A man was trying to cross a road. It was the rush hour, and it was difficult to cross. Cars were going so fast, and he was a very, very mild mannered man. He tried many times and came back. Then he saw an old acquaintance, Mulla Nasruddin, on the other side. He cried, “Nasruddin, how did you cross the road?”
Nasruddin replied, “I never crossed it. I was born on this side.”
There are people who are always thinking of the distant shore. The distant always looks beautiful; the distant has a magnetism of its own because it is covered in mist. But the ocean is the same. It is up to you to choose. Nothing is wrong in going on that ocean, but go for the right reasons. You may be simply avoiding the jump from this shore. And even if the boat leads you to the other shore, the moment you reach it you will start thinking of this shore because this will be the faraway point. Many times, in many lives, you have done this. You have changed the shore, but you have not taken the jump.
I have seen you crossing the ocean from this side to that and from that side to this. This is the problem: that shore is far away because you are here. When you are there, this shore will be far away. You are in such a sleep you have completely forgotten that you have also been to that shore again and again. By the time you reach the other shore, you have forgotten the shore that you have left behind. By the time you reach it, oblivion takes over.
You look to the distant shore and again somebody says, “Here is a boat, sir. You can go to the other shore and take the jump from there because God is very, very far away.” Again you start the preparation to leave this shore. Patanjali gives you a boat to go to the other shore, but when you have reached there, Zen will always give you the jump. The final jump is of Zen. Meanwhile you can do many things; that is not the point. Whenever you take the jump it will be a sudden jump, it cannot be gradual.
All gradualness is in going from this shore to that – but nothing is wrong in it. If you enjoy the journey, it is beautiful because he is here, he is in the middle, and also at that shore. No need to reach to the other shore either. You can take the jump in the middle, just from the boat. The boat becomes the shore. Where ever you jump from is the shore. Every moment, where ever you can take the jump from becomes the shore. If you don’t take the jump, it is no longer the shore. It depends on you; remember this well.
That’s why I am talking about all the contradictory standpoints, so that you can understand from every side. You can see the reality from every side and you can decide. If you decide to wait a little, beautiful. If you decide to take the jump right now, beautiful. To me everything is beautiful and great, and I have no choice. I simply give you all the choices. If you say, “I would like to wait a little,” I say, “Good! I bless you. Wait a little.” If you say, “I am ready and I want to jump,” I say, “Jump, with my blessings.”
For me there is no choice – neither Heraclitus, nor Patanjali. I am simply opening all the doors for you with the hope that you may enter a door. But remember the tricks of the mind. When I talk about Heraclitus you think it is too vague, too mysterious, too simple. When I talk about Patanjali you think it is too difficult, almost impossible. I open the door and you interpret something and make a judgment and stop yourself. The door is not open for you to judge, the door is open for you to enter.
The second question:
Osho,
You talked of moving from faith to trust. How can we use the mind that swings from doubt to belief to go beyond these two polarities?
Doubt and belief are not different – both are aspects of the same coin. This has to be understood first because people think that when they believe, they have gone beyond doubt. Belief is the same as doubt because both are concerns of the mind. Your mind argues, says no, finds no proof to say yes – and you doubt. Your mind then finds arguments to say yes, proof to say yes – and you believe. In both cases you believe in reason; in both cases you believe in arguments. The difference is on the surface. Deep down you believe in the reasoning. Trust is the dropping out of reasoning. It is mad, irrational, absurd.
I say that trust is not faith. Trust is a personal encounter. Faith is again given and borrowed. It is a conditioning. Faith is a conditioning which your parents, your culture, and society give you. You don’t bother about it; you don’t make it a personal concern. It is a given thing. A thing which is given and which has not been a personal growth is just a facade, a false face, a Sunday face.
For six days of the week you are different; then on Sunday you enter the church and you put on a mask. See how people behave in church: so gently, so humanly – the same people! Even a murderer goes to church and prays. Look at his face – it looks so beautiful, so innocent, and this man has killed! In church you have a proper face to use and you know how to use it. It’s a conditioning. It is given to you in your very childhood.
Faith is given; trust is a growth.
You encounter reality, you face it, you live it, and by and by you come to an understanding that doubt leads to hell, to misery. The more you doubt, the more miserable you become. If you doubt completely, you will be in perfect misery. If you are not in perfect misery, that is because you cannot doubt completely. You still trust. Even an atheist trusts. Even a man who doubts whether the world exists or not also trusts; otherwise he cannot live, and life will become impossible.
If doubt becomes total, you cannot live for a single moment more. How can you breathe in, if you doubt? If you really doubt, who knows if the breath isn’t poisonous? Who knows, maybe millions of germs are being carried in? And who knows, maybe cancer is being carried in with the breath?
If you really doubt, you cannot even breathe. You cannot live for a single moment more; you will die immediately. Doubt is suicide, but you never doubt perfectly, so you linger on. You linger on, somehow you drag on. Your life is not total. Just think: if total doubt is suicide, then total trust will be the absolute life possible.
That’s what happens to a man of trust: he trusts, and the more he trusts, the more he becomes capable of trusting. The more he becomes capable of trust, the more life opens. He feels more, he lives more, he lives intensely. Life becomes an authentic bliss. Now he can trust more. Not that he is never deceived because if you trust, that doesn’t mean that nobody is going to deceive you. In fact, more people will deceive you because you become vulnerable. If you trust, more people will deceive you, but nobody can make you miserable; that is the point to understand. They can deceive you, steal things from you, borrow money and never return it, but nobody can make you miserable. That becomes impossible. Even if they kill you, they cannot make you miserable.
You trust, and it makes you vulnerable, but also absolutely victorious because nobody can defeat you. They can deceive you, they can steal from you and you may become a beggar, but still you will be an emperor.
Trust makes emperors out of beggars and doubt makes beggars out of emperors. Look at an emperor who cannot trust; he is always afraid. He cannot trust his own wife, or children because a king possesses so much that his son will kill him for it, his wife will poison him for it. He cannot trust anybody. He lives in such distrust that he is already in hell. Even when he sleeps he cannot relax. Who knows what is going to happen?
Trust makes you more and more open. Of course, when you are open many things will become possible. When you are open, friends will reach your heart; of course, enemies can also reach your heart… The door is open. So there are two possibilities. If you want to be secure, you close the door completely. Bolt it, lock it and hide inside. Now no enemy can enter, but neither can a friend. Even if God comes, he cannot enter. Now nobody can deceive you, but what is the point? You are in a grave. You are already dead. Nobody can kill you, but you are already dead; you cannot come out. Of course, you live in security, but what type of life is this? You don’t live at all.
Then you open the door. Doubt is closing the door; trust is opening it. When you open the door, all the alternatives become possible. Friends may enter, foes may enter. The wind will come, and bring the perfume of flowers. It will also bring the germs of diseases. Now everything is possible – the good and the bad. Love will come; hate will also come. Now God can come and also the Devil. This is the fear – that something