Commentaries on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Vol. 2 The Messiah Chapter 9: This moment... the only reality

BELOVED OSHO,

AND AN ASTRONOMER SAID, MASTER, WHAT OF TIME?

AND HE ANSWERED:

YOU WOULD MEASURE TIME THE MEASURELESS AND THE IMMEASURABLE.

YOU WOULD ADJUST YOUR CONDUCT AND EVEN DIRECT THE COURSE OF YOUR SPIRIT ACCORDING TO HOURS AND SEASONS.

OF TIME YOU WOULD MAKE A STREAM UPON WHOSE BANK YOU WOULD SIT AND WATCH ITS FLOWING.

YET THE TIMELESS IN YOU IS AWARE OF LIFE'S TIMELESSNESS,

AND KNOWS THAT YESTERDAY IS BUT TODAY'S MEMORY AND TOMORROW IS TODAY'S DREAM.

AND THAT THAT WHICH SINGS AND CONTEMPLATES IN YOU IS STILL DWELLING WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THAT FIRST MOMENT WHICH SCATTERED THE STARS INTO SPACE.

WHO AMONG YOU DOES NOT FEEL THAT HIS POWER TO LOVE IS BOUNDLESS?

AND YET WHO DOES NOT FEEL THAT VERY LOVE, THOUGH BOUNDLESS, ENCOMPASSED WITHIN THE CENTER OF HIS BEING, AND MOVING NOT FROM LOVE THOUGHT TO LOVE THOUGHT, NOR FROM LOVE DEEDS TO OTHER LOVE DEEDS?

AND IS NOT TIME EVEN AS LOVE IS, UNDIVIDED AND PACELESS?

BUT IF IN YOUR THOUGHT YOU MUST MEASURE TIME INTO SEASONS, LET EACH SEASON ENCIRCLE ALL THE OTHER SEASONS.

AND LET TO-DAY EMBRACE THE PAST WITH REMEMBRANCE AND THE FUTURE WITH LONGING.

Kahlil Gibran is a category in himself. That is what is most surprising in him, and the most mysterious. There are moments when he seems to be a mystic of the highest order -- a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus, a Socrates. And at other times the mystic simply disappears, leaving behind only a poet who sings beautiful but contentless songs, who speaks in words of gold. But there is no authentic experience in those words, no existential taste.

It is very difficult for an ordinary man to distinguish between when Kahlil Gibran is a mystic and when he is just a poet. Sometimes, when he is just a poet, he appears more beautiful. He is a born poet; he is like a river that sometimes becomes very shallow -- but when the river is very shallow it sings songs. And sometimes the river becomes very deep -- but then there is only silence.

Today's statements would have been perfectly right on the lips of a Heraclitus, or Chuang Tzu, or Nagarjuna. There would have been no surprise if Buddha were speaking these words.

The surprise is that Kahlil Gibran is not yet an awakened man, yet in some miraculous way, he speaks of those depths and those heights which are available only to the enlightened. That's why I say he is a category in himself -- a strange mixture of the mystic and the poet.

As a poet, the greatest mystic will look poor in comparison to Kahlil Gibran; but as a mystic, Kahlil Gibran only once in a while spreads his wings in the open sky and reaches to the boundless, to the unlimited -- without any fear, without even looking back.

In his soul, the poet and the mystic are both present -- he is a very rich man. The poet is more often awake, the mystic once in a while, but the mixture of these two has created a new category to which only one other man, Rabindranath Tagore, can belong. I know only of these two persons who belong to this strange category.

The statements that we are going to discuss are of tremendous profoundness, and about the most mysterious subject: time. We all think as if we know time; we have taken it for granted. There are people who are playing cards, going to the movies, and if you ask them, "What are you doing?" they don't hesitate in saying that they are "killing time." They don't know what time is.

Down the centuries thousands of philosophers have pondered and contemplated the subject, but nothing very tangible has come into the hands of humanity. But these statements are not from a philosopher, these statements are from a poet who knows the beauty of language.

Once in a while, when his mystic is a little awake, a window opens into the unknown. He catches a glimpse and he is articulate enough to bring that glimpse into words, to translate it into such words that perhaps he himself may not be able to explain what he means.

It happened once... a professor of English in the University of London was stuck at a certain point while he was teaching the poems of Coleridge, one of the great poets of England. The professor must have been very honest. Ordinarily professors are never honest; even if they don't understand, they go on pretending that they understand. Even if they don't know, they never say, "I don't know." It is rare to find a professor who can say, "Forgive me, I can understand the words but I cannot catch the meaning behind them. So just give me one day's time, because Coleridge lives in my neighborhood so it is not a difficult problem.

"I will go to him and ask him directly, `What do you mean? I understand the beauty of your words, the linguistic meaning of your words, but that is not all. I feel continually that something is missing, that I am missing the real meaning and the significance. I am able to catch hold of the rose, but the fragrance simply eludes me -- and the fragrance is the significance of the rose.'"

The next day he approached Coleridge. He was watering his plants in the garden -- an old man. The professor said, "Forgive me for disturbing you, but it has become absolutely necessary for me.... I cannot be dishonest to my students. If I know something, I say I know; if I do not know, I cannot pretend. Although they will not be able to figure out, they will not be able to see, that they have been deceived, I can see that I am deceiving them.

"This is your poem and this is the part where I am stuck. The whole night I tried to figure it out -- I have found layers upon layers in it -- but still the meaning is missing. So I have come to ask you: What is the meaning of these words?"

Coleridge said, "You are asking a very difficult question. At the time when I wrote this poem, two persons knew the meaning."

The professor was very happy. He said, "Then there is no problem. I don't care about the other person -- you just tell me what the meaning is."

He said, "You misunderstand me. When I was writing it, two persons knew the meaning: I knew the meaning and God knew the meaning -- and now only God knows. I have tried hard myself... beautiful words, but nothing substantial. You have to forgive me. If you meet God somewhere you can ask your question to Him; and you can also ask on my behalf, because I am very much disturbed.

"This is not the first time you have come to me; this has happened three or four times before. Other people who have a deep insight into poetry have approached me and this is the point where they get stuck. Those closed words are clear, but empty, words."

Kahlil Gibran is one of the greatest poets -- with a unique quality: once in a while his poet transforms into a mystic. And when that mystic speaks it is not Kahlil Gibran who is speaking.

In the words of Coleridge, "It is God who is speaking." He has become just a vehicle, allowing that existence to express itself. If you go to him, he himself may perhaps not be able to explain to you many things that he has said -- and said so beautifully that they have never been said so beautifully ever before.

AND AN ASTRONOMER SAID, MASTER, WHAT OF TIME?

The astronomer is continually concerned with the reality of time. That is his whole profession, his whole search.

AND HE ANSWERED:

YOU WOULD MEASURE TIME THE MEASURELESS AND THE IMMEASURABLE.

He is saying that your very effort is absurd. you would measure... the measureless and the immeasurable? Just the very idea shows your ignorance. Life has many dimensions which are measureless and immeasurable; time is only one of the aspects.

By the way, it will be significant for you to understand that the English word "measure" comes from the same Sanskrit root as "matter." The Sanskrit root is matra -- that which can be measured.

Matter is that which can be measured.

Spirit is that which cannot be measured.

The only difference between matter and the spiritual is that of measurement, because one measure is a quantity -- matter -- and the other measure is a quality -- spirit, love, time. These are qualities; there is no way to measure them. You can experience them, but you cannot describe your experience in words which indicate any kind of measurement. Can you tell someone how much you love them? -- one kilo, two kilos, or one mile, two miles? How much do you love? Even the whole sky will seem to be too small. All measurements are dropped.

So whenever somebody says, "I love you very much," he does not understand what he is saying -- because "very much" indicates quantity. Love is simply love. It is never more, never less. It is enough to say, "I love you." Or perhaps it is better even not to say that. Let your eyes show it, let your hands speak it, let your songs give hints, let your dance indicate it. Don't say, "I love you," because the moment you say, "I love you," you have confined something vast to a small word, "love." You have killed something.

The vastness of love, if confined to a small word, is imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it is a dead word.

My own experience of thousands of my people has given me strange insights, which perhaps Gautam Buddha missed -- because he never talked about love. The moment you say to someone, "I love you" -- watch! Perhaps it is the beginning of the end.

When there was love there was no need to say it.

Without saying it, it was heard.

Without uttering a single word, every vibe around you showed that you are in the spring, blossoming, dancing in the wind, in the sun, in the rain. The man in love does not walk, he dances. Only people who do not know love, walk.

The moment love blossoms in your being, the phenomenon is so great and so overwhelming that it changes everything in you. Your eyes are no longer the same as they used to be -- dull, dead; suddenly they become aflame. Suddenly the darkness in your eyes disappears and there is light; the shallowness of your face disappears and there is a depth beyond depth. You touch somebody, and your hand is no longer just a physical thing; through it is flowing something non-physical, non-material -- the warmth.

You must have seen, shaking hands with people.... With a few people, when you shake hands, it seems as if you are shaking hands with a dead branch of a tree. And with a few others -- rarely -- when you shake hands you know it is not simply shaking hands, but a meeting of two energies. You feel the passing of energy from your side and the passing of energy from the other side. There has been a communication, a communion.

Almustafa says: You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. Please don't be so stupid. But astronomers, for centuries, have been doing that.

Almustafa says:

YOU WOULD ADJUST YOUR CONDUCT AND EVEN DIRECT THE COURSE OF YOUR SPIRIT ACCORDING TO HOURS AND SEASONS.

That reminds me.... One of my friends -- although he was very old, of the age of my grandfather -- loved me immensely, so the distance between the ages, the generation gap, disappeared. He remained a member of the parliament for sixty years continuously. It is now a fact of history that only two men have remained for so long, non-stop, as members of parliament. One was Winston Churchill and the other is Dr. Govindas.

He was very traditional, and everybody wondered that he was so traditional, so orthodox.... Even orthodox people used to ask, "How do you both manage to sit for hours and discuss?" I used to stay with him whenever I used to pass through New Delhi. Even his wife told me one day, "This is so strange... everything that you say is against him. Listening to you both I get so confused. He goes on listening to you and he goes on doing his thing."

His superstitions were such that if he were going somewhere by train or by plane, first he would call his astronomer to ask, "What is the right time to move towards the north or towards the south -- exact minute, seconds?" And the astronomer would figure out the situation of the stars.

I told him, "This is going too far." The stars are not concerned where Govindas is going. I don't see any reason why the stars should be worried that Govindas is going north, when he should go to the south, that he is going one hour too early....

I said, "This is just the ego of the man -- as if the whole existence moves around his ego!"

He would listen to me and he would say, "You may be right, but I don't want to take any risk."

I said, "This is strange; you never argue the point."

He said, "It is not a question of argument, it is a question of risk. You may be right, but who knows?" -- for centuries people have consulted astronomers all over the world, birth charts have been made....

It was so difficult to stay with him, and it was very difficult not to stay with him, because if I was in Delhi not staying with him, and he came to know the next day, by reading in the newspapers, he would come rushing to me, angry, saying, "I have told you that whenever you are in Delhi you have to stay with me."

He wouldn't listen at all, he would simply drag me to his house -- and I was very comfortable in his house. He had a very beautiful house -- the best house, like emperors have: all comforts, servants, cars, everything; and only he and his wife, both old, were there.

He used to call people there -- parliamentarians, ministers, cabinet ministers -- to meet me. I said, "Everything is okay except your astronomer. If you would stop calling that astronomer.... Because of him I feel so tortured. The train is going to leave in the night at twelve and the astronomer says I should leave just when the sun is setting. It is not in my hands: The train will leave in the middle of the night; it cannot leave at six o'clock in the evening." So the astronomers have found a via media. They say, "You leave the house at six o'clock and wait at the station." So for hours I was waiting at the station.

I said, "This is the only trouble with you; otherwise, everything is okay."

I would reach Delhi, and if I was going to stay with him he would come to pick me up. But he would not move from the station until the time the astronomer had said he should reach the house. Even if we reached the house earlier, just by chance, if there was not much traffic, then we would go round and round.

I said, "This is strange. You harass me and you harass yourself."

He said, "We will reach the house at exactly the time the stars intend us to enter into the house."

I said, "No stars have told you anything."

But the astronomers, for thousands of years, have been obsessed. Their obsession is that they discipline their conduct according to their astronomical calculations. When to get married....

You will be surprised to know that in the ancient Indian astronomical treatises even the time when you should make love to your wife has to be asked by the astronomer, because she may get pregnant at a wrong time. Then you will get an Adolf Hitler bomb into your house, or a Ronald Reagan. So wait a little....

The treatises even say such absurd things like when the mother is going to give birth to the child she should hold and control until the right moment; she should suffer the pain. It is a struggle, because the child wants to be born, but the stars are not allowing it.

Such discipline... even your birth, your impregnation, have to be decided according to the stars and their movements. And everything else -- when you should eat, when you should not eat. For at least ten thousand years Jainas have not eaten in the night -- only between sunrise and sunset.

As a small child I used to suffer, because I had no idea.... What nonsense is this? Why should the stars be worried about me eating in the night? But a strange method is followed. Whatever is left after the supper, at sunset, is given to the beggars. So in the kitchen there is nothing left. So you may believe in the stars or not, but you have to remain hungry. And, particularly, there are ten days of holidays in Jainism when you cannot even drink water in the night; otherwise you will go to hell. Just drinking pure water -- not even polluted water. You are drinking the same water the whole day; there is no problem. The problem is the stars.

Almustafa is saying: you would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Not only your conduct but even your spiritual growth depends on your calculations of time and stars.

Just a few days ago, a young Jaina nun, a twenty-one year old, beautiful girl, escaped from the temple where she was staying. It was thought that somebody had abducted her, but the truth was something else. After two days a letter was received from the girl to her parents, saying, "Now I am adult. I have completed twenty-one years of age, and now I am absolutely free to make decisions about my life.

"You forced me to become a nun, renouncing life, because the astronomer said that if I became a nun at the age of nine, in a certain month, on a certain day, I will become enlightened."

Now no parents can afford to loose such an opportunity. In the first place a girl in India is a burden. Soon they will have to arrange a marriage. And marriage is so ugly in this country -- the father of the boy who is going to be married to this girl will ask for money. If the boy is a doctor he will ask for all the money that he has spent on his education. And every parent of any girl wants their girl to be in a well-to-do family. People sell their houses, their lands, just for their daughters to be married into a well-to-do family.

So this was a good opportunity -- a double opportunity. Now the problem of marriage is finished. The nun is going to be a celibate her whole life and there is also a great opportunity that she will become enlightened, because the astronomer said so.

The scriptures say that if your son or your daughter becomes enlightened, you are blessed. The father, the mother, they are blessed to have a son or a daughter who becomes enlightened. It raises even their consciousnesses. It is their blood, their bones; it is their extension. Something of the glory of the enlightened person is going to be reflected in the lives of the parents.

So they forced the girl -- and she was not even able to understand what was happening. At the age of twenty-one she saw the whole thing -- that this is sheer stupidity -- and she escaped. And she threatened her parents: "If you try to find me and force me back again, I am going to expose all the tortures that I have gone through, and all the ill treatment, perverted treatment, that has been given to me.

"So if you want to save your monks and your nuns and their so-called purity and celibacy, you simply forget me completely. Don't try to find me."

Stars cannot decide anything.

OF TIME YOU WOULD MAKE A STREAM UPON WHOSE BANK YOU WOULD SIT AND WATCH ITS FLOWING.

This is the way of the philosopher, the speculator. For him, time is just like a stream; and he is sitting on the bank speculating about the stream: where it comes from, where it goes... but the reality is something totally different.

It is not time that goes anywhere; we come and we go. Time remains where it is, where it has always been. It is not a stream; we are streams. Time cannot be a stream because it is not matter.

Modern physics will support Kahlil Gibran in his statement. Albert Einstein will support him because he has reduced time to a dimension of space -- the fourth dimension of space.

Just think of space... you never think of space as a stream. Space is always there: you come and go, you go into the room, you go out of the room, but the space in the room remains where it is. Albert Einstein's whole life effort was somehow to figure out what time is. And his discovery was that time is only a fourth dimension of space; hence certainly it cannot be in a flow.

It is not possible that one of your hands is a flow and your whole body remains static -- then your hand will have gone to the ocean and you will be left far behind; and then there is no possibility of meeting your hand again.

If time is a fourth dimension of space, that means neither space goes anywhere, nor time goes anywhere. Seasons come and go, people come and go; spring comes and there are flowers, and the fall comes and all the trees are standing naked. So there is much going and coming -- but remember that neither space goes anywhere nor time goes anywhere.

It is strange that nobody before Albert Einstein indicated the fact that time should not be thought of as a stream. It has always been thought, in all cultures, in all civilizations, in all ages, as a stream. There must be something psychological in it. Why has the whole humanity always thought of it in the same way -- as a stream?

As I see it.... I see a very significant psychological fact in it. The psychological fact is that we don't want to be a stream, we want to be here and now, forever. Seasons change, morning comes, evening comes, day changes into night, night changes into day. Everything around us goes on changing; we just remain the same. Our fear of change, our fear of the unknown... because the change may take you into the unknown; it is bound to take you into the unknown.

We also see childhood changes, youth changes, middle age changes, old age changes, but we do not pay much attention to this kind of change, because this is our identity. So we know perfectly well we are changing -- we are in a flux -- but we are afraid to become conscious of it.

A true meditator is one who becomes conscious of the change that is happening in his body, in the world. He has to become aware of everything that changes. Your mind goes on changing, your feelings go on changing -- is there something which does not change? We have called that innermost core of your being the center of your cyclone, your soul, which does not change.

Again it will be important to be reminded that only one person in the whole history of man has called the soul "time," and that man was Mahavira. He has called the soul samaya -- time. That is the only thing that remains; everything goes on flowing.

So there is within you at the very deepest point, a witness -- a sakshi -- a watcher which does not change. And this watcher is really nothing but time. But only one man in the whole of history has actually called it time.

So if you become a witness of all the changes that are happening around you -- outside you, inside you -- sooner or later you will become aware of the one who is watching it all. That witness is eternal. That witness is your immortality. That witness knows no death, because it knows no change.

YET THE TIMELESS IN YOU IS AWARE OF LIFE'S TIMELESSNESS.

That is what I say is the most mysterious thing about Kahlil Gibran. He is not, in any way, of the same category as Mahavira, but what he is saying is exactly the same. He is saying: Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. Because you conceive of time as a stream, a change within you, there is something which is changeless. You can call it timeless because you are accustomed to time being synonymous with change.

That timeless within you, that unchanging within you is aware of the innermost core of existence too, is aware that all change is superficial.

In death nothing ever changes.

It is always the same.

Just the very idea and you will feel a great serenity and silence descending upon you....

AND KNOWS THAT YESTERDAY IS BUT TO-DAY'S MEMORY AND TO-MORROW IS TO-DAY'S DREAM.

Poets are not expected to say such things; it is not in their dimension. Yesterday is but today's memory.... There is no yesterday left behind. It is not like a railway train -- that you have come to this station and you have left the other station behind. Yesterday has come with you. It has not been left behind, it has come with you as memory. It is today's memory, and the same is true about tomorrow.

It is not that it is going to come from somewhere to meet you; you already have it in your dream, in your imagination.

Yesterday is your memory.

Tomorrow is your dream.

But the only real thing is today.

AND THAT THAT WHICH SINGS AND CONTEMPLATES IN YOU IS STILL DWELLING WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THAT FIRST MOMENT WHICH SCATTERED THE STARS INTO THE SPACE.

This is a tremendously potential statement. He is saying, "This very moment what is dwelling within you is not something different; you have not left the beginning, the first moment when stars were scattered into the sky. That first moment is still within you; it is your memory."

He is not saying anything about the last moment, but just a logical corollary.... If the first moment is dwelling within you, when the stars were scattered into the sky, the last moment, when all the scattered stars will be again pulled back into a net and disappear, is also dwelling in you, in your dreams.

You contain the whole eternity in this very moment.

The whole past and the whole future is contained in this small moment. It is not small; you are just not aware of its immensity.

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?

He is just giving you an example: Everybody feels that the power within him to love is boundless. But you have boundaries. How can the boundless be within you, who have boundaries? You must have read Leo Tolstoy's famous story, How Much Land Does a Man Require? -- how big is your grave going to be?

In this small body you are aware there are things which are boundless. He is giving you the example of love, because that is more common and understandable. In the same way, time also dwells in you in its boundlessness. In the same way, space also dwells in you in its infinity.

It will be far better -- perhaps not linguistically right... but I don't care about language, I care about what is real. To say, "Love dwells within me," is not right. It is better to say, "I dwell in love." Then your boundaries cannot be the boundaries of love. Perhaps you have loved -- but loved without any awareness. If you had loved with awareness you would not have said, "Love is in my heart." No -- your heart is in love.

Love surrounds you -- infinite love. And perhaps that is the reason no lover is satisfied -- because his love is boundless and needs a response which is boundless. Every lover is in search of someone who can love boundlessly -- there will not be any limitation on it -- but your very idea that love dwells in you makes it a small thing.

Think that you dwell in love just as the fish dwells in the ocean, then you can share your love without any fear, then you know it is inexhaustible, then you need not be so miserly about it.

If love is understood as an oceanic feeling around you, there will be no jealousy.

Jealousy is the poison that kills all love and all its joy. But jealousy arises because of your basic misunderstanding. We go on thinking of love also as a quantity, so we are afraid: if the person you love also loves somebody else, you are immediately afraid. He was loving you two kilos -- now only one kilo. And tomorrow, if he finds somebody else -- only half a kilo! And in this way your love will go on disappearing; soon you will be sitting with your scales, with no kilos.

The whole of jealousy is based on the fear that love can be divided, that it is a quantity.

It is a quality.

You can give as much as you want, to as many people as you want -- to the whole world -- still your sources are inexhaustible. There is no question of jealousy at all.

In my dreams of the future humanity, I always see that the day must come, one day, when there will be no jealousy, when there will be no anger, when there will be no quarreling over small things -- because you have such a treasure of love, who cares about small things?

Love itself is such a fulfillment that you don't need any other fulfillment. It is the nourishment of your very soul. And the day when there is a possibility of love without jealousy, we will have brought the kingdom of God on the earth.

That is where I differ from Jesus. Jesus wants you to enter God's kingdom: I want you to bring God's kingdom here on the earth -- because this is an unnecessarily arduous thing, to convince so many people, "Come on, follow me, and I will take you to the kingdom of God." Why not bring the kingdom of God here?

All the religions are angry with me, for the simple reason that they have all been exploiting humanity -- that they will make arrangements for you in the kingdom of God. Naturally, they look at me as their most dangerous enemy, because I am telling you, "There is no need to go anywhere. We can pull the whole tent of God's kingdom here, with God and all in it!"

There is no need to go anywhere.

All that is needed is a deep understanding and awareness of love's infinity.

AND YET WHO DOES NOT FEEL THAT VERY LOVE, THOUGH BOUNDLESS, ENCOMPASSED WITHIN THE CENTER OF HIS BEING....

Almustafa is saying: On the one hand love is infinite...and yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the center of his being.... It is both. The circumference is bigger than the sky, and the center is at the very interiority of your being.

... AND MOVING NOT FROM LOVE THOUGHT TO LOVE THOUGHT, NOR FROM LOVE DEEDS TO OTHER LOVE DEEDS?

Love is not a flux, a movement. It is not that from one love thought it moves to another love thought, from one love deed it moves to another love deed. No, deeds and thoughts and feelings all move in the ocean of love. But the love itself remains as it is -- eternal, immortal, ultimate.

AND IS NOT TIME EVEN AS LOVE IS, UNDIVIDED AND PACELESS?

He has brought his conclusion to a beautiful end: and is not time even as love is.... I don't think that the astronomer would have understood him, because astronomers are one of the categories of idiots. There are many categories, but astronomers are a very prominent category. They don't know what love is.

The whole argument of Kahlil Gibran is based on a synchronicity between love and time. It is difficult to discuss time, because it is nobody's experience.

In England there was one great atheist, Edmund Burke. His friends told him, "You are a great atheist. One of our great preachers has come -- even the archbishop is going to hear his sermon today. We invite you to come; and you will be convinced."

Burke went to the church with his friends. He listened to the sermon, and at the end, when it was a question-answer hour, he stood up and he asked, "Have not you told us that God is omnipotent, all-powerful?"

The bishop said, "Of course, God is all-powerful. He can do whatever he wants to do. He created the world, he created everything."

Edmund Burke just raised his hand, showed his watch, and told the priest, "I give you and your God five minutes -- let Him stop my watch. A simple thing.... I am not asking Him to create a world, just to stop my watch. And I am giving enough time -- five minutes. In six days he created the whole universe. I can stop my watch within a second."

The congregation was shocked, the archbishop was shocked. The watch continued to move.... Edmund Burke's friends were very much depressed. The whole congregation fell into silence: Edmund Burke laughed and walked out of the church. His friends came out, running, with him.

He said, "Do you understand? I have proved that there is no God. And even if there is any God, He is not even potent enough to stop my watch."

This incident has been quoted again and again in many books written about Edmund Burke -- he was a great thinker. Whenever I have come across this incident, I have to laugh myself. And I have felt that it is unfortunate that Edmund Burke is dead; otherwise I would have entered England, even if the parliament does not allow me, just to say to Edmund Burke, "God did not bother about your watch because time is always at a stop. It is not moving. What to do? Your question was wrong. It is your watch that is moving.

"It is our arbitrary method to measure time, which is immeasurable. But God does not know our arbitrary things; He is not a watchmaker. He is aware of the time; and He must have laughed, 'Time has always been at a stop. What is this English fool asking?' And how can you stop a thing which is already stopped? -- since the very beginning it has been at a stop. It has never moved."

Our superficial understanding is of movement -- one thought to another, one deed to another. But existence knows, in its roots, everything is at a full stop. Nothing moves.

If you can experience this point where nothing moves, you have come home.

That very experience will explain to you all the mysteries of existence.

AND IS NOT TIME EVEN AS LOVE IS, UNDIVIDED AND PACELESS?

BUT IF IN YOUR THOUGHT YOU MUST MEASURE TIME INTO SEASONS, LET EACH SEASON ENCIRCLE ALL THE OTHER SEASONS.

He is saying, "I can understand your difficulties. Perhaps you cannot rise to such heights, or such depths, and you have to measure time. Then remember one thing...if you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons. He is saying, "Let your birth and your death be the same; don't divide them. Then let the fall and the spring be the same; don't divide them."

The moment you are born you have started dying. It is not that, after seventy years you will one day suddenly die. Nobody has suddenly died, up to now. Death is a process, just as life is a process.

And life and death are almost like your two wings, together.

The moment you are born, you have started dying too. As life grows, so is death growing -- simultaneously, hand in hand. The moment life is complete, death is also complete. They come into the world together, they disappear from the world together. They are not two different things.

LET EACH SEASON ENCIRCLE ALL THE OTHER SEASONS.

AND LET TO-DAY EMBRACE THE PAST WITH REMEMBRANCE AND THE FUTURE WITH LONGING.

If you must divide -- the best is not to divide, but if your mind cannot understand the indivisibility of existence, and you must divide -- then at least remember that your...to-day embraces the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

Let, in your present moment, there be a meeting of the whole past and of the whole future.

This moment, which contains the whole past and the whole future, is the only reality there is.

This present moment is time. And it is always present.

I have loved one small incident.... There was an atheist, a great law expert, and he always loved to discuss about God. The easiest thing to demolish in the world is God -- God is the most defenseless hypothesis. He always wanted to bring in somehow, in discussions with friends or strangers, the question of God.

But it is not always easy. Somebody is talking about the weather, somebody is talking about the vegetables... how to bring God in? So he made a device: just behind himself on the wall he wrote in big letters, bold letters: "GOD IS NOWHERE," so anybody who came would look at it. And it was such a thing that just out of curiosity one would ask, "This is strange. Why have you written this sentence here -- don't you believe in God?" So every person who entered in his sitting room had to discuss God with him. And he was ready with arguments.

One day his small child, who was just learning language and was able to pronounce small words, but was not able to pronounce big and long words, was sitting there on the floor when two, three people came -- strangers. They looked at the wall, so the boy also looked at the wall -- for the first time; otherwise he had not cared, he had been living in the house. And because he was trying to learn language... and whenever children are trying to learn something they try it again and again, to grasp it. So he tried himself. He read slowly, "God" -- everybody listened to what he was saying -- "is".... But nowhere was too big a word, so he cut it in two: "God is now here."

Even his father was shocked. Thousands of people had come into the room but nobody had made "nowhere" into "now, here".

A Persian sufi saying is: "When you cannot understand, sometimes God speaks to you through children." You cannot argue with children. Now you cannot argue with him, "It is not `now here,' it is `nowhere.'" The child started repeating it again and again: "God is now here."

That night the father could not sleep. Again and again he heard his child's voice. It is difficult to argue with him: "God does not exist." He tried, but he said, "If He does not exist, then how can He be now here?"

He had to look into his own philosophy of atheism for the first time: "Perhaps the child is right. I have never searched... where God is. All my arguments are only intellectual; I have no existential experience. I have never meditated. I have never experienced what it means to be `now here.'"

If you can experience the phenomenon of "now here," you have experienced something that a few people have called God, a few people have called truth, a few people have called love, a few people have called beauty. It does not matter what you call it.

But the transformation from "nowhere" to "now here" is so vast and unbridgeable... from a negative statement it becomes an absolutely positive statement.

What Albert Einstein discovered -- that time is the fourth dimension of space -- that child uttered without knowing it: because "now" is time and "here" is space.

Where "now" and "here" are together, the whole existence is available to you.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

Kahlil-Gibrans-Prophet

THE MESSIAH, VOL 2

Chapter-9

This moment... the only reality