The second question

Question 2

OSHO,

WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT TRUST?

Anand Parinita,

TRUST IS A MYSTERY -- that is the first thing to be understood about trust. Hence it cannot be explained. I can give you a few indications of it, just fingers pointing to the moon, a few hints, but it cannot be described or defined.

It is the highest form of love, it is the essential core of love. Love itself is a mystery and indefinable, but love is like a circumference and trust is its very center, its soul. Love is like a temple and trust is the innermost shrine in the temple where God is situated.

Ordinarily people think that trust means faith; that is wrong. Trust does not mean faith. Faith is emotional, sentimental. Faith creates fanatics. Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, these are the people who have faith. Trust creates only a quality of religiousness. Trust never makes anybody a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. Faith is borrowed -- borrowed from the parents, from the society in which you are born. Faith is accidental. YOU live in faith out of fear or out of greed, but not out of love. Trust is out of love.

Faith is a conditioning, imposed; it is a bondage. The man of faith is a prisoner. He may know it, he may not know it. He may have been living in a very beautiful palace, but he is imprisoned in it. The prison may be very well decorated -- with Bibles and Korans and Vedas and Gitas -- it may be made out of beautiful doctrines, philosophies, ideologies, but it is a prison because you have not entered into it on your own; you have been forced to enter it.

I was a small child and my father used to take me to the temple, and I always resisted it. I would tell him, "I will stay outside the temple -- you go in."

He would say, "But why can't you come in?"

I would say, "When I feel like coming in I will come in, but I don't feel like coming in. It is so beautiful outside! Why should I go in? And I don't see any point in it at all! The trees outside, the birds singing outside, the sun -- it is so beautiful! I will wait here for you. If you choose to be inside and sit in that windowless, closed place, that is YOUR choice."

He would try to persuade me but he was never successful. Every parent tries, and the intention is not bad -- the intention IS good -- but unconscious intentions, even if they are good, they are not of much help. They hinder, they harm. An intention can be really good only when it is conscious, otherwise prisons are created, and you become attached to prisons. It is so difficult.

Even a man like Bertrand Russell, who does not believe in Christianity, has confessed that although he has dropped believing in Christianity, if somebody suddenly asks him, "Who was the greater man, Buddha or Christ?" somewhere deep inside he knows that Buddha is greater, but he will answer, "Christ." That Christian upbringing... the mind that has been dropped has left scars.

He says, "When I think about it, when I am alert, I can see the greatness of Buddha. Compared to Buddha what Christ says looks ordinary -- but that is when I am alert. When I am not alert, if you wake me up suddenly from sleep and ask me, I will certainly say Christ. It hurts somewhere to put Buddha above Christ."

And I can understand his difficulty. The same will be the difficulty of a Buddhist. He may be convinced that Christ is far better, he may be convinced that Christ's sacrifice is greater than Buddha's, but deep down in the unconscious the training, the conditioning is there -- he cannot put anybody else above Buddha.

One Jaina scholar who was a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi wrote a book on Mahavira and Buddha and he showed me his manuscript. He told me, "I am trying to synthesize both the religions."

I looked at the title and I said, "You won't be able to synthesize them, you will not be able to bring about a synthesis. Just your title is enough!"

He said, "What can you know from the title?"

The title was BHAGWAN MAHAVIRA AND MAHATMA BUDDHA. I said, "Can't you call both Bhagwan?" "Mahatma" means a very great man but still a man, and "Bhagwan" means one who has gone beyond man. I said, "How can you bring about a synthesis? You have already discriminated! "

He was shocked and he said, "I have shown my book to many people -- nobody has indicated that. I have shown it to great scholars, pundits, and they have all appreciated it."

I asked him, "Have you shown it to any Buddhist?" He said, "No." I said, "Show it to any Buddhist and he will see the insult that you have done Buddha. Ask him what he would suggest. He will say, 'Write BHAGWAN BUDDHA AND MAHATMA MAHAVIRA -- change it!"

What is Mahavira compared to Buddha to a Buddhist? But to a Jaina, Mahavira is greater. Buddha comes very close, but close; a distance is still there. It may be only of one step, but that much distance has to be there. Our egos are involved.

Faith is egoistic, hence it is fanatic. Faith is borrowed, hence it is ugly. Faith is a bondage because you have been forced into it by subtle strategies. It is not trust. Trust is a totally different phenomenon, with a different flavor. It is your own growth that brings you to trust; it is your own experience, it Is your own knowing. Faith happens through conditioning and trust happens through unconditioning. One has to drop faith before one can attain to trust.

And the second thing to remember: trust is not belief either. Belief is again a trick of the mind to repress doubt. Man is born with many doubts, millions of doubts, and it is natural, it is a gift of God. Doubt is a gift of God, but it creates trouble for you. If you start doubting... and you can doubt EVERYTHING, and you have to live with people who believe. Your life will be in constant conflict, you have to compromise. If you are born amongst Christians you have to believe; if you don't believe you will be in trouble.

Why was Jesus crucified? -- for the simple reason that he refused to believe; he tried to experience. In the Bible the major part of his life is completely missing; eighteen years are missing. And in a life of thirty-three years, eighteen years iS a maJor portion. He is mentioned first when he is twelve and then he is mentioned when he is thirty, and by thirty-three he is crucified.

What happened between the ages of twelve and thirty? Where was he? In these eighteen years he lived with many Masters, he moved in many mystery schools. Particularly, he lived with a secret school, that of the Essenes; his whole teaching comes from that secret school. But all those eighteen years were of deep meditation, experimentation; he went to the deepest core of his being. When he arrived when he himself came to know what truth is, there was trust -- it was not belief.

Trust has to be deserved belief is a very cheap substitute. Belief means you are afraid of doubt, because doubt creates trouble, and doubt keeps you in a state of confusion. And you are not courageous enough to live in confusion, not courageous enough to live in a state of chaos, in anarchy -- and doubt creates that. So you immediately repress the doubt, and the way to repress is to believe.

The way to trust is DOUBT, and doubt to the very end. Go the whole way! Don't repress your doubt at any point, otherwise you will miss trust. Trust arises out of doubt, not by repressing but by experiencing doubt to its ultimate extreme.

When you go on doubting and doubting and doubting, a moment comes when all beliefs are destroyed by doubt, all faith evaporates in the heat of doubt, and all that is left is your being. Now there is nothing to doubt because you have doubted all and everything. When there is nothing to doubt, doubt dies, commits suicide, because there is nothing to keep it going on, nothing to nourish it any more. That has been my way. I have not arrived through belief, I have arrived through doubt. It is better to begin as a great doubter than as a believer, because the believer will remain always pseudo; he will always remain superficial, shallow. Belief can never be more than skin-deep: scratch it a little bit and immediately the doubt is there. Trust needs a continuous hammering; doubt has to be used as a hammer. Until you reach to the rock bottom of it all...

An America tenor was making his debut in "Pagliacci" at La Scala Opera House in Milano. When he finished the exciting aria, "Vesta la Giubba," the audience applauded, and Carbogno, an elderly man sitting down front, stood up and exclaimed, "Sing-a it again!"

The tenor, delighted by the request, did an encore. Carbogno, the opera-lover, again leapt to his feet and implored, "Sing-a it again!"

After five encores, the tenor walked to the edge of the stage and said, "Thank you for your very gracious reception."

Once more the old man shouted, "Sing-a it again!"

"I'm sorry, sir," begged the singer. "We must go on. I cannot sing it again."

"Yes!" declared the opera fan. "You sing-a it again until-a you sing-a it right!"

One has to go on and on doubting -- until-a you sing-a it right!

Doubt is a sword: it cuts all beliefs, but it is a dangerous path. The path to truth is bound to be dangerous because truth is the ultimate peak. The higher you move towards Everest, the more you are entering into a dangerous arena. A single wrong step and you will be lost forever.

Truth liberates, but to reach truth you have to go through a very narrow passage, climbing towards the heights. It is dangerous. Hence millions of people decide to live in their dark valleys and they believe that "Everest exists and it is sunlit and there is tremendous beauty, because Jesus has reached there, Buddha has reached there.

We can believe in them. What need is there for us to go there? We can live in our dark valleys comfortably. There is no need to take any risk."

But without risk there is no truth, without risk there is no life. You have to learn to gamble, you have to be a gambler.

If you doubt and go on doubting, a moment comes when all that you have ever believed disappears, evaporates. It is almost a state of madness. One can fall any moment into the abyss that surrounds you. If one falls, it is a breakdown. If one keeps alert and aware, watchful, cautious, then it is a breakthrough.