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Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
A WHILE AGO YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT SILENCE WHICH STARTLED ME. IN MY SLEEPINESS, I'D SIMPLY THOUGHT OF IT AS JUST AN ABSENCE -- AN ABSENCE OF NOISES. BUT YOU WERE SAYING IT HAD POSITIVE QUALITIES, A POSITIVE SOUND. AND IN MY MEDITATIONS, I'VE NOTICED THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN A SILENCE IN MY BODY AND A SILENCE IN MY MIND. I CAN HAVE THE FIRST, WITHOUT THE SECOND. BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT SILENCE.
Anand Somen, silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All that they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by the inner eyes. It is not something fictitious; it is a reality, and a reality which is already present in everyone -- just we never look in. All our senses are extrovert. Our eyes open outside, our ears open outside, our hands move outside, our legs... all our senses are meant to explore the outside world.
But there is a sixth sense also, which is asleep because we have never used it. And no society, no culture, no educational system helps people to make the sixth sense active. That sixth sense, in the East, is called "the third eye." It looks inwards. And just as there is a way of looking in, so there is a way of hearing in, so there is a way of smelling in. Just as there are five senses moving outward, there are five counter-senses moving inward. In all, man has ten senses, but the first sense that starts the inner journey is the third eye, and then other senses start opening up.
Your inner world has its own taste, has its own fragrance, has its own light. And it is utterly silent, immensely silent, eternally silent. There has never been any noise, and there will never be any noise. No word can reach there, but you can reach. The mind cannot reach there, but you can reach
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