Written by Jack Barratt
How can you establish a relationship with Him through doctrines? You will have to go within. Only those who are mad can enter, not the intelligent; they are left out. For your intelligence, your cunningness is not genuine. It has always been true that lunatics have attained and the wise have lagged behind.
Osho, The True Name, Volume 1, 175.
How can a real saint squander generous donations to buy 93 Rolls Royces? How can a real saint happily receive copious amounts of luxurious gifts whilst there are other unfortunate beings starving in the world? To answer these questions we should first understand what a ‘real saint’ is. A real saint, a siddha or avadhuta, is somebody who has dissolved their conceptual mind. The root of the conceptual mind is the feeling of ‘I’ as it refers to an individual discrete identity. Through the process of gradually weakening his entire framework of dense, self-centered thinking, the proto-saint eventually reaches the point where their sense of an individual, personal ‘I’ collapses. When this sense of self-identity collapses, a vast, wide-open space is revealed as the all-pervasive, unobstructed identity of himself and all beings. When there is no ‘I,’ there is also no ‘you,’ ‘we,’ or ‘they.’ The real identity that we discover is clearly perceived to be the only identity—the essential inner identity of everything that exists. Once we have become established in this perception, then we begin the process of complete dissolution, whereby we resolve all stray flows of thought into this space of self-less, thought-free openness. From this point of consolidation into divisionless space, our awareness then expands to become multidimensional, cosmic, and infinite. Thus, what we call the ‘real saint’ is the one who has completed this process and has become totally re-established in the substratum energy of existence. The real saint is not defined by what they do but who they are.
In the world of ignorance, of increasingly dense levels of shallowness, hypocrisy, and superficiality, beings are measured and judged by what they do. In the world of the fake, even a monster will be praised for engaging in an apparently charitable act—even if it was funded through violence and exploitation. In that world, the world of mainstream media, politics, and whatever else, we are judged on how we appear and not what we actually are. In that world, we can forget about the essence of existence because even the essence of who we are as individuals is something that is endlessly obscured and distorted. This is not the world of spirituality. This world, the world that is so prevalent on this earth today as a manifestation of the prevalent lower frequency consciousness, is a world where all possible natural, harmonious principles are reversed. In all scriptures that speak about hellish realms, such realms are described as hot, as basically burning. With the climate disasters that we see around us today, it is clear to see that this world is also morphing into a kind of
hellish realm. This is the realm that ignorant, confused beings created for themselves through their violent, foolish actions.
The activity of the foolish is to live in such a way where you bury yourself a foot deeper every day, where you ceaselessly behave in such a way that causes your own soul to be fractured into increasingly more diminutive divisions. The work of the foolish and ignorant is ultimately akin to licking honey from a razor blade, and then, when the blood is drawn, to carry on licking in order to savor the sweetness of the honey at the expense of one’s own lifeblood. This is an uncomfortable world for real saints to live in. In these times, the real saints that emerge are often the mightiest. In the same way that a military unit would only send their finest soldier to lead a highly dangerous, risky mission, so too do the higher realms of existence still send forth the greatest souls to rescue beings who wish to raise themselves and carve for themselves a pleasant, harmonious existence on this burning earth before they become totally liberated from the need for karmic incarnation here.
One characteristic of the fake world that has set this earth on fire is its cunningness. The great master, Osho, uses this word ‘cunning’ a lot to describe the activity of ignorance. To be cunning means to try and fabricate and manipulate life and others around us to conform to our limited desires and fears. If we want to manipulate, then we must be accustomed to the practice of lying, of obfuscating, of being one way but appearing another way. However, in spiritual terms, the problem with these practices is that the more we cover and obscure, the further we stray from the natural space of existence that is totally naked, uncovered, spotless, and unobscured. In order to connect with this sphere, the sphere of reality as it is, we have to be vulnerable, simple, and childlike.
When children act like children, we call them as they are—as children. Depending on whether we have any light left in us, we will either laugh and smile at the wild, illogical, and beautifully playful behavior of children, or if we have hardened hearts, we will sneer a sneer that actually masks our own misery and rigidity. Such rigidity is actually a mask for fear. It is a mask that covers our own fear of being naked. The wildness of children is actually incredibly powerful because such behavior often manifests without the interference of fearful conceptual thinking. Any type of action that occurs without the medium of the conditioned mind is always powerful—it has an impact and it is also capable of putting a smile on the faces of those who are sensitive. Such is also the behavior of real saints.
When adults act like children, that is, in a playful and illogical way, we sometimes label them as crazy, mad, or eccentric. These are the words that we use when we see something that we do not understand, when we see something that we cannot box or tightly reify. What is an enlightened being? Internally he is ancientness itself—he is the primordial self of all beings. However, in expression, he can be as loose, carefree, playful, vulnerable, and innocent as a child. This vulnerability, this softness is a manifestation of wisdom. Why? Because the wise being understands that appearances are, in themselves, illusory. Just as a gold ring, when it is smelted down and made into a necklace, doesn’t cease to be gold, so too does this vast world-appearance never leave its essence—which is nameless, indescribable, and totally free and unconfined. The real saint dwells in that nameless space that is forever unaffected by the swirl of appearances. It is unaffected because there is no division within it; there is nothing to be affected by anything else. To perceive this and be established in it is supremely blissful. It is this bliss that gives the being, who may physically be even over the age of 100, a totally childlike demeanor and approach to life. Such a being need not be cunning because they know that there is nothing to achieve in this world and there is nothing to run away from. When something comes to such a being, they accept it. When something leaves such a being, they let it go. Whether the real saint appears to live in luxury, or whether they appear to live in poverty, they neither chase appearances nor run away from them. You cannot judge the inner state of such a being by looking at their external life circumstances. Perfectly free beings, who are basically established in a state of absolute omnipotence, will often hide their inner state and power by appearing to be outwardly ignorant. This helps to keep immature, power-hungry seekers away. Those who have the subtlety to feel their inner silence will come closer and will be granted the gifts that emerge spontaneously from the depths of that silence.
Spirituality is a path to the real. Lord Dattatreya’s teaching in this age is to ‘Be You,’ to be totally natural on an individual level first so that we can begin to gradually relax into reality on deeper levels. This path cannot be walked with cunning. This path cannot be walked with an intelligence that thinks it already knows the way. This path must be walked with vulnerability, simplicity, openness, love, and humor.
This world, this life, is a dream. It is foolish to grasp at dreams as if they are real. Grasping is suffering itself. Let us loosen our grip. Let us loosen our control and cunning. When these things are loosened then we discover that we are looseness ourselves—we are the eternally untied knot. It cannot be tied because it has no parts. It is a mass of light-space. It is reality. It is perfection. It is known only by the beautifully innocent. It is known only by the child-like ones. Great masters like Osho have known, understood, and lived this. It is visible in his eyes and in his words. Let us not imitate such beings though. Let us establish ourselves in the essence and then see how it manifests through our uniqueness. Each of us, like a flower, is totally unique, irreplaceable, and inimitable. May we sincere beings embrace and unify these two strands of all-pervasive beingness and beautiful God-given uniqueness.