Repetition of the old invites sleep. Mothers know this, even if you don't. When they want to send their babies to sleep they sing them lullabies, and they sing the same lines over and over again. The baby hears it, and after a short time, hearing it again and again and again, he gets bored and goes to sleep.
The mantras that are given to you for meditation do the same thing. You are sitting, and you go on chanting, "Rama, Rama, Rama…" and the drone catches hold of you. How long can you go on listening to "Rama, Rama, Rama"? — the same thing again and again.
First you become bored, then the boredom takes you into drowsiness, and the drowsiness leads you into sleep. If I tell you the same thing in the same words every day, you will start dozing, and I am here trying to awaken you, not to send you to sleep. So I will go on changing the words every day. For me they are meaningless; there is no question of any consistency or inconsistency in them.
I am not interested at all in what I am saying. My interest is in the gaps which I leave between the words: those gaps are my invitation, and if you miss them, you have missed everything. You can learn all my words by heart; there is no sense in that, they will just add to your load. And already your load is ample; already you know much more than you need to know; already your knowledge is killing you.
These words will add to your knowledgeability further; you will become a great wordspinner. You will be able to make others understand with your clever argumentation, you will be able to change others' attitudes, you will be able to shatter their intellects. Nobody will be able to defeat you, but you will remain as you are — sick, diseased, one who has not reached anywhere.
Wherever you find your mind has disappeared, wherever you find you have been able to hear the silence between words, those are the points where you need to dive deep; those are the junctures from where you go across to the other shore; those are the points from which all the boats sail for the other shore.
OSHO
