I am reminded of a great Sufi master, Junnaid.
One day one of his disciples — who had managed somehow to trust in Junnaid, who had with effort remained unskeptical — had gone hunting in the forest. And he saw Junnaid sitting by the side of a beautiful lake with a beautiful woman. From far away he saw, and from far away everything is beautiful — and particularly a Mohammedan woman.
No Mohammedan woman is ugly — her face is veiled. It is a great strategy of ugly women against the beautiful; in this way the beautiful are lost.
All his repressed suspicions and doubts arose, surfaced — and it was not only that Junnaid was sitting with the woman; the woman was pouring wine from a flask into a cup for Junnaid.
All his trust was shattered, all his love was finished: "There is a limit to everything. This is going too far. This man is a fraud!"
And if he had returned without going to Junnaid to say something, he would have remained with the idea that the man was a fraud. He had all the facts, he had seen with his own eyes, he was a witness. He needed no other evidence, no other proof. No argument would have convinced him that he could have been wrong.
But Junnaid shouted loudly, "Don't go back! Come close, because when you come close many facts prove to be fictions. The closer you come, the more fictitious they are. Just come close."A little bit afraid, but he came.Junnaid lifted the veil from the woman's face. She was Junnaid's mother, an old woman. And he said, "What about the beautiful woman you had seen? — and you had seen her with your own eyes. Could you have imagined an old woman, my own mother? It was beyond your imagination."
And take this flask and look closely, taste it; it is pure water, not wine. Just the flask is of the wine."But you were going with absolute certainty: that this man is a fraud — women and wine in privacy, in the forest — and in public he has another face, of a great master."
The disciple fell at his feet and said, "Please forgive me."Junnaid said, "It is not a question of forgiveness; it is a question of understanding. You have a trust which is forced, and a forced trust is bound to sooner or later go through a breakdown. Your love is an effort, and love cannot be an effort — either you love or you don't, the question of effort does not arise. You were trying to imitate other disciples, and the path of the truth is not for imitators."
I had come to this place only for you, knowing that you were going hunting and you were bound to come to this lake. You have to start from the beginning, and this time your love has not to be an effort and your trust has not to be something forced. These things are beautiful when they grow naturally — and when they grow naturally then no facts, no figures can destroy them. They have such tremendous energy of their own that all facts and figures simply evaporate."
Facts are not truths, but just like soap bubbles. Yes, a soap bubble is — but its existence or non-existence is almost equal.Truth has an eternity: it was true, it is true, it will remain true. There is no way for the truth to be otherwise.
Facts go on changing. Facts depend on interpretations. The same fact can be interpreted in a thousand and one ways. And that's what we are all doing; otherwise, there would be no need of so many religions, so many philosophies, so many ideologies.Truth is one.?
OSHO