In the early morning hours a young man came. He looked sad and it seemed as if some loneliness was enveloping him from within, as if he had lost something and his eyes seemed to be searching for it. He has been visiting me for nearly a year now, and this this too I knew well, that one day he would come like this. Before this, there was an imaginary bliss in him which has now gradually disappeared.
For a while there is silence. The young man closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking about something. Then he spoke openly: "l have lost my trust. I lived in dreams, which have been shattered now. I used to feel God to be with me; now I am left alone and I feel puzzled. Never before was I so helpless. I want to go back, but that too does not seem possible now. That bridge is ruined."
I tell him, only that which was not can be taken away. It is not possible to take away that which is. Loneliness only gets suppressed in the unconsciousness — not destroyed — through the companion of dream and imagination. The bliss attained through imagination and the mental projection of God is not real. It is a delusion, not a support. And the sooner one gets rid of delusions the better.
To really attain to God, one has to renounce all mental concepts — and the concept of God is not an exception, that too has to be renounced. This is the only renunciation and this is the only asceticism… because there is no greater hardship than renouncing dreams.
At the point of disappearance of imaginations, dreams and concepts, manifests 'that which is'; the sleep shatters and wakefulness comes. The attainment thereafter is the real attainment, because nobody can take it away. And it is not disrupted by any other experience, because it is one's own experience, not an experience of the other. It is not the seeing of any scene, it is a realization of the pure seer himself. It is not a thought about God, it is being in God.
Do not panic if the imaginary concept of God, and trust in God have disappeared. This can only be good. Give up all concepts and then see.
What is seen then is God.
OSHO (BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH)
