BELOVED MASTER
I FEEL LIKE SUCH A NO-SAYER. IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR NO-SAYERS ?
No-saying is a good beginning, but not a good end. No-saying is the seed; yes-saying is the flowering of it. The yes has to come through the no — the no is the womb of the yes. If you cannot say no, your yes will be impotent. It won't have any meaning at all, it won't transform your life. It will be just on your lips, not in your heart.
That's what has happened to the whole of humanity. People have been forced to become yea-sayers, theists, God-believers, without ever knowing the taste of no. The yes has been forced upon them. They have not arrived at the yes, the yes has been handed over to them, it is borrowed.It is a mere belief, and all beliefs are blind. They keep you blind, they keep you in darkness. They keep you stuck and stagnant.
There is nothing wrong in saying no. No has as much beauty as yes. No is the way to arrive at yes. Use the no as a stepping-stone. Don't let it become a habit; be conscious about it, that's all. I cannot say to you to start saying yes, because that will be not yet ripe for you. Go on saying no as long as the no remains significant to you. The no will destroy all that is false, borrowed. It will negate all beliefs. It will create an empty space in you.In the East we call the whole process NETI, NETI — neither this nor that. We have never condemned it.It cleans you of all rubbish, it purifies you. It is a fire. Passing through it is a necessary step you cannot avoid. Those who avoid passing through it, their yes is just parrotlike. You can teach the parrot anything and he will go on repeating it. He does not mean it. He has no heart within it, he simply says the words — empty words, hollow words.
The people who have been conditioned to say yes — yes to God, yes to the religion, yes to the society, yes to the parents — their yes is bogus, it has no substance. It is not even a shadow. Even shadows have something in them, but this yes is absolutely a nonentity. Parents teach you to respect the parents, say yes to them, be obedient. Of course, that is THEIR vested interest. And the priest says: Respect the priest, respect the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, respect the tradition, respect convention. That is HIS vested interest. And so on, so forth.
Somebody asked George Gurdjieff, "Why has respect for parents been emphasized, in every religion, in every country, in every society? Is there something divine in it?" Gurdjieff laughed and said, "Yes. God knows perfectly well that if people are trained to say yes to the parents only then will they say yes to God. He has a vested interest in it" — because God is the father figure, the ultimate father. And Gurdjieff also said, "Parents are sooner or later going to die, and then there will be a vacuum.
You respected your parents, you were obedient to your parents, you were always following, imitating whatsoever they said. You were just a carbon copy. You will feel very empty — so much so that you would like to fill your emptiness with something. And that is the place which God will start filling in you."He was joking. It is not God's vested interest. Of course it is the vested interest of the priests.
God has no vested interest in anything. In fact there is no God as a person; God is only godliness.One need not believe in God, one need not be a yea-sayer. One should learn the process of saying no.So Jinesh, don't be worried. Say no boldly, courageously.
Risk everything for the no. Slowly slowly, you will become aware that the no has limits. There are points when you cannot say no. When you explore the possibilities of saying no, you will come across certain spaces where no-saying is impossible and yes arises within your heart on its own accord, not as a conditioning, not because somebody has told you.
Now it is your own flowering. And then that yes has beauty, then that yes has truth, that yes makes you a religious person. Otherwise you remain just imitators. You can imitate Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism — it does not matter whom you imitate.I have seen Christians becoming Hindus, Hindus becoming Christians — they are the same people. Not only that, I have seen Catholics become communists — they still remain the same people. I have seen communists become religious — but still they are the same people. Just the object of worship changes. Gods go on changing. One God fails, another God is replaced — but the worshipper is the same.
Whether you worship Mohammed or Marx, Mahavira or Moses, it is not going to make any difference.If your yes has not come as a growth to you, then it is absolutely useless. Pass through this fire of no-saying, but remember only one thing: don't let it become a habit. It can become a habit, that is the danger. The danger is not in no-saying. The danger is that your no-saying may become mechanical.
So say it consciously, that's all I can advise you — say it consciously! Just don't go on saying it because you have become accustomed. That is as foolish as saying yes meaninglessly. If you say it as a habit, it is meaningless.There are theists and there are atheists, and they are all in the same boat. Somebody has been told from the very beginning that God is — say yes and you will be saved. And somebody has been told there is no God — say no and you are saved. And they both are repeating. Whom you are imitating is irrelevant.
People are imitators. The whole world is full of those imitators. You think those imitators are yea-sayers? You think those imitators are no-sayers? They are not saying anything, they are simply repeating whatsoever they have been told to repeat. Just remember one thing: don't let it become a habit. Be conscious of it and you will be immensely benefited.
Things become unconscious. You cannot hide them. Everybody else will be able to see them except you. If you can also see your habits, you start becoming a little detached, unidentified from them, a little aloof. And that very aloofness is a transcendence. Then you will be able to say when no is needed — you will say no. And you will be able to say yes when yes is needed. You will not be fixated.To be fixated is insane.
I don't want you to become yea-sayers; I want you to be conscious, alert, watchful, responsive. There are moments when your total being would like to say no. Then say no. If everything has to be risked, risk, but don't be false to your own being. And there will be moments when your whole being says, "Say yes." And then too, maybe there is great danger in saying yes, but say it. That's the way of the sannyasin, the really religious person.Don't become fixated. You can move from no-saying to yes-saying, and you can still remain unconscious and fixated. Then nothing has happened. Your disbelief has become belief, but you are the same person.
Ira Schwartzbaum thought he was God. His worried parents, unable to convince him otherwise, finally took him to see a world-famous psychiatrist.Ira lay on the couch and closed his eyes."Tell me," the psychiatrist asked him in an encouraging, sympathetic voice, "how did it all start?""Well," Ira said, "on the first day I created the earth, then…."
You can be fixated. And once you are fixated on a certain thing, when you cannot have a detached view of it, when you cannot create a distance between it and you — you are insane. What your fixation is is not important. You may be a communist or a Catholic, Hindu or a Mohammedan, believer/disbeliever, no-sayer/yes-sayer — it is all the same.Hence, don't be worried about your no-saying. Be conscious of it.
Next time you say no, don't just say it out of habit, out of a past pattern. Reflect, watch, wait… and let a response arise in you. And you may be surprised — a yes is born. And it will be born in you, it will not be imposed from the outside.Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness. And I know that as you become conscious you will be able to say more yes than no.
Ultimately a moment comes when life becomes just yes. But it is not fixation. You are still capable of saying no, not that you have become incapable of saying no. In fact, the greater is your yes, in the same proportion is your capacity to say no. You may not say… it may not be needed. Your understanding of life, your love affair with life may have brought you such tremendous joy that you may not like to say no. You may see the childishness of it, the stupidity of it, the stubbornness of it.
You may see its poison and you may not say no, but that does not mean that you have become incapable of saying it. The more capable you are of saying yes, in the same proportion you will be capable of saying no too. But now everything will be decided by your conscious response.Ultimately the awakened person stops saying no. Not that he deliberately decides not to say no… it simply withers away just as dead leaves fall from the trees.
OSHO