Real Trust Is the Absence of the Duality of Doubt and Trust

Real Trust Is the Absence of the Duality of Doubt and Trust

Osho,
Could you talk about trust?
Whenever I trust, whatever happens is beautiful; when doubt arises, I am in pain. Just the fact of trusting you, or life, or somebody, is enough to make me feel light, happy.
Why then do I still doubt?

“It is one of the most fundamental questions of life. The question is not only about trust and doubt: the question is rooted in the duality of the mind.

“It is so with love and hate, it is so with body and soul, it is so with this world and the other world.

“Mind cannot see the one. The very process of mind divides reality into polar opposites – and reality is one, reality is not two, reality is not many. It is not a multiverse, it is a universe.

“This existence is an organic whole.

“But the mind basically functions by dividing, the mind functions like a prism.

“If you pass a ray of light through the prism, it is immediately divided into seven colors. Before passing through the prism it was simply white, pure white; after the prism it is the whole rainbow.

Mind divides reality into two.

“And those two are bound to be always together, because in existence itself they are indivisible. The division exists only in mind, only in your thought.

“You say: “Could you talk more about trust? Whenever I trust, whatever happens is beautiful…”

“But your trust is nothing but the other pole of doubt; it cannot exist without doubt.

“Your trust is simply an antidote to doubt. If doubt really disappears, where will your trust be? What need will there be of trust? If there is no doubt then there is no trust either.

And you are afraid to lose trust, you cling to trust. In clinging to trust you are clinging to doubt too, remember.

You can have both, but you can’t have one.

“Either you have to drop both or you have to go on keeping both; they are indivisible, two sides of the same coin. How can you avoid the other side?

“It will always be there. You may not look at it, that makes no difference. But sooner or later you will have to.

“Another part of mind is: it gets bored with anything very soon. So if you are in trust, soon it gets bored with it.

“Yes, it is beautiful, but only in the beginning. Soon the mind starts hankering for something new, for something different, for a change.

“Then there is doubt, and doubt hurts; again you start moving toward trust.

“And trust becomes boring, and you have to fall into the trap of doubt… One goes on this way like a pendulum of a clock: right, left, right, left, one goes on moving.

You will have to understand that there is a trust totally different from what you have known up to now as trust.

“I am talking about that trust. The distinction is very delicate and subtle, because both words are the same.

“I have to use the language that you use. I cannot create a new language; it will be useless because you won’t understand it.

“I cannot go on using your language in the same sense you use it, because then it will also be useless: I will not be able to express my experience, which is beyond your language.

“So I have to find a middle point; I have to use your language, your words, with new meanings. That compromise is bound to be there. All the buddhas had to do that much.

“I use your words with my meanings. Hence, be very alert: when I say “trust” what I mean is totally different from what you mean when you use the same word.

When I say “trust” I mean the absence of the duality of doubt and trust.

“When I say “love” I mean the absence of the duality of love and hate.

“When you use the word trust it means the other side of doubt; when you use love it means the other side of hate.

“But then you are caught in a duality, in a double bind. And you will be crushed between the two; your whole life will become a life of anguish.

“You know trust is beautiful, but doubt arises because your trust is not beyond doubt. Your trust is against doubt, but not beyond.

My trust is a transcendence; it is beyond.

“But to be beyond you have to remember: both have to be left behind. You can’t choose.

Your trust is a choice against doubt; my trust is a choiceless awareness.

“In fact, I should not use the word trust; it confuses you. But then what to do? What other word to use for it? All words will confuse you.

“I should not be speaking really, but you would not be able to understand the silence either. I am speaking in order to help you to become silent.

“My message can be delivered only in silence. Only in silence, the communion…

“But before that becomes possible, I have to communicate to you, persuade you for it. That can be done only through your words.

“But one thing, if remembered, will be of immense help: I use your words, but with my own meanings – don’t forget my meanings.

“Go beyond doubt and trust, then you will have a new taste of trust – which knows nothing of doubt, which is absolutely innocent.

“Go beyond both, then simply you are left, your consciousness, without any content. And that’s what meditation is all about.

Trust is meditation.

“Don’t repress your doubt. That’s what you go on doing.

“When you listen about the beauties of trust, the wonders of trust, the miracles of trust, a great longing, a great desire, a great greed arises in you to attain it.

“And then you start repressing doubt; you go on throwing doubt deep into the unconscious so that you need not encounter it.

“But it is there. And the deeper it is, the more dangerous it is, because it will manipulate you from the background. You will not be able to see it, and it will go on influencing your life.

Your doubt will be more potent in the unconscious than in the conscious.

“Hence, I say it is better to be a doubter, it is better to be skeptical knowingly, consciously, than to be a believer and unknowingly, unconsciously remaining a doubter.

“All believers doubt, hence they are so afraid of losing their trust. Their trust is poor, their trust is impotent.

“Hindus are afraid of reading the scriptures of the Buddhists, Buddhists are afraid of reading the scriptures of the Christians, Christians are afraid of reading the scriptures of other religions. The atheist is afraid to listen to the mystic, the theist is afraid of listening to the atheist.

From where does all this fear come? Not from the other: it comes from your unconscious.

“You know perfectly well – how can you avoid knowing it? You may like to forget, but you cannot – it is there!

Vaguely you always feel it, the doubt is there, and anybody can provoke it.

“It may have become dormant, it can become active again; hence the fear of listening to something that goes against your belief.

“All believers live with closed eyes and closed ears and closed hearts – they have to, because the moment they open their eyes there is fear.

“Who knows what they are going to see? It may affect their belief.

“They cannot listen, they cannot afford to listen, because something may go deep into the unconscious and the unconscious may be stirred.

“And it is with great difficulty that they have been able to control it.

But this controlled doubt, this repressed doubt, is going to take vengeance, it is going to take revenge sooner or later.

“It will wait for an opportunity to assert itself. And it is growing stronger and stronger inside you. Soon it will throw off your conscious belief systems. That’s why it is so easy to change people from Hindus to Mohammedans, from Mohammedans to Christians, from Christians to Hindus – it is so easy.

“Before the Russian revolution, just sixty years ago, the whole of Russia was religious – in fact it was one of the most religious countries. Then what happened? Just the revolution! The Communists came in power, and within ten years all that religiousness evaporated.

“People became atheistic because now they were taught in the schools, colleges, universities, everywhere, that there was no God, that there was no soul.

“They used to believe in God, now they started believing in no-God! They used to believe before, they are still believing.

“Before doubt was repressed, now trust is repressed.

“Sooner or later Russia is going to go through another revolution – when trust will come up again and doubt will be thrown back into the unconscious. But it is all the same. You are moving in circles.

“In India, you are great religious people. It is all rubbish. Your so-called religion is nothing but repressed doubt. And that is so in other countries too.

This is not the way of inner transformation – repression is never the way of revolution.

“Understanding, not repression: try to understand your doubt, try to understand your trust; try to understand your no, and try to understand your yes, and then you will see they are not separate, they are inseparable. What meaning can yes have if the word no disappears from languages? What meaning can no have if you don’t know anything about yes?

“They are bound together, married together, they cannot be divorced. But there is a transcendence. There is no need to divorce them, there is no need to separate them – don’t try the impossible. Go beyond. Just watch both.

“This is my suggestion: watch when doubt arises, don’t get identified with it. Don’t get disturbed, there is nothing to be disturbed about.

Doubt is there – you are watching it, you are not it. You are just a mirror reflecting it.

“And when trust arises there will be a little more difficulty in watching because you say, “Trust makes me so happy, trust makes me feel so beautiful.” You will jump upon it, you would like to become identified with it. You would like to be known as one who trusts, as one who has faith.

But then you will never get out of the vicious circle. Watch trust too.

“And the deeper your watching becomes… You will be surprised: looking deep into doubt you will find the other side is trust – as if the coin becomes transparent and you can see this side and you can also see the other side.

“Then watching trust you will be able to see doubt hiding behind it.

That moment is of great realization: when seeing that doubt is trust, that trust is doubt, you become free from both.

“Suddenly, a transcendence! You are no longer attached to either, your bondage is finished.

“You are no longer caught in the duality, and when you are no longer caught in duality, you are not part of the mind at all – mind is left far behind.

You are simply a pure consciousness. And to know pure consciousness is to know real beauty, real blessing, real benediction.

“If you want to call that state “trust,” then you will understand my language.

“I call that state trust which knows nothing of doubt, not even a shadow of doubt. But of course I am using language in such a way that no linguist will agree with.

“But that’s how it has always been. The mystic has something to say to you which cannot be said. And the mystic has to communicate to you something which is incommunicable.

“The problem for the mystic is: what to do? He has something, and it is so much that he would like to share it – he has to share it.

“Sharing is inevitable, it cannot be avoided. It is like a cloud full of rainwater: it has to rain, it has to shower. It is like a flower full of fragrance: the fragrance has to be released to the winds. It is like a lamp in the dark night: the light has to dispel the darkness.

Whenever someone becomes enlightened, he becomes a cloud full of rainwater.

“Buddha has called the man of enlightenment one who has attained meghasamadhi megha means cloud, samadhi means the ultimate consciousness: one who has attained the cloud of ultimate consciousness.

“Why does he use the word cloud? – because of this intrinsic necessity to shower. A man who is enlightened becomes a flower which has opened.

“The mystics in the East have called the ultimate opening of your heart, of your being, of your consciousness, sahasrar – one-thousand-petaled lotus.

“When this one-thousand-petaled lotus opens, how can you avoid sharing your fragrance? It is natural, spontaneous; it starts spreading into the winds.

“A buddha is a man whose heart is full of light; a buddha is one who has become a flame, an eternal flame which cannot be extinguished.

“Now it is bound to dispel darkness. But the problem is: how to give the message?

You have a language which is based on duality and he has an experience which is rooted in non-duality.

“You are on the earth, he is in the sky. The distance is infinite but it has to be bridged. And you cannot bridge it, only a buddha can bridge it.

“You know nothing of the sky, you know nothing of that inexpressible experience, that ineffable experience. But he knows both. He knows your darkness because he has lived in that darkness himself.

“He knows your misery because he has passed through it and he knows now the bliss of ultimate attainment. Now he knows what godliness is.

“Only he can manage to bridge, only he can manage to create some links between you and him.

Language is the most important link between humanity and the buddha.

“In fact, language is the most distinctive characteristic of human beings; no other animals use language. Man is man because of language.

“Hence, language cannot be avoided, it has to be used – but it has to be used in such a way that you are constantly reminded that it has to be dropped, and the sooner the better.

“Drop both doubt and trust, belief and unbelief, skepticism and faith – drop both!

“And then see something new arising in you which is not trust in the old sense – because it has no doubt in it – which is trust in a totally new meaning, with a totally new texture.

That’s what I am talking about, that’s what I call trust: trust which is beyond doubt and your trust, beyond both, whatsoever you have known up to now.

“There is a light which is neither your darkness nor your light, and there is a consciousness which is neither your unconscious nor your conscious.

“What Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung called conscious, unconscious, are parts of your mind.

“When Buddha talks about consciousness he is not talking in the same sense as Freud and Jung – his consciousness is the witnessing consciousness, which witnesses the consciousness of Freud and the unconsciousness of Freud.

Learn to become more of a witness, create more watchfulness.

“Let each act, each thought, be seen. Don’t become identified with it; remain aloof, distant, far away, a watcher on the hills.

“Then one day you will be showered with infinite bliss.

END

Excerpted from Osho, The Dhammapada, Vol.1, Talk #2 – A Watcher on the Hills

To read this complete talk and see all the available media formats, click here.

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