Silence is the answer

When the mind has lost all its nonsense and noise, when the mind traffic is nil, when the mind has stopped completely, has come to a standstill, suddenly in that silence you experience a presence that has always been there within and without, but of which you were unaware because the mind was too noisy. It was impossible to hear the still, small voice. And once you have heard it your life is transformed. Then for the first time you know the taste of religion.

And the taste of religion is the taste of neither Christianity, nor Hinduism, nor of Judaism, nor of Mohammedanism; the taste of religion is simply the taste of religiousness. It has nothing to do with all those cults and sects and dogmas and churches, synagogues, temples, mosques – it has nothing to do with these. This is sheer politics played in the name of religion.

I teach a religion less religiousness – and that is the need of today and of all the tomorrows that are going to follow. The old kind of religion is outdated, its time is finished, in fact it has been living a posthumous kind of existence for centuries. It is dead already, we are only carrying a corpse and it is stinking.

Meditation is the only way to experience god, to experience religion. You cannot get it from the Bible, from the Gita, from the Koran, from the Talmud – no words, no scriptures can give it to you. Only silence is able to receive god, is able to become pregnant with god, to carry god in your belly, in your very heartbeat, in your breathing, to feel him everywhere, in everybody!..

Silence is presence of your awareness, your being. Fill your silence with your own presence, radiance, and feel it as a positive phenomenon; don't look at it as absence of words. It is not absence. If you can be positively silent, if you can enjoy it, if you can rejoice it, you will be tremendously benefitted. And not only you – others who come in contact with you, they will also be tremendously benefitted. Then sometimes be silent with them, when it is the season to be silent...

You have to listen in silence to silence. Neither words nor deeds but utter silence. And then your very life becomes a sweetness, and your very life becomes expressive, then your existence has a grace. And that is the song, that is your sermon.

Osho: Silence is the answer