Who has become aware that “I am shallow, I am false and phony, and that there seems to be no depth in me?” Who is this? This witness is you. This is your center; your center is arising out of the chaos of your personality. This is a great moment, a moment of great blessings. Don’t lose track of it. Howsoever painful the journey, one has to go through it because the end is utterly blissful.

This is the sacrifice that each sannyasin has to do – the sacrifice of the phony on the altar of the real.

The second question.

Osho,
Why is it so difficult to be silent? My words are so mechanical and used, a continuous repetition of histories: the same old past which doesn’t exist anymore. How am I still not tired of it?

It is difficult to be silent because in silence one disappears. You can exist as an ego only in noise. Noise is the food for you to exist as an ego. You live on it, you thrive on it, hence the difficulty of becoming silent.

When people start thinking of becoming silent, they have the idea that when silence comes they will be there and they will enjoy the silence. That idea is utterly wrong; you don’t have any notion of real things. When silence comes, you will not be there; you and silence cannot exist together. You are the noise. So when silence comes there is only silence.

There is nobody who is silent; there is nobody who can be there enjoying silence. Silence is not an experience because there is no experiencer. It is utter silence; there is nobody. Sufis call it fana, dissolution. Buddha has called it nirvana, extinguishing of the candle. All is gone and there is only nothing, a kind of no-thing-ness.

You will not be able to find yourself as a self; hence the difficulty. You will have to die to become silent – and who wants to die? We want silence also as a decoration, as a medal, so we can brag that “Not only have I got money, I have also got meditation”; so that we can brag that “Not only am I rich outwardly, I am rich inwardly too.” The first interest in searching for silence arises out of the ego, and the ego itself is the barrier.

So when you come in contact with a master or with an energy field, with a school where things are being done – really being done, not only thought about – then the fear arises. Then you become aware of the phenomenon that with the noise disappearing you will also disappear. Are you ready to risk that much?

You say, “Why is it so difficult to be silent?” – because you are invested in noise. “My words,” you say, “are so mechanical and used, a continuous repetition of histories: the same old past which doesn’t exist anymore.”