DARSHANS WITH THE MASTER

JEEVAN [a middle-aged, lively American woman]:

I have a question I would like to ask you about words. Words are very important to me, and your words are very important. How do you feel about me singing your words?

OSHO: [smiling] Very good!

They come so easily. I have tapes of you and I sing with you and the birds. It’s very lovely. It’s called plagiarizing on the outside so I just want to check with you

OSHO: [chuckling] You enjoy it. It’s very good. And words are important. Sometimes a change of a small word, just replacing it by another word can change your whole life.

JEEVAN Oh, you’ve done that for me in so many ways in the last year and a half.

OSHO: Mm...because words are not just words. They have moods, climates of their own. When a word settles inside you, it brings a different climate to your mind, a different approach, a different vision. Call the same thing a different name and see: something is immediately different.

So one of the most important things to remember is: if it is possible, live an experience and don’t fix it by any word because that will make it narrow. You are sitting... it is a silent evening. The sun has gone and the stars have started appearing. Just be. Don’t even say, ‘This is beautiful,’ because the moment you say that it is beautiful, it is no more the same. By saying ‘beautiful’ you are bringing in the past and all the experiences that you said were beautiful have colored the word. Your word ‘beautiful’ contains many experiences of beauty. But this is totally new. It has never been so. It will never be so again.

Why bring in the past? The present is so vast – the past is so narrow. Why look from a hole in the wall when you can come out and look at the whole sky? So try not to use words, but if you have to, then be very choosy about them because each word has a nuance of its own. Be very poetic about it. Use it with taste, love, feeling.

There are feeling words and there are intellectual words. Drop intellectual words more and more. Use more and more feeling words. There are political words and there are religious words. Drop political words. There are words which immediately create conflict. The moment you utter them, argument arises. So never use logical, argumentative language. Use the language of affection, of caring, of love, so that no argument arises.

If one starts feeling this way, one sees a tremendous change arising. If one is a little alert in life, many miseries can be avoided. A single word uttered in unconsciousness can create a long chain of misery. A slight difference, just a very small turning and it makes a lot of change. One should become very very careful and use words when absolutely necessary. Avoid contaminated words. Use fresh words, non-controversial, which are not arguments but which are just expressions of your feelings.

If one can become a connoisseur of words, one’s whole life will be totally different. Your relationships will be totally different because ninety-nine percent of a relationship is through words, gestures – and those are also words. The same word has created so many troubles for you and again you blurt it out. If a word brings misery, anger, conflict, argument, drop it. What is the point in carrying it? Replace it by something better. The best is silence. Next best is singing, poetry, love. Good, Jeevan…very good.

Excerpted from A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose July, 1976