Question 2

"BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I SEE YOU, SOMETIMES I SEE A TWINKLE OF CHILDLIKE INNOCENCE, A WARMTH THAT I CALL LOVE. AND SOMETIMES I SEE A VAST EMPTINESS, AS COOL AND CRYSTAL-CLEAR AND IMPERSONAL AS THE NIGHT SKY. ARE BOTH THESE QUALITIES IN YOU? ARE BOTH THESE QUALITIES IN ME? IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE BUT TRUE."

Sarito, you have stumbled on a very significant truth. The childlike innocence and the warmth of love that you see are not contradictory to "a vast emptiness as cool and crystal-clear and impersonal as the night sky." In fact, they are both sides of the same coin. If you become childlike, innocent, there will be a warmth and love in you. But on the other side of the coin, you will be just like the cool, impersonal nothingness, just like a starry night.

Both these things happen together. The first happens -- the coolness, the nothingness -- and then the innocence of the child brings the warmth. But it is always difficult for the intellect to figure out when it sees something which appears to be opposite.

For example, if you dig up the roots of a rosebush, you cannot conceive that these roots are connected with the roseflowers. The roots are ugly. There seems to be no likeness in any way possible between the roseflowers and the roots. But the roots are giving all the juice and life to the roseflower. It is the roots which are giving the color, the liveliness, the warmth, the beauty to the roseflower.

Life is full of such apparent opposites. This is your inner opposite: if inside you, you become as cool as the starry night -- nothingness, impersonal -- this will be your root; then your childlike innocence, warmth, love, will be your expression as a flower. They cannot exist separately.

This is in me and these qualities are in you too. Once you have become aware of the phenomenon, it won't take a long time for you to realize the same roots and the roses within you. Only when you experience it within you, will you be able to understand -- not just intellectually, but existentially. But you have certainly stumbled on a tremendously great truth.You are saying, Sarito, "It seems impossible but true." Truth is impossible, but anyway it happens. It only appears impossible, but it is our very potential. Existence is so full of mysteries: never think in terms of impossibilities. Everything is possible. The impossible is only an idea of the mind.

Can you understand how these green trees are growing upwards, against gravitation? It is impossible. But they are managing perfectly well, all the trees of the world, and they have never thought about gravitation, they don't care about it. Scientists have been very much troubled that trees grow one hundred and fifty feet high. And not only the trees, but the juice, the water, has to go upwards without any pumping system in the tree. How is it managing? You cannot take water one hundred and fifty feet high without an electric pump.

But these trees have their own mystery, and it is so subtle that when scientists became aware of it they could not believe it: that for millions of years these trees -- ignorant, uneducated, not knowing anything of science -- have been doing a miracle. The miracle is that on the top where every tree is searching for the sun ... That is the trick: every tree is searching for the sun. So whenever the trees grow thick, the trees will also go higher. It is a competition. Whoever goes higher will survive longer.

They are seeking the sun so the sun can evaporate water from their tops. And it is a connecting link; they function like blotting paper. When on the top the sun takes the water as vapor, the top becomes dry, the blotting paper becomes dry. It goes on taking the water from underneath and the second layer of blotting paper becomes dry. And because the second layer has become dry, it takes water from a lower one.

In this way, for one hundred and fifty feet the tree goes on carrying its water without any pumping system.

But it needs the sun, otherwise it will die. It is the sun against gravitation. The tree is managing a conspiracy against gravitation in combination with the sun. With the help of the sun it is going higher, taking juices from the roots.It has been found that roots have a certain sensitivity which even we don't have. A few people have it. You must have heard of a few people who can just walk around and tell you where you will find water. But these people also take help from the trees, which you may not have noticed. They always carry a branch, a fresh branch cut from the tree, in their hands. The whole trick is that they carry the branch in their hands. Their hands are very sensitive. They don't know anything about water but the tree branch knows. So wherever the tree branch gives them a jerk -- just so slight that you cannot see, but they can feel the jerk -- the tree branch is interested, there is water.

They are deceiving people, they are trying to show that they are working a great miracle. It is not a miracle, it is a simple method the trees have been using. Wherever the water is, the branch is bound to move. And they have only to be sensitive to the branch, where it moves, which side, where it points. And they will go round and round, again and again, to the same point, to make completely sure where the point is, where you will find water.

It has been found that roots of trees move hundreds of feet away just to find water. But how do they manage to know that a hundred feet south or north there is water and, strangely enough, even water in a water pipe, a hundred feet away? The tree roots are so sensitive towards water that although the water may be going through a pipe, they become aware of it. And it has been found that they break the pipe. They enter the pipe and they start drinking your water for their own purposes, sending it one hundred and fifty feet high. It is stealing, and they don't pay any taxes. They don't care about your water corporation. But they manage.

In the commune in America we were living in a desert. Only one type of tree grows in that desert. That tree has learned ways to exist in the desert, it has adapted itself to desert life. As the camel is adapted to the desert, those trees are also adapted.

Their whole strategy is -- because they don't have any water as far as their roots are concerned -- to gather moisture from the air, particularly in the night when the desert becomes cool and there is moisture, humidity. From each leaf, from every branch, they suck the moisture, and that is their only way of existence. They don't use their roots, because as far as the roots are concerned, it is pure desert; there is no water at all. But they learned a new method -- just the opposite -- of absorbing moisture through the leaves.

Ordinary trees everywhere evaporate water from the leaves and suck water from the roots. But desert trees function in a totally opposite way. They don't use their roots. They use their roots only to keep them standing, just as a support for them to stand -- that's all. It is sheer intelligence that in the night they will suck all the moisture in the air, and they live perfectly well.

It is a wrong idea that existence is unintelligent. It is more intelligent than you can think. Its whole functioning is full of intelligence and nothing is impossible. You just have to find the right way and then impossibles become possibles.Your mind is a little cowardly. Your mind wants things according to it, it wants everything in accordance with its own conditioning. That makes many things impossible. You have to learn not to force existence to be in accordance with you. That is the irreligious way and you are not going to win.

The religious way is to be humble and function according to existence. Be natural and let nature decide the course of your being. And nature is tremendously intelligent. It gives you birth, it gives you life, it gives you your intelligence. Unless it is an ocean of intelligence, from where can you get your intelligence -- which is small, certainly, in comparison to the universal intelligence?

It is my experience that both these things come together, Sarito. A silent nothingness, impersonal coolness ... But remember not to hear me as saying "coldness"; I am simply calling it "coolness." Coldness is a totally different thing: coldness is a closedness. Coolness is not a closed experience, it is very lively, very open, a fresh breeze passing through you continuously. You are being renewed every moment -- that's why you are cool.

And because you are impersonal, you are innocent. Otherwise you cannot be innocent. And because you are innocent and alive and fresh every moment, there comes a certain loving warmth in you which is unaddressed to anybody -- just like a fragrance. Anybody can rejoice in it who is capable of being receptive.

I want my people to make this impossible possible. When this impossible becomes possible, you will have the total existential understanding of Sat-Chit-Anand, of truth, of consciousness, of bliss.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.