Question – Beloved Osho, Please would you say something about the relationship between Let-Go and Witnessing?
Osho – Prem Vijen, let-go is the atmosphere in which witnessing flowers. They are almost two sides of the same experience — they are not different. One cannot allow let-go without witnessing, neither can one be a witness without being in a let-go.
Let-go simply means total relaxation: no tension, no thought, no desire — mind not moving, not going anywhere, just not functioning. Mind in silence allows the greatest experience of life, the arising of a new phenomenon — witnessing.
We are all living and we are all a little bit conscious too; otherwise life would be impossible. But our consciousness is very superficial, just skin-deep — or perhaps not even that deep.
Witnessing is as deep as you are, as existence is. It is the deepest point of life in existence where one simply watches what remains to watch: a tremendous silence, a great joy, a beautiful existence surrounding you, and a deep ecstasy — a song without words and a dance without movement. Witnessing is the ultimate experience of religion. Only those who arrive at it have really lived; others have been only vegetating.
Nancy and Ronald Reagan went out to eat in a high class restaurant, and after seating them at the best table, the waiter gave them the menus. He returned to take their orders, and Nancy gave hers first. “For the aperitif I will have a dry martini, and for the appetizer I will take the Hawaiian lobster salad,” she said. “Then for the fish course I will have rainbow trout, and for the entree I will take the steak.”
“And what about the vegetable?” asked the waiter. And with only a few seconds hesitation, she replied, “Oh, he will have the same.”
But it is true about most of the people in the world — they are vegetables. They have not known anything that can make them claim to be more than vegetables. The whole effort of raising your consciousness is to make you transcend your vegetable existence. Let-go is to create the right soil, and witnessing, watching, being alert are the seeds. You have only to be the right soil for the right seed, and the lotuses are bound to grow in your being.
Source – Osho Book “The Golden Future”
