A glass of orange juice

“Whatsoever you believe becomes effective,” says Osho. “You see only that which you are looking for.”

Trusting a Buddha or a Mahavira or a Jesus, Zarathustra, is nothing but opening yourself… the very idea that higher beings than you have existed, walked, lived – higher beings are possible. It is not impossible to be a Buddha – the very notion, and a ray of light enters in your being. And that light starts transforming you. Your very chemistry changes.

Hence all the religions insist on trust, shraddha, faith. It has nothing to do with superstitions, it has nothing to do with theological beliefs. It is just an opening of the heart. If you don’t believe, if you insist that roses don’t exist, then even if someday you come across a rosebush, you will not believe. You will say, ‘There must be some illusion, somebody is playing a trick, or I am in a mirage, or I am dreaming, because roses can’t exist.’

In the first place if you don’t believe in the existence of roses the very possibility is you may come across them and you may not look at them because we look only at things we believe are possible. We go on passing, indifferent. Whatsoever you believe becomes effective.

I have heard:

It happened in a hospital.

A nurse put a screen round a male patient’s bed, gave him a specimen bottle and said, ‘I will be back in ten minutes for your specimen.’

Then another nurse came and gave the man a glass of orange juice. The man, who was something of a wit, poured the orange juice into the specimen bottle.

When the first nurse came back, she took a look and said, ‘This specimen is a little too cloudy.’

‘So it is,’ agreed the patient. ‘I will run it through again and see if I can clean it up.’

And as he put the bottle to his lips the nurse fainted.

Just your belief, just the very idea – what is this man doing? He was simply drinking orange juice. But once you believe a certain thing it becomes effective. Now the nurse is thinking he is drinking his urine. It is only in her idea – but ideas are great realities, they change your outlook.

If you are looking for beauty you will find beauty. If you believe beauty does not exist, you may come across it but you will not look for it. You see only that which you are looking for.

Faith, trust, simply means this much – that we are not the last, we are not the crescendo of existence… higher reality is possible. To believe in a Jesus or a Buddha is simply to believe in your own future, that you can grow. To believe in Buddha is to believe in growth, that there is still something which can happen to you.

Osho, The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 1, Ch 7

Series compiled by Shanti

All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales

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