Osho : Tilopa’s sutra: IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE; IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN OBSERVES THE MIND, ONE DESTROYS DISTINCTIONS AND REACHES BUDDHAHOOD. IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE....

Now try to understand Tilopa’s sutra:


IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE; IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN
OBSERVES THE MIND, ONE DESTROYS DISTINCTIONS AND REACHES BUDDHAHOOD.
IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE....

This is a method, a tantra method: 

to look into space, into the sky, WITHOUT SEEING; to look with an empty eye. Looking, yet not looking for something: just an empty look.

Sometimes you see in a madman’s eyes an empty look – and madmen and sages are alike in certain things. A madman looks at your face, but you can see he is not looking at you. He just looks through you as if you are a glass thing, transparent; you are just in the way, he is not looking at you. And you are transparent for him: he looks beyond you, through you. 

He looks without looking AT you; the ”at” is not present, he simply looks.

Look in the sky without looking for something, because if you look for something a cloud is bound to come: ”something” means a cloud, ”nothing” means the vast expanse of the blue sky. 

Don’t look for any object. If you look for an object, the VERY LOOK creates the object: 

a cloud comes, and then you are looking at a cloud.

Don’t look at the clouds. Even if there are clouds, you don’t look AT them simply look, let them float, they are there. 

Suddenly a moment comes when you are attuned to

this look of not-looking – clouds disappear for you, only the vast sky remains. It is difficult because

eyes are focused and your eyes are tuned to look at things.

Look at a small child the first day born. He has the same eyes as a sage – or like a madman: his

eyes are loose and floating. He can bring both his eyes to meet at the center; he can allow them to

float to the far corners – they are not yet fixed. His system is liquid, his nervous system is not yet a

structure, everything is floating. So a child looks without looking at things; it is a mad look. Watch a

child: the same look is needed from you, because again you have to attain a second childhood.

Watch a madman, because the madman has fallen out of the society. Society means the fixed world
of roles, games. A madman is mad because he has no fixed role now, he has fallen out: he is the
perfect drop-out. A sage is also a perfect drop-out in a different dimension. He is not mad; in fact he
is the only sanest possibility. But the whole world is mad, fixed – that’s why a sage also looks mad.
Watch a madman: that is the look which is needed.
In old schools of Tibet they always had a madman, just for the seekers to watch his eyes. A madman
was very much valued. He was searched after because a monastery could not exist without a
madman. He becomes an object to observe. The seekers will observe the madman, his eyes, and
then they will try to look at the world like the madman. Those days were beautiful.
In the East, madmen have never suffered like they are suffering in the West. In the East they were
valued, a madman was something special. The society took care of him, he was respected, because
he has certain elements of the sage, certain elements of the child. He is different from the so-called
society, culture, civilization; he has fallen out of it. Of course, he has fallen down; a sage falls up,
a madman falls down – that’s the difference – but both have fallen out. And they have similarities.
Watch a madman, and then try to let your eyes become unfocused.
In Harvard, they were doing one experiment a few months ago, and they were surprised, they
couldn’t believe it. They were trying to find out whether the world, as WE see it, is so or not –
because many things have surfaced within the few last years.
We see the world not as it is, we see it as we expect it to be seen, we project something onto it.
It happened that a great ship reached a small island in the Pacific for the first time. The people of
the island didn’t see it, nobody! And the ship was so vast – but the people were attuned, their eyes
were attuned to small boats. They had never known such a big ship, they had never seen such a
thing. Simply their eyes would not catch the glimpse, their eyes simply refused.
In Harvard they tried on a young man: they gave him spectacles with distorting glasses, and he
had to wear them for seven days. For the first three days he was in a miserable state, because
everything distorted, the whole world around distorted.... It gave him such a severe headache, he
couldn’t sleep. Even with closed eyes those distorted figures would... the faces distorted, the trees
distorted, the roads distorted. He couldn’t even walk because he couldn’t believe: ”What is true and
what is given by the projection of distorting glasses?”
But a miracle happened! After the third day he became attuned to it; the distortion disappeared.
The glasses remained the same, distorting, but he started looking at the world in the same old way.
Within a week everything was okay: there was no headache, no problem, and the scientists were
simply surprised; they couldn’t believe it was happening. The eyes had completely dropped, as if
the glasses were no longer there. The glasses were there, and they were distorting – but the eyes
had come to see the world for which they were trained.
Nobody knows whether what you are seeing is there or not. It may not be there, it may be there in
a totally different way. The colors you see, the forms you see, everything is projected by the eyes.
And whenever you look fixedly, focused with your old patterns, you see things according to your
own conditioning. That’s why a madman has a liquid look, an absent look, looking and not looking
together.


Osho


Tantra: The Supreme Understanding
Chapter 2
The Root Problem