CHAPTER 2

No Mission, No Message

1 October 1969 pm in Pahalgam, Kashmir, India

FIRST QUESTIONER: WHAT IS YOUR MISSION IN LIFE? AND WHAT METHOD SHOULD WE
USE TO FULFILL THIS MISSION?

OSHO: As far as my mission in life is concerned, there is no such thing as my mission. Neither
is there any my, nor is there any mission. I am not teaching something to others – there is no
message to be given to the world. Messages are many, missions are enough – and there is no
lack of missionaries, nor is there any lack of thoughts, ideologies, isms. On the contrary, the mind
of the world is much too burdened with these things. To me it seems that if the mind of man can
be unburdened, only then is there any possibility of living the truth, or of feeling life in its totality.
Ideologies, thoughts, isms, missions, they all add to the burden of the mind.

The more the mind knows, the less it becomes capable of knowing; knowledge is the only hindrance
towards knowing. Knowing is something quite different from knowledge. Knowledge means
thoughts, and knowledge means borrowed learning. Knowing means a mind which is unburdened of
everything that is known; a mind in the state of knowing is simply ignorant – it doesn’t know anything,
it is humble. And to be humble, one has to unlearn what has become a burden.

The known must cease for the unknown to be. And life is unknown, and truth is unknown, yet we
are all burdened with knowledge. This attitude of knowledge becomes a hindrance towards the void,
which goes into the unchartered, into the unknown, the unacquainted, the unlearnt.

So to me there is nothing to be preached or to be taught – I am not a teacher in that sense. Rather,

I am awakened – not a teacher. And the first awakening that is required today is the awakening of
the humble attitude of an unlearnt, unknowledgeable mind, a mind that is open and not closed.

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CHAPTER 2. NO MISSION, NO MESSAGE

This humility is needed but you cannot teach this humility through a mission, because a mission
becomes an organization. A mission becomes, in the long run, the vested interest. A mission
becomes a sect; a mission becomes interested, not in the unknown, but in the knowledge that the
mission has to impart to others.

So every type of mission burdens the human mind. And the need is to be unburdened.

There are things which can be known by others; information can be imparted. As far as science is
concerned – the complete knowledge known as scientific knowledge – there are things that can be
imparted. Then there is the possibility of a school, of a teacher, of a mission.... But there are things
as far as the inner is concerned... as far as the divine is concerned, and these things cannot be
made part and parcel of a dead knowledge. They cannot be condensed into maxims, nor is there
any possibility for any objective experimentation or for a laboratory where more than one person
can experiment and come to a conclusion. There is no such possibility. The inner, the divine, is
basically individual, is basically subjective. One knows, but cannot impart the knowledge to others.
One knows and lives.... Others may feel the perfume, may feel the scent, may feel the song, may
feel the unknown presence, but that too is intuitive, that too is indirect.

You cannot preach the divine directly, so there is no mission-like activity for me. When there is
no mission, there is no question of how to work it out, how to implement it, how to organize it. I
am against all sorts of organizations. Truth cannot be organized, and the moment one thinks of
organizing it the truth is killed, only the dead remains. What is living goes out of any organization,
because to know the truth is so individual, it cannot be organized. You can organize around an
ideology, not around a realization. You can organize around a mission, not around the unknown, not
around the realization of the unknown.

So there is no possibility of there being any organization around me. Nor am I interested... rather,
I am against it. But we can never think of doing anything without organization. And the difficulty is:
the very nature of the thing is so, that if you organize it, you kill it; and if you don’t organize it, then
you raise the problem, what to do with it? How to make others know about it? That too can only be
done through individuals, not through organizations.

If what I say appeals to you, or somebody, he has to become the embodied presence of what I am
saying. Even if one individual becomes the embodied presence and people begin to feel about him...
something new, something transformed is imparted. By the very presence of such an individual the
work goes on....

Only such a type of mission can I conceive of. But I cannot call it a mission because the very word
has become associated with so many wrong things.

To be religious means to be imparting indirectly what one has realized. So I will go on trying,
endeavoring to contact individuals personally, and indicating towards things which cannot be
indicated. But no dead code or dead scripture must be allowed to be practiced or organized, or
given a base – unlike the old sects, the old religious or public organizations.

To me, organization means something based on hatred. No organization is centred around love,
because love needs no organization. Hatred needs organization. Nations, parties, religions, are all

Early Talks 4 Osho