IN HIS SONG OF MAHAMUDRA, 
TILOPA SAYS:
Mahamudra is beyond all words and symbols, but for you, Naropa, earnest and loyal, must this be said: The void needs no reliance, mahamudra rests on nought. Without making an effort, but remaining loose and natural, one can break the yoke - thus gaining liberation.

The experience of the ultimate is not an experience at all - because the experiencer is lost. And when there is no experiencer, what can be said about it? Who will say it? Who will relate the experience? When there is no subject, the object also disappears - the banks disappear, only the river of experience remains. Knowledge is there, but the knower is not.

That has been the problem for all the mystics. They reach to the ultimate, but they cannot relate it to those who are following. They cannot relate it to others who would like to have an intellectual understanding. They have become one with it. Their whole being relates it, but no intellectual communication is possible. They can give it to you if you are ready to receive; they can allow it to happen in you if you also allow it, if you are receptive and open. But words won't do, symbols won't help; theories and doctrines are of no use at all.

The experience is such that it is more like an experiencing than like an experience. It is a process - and it begins, but it never ends. You enter into it, but you never possess it. It is like a drop dropping in the ocean, or, the ocean itself dropping into the drop. It is a deep merger, it is oneness, you simply melt away into it. Nothing is left behind, not even a trace, so who will communicate? Who will come back to the world of the valley? Who will come back to this dark night to tell you?

All the mystics all over the world have always felt impotent as far as communication is concerned. Communion is possible, but communication, no. This has to be understood from the very beginning. A communion is a totally different dimension: two hearts meet, it is a love affair. Communication is from head to head; communion is from heart to heart, communion is a feeling. Communication is knowledge: only words are given, only words are said, and only words are taken and understood. And words are such: the very nature of words is so dead that nothing alive can be related through them. Even in ordinary life, leave aside the ultimate, even in ordinary experiencing when you have a peak moment, an ecstatic moment, when you really feel something and become something, it becomes impossible to relate it in words.

In my childhood I used to go early in the morning to the river. It is a small village. The river is very very lazy, as if not flowing at all. And in the morning when the sun is not yet arisen, you cannot see whether it is flowing, it is so lazy and silent. And in the morning when there is nobody, the bathers have not come yet, it is tremendously silent. Even the birds are not singing in the morning - early, no sound, just a soundlessness pervades. And the smell of the mango trees hangs all over the river.

I used to go there, to the furthest corner of the river, just to sit, just to be there. There was no need to do anything, just being there was enough, it was such a beautiful experience to be there. I will take a bath, I will swim, and when the sun will arise I will go to the other shore, to the vast expanse of sand, and dry myself there under the sun, and lie there, and sometimes even go to sleep.

When I came back my mother used to ask: "What have you been doing the whole morning?" I will say: "Nothing," because, actually, I had not been doing anything. And she will say: "How is it possible? Four hours you have not been here, how is it possible that you have not been doing anything? You must have been doing something." And she was right, but I was also not wrong.

I was not doing anything at all. I was just being there with the river, not doing anything, allowing things to happen. If it FELT like swimming, remember, if it FELT like swimming, I would swim, but that was not a doing on my part, I was not forcing anything. If I felt like going into sleep, I would go. Things were happening, but there was no doer. And my first experiences of satori started near that river: not doing anything, simply being there, millions of things happened.

But she would insist: "You must have been doing something." So I would say: "Okay, I took a bath and I dried myself in the sun," and then she was satisfied. But I was not, because what happened there in the river is not expressed by words: "I took a bath" - it looks so poor and pale. Playing with the river, floating in the river, swimming in the river, was such a deep experience. To say simply "I took a bath," makes no sense about it; or to just say "I went there, had a walk on the bank, sat there," conveys nothing.

Even in ordinary life you feel the futility of words. And if you don't feel the futility of words, that shows that you have not been alive at all; that shows that you have lived very superficially. If whatsoever you have been living can be conveyed by words, that means you have not lived at all.

When for the first time something starts happening which is beyond words, life has happened to you, life has knocked at your door. And when the ultimate knocks at your door, you are simply gone beyond words - you become dumb, you cannot say; not even a single word is formed inside. And whatsoever you say looks so pale, so dead, so meaningless, without any significance, that it seems that you are doing injustice to the experience that has happened to you. Remember this, because Mahamudra is the last, the ultimate experience.

Mahamudra means a total orgasm with the universe. If you have loved somebody, and sometimes you have felt a melting and merging - the two are no more two; the bodies remain separate, but something between the bodies makes a bridge, a golden bridge, and the twoness inside disappears; one life energy vibrates on both the poles - if it has happened to you, then only you can understand what Mahamudra is. Millions and millions times deep, millions and millions of times high, is Mahamudra. It is a total orgasm with the whole, with the universe. It is melting into the source of being.

And this is a song of Mahamudra. It is beautiful that Tilopa has called it a song. You can sing it, but you cannot say it; you can dance it, but you cannot say it. It is such a deep phenomenon that singing may convey a little tiny part of it - not what you sing, but the way you sing it.

Many mystics have simply danced after their ultimate experience; they could not do anything else. They were saying something through their whole being and body; altogether, body, mind, soul, everything involved in it. They were dancing; those dances were not ordinary dances. In fact, all dancing was born because of these mystics; it was a way to relate the ecstasy, the happiness, the bliss. Something of the unknown has penetrated into the known, something of the beyond has come to the earth - what else can you do? You can dance it, you can sing it. This is a song of Mahamudra.

And who will sing it? Tilopa is no more. The orgasmic feeling itself is singing. It is not a song of Tilopa; Tilopa is no more. The experience itself is vibrating and singing. Hence, the song of Mahamudra, the song of ecstasy, ecstasy itself singing it. Tilopa has nothing to do; Tilopa is not there at all, Tilopa has melted. When the seeker is lost, only then the goal is achieved. Only when the experiencer is no more, the experience is there. Seek and you will miss it - because through your seeking the seeker will be strengthened. Don't seek and you will find it. The very seeking, the very effort becomes a barrier, because the more you seek, the more the ego is strengthened: the seeker. Do not seek.

This is the deepest message of this whole song of Mahamudra: do not seek, just remain as you are, don't go anywhere else. Nobody ever reaches God, nobody can because you don't know the address. Where will you go? Where will you find the divine? There is no map, and there is no way, and there is nobody to say where he is. No, nobody ever reaches God. It is always the reverse: God comes to you. Whenever you are ready, he knocks at your door; he seeks you whenever you are ready. And the readiness is nothing but a receptivity. When you are completely receptive there is no ego; you become a hollow temple with nobody in it.

Tilopa says in the song, become like a hollow bamboo, nothing inside. And suddenly, the moment you are a hollow bamboo, the divine lips are on you, the hollow bamboo becomes a flute, and the song starts - this is the song of Mahamudra. Tilopa has become a hollow bamboo, and the divine has come, and the song has started. It is not Tilopa's song, it is the song of the ultimate experience itself.

Something about Tilopa before we enter into this beautiful phenomenon. Nothing much is known about Tilopa, because nothing in fact can be known about such persons. They don't leave a trace, they don't become a part of history. They exist by the side, they are not part of the main traffic where the whole humanity is moving; they don't move there. The whole humanity moves through desiring, and persons like Tilopa move into desirelessness. They simply move away from the main traffic of humanity where history exists.

And the more away they go from the traffic, the more mythological they become. They exist like myths, they are no more events in time. And this is as it should be, because they move beyond time, they live beyond time - they live in the eternity. From this dimension of our common humanity, they simply disappear, they evaporate. The moment when they are evaporating, only that moment we remember, that much they are part of us. That's why nothing much is known about Tilopa, who he is.

Only this song exists. This is his gift, and the gift was given to his disciple, Naropa. These gifts cannot be given to anybody - unless a deep love intimacy exists. One has to be capable to receive such gifts. This song has been given to Naropa, his disciple. Before this song was given to Naropa, Naropa was tested in millions of ways: his faith, his love and trust. When it came to be known that there exists nothing like doubt in him, not even a tiny part of doubt, when his heart was totally full with trust and love, then this song was given.

I am also here to sing a song, but it can be given to you only when you are ready. And your readiness means that doubt should simply disappear from the mind. It should not be suppressed, you should not try to defeat it, because defeated it will remain in you; suppressed, it will remain part of your unconscious and it will go on affecting you. Don't fight your doubting mind, don't suppress it. Rather, on the contrary, you simply bring more and more energy into trust. You simply be indifferent to your doubting mind, nothing else can be done.

Indifference is the key: you simply be indifferent. It is there - accept it. Bring your energies more and more towards trust and love - because it is the same energy which becomes doubt; it is the same energy which becomes trust. Remain indifferent to doubt. The moment you are indifferent, your cooperation is broken, you are not feeding it - because it is through attention that anything is fed. If you pay attention to your doubt, even if you are against it, paying attention to it is dangerous because the very attention is the food; that is your cooperation. One has just to be indifferent, neither for nor against: don't be for doubt, don't be against doubt.

So now you will have to understand three words. One word is "doubt," another word is "belief," the third word is "trust" or "faith" - what in the East is known as SHRADDHA. Doubt is a negative attitude towards anything. Whatsoever is said, first you look at it negatively. You are against it, and you will find reasons, rationalizations how to support your "againstness." Then there is the mind of belief. It is just like the mind of doubt only standing upside down; there is not much difference. This mind looks at things positively and tries to find reasons, rationalizations how to support it, how to be for it. The mind who doubts suppresses belief; the mind who believes suppresses doubt - but they both are of the same stuff; the quality is not different.

Then there is a third mind whose doubting has simply disappeared - and when doubt disappears, belief also disappears. Faith is not belief, it is love. Faith is not belief because it is not half, it is total. Faith is not belief because there is no doubt in it, so how can you believe? Faith is not a rationalization at all: neither for nor against, neither this nor that. Faith is a trusting, a deep trusting, a love. You don't find any rationalizations for it, it simply is so. So what to do?

Don't create belief against faith. Just be indifferent to belief and doubt both, and bring your energies towards more and more love; love more, love unconditionally. Not only love me, because that is not possible: if you love, you simply love more. If you love, you simply exist in a more loving way - not only towards the master, but towards everything that exists around you: towards the trees and the stones, and the sky and the earth. You, your being, your very quality of being, becomes a love phenomenon. Then trust arises. And only in such a trust can a gift like the song of Mahamudra be given. When Naropa was ready Tilopa gave this gift.

So remember, with a master you are not on a "headtrip." Doubt and belief are all "head-trips." With a master you are on a "heart-trip." And heart doesn't know what doubt is, heart doesn't know what belief is - heart simply knows trust. Heart is just like a small child: the small child clings to the father's hand, and wherever the father is going the child is going, neither trusting nor doubting; the child is undivided. Doubt is half, belief is half. A child is still total, whole; he simply goes with the father wherever he is going. When a disciple becomes just like a child, then only these gifts of the highest peak of consciousness can be given.

When you become the deepest valley of reception, then the highest peaks of consciousness can be given to you. Only a valley can receive a peak. A disciple should be absolutely feminine, receptive, like a womb. Only then such a phenomenon happens as is going to happen in this song.

From: Osho: Tantra - The Supreme Understanding