OnenesS, ThE ExperiencE of SilencE

Mind always creates duality; otherwise, to be open or to be witnessing are not two things.

If you are open, you will be witnessing.

Without being a witness, you cannot be open; or if you are a witness, you will be open—because being a witness and yet remaining closed is impossible. So those are only two words.

You can either start with witnessing—then opening will come on its own accord; or you can start by opening your heart, all windows, all doors—then witnessing will be found, coming on its own. But if you are simply thinking, without doing anything, then they look separate.

Mind cannot think without duality. Duality is the way of thinking.

In silence, all dualities disappear.

Oneness is the experience of silence.

For example, day and night are very clear dualities, but they are not two. There are animals who see in the night. Their eyes are more sensitive, capable of seeing in darkness. For them, there is no darkness. Those animals cannot open their eyes in the day, because their eyes are so delicate that the sun hurts. So while it is day for you, for those animals it is night; the eyes are closed, all is darkness. When it is night for you, it is day for them. The whole day they sleep, the whole night they are awake.

And if you ask a scientist and a logician, you will see the difference. If you ask the logician, “What is day?” he will say, “That which is not night.” And what is not night? It is a circular game. If you ask, “What is night?” the logician is going to say, “What is not day.”

You need day to define night, you need night to define day. Strange duality, strange opposition…. If there is no day, can you think of night? If there is no night, can you think of day? It is impossible.

Ask the scientist, who is closer to reality than the logician. For the scientist darkness is less light, light is less darkness. Now it is one phenomenon, just like a thermometer. Somebody has a temperature of 110 degrees, just ready to move out of the house. Somebody has a temperature of 98 degrees, the normal temperature for human beings, but somebody falls below 96 degrees, again ready for a move.

And the same is true about all oppositions that mind creates. Openness, witnessing … if you think intellectually, they look very different. They seem to be unrelated, how can they be one? But in experience they are one.