Mystic Mantra: Nouns are a fiction created by man

We have heard that life is in flux, but we have only heard so from the enlightened people, it is not our experience. That is why we ignore it and try to create permanent dwellings in this fleeting world. The mind wants to possess everything and wishes that things would not slip out of its hands. But it doesn’t know that this is the real cause of its misery. Osho has explained it in a new way: that life is not a noun; it is a verb — because the noun is static, and the verb is always flowing. But our problem is, we would like this life to be a noun, which means static, labelled, immobile so that we can possess it; and overlook that the whole of existence, which is like a verb, which means it is running, it is constantly moving, always incomplete.

Ponder Osho’s words: “You have to understand one thing which is very fundamental: the world consists of verbs, not of nouns. Nouns are a human invention — necessary, but after all, a human invention. But existence consists of verbs, only of verbs — not nouns and pronouns. Look at this. You see a flower, a rose. To call it a flower is not right, because it has not stopped flowering, it is still flowering; it is a verb; it is a flow. By calling it a flower you have made it a noun. You see the river. You call it a river — you have made it a noun. It is “rivering”. It would be more accurate to the existential to say that it is “rivering” — flowing. And everything is changing — flowing. The child is becoming a young man; the young man is becoming old. Life is turning into death; death is turning into life.

Everything is in continuity, continuous change; it is a continuum. There never comes a full stop. It comes only in language. The child is still flowing in you. The river is becoming big, new rivulets are joining it, but the original is still there. When you say God, you are using a noun, something static, dead. When I say godliness, I am using a verb for something alive, flowing, moving.”