“Truth is an experience, not a belief. Truth never comes by studying it; truth has to be encountered, one has to face it.
One who studies love is like a person who studies the Himalayas by looking at a map. The map is not the mountain!
And if you start believing in the map, you will miss the mountain. If you are too occupied with the map, the mountain may be standing right in front of you, but you will not be able to see it.
That’s how things are. The mountain is there, but your eyes are full of maps — maps of the mountain, maps of the same mountain made by different explorers. Someone climbed the mountain from the north, another from the east. They made different maps: the Koran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita — different maps of the same truth. But you are too full of maps, too burdened by their weight; you cannot move an inch.
You cannot see the mountain standing right there, its peaks of virgin snow shining like gold in the morning sun.
You don’t have the eyes to see it.”
— Osho, The Wisdom of the Sands
On the path of returning to our spiritual roots, there comes a moment when we abandon the maps and begin to walk on our own. This is the time when we leave theories behind because we want to experience our own truth. Once we experience it, we finally understand the words above. Otherwise, even this remains just another theory.
