Osho, What is the mystic conception of ultimate reality?
Answer: The mystic’s conception of the ultimate reality is the only authentic and real experience. It is not a thought or a concept, but an existential experience.
The mystic does not deal with the mind. His whole effort is to get rid of the prison of the mind. The mystic is not a philosopher; his world is beyond all philosophies. Philosophies are simply by-products of mental processes. They do not reflect the reality, they only reflect you. That’s why there are so many philosophies in the world contradicting each other.
The reality is one. How can there be so many philosophies? There are not so many mystical experiences. There is only one experience: neither time nor space changes it. For millennia, the mystic in every country, in every race, in every age has experienced the same reality. The philosopher thinks about reality, the mystic simply drops all thinking. In his silence, his utter silence and serenity, he becomes a mirror, and the reality reflects itself.
The mystic is the greatest flowering of human consciousness. His ultimate vision can be described in three beautiful words that have been used for thousands of years, and there has not been any improvement on them. They are three words from the ancient-most sources: satyam shivam sundaram.
Satyam means the truth - not what you think about it, but what it is; not your idea about it, but its reality. To know this truth you have to be utterly absent. Your very presence will distort the vision - because your presence means the presence of your mind, your prejudices, your conditionings. You are nothing else but a bundle of all that has been forced upon you by the religions, by the society, by the so-called leaders of humanity.
Your absence means the absence of all prejudices, of all borrowed knowledge: absence of the Christian, absence of the Hindu, absence of the Mohammedan; just a pure sky, a pure being. I am using the word absence to deny all that is not you.
But don’t misunderstand me: this absence of you is your real presence. Only the prejudices are absent. The ego is absent, your knowledgeability is absent but your being shows in its utter purity. You disappear as a personality and there remains only a pure presence. So on one side it is absence of all that is false in you, and on the other side it is presence of all that is real in you. In this state you don’t think, you simply see.
This seeing of existence is the first experience of the mystic contained in the word satyam. Satyam means the truth: not any conception about it, but truth itself.
The second word, shivam, means virtue: all that is good, all that is valuable, all that is the most precious in you; the ultimate good. The man who comes to experience the truth starts living the truth immediately. There is no other alternative. His living the truth is shivam. Shivam means truth in action, truth in your life, truth in your love, truth in your friendship, truth in your eyes and truth in your heart. Shivam is the action of truth. Truth itself is the center of the cyclone, but if you experience the truth, the cyclone around you becomes shivam. It becomes pure godliness.
A man of truth is the only proof that the world is divine. No argument can prove that the world is divine.
Excerpt (courtesy Pan Macmillan India) from Satyam Shivam Sunderam: Truth Godliness Beauty by Osho