So the tree became the symbol of dropping out of “the road.” The road is the world, where everybody is going somewhere, trying to find something, and in fact basically trying to forget himself because it hurts. Even in the hottest summer you can go on the road in coolness, in the shadow. It was enough to remind one to step out of the road, because this has been for thousands of years the tradition, to plant trees on both the sides of Indian roads - huge trees with big branches almost meeting over the middle of the road so the road is completely covered with shadow. For five hundred years, in the temples that were made and dedicated to Buddha, there was only a tree carved on the stone or marble, nothing else. Instead of a statue only a tree was made. You will be surprised to know that after Buddha’s death, for five hundred years his statue was not made. Sitting under a tree is just representative. No, these are real dropouts who never drop in again. They are real dropouts, not the Californian type which within a few years drops in again. These are the people who have stepped out of the road on which the whole procession of humanity is going. These are the people who have stopped running. They mean something far more significant. To me the statues of Buddha and Mahavira in the East, sitting in a lotus posture under a tree, do not mean anything historical. They don’t stop, they don’t sit by the side of the road under a tree. People start running from their birth till they die. If there is a gap between the two and the question raises its head, and you start feeling agony, then it is better to continue, to go on running don’t stop. One thing is not finished, and you start doing another thing because you are afraid. Everybody is trying to escape, finding ways: falling in love, doing this, doing that - somehow, somewhere engaged. If you don’t start stuffing out of fear, if you don’t start escaping from your agony…. But out of this very chaos the stars are born. It is very extraordinary, and it is of tremendous value to your whole life, its growth, that you should feel agony, that each fiber of your being should feel the questioning, that you should become simply a question. That’s why I say it is not ordinary pain, suffering, misery.
Once you become aware of this situation then agony arises. No other animal, no tree, no bird is accidental they are planned. It seems as if we are accidental, that by some accident we are born. This is the agony - that the meaning is not known, that the purpose is not known, that the goal is not known. And this is as deep as anything can be in you, at the very core of your being. The question leaves not even for a single moment. Whatever you do, the question is there: Are you sure? Is it the thing for you to do? The question continuously remains not even for a single moment does the question leave. I don’t know whether whatever I am doing I am supposed to do or not. I don’t know where I am going and why I am going. Man is the only animal in existence who has freedom - and out of the freedom is agony.
There is nobody to prevent him, it is his freedom. At the very last moment he simply can step aside. There is no necessity for him to just go on following the path that he has followed. To the very last breath he can change his whole life pattern. To the very last breath he goes on growing.
Man is a continuous enquiry, a continuous question. No animal bothers asking the questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? He knows it already there is no question, there is no doubt, no enquiry. The animals, the trees, the rocks, know first who they are, then they exist hence there is no spiritual enquiry. You exist first, and then you have to find who you are. Osho speaks on ‘Agony and Ecstasy’: “Agony means: I don’t know who I am….
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