JESUS
Come Follow Yourself Vol 04 06
Sixth Discourse from the series of 11 discourses - Come Follow Yourself Vol 04 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
I don't want to be this, I don't want to be that. I don't want to be here, I don't want to be there. I don't want to live, I don't want to die. I don't want to cry, I don't want to laugh. I can't be passive, I can't be active. I can't will and I can't surrender.
So just be in between. And this is not a question of one person, this is the state of all minds. The mind cannot be this and cannot be that. The mind does not want to be defined, does not want to be static, does not want to be confined. So whenever you want to try to be this, the mind starts working to be that. It goes on moving in the polarities. The mind is a movement; it is a constant movement.
What can be done? – don’t try to be this or that; just be in between. If you can be in between, you transcend mind. Just watch, be a witness. Don’t try to do anything; just observe the mind going from A to B, from B to A again, the mind moving from one side to the other like the pendulum of an old clock – from left to right, from right to left.
Have you watched a pendulum? When it is going to the left, it is gathering momentum to go to the right. On the surface, it is going to the left; deep inside, it is gathering momentum to go to the opposite pole. When it is going to the right it is being prepared to go to the left.
When you love a person through the mind, you are already getting ready to hate him. There is a poem by D. H. Lawrence in which he says, “The moment I say to my beloved, ‘I love you,’ I have already started hating her. The moment I say to my beloved, ‘I will be forever and forever with you,’ I have already departed.” The divorce is on the way. In the very moment you are getting married, divorce is on the way.
This is the way of the mind, how the mind functions. Just try to understand the functioning of the mind, otherwise you will always be in chaos, confusion, in a sort of insanity. Become a watcher. Get out of the traffic of the mind, stand by the side of the road and just see. And when I say just see, I mean don’t evaluate, don’t judge. Don’t say, “This is good, that is wrong,” because once you say, “This is good,” you are no longer a witness. You have jumped into the river, you are already identified, you are already in trouble. Just stand by the side of the road, or sit on the bank of a river and let the river flow wherever it goes. You are not concerned; it is none of your business. Unconcerned, indifferent, just watching – and suddenly you will be in between, neither this nor that.
That in between point is the point of transcendence. Suddenly the mind disappears with all its traffic. You are left alone, alone in tremendous purity, alone in absolute innocence, alone with no movement – silent, eternal, not going anywhere, just being here. You are not trying to become someone, something, this or that – just being yourself. And to be yourself is to be divine. To be yourself is to meditate. To be yourself is all that religion is about. This is what I’m teaching here.
I’m not teaching you a particular pattern of life. I’m not giving you a style of life. At the most, I’m trying to give you a vision, a clarity, an understanding. I’m not trying to give you a character – moral or immoral, good or bad. I’m not giving you a philosophy to live by. I’m simply giving you an insight into yourself. Then no philosophy is needed, no pattern is needed. Then you can just be yourself with no condemnation, with no evaluation. And that purity of being oneself, that beauty of being oneself, transcends all that you can desire, transcends all that you can even conceive of, transcends all that you can ever imagine or dream about. Just a glimpse of it and you will never be the same again.
So this is not a question from somebody in particular. Krishna Radha has asked it, but it is not only her question; it is everybody’s question. It is one of the most basic, essential questions of all human beings, of all those who are trapped in the mind. And there is only one way out of the trap – that you don’t choose. Neither this nor that – you simply don’t choose. You withdraw from choice and you become choiceless. Choicelessness is freedom. To choose is to choose a prison, to choose is to choose a bondage. To choose is wrong, to be choiceless is to be right.
The second question:
Osho,
How is it possible? I'm afraid when I feel your love deep inside me.
Love always creates fear because love is death, a greater death than the ordinary death you know of. In an ordinary death the body dies, but that is not death at all because the body is just like clothes. When they are tatty and old you change them for a new one. It is not death, it is just a change: a change of clothes, or a change of a house or abode. But you continue, the mind continues – just the same old mind in new bodies, just the same old wine in new bottles. The form changes, but not the mind; the shape changes, but not the mind. So the ordinary death is not a real death. Love is a real death – the body does not die but the mind dies. The body continues to be the same, but the ego disappears.
If you love, you will have to drop all the conceptions you have about yourself. If you love, you cannot be the ego because the ego will not allow love. They are antagonistic. If you choose the ego, you will not be able to choose love. If you choose love, you will have to drop the ego. Hence the fear.
A greater fear than death grips you whenever you are in love. That’s why love has disappeared from the world. Rarely, very rarely, does the phenomenon happen that love descends. What you call love is just a false coin. You have invented it because it is so difficult to live without love. It is difficult because without love, life carries no meaning, it is meaningless. Without love, life has no poetry in it. Without love, the tree exists but never flowers. Without love, you cannot dance, you cannot celebrate, you cannot feel grateful, you cannot pray. Without love, temples will be just ordinary houses; with love, an ordinary house is transformed, transfigured into a temple. Without love, you remain just possibilities, empty gestures. With love, for the first time you become substantial; with love, for the first time the soul arises in you – the ego drops but the soul arises.
It is impossible to live without love, so humanity has created a trick. Humanity has invented a trick, a device. The device is to live in a false love so the ego continues on its own. Nothing is changed, and you can play the game of being in love – you can go on thinking you love, you can go on believing you love. But look at your love. What happens out of it? – nothing except misery, nothing except hell, nothing except conflict, quarrel, violence. Look deeply into your love relationships. They are more akin to hate relationships than to love. It is better to call them hate relationships than to call them love relationships.
Because everybody is living in the same way, you never become aware. Everybody is carrying the false coin; you never become aware. The real coin of love is very costly. You can purchase it only at the cost of losing yourself. There is no other way.
So the question is perfectly relevant. It is from someone that I know. I know her, I know her love toward me, I know her deep possibilities. She is just on the brink. Any moment the ego can collapse, but she is somehow holding herself together. She will not be able to for long; she will have to collapse. Hence the fear.
“How is it possible?” she asks. “I’m afraid when I feel your love deep inside me.” She thinks it is a sort of contradiction: if she loves so much, why this fear? And I tell you, the fear is there because she loves so much. There is no contradiction in it, it is an absolutely consistent thing. Whenever you love you are afraid.
Moving toward love is moving toward an abyss. One starts wavering, one feels dizzy. Go to a height in the Himalayas and look down at the valley – that valley is no-thing. When you look down at the valley of love, a tremendous fear grips you. You are almost paralyzed; you cannot run away, you cannot take the jump. You simply tremble in infinite fear. What to do? Going back is not possible because love attracts. Love calls your depth, love calls your future, love calls your potentiality – and love gives you a glimpse of what you can be. You cannot run away from it, and you cannot jump because the cost is too high. You will have to drop yourself, all you have been thinking yourself to be – the image, the past, the identity.
I tell you, the cost seems to be too much only before the jump. Once you take the jump, you will know that whatever you have given up is nothing, and what you have attained is infinitely valuable. Let me tell you a paradox: love demands you drop that which you don’t have, and love offers you that which you already have. Love wants you to get rid of that which you don’t have.
The ego is a false entity, just a notion, a cloud in the sky of your being – just smoke, nothing substantial, a dream. Love requires you to drop that which you don’t have, and love is ready to give you that which you have and have always had. Love gives you yourself back; the ego goes on hiding you from yourself, love reveals you to yourself. But the fear is there. The fear is natural, and one has to go in spite of the fear.
Be courageous. Don’t be cowards. The real mettle of your being is tested only when love arises. Never before do you know of what mettle you are made. In ordinary life, in the marketplace, doing this and that, in the world of ambition and power politics, your real mettle is never really tested. You never pass through the fire.
Love is the fire. If you are really gold, you will survive it. If you are not real gold, you will be gone. I tell you that you are real gold.
Trust me. Pass through the fire. Hesitation is natural, but don’t make hesitation a barrier. Even with the hesitation, pass through it. In spite of the fear, pass through the fire. And only through the fire will the rose of your consciousness flower – there is no other way.
The third question:
Osho,
It seems that nothing ever really drops away. Suddenly it is gone, but just as suddenly it is back again. It all seems like a magic trick.
A very meaningful question, with tremendous implications for understanding. Let us move into it very slowly.
Yes, this is so: nothing ever really drops away. Nothing ever really drops away; suddenly it is gone, and as suddenly as it left, in the same way, at any moment, suddenly it is back again. Why is it so? You have never tried to understand the nature of human consciousness. The nature of human consciousness is absolute freedom. When I say absolute freedom, I mean you are free at any moment to be whatever you decide. Nothing holds itself against you. You may have been a saint up to now, you may have lived in celibacy up to now. This very moment you can change; you can throw away your celibacy, you can fall in love with a woman or a man. Because you have been celibate in the past does not, cannot, become a bondage. You remain free. If you want to be celibate in this moment also, you can be. But remember that it is not because of the past, it is again a fresh decision. You have to go on making your decision again and again and again, reviving it again and again and again. At any moment you can drop it.
Existentialists are right. They say: existence precedes essence. It is a very pregnant sentence. Let me repeat it: existence precedes essence. A man is born – he is pure freedom, he has no essence, only existence. Then he will choose his essence, whom he is going to be – and it will be his choice. He can be a saint, he can be a sinner; he can be a criminal, he can be a murderer, or he can be a martyr. He brings pure existence into the world – a blank sheet, a pure canvas. What colors he is going to use, and what sort of painting he is going to make of his life, are totally up to him. He does not bring a character. He simply brings a potentiality, a pure potentiality.
And this pure potentiality always remains pure; you cannot corrupt it. You become a saint; that means you decide that to be a saint is going to be your essence. But this is your decision, and if you want to keep it up to the very end of your life, every morning – in fact every minute of your existence – you will have to decide again and again and vote for it. Any moment you stop deciding, any moment you say, “Enough is enough, now I want to change,” nobody is barring the path. You can cancel your whole past in a single moment because that past was your decision, nobody else’s. It is not like a destiny forced from above, from outside. It is your own inner decision. You can change it.
That’s why nothing ever disappears. You can become a sinner, but tomorrow you may again change. You can again take the vow of a Catholic priest and become a priest again and become celibate. Try to understand this. This has tremendous implications for your life.
Don’t throw the responsibility on anybody else. Nobody else is a deciding factor – neither your mother nor your father; whatever the psychoanalysts say is really irrelevant to your being. It is for you to decide. Even people who are mad are mad because of their own decision. Somehow they found it to be convenient, somehow they decided, they voted for it. Nobody has forced them, nobody can force anybody because the innermost quality of being is freedom. It is not something accidental; it is your very nature.
You have been smoking up to now. For thirty years you may have been a chain smoker, and you come to me and you ask, “What to do? How to stop?” You are asking a wrong question. In fact, you don’t want to stop. Go deep into your own mind: you don’t want to stop; you are playing a game. You don’t want to stop but you want to show people that you want to stop. Or this very idea that you want to stop gives you a very, very good image about yourself. Then you go on saying, “What can I do? It has become such a long habit; I cannot stop, though I want to stop.” This is simple, sheer foolishness and stupidity, and you are not deceiving anybody except yourself. If you really want to stop, there is no need to do anything about it. The very decision that you want to stop is enough; the half-smoked cigarette in your hand will drop of its own accord. But you remain free. That does not mean again tomorrow you cannot take it up. You remain free; nobody can bind you. Again tomorrow you can take it up. Then please don’t start saying it is because of old habit: “I tried my best and I had stopped, and for twenty-four hours I didn’t smoke. Because of a thirty-year-old habit, I am again taking it up. The urge is too much.”
Do not try to befool anybody. There is nothing like that. You are again deciding. If you are deciding, it is okay; you can find a thousand and one ways to decide again. But remember always, it is your decision, yours and nobody else’s. And you remain free. That’s why it happens that nothing seems to disappear forever. It comes again and again because you again invoke it to come, you again call it to come.
I have heard…
Mulla Nasruddin once decided he would never touch any alcoholic drink again in his life – any intoxicant – and he was a drunkard. So just to test his own willpower, he walked on the path where the pub was. Just in front of the pub, he looked at the pub in a very proud way and said to himself, “I have decided nothing can attract me and nothing can force me to go astray,” and he heartily walked a hundred feet away. Then he patted his own back and he said, “Nasruddin, you are great. Now I will treat you, come to the pub.” And on that day he drank twice.
Don’t play games with yourself. It is your freedom, but freedom is very dangerous because it does not leave any corner for you to hide in. You cannot throw responsibility on anybody else. Simply and absolutely, you are responsible. Just watch and see the fact of it, and truth liberates.
If you can see this, whether you decide to smoke or drink does not matter. Whether you decide to drop it does not matter. The only thing that matters is to be always mindful of your freedom. If you are not aware of that, then this will happen, you will feel that nothing ever really drops away. It comes again and again, and of course it comes worse than ever. It comes with a vengeance.
But don’t think of yourself as a victim; you are not. Try what I am saying, just watch what I am saying. Smoking – let there be a decision you are not going to smoke. Let the cigarette drop from your fingers, and watch. Just go on observing. Whenever you again want to smoke, don’t say it is because of old habit. It is again a fresh decision, not an old habit – you go on throwing the responsibility on the old habit to save your own face. Please don’t do that. Say, “Now I have decided to smoke again.” Nobody is barring you; it is your decision. You can cancel, or you can vote for it again. Always insist that this is a fresh decision. Then you will never be in the grip of so-called habits, so-called mechanical habits, and you will feel a free man.
Smoking or not smoking is immaterial; to feel a free man is very significant. Nothing is more significant than that. And I am here to make you aware of your freedom. If you go to the so-called saints, they will make you aware of your mechanicalness; that is the difference. They will make you aware of your mechanicalness, and they will create a new mechanicalness in you. They will say, “You have been smoking for thirty years? Now take a vow you will never smoke again.” The old habit is there. Now they are telling you to create a greater habit in order to destroy the old habit. Then nonsmoking will become a habit, but the freedom is nowhere there. Whether you smoke or don’t smoke, you remain a victim.
We have a sannyasin here whose father is a very beautiful man. People think he is a little crazy, but he is really a beautiful man. He belongs to a certain sect of Jainism. He went on a visit, on a pilgrimage, and when you go to Jain monks they always ask you to take a vow – because otherwise you going on the pilgrimage is meaningless. The monk there asked him to take some vow, so he decided to take a vow. He said, “I have never smoked in my life. Now I will smoke.” The monk must have thought him crazy.
The father came back and he told me, “I have taken this vow.” And now he smokes religiously.
I said, “You are a beautiful man. You did well.” Whether you smoke or don’t smoke, all vows lead you to mechanicalness.
My whole emphasis is that you should become aware of your freedom. Let your life flow out of your freedom. Whatever you decide is up to you. Who am I to tell you to smoke or not to smoke, to drink or not to drink? I am not worried about such foolishnesses; this is for you to decide. You are your own master. These are trivia, they are not significant. All that matters is that you remain alert, remain centered in your freedom. Never do anything which goes against your freedom. Do – everything is allowed if it is done out of freedom. To act out of freedom is to be virtuous, to act out of bondage is to sin.
The fourth question:
Osho,
You say that if a man is thirsty he should come and drink from you. We are here as much as we can be, and you are here, are you not? So what is missing?
Nothing is missing – on the contrary, something is there that is not needed. Nothing is missing. There is something that is not needed: you are too much. Your too-muchness is creating the barrier. If you somehow can be missing, the thing will happen immediately. When you come to me next time, leave yourself back at home. Come alone; don’t bring yourself here. But you go on bringing yourself. If it is too difficult to leave yourself at home, then leave yourself where you leave your shoes.
Nothing is missing. The whole problem of man is not that something is lacking in him, but that something more is there that is not needed. It is not a problem of minus, it is a problem of plus. I am here, available, but you are not there to receive me. It is not that you are empty, but because you are too full, too full of yourself. There is no space for me to enter you. So many thoughts, so many ideas, so many ideologies – somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Jain – so many diseases. This is the plus. And among these diseases is sitting the king of all diseases – the ego, enthroned, crowned. This plus has to be dissolved.
Here you have to be vacant, empty, void, open so the breeze that is blowing here can pass through you without any obstruction. And with the breeze, the dust you have gathered through many lives will be blown out. You will be left clean and pure.
So remember this: whenever you ask such questions, you think you have to do something that you are not doing, that something is missing. No, you are doing something that is not needed to be done. While listening to me you are thinking – that is the plus. While listening to me just be a listening. There is no need to think because I am not propounding a philosophy here. I am simply stating a few facts. Those facts are not hypothetical, those facts are my realizations. I have come to see something that I would like to deliver to you. But if you are listening without thinking, only then is it possible. When I say don’t think, I don’t mean that whatever I say, you have to accept blindly. No, I’m simply saying: just listen; no need to believe in it, no need to disbelieve in it. Don’t bring that problem in right now. Just listen so you can understand what I am saying. Later on you can think about it, and you can decide whether to be with me or not to be with me. That decision is possible only if you have listened rightly.
And how will you decide if you have not been listening to me? This is the beauty of it: if you have listened rightly, a fact has a certain quality in it, so once it enters you, you cannot deny it, you cannot be against it. A fact has a self-evidence about it. It does not need any proof or argument. It has a truth in it. Once you listen, you can feed that truth within you. Just listen to me and then there will be no need to think about it. You will be able to see the truth of it, and truth liberates.
I cannot liberate you, nobody can liberate you; only truth can liberate you. And the truth has to be seen by you. I may be seeing it, I may be telling it to you. In a thousand and one ways, I may be showering it upon you, but that is useless if you are not open, if your pot is upside down, if you are not listening. When I am speaking, if simultaneously you go on thinking of what I am saying, and you go on like commentators in a cricket match and you go on commenting, “Yes, this is right, that is wrong. That I cannot believe. This goes against my philosophy – I am a Christian, what this man is saying is anti-Christian; this is not written in the Bible…” If you go on commenting, while you are commenting you are missing me. Then you may listen to bits and fragments, and out of those bits and fragments you may create something within you that has nothing to do with me.
Listen to me as totally as possible. Listening to me, be completely vacant, empty, so there is no resistance. I can pass through and through you. You become transparent to me. Once the truth seed falls into you, there will be no need to be worried; it sprouts on its own. It brings much fruit on its own. It does not need your help. It simply needs one thing: please don’t hinder it. You are not asked to help it to grow, you are only asked to allow it to fall in the right soil of your heart.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Should one first come to terms with one's own loneliness before entering into a relationship?
Yes, you have to come to terms with your loneliness – so much so the loneliness is transformed into aloneness. Only then will you be capable of moving into a deep enriching relationship, only then will you be able to move into love.
What do I mean when I say that one has to come to terms with one’s loneliness, so much so it becomes aloneness? Loneliness is a negative state of mind. Aloneness is positive, notwithstanding what the dictionaries say. In dictionaries, loneliness and aloneness are synonymous. They are synonyms; in life they are not. Loneliness is a state of mind when you are constantly missing the other; aloneness is the state of mind when you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable, aloneness is blissful. Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring for something. Aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness you are off center, in aloneness you are centered and rooted. Aloneness is beautiful. It has an elegance around it, a grace, a climate of tremendous satisfaction. Loneliness is beggarly. All around it there is begging and nothing else, it has no grace around it. In fact, it is ugly. Loneliness is a dependence; aloneness is sheer independence. One feels as if one is one’s whole world, one’s whole existence.
Now, if you move into a relationship when you are feeling lonely, you will exploit the other. The other will become a means to satisfy you. You will use the other, and everybody resents being used – because no man is here to become a means for anybody else. Every man is an end unto himself. Nobody is here to be used like a thing, everybody is here to be worshipped like a king. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations, everybody is here just to be himself. So whenever you move into any relationship out of loneliness, the relationship is already on the rocks. Even before it has started, it is already on the rocks. Even before the birth, the child is dead. It is going to create more misery for you.
Remember, when you move out of your loneliness you will fall into a relationship with somebody who is in the same plight because no man who is really living his aloneness will be attracted toward you. You will be too below him. He can at the most sympathize, but cannot love you. One who is on his peak of aloneness can only be attracted toward somebody who is also alone. So whenever you move out of loneliness, you will find a man of the same type, you will find your own reflection somewhere. Two beggars will meet, two miserable people will meet. And remember, when two miserable people meet, it is not an ordinary addition; it is a multiplication. They create much more misery for each other than they could have created in their loneliness.
First become alone; first start enjoying yourself, first love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes, it doesn’t matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay – you are not missing. You are not waiting for somebody to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes, good, beautiful. If nobody comes, that too is beautiful and good.
Then move into a relationship. Now you move like a master, not like a beggar. Now you move like an emperor, not like a beggar. The person who has lived in his aloneness will always be attracted to another person who is also living his aloneness beautifully, because the same attracts the same. When two masters meet – masters of their being, of their aloneness – happiness is not just added, it is multiplied. It becomes a tremendous phenomenon of celebration. And they don’t exploit, they share. They don’t use each other. Rather, on the contrary, they both become one and enjoy the existence that surrounds them.
Two lonely people are always facing each other, confronting. Two people who have known aloneness are together, facing something higher than both. I always give this example: two ordinary lovers who are both lonely always face each other; two real lovers, on a full-moon night, will not be facing each other. They may be holding hands, but they will be facing the full moon high in the sky. They will not be facing each other, they will be together facing something else. Sometimes they will be listening to a symphony of Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner together. Sometimes they will be sitting by the side of a tree and enjoying the tremendous being of the tree enveloping them. Sometimes they may be sitting by a waterfall and listening to the wild music that is continuously being created there. Sometimes, by the ocean, they will both be looking to the farthest possibility that the eyes can see.
Whenever two lonely people meet, they look at each other because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other – how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two people who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travelers; they move on a pilgrimage. The goal is high, the goal is far away. Their common interest joins them together.
Ordinarily the common interest is sex. Sex can join two persons momentarily and casually, and very superficially. Real lovers have a greater common interest. It is not that sex will not be there – it may be there, but as part of a higher harmony. Listening to Mozart’s or Beethoven’s symphony, they may come so close, so close, so close that there may be love. They may make love to each other, but it is in the greater harmony of a Beethoven symphony. The symphony was the real thing; the love happens as part of it. And when love happens of its own accord, unsought, unthought – simply happens as part of a higher harmony – it has a totally different quality to it. It is divine, it is no longer human.
The word happiness comes from a Scandinavian word hap. The word happening also comes from the same Scandinavian root. Happiness is that which happens. You cannot produce it, you cannot command it, you cannot force it. At the most, you can be available to it. Whenever it happens, it happens.
Two real lovers are always available – but never thinking, never trying to find happiness. They are never frustrated because whenever it happens, it happens. They create the situation. In fact, if you are happy with yourself, you are already the situation, and if the other is also happy with himself or herself, she is also the situation. When these two situations come close, a greater situation is created. In that greater situation much happens, nothing is produced. Man does not have to do anything to be happy; man just has to flow and let go.
So, the question is, “Should one first come to terms with his own loneliness before entering into a relationship?” Yes, and absolutely yes. It has to be so, otherwise you will be frustrated, and in the name of love you will be doing something else that is not love at all.
The last question:
Osho,
I feel your grace melting me. Love to you my master.
It is from Anup. It is not a question. A real question is never a question, it is a statement. This is a statement of Anup’s state of being at this moment. I can also feel he is melting, but this is just the beginning.
Don’t become too self-conscious about it, otherwise the melting will stop. Allow it so more and more becomes possible. Go on melting, and always remember that more is waiting. Always remember that it is always the beginning, never the end. In fact, there is no end to it. Life is such a mystery: there are only beginnings, no ends.
So, go on melting and always remembering that more is coming. Never become satisfied. A complacent satisfaction can become suicidal. And there come many moments when one feels that more is not possible, one comes to a peak and one feels, “Now, how is more possible?” Whenever this idea that more is not possible arises in your mind, remember me. More is always possible. There never comes a moment when more is not possible. That is the meaning when we say God is infinite: you enter God but you never reach. Let me repeat it again: you enter God but you never reach him. You can drown in him but you cannot say you have known him. It is so vast, so infinitely vast, and man is just a tiny drop.
Go on melting, always remembering that more is on the way.
Enough for today.
Osho,
I don't want to be this, I don't want to be that. I don't want to be here, I don't want to be there. I don't want to live, I don't want to die. I don't want to cry, I don't want to laugh. I can't be passive, I can't be active. I can't will and I can't surrender.
So just be in between. And this is not a question of one person, this is the state of all minds. The mind cannot be this and cannot be that. The mind does not want to be defined, does not want to be static, does not want to be confined. So whenever you want to try to be this, the mind starts working to be that. It goes on moving in the polarities. The mind is a movement; it is a constant movement.
What can be done? – don’t try to be this or that; just be in between. If you can be in between, you transcend mind. Just watch, be a witness. Don’t try to do anything; just observe the mind going from A to B, from B to A again, the mind moving from one side to the other like the pendulum of an old clock – from left to right, from right to left.
Have you watched a pendulum? When it is going to the left, it is gathering momentum to go to the right. On the surface, it is going to the left; deep inside, it is gathering momentum to go to the opposite pole. When it is going to the right it is being prepared to go to the left.
When you love a person through the mind, you are already getting ready to hate him. There is a poem by D. H. Lawrence in which he says, “The moment I say to my beloved, ‘I love you,’ I have already started hating her. The moment I say to my beloved, ‘I will be forever and forever with you,’ I have already departed.” The divorce is on the way. In the very moment you are getting married, divorce is on the way.
This is the way of the mind, how the mind functions. Just try to understand the functioning of the mind, otherwise you will always be in chaos, confusion, in a sort of insanity. Become a watcher. Get out of the traffic of the mind, stand by the side of the road and just see. And when I say just see, I mean don’t evaluate, don’t judge. Don’t say, “This is good, that is wrong,” because once you say, “This is good,” you are no longer a witness. You have jumped into the river, you are already identified, you are already in trouble. Just stand by the side of the road, or sit on the bank of a river and let the river flow wherever it goes. You are not concerned; it is none of your business. Unconcerned, indifferent, just watching – and suddenly you will be in between, neither this nor that.
That in between point is the point of transcendence. Suddenly the mind disappears with all its traffic. You are left alone, alone in tremendous purity, alone in absolute innocence, alone with no movement – silent, eternal, not going anywhere, just being here. You are not trying to become someone, something, this or that – just being yourself. And to be yourself is to be divine. To be yourself is to meditate. To be yourself is all that religion is about. This is what I’m teaching here.
I’m not teaching you a particular pattern of life. I’m not giving you a style of life. At the most, I’m trying to give you a vision, a clarity, an understanding. I’m not trying to give you a character – moral or immoral, good or bad. I’m not giving you a philosophy to live by. I’m simply giving you an insight into yourself. Then no philosophy is needed, no pattern is needed. Then you can just be yourself with no condemnation, with no evaluation. And that purity of being oneself, that beauty of being oneself, transcends all that you can desire, transcends all that you can even conceive of, transcends all that you can ever imagine or dream about. Just a glimpse of it and you will never be the same again.
So this is not a question from somebody in particular. Krishna Radha has asked it, but it is not only her question; it is everybody’s question. It is one of the most basic, essential questions of all human beings, of all those who are trapped in the mind. And there is only one way out of the trap – that you don’t choose. Neither this nor that – you simply don’t choose. You withdraw from choice and you become choiceless. Choicelessness is freedom. To choose is to choose a prison, to choose is to choose a bondage. To choose is wrong, to be choiceless is to be right.
The second question:
Osho,
How is it possible? I'm afraid when I feel your love deep inside me.
Love always creates fear because love is death, a greater death than the ordinary death you know of. In an ordinary death the body dies, but that is not death at all because the body is just like clothes. When they are tatty and old you change them for a new one. It is not death, it is just a change: a change of clothes, or a change of a house or abode. But you continue, the mind continues – just the same old mind in new bodies, just the same old wine in new bottles. The form changes, but not the mind; the shape changes, but not the mind. So the ordinary death is not a real death. Love is a real death – the body does not die but the mind dies. The body continues to be the same, but the ego disappears.
If you love, you will have to drop all the conceptions you have about yourself. If you love, you cannot be the ego because the ego will not allow love. They are antagonistic. If you choose the ego, you will not be able to choose love. If you choose love, you will have to drop the ego. Hence the fear.
A greater fear than death grips you whenever you are in love. That’s why love has disappeared from the world. Rarely, very rarely, does the phenomenon happen that love descends. What you call love is just a false coin. You have invented it because it is so difficult to live without love. It is difficult because without love, life carries no meaning, it is meaningless. Without love, life has no poetry in it. Without love, the tree exists but never flowers. Without love, you cannot dance, you cannot celebrate, you cannot feel grateful, you cannot pray. Without love, temples will be just ordinary houses; with love, an ordinary house is transformed, transfigured into a temple. Without love, you remain just possibilities, empty gestures. With love, for the first time you become substantial; with love, for the first time the soul arises in you – the ego drops but the soul arises.
It is impossible to live without love, so humanity has created a trick. Humanity has invented a trick, a device. The device is to live in a false love so the ego continues on its own. Nothing is changed, and you can play the game of being in love – you can go on thinking you love, you can go on believing you love. But look at your love. What happens out of it? – nothing except misery, nothing except hell, nothing except conflict, quarrel, violence. Look deeply into your love relationships. They are more akin to hate relationships than to love. It is better to call them hate relationships than to call them love relationships.
Because everybody is living in the same way, you never become aware. Everybody is carrying the false coin; you never become aware. The real coin of love is very costly. You can purchase it only at the cost of losing yourself. There is no other way.
So the question is perfectly relevant. It is from someone that I know. I know her, I know her love toward me, I know her deep possibilities. She is just on the brink. Any moment the ego can collapse, but she is somehow holding herself together. She will not be able to for long; she will have to collapse. Hence the fear.
“How is it possible?” she asks. “I’m afraid when I feel your love deep inside me.” She thinks it is a sort of contradiction: if she loves so much, why this fear? And I tell you, the fear is there because she loves so much. There is no contradiction in it, it is an absolutely consistent thing. Whenever you love you are afraid.
Moving toward love is moving toward an abyss. One starts wavering, one feels dizzy. Go to a height in the Himalayas and look down at the valley – that valley is no-thing. When you look down at the valley of love, a tremendous fear grips you. You are almost paralyzed; you cannot run away, you cannot take the jump. You simply tremble in infinite fear. What to do? Going back is not possible because love attracts. Love calls your depth, love calls your future, love calls your potentiality – and love gives you a glimpse of what you can be. You cannot run away from it, and you cannot jump because the cost is too high. You will have to drop yourself, all you have been thinking yourself to be – the image, the past, the identity.
I tell you, the cost seems to be too much only before the jump. Once you take the jump, you will know that whatever you have given up is nothing, and what you have attained is infinitely valuable. Let me tell you a paradox: love demands you drop that which you don’t have, and love offers you that which you already have. Love wants you to get rid of that which you don’t have.
The ego is a false entity, just a notion, a cloud in the sky of your being – just smoke, nothing substantial, a dream. Love requires you to drop that which you don’t have, and love is ready to give you that which you have and have always had. Love gives you yourself back; the ego goes on hiding you from yourself, love reveals you to yourself. But the fear is there. The fear is natural, and one has to go in spite of the fear.
Be courageous. Don’t be cowards. The real mettle of your being is tested only when love arises. Never before do you know of what mettle you are made. In ordinary life, in the marketplace, doing this and that, in the world of ambition and power politics, your real mettle is never really tested. You never pass through the fire.
Love is the fire. If you are really gold, you will survive it. If you are not real gold, you will be gone. I tell you that you are real gold.
Trust me. Pass through the fire. Hesitation is natural, but don’t make hesitation a barrier. Even with the hesitation, pass through it. In spite of the fear, pass through the fire. And only through the fire will the rose of your consciousness flower – there is no other way.
The third question:
Osho,
It seems that nothing ever really drops away. Suddenly it is gone, but just as suddenly it is back again. It all seems like a magic trick.
A very meaningful question, with tremendous implications for understanding. Let us move into it very slowly.
Yes, this is so: nothing ever really drops away. Nothing ever really drops away; suddenly it is gone, and as suddenly as it left, in the same way, at any moment, suddenly it is back again. Why is it so? You have never tried to understand the nature of human consciousness. The nature of human consciousness is absolute freedom. When I say absolute freedom, I mean you are free at any moment to be whatever you decide. Nothing holds itself against you. You may have been a saint up to now, you may have lived in celibacy up to now. This very moment you can change; you can throw away your celibacy, you can fall in love with a woman or a man. Because you have been celibate in the past does not, cannot, become a bondage. You remain free. If you want to be celibate in this moment also, you can be. But remember that it is not because of the past, it is again a fresh decision. You have to go on making your decision again and again and again, reviving it again and again and again. At any moment you can drop it.
Existentialists are right. They say: existence precedes essence. It is a very pregnant sentence. Let me repeat it: existence precedes essence. A man is born – he is pure freedom, he has no essence, only existence. Then he will choose his essence, whom he is going to be – and it will be his choice. He can be a saint, he can be a sinner; he can be a criminal, he can be a murderer, or he can be a martyr. He brings pure existence into the world – a blank sheet, a pure canvas. What colors he is going to use, and what sort of painting he is going to make of his life, are totally up to him. He does not bring a character. He simply brings a potentiality, a pure potentiality.
And this pure potentiality always remains pure; you cannot corrupt it. You become a saint; that means you decide that to be a saint is going to be your essence. But this is your decision, and if you want to keep it up to the very end of your life, every morning – in fact every minute of your existence – you will have to decide again and again and vote for it. Any moment you stop deciding, any moment you say, “Enough is enough, now I want to change,” nobody is barring the path. You can cancel your whole past in a single moment because that past was your decision, nobody else’s. It is not like a destiny forced from above, from outside. It is your own inner decision. You can change it.
That’s why nothing ever disappears. You can become a sinner, but tomorrow you may again change. You can again take the vow of a Catholic priest and become a priest again and become celibate. Try to understand this. This has tremendous implications for your life.
Don’t throw the responsibility on anybody else. Nobody else is a deciding factor – neither your mother nor your father; whatever the psychoanalysts say is really irrelevant to your being. It is for you to decide. Even people who are mad are mad because of their own decision. Somehow they found it to be convenient, somehow they decided, they voted for it. Nobody has forced them, nobody can force anybody because the innermost quality of being is freedom. It is not something accidental; it is your very nature.
You have been smoking up to now. For thirty years you may have been a chain smoker, and you come to me and you ask, “What to do? How to stop?” You are asking a wrong question. In fact, you don’t want to stop. Go deep into your own mind: you don’t want to stop; you are playing a game. You don’t want to stop but you want to show people that you want to stop. Or this very idea that you want to stop gives you a very, very good image about yourself. Then you go on saying, “What can I do? It has become such a long habit; I cannot stop, though I want to stop.” This is simple, sheer foolishness and stupidity, and you are not deceiving anybody except yourself. If you really want to stop, there is no need to do anything about it. The very decision that you want to stop is enough; the half-smoked cigarette in your hand will drop of its own accord. But you remain free. That does not mean again tomorrow you cannot take it up. You remain free; nobody can bind you. Again tomorrow you can take it up. Then please don’t start saying it is because of old habit: “I tried my best and I had stopped, and for twenty-four hours I didn’t smoke. Because of a thirty-year-old habit, I am again taking it up. The urge is too much.”
Do not try to befool anybody. There is nothing like that. You are again deciding. If you are deciding, it is okay; you can find a thousand and one ways to decide again. But remember always, it is your decision, yours and nobody else’s. And you remain free. That’s why it happens that nothing seems to disappear forever. It comes again and again because you again invoke it to come, you again call it to come.
I have heard…
Mulla Nasruddin once decided he would never touch any alcoholic drink again in his life – any intoxicant – and he was a drunkard. So just to test his own willpower, he walked on the path where the pub was. Just in front of the pub, he looked at the pub in a very proud way and said to himself, “I have decided nothing can attract me and nothing can force me to go astray,” and he heartily walked a hundred feet away. Then he patted his own back and he said, “Nasruddin, you are great. Now I will treat you, come to the pub.” And on that day he drank twice.
Don’t play games with yourself. It is your freedom, but freedom is very dangerous because it does not leave any corner for you to hide in. You cannot throw responsibility on anybody else. Simply and absolutely, you are responsible. Just watch and see the fact of it, and truth liberates.
If you can see this, whether you decide to smoke or drink does not matter. Whether you decide to drop it does not matter. The only thing that matters is to be always mindful of your freedom. If you are not aware of that, then this will happen, you will feel that nothing ever really drops away. It comes again and again, and of course it comes worse than ever. It comes with a vengeance.
But don’t think of yourself as a victim; you are not. Try what I am saying, just watch what I am saying. Smoking – let there be a decision you are not going to smoke. Let the cigarette drop from your fingers, and watch. Just go on observing. Whenever you again want to smoke, don’t say it is because of old habit. It is again a fresh decision, not an old habit – you go on throwing the responsibility on the old habit to save your own face. Please don’t do that. Say, “Now I have decided to smoke again.” Nobody is barring you; it is your decision. You can cancel, or you can vote for it again. Always insist that this is a fresh decision. Then you will never be in the grip of so-called habits, so-called mechanical habits, and you will feel a free man.
Smoking or not smoking is immaterial; to feel a free man is very significant. Nothing is more significant than that. And I am here to make you aware of your freedom. If you go to the so-called saints, they will make you aware of your mechanicalness; that is the difference. They will make you aware of your mechanicalness, and they will create a new mechanicalness in you. They will say, “You have been smoking for thirty years? Now take a vow you will never smoke again.” The old habit is there. Now they are telling you to create a greater habit in order to destroy the old habit. Then nonsmoking will become a habit, but the freedom is nowhere there. Whether you smoke or don’t smoke, you remain a victim.
We have a sannyasin here whose father is a very beautiful man. People think he is a little crazy, but he is really a beautiful man. He belongs to a certain sect of Jainism. He went on a visit, on a pilgrimage, and when you go to Jain monks they always ask you to take a vow – because otherwise you going on the pilgrimage is meaningless. The monk there asked him to take some vow, so he decided to take a vow. He said, “I have never smoked in my life. Now I will smoke.” The monk must have thought him crazy.
The father came back and he told me, “I have taken this vow.” And now he smokes religiously.
I said, “You are a beautiful man. You did well.” Whether you smoke or don’t smoke, all vows lead you to mechanicalness.
My whole emphasis is that you should become aware of your freedom. Let your life flow out of your freedom. Whatever you decide is up to you. Who am I to tell you to smoke or not to smoke, to drink or not to drink? I am not worried about such foolishnesses; this is for you to decide. You are your own master. These are trivia, they are not significant. All that matters is that you remain alert, remain centered in your freedom. Never do anything which goes against your freedom. Do – everything is allowed if it is done out of freedom. To act out of freedom is to be virtuous, to act out of bondage is to sin.
The fourth question:
Osho,
You say that if a man is thirsty he should come and drink from you. We are here as much as we can be, and you are here, are you not? So what is missing?
Nothing is missing – on the contrary, something is there that is not needed. Nothing is missing. There is something that is not needed: you are too much. Your too-muchness is creating the barrier. If you somehow can be missing, the thing will happen immediately. When you come to me next time, leave yourself back at home. Come alone; don’t bring yourself here. But you go on bringing yourself. If it is too difficult to leave yourself at home, then leave yourself where you leave your shoes.
Nothing is missing. The whole problem of man is not that something is lacking in him, but that something more is there that is not needed. It is not a problem of minus, it is a problem of plus. I am here, available, but you are not there to receive me. It is not that you are empty, but because you are too full, too full of yourself. There is no space for me to enter you. So many thoughts, so many ideas, so many ideologies – somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Jain – so many diseases. This is the plus. And among these diseases is sitting the king of all diseases – the ego, enthroned, crowned. This plus has to be dissolved.
Here you have to be vacant, empty, void, open so the breeze that is blowing here can pass through you without any obstruction. And with the breeze, the dust you have gathered through many lives will be blown out. You will be left clean and pure.
So remember this: whenever you ask such questions, you think you have to do something that you are not doing, that something is missing. No, you are doing something that is not needed to be done. While listening to me you are thinking – that is the plus. While listening to me just be a listening. There is no need to think because I am not propounding a philosophy here. I am simply stating a few facts. Those facts are not hypothetical, those facts are my realizations. I have come to see something that I would like to deliver to you. But if you are listening without thinking, only then is it possible. When I say don’t think, I don’t mean that whatever I say, you have to accept blindly. No, I’m simply saying: just listen; no need to believe in it, no need to disbelieve in it. Don’t bring that problem in right now. Just listen so you can understand what I am saying. Later on you can think about it, and you can decide whether to be with me or not to be with me. That decision is possible only if you have listened rightly.
And how will you decide if you have not been listening to me? This is the beauty of it: if you have listened rightly, a fact has a certain quality in it, so once it enters you, you cannot deny it, you cannot be against it. A fact has a self-evidence about it. It does not need any proof or argument. It has a truth in it. Once you listen, you can feed that truth within you. Just listen to me and then there will be no need to think about it. You will be able to see the truth of it, and truth liberates.
I cannot liberate you, nobody can liberate you; only truth can liberate you. And the truth has to be seen by you. I may be seeing it, I may be telling it to you. In a thousand and one ways, I may be showering it upon you, but that is useless if you are not open, if your pot is upside down, if you are not listening. When I am speaking, if simultaneously you go on thinking of what I am saying, and you go on like commentators in a cricket match and you go on commenting, “Yes, this is right, that is wrong. That I cannot believe. This goes against my philosophy – I am a Christian, what this man is saying is anti-Christian; this is not written in the Bible…” If you go on commenting, while you are commenting you are missing me. Then you may listen to bits and fragments, and out of those bits and fragments you may create something within you that has nothing to do with me.
Listen to me as totally as possible. Listening to me, be completely vacant, empty, so there is no resistance. I can pass through and through you. You become transparent to me. Once the truth seed falls into you, there will be no need to be worried; it sprouts on its own. It brings much fruit on its own. It does not need your help. It simply needs one thing: please don’t hinder it. You are not asked to help it to grow, you are only asked to allow it to fall in the right soil of your heart.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Should one first come to terms with one's own loneliness before entering into a relationship?
Yes, you have to come to terms with your loneliness – so much so the loneliness is transformed into aloneness. Only then will you be capable of moving into a deep enriching relationship, only then will you be able to move into love.
What do I mean when I say that one has to come to terms with one’s loneliness, so much so it becomes aloneness? Loneliness is a negative state of mind. Aloneness is positive, notwithstanding what the dictionaries say. In dictionaries, loneliness and aloneness are synonymous. They are synonyms; in life they are not. Loneliness is a state of mind when you are constantly missing the other; aloneness is the state of mind when you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable, aloneness is blissful. Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring for something. Aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness you are off center, in aloneness you are centered and rooted. Aloneness is beautiful. It has an elegance around it, a grace, a climate of tremendous satisfaction. Loneliness is beggarly. All around it there is begging and nothing else, it has no grace around it. In fact, it is ugly. Loneliness is a dependence; aloneness is sheer independence. One feels as if one is one’s whole world, one’s whole existence.
Now, if you move into a relationship when you are feeling lonely, you will exploit the other. The other will become a means to satisfy you. You will use the other, and everybody resents being used – because no man is here to become a means for anybody else. Every man is an end unto himself. Nobody is here to be used like a thing, everybody is here to be worshipped like a king. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations, everybody is here just to be himself. So whenever you move into any relationship out of loneliness, the relationship is already on the rocks. Even before it has started, it is already on the rocks. Even before the birth, the child is dead. It is going to create more misery for you.
Remember, when you move out of your loneliness you will fall into a relationship with somebody who is in the same plight because no man who is really living his aloneness will be attracted toward you. You will be too below him. He can at the most sympathize, but cannot love you. One who is on his peak of aloneness can only be attracted toward somebody who is also alone. So whenever you move out of loneliness, you will find a man of the same type, you will find your own reflection somewhere. Two beggars will meet, two miserable people will meet. And remember, when two miserable people meet, it is not an ordinary addition; it is a multiplication. They create much more misery for each other than they could have created in their loneliness.
First become alone; first start enjoying yourself, first love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes, it doesn’t matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay – you are not missing. You are not waiting for somebody to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes, good, beautiful. If nobody comes, that too is beautiful and good.
Then move into a relationship. Now you move like a master, not like a beggar. Now you move like an emperor, not like a beggar. The person who has lived in his aloneness will always be attracted to another person who is also living his aloneness beautifully, because the same attracts the same. When two masters meet – masters of their being, of their aloneness – happiness is not just added, it is multiplied. It becomes a tremendous phenomenon of celebration. And they don’t exploit, they share. They don’t use each other. Rather, on the contrary, they both become one and enjoy the existence that surrounds them.
Two lonely people are always facing each other, confronting. Two people who have known aloneness are together, facing something higher than both. I always give this example: two ordinary lovers who are both lonely always face each other; two real lovers, on a full-moon night, will not be facing each other. They may be holding hands, but they will be facing the full moon high in the sky. They will not be facing each other, they will be together facing something else. Sometimes they will be listening to a symphony of Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner together. Sometimes they will be sitting by the side of a tree and enjoying the tremendous being of the tree enveloping them. Sometimes they may be sitting by a waterfall and listening to the wild music that is continuously being created there. Sometimes, by the ocean, they will both be looking to the farthest possibility that the eyes can see.
Whenever two lonely people meet, they look at each other because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other – how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two people who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travelers; they move on a pilgrimage. The goal is high, the goal is far away. Their common interest joins them together.
Ordinarily the common interest is sex. Sex can join two persons momentarily and casually, and very superficially. Real lovers have a greater common interest. It is not that sex will not be there – it may be there, but as part of a higher harmony. Listening to Mozart’s or Beethoven’s symphony, they may come so close, so close, so close that there may be love. They may make love to each other, but it is in the greater harmony of a Beethoven symphony. The symphony was the real thing; the love happens as part of it. And when love happens of its own accord, unsought, unthought – simply happens as part of a higher harmony – it has a totally different quality to it. It is divine, it is no longer human.
The word happiness comes from a Scandinavian word hap. The word happening also comes from the same Scandinavian root. Happiness is that which happens. You cannot produce it, you cannot command it, you cannot force it. At the most, you can be available to it. Whenever it happens, it happens.
Two real lovers are always available – but never thinking, never trying to find happiness. They are never frustrated because whenever it happens, it happens. They create the situation. In fact, if you are happy with yourself, you are already the situation, and if the other is also happy with himself or herself, she is also the situation. When these two situations come close, a greater situation is created. In that greater situation much happens, nothing is produced. Man does not have to do anything to be happy; man just has to flow and let go.
So, the question is, “Should one first come to terms with his own loneliness before entering into a relationship?” Yes, and absolutely yes. It has to be so, otherwise you will be frustrated, and in the name of love you will be doing something else that is not love at all.
The last question:
Osho,
I feel your grace melting me. Love to you my master.
It is from Anup. It is not a question. A real question is never a question, it is a statement. This is a statement of Anup’s state of being at this moment. I can also feel he is melting, but this is just the beginning.
Don’t become too self-conscious about it, otherwise the melting will stop. Allow it so more and more becomes possible. Go on melting, and always remember that more is waiting. Always remember that it is always the beginning, never the end. In fact, there is no end to it. Life is such a mystery: there are only beginnings, no ends.
So, go on melting and always remembering that more is coming. Never become satisfied. A complacent satisfaction can become suicidal. And there come many moments when one feels that more is not possible, one comes to a peak and one feels, “Now, how is more possible?” Whenever this idea that more is not possible arises in your mind, remember me. More is always possible. There never comes a moment when more is not possible. That is the meaning when we say God is infinite: you enter God but you never reach. Let me repeat it again: you enter God but you never reach him. You can drown in him but you cannot say you have known him. It is so vast, so infinitely vast, and man is just a tiny drop.
Go on melting, always remembering that more is on the way.
Enough for today.