Osho on Effort

NO EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO BE BORN.

NO EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO DIE.

NO EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO FALL IN LOVE

WHY IS SUCH EFFORT REQUIRED TO KNOW GOD (THROUGH MEDITATION)

WHEN THIS SEEMS TO BE THE MOST NATURAL THING?

IS GOD TRYING TO TEST US IN SOME WAY?

First thing:

no effort is required in meditation either. Meditation also comes on its own accord. Through effort it never comes. To whom has meditation happened through effort? It will be almost like making an effort to love somebody. How can you make any effort to love somebody? The more effort you make, the more the love will be false, pseudo, just a pretension. Love has to arise naturally. So arises meditation.

But all meditators are not spontaneously in it — and neither are all lovers spontaneously in it. In fact, psychologists say — a tremendous discovery — that if love is not talked about, ninety-nine percent of people will never know anything about it. If love is not talked about, if poets don’t go on praising it, and if traditional literature is not available about love, ninety-nine percent of people will never be aware that anything like love exists. They will know about sex, but not about love. But because of the poets and because of the novelists and because of the films and the TV, love is talked so much about that everybody starts thinking that he is in love. That love is also false.

And the same is the case with meditation. Ninety-nine percent of people start meditating because meditation is talked about. There are times when it becomes fashionable. America is passing through such a phase. Meditation is talked about; everybody is doing meditation. If you are not doing it you must be missing something. You don’t feel any need for it, it has not arisen in your being, you have not come to that point of evolution where meditation happens on its own accord; but everybody is doing it and everybody is going to the Masters and everybody is sitting silently. Somebody is doing Zazen and somebody is doing TM and somebody is doing Dynamic. You must be missing something. So greed arises; out of greed you start making effort. That effort is not for meditation. That effort is to gain something which you think will be gained out of meditation.

These phases come and go. These cults arise and disappear. These are just like fashions. The real meditator has not come to meditate because others are meditating, but a deep need has arisen in him, has become a knocking in his heart, a continuous knocking. The whole world seems to be meaningless; he wants to go in. He wants to know who he is. Not because others have known! If there is nobody propagating meditation and no books are available and all books are destroyed and all Masters go and hide in the caves in the Himalayas, then too there will be a few people who will meditate, who will find out how to meditate on their own accord. Those will be the real meditators. And for them meditation will be just as easy as anything. It will be just like breathing. When such a man comes, then any technique functions for him. I observe it every day. If somebody whose time has come to meditate….

It is just like sexual maturity. A boy of three years has no idea about sex, and even if the boy of three years comes to see a man making love to a woman, he will not understand what is happening. At the most, he will think the man is trying to kill the woman; they are fighting or something. He will not have any idea what is happening. By the age of fourteen, suddenly something explodes in his biology. He is not aware of what it is, but something is happening. He is the same no more. And then follows a time, a period, of very much embarrassment because the boy does not know what exactly is happening. But something is happening, something very much unknown, something which is creating trouble, something which is hovering around; and he does not know what it is and how to tackle it and how to figure it out. It is a natural phenomenon; now sex has become mature; the sex gland is secreting.

If life goes naturally, beautifully, if there are no life negative teachers, if there are no politicians and priests to distract you — then near about the age of forty-two, exactly as sex maturity comes, comes meditation maturity, Near about the age of forty-two, one starts feeling to fall withinwards. Near the age of fourteen, one starts falling towards the other, becomes extrovert. Love is extroversion; relationship is to think of the other. Meditation is introversion; meditation is to think of one’s own self, of one’s own center.

Between the age of fourteen and the age of forty-two there comes a change. By and by one lives life, knows what love is, knows its fulfillment and its frustration, knows its joy and its sadness, knows its beauty and its ugliness, knows that there are moments of great ecstasy and then great valleys of darkness. Then one starts by and by moving towards his own self, because to depend on the other can never be really ecstatic. If your joy depends on the other, that joy can never have the quality of freedom in it. And a joy which does not have the quality of freedom is not much joy. If you are dependent on the other, then there is a limitation.

And the joy that comes through love is momentary. You can meet with the other only for moments, and then again you are separate and you fall apart. Just in the middle of it you fall apart. Just for a moment you become joined together. Then one starts thinking, “Is there a way to become one with existence and never to fall apart again?” That’s what meditation is.

Love is joining with existence through another person for only moments. Meditation is getting joined together with existence eternally. “Yoga” means “to join together”. This has to happen somewhere in the deepest core. And then there is joy and then there is freedom. And then there is bliss and there is no dark valley following it. Then happiness is eternal, then celebration is eternal. But that moment comes. That too comes, remember.

So you say, “No effort is required to be born. No effort is required to die. No effort is required to fall in love.” I would like to tell you, “No effort is required to fall into meditation either.” But if there are hindrances…. For example, in a primitive community, when the child is born there is no effort — neither on the side of the child nor on the side of the mother. But that is not the case in a civilized society; effort is needed, the doctor’s help is needed. Much effort is needed to help the child to be born, and the mother feels so much pain. And you don’t know how much pain the child feels. If you want to know you can ask the Primal therapists how much trauma he passes through. That small tube, the small passage, from the mother’s womb to the world is very painful. And the child wants to get out of it, and he thrusts hard to get out of it. And the mother feels pain because the passage is small and the child is big. And she wants to hold back, unconsciously. She cannot hold back — in the nature of things the child has to come out — but there is a struggle. The mother-and-the-child conflict has started. The child wants to get out and the mother is afraid and she is holding, she is controlling. This is true about the civilized person, not true about the uncivilized. The uncivilized mother simply goes with it. And the uncivilized person has no need for Primal therapy, because he never passes through any trauma; the mother is helpful. The child simply floats and comes out…

You say no effort is required to be born…? Not for the civilized. The civilized person needs much effort to be born. Maybe the mother has been given tranquilizers, sedatives, she has been put into unconsciousness so she does not pass through great pain, or even the birth may be a Caesarian, the mother may have to be operated on. The doctor is needed, the nurse is needed, the midwife is needed. Why? To undo the wrong that the society has done. You say no effort is required to die? You are wrong again. You can go and look in the American hospitals. Many old people are ready to die, and they want to die; they are not allowed to die. The question of euthanasia has become one of the most important questions for the future because medical science has really evolved and it can help a person to live for two hundred years or even more. He may not have much of a life, but he can hang on; he can hang on in a hospital. He will not be able to move or to talk or to love, but he can be just there vegetating. It will be tremendous misery and hell.

Now, if he wants to die, no society allows him to die. They say, “It is illegal; you cannot commit suicide.” A person who has become one hundred thirty or one hundred forty years of age wants to die because his existence is simply torture. The society seems to be very sadistic… they say, “You are not allowed to die; you will have to live.” And the doctors will continue to help you to live because they have much compassion for you. Because of the compassion, you will have to live. Now, his wife is dead, his children are dead, his relations are dead, his friends are gone, and he is hanging on, for no purpose. He does not know what is going to happen tomorrow. Just hanging on and hanging on and hanging on…. Can you think of the misery that he will feel…? Then there will be the need to commit suicide. He will have to find ways and means. Maybe he will have to bribe the doctor to cut the connection from the oxygen tank, or not to give him any more medicines. He may have to bribe someone; effort will be needed.

Natural death is natural, but man is not natural anymore! So nothing is natural — not even death. If you die naturally, that will be a totally different thing. But you don’t live naturally; how can you die naturally? Death has to be the culmination of whatsoever you have done in your life. If you have lived unnaturally, you will die unnaturally. A natural death is possible only if the life has been natural.

So the questioner says, “No effort is required to die.” You are true. In a very primitive society no effort is required, but because of the compassion of the missionaries, primitives have disappeared. They have all become educated people now. Now effort is needed to die. Why do so many people commit suicide? And the suicide rate goes on growing every year. Why? Isn’t natural death enough…? Suicide means death with effort. And the suicide rate will go higher and higher if the governments are too adamant to relax and they don’t allow people to die and they force them into nursing homes and into hospitals and force them to live against their wishes. Then more and more suicides will be there. Man has disturbed all that is natural. And you say no effort is required to fall in love? That too is not true. That too is not true. Looking at the TV continuously, looking at and watching films, reading poetry and novels, they all help you to fall in love. They give you the ideas; they nourish your so-called love. It is not natural.

The natural has disappeared. All that is nature has disappeared; everything is false and plastic. Hence meditation also has to be false and plastic. But real meditation never happens through effort.

Then what does one have to do? You have to do some effort in the beginning; otherwise you will never come close to any meditation technique, close to any meditation school. You will have to go through effort because you have become unnatural beings.

Making effort will help you to understand what meditation is. It will not lead you into meditation; it will simply help you to understand what meditation is. It will help you to understand whether you can fall into that space called meditation easily or not. If you feel that it comes very easily to you, that you can fall in that space and you can reach that space, effort will disappear by itself. There will be no need. You can simply sit with closed eyes and it is there. It is so natural. But only once it happens, then it is very natural. And unless it has happened you will not be able to know whether you are a natural meditator or not; so effort will be needed.

Man has been made so artificial that everything will have to be made through effort. But by making effort you will come to feel and see whether you can easily float into it or not. And you ask, “Why is such effort required to know God when this seems to be the most natural thing?” If it is the most natural thing, then it must have happened to the questioner. It has not happened otherwise you would not be here. What is a God-realized man doing here…? There is no point. Your seeking has stopped if you have known. Yes, once you know, it is very simple and easy, but until you know it, effort will be needed. And

remember, effort is not needed for meditation. Effort is needed to undo what the society has done to you. A dehypnosis is needed. The society has hypnotized you. The society has conditioned you; an unconditioning is needed. The society has made you dirty; a cleansing is needed. A good shower — that’s what your effort is. Once you have started feeling that meditation is your innermost quality, you can go into it anytime. It is so easy, as breathing. Then all effort disappears.

And you ask, “Is God trying to test us in some way?” No. There is no God in the first place to test you. And even if there is a God, he is not in any way interested in testing and examining you. What is the point? And he is not a sadist to torture you. Teachers are sadists; examiners are sadists. You can ask the psychologists. They say people who want to torture others, they become teachers, some tendency to torture. And you cannot find more beautiful opportunities than small children. Torture them, test them, examine them — and for their own good! And nobody can prevent you, because you are doing it for their own good. God is not in any way interested in testing you. The problem is not arising because of God. The problem is arising because of your society, your politics, your priesthood. They have made you in such a way that you cannot meditate. They have made such simple things impossible.

It is just like in the ancient days in China they used to put small shoes, iron shoes, on women’s feet because that was the sign — a smaller foot was the sign that the woman comes from a royal family. If the woman cannot walk rightly, she is royal! So no rich women were able to walk; they had small feet. And if you encase the feet in iron shoes, what are you doing? Great pain was suffered just to have small feet. Those feet cannot be beautiful. Those feet are ugly because the growth has not happened. How can something retarded be beautiful? But that was thought of for thousands of years as beautiful, and women suffered it — and they enjoyed it, that they had small feet. Now that has disappeared. Now, if a royal woman, a rich woman in ancient China was to learn running, jogging, it would have been very difficult. Much effort would have been needed because she did not have the feet for it. Not that God is testing her — just because the society is foolish and the society has conditioned her feet in such a way that she cannot run.

And the same is true about a thousand and one things.

Your society conditions you in a certain way; then you cannot do certain things. When you want to do them, much effort is needed to undo what the society has done. The society has taught you to think, and to think continuously, and to think skillfully and cleverly. It has not allowed you to know that there are spaces of no-thought, because the society is afraid. Those spaces of no-thought are very dangerous. Those spaces of no-thought are very crazy. Those spaces of no-thought will give you great joy, but will make you so rebellious. Those great spaces will make you very, very happy, but a happy person becomes free. He cannot be easily forced to do foolish things.

You cannot send him to the army. He will say, “Nonsense. I am so happy, why should I go and kill others and be killed?” You cannot send him to the military; he will simply say no. You cannot force him to do foolish things for his whole life like a machine, He will say, “Why? I will do things that I like and that I love.” An ecstatic person is a rebellion in the world. You cannot tell him to just be a clerk in an office and go on filing things, putting files upon files his whole life. He will say, “I will go and become a farmer because I love trees. If I am not going to be rich, it is okay. My richness will be of the inner.” “I am going to become a fisherman. I will be on the open sea. I don’t want to become a clerk.” But then things will be difficult for the society. Society needs clerks, society needs soldiers. Society needs very repressed people whose energies are boiling inside and have no way to go anywhere — so that they can be put into any work. Society arranges things in such a way that you can become slaves.

The society is not here to make you free people, because with freedom politics will disappear, states will disappear. In a free world there will be no nation and there will be no need for nations and there will be no need for armies. Millions of people just wasting their life — doing parade. Left turn! Right turn! Turn about! Millions of people — doing it very happily and thinking they are doing great things, great service to humanity. Who would like it? Free people would like to become singers or dancers. Good if you dance. But “turn about,” “left turn,” “right turn”? Have you ever seen any bird doing right turn, left turn? Have you seen any animal? They dance, yes, they dance, but dance is a totally different thing. People will dance and people will sing and people will go into the forest and chop wood, and they will go to the sea and fish and they will go to the mountains, they will do farming, gardening, they will be carpenters, weavers, spinners. But people will do something that they like to do.

Right now you are doing something that the government wants you to do. And subtle is the trick. The university, the school, the college — subtle is the trick to force you into something which you never wanted to do. Then of course if you remain miserable it is just understandable. How can you be happy?

It is very rare that you come across a celebrating being because it is very difficult to escape from the prisons the society has created around you. In a natural world things will be just the reverse. It will be very difficult to find a miserable man. Why? There seems to be no need to be miserable. Buddhas will be just common. Rarely will you find a man who is not a Buddha, if things go naturally. But things are not natural. That’s why you even have to learn how to meditate, and you have to learn how to love, and you have to learn how to be happy, and you have to learn how to know God.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.

Discourse Series: The First Principle

Chapter #4

Chapter title:Go with the River

14 April 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘meditation, love, natural, spontaneous, maturity, freedom, joy, celebration, ecstasy’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

The Book of Wisdom
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
From Bondage to Freedom
From Death to Deathlessness
The Last Testament
Philosophia Perennis
Sermons in Stones
Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
The Tantra Vision
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
Tao: The Pathless Path
Zen: The Path of Paradox
Beyond Psychology
The Razor’s Edge
Tantra: The Supreme Understanding