RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS
The Goose is Out 04
Fourth Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - The Goose is Out by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Why do Indians think of sex in terms of need instead of fun? They also think at the same time that they have transcended sex, but in reality it has only been suppressed. Is there any similarity between suppression and transcendence which can mislead people, as you sometimes say that there is some similarity between a buddha and a madman?
Indian culture is the most rotten culture that has evolved in the world, the rottenest – rotten to the very core. It is so rotten that it has forgotten how to die. To die one needs to be a little bit alive, and unless you know how to die you simply vegetate, you stagnate.
Death is a process of revival. Just as each individual has to die to be born again, each culture has to die to be born again. Each society, each civilization has to pass through life to death, from death to life again.
Indian culture is the only culture which has not died for thousands of years. There have been many cultures in the world: the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian. They all flowered, blossomed: they contributed their beauty to the world – their sculpture, their music, their poetry, their drama – and then they disappeared without leaving a trace behind. This is how it should be.
If all the old people in your family were alive – your father and your father’s father and his father’s father to the very end, to Adam and Eve and God the Father – then one thing is certain: you would be crushed. So many old people, all corpses, are enough to crush a small child who is delicate like a rose.
One of the greatest things that Friedrich Nietzsche did was to declare: God is dead and man is free.
God as father has to be dead, otherwise his weight will be too much, it will be too mountainous. It won’t allow the freshness of humanity. It won’t allow exploration, it won’t allow adventure. The old man will be too cautious, too cunning, too calculating, too Jewish. His whole experience of the past will be enough to destroy the child. The child needs exploration; and, of course, when you explore you commit many mistakes – that is part of growth. One should be allowed to commit mistakes. One should certainly be intelligent enough not to commit the same mistakes again and again; one should be creative enough to invent new mistakes. That’s the way one expands, grows. That’s the way consciousness becomes integrated.
Life is a trial-and-error process. The old man drops all mistakes, errors. He becomes so accustomed to doing the right thing that exploration, adventure, disappear from his life. And because of his own fears he won’t allow the new generations to go in new directions, in new dimensions. He will make them afraid; he will paralyze them, he will cripple them. That’s what has been happening in India.
India is a strange case. It is extraordinary in a way: this has never happened anywhere else. All the countries, all the cultures, civilizations, have lived, died and were resurrected again; India has remained the same. It is more like a plastic flower than like a real rose. It is more concerned with stability than with aliveness. Its whole concern is how to go on and on forever.
But that is not the real thing. How to live each moment totally is the question. It is not a question of endurance; the question is one of depth. Only those who live in depth know what life is all about. Those who live in endurance live horizontally, superficially. Their life is a mask; there is no authenticity in it. Hence, I say Indian culture is neither alive nor dead but living in a kind of suspension, in a kind of limbo. It is a ghost culture: all that is significant, all that makes life a joy, has been dropped because it is dangerous, and all that is stable, permanent, plastic, has been gathered together because it is safer.
Remember, this is the way of an old man. The old man always thinks of safety, security, his bank balance; he always thinks in terms of fear, because death is always standing in front of him.
The child never bothers about death; his concern is life. He is interested in going into the uncharted, into the unknown; he is ready to take risks. Those who are ready to risk, they are the only truly alive ones. They may not live long, but that is not the point at all. To live for a single moment with authenticity, totality, integrity is more than enough. A single moment of total experience is far greater than the whole of eternity. It contains the whole of eternity, it contains timelessness. But one can go on vegetating for thousands of years like a cabbage, a cauliflower – very holy looking, very saintly.
Cabbages are not sinners, and cauliflowers are great scholars. A cabbage becomes a cauliflower through college education. Cauliflowers are pundits, theologians, religious people. This country is full of these people, and the burden of them is great. Somebody needs to help this country to die so that it can live again. Crucifixion is a basic condition for resurrection. The art of living is preceded by the art of dying.
This country is stinking, it has nothing else to brag about, so it brags about the past. It brags about its phoniness, it brags about its holiness, it brags about its spirituality – which is all nonsense because the basic foundation is missing. We talk about the temple – the temple is possible, but first you have to put the basic foundation together.
Life is a hierarchy of needs. First the physical has to be taken care of; material existence has to be taken care of. Science fulfills a basic need. If you miss science you will miss religion. Between science and religion is the world of art. These are the three basic dimensions of life. Science has to take care of the material, the physiological, the biological – the external needs of man. Religion has to take care of the innermost – interiority, subjectivity. Between the two is the world of aesthetics: art, poetry, music, dance, drama, literature.
A man who is hungry cannot think of poetry. A man who is hungry cannot conceive of meditation. It is impossible! This long, long traditional ego tries to hide its poverty. The so-called Indian spiritualism, the so-called desire of the Indian culture to guide the whole world toward spirituality is just stupid. It is sheer nonsense, it is rubbish. But that is their only face-saving device – they can save face only behind that screen. They know their bodies are hungry, they know that things which are absolutely necessary to them are not available. They are starving; they are ill, sick in every way. Eighty percent of the country is living as beggars. Few are well nourished: almost everybody is undernourished. When a person is undernourished it is not only the body that suffers, remember; undernourishment in a very subtle way destroys the capacity of your mind.
Mind needs its own nourishment, and unless the body is adequately nourished the mind cannot be nourished. First the body’s needs have to be fulfilled. When there is something more after the body’s fulfillment, then nourishment goes to the brain cells. The mind is a luxury that does not exist in animals; it is a human prerogative. It came into existence only because man could manage his bodily needs so totally that there was energy left, and that overflowing energy became his brain, became his mind, became his psychology.
When psychological needs are fulfilled, totally fulfilled, and again there is more energy available, that energy transforms into spirituality, into meditation, into buddhahood.
India is in a sad state, and the saddest thing is that Indians try to hide it rather than expose it. They are angry at me because I am exposing the truth as it is. They are angry at me because I am not trying to cover it up. They would like me, they would respect me, they would call me a great mahatma, an incarnation of God and all kinds of rubbish, under the condition that I go on covering their wounds.
I cannot cover anybody’s wounds. I can heal them, but the healing process is a totally different process. First you have to expose your wounds to the sun, to the air. You have to expose them. It hurts! Wounds which have been kept secret for thousands of years, suddenly exposed… You cannot believe it. You have always believed that you are great spiritualists, but I see the whole phoniness of it; I see the hypocrisy of it. The greatest hypocrisy that happens happens through two denials: food and sex. These are basic needs, and they are two sides of the same coin. They are not very different.
Food is needed for the existence of the individual. An individual can exist without sex. It will not be much of a joy, but he can survive. Without food the individual cannot exist; he will shrink and die. At the most, if he is perfectly healthy, he can exist without food for three months – ninety days – but that too only if he is perfectly healthy, and if he has too much extra food accumulated in his body in the form of fat and other things. Then he can survive for three months.
That survival, remember, has nothing to do with religion; that is sheer cannibalism – one is eating oneself. When you fast you are eating your own meat, hence I am against fasting; that is the worst kind of meat-eating. You can fast and every day you will lose weight. Where is that weight disappearing to? You are digesting it. Within three months you will die.
The individual can exist for a little while without food, he can exist without sex – he can survive – but the human race, the species, cannot exist without sex. That is food for the species. Sex is food for the species. Without sex humankind will disappear. And the people who have been teaching celibacy are murderous. The people who have been teaching celibacy to humanity are basically cutting the very roots of humanity. If they were to be followed literally there would be no humanity left.
There would have been no Mahavira, no Buddha, no Krishna; there would have been no Mohammed, no Kabir, no Nanak, if their parents had followed the idea of celibacy. It is good, it is fortunate that Buddha’s father did not follow the stupid idea of celibacy, otherwise the world would have missed one of the greatest flowerings.
If celibacy is perpetuated, then humanity will disappear. It is a very egoistic idea, egoistic in the sense that you only care about yourself. Indians go on talking about spirituality, selflessness, and at the same time, with the same face, they go on talking about celibacy. Celibacy is selfishness, absolute selfishness. Your parents and their parents and their parents have all joined together to give birth to you. Now, trying to be celibate, forcing celibacy, simply means you are closing the doors to future humanity. And you call it selflessness? You call it spirituality?
This is pure egoism – as if you were the center of the whole existence, as if the whole existence existed only for you: because you have been produced, now there is no need for anything; the whole can disappear.
Although the teaching continues, nobody follows it. Unnatural teachings cannot be followed. That is one good thing about them. Only a few fools, maniacs, obsessed people may try to follow them, but any man of intelligence will not follow such ideas.
Such ideas create two kinds of difficulties. One: those who are cunning, they become hypocrites. And those who are innocent, they become guilty. That’s what has happened in India, and the same has happened on a wider scale all over the world. The disease is contagious. It must have started in India; its origin seems to be Indian. That is the only contribution that India has made to the world – a contagious disease which creates hypocrites and guilty people. Both are ugly specimens. The world needs neither the hypocrites nor the guilty.
The hypocrites become priests, monks, mahatmas, sages, saints, and the guilty become the followers. This is the game that is going on.
You ask me: “Why do Indians think of sex in terms of need…?” Because their needs are not fulfilled. They are in all kinds of need – to them sex is also a need. A needy person has an eye which projects his needs everywhere. You see only that which you can see, you hear only that which you can hear: you are continuously choosing according to your need. To a hungry person a beautiful woman simply looks like a delicious dish. The very idea shows where the man stands.
There are expressions in all the languages of the world for love. People have started using words like eating – ”I would like to eat you” the lover says to the woman. What kind of love is this? Lovers bite each other, lovers chew each other – as if they are chewing gum. Lovers leave tooth marks on each other. What kind of poetry is this? They scratch each other with their nails… Is this love or is something else masquerading behind it?
Love should be deep caring. One should not think in terms of food, of eating, biting – these are ugly expressions.
India lives with all kinds of needs. Hence, sex also becomes only a need, at the most, a release, a tranquilizer – the same kind of release that you feel when you have a good sneeze: some burden, some tension is gone. But there is no fulfillment in it, there is no rejoicing in it.
Indians make love as if they are thieves, as if they are doing something wrong. They make love as if they are going against God, as if they are committing some sin.
Of course they have to make love because that is a need. It can only be a need when their other needs are fulfilled. When all the needs are fulfilled, love starts having a totally different dimension to it – the dimension of fun, the dimension of dance and music. Then you are not using it as a relaxation, as a tranquilizer, as a sneeze – you start sharing. Love becomes more prominent; sex becomes secondary. When it is a need love is just a word: sex is the only thing, the reproductive activity is the only thing.
You know it – it is a well-known fact scientifically observed all over the world – that poor people produce more children. Why? They don’t have any other ways of entertaining themselves. They don’t have the idiot box, the TV, they cannot sit glued in their chair for six hours. They don’t have a chair, in fact! They don’t have the money to go to a hotel to participate in some celebration, to go to a movie, to drink alcohol, to dance, sing… All possibilities are closed. The tiredness of the day, the routine of work, the continuity of the same rut… The only possibility, a free amusement available to them, is sex. That becomes their last act in the day. So before going to sleep they religiously devote one, two minutes to it, and then they fall asleep like a log.
The newly-married couple were entertaining a bachelor in the den of their suburban home when the conversation turned to sexual morality.
“Since you claim to be so liberal,” the Indian bachelor challenged the husband, “would you let me kiss your wife’s breasts for a thousand dollars?”
Not wishing to seem prudish, and needing the extra money, the couple agreed, and the wife removed her blouse and bra. Then pressing his face between her breasts the chap nestled there for several minutes, until the husband grew impatient to complete the deal. “Go ahead and kiss them,” he urged the bachelor.
“I would love to,” the fellow sighed, “but I really can’t afford it.”
The question is whether you can afford anything else… Hence, to the Indian mind, sex remains an animal act. It never rises to the realms of poetic beauty, it never becomes love. So whenever you talk to the Indian about love, he immediately thinks you are talking about sex. Love is immediately, automatically translated as sex. It is impossible to talk to the Indian about love. This is my experience of talking to millions of Indians all over the country. Talk about love, and by the time the word reaches them it is no longer love, it becomes sex.
They know only sex. Love has no other connotation for them. It is such a misunderstanding, one feels almost helpless. Talking to Indians is really troublesome.
You can talk about God, you can talk about the soul, you can talk about moksha, nirvana; you can talk about the Vedas, and there will be no misunderstanding, because they are like parrots – for thousands of years they have been repeating those words. Not that they will understand you, but at least they will understand the words. When you say “God” they know its meaning. They don’t know the experience, but at least the meaning is known. But when you talk about love, even the meaning is not known. The experience of it is far, far away.
She had just finished her shower when the doorbell rang. Tiptoeing to the front door, shivering in plump, pink nudity, she called, “Who is it?”
“The blind man,” came a mournful voice.
So she shrugged and opened the door with one hand while reaching for her purse with the other. When she turned to face the man he was grinning from ear to ear. And she saw that he was holding a large package in his arms.
“You can see!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he nodded happily, “and mighty pretty too. Now, where do you want I should put these blinds?”
The romantic young man sat on the park bench with a first date. He was certain his charming words and manner would win her as they had so many others.
“Some moon out tonight,” he cooed.
“There certainly is,” she agreed.
“Some really bright stars in the sky.”
She nodded.
“Some dew on the grass.”
“Some do!” she said indignantly. “But I am not that sort!”
It is really difficult to talk with Indians about love: they have never lived the experience. All that they know is the sexual mechanism, and all that they know is sexual animalness; that is their experience. They cannot understand sex as fun – because sex cannot be fun, only love can be fun.
Love is fun: it is a play, it is playfulness. And at the ultimate peak of love, the same playfulness becomes prayerfulness.
These are the three stages: need, playfulness, prayerfulness. Unless you have experienced love at its ultimate, utmost peak as prayer, you have not really lived your life; you have missed the point.
You say: “Why do Indians think of sex in terms of need instead of fun?” They don’t know anything about fun, about playfulness. They are serious people – very holy, very spiritual. They are walking corpses. You cannot expect playfulness from them; you can expect only long faces.
You cannot live with saints for long. Even to be with a saint for twenty-four hours is a punishment; it is not a reward because within twenty-four hours he will make you so bitter toward life, he will make you so sad, he will make you so sour, he will make you feel guilty, condemned… That is his only joy. Religious people only enjoy one thing: making everybody sad, taking away people’s laughter.
They condemn me because I am teaching people laughter. I am teaching people love; I am teaching people how to rejoice in the moment, in the very ordinariness of life. There is no other kind of life anywhere; there is no other world; this is the only world! And we have to live this world. We are not to sacrifice this world for some other world.
I am not teaching sacrifice, I am not teaching asceticism, I am not teaching fasting, I am not teaching celibacy. I am teaching the celebration of life. That’s what they have been missing for thousands of years.
They cannot understand sex as fun; it is a misery. If they cannot understand it as fun, they cannot understand it as prayer; that is impossible.
You say: “They also think at the same time that they have transcended sex, but in reality it has only been suppressed.” Transcendence of sex is possible only when sex reaches to the flowering of prayerfulness. Before that, sex cannot be transcended. You can only jump beyond sex from that borderline. Then it is not celibacy, it is simply the disappearance of the ego into the whole. It is not really transcendence of sex but becoming part of the whole orgasmic universe. It is reaching to the ultimate of union with the whole.
What are you doing when you are making love to a woman? You are trying to have a certain union with the opposite pole. For a moment the union happens – rarely, because so many conditions have to be fulfilled. Unless all conditions are fulfilled you may simply go through the gestures of making love. Only once in a while are a man and woman really in tune – at-one-ment, attunement – and then for a moment, the orgasmic joy.
What is orgasmic joy? The disappearance of the ego for a moment. But even for a moment it is tremendously significant, precious, far more precious than any Kohinoor. The same thing happens on a deeper level in prayer. With prayer you are not trying to meet with the other person, but you are trying to meet with the universe. The other person has become just a window. You are no longer attached to the window frame. You are going through the window into the world of the stars, clouds, birds. You are moving beyond. Love teaches you how to go beyond the window and to search for the stars. Once you have taken flight, the window is left far behind. Once you leave the window, a miracle happens. Because your ego was framed by the window: once you leave the window behind, your ego is also left behind. The ego needs the other: when the other is no longer there, the ego is also no longer there.
Psychologists say the ego comes later on. First, you start feeling the presence of the other. The child first feels the presence of mother, father, brothers, sisters, walls, paintings, whatsoever surrounds him. Slowly, slowly he becomes aware of the fact: “I am separate from all these. Sometimes Mother is there and sometimes she is not there, but I am always here.” First enters the experience of the other, and then the ego arises.
In the same way in prayer – the reverse order – first there is the disappearance of the other and then the ego dissolves. Once you have left the frame, the small frame of the lover and the beloved, and you have taken yourself into the beyond, the dissolution happens. Buddha calls it nirvana. The word is beautiful: nirvana simply means cessation of the flame. Just as you extinguish a lamp and suddenly the flame disappears into the whole, so it is in the ultimate state of love. Then one knows transcendence. Transcendence of the ego becomes the transcendence of sex.
Remember, it is not against sex. In fact, you have moved your momentary experience of sex into cosmic sex; you have become one with the orgasm of existence itself. Now it will be there each moment, you cannot lose it. Now the goose is really out! You cannot enter the bottle again.
Transcendence of sex is a totally different phenomenon from the suppression of it. But suppression can give you the feeling that you have transcended.
The old maid rushed up to the policeman. “I have been raped! I have been attacked,” she cried. “He ripped off my clothing; he smothered me with burning kisses. Then he made mad, passionate love to me!”
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, madam,” said the officer. “Just when did all this take place?”
“Twenty-three years ago this September,” said the woman.
“Twenty-three years ago?” he exclaimed. “How do you expect me to arrest anyone for something he did twenty-three years ago?”
“Oh, I don’t want you to arrest anyone, officer,” said the woman. “I just like to talk about it, that’s all.”
You will be surprised that all your so-called saints continuously talk against sex. Why? If they have transcended it, why this obsession with sex? In Indian scriptures you will find such obscene descriptions of women that you will be surprised. Your Playboys and magazines like that are nothing by comparison. You can go and see the temples at Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, and you will see that your so-called obscene literature is just the beginning. Khajuraho has the most obscene sculpture that has ever existed anywhere in the world. It took hundreds of years to do because it is stone sculpture; it is not just a photograph of a nude model in a Playboy magazine. Thousands of sculptors for hundreds of years must have worked on it; and not one temple, hundreds of temples. Why are these sculptures on the temples? What have temples got to do with it?
They have much to do with it. Saints need it, religious people need it. These are their fantasies. These are what they are seeing inside themselves; they want them to be projected. In Indian scriptures you will be surprised to note that Indian gods are the worst rapists in the world. They are not contented with heavenly beauties; they continue to descend to the earth and seduce and rape earthly women. They become tired of the heavenly beauties for the simple reason that heavenly beauties are a little stale, stale in the sense that they never grow old, they always remain the same. They don’t perspire; hence they don’t need a shower. Their bodies are not ordinary: they are made of gold and silver. Now what can you do with a woman with a body of gold and silver, eyes of emeralds and diamonds? Sooner or later you will get tired. It is a toy, a doll, it is not a woman. She never nags you; she never throws pillows at you. No drama, no life!
They descend to earth. All the Indian devas – the Indian gods – are very sexual, obsessively sexual. The saints who have been writing these scriptures describe women in such beautiful words. That shows their minds. But they are pretending at the same time that they are condemning sex, they are telling you these things so that you can remain aware of them.
The elderly spinster hired a young lawyer to prepare her will. “I have ten thousand dollars set aside,” she explained, “and I want to spend it on myself. Nobody in this town has ever paid any attention to me, but they will sit up and take notice when I die.”
Warming to the subject she cackled, “I want to spend all of eight thousand dollars on the biggest, fanciest funeral this town has ever seen.”
“Well,” said the lawyer, “that’s a lot to pay for burying someone in these parts. But it is your money, madam, and you are entitled to spend it any way you like. Now, what about the other two thousand?”
“I’ll take care of that,” the old woman replied with a broad smile. “I’ve never been to bed with a man and I aim to try that at least once before I’m through. As you can see I’m not much to look at, but I figure for two thousand dollars I can get me a man that is young enough and handsome enough to please me.”
That night the lawyer reported the conversation to his wife. As they discussed the situation, the wife casually mentioned how nice it would be to have the two thousand dollars. Minutes later they were on their way to the spinster’s house, the wife driving. As the lawyer stepped from the car he instructed his wife, “Pick me up in two hours.”
Returning at the prescribed hour, the wife tooted the horn. No response from the house. She then blew a prolonged blast. An upstairs window was raised and the lawyer thrust out his head. “Come back in four days,” he shouted. “She’s decided to let the municipal committee bury her.”
These are the people, real people. Don’t be deceived by their faces. Look deep inside them, and you will find tremendous madness. Suppression brings madness; transcendence brings buddhahood.
Yes, I have said there is some similarity between a buddha and a madman. The similarity is that a buddha goes beyond the mind, and the madman falls below the mind. The same similarity exists between transcendence of sex and suppression of sex. Transcendence is going beyond sex – and to go beyond one has to go through; sex has to be used as a ladder – and suppression is falling below sex.
Suppression creates neurosis. Transcendence brings flowering, flowering of all that is best in you, flowering of all that is your real being. It is the release of your hidden splendor.
The second question:
Osho,
You said recently that you loved Wilhelm Reich. I have studied and written about him for years. While your ideas – sex equals energy, living in the now, and God is life – agree with his, you go far beyond him. In what way was he limited?
Edward Mann, I have read your book on Wilhelm Reich. I also remember you quoted me in that book.
Wilhelm Reich and my ideas have a certain superficial similarity, but remember it is superficial. Wilhelm Reich is a thinker, not a meditator, and sometimes thinkers groping in the dark can find a few things, they can stumble upon a few things. But to have eyes is a totally different phenomenon.
Yes, once in a while you can find the door by groping in the darkness – even a blind man can find it – but to have eyes, and to have light, and to go directly to the door without groping is a totally different phenomenon.
Wilhelm Reich is certainly appreciated by me, appreciated for the fact that he is not a meditator, and yet he has stumbled upon something which only meditators can come across. That is also his limitation: he is only a thinker. What he preaches he cannot practice. In fact he does just the opposite of it. His blindness can be seen in his life, not in his words.
Wilhelm Reich’s wife wrote about him that he was a very jealous man. Now that is impossible. If a man has transcended sex, then jealousy is impossible. He continuously talked about getting rid of possessiveness, jealousy, but about his wife he was very suspicious. Finally they had to separate, and the cause of separation was Wilhelm Reich, himself. He meddled with all kinds of women continuously. He had many love affairs in the name of freedom, in the name of love, in the name of nonpossessiveness, in the name of friendship and sharing. But he wouldn’t allow the same for his wife.
Even when he would leave his town, he told his friends to keep an eye on his wife. Wilhelm Reich’s wife was herself a psychoanalyst. It was impossible for her to understand. But I can see why it happened – he was only a thinker.
Thinkers are, in a way, cunning. For themselves they find all kinds of excuses, but for others there is a totally different standard. That’s where he was limited. Because he was not a meditator he could not transform his sexual energy into playfulness, prayerfulness, and ultimately into an orgasmic existence.
That’s why he went mad. It is dangerous to play with fire. If you don’t understand its nature it is better to leave it alone. Sex is fire because it is life: to play with it without understanding the whole process of its transformation is certainly dangerous. And that danger was what happened to him.
He was on the right path, but he was blind. He needed grounding in meditation. He would have become a buddha, but he became just a madman.
You say, “While your ideas – sex equals energy…” These are not my ideas, these are my experiences. A clear-cut distinction has to be understood. For Wilhelm Reich these are ideas. A blind man can have ideas about light, but that will not help him. A deaf man can have ideas about music, but that will not make him understand music, experience music. I don’t have any ideas, these are my experiences. Whatsoever I am saying to you I am not saying it as a philosopher.
I am not a thinker at all; to me thinking is a very low-quality activity. What I am saying is my experiencing. So these are not my ideas on sex; these are actual experiences. I am not trying to indoctrinate you; I am simply inviting you to experience what I have experienced. So I don’t ask you to believe in me.
Wilhelm Reich was a fanatic. He wanted his followers to believe in him, to believe in him absolutely. He was very dictatorial. He would not allow any doubt in anybody’s mind, and he was constantly living in fear –fear of persecution, as if he were being persecuted continuously, as if somebody were after him. These are the signs of a fanatic mind.
He had the possibility of growing, but he needed the right soil. That was missing. Had he been one of my sannyasins, there would have been a totally different kind of man born out of him.
He lived in the bottle. The goose could not come out. He became too attached to the bottle – his ideology, his philosophy. And this constant fear of persecution, suspicion, drove him mad.
You say: “Your ideas – sex, living in the now, and God is life – agree with his…” They only appear to agree. Living in the now, how can you feel persecuted? Persecution is always going to be tomorrow. Right at this moment how can you feel persecuted? It can happen only in the next moment.
His whole life he was talking about living in the now, but it was only talk, mere talk; he never lived in the now. He was thinking of himself in the old foolish pattern, as being a prophet.
This stupid Judaic idea of being a prophet has tortured many people in the West. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews – all the three religions which were born outside India, have revolved around the idea of the prophet. Sigmund Freud had the same attitude, and Wilhelm Reich was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. Then Carl Gustav Jung had the same idea; he was also a follower of Sigmund Freud. Then Adler had the same idea; he was also a follower of Sigmund Freud. All by-products of the Jewish mind: they were all thinking in terms of the salvation of the whole of humanity depending on them.
That is living somewhere else, not in the now.
Just the other day, Sheela brought a report from a Christian theologian, a big report against me. He must have come with preconceived ideas, and got very confused. He could not manage with his preconceived ideas and he could not let go of them either. So he is wishy-washy: one thing he says against me, one thing he says for me. He has got into such a mess. But I liked one thing that he said – although he thought he was making a very significant criticism.
He said: “The moment Osho dies, his whole movement will disappear like a soap bubble.” I loved it! That’s how it should be! Why should it continue? What for? There is no reason. I live now; I am not interested in the future at all. What does it matter whether my movement disappears like a soap bubble or not? I love soap bubbles! They look beautiful in the sun. And they should disappear so that a few other people can make other soap bubbles. I have no monopoly over them. In fact, the world would have been better if the soap bubble that was created by Jesus had disappeared with him. Then these Polack Popes would not be here. Now they are making much fuss about a bubble which is not there. The soap bubble that Buddha created, had it disappeared, would have been a great blessing to humanity, because all these Buddhist monks and theologians, and all kinds of stupid people…we would have been saved from them!
Just the other day I was reading a Buddhist scripture. Buddhist scriptures say that there are thirty-three thousand rules for each Buddhist monk to follow. Thirty-three thousand rules! Even to remember them you will need a computer. What kind of rules? I will tell you just one rule. When a Buddhist monk goes to the toilet he should remove the lid of the toilet very slowly; no noise should be made. Why? Because there are always hungry ghosts who eat shit. If they eat your shit, you are responsible; then you will suffer in your future lives. Great people! Great religious rules!
This idea is of prophets who are trying to solve everybody’s misery, who come for the salvation of humanity. There is no established fact that Jesus came, and yet Christians still go on bragging that he came for the salvation of humanity. But the salvation of humanity has not happened yet. Two thousand years have passed. He proved a very impotent prophet. What kind of salvation has happened? Jainas say that Mahavira came to uplift humanity. Humanity is where it is. Buddha came to deliver everybody…
I want to put a full stop to all this nonsense. I am not here to deliver anybody. Why should I deliver you? Your parents have already done that! I have no responsibility. I am not responsible to anybody – to any humanity, to any future. I am enjoying my moment, and those who want to enjoy this moment, this beautiful soap bubble in the sun, they can enjoy with me.
He thinks – the Christian theologian who came from Germany just to study what is happening here – that of course it looks beautiful now, but as Osho dies it will disappear.
It should disappear. I will make every arrangement for it to disappear. It should not remain even for a single moment, because that will be a dead thing.
Wilhelm Reich lived with this prophetic mission. All prophets are in a way mad, a little neurotic. Even good people, even people like Jesus, have a little strain of neurosis: “the only begotten son of God.” Just see the neurosis. So what are all the others, bastards?
Jesus claims that he is born of a virgin mother. What nonsense! Some neurosis, some streak of neurosis! The slate is not absolutely clean…some hangover from the past. He was waiting for miracles. At the very last moment, on the cross, he was waiting. He shouted at God, “Why have you forsaken me?” You see the expectation? You see the demand? He is frustrated, he is angry: “Why have you forsaken me?” He must have been waiting deep down for a miracle to happen, expecting that God will descend and save his only begotten son. But no God descended, because there is no God. It was not possible. He was continually praying, raising his hands toward the sky, and calling, “Abba, Father.” These are childish attitudes. But this is what has happened in the past.
With me it is a totally different phenomenon. I want to make a complete break from the past. I am not a prophet, I am not a messiah, I am not the only begotten son of God, I have not come to make arrangements for your salvation. There is no need – the goose is out!
Wilhelm Reich lived in reaction, not in rebellion. And the distinction is subtle. He was reacting. When you react against something you remain attached to it; you cannot be free of it. Reaction is a kind of negative attachment.
I am not reacting, I am simply disconnected. I am discontinuous with the past because that is the only way to live now. I have no past and no future. This moment is all!
The third question:
Osho,
I don't have any questions. Still there is one… Could you please say something crazy that has no purpose?
What do you think I have been doing all along? Do you think there is any purpose in what I am saying? Can you find a crazier man than me?
I am utterly crazy, and I have no purpose at all. I am just enjoying myself. I love to talk, so I love to talk… Hence, I have freedom which no thinker can ever have, because he has to be consistent. I don’t care at all about any consistency. The moment I have said anything, it is finished; then I don’t look back. I have never read any of my books – I don’t even remember the names.
If somebody asks me, “Osho, You have said this in that book…” I say, “Really? It must have been said by somebody else. That man died long ago.”
So everything that I am saying is purposeless, as purposeless as the roses, as a bird on the wing, as the stars, as the dewdrops in the early morning sun. What purpose could there be? I am not in any way purposive. It is sheer joy.
Three Polacks are standing outside a brothel discussing what prices they are willing to pay for the services inside. They decide that one of them should go inside first while the other two wait outside.
Half an hour later, the one who went inside comes out with a gleaming smile across his face.
“What happened? What was it like?” his friends ask.
“Well, I paid five zlotys, went into a room and this tall sexy woman was waiting for me. She took my clothes off, put two pineapple rings over my prick and proceeded to slowly eat them off. It was great!”
The second Polack, pleased with his friend’s report, goes inside. An hour later he comes out, a big Cheshire cat grin on his face.
“What happened?” asked the other two.
“Well, I paid ten zlotys, and it was the same as our first friend. But this time she put four pineapple rings over my cock and ate them off very, very slowly.”
The third Polack, by this time was very horny. He rushed into the brothel and came out fifteen minutes later with a long, sad face.
“Well,” ask his friends, “what’s wrong? What happened?”
“Well, begins the sad Polack, “it started off great. I paid twenty zlotys and she put six rings of pineapple over my cock, plus a big scoop of whipped cream.”
“Wow!” the friends exclaim.
“That’s not all,” continues the third, “a handful of crushed nuts, a sugar wafer, hot chocolate sauce, and topped off with a beautiful red cherry.”
“That sounds great,” one of the others said. “What could possibly make you so sad then?”
“Well, it looked so fucking good, I ate it myself!”
Enough for today.
Osho,
Why do Indians think of sex in terms of need instead of fun? They also think at the same time that they have transcended sex, but in reality it has only been suppressed. Is there any similarity between suppression and transcendence which can mislead people, as you sometimes say that there is some similarity between a buddha and a madman?
Indian culture is the most rotten culture that has evolved in the world, the rottenest – rotten to the very core. It is so rotten that it has forgotten how to die. To die one needs to be a little bit alive, and unless you know how to die you simply vegetate, you stagnate.
Death is a process of revival. Just as each individual has to die to be born again, each culture has to die to be born again. Each society, each civilization has to pass through life to death, from death to life again.
Indian culture is the only culture which has not died for thousands of years. There have been many cultures in the world: the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian. They all flowered, blossomed: they contributed their beauty to the world – their sculpture, their music, their poetry, their drama – and then they disappeared without leaving a trace behind. This is how it should be.
If all the old people in your family were alive – your father and your father’s father and his father’s father to the very end, to Adam and Eve and God the Father – then one thing is certain: you would be crushed. So many old people, all corpses, are enough to crush a small child who is delicate like a rose.
One of the greatest things that Friedrich Nietzsche did was to declare: God is dead and man is free.
God as father has to be dead, otherwise his weight will be too much, it will be too mountainous. It won’t allow the freshness of humanity. It won’t allow exploration, it won’t allow adventure. The old man will be too cautious, too cunning, too calculating, too Jewish. His whole experience of the past will be enough to destroy the child. The child needs exploration; and, of course, when you explore you commit many mistakes – that is part of growth. One should be allowed to commit mistakes. One should certainly be intelligent enough not to commit the same mistakes again and again; one should be creative enough to invent new mistakes. That’s the way one expands, grows. That’s the way consciousness becomes integrated.
Life is a trial-and-error process. The old man drops all mistakes, errors. He becomes so accustomed to doing the right thing that exploration, adventure, disappear from his life. And because of his own fears he won’t allow the new generations to go in new directions, in new dimensions. He will make them afraid; he will paralyze them, he will cripple them. That’s what has been happening in India.
India is a strange case. It is extraordinary in a way: this has never happened anywhere else. All the countries, all the cultures, civilizations, have lived, died and were resurrected again; India has remained the same. It is more like a plastic flower than like a real rose. It is more concerned with stability than with aliveness. Its whole concern is how to go on and on forever.
But that is not the real thing. How to live each moment totally is the question. It is not a question of endurance; the question is one of depth. Only those who live in depth know what life is all about. Those who live in endurance live horizontally, superficially. Their life is a mask; there is no authenticity in it. Hence, I say Indian culture is neither alive nor dead but living in a kind of suspension, in a kind of limbo. It is a ghost culture: all that is significant, all that makes life a joy, has been dropped because it is dangerous, and all that is stable, permanent, plastic, has been gathered together because it is safer.
Remember, this is the way of an old man. The old man always thinks of safety, security, his bank balance; he always thinks in terms of fear, because death is always standing in front of him.
The child never bothers about death; his concern is life. He is interested in going into the uncharted, into the unknown; he is ready to take risks. Those who are ready to risk, they are the only truly alive ones. They may not live long, but that is not the point at all. To live for a single moment with authenticity, totality, integrity is more than enough. A single moment of total experience is far greater than the whole of eternity. It contains the whole of eternity, it contains timelessness. But one can go on vegetating for thousands of years like a cabbage, a cauliflower – very holy looking, very saintly.
Cabbages are not sinners, and cauliflowers are great scholars. A cabbage becomes a cauliflower through college education. Cauliflowers are pundits, theologians, religious people. This country is full of these people, and the burden of them is great. Somebody needs to help this country to die so that it can live again. Crucifixion is a basic condition for resurrection. The art of living is preceded by the art of dying.
This country is stinking, it has nothing else to brag about, so it brags about the past. It brags about its phoniness, it brags about its holiness, it brags about its spirituality – which is all nonsense because the basic foundation is missing. We talk about the temple – the temple is possible, but first you have to put the basic foundation together.
Life is a hierarchy of needs. First the physical has to be taken care of; material existence has to be taken care of. Science fulfills a basic need. If you miss science you will miss religion. Between science and religion is the world of art. These are the three basic dimensions of life. Science has to take care of the material, the physiological, the biological – the external needs of man. Religion has to take care of the innermost – interiority, subjectivity. Between the two is the world of aesthetics: art, poetry, music, dance, drama, literature.
A man who is hungry cannot think of poetry. A man who is hungry cannot conceive of meditation. It is impossible! This long, long traditional ego tries to hide its poverty. The so-called Indian spiritualism, the so-called desire of the Indian culture to guide the whole world toward spirituality is just stupid. It is sheer nonsense, it is rubbish. But that is their only face-saving device – they can save face only behind that screen. They know their bodies are hungry, they know that things which are absolutely necessary to them are not available. They are starving; they are ill, sick in every way. Eighty percent of the country is living as beggars. Few are well nourished: almost everybody is undernourished. When a person is undernourished it is not only the body that suffers, remember; undernourishment in a very subtle way destroys the capacity of your mind.
Mind needs its own nourishment, and unless the body is adequately nourished the mind cannot be nourished. First the body’s needs have to be fulfilled. When there is something more after the body’s fulfillment, then nourishment goes to the brain cells. The mind is a luxury that does not exist in animals; it is a human prerogative. It came into existence only because man could manage his bodily needs so totally that there was energy left, and that overflowing energy became his brain, became his mind, became his psychology.
When psychological needs are fulfilled, totally fulfilled, and again there is more energy available, that energy transforms into spirituality, into meditation, into buddhahood.
India is in a sad state, and the saddest thing is that Indians try to hide it rather than expose it. They are angry at me because I am exposing the truth as it is. They are angry at me because I am not trying to cover it up. They would like me, they would respect me, they would call me a great mahatma, an incarnation of God and all kinds of rubbish, under the condition that I go on covering their wounds.
I cannot cover anybody’s wounds. I can heal them, but the healing process is a totally different process. First you have to expose your wounds to the sun, to the air. You have to expose them. It hurts! Wounds which have been kept secret for thousands of years, suddenly exposed… You cannot believe it. You have always believed that you are great spiritualists, but I see the whole phoniness of it; I see the hypocrisy of it. The greatest hypocrisy that happens happens through two denials: food and sex. These are basic needs, and they are two sides of the same coin. They are not very different.
Food is needed for the existence of the individual. An individual can exist without sex. It will not be much of a joy, but he can survive. Without food the individual cannot exist; he will shrink and die. At the most, if he is perfectly healthy, he can exist without food for three months – ninety days – but that too only if he is perfectly healthy, and if he has too much extra food accumulated in his body in the form of fat and other things. Then he can survive for three months.
That survival, remember, has nothing to do with religion; that is sheer cannibalism – one is eating oneself. When you fast you are eating your own meat, hence I am against fasting; that is the worst kind of meat-eating. You can fast and every day you will lose weight. Where is that weight disappearing to? You are digesting it. Within three months you will die.
The individual can exist for a little while without food, he can exist without sex – he can survive – but the human race, the species, cannot exist without sex. That is food for the species. Sex is food for the species. Without sex humankind will disappear. And the people who have been teaching celibacy are murderous. The people who have been teaching celibacy to humanity are basically cutting the very roots of humanity. If they were to be followed literally there would be no humanity left.
There would have been no Mahavira, no Buddha, no Krishna; there would have been no Mohammed, no Kabir, no Nanak, if their parents had followed the idea of celibacy. It is good, it is fortunate that Buddha’s father did not follow the stupid idea of celibacy, otherwise the world would have missed one of the greatest flowerings.
If celibacy is perpetuated, then humanity will disappear. It is a very egoistic idea, egoistic in the sense that you only care about yourself. Indians go on talking about spirituality, selflessness, and at the same time, with the same face, they go on talking about celibacy. Celibacy is selfishness, absolute selfishness. Your parents and their parents and their parents have all joined together to give birth to you. Now, trying to be celibate, forcing celibacy, simply means you are closing the doors to future humanity. And you call it selflessness? You call it spirituality?
This is pure egoism – as if you were the center of the whole existence, as if the whole existence existed only for you: because you have been produced, now there is no need for anything; the whole can disappear.
Although the teaching continues, nobody follows it. Unnatural teachings cannot be followed. That is one good thing about them. Only a few fools, maniacs, obsessed people may try to follow them, but any man of intelligence will not follow such ideas.
Such ideas create two kinds of difficulties. One: those who are cunning, they become hypocrites. And those who are innocent, they become guilty. That’s what has happened in India, and the same has happened on a wider scale all over the world. The disease is contagious. It must have started in India; its origin seems to be Indian. That is the only contribution that India has made to the world – a contagious disease which creates hypocrites and guilty people. Both are ugly specimens. The world needs neither the hypocrites nor the guilty.
The hypocrites become priests, monks, mahatmas, sages, saints, and the guilty become the followers. This is the game that is going on.
You ask me: “Why do Indians think of sex in terms of need…?” Because their needs are not fulfilled. They are in all kinds of need – to them sex is also a need. A needy person has an eye which projects his needs everywhere. You see only that which you can see, you hear only that which you can hear: you are continuously choosing according to your need. To a hungry person a beautiful woman simply looks like a delicious dish. The very idea shows where the man stands.
There are expressions in all the languages of the world for love. People have started using words like eating – ”I would like to eat you” the lover says to the woman. What kind of love is this? Lovers bite each other, lovers chew each other – as if they are chewing gum. Lovers leave tooth marks on each other. What kind of poetry is this? They scratch each other with their nails… Is this love or is something else masquerading behind it?
Love should be deep caring. One should not think in terms of food, of eating, biting – these are ugly expressions.
India lives with all kinds of needs. Hence, sex also becomes only a need, at the most, a release, a tranquilizer – the same kind of release that you feel when you have a good sneeze: some burden, some tension is gone. But there is no fulfillment in it, there is no rejoicing in it.
Indians make love as if they are thieves, as if they are doing something wrong. They make love as if they are going against God, as if they are committing some sin.
Of course they have to make love because that is a need. It can only be a need when their other needs are fulfilled. When all the needs are fulfilled, love starts having a totally different dimension to it – the dimension of fun, the dimension of dance and music. Then you are not using it as a relaxation, as a tranquilizer, as a sneeze – you start sharing. Love becomes more prominent; sex becomes secondary. When it is a need love is just a word: sex is the only thing, the reproductive activity is the only thing.
You know it – it is a well-known fact scientifically observed all over the world – that poor people produce more children. Why? They don’t have any other ways of entertaining themselves. They don’t have the idiot box, the TV, they cannot sit glued in their chair for six hours. They don’t have a chair, in fact! They don’t have the money to go to a hotel to participate in some celebration, to go to a movie, to drink alcohol, to dance, sing… All possibilities are closed. The tiredness of the day, the routine of work, the continuity of the same rut… The only possibility, a free amusement available to them, is sex. That becomes their last act in the day. So before going to sleep they religiously devote one, two minutes to it, and then they fall asleep like a log.
The newly-married couple were entertaining a bachelor in the den of their suburban home when the conversation turned to sexual morality.
“Since you claim to be so liberal,” the Indian bachelor challenged the husband, “would you let me kiss your wife’s breasts for a thousand dollars?”
Not wishing to seem prudish, and needing the extra money, the couple agreed, and the wife removed her blouse and bra. Then pressing his face between her breasts the chap nestled there for several minutes, until the husband grew impatient to complete the deal. “Go ahead and kiss them,” he urged the bachelor.
“I would love to,” the fellow sighed, “but I really can’t afford it.”
The question is whether you can afford anything else… Hence, to the Indian mind, sex remains an animal act. It never rises to the realms of poetic beauty, it never becomes love. So whenever you talk to the Indian about love, he immediately thinks you are talking about sex. Love is immediately, automatically translated as sex. It is impossible to talk to the Indian about love. This is my experience of talking to millions of Indians all over the country. Talk about love, and by the time the word reaches them it is no longer love, it becomes sex.
They know only sex. Love has no other connotation for them. It is such a misunderstanding, one feels almost helpless. Talking to Indians is really troublesome.
You can talk about God, you can talk about the soul, you can talk about moksha, nirvana; you can talk about the Vedas, and there will be no misunderstanding, because they are like parrots – for thousands of years they have been repeating those words. Not that they will understand you, but at least they will understand the words. When you say “God” they know its meaning. They don’t know the experience, but at least the meaning is known. But when you talk about love, even the meaning is not known. The experience of it is far, far away.
She had just finished her shower when the doorbell rang. Tiptoeing to the front door, shivering in plump, pink nudity, she called, “Who is it?”
“The blind man,” came a mournful voice.
So she shrugged and opened the door with one hand while reaching for her purse with the other. When she turned to face the man he was grinning from ear to ear. And she saw that he was holding a large package in his arms.
“You can see!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he nodded happily, “and mighty pretty too. Now, where do you want I should put these blinds?”
The romantic young man sat on the park bench with a first date. He was certain his charming words and manner would win her as they had so many others.
“Some moon out tonight,” he cooed.
“There certainly is,” she agreed.
“Some really bright stars in the sky.”
She nodded.
“Some dew on the grass.”
“Some do!” she said indignantly. “But I am not that sort!”
It is really difficult to talk with Indians about love: they have never lived the experience. All that they know is the sexual mechanism, and all that they know is sexual animalness; that is their experience. They cannot understand sex as fun – because sex cannot be fun, only love can be fun.
Love is fun: it is a play, it is playfulness. And at the ultimate peak of love, the same playfulness becomes prayerfulness.
These are the three stages: need, playfulness, prayerfulness. Unless you have experienced love at its ultimate, utmost peak as prayer, you have not really lived your life; you have missed the point.
You say: “Why do Indians think of sex in terms of need instead of fun?” They don’t know anything about fun, about playfulness. They are serious people – very holy, very spiritual. They are walking corpses. You cannot expect playfulness from them; you can expect only long faces.
You cannot live with saints for long. Even to be with a saint for twenty-four hours is a punishment; it is not a reward because within twenty-four hours he will make you so bitter toward life, he will make you so sad, he will make you so sour, he will make you feel guilty, condemned… That is his only joy. Religious people only enjoy one thing: making everybody sad, taking away people’s laughter.
They condemn me because I am teaching people laughter. I am teaching people love; I am teaching people how to rejoice in the moment, in the very ordinariness of life. There is no other kind of life anywhere; there is no other world; this is the only world! And we have to live this world. We are not to sacrifice this world for some other world.
I am not teaching sacrifice, I am not teaching asceticism, I am not teaching fasting, I am not teaching celibacy. I am teaching the celebration of life. That’s what they have been missing for thousands of years.
They cannot understand sex as fun; it is a misery. If they cannot understand it as fun, they cannot understand it as prayer; that is impossible.
You say: “They also think at the same time that they have transcended sex, but in reality it has only been suppressed.” Transcendence of sex is possible only when sex reaches to the flowering of prayerfulness. Before that, sex cannot be transcended. You can only jump beyond sex from that borderline. Then it is not celibacy, it is simply the disappearance of the ego into the whole. It is not really transcendence of sex but becoming part of the whole orgasmic universe. It is reaching to the ultimate of union with the whole.
What are you doing when you are making love to a woman? You are trying to have a certain union with the opposite pole. For a moment the union happens – rarely, because so many conditions have to be fulfilled. Unless all conditions are fulfilled you may simply go through the gestures of making love. Only once in a while are a man and woman really in tune – at-one-ment, attunement – and then for a moment, the orgasmic joy.
What is orgasmic joy? The disappearance of the ego for a moment. But even for a moment it is tremendously significant, precious, far more precious than any Kohinoor. The same thing happens on a deeper level in prayer. With prayer you are not trying to meet with the other person, but you are trying to meet with the universe. The other person has become just a window. You are no longer attached to the window frame. You are going through the window into the world of the stars, clouds, birds. You are moving beyond. Love teaches you how to go beyond the window and to search for the stars. Once you have taken flight, the window is left far behind. Once you leave the window, a miracle happens. Because your ego was framed by the window: once you leave the window behind, your ego is also left behind. The ego needs the other: when the other is no longer there, the ego is also no longer there.
Psychologists say the ego comes later on. First, you start feeling the presence of the other. The child first feels the presence of mother, father, brothers, sisters, walls, paintings, whatsoever surrounds him. Slowly, slowly he becomes aware of the fact: “I am separate from all these. Sometimes Mother is there and sometimes she is not there, but I am always here.” First enters the experience of the other, and then the ego arises.
In the same way in prayer – the reverse order – first there is the disappearance of the other and then the ego dissolves. Once you have left the frame, the small frame of the lover and the beloved, and you have taken yourself into the beyond, the dissolution happens. Buddha calls it nirvana. The word is beautiful: nirvana simply means cessation of the flame. Just as you extinguish a lamp and suddenly the flame disappears into the whole, so it is in the ultimate state of love. Then one knows transcendence. Transcendence of the ego becomes the transcendence of sex.
Remember, it is not against sex. In fact, you have moved your momentary experience of sex into cosmic sex; you have become one with the orgasm of existence itself. Now it will be there each moment, you cannot lose it. Now the goose is really out! You cannot enter the bottle again.
Transcendence of sex is a totally different phenomenon from the suppression of it. But suppression can give you the feeling that you have transcended.
The old maid rushed up to the policeman. “I have been raped! I have been attacked,” she cried. “He ripped off my clothing; he smothered me with burning kisses. Then he made mad, passionate love to me!”
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, madam,” said the officer. “Just when did all this take place?”
“Twenty-three years ago this September,” said the woman.
“Twenty-three years ago?” he exclaimed. “How do you expect me to arrest anyone for something he did twenty-three years ago?”
“Oh, I don’t want you to arrest anyone, officer,” said the woman. “I just like to talk about it, that’s all.”
You will be surprised that all your so-called saints continuously talk against sex. Why? If they have transcended it, why this obsession with sex? In Indian scriptures you will find such obscene descriptions of women that you will be surprised. Your Playboys and magazines like that are nothing by comparison. You can go and see the temples at Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, and you will see that your so-called obscene literature is just the beginning. Khajuraho has the most obscene sculpture that has ever existed anywhere in the world. It took hundreds of years to do because it is stone sculpture; it is not just a photograph of a nude model in a Playboy magazine. Thousands of sculptors for hundreds of years must have worked on it; and not one temple, hundreds of temples. Why are these sculptures on the temples? What have temples got to do with it?
They have much to do with it. Saints need it, religious people need it. These are their fantasies. These are what they are seeing inside themselves; they want them to be projected. In Indian scriptures you will be surprised to note that Indian gods are the worst rapists in the world. They are not contented with heavenly beauties; they continue to descend to the earth and seduce and rape earthly women. They become tired of the heavenly beauties for the simple reason that heavenly beauties are a little stale, stale in the sense that they never grow old, they always remain the same. They don’t perspire; hence they don’t need a shower. Their bodies are not ordinary: they are made of gold and silver. Now what can you do with a woman with a body of gold and silver, eyes of emeralds and diamonds? Sooner or later you will get tired. It is a toy, a doll, it is not a woman. She never nags you; she never throws pillows at you. No drama, no life!
They descend to earth. All the Indian devas – the Indian gods – are very sexual, obsessively sexual. The saints who have been writing these scriptures describe women in such beautiful words. That shows their minds. But they are pretending at the same time that they are condemning sex, they are telling you these things so that you can remain aware of them.
The elderly spinster hired a young lawyer to prepare her will. “I have ten thousand dollars set aside,” she explained, “and I want to spend it on myself. Nobody in this town has ever paid any attention to me, but they will sit up and take notice when I die.”
Warming to the subject she cackled, “I want to spend all of eight thousand dollars on the biggest, fanciest funeral this town has ever seen.”
“Well,” said the lawyer, “that’s a lot to pay for burying someone in these parts. But it is your money, madam, and you are entitled to spend it any way you like. Now, what about the other two thousand?”
“I’ll take care of that,” the old woman replied with a broad smile. “I’ve never been to bed with a man and I aim to try that at least once before I’m through. As you can see I’m not much to look at, but I figure for two thousand dollars I can get me a man that is young enough and handsome enough to please me.”
That night the lawyer reported the conversation to his wife. As they discussed the situation, the wife casually mentioned how nice it would be to have the two thousand dollars. Minutes later they were on their way to the spinster’s house, the wife driving. As the lawyer stepped from the car he instructed his wife, “Pick me up in two hours.”
Returning at the prescribed hour, the wife tooted the horn. No response from the house. She then blew a prolonged blast. An upstairs window was raised and the lawyer thrust out his head. “Come back in four days,” he shouted. “She’s decided to let the municipal committee bury her.”
These are the people, real people. Don’t be deceived by their faces. Look deep inside them, and you will find tremendous madness. Suppression brings madness; transcendence brings buddhahood.
Yes, I have said there is some similarity between a buddha and a madman. The similarity is that a buddha goes beyond the mind, and the madman falls below the mind. The same similarity exists between transcendence of sex and suppression of sex. Transcendence is going beyond sex – and to go beyond one has to go through; sex has to be used as a ladder – and suppression is falling below sex.
Suppression creates neurosis. Transcendence brings flowering, flowering of all that is best in you, flowering of all that is your real being. It is the release of your hidden splendor.
The second question:
Osho,
You said recently that you loved Wilhelm Reich. I have studied and written about him for years. While your ideas – sex equals energy, living in the now, and God is life – agree with his, you go far beyond him. In what way was he limited?
Edward Mann, I have read your book on Wilhelm Reich. I also remember you quoted me in that book.
Wilhelm Reich and my ideas have a certain superficial similarity, but remember it is superficial. Wilhelm Reich is a thinker, not a meditator, and sometimes thinkers groping in the dark can find a few things, they can stumble upon a few things. But to have eyes is a totally different phenomenon.
Yes, once in a while you can find the door by groping in the darkness – even a blind man can find it – but to have eyes, and to have light, and to go directly to the door without groping is a totally different phenomenon.
Wilhelm Reich is certainly appreciated by me, appreciated for the fact that he is not a meditator, and yet he has stumbled upon something which only meditators can come across. That is also his limitation: he is only a thinker. What he preaches he cannot practice. In fact he does just the opposite of it. His blindness can be seen in his life, not in his words.
Wilhelm Reich’s wife wrote about him that he was a very jealous man. Now that is impossible. If a man has transcended sex, then jealousy is impossible. He continuously talked about getting rid of possessiveness, jealousy, but about his wife he was very suspicious. Finally they had to separate, and the cause of separation was Wilhelm Reich, himself. He meddled with all kinds of women continuously. He had many love affairs in the name of freedom, in the name of love, in the name of nonpossessiveness, in the name of friendship and sharing. But he wouldn’t allow the same for his wife.
Even when he would leave his town, he told his friends to keep an eye on his wife. Wilhelm Reich’s wife was herself a psychoanalyst. It was impossible for her to understand. But I can see why it happened – he was only a thinker.
Thinkers are, in a way, cunning. For themselves they find all kinds of excuses, but for others there is a totally different standard. That’s where he was limited. Because he was not a meditator he could not transform his sexual energy into playfulness, prayerfulness, and ultimately into an orgasmic existence.
That’s why he went mad. It is dangerous to play with fire. If you don’t understand its nature it is better to leave it alone. Sex is fire because it is life: to play with it without understanding the whole process of its transformation is certainly dangerous. And that danger was what happened to him.
He was on the right path, but he was blind. He needed grounding in meditation. He would have become a buddha, but he became just a madman.
You say, “While your ideas – sex equals energy…” These are not my ideas, these are my experiences. A clear-cut distinction has to be understood. For Wilhelm Reich these are ideas. A blind man can have ideas about light, but that will not help him. A deaf man can have ideas about music, but that will not make him understand music, experience music. I don’t have any ideas, these are my experiences. Whatsoever I am saying to you I am not saying it as a philosopher.
I am not a thinker at all; to me thinking is a very low-quality activity. What I am saying is my experiencing. So these are not my ideas on sex; these are actual experiences. I am not trying to indoctrinate you; I am simply inviting you to experience what I have experienced. So I don’t ask you to believe in me.
Wilhelm Reich was a fanatic. He wanted his followers to believe in him, to believe in him absolutely. He was very dictatorial. He would not allow any doubt in anybody’s mind, and he was constantly living in fear –fear of persecution, as if he were being persecuted continuously, as if somebody were after him. These are the signs of a fanatic mind.
He had the possibility of growing, but he needed the right soil. That was missing. Had he been one of my sannyasins, there would have been a totally different kind of man born out of him.
He lived in the bottle. The goose could not come out. He became too attached to the bottle – his ideology, his philosophy. And this constant fear of persecution, suspicion, drove him mad.
You say: “Your ideas – sex, living in the now, and God is life – agree with his…” They only appear to agree. Living in the now, how can you feel persecuted? Persecution is always going to be tomorrow. Right at this moment how can you feel persecuted? It can happen only in the next moment.
His whole life he was talking about living in the now, but it was only talk, mere talk; he never lived in the now. He was thinking of himself in the old foolish pattern, as being a prophet.
This stupid Judaic idea of being a prophet has tortured many people in the West. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews – all the three religions which were born outside India, have revolved around the idea of the prophet. Sigmund Freud had the same attitude, and Wilhelm Reich was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. Then Carl Gustav Jung had the same idea; he was also a follower of Sigmund Freud. Then Adler had the same idea; he was also a follower of Sigmund Freud. All by-products of the Jewish mind: they were all thinking in terms of the salvation of the whole of humanity depending on them.
That is living somewhere else, not in the now.
Just the other day, Sheela brought a report from a Christian theologian, a big report against me. He must have come with preconceived ideas, and got very confused. He could not manage with his preconceived ideas and he could not let go of them either. So he is wishy-washy: one thing he says against me, one thing he says for me. He has got into such a mess. But I liked one thing that he said – although he thought he was making a very significant criticism.
He said: “The moment Osho dies, his whole movement will disappear like a soap bubble.” I loved it! That’s how it should be! Why should it continue? What for? There is no reason. I live now; I am not interested in the future at all. What does it matter whether my movement disappears like a soap bubble or not? I love soap bubbles! They look beautiful in the sun. And they should disappear so that a few other people can make other soap bubbles. I have no monopoly over them. In fact, the world would have been better if the soap bubble that was created by Jesus had disappeared with him. Then these Polack Popes would not be here. Now they are making much fuss about a bubble which is not there. The soap bubble that Buddha created, had it disappeared, would have been a great blessing to humanity, because all these Buddhist monks and theologians, and all kinds of stupid people…we would have been saved from them!
Just the other day I was reading a Buddhist scripture. Buddhist scriptures say that there are thirty-three thousand rules for each Buddhist monk to follow. Thirty-three thousand rules! Even to remember them you will need a computer. What kind of rules? I will tell you just one rule. When a Buddhist monk goes to the toilet he should remove the lid of the toilet very slowly; no noise should be made. Why? Because there are always hungry ghosts who eat shit. If they eat your shit, you are responsible; then you will suffer in your future lives. Great people! Great religious rules!
This idea is of prophets who are trying to solve everybody’s misery, who come for the salvation of humanity. There is no established fact that Jesus came, and yet Christians still go on bragging that he came for the salvation of humanity. But the salvation of humanity has not happened yet. Two thousand years have passed. He proved a very impotent prophet. What kind of salvation has happened? Jainas say that Mahavira came to uplift humanity. Humanity is where it is. Buddha came to deliver everybody…
I want to put a full stop to all this nonsense. I am not here to deliver anybody. Why should I deliver you? Your parents have already done that! I have no responsibility. I am not responsible to anybody – to any humanity, to any future. I am enjoying my moment, and those who want to enjoy this moment, this beautiful soap bubble in the sun, they can enjoy with me.
He thinks – the Christian theologian who came from Germany just to study what is happening here – that of course it looks beautiful now, but as Osho dies it will disappear.
It should disappear. I will make every arrangement for it to disappear. It should not remain even for a single moment, because that will be a dead thing.
Wilhelm Reich lived with this prophetic mission. All prophets are in a way mad, a little neurotic. Even good people, even people like Jesus, have a little strain of neurosis: “the only begotten son of God.” Just see the neurosis. So what are all the others, bastards?
Jesus claims that he is born of a virgin mother. What nonsense! Some neurosis, some streak of neurosis! The slate is not absolutely clean…some hangover from the past. He was waiting for miracles. At the very last moment, on the cross, he was waiting. He shouted at God, “Why have you forsaken me?” You see the expectation? You see the demand? He is frustrated, he is angry: “Why have you forsaken me?” He must have been waiting deep down for a miracle to happen, expecting that God will descend and save his only begotten son. But no God descended, because there is no God. It was not possible. He was continually praying, raising his hands toward the sky, and calling, “Abba, Father.” These are childish attitudes. But this is what has happened in the past.
With me it is a totally different phenomenon. I want to make a complete break from the past. I am not a prophet, I am not a messiah, I am not the only begotten son of God, I have not come to make arrangements for your salvation. There is no need – the goose is out!
Wilhelm Reich lived in reaction, not in rebellion. And the distinction is subtle. He was reacting. When you react against something you remain attached to it; you cannot be free of it. Reaction is a kind of negative attachment.
I am not reacting, I am simply disconnected. I am discontinuous with the past because that is the only way to live now. I have no past and no future. This moment is all!
The third question:
Osho,
I don't have any questions. Still there is one… Could you please say something crazy that has no purpose?
What do you think I have been doing all along? Do you think there is any purpose in what I am saying? Can you find a crazier man than me?
I am utterly crazy, and I have no purpose at all. I am just enjoying myself. I love to talk, so I love to talk… Hence, I have freedom which no thinker can ever have, because he has to be consistent. I don’t care at all about any consistency. The moment I have said anything, it is finished; then I don’t look back. I have never read any of my books – I don’t even remember the names.
If somebody asks me, “Osho, You have said this in that book…” I say, “Really? It must have been said by somebody else. That man died long ago.”
So everything that I am saying is purposeless, as purposeless as the roses, as a bird on the wing, as the stars, as the dewdrops in the early morning sun. What purpose could there be? I am not in any way purposive. It is sheer joy.
Three Polacks are standing outside a brothel discussing what prices they are willing to pay for the services inside. They decide that one of them should go inside first while the other two wait outside.
Half an hour later, the one who went inside comes out with a gleaming smile across his face.
“What happened? What was it like?” his friends ask.
“Well, I paid five zlotys, went into a room and this tall sexy woman was waiting for me. She took my clothes off, put two pineapple rings over my prick and proceeded to slowly eat them off. It was great!”
The second Polack, pleased with his friend’s report, goes inside. An hour later he comes out, a big Cheshire cat grin on his face.
“What happened?” asked the other two.
“Well, I paid ten zlotys, and it was the same as our first friend. But this time she put four pineapple rings over my cock and ate them off very, very slowly.”
The third Polack, by this time was very horny. He rushed into the brothel and came out fifteen minutes later with a long, sad face.
“Well,” ask his friends, “what’s wrong? What happened?”
“Well, begins the sad Polack, “it started off great. I paid twenty zlotys and she put six rings of pineapple over my cock, plus a big scoop of whipped cream.”
“Wow!” the friends exclaim.
“That’s not all,” continues the third, “a handful of crushed nuts, a sugar wafer, hot chocolate sauce, and topped off with a beautiful red cherry.”
“That sounds great,” one of the others said. “What could possibly make you so sad then?”
“Well, it looked so fucking good, I ate it myself!”
Enough for today.