Birthday of an Irish Writer Oscar Wilde

16th October is the birthday of the flamboyant Irish writer Oscar Wilde. Educated at Trinity

College, Dublin and Oxford, he lived his adult life in London moving in elite social circles. His

fondness for aesthetics, biting wit and effusive charming style made him very well known.

His ideas about the supremacy of art found expression in his juicy novel “The Picture of

Dorian Gray” (1890) which has been a subject of 3 Hollywood movies. Wilde was

notoriously jailed for 2 years between 1895-1897 for consensual homosexual acts.

Homosexuality has been decriminalised in the UK since 1967. He died of meningitis in Nov

1900 at the young age of 46.

Osho often quotes Oscar Wilde in His discourses. Osho says, “Existence loves everybody — and a man who has disappeared as an ego, as a personality, is nothing but a vehicle to existence. He does not love; he is love. I would like to remind you about Oscar Wilde. He says, “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

If you will see what miracles are happening around you, within you, you will respect yourself too, you will love yourself too. If the whole existence loves you, you will love yourself. And that is the only romance that knows no divorce. But it is not arrogant, it is not egoistic. That has to be remembered, because ego is a closing factor.”

Osho Says……

BELOVED MASTER,

IN THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL, OSCAR WILDE SAYS, “FOR ALL MEN KILL THE THINGS THEY LOVE. YET NOT EVERYONE HAS TO DIE.” IT FEELS LIKE THIS INSIGHT DOES NOT ONLY APPLY TO SHEELA, IT SEEMS TO REFER TO EACH OF US.

PLEASE FORGIVE OUR DEAFNESS, BELOVED MASTER, AND FROM YOUR COMPASSION, GO ON ENCOURAGING OUR SOULS TO GROW AND NOT FALL BACK AND DIE.

Oscar Wilde is not an enlightened person, but a very keen observer of life, and he has many great insights. This is one of his great insights: People kill those things they love. Why does it happen?… because your love is not pure love, it has many other things. Just hiding behind it there is jealousy, there is a power trip, there is fear of losing the loved one. So lovers try to make each other prisoners — afraid that if they don’t make them prisoners, then their freedom may take them away from them. They cut their wings so that they cannot fly. They are so jealous and suspicious that they destroy each other’s joy in life. They want the other to be loving, and the other wants the same, so it becomes almost a dead ritual.

You can see a husband kissing a wife: he is just doing a dead ritual because it has to be done; otherwise there will be trouble.

The American philosopher, Dale Carnegie, whose books have sold next to the BIBLE — and he could be a philosopher only in America, because whatever he is talking is such nonsense and rubbish — he suggests that you remember to say two or three times in the day to your wife, “I love you.” The same “I love you” the wife has to say two, three times a day to the husband.

But it is not coming out on its own, you are following the book of Dale Carnegie and just repeating like a parrot “I love you.” And both know that the love has disappeared long ago, only words have remained. They have killed the love, they have tried to possess each other; and when you try to possess someone you reduce his humanity to a commodity. A wife is not human, she is a thing. A husband is not human, he is a thing…

This is not love.

Oscar Wilde’s insight is true as far as your so-called love is concerned: you kill the person you love. He may remain alive, but you destroy his freedom, you destroy his humanity; you reduce him to a thing. If this is love, then what is hate? Jesus says, “Love your enemies just like yourself.” He should have said rather, “Love your husbands just like yourself, love your wives just like yourself.” These are the real enemies — intimate enemies. But to attain to that love, just preaching is not enough. You have to go through a total transformation. You have to move from mind to a state of no-mind. That’s what I call meditation — the process of moving from mind to no-mind, from thought to a state of thoughtlessness, silence. Once you start experiencing the space of no-mind, everything in your life goes through a transformation. The ego dies, your love becomes absolutely clean and pure. Then it does not follow what Oscar Wilde is saying.

Oscar Wilde himself became so much disturbed with his love relationships that he became a homosexual. It is not strange that homosexuals are known as gay people; they are gay. Heterosexuals — you cannot say that they are gay. They are so sad, so serious, so burdened; just waiting for death to free them from all this nonsense that they have created themselves — the wife, the children…. They have messed up their whole life, and their house has become a madhouse. But homosexuality is not a way out; it is just a slight change, because homosexuals start becoming as jealous, as possessive, and destroy the other as much as heterosexuals. And it is good that Oscar Wilde is not alive today; otherwise, he would be suffering from AIDS. So all his wisdom would have led him to the disease AIDS. Love has certainly to be purified, and just by changing objects of love nothing is changed. Change your subjectivity.

You ask me not to take note of your deafness, of your blindness. I never take any note. I may talk about it, I may hit you as hard as I can, but I don’t take any note of it. What can you do? This is enough, that you are here. You have taken a great step, even in your blindness, to come close to someone who is not blind. So don’t be afraid. My love is not the love Oscar Wilde is talking about. He has no idea of the love that I have for you. It does not destroy; it helps you to become free of all bondages, it helps you to become yourself.

My only joy is if you become absolutely free individuals, finding in yourself the source of eternal light.

And there is no need to worry. My compassion for you and for all the sannyasins around the world will keep me in the body long enough, until you open your eyes and wake up. So if you really want me to remain in the body forever, then keep your eyes closed and remain deaf. But that is not good on your part. You should wake up as quickly as possible, because my work as far as I am concerned is finished. I am just hanging around for you. Even though you go on doing stupid things, it does not change my love for you. I know that what else can you do in your state? Whatever you are doing is expected. But don’t continue it: bring it to an end, to a full stop. I want you to become free of all bondage.

Help me, so that I can become free of my body too. That will be your response to my love — because to me my body is a bondage. This is my last life. Once I get out of this body I am not going to be born again. Then I will be part of this vast universe, that tremendous freedom….

How long are you going to force me to wait?

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of public discourse by Osho.

Discourse series: From Bondage to Freedom

Chapter #29

Chapter title: Truth — not a highway but a hill track

13 October 1985 am in Rajneeshmandir

References:

Osho has also spoken of eminent writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Milton, Leo Tolstoy, Byron, Shakespeare, Kalidasa, John Ruskin, Kahlil Gibran, Oscar Wilde, Rabindranath Tagore and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Come, Come, Yet Again Come
2. The Transmission of the Lamp
3. The Book of Wisdom
4. The Dhammapada: the way of the Buddha Vol. 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12
5. The Discipline of Transcendence Vol. 1, 2, 3
6. The Last Testament Vol. 1, 3, 5
7. The Messiah Vol. 1, 2
8. The Art of Dying
9. The Fish in The Sea Is Not Thirsty
10. Light on the Path
11. The Secret
12. The Hidden Splendour
13. The New Dawn
14. Beyond Enlightenment
15. The Golden Future