The first question:
Osho,
The masses were against Jesus, they were against Buddha, they are against you. Why?
The masses live in a kind of nonindividual existence. They live like sheep. So whenever a man like Jesus or Buddha is there, asserting his individuality, his rebellion, his freedom, naturally he is disliked. The masses become afraid. Their foundations are shaken. If Jesus is right, then the whole life pattern of the masses will have to be changed. It is too much work, and people have invested too much in their slavery.
The presence of Jesus makes people feel bankrupt. The moment you come across a buddha, you are reduced to a very ugly kind of inhuman being. You lose all dignity, you feel humiliated. If you are intelligent, you will rise to the occasion. You will see the point that up to now you have lived in ignorance, in sleep, and you will feel grateful to the buddha that his presence has become a ray of light into your dark night of the soul. But that much intelligence is very rare.
People are stupid, stubborn; they immediately react. Rather than rising higher, taking the challenge of the peak that Buddha is, they destroy him, they destroy Jesus, so that they can again fall asleep and dream their so-called sweet dreams.
That’s why they are against me. I am a kind of disturbance. My presence cannot be ignored. Either you have to be with me or you have to be against me. Whenever you cannot ignore the presence of a certain person and you have to choose, great turmoil arises in your being – because no choice is easy. Choice means change.
You have lived for fifty years in a certain way. Those habits have become settled. Now, suddenly I am here calling you forth out of the grave that you have believed was real life. I am here condemning all that you have lived for – all your values, all your so-called morality, all your knowledge, all your religion. Only very courageous people, very few chosen ones, will be able to rise to the occasion and will risk all that they have for something which is not visible, for something which you can only trust.
Now, this is difficult for the ordinary masses; they decide for the known. Jesus is something of the unknown, Buddha is something from the beyond. Now the question is: to choose the known, the familiar, the safe, the comfortable, the convenient, or to choose this adventure and to go with Buddha into something uncharted, unmapped, into something one can never be certain whether it is or it is not.
Buddha himself may be deceived or may be a deceiver. There is no way, this way or that, to be totally certain about it. In deep hesitation, in deep confusion, in deep trembling, one has to go with Buddha. Only those who are still young, whose minds have yet not gathered too much dust, who are still able of wondering, feeling the awe of life, who are still not absolutely settled, closed, finished, who are not yet dead – only those few people will be able to go with me, with Jesus, with Buddha. Others are bound to be against them.
Then there are many other reasons too. People like to belong to groups. It gives a kind of consolation, satisfaction, “I am on the right track.” If you are a Christian, then millions of Christians are with you; you belong to them, you are not alone.
If you are with me, you are almost alone. You will be uprooted from the crowd to which you had belonged up to now. For few moments you will be nowhere, no one. You will become anonymous. You will not be a Christian or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan – and that has become your identity.
You have been a Christian or a Hindu or a Jew, and that is your identity, that’s what you know about yourself. If somebody asks, “Who are you?” you can say, “I am a Catholic.” It gives you a certain false feeling, as if you know yourself. People go on living in the world of “as if,” but when you live in the world of “as if” long enough it starts looking real; you start believing it.
When the child is born he is not Christian or Jew or Hindu, and he is perfectly happy without being. But soon he will become a Hindu or a Mohammedan or somebody else. He will have to be taught. He will be given an identity, a label and that label means much to you because behind the label is emptiness.
Once the label is taken away you will fall into an abysmal emptiness. Unless you are really courageous, unless you have real guts to go into that emptiness, you would like to cling to the label.
Some experiments by Henry Tajfel at Bristol University have produced unexpected results. Parties of schoolboys aged fourteen to fifteen were subjected to a quick and bogus psychological test. Then each boy was told that he was either a “Julius person” or an “Augustus person.” No explanation was given of the characteristics of the Julius or Augustus people, nor did the boys know whom the other members of their group were.
Nevertheless, they promptly identified with their fictitious group, proud to be a Julius person or an Augustus person to such an extent that they were willing to make financial sacrifices to benefit their anonymous group brothers, and to cause discomfort in the other camp.
Tajfel says that you can alter a person’s behavior predictably, just by telling him he belongs to a group – even a group of which he has never heard before. Almost automatically the participant in these experiments favors anonymous members of his own group and, given the opportunity, he is likely to go out of his way to put members of another group at a disadvantage. People will stick up for a group to which they happen to be assigned, without any indoctrination about who else is in the group or what its qualities are supposed to be.
Only by grasping the full import of the positive and quick propensity of human beings to identify with any group they find themselves in, can one make a firm base from which to search out the origins of hostility.
These experiments of Henry Tajfel are of tremendous import. People love to belong. And when a man like Jesus comes, he uproots you from your group. Jesus comes and he takes you out of the community of Jews. He starts something new, which has no past, no history, no respectability. He simply starts things from ABC.
Now, those few people who followed Jesus must have been of some integrity, otherwise they wouldn’t have followed him. Because following Jesus meant that they would no longer be part of the Jewish community in which they were born and indoctrinated, and to which they had already belonged. And they had always been proud that they were Jews, the chosen people of God. They had always believed they are special people.
Now here comes the son of a carpenter, Jesus, with nothing in his past to support him, a vagabond, and he starts gathering a group of people. This group is so new, it will take time for people to belong to it; it will happen only when Jesus is gone. But when Jesus is gone it is pointless.
After Jesus died, nearabout two hundred, three hundred years afterward, Christianity itself started becoming a special group. Then people were happy to belong to it. Now millions are happy to belong to Christianity.
People like to belong. Now, if you come to me you will be losing your belonging. You will be becoming alone, and you will be going with somebody who has no past, no traditional support. It will be an absolutely new enterprise, risky. It is a gamble. And people even like to belong to fictitious groups – what to say about religions?
Arthur Koestler says:

“I found these experiments of Henry Tajfel extremely revealing, not only on theoretical grounds but also for personal reasons, related to a childhood episode which has never ceased to puzzle and amuse me.
“On my first day at school, aged five, in Budapest, Hungary, I was asked by my future classmates the crucial question, ‘Are you an MTK or an FTC?’ These were the initials of two leading soccer teams, perpetual rivals for the league championship, as every schoolboy knew – except little me, who had never been to a football match. However, to confess such abysmal ignorance was unthinkable, so I replied with haughty assurance, ‘MTK, of course!’
“And thus the die was cast. For the rest of my childhood in Hungary, and even when my family moved to Vienna, I remained an ardent and loyal supporter of MTK, and my heart still goes out to them, all the way across the Iron Curtain. Moreover, their glamorous blue and white striped shirts never lost their magic, whereas the vulgar green and white stripes of their unworthy rivals still fill me with revulsion.
“I am even inclined to believe that this early conversion played a part in making blue my favorite color. After all, the sky is blue, a primary color, whereas green is merely the product of its adulteration with yellow. I may laugh at myself, but the emotive attachment, the magic bond, is still there, and to shift my loyalty from the blue-white MTK to the green-white FTC would be downright blasphemy.
“Truly, we pick up our allegiances like infectious germs. Even worse, we walk through life unaware of this pathological disposition, which lures mankind from one historic disaster into the next.”

You come to me – you have already belonged to a group your whole life. You have been a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Jew. And these groups are not ordinary groups like football teams – they indoctrinate, from the very beginning they start conditioning you. Great conditioning exists in you.
So whenever a man like Jesus or Buddha is there, your conditioning goes against him. He wants to create an unconditional mind, that’s the problem. He wants you to get rid of all your pathological attachments, that’s the problem. You are too attached to your disease, to your pathology, and anybody who wants to see you healthy and whole will look like the enemy. See the point.
Another new sannyasin, Dwabha, has just written to me saying, “I am feeling very good here, but when I go out there are Christians who hand out pamphlets to me about Christianity, about Jesus, and they tell me that you are an anti-Christ. So what should I do?” It is natural. Christians are becoming afraid because so many Christians are coming to me. The fear is natural, their vested interest is there. Hindus are afraid, Jainas are afraid; their fear is understandable. To take anybody from any group to which he has belonged is to offend the group because their number is reduced. And number means power. In this world, the more people belong to your group, the more powerful you are. In the name of religion, much power politics goes on.
So they will tell you that I am anti-Christ. They were telling Jesus’ followers that Jesus was anti-Moses; they were telling Buddha’s followers that Buddha was anti-Veda. That has been an old, old story; it is nothing new.
Truth cannot be accepted by the masses because the masses live in lies. And they have lived in their lies so long that those lies are no longer lies to them, they really believe in it. And whenever you say something different from their beliefs you create confusion in them, and nobody wants to be confused.
You create an inner trembling, a doubt in them, and nobody wants to be in doubt. The doubt is there. If they had known the truth, there would have been no fear. They have not known the truth, they have only believed. The doubt is there, deep down in their souls, so whenever you say something that goes against them their doubt starts rising, surfacing. And they are afraid to be in doubt. Everybody wants certainty. Why? – because certainty gives security, certainty gives you confidence. Doubt makes you shaky.
And I am going to create much doubt in you because in my vision, unless doubt destroys your false certainties, there is no possibility to attain to true certainty. True certainty is not out of belief. It comes out of experience, it comes out of your own realization.
I am not anti-Jesus, I am certainly anti-Christianity. I am not anti-Buddha, I am certainly anti-Buddhist. I am not anti-Krishna but I am certainly anti-Hindu. Whatever I am saying and doing is the work of Jesus, the work of Krishna, and Buddha. Certainly not in the same language – how can it be in the same language? How can I speak Aramaic to you; how can I use the metaphors Jesus used? Those metaphors are out of date, they don’t belong to this century.
I will have to be more scientific, I will have to be more logical. Even though I want you to go beyond logic, I will have to lead you to the extreme point of logic first; only from there you can take the jump into the illogical.
I cannot talk with you the way Buddha talked; he was talking to a different audience. My words will be different, my approach will be different, my methodology will be different. But the moon that I am pointing to is the same. My finger is different, it’s bound to be so. If you compare my finger with Jesus’ finger, they are different – but the moon that we are pointing to is the same. Look at the moon and don’t be too much bothered by the fingers.

The second question:
Osho,
I have been thinking of becoming a sannyasin for at least seven years. Why am I not able to take the jump?
It seems you are not aware of death at all. If you are aware of death, you cannot postpone like that. And now, because you have been postponing for seven years, postponement must have become a habit. You have practiced it long. You have become too attached to postponing.
Postponement gives a good feeling. First, it is not risky; you need not change. You are always going to change tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. So meanwhile you can remain the same as you are. Tomorrow becomes a protection, “Tomorrow I will become a sannyasin. So today, whatsoever I am, I have to be. It is only the question of one day, tomorrow I will become a sannyasin and I will take the jump.” And when tomorrow comes, it always comes as today.
Now, for seven years you have been practicing postponement. It must have become a kind of addiction. Remember, death can happen any moment. Those who are aware of death drop postponement because tomorrow is not certain. Only this moment is certain, the moment that is already in your hands. Even the next moment is not certain.
So if you see something valuable in something, do it – and do it now! Remember it, now or never. If you don’t want to do it, who is telling you to do it? Forget all about it. But please don’t postpone. Either decide, “I am not going to take sannyas” – and that’s perfectly good. At least decisiveness will be there, your worry will be dropped. Decide, “I am not going to take sannyas” and be finished with it; or take the jump and be finished with it.

A male dinosaur and a female dinosaur were having an affair. For ten million years they walked around, talking and looking into each other’s eyes. Then they would sometimes hold hands, and this continued for twenty million years more.
For the next fifteen million years they would kiss and touch each other all over. Then finally the male said to the female, “Dear, we have been together for so many years, how do you feel about… You know, I think it is time we made love!”
“I want to but I can’t” she answered. “Now I have got my period for the next seventy million years.”

You are not a dinosaur, time is very short. Life is very small. Out of a seventy-year life span, almost thirty-five years are almost lost in sleep. And then eating, drinking, dressing, going to the office, coming to the house, then earning your bread, and friends and clubs and hotels and movies and the TV… Just count, and you will not find even one year left to live. You will not even find one year out of seventy years to meditate, to search, to be.
It is already too much that you have done seven years thinking of sannyas. Either take it or forget all about it, but be decisive. To remain so indecisive for so long is dangerous because then indecisiveness becomes your nature.

The third question:
Osho,
I finally realized that I am never going to get enlightened. But there is no way to die. What to do?
This is a great realization. No one is going to get enlightened, because enlightenment is not something that has to happen. It has already happened, you are enlightened. You just have to look into yourself and find it. It is already the case.
That’s the whole theme that I am preaching to you, day in and day out, year in and year out. Enlightenment is not something like an achievement that will happen someday. It has already happened – you are enlightened, there is nobody who is not enlightened.
But man has the capacity to remember or to forget, and you have forgotten it. You have decided to forget about it. You are keeping it at your back. It is there; you can keep it at your back for millions of lives, but it is there, and it will remain there. And any moment you decide to turn one hundred eighty degrees, you will be surprised – it has always been there waiting, waiting for you to come home.
You are not going to get enlightened because you are enlightened. I am here not to make you enlightened, but just to remind you. Just to remind you – that’s all the function of the master, to shake you into wakefulness.
Godliness is your treasure. All that you need, all that you can ever need, is already given. It is already provided for. But you have not searched within yourself, you have not opened the treasures within yourself. And you go on looking all over the earth. You can go on looking and you will not find it, because it is not something to be found, it is something to be remembered. See the distinction, the difference – it is vast. It is a difference that makes a great difference.
It is as if you have money in your pocket but you have forgotten, and then one day suddenly you remember, and it is there. One day suddenly, searching for something else, you find it.
Enlightenment is not something of the future, it is your presentness. Become aware of it, now. This is it.

The fourth question:
Osho,
Morarji Desai has said in an interview given to Sunday, “Osho puts emphasis on the socialization of woman.”
He said, “Just as prostitutes are socialized, he wants all women to be socialized.” He also said, “Osho goes even further and says that there is no need of marriage. Osho also advocates free sex.”
What do you say about it, Osho?
Morarji Desai is a male chauvinist. Women are not property, so how can they be public or private? What is man, public or private? If men need not be public property or private property, then why should women be either public property or private property? The whole idea is based in male chauvinistic attitudes. Morarji Desai represents all that is rotten in the human past. These are the two attitudes that have been taken by men about women; both are wrong.
Karl Marx and Engels have some insight about it. They said that the ownership of women arose simultaneously with the ownership of things. The husband-wife relationship came as a by-product of private property. Hence Marx and Engels were in favor of making women socialized. That is going from one stupidity to another; but the basic idea is the same, that the woman is property. She either belongs to a particular man for his whole life, then she is a wife, or she is possessed by a man for one single night, then she is a prostitute.
What is the difference between a prostitute and a wife? One is a temporary arrangement, the other is a little more permanent. Marriage is a permanent kind of prostitution; deep down, it is not different. Hence marriage and prostitution have existed together.
If you go into it, it is marriage that has created prostitution. And prostitution will never disappear from the world unless marriage disappears; it is the shadow of marriage. In fact prostitutes have been saving marriage. It is a safety measure so the man can go once in a while, just for a change, to another woman, a prostitute, and save his marriage and its permanency.
That’s what has been done down the ages. The prostitute was there to save you and your marriage. So whenever your marriage is on the rocks you can always go to the prostitute. Whenever you are bored with your woman, tired of her, just to be refreshed you can go to the prostitute, and things will start flowing again with your own woman. The prostitute was a kind of holiday.
People think prostitution is against marriage; they are utterly wrong. Prostitution is the other side of the same coin: on one side it is marriage, on the other side it is prostitution. That’s why marriage has existed for at least five thousand years but people have not been able to get rid of prostitution – they cannot. There is a logical relationship, they are interdependent. If prostitution is simply stopped, marriages will start falling apart. The prostitute is like glue, she helps you to remain not bored with your woman. But both are based on the idea of property.
In China, for centuries, it was the rule that if a man killed his woman he wasn’t thought to be a murderer. He couldn’t be punished by the court because the woman was his property. It is your right to destroy your chair, or if you want to demolish your house it is nobody else’s business to interfere.
For centuries the woman has been thought of as property. In India, even the words are there – the woman is known as nari sampatti, the female property. When a girl is married, the father is said to give the girl as a gift, kanyadan. The woman has been treated as a thing. I am against it.
Who told Morarji Desai that I want women to be socialized? That must have been his inference, I have never said it. There is no need to socialize because that again will be treating women in an inhuman way.
That was the idea of Engels and Marx – because they were reactionaries; they were reacting against private property. So just as factories had to be nationalized, socialized and state owned, in exactly the same way, everything private should be owned by the society. They had this proposal that the woman should be owned by the society. Everything that was owned by people has to be owned by the state or by the society.
I am not a communist, I am an anti-communist. My whole approach is that the woman is not a thing, the woman is a human being, as much as Morarji Desai. Nobody needs to own anybody else. Neither the husband needs to own the woman, nor the woman needs to own the husband. The whole idea of ownership is ugly, violent, degrading. I have never said this.
But there are a thousand and one rumors in this country about me: what I say, what I am doing here. This seems to be really strange. These people never come here to see what is happening here. They go on believing in the rumors.
The first thing: the woman is different from the man, but not unequal. She has equal rights. The difference is there and the difference is beautiful and the difference should be maintained.
Now there is a tendency in the West to destroy the difference. And whenever something starts happening in the mind, it immediately affects the body. The Western woman is losing much femininity. The idea – particularly because of women’s lib – the idea is destroy differences, only then can you be equal. That’s nonsense.
You can be different and equal. The rose is different from the lotus, but they have equal right to be in the sun and to be in the wind and to be in the rain; they have an equal right to exist. They are different, and their difference is beautiful. It makes life rich, it gives variety.
Men and women are different, and they should remain different because that is the whole reason for their attraction to each other. If they become too much alike they will lose that attraction. They should be diametrically opposite, they should be as far away from each other as possible, so that the mystery continues and the desire to explore each other continues.
The Western woman is losing something. The Eastern woman is not yet a human being. She is thought to be property. People like Morarji Desai still go on thinking about women as property, private property. In the East the woman still remains a thing, a commodity to be sold purchased: either permanently, then it becomes marriage, or temporarily, then it is prostitution. The difference between prostitution and your so-called marriage is only of degrees – not of quality, only of quantity.
In the West, because of women’s lib, the idea is arising that the woman has to be just like the man, only then will she be equal. That’s again another foolishness. Equality need not be similarity. And if the woman becomes similar to the man she will lose all her charm, all her grace, all her beauty.
Even her body is adjusting and becoming more like a man’s. She is losing her curves, she is losing her softness and becoming a little hard. She is becoming aggressive, losing her receptivity, and she is pretending to be like a man. If the woman starts pretending to be like a man she will always remain a second-rate man. She can never become first rate, she will be a copy. How can a woman become a first-rate man? That is impossible. It is as impossible as a man trying to become a first-rate woman; he will just be a copy, an actor, a pretender. And all pretension is to be condemned.
The woman has to remain a woman. The woman has to keep her distance. The woman has to grow those differences because those differences are of immense value. It is on those differences the attraction depends; it is on those differences that the whole poetry of life exists. Those differences are the magnetic force. Bring men and women too close, too alike, too similar, and you will have destroyed something of immense value – the natural attraction will be gone.
I am neither for that, nor for the Eastern stupidity that the woman should be treated as a commodity. Why can’t men and women exist as friends, equal although utterly different? What is the need of there being either private property, a private ownership of women, or a social ownership? The very idea of ownership is wrong. Nobody can own anybody else.
If understanding grows in the world, parents will not even own their children. They shouldn’t, because the idea of ownership is dehumanizing. Children come through you, but you don’t own them, they are not your property. Love them because you have given birth to them, but don’t try to make them imitators. Don’t use and exploit them for your own ambitions. Don’t claim that they belong to you. They belong only to existence and nobody else.
You ask, “Morarji Desai said in an interview given to Sunday, ‘Osho puts emphasis on the socialization of women. Just as prostitutes are socialized, he wants women to be socialized.’”
That is utterly false, I have never said anything like that. And one hopes that a responsible person like the prime minister of a country would have a little more sense, would go into facts and see what I have said and what I have not said.
“He also said, ‘Osho goes even further and says that there is no need of marriage.’” That’s true; there is no need of marriage, friendship is enough. Marriage came into existence only because man was incapable of love and friendship. It was a poor substitute.
If you love somebody, there is no need to make it a legal contract. And a legal contract cannot make it a certainty that you will always love the person. The legal contract has no power over love. Marriage is a legal contract. It is ownership, private ownership. It is a license to own the woman. Just as you have dog licenses, it is a license that you are the owner. This simply shows that there is no love. Law comes in only when there is no love; otherwise, love is enough unto itself.
Love should be the primary phenomenon, and then you can be together. The togetherness should be a friendship and a responsibility. When two persons love each other they are responsible, they care for each other. No law is needed to create that caring and that responsibility; no law is capable of creating it, either. At the most, it can impose a certain formal structure on you which will destroy your love, your friendship.
As the society becomes more and more alert, and more and more conscious, as it is becoming every day, marriage is going to disappear. Instead of marriage there will be friendship. Just as in the past husband and wife were beautiful words, in the future girlfriend and boyfriend will take a very respectable place.
Meanwhile, because you have to live in a society you can go into marriage, but marriage should remain secondary. It should be only because you have loved each other; it should come out of your love, not vice versa. In the past it has been tried – first get married, and then love each other. That is impossible. Nobody can manage love; it is in nobody’s power to create love. It happens when it happens.
You can put two persons together… And that’s what has been done, down the ages. Marry two persons; they have to be together. When two persons are together they start liking each other, just as brothers like their sisters and sisters like their brothers. It is a forced arrangement. And when two persons are together, a liking, a certain kind of liking arises, and they depend on each other, they use each other. But love is a totally different affair.
If marriage comes first, there is almost no possibility of love ever happening. In fact, marriage was invented to prevent love because love is dangerous. It takes you to such high peaks of joy, ecstasy, romance, poetry that it is dangerous to the society to allow people to soar so high, to see something of the height and depth. If a person has known love, nothing will ever satisfy him. Then you cannot satisfy him just by giving him a big bank allowance, no. A big bank balance will not help. Now he knows something about real richness.
If a man has loved and lived those ecstatic moments, you will not be able to attract him toward power politics. Who cares? You will not be able to force him into ugly inhuman jobs. He would like to remain a poor man, but his love flowing. Once you kill love – and marriage is an effort to kill it – once you kill love, then the energy of the person that is no longer moving into love is available for the society to exploit.
You can make him a soldier and he will be a dangerous soldier. He will be ready to kill; any excuse, and he will be ready to kill or to be killed. He will be boiling with frustration, with anger. You can force him into any ambitious direction.
He will become a politician, he will become like Morarji Desai: his whole life thinking of only one thing – how to become the prime minister of the country. Now at the age of eighty-three he has become the prime minister. And just the other day I was reading in the newspapers that he has asked people to pray for his long life. Long life – still? Will you ever leave this poor country or not? Long life for himself and his colleagues so they can serve the country. Won’t you give the chance of serving the country to a few other people? Now, how long does he want to torture us?
These are the people who have not known love. Love frustrated becomes a great greed, love frustrated becomes great violence, love frustrated leads you into the worlds of ambition. Love frustrated is very destructive.
But the society needs destructive people. It needs great armies: it needs armies of politicians, it needs armies of clerks, stationmasters, etcetera, etcetera. It needs people who are ready to do anything because they have not known anything higher in life. They have never touched any poetic moment in their life. They can go on counting money their whole life and thinking this is all there is.
Love is dangerous. I would like that love becomes available to each and all. And if marriage happens at all, it should be a by-product of love and it should remain secondary. If love disappears one day, no hindrances should be created to dissolve the marriage. If two persons want to get married, both have to agree to it. But for divorce, even if one person wants to divorce, that should be enough reason. Two persons need not agree for divorce.
Right now, no hindrances are created for marriage. Any two fools can go to the registry office and get married. But a thousand and one hindrances are created for divorce. This is a very insane approach.
In my vision, all kinds of hindrances should be created when people are getting married. They should be told, “Wait for two years, live together for two years. And after two years, even if you still want to get married, come back.” People should be allowed to live together so that they can know what kind of people they are and whether they are suited or not, whether they mix or not, whether they can create a harmony in their life or not.
But anybody can go to the marriage office and get married, and nobody creates any disturbance. This is absurd. And when you want to get separated, then the whole court and the law and the police and everybody is there to prevent you. The society is for marriage and against divorce.
I am neither for marriage nor for divorce. In my vision there should be only a kind of friendship between people, a responsibility, a caring. And if that day is far away, then meanwhile marriage shouldn’t be allowed so easily. People should be given a chance to test each other, to live in all kinds of situations. Just out of a poetic vision, just out of a first sight love, marriage shouldn’t be allowed.
Let things cool down, let things become ordinary. Let them see whether they can manage with ordinary life, with day-to-day problems, and only then allow them to get married. That too should be temporary. Maybe every two years they have to come back to renew it; if they don’t come, it is finished. The license should be renewed every two years, and whenever they want to separate, no problem should be created. This is my attitude. I am not against marriage but I am for love. And love has to be the decisive factor.
“And he said, ‘Osho also advocates free sex.’ What do you say about it?” It is very difficult for Morarji Desai and people like him to understand what I am saying. What I am saying is really transcendence of sex. I am not teaching sex, I am teaching love. But in these people’s minds, love and sex make no difference. In their minds love means sex because they have not known love, they have only known sex.
Love and sex are far apart. Sex is a biological phenomenon, love is a human phenomenon. And what is the difference? Biologically, nature is interested in you so that you can reproduce, so life continues. Sex is a reproductory system. So in nature, sex has no other meaning, no other significance than reproduction. It is only man’s glory, his dignity and freedom, that sex is, by and by, becoming free from biological hangovers.
Sex is becoming play, fun, celebration. When sex becomes play, fun and celebration, it starts moving toward a new quality that is love. Love is not needed for reproduction. Love is an art like music, like poetry, like painting.
The difference is such – animals eat, man also eats; as far as eating is concerned there is no difference. But watch closely, whenever animals eat, they move into a place where nobody can see them eating because they are always afraid that the other may start taking something from their food. Animals eat alone.
It is only man who likes to eat with people, who invites people, who makes a celebration out of eating. That is new, that is something utterly new. It doesn’t exist in the animal world. Animals eat just to fulfill their bodily needs. Man brings some aesthetics to his eating habits. He will prepare the food, he will prepare it in beautiful shapes, and he will give beautiful colors to the food. And he will have manners. He will arrange the table, and the flavor, and the lights and the incense; and friends together, talking gossiping – music, and then he will eat. Now eating has taken a totally different turn. It has become an art.
Such is the case with sex. In animals it is only a reproductive phenomenon.
Morarji Desai’s guru, Mahatma Gandhi, used to say, “Make sexual contact only when you want to reproduce.” Now, that is animal, it is below human. He was thinking he was teaching something great, spiritual. That wasn’t spiritual at all. That is below human dignity. What he was teaching is utterly animalistic. He was saying that sex is allowed only when you want to reproduce a child, otherwise not. Then there is no possibility of love.
Love is the aesthetics of sex. Love is an effort to free it from its biological past. You love a woman, not because you are basically interested to produce a child; you love a woman for her own sake. You love a woman for the sheer joy of being with her; you love a man for the sheer joy of sharing your energy with him.
Sex may come into it, may not come into it. If love is there and the climate of love is there and sex comes into it, even sex is no longer ordinary sex. It is transformed by the love climate. But it is not necessarily so, that it should come. Two lovers can simply sit holding hands, looking at the full moon. There is no need of any sex to enter it necessarily. It is enough, it is immensely satisfying. Two lovers can read poems to each other, sing a song together, dance, hug, hold each other. Sex is not a necessity. If it happens, it is good. If it does not happen, there is no hankering for it to happen.
Love is its own fulfillment. Love is going higher than sex. I teach love. And if you know love, you will slowly, slowly, start moving beyond sex.
Mahatma Gandhi had no vision of love, and Morarji Desai has learned all that he knows from Mahatma Gandhi. He has no vision of love. I don’t think he has ever loved anybody; I don’t think he has known anything of love. All that he knows is ambition, greed, power politics.
He must have known sex because he has reproduced children. But that sex must have been something ugly, animalistic, mechanical, just for the sake of reproduction. He has been so much against any human warmth and contact that he even advised Mahatma Gandhi, his guru…
Mahatma Gandhi, in his old age, used to walk with two girls, one on each side, just for support. He would put his hands on those two girls’ shoulders and walk. He used to call them his walking sticks.
You will be surprised that Morarji Desai brags about this very much. He says that he even advised Mahatma Gandhi, “This is not right, you shouldn’t touch women. And you shouldn’t walk with girls, your hands on their shoulders; it is not good.” Now, this man knows nothing of human warmth. This man is constantly obsessed with sex. He has known only very, very rudimentary animal sex in his life.
And he goes on projecting his ideas on me. I am not teaching free sex, I am teaching love. Love certainly brings sex to a higher plane; it helps sex to move beyond biology toward spirituality.
And then there is one step more. If you go on loving, nonpossessive love, without becoming each other’s property; if your love goes on growing in deep friendship, accepting the other as the other is, without making any demands how he should be, without becoming each other’s dominators; if your love goes on growing into friendship, prayer arises.
In love, sometimes sex will be a part. In prayer, sex will disappear completely. Love is the bridge between sex and prayer. Don’t get stuck on the bridge, go beyond sex.
But all going beyond is always going through. Hence I say don’t reject sex, otherwise you will never be able to know love. Transform sex, don’t reject it. Anything rejected remains hanging around you like a lodestone. Morarji Desai is just a male chauvinistic, traditionalist, obscurantist, fascist.

The fifth question:
Osho,
Is it necessary to communicate in detail a problem I had, which I in my mind have already turned over to you as my loving master, for help and guidance?
Can I now consider it your problem rather than mine?
Subuddha, you absolutely can trust me. Forget all about your problem, I have taken it. It may raise its head again and again. You will have to constantly remember that you have given it to me, that you are not to think about it any longer, any more, that it has nothing to do with you.
And if you can do this with this problem you will be able to find a key. Then you can do it with all your problems. Problems are never solved. They are always dissolved. They are not worth solving either; one has to go beyond them. And this is the way to go beyond them.
This is one of essential parts of adab; surrender your problems to your master and forget about them. Then you are finished; then it is none of you business.
And remember, it is not that it becomes my problem. I don’t know even what your problem is. And it is not that I will be troubled by your problem and I will worry about it and I will lose my sleep over it – nothing! I am just an excuse so that you can drop your problem. By dropping it, you go beyond it. In that very dropping, something happens in you. In that very dropping, trust happens, intelligence happens. In that very dropping, the energy that was getting hooked in the problem is released. You become more vital, you pulsate with new energy, and you can rise higher.
Problems are never solved, but one can go beyond them. And when one has gone beyond them they are no longer material, they are irrelevant.
I am just an excuse; I don’t do a thing. But you can do miracles through me. And Subuddha can do it, he has that quality. It is not in everybody’s capacity to do it, but I have looked in Subuddha’s eyes and I have felt it, that he knows how to surrender.
I am not asking for your money to be surrendered to me. I am simply asking, “Surrender your problems to me, surrender all your diseases to me, surrender all your pathologies to me.” And in that very surrendering you will be unburdened, you will be free.

The last question:
Osho,
You say unenlightened persons cannot be compared. But I compare and evaluate myself constantly with other people. I feel this constantly brings clouds and a distance between them and myself. What can be done about it?
I have said that unenlightened persons cannot be compared because they are utterly different from each other. Their histories are different, their biographies are different, their pasts are different. They have moved through different terrains, different lives, in different ways; their karmas are different. They cannot be compared. It will be like comparing a stone with a roseflower, or a roseflower with a star. People are so different from each other, they cannot be compared.
Only enlightened persons can be compared because they are no longer different at all, because they are no more. Emptiness can have only one taste. When two rooms are utterly empty, what is there to compare? They are so alike. If you want to compare, you can compare; you can say both are empty. Otherwise there is nothing to compare. When both the rooms are full of different furniture and paintings, there is much to compare; they are different.
The unenlightened person is utterly unique, there is nobody like him. He has his own pathology, his own neurosis, and nobody else has it. You can compare in a way.
Two enlightened persons are so alike, you can compare that they are alike. But the paradox has to be understood. Two enlightened persons are so alike, how will you compare them? And the other side of the paradox: two unenlightened persons are so unalike that the mind tends to compare them. One has this much money, the other has more. One has this quality, the other has something else; the temptation is there to compare.
Where does the temptation to compare come from? It comes from your own ego. You are constantly comparing where you are on the scale. Somebody is poorer than you and you feel good, and somebody is richer than you and you feel bad. Seeing the poor man you feel very good. Sometimes out of that feeling you may even like to help the poor man a little bit. Seeing the rich man you feel jealous, you feel very bad, hurt. Seeing the rich man a great desire arises in you how to become that rich, how to prove yourself. And it is a multidimensional phenomenon.
You see an ugly man and you feel good, and you see a beautiful man and you feel bad; it is a constant comparing because the ego can exist only between this comparison. If you drop this comparison, if you simply say, “I am what I am, and they are what they are,” then the ego will immediately lose its roots in you. Then it cannot exist. It exists between inferiority and superiority. This has to be understood.
Ego is sandwiched between inferiority and superiority, it is a thin layer between the two. And because it is sandwiched between inferiority and superiority it is constantly in trouble, misery and tension. Everybody is sandwiched.
If you watch yourself, you will always see who is behind you and who is ahead of you, and that you are sandwiched. The person who is behind you is trying to get ahead of you, so he has to be stopped. And the person who is ahead of you is trying to go still further ahead; he has to be stopped too. You have to get ahead, and you have to gain speed, and you have to put more energy into conflict and competition.
This is how the whole world of ego continues. Watch and see the ways of the ego and then it is not very difficult to drop it. Just seeing it, understanding it, your grip loosens. What is the point? There are millions of people in the world. If you go on comparing with everybody, your whole life will remain just miserable.
Somebody has beautiful eyes, and you don’t have, and somebody has something else, and you don’t have. And both ways it is bad. When somebody has not something and you have, then too it is bad, then too it puffs your ego. And the puffed ego becomes very sensitive, very touchy, anybody can hurt it.
You ask me, “You say unenlightened persons cannot be compared.” In a way they cannot be compared because they are unique. In a way they can be compared because their uniqueness only consists of quantitative differences. Enlightened people can be compared in a way because they are all alike, and they cannot be compared because they are so alike.
If you understand me rightly, comparison as such is meaningless. It is meaningless with unenlightened people, it is meaningless with enlightened people. Comparison itself is wrong, and the comparing mind is an egoistic mind.
Just go inside – because when you compare you have to go outside, you have to focus on others. Just go inside and see who you are. Uncomparing, just see who you are. Just see what your reality is, not in reference to somebody else.
You are something authentic in your own right. Why not see it? Why compare? Comparison will give you a false identity, and that false identity is what is called ego.
When the false has been dropped, the real arises. And that real is incomparable because the real is not any self, it is open sky.

They tell the story of the rich old man who picked up a young girl and took her to his penthouse apartment. It was a very hot summer night and eventually they reached the bed, which had been his original objective.
Unfortunately he had figuratively bitten off more than he could chew, and while lying on top of her, with the sweat pouring off his face, nothing else was happening. Finally the beautiful young girl impatiently reached behind her and extracted from her pillow a large feather and proceeded to brush his head with it.
The old man exclaimed, “What the hell are you doing? I am having enough trouble as it is!”
She looked up sweetly and murmured, “Well, comparatively speaking, I am beating your brains out!”

The mind is continuously thinking in comparisons, it is constantly comparing. Mind lives in relativity, mind is a by-product, an epiphenomenon of relativity. And you are not part of relativity; you are something beyond Albert Einstein’s world of relativity. You are neither time nor space, you are something beyond – you are the witness. And the witness is not confined by any time and space, the witness is beyond all relativity. The witness is absolutely there; its existence is absolute.
Albert Einstein says there is nothing like an absolute. He is true as far as science is concerned, but he is wrong because he has not looked withinward.
Outside, all is relative; inside, nothing is relative. Outside, everything is moving; inside, nothing is moving. Outside, everything is flux; inside, everything is eternity. But he has not looked inside, he has not looked at the center of the cyclone.

Have you heard the old story of the little ten-year-old boy who went to the zoo with his mother? When they came to the elephant, the little boy asked his mother what was hanging from the elephant.
“That’s its tail, son,” replied the mother.
“No, the other thing hanging,” said the kid.
“That’s his trunk,” said the mother.
“No, the other thing that is hanging,” insisted the little boy.
“It’s nothing, son, nothing at all,” replied the embarrassed mother.
A few weeks later, the little boy went to the circus with his father and when they came to the elephant, the kid started with his father.
“What’s that hanging from the elephant?” asked the boy.
“Its tail, son,” replied the father.
“No, the other thing,” asked the son.
“That’s his trunk, son.”
“No, the other thing hanging from the elephant,” the son persisted.
“Well, son, I think by now you are old enough to know.” And the father began to explain the facts of life to him. When he had finished, the kid turned to his father and said, “How come when I asked mother what it was, she said it was nothing at all?”
“Well, my son,” said the father, “your mother just happens to be a little spoiled.”

You get it? That’s how the mind continues to compare and compare and compare.
Drop comparisons and just be. Just see that which is, not in reference to something else. And once you have looked within yourself and seen that which is, without any reference to anything else, you will be surprised how much you have been missing. Then open your eyes and look at things without any comparison.
A roseflower does not have to be compared with other roseflowers, it exists in its own right. It has no reference to any other rose that has been on the earth or will ever be on the earth. It is individual, authentically individual. Then look at each person as authentically individual. And then life looks so rich, infinitely rich, because it consists of tremendous uniquenesses.
Our comparison dulls our mind, our comparison gathers dust on the mirror of our consciousness. Drop this old habit of comparing. But the start has to be done inside. Old habits die hard, but if you become alert they can be dropped.
It will take a little time, but as the habit starts disappearing, you will start entering the world of reality, which is noncomparative. And the world that is noncomparative is the world of the absolute, the world of God. That’s what we are searching for here.
Science searches for the world of relativity, religion for the world of the absolute.
Enough for today.

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