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‌CHAPTER 3

13 December 1975 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[The first sannyasin Osho addressed had sent him a letter earlier saying that she was in a deep loving relationship with her husband, but at the same time she felt attracted to someone else.]

Two things to remember. The first: love grows only in deep intimacy and trust. If you change persons, from A to B, from B to C, it is as if you are transplanting your being from one place to another. You will never grow roots. And the tree will grow fragile and weak. To gain strength, deep roots are needed; and to gain roots, time is needed. And for love even eternity is not enough. Even eternity is not enough, remember, because love can grow and grow and grow – and there is no end to it. There is a beginning, but there is no end.

So don’t take love as a superficial thing. It is not just a relationship. Through love, your whole being has to be discovered. It is sacred, but in the West it has become very profane; it has almost lost the meaning. It has become more and more sexual and bodily, very superficial and casual. In fact I am afraid that the West may lose the very dimension of love. People may completely forget that there was a possibility of inner endless growth in it.

If it is a question of excitement, then it is good to change partners. Then you are more excited and your partner is something to discover. With an old partner everything is known and settled; the whole territory is known. One starts feeling a little fed up, a little bored. This is natural. But if you love the person, you love even the boredom. If you love the person, you also love even his old habits, the old ways, the old territory. Old things have a charm of their own, mm? Just the old armchair you sit on – it has something that no other chair can give, it fits perfectly. Not only that you know it, it also knows you.

There is a familiarity in the old room in which you have lived, the old house. there is a certain affinity, a certain tuning, so that by and by you are not two separate things. You have melted into each other

and have become one, and the boundaries have become blurred. With new things, boundaries are very shy and the separation is very clear. Old things have their charm, but one has to discover it.

Only children are interested in new things. The more grown up you are, the more interested you are in the old things, and the less one is bored. Then you go on finding that these are just levels, layers; that when you love a person one layer has been known – but don’t conclude that that is all. A deeper layer is waiting to be provoked and challenged – and there is no end to it. In fact the person himself is not aware how many layers of being he has. If a lover challenges his being, not only the lover will know, the person himself will come to know his being – and only through love. we come to know each other when we challenge each other, and go on provoking each other.

So try to find out new was with the old person – and you will never be at a loss. Once you know the key of how to always discover a new layer, then the old person is never old. Or, he is old and yet new. then you are not bored or fed up. then by and by roots grow.

A point comes in deep love where the lover and the beloved almost become one. I say almost, because the bodies remain separate; but they come to feel a harmony. Now even new research shows that if two persons have loved each other very long, they need not say anything to each other. If a thought arises in one person, it is immediately transferred to the other. Old lovers don’t say much but they understand. By and by lovers become twins, mm?

So love is a great adventure, it is not a casual thing. It is a life commitment – and if you can understand, it is a commitment for lives, not only for one life.

Because of Christianity and Judaism and Mohammedanism – and these three religions have become very important in the West – the concept of rebirth has been lost. But if you love a person very deeply in this life, you will find him in the next life again. There are recorded phenomena about the same couple being born again and again for many lives, going on discovering each other.

So let love be your meditation. Make it a sacred thing, not a casual phenomenon. Let it be a challenge. Each challenge is painful because each growth is painful. So for six months you have to make love your meditation. Forget that anybody else exists except your lover. And see what happens in these six months.

If someday some idea arises about somebody – because mind goes on thinking; it is a betrayal of the inner spirit, it is a renegade, a Judas – don’t repress it, because repression is not going to help. Each night, whenever you have any desire, any erotic desire arising, for half an hour close the eyes and let that desire have full play in fantasy. Whatsoever you want to do, do in fantasy. Don’t condemn it; it is natural, just human. Devote that half hour completely to it so that it is finished with.

Soon you will start seeing the whole game of the mind, and within six months all ideas of other persons will disappear from the mind. And when that happens, for the first time you will know what love is. Up to now you have only heard the word, mm? So six months. And then every month you go on reporting how things are going. Good, Anupama.

[A sannyasin says she has a tension like a ‘greed for God’ and cannot accept her stupidity.]

Nothing is to be done. They are needed, they are fun! If you are not stupid at all and you become completely wise, life will be too burdened. A little foolishness is good so that one can enjoy also. And every great man... it is not that he has dropped foolishness, he has used it. He has transformed it into his wisdom.

Nothing has to be dropped and nothing has to be cut away, otherwise you will always remain a fragment, you will never be whole. That stupid pa] t is also you. And who is condemning it? It is the ego. In fact the stupid part is more natural than this ego which goes on condemning and saying that this part is stupid and to drop it.

Don’t be serious – there is no need, no need. And whether you accept yourself or not, you are you. Your rejection doesn’t make any change. It only makes you miserable, that’s all. If you accept, you can dance and be happy and celebrating. If you don’t accept, you become serious and tense. So the real question is not whether to accept or not, but whether you want to be happy or unhappy.

Once Diogenes, who had become a hundred years old, was asked by somebody why he was always happy and what was his secret. He said, ‘Every morning when I get up I have two alternatives – to be happy or not to be happy. I always choose to be happy!’

What is the point in being miserable! And this is the most important thing: if you are happy you start changing. Happiness is the only alchemy in the world. It is the only secret of transformation; there is no other. Unhappy people never change, and because they don’t change they become more unhappy.

Happy people continuously change, and because they change they become more and more happy; and then more and more change is possible. Why do I say that happiness is the only alchemy? It is because in happiness you are flowing, your energy is not frozen; it is not blocked. You have an inner dance of energy, a dynamic energy, that is needed for transformation. When you are unhappy you are dull, solid, rock-like; nothing is flowing, everything is frozen. How can you change?

So don’t be serious! This is one of the pitfalls for people who are searching for God. People who are searching for God are almost always serious people. Non-serious people don’t get interested in God – and they are the right persons to find Him! They are so much involved in life, in love, in enjoying small things – ‘eat, drink, be merry’ – they are moving in the world, mm? They don’t go to the temple or to church – it seems too serious and seems to belong to death and not to life.

And they are the right people, the festive people, who can attain to God. But this is the misfortune – that they never become interested. The people who become interested are always depressed, sad, blocked. They are people who have missed their lives somehow: egoists, moralists, puritans, all sorts of ill people. They get into the church, and because of them God cannot enter the church. I can understand God’s difficulty, because what can you do with serious people – they will kill you!

God is where life is, where the dance is still happening and the flowers blossoming, the rivers flowing, and the world of stars. He is there – in life. God is life. You can forget the word ‘god’ and nothing will be lost – ‘life’ is enough. And when I say ‘life’ I don’t mean life with a capital ‘L’, no; just a lower case ‘l’ will do. Just a simple life, not even with a capital L. That life is God.

So this is a problem, and this is the problem I have to face every day. I would like you to be happy and merry and cheerful. I would like you to be madly in love with life, because that is the only way one knows what God is. When you are lost in love and life, you have found Him. When you are too serious in the mind, and after Him too much, you can go on chasing Him but you will never find Him – because you are not the right person. He will not want to meet you. (Radha laughs) Your company will be too serious.

God has always been avoiding the saints, and He has done well to avoid them. So don’t be a saint! Even if you are a sinner it is okay. But be happy, because a happy man cannot sin. By and by the happiness transforms. You may be a saint, but if you are unhappy you are already committing the greatest sin that one can commit – the sin of being unhappy. A person who is unhappy will tend to make others unhappy. You can give to others only that which you have.

So drop all this nonsense! If you want to be religious, drop all religion. And if you want some day to know what God is, forget all about Him – life is enough. Be more festive, mm? And there is nothing to it – just a simple understanding. So start being happy from this very moment, right? (Radha smiled tentatively)

And that is why I am not allowing you into the ashram yet. When I see that you are really dancing and happy I will allow you, otherwise you will have to wait outside the gate a little longer, mm? You know that is the barrier – because I am afraid of serious people. (Osho laughed with the group.) They can come and destroy the whole thing that I am trying to create.

I don’t think that you are naturally a serious person. There are people who are born ill, who are born serious. It is very difficult for them to drop it. But for you, I don’t see any problem. You can simply get out of it as one gets out of the clothes, that’s all. You be yourself, and don’t bother with seriousness. Good, Radha. From this very moment, mm?

[A sannyasin asked Osho about the nature of epilepsy, from which she had been suffering for several years. She only had attacks – and only of two minutes duration – when she was asleep.

She added that the fits left her feeling rather strange and empty]

... don’t be worried; it will disappear by and by. There is nothing wrong in it. Try and make it a meditation. Just do one thing: every night when you go to sleep, just repeat three times that whenever it is going to happen, it will be tremendously peaceful and silent and blissful. That’s all. And next time when it happens, something of meditation will have entered into it and there will be a change. Epileptic fits and ecstatic fits are similar: the mechanism is the same, only the quality is different.

Ramkrishna used to have fits. Doctors diagnosed that they were epileptic and that he was going insane. Had he been in the West he would have immediately been given electric shocks and been put into a mental asylum. You have the fit for only two minutes. He used to sometimes have a fit for six hours, and once he remained unconscious for eighteen hours.

In India we know that the symptom is the same as in epilepsy, but that the person is only unconscious in the body – deep inside the consciousness is there and he is perfectly peaceful.

Next time it happens you will have a very ecstatic and blissful experience – deep silence and calm. And those two minutes will give you a tremendous insight into your being.

But use the same words every night and in the same order, so the mind doesn’t get confused. Next time it will be beautiful, it will not be a disease anymore, mm?

[A sannyasin who runs a centre in the West says he is always being told to cut his hair] Mm, don’t cut it.

[The center leader adds: ... when I work in the centre, I often feel difficulties both working and meditating... I work much]

No, you work much. Working is never bad, and one can never work too much, never. We never work too much.

... We never work as much as we can, we never work to the maximum potential. In fact, at the most, people work fifteen percent of their potential – and those are the very hard workers.

As I see it, you are not working more than seven or eight percent. The more you work, the more you are capable of working. The less you work, the less you become capable of working. Life has its own logic.

Jesus says,‘If you have, more will be given to you. If you don’t have, even that which you have will be taken away from you.’ If you work hard you will get more energy. If you don’t work hard, if you don’t work at all and you avoid it, even the energy that you have will disappear. So whatsoever you want to do, do it, and do it to the optimum. And soon you will see that more and more doors are opening, and more energy becomes available.

Always try to reach more than you can grasp; always try to reach beyond your grasp. That is how one grows. If you always try that which you can do, you will always fall flat on the earth – you will not he growing. Try the impossible and it becomes possible. And if you don’t try the possible, even that will become impossible.

There is a time to work, a certain age limit where you can work hard. If you have worked hard at that age, in your remaining life the glow of work remains with you. If you miss that time, then you miss the glow. Then you simply repent that you missed the time when you could have worked hard. People who have been really working have a different type of energy in their old age – a glow, something, as if a light is burning inside. They may not be working then, but you know that they have earned a rest and now they can relax. Relaxation has to be earned.

So do whatsoever you can do right now, because right now you have energy, mm?

[The center leader answers: I find it difficult to work and meditate each day. I find it easier to work a lot, then spend some time meditating.]

You don’t understand the mechanism. In fact, one should continuously change, because the brain has many centres.

For example, if you do mathematics, then a certain part of the brain functions and the other parts rest. Then you read poetry: then that part that was functioning in mathematics rests and another part starts functioning.

That’s why in universities and schools we change periods – forty minutes, forty-five minutes – because each centre of the brain has a capacity to function for forty minutes. Then it feels tired and needs a rest, and the best rest is to change the work – so that some other centre starts working and one relaxes. So continuous change is very very good; it enriches you.

I understand the difficultyYou do a thing and the mind becomes obsessed, you go mad after it.

But that’s bad; one should not become so possessed. while doing it, become absorbed, but always remain a master; otherwise you will become a slave. and slavery is not good. Even slavery to God, to meditation, is not good. If you can’t stop doing a certain thing, or you only stop very reluctantly, that simply shows that you don’t know how to change gears in the mind.

So do one thing:: whenever you are doing something.for example, you are meditating and now

you want to do something else. then after you stop meditating for five minutes simply exhale deeply, as possible. Then let the body inhale, don’t you inhale. Have a feeling that you are throwing out everything that was in the mind and in the body and in the system. Just five minutes, then start doing some other work, and immediately you will feel you have changed.

You need the neutral gear for five minutes, mm? If you change gear in a car, the gear has to first move to neutral – even if just for a single moment, but it has to move. The more efficient the driver, the faster he can move from neutral. So give five minutes to the neutral gear. You are not working at anything – just breathing, just being. Then by and by you go on dropping: after one month, four minutes; after two months, three minutes.

Then by and by there will come a point where just one exhalation is enough and you are finished with the work – closed, a full stop – and then you start other work. You try this, and next time you come you will be perfectly okay.

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