2 Play, Don\'t Proselytise

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‌CHAPTER 2

Play, Don’t Proselytise

2 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin asks if Osho can help his father understand his taking sannyas because he is suffering over it.]

You can help him but his understanding cannot be guaranteed. If somebody wants to suffer then there is no way to help. If he is really that much closed – that he thinks only the thing he thinks is sane and everything else is insane – then he deserves suffering; he is earning it. This kind of attitude is bound to create trouble. A mind who is open does not suffer because he can see alternatives and he is always ready to look at things in a different and new way. But if a mind is closed then nobody else is responsible; the suffering is his own responsibility.

But I am not saying to make him suffer. I’m saying to try everything that you can, but still if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen, and you have to go on your own way. He has suffered enough. If you learn his way you will suffer also. Learn a lesson from him. Whenever you see a man suffering, remember that he must have lived wrongly.

Ordinarily we think others have made him suffer – that is not right; nobody can make anybody suffer. You can kill me but you cannot make me suffer; that is impossible. You can throw me in gaol – that is possible – but you cannot make me suffer. Suffering is my creation: only I can create or uncreate it; nobody else can do anything about it. And so is the case with happiness. You cannot make me happy. You can force me into heaven but you cannot make me happy. Happiness is my own creation, my own freedom. I can remain unhappy even in heaven.

If he has suffered too much he needs all the compassion and all the love that you can muster. But always remember that he must have lived wrongly. He must have remained a closed mind. He must

have lived in such a way that he cannot allow other possibilities, alternatives, other people, other philosophies, other religions, other standpoints, other styles. Then he suffers. A man suffers when he wants to impose his idea on the whole world – and it is not possible; then suffering comes. If he really loves you he will give you freedom. This is your life, you have to choose your path. You have to choose what you would like to be and what you would not like to be. If you start choosing, even if he feels that it doesn’t look right to him, he will only explain his idea to you but will not condemn you. Because who knows in the final analysis who is right – he or you? One thing is certain – that your life is yours, his life is his. You should not interfere in his life, in his prayer, in his meditations, in his ways; he should not interfere in your life.

But parents have always been of the opinion that they are allowed to interfere in their children’s lives. That is a very non-democratic idea, very dictatorial. Parents have committed crimes against children because of this idea. They think: ‘It is my kid and I can do anything I want to do. My kid has to be my kid. If I am a jew, he has to be a jew; if I am a christian he has to be christian.’ Why? He is a jew; that is more than enough! Now let you choose your own way. If you choose to be a jew that’s perfectly good, but if you don’t then your desire has to be respected. People who don’t respect others’ desires suffer, but the responsibility is theirs. I will help you; you can help him.

Don’t be arrogant, don’t argue with him... because his ideas may have settled. He has lived his life and has become settled, and it is very difficult to unsettle again, to start thinking that something like sannyas can be sane. That will create anxiety in his mind. He has settled, he has become of a particular opinion, he has chosen a way. Even if he has suffered it is his way, familiar, he is acquainted with it. No need to argue with him; his ego won’t allow that. Parents have great egos; they cannot listen to their children. Even if the children bring the right message they cannot listen.

Even Joseph didn’t listen to Jesus. The parental ego is strong. They think they know. They have lived, experienced life. What do you know? You are just young; you have to see many things... that idea. So no need to argue with him, no need to be aggressive. Just say very humbly that something has happened to you. Just try to explain what has happened with no arrogance, with no effort to convince him and no effort to convert him. There is no need... there is no need to disturb him.

But let him feel your joy... not your philosophy but your joy, which will be of great help. Let him feel your silence. Let him feel that you have changed, that something has started growing in you which was not there before. Let him watch and see and feel. So this will be your task; to be more meditative, silent, restful, laughing, loving... and only that can help him, nothing else.

If he sees that you are happy, then of course a father is happy. Even if he thinks that you are going a little berserk, it’s okay; f you are happy, it is good. He may think that it is a little eccentric, moving in orange in israel, mm? – the last place to move in orangeIn California it is okay!

He will feel a little that something has gone wrong, but if he sees that you are really happy then he will not interfere. Only your happiness, your silence and maybe, who knows? – one never knows. He may become interested and he may start asking what you are doing and what has happened to you.

So take a few books, mm? particularly books on hassids. I have spoken on hassidism; that book will be helpful. That’s why I go on speaking on different religions. Different kinds of parents have to be helped! I take their children away and of course they feel angry!

And come back! Good!

[Osho explains deva means divine, and vimlan means freshness – divine freshness.] And that is the quality to be remembered, to be imbibed.

Freshness is destroyed by thoughts, by the past hanging around you. It is the dust of the past that keeps people unfresh and dull. It is as if the mirror is completely covered with dust and it cannot reflect. Come out of the past more and more, destroy bridges between you and the past, cut your roots with the past. It is painful but it is immensely enrichening too, because once your roots are removed from the past they will start entering the present and the future.

If a person is very well-rooted in the past then there is no need for roots to seek new sources of energy, new nourishment in the present and the future. Why bother? When a person is well-rooted in the past life becomes a kind of non-adventure. One lives because one has to live, but it is more like a dragging... not a joy, not a thrill, not that something incredible is waiting for you there. Time passes by, one goes on and on and dies, but not with a song in the heart. The song arises only out of the unknown, out of the possible. That which can surprise you, only that can bring a song to you.

So one has to work continuously to uproot oneself from the past. And this is a constant work; it cannot be stopped. You cannot say that you have done enough; now you will not bother. No, it has to be done every day. If you don’t clean the dust even for just one day, the mirror will be covered by dust. Just as every day you take a bath in the morning and in the evening, one has to continuously clean oneself of the past only then does freshness remain alive. And when freshness is alive, god is very close. There is nothing hindering you and god; there is no wall between you and god. When one is absolutely fresh one is divine.

That’s why sometimes early in the morning a rose flower with the night dew still on it has some beauty that is not of this earth, has something divine and sacred about it. It is not the rose flower really, but the freshness, that morning freshness, that glistening dew on it, those new, fresh sunraysAll that

together and on the young rose the petals are just opening. You can feel the sacredness around it... you can feel the shrine, the temple. And that’s how one should exist – like a fresh rose flower.

Prem means love and wasi means a pool, a lake: a lake of love, a pool of love. That you have to becomeand that is lacking somewhere, that is missing somewhere. Somehow you have managed

to be completely dryand you are making great efforts to manage it!

Relax! There is no need to protect oneself that way. It will harden you more and more, will make you stiff and will create a desert in your heart. You can become the spring! And that is the whole message of sannyas: turning people into springs.

[A sannyasin returning to the West says he does not know when he will return, maybe in the spring, because the lady he is in love with, has her roots there.]

The best thing will be if you can send the lady just for two, three weeks, so I can break her roots. Otherwise bring her in the spring, mm?...

Mm? then I will do something. Nothing to worry about. She is going to come here. There is nothing in America to have roots there for!...

Just let her come here once and then she will have the right perspective of things. You are going to be part of my family here; that is already decided. It is not something that you have to decide or anything. It is not a problem to be solved: it is already decided.…

I will need you there and you will be a great help – and so will your lady. Bring her too.…

I know! Keep this (a box) with you. Whenever you need me just put it on your heart. And this box will be helpful. Just put it under the pillow of your lady and it will help. It is a magic box: it does miracles!

[An older sannyasin who was in the Tantra group says that he has not been so much interested in sex because of the troubles involved in love affairs. But now he is meeting so many nice sannyasins he feels more interested in sex, but at his time of life, his body is not really wanted it.]

I understand. Mm mm.… One: up to now societies have been so much against sex – religions and churches all against it – that they have created a very very unconscious hatred. You may not be aware of it consciously, you may not see it anywhere in your mind so that you can detect it. It has gone to the very roots of the body, to the very gut level, because it has been for centuries that people have been taught to be against sex. One thing: that hatred has to be dropped, that hate and condemnation has to be dropped, and that can only be dropped if you start learning a reverence for sex.

Sex is holy, because it is the deepest thing that can happen between two persons. It is the deepest phenomenon that is possible between two beings; it is the deepest communion. We can talk through words; that is a kind of communication. That is the most superficial – verbal – and sexual is the most deep, and all other communications are somewhere in between.

So a great reverence has to be developed. That is the tantra vision: reverence for life, reverence for everything that life implies, particularly sex because it is sex that life comes out of. Each cell of the body is a sexual cell. The whole celebration around us is a sexual celebration. Flowers are sexual, the song of the bird is sexual and all that is beautiful is sexual. But the word ‘sex’ has become very very condemned. The moment you use the word something inside you becomes antagonistic; the very word has become loaded. I am not saying to force sex on yourself, but whenever it happens have a very very holy, full-of-reverence attitude towards it. The woman that you love, think of her as a goddess; think of her as a medium between you and god.

And there is no need to force sex, because at your age you are no more capable of forcing sex so many times. There is no need to either, and forcing is ugly, but whenever it happens go into it as if you are moving into meditation and prayer.

No need to manipulate, no need to prove anything. If it doesn’t happen it is perfectly good; if it happens it is perfectly good. But let it happen; don’t force it, don’t make it happen. Otherwise if you make it happen you will feel tired, you will feel a little frustrated; your body will not feel good about it. And then those old ideas in the mind – that it is something wrong – Will become more strong: ‘Look, the body is feeling frustrated.’

That will be strengthening a wrong attitude. So don’t force it. And if you try to force it, sometimes you will feel that you don’t have that energy. Then too one feels very very hurt, humiliated. Then it is better not to go into it, because why go into humiliation ? Never force it; if it happens once in a while on its own, it is perfectly beautiful. Go into it as if you are entering into a temple. Sex, once experienced as sacred, becomes the door to the divine. And that approach changes its very quality. Then it is no more sexual because it is no more cerebral.

Sex in the head is pathological. And repression does exactly that. My slogan is: from repression to reverence. First sexuality – that is, thinking about sex – disappears, and then one day sex itself disappears. Then and only then does love arise. Love is the revolution. Love is the philosopher’s stone.

And the second thing: you are right – all over the world and down the ages, sex has become involved with co many things. It is true that the trouble is more than the joy of it. So many people simply decide not to be bothered with it because it creates so many anxieties, problems, conflicts which are not worth the trouble. And on the whole it doesn’t seem to give anything; it seems pointless. It seems to be a kind of masochism: as if in the name of sex and love you create miseries for yourself.

Sex has been corrupted by the priests and politicians. Its innocence has been destroyed. Its joy has been poisoned. This is the greatest calamity that has happened to this unfortunate species called mankind. I want to give sex back its joy and its innocence and its spontaneity. My whole effort here is to make sex pure again. Nothing foreign should be involved in it: no jealousy, no ego, no expectations. It should be a pure phenomenon: two persons in that moment feeling that they would like to communicate on a deeper level, that’s all. No obligation, no duty, no commitment through it.

Sex should be playful and prayerful. That is what I mean by purity. By purity I do not mean anything moral. God forbid! It is morality that has made it impure in the first place. Sex is and should be amoral. And it will help both. Sex free from morality will be joyous, healthy and whole, and morality freed from sex will be sane and reasonable and rational and practical.

The commitment has destroyed the whole beauty of it. Now humanity has come to the point where commitments can be dropped and sex can become a simple joy, a very simple joy. Not that because you love the woman you have to marry her, or the woman has to marry you because she has made love to you. Not that now you have to be parents, you have to bring children into the world. Not that now you have to manage a house, that now you have to look at the financial problems. Those things have destroyed the very joy of it. The cost is too much.

And that’s why people have lost enthusiasm for it: it asks too much, the price is too much. And the price has been made too great because the people who have managed this society were against sex. Power-seekers are almost always against Joy. That’s why they seek power! Power is a substitute for love. Because they could not get love they want to get attention. And power- seekers are pathological. Unless one is insane there is no reason why one should seek power. These people are miserable and they cannot tolerate anybody else being blissful either.

Power-seekers don’t allow sex just as fun. They know in what way it is a basic need. It can be exploited for many things – for society, for family, for politics, and this and that; it can be exploited for many things. And it is such a basic need that people will have to agree, they will have to pay

the price, whatsoever it is. Knowing the need of it the politicians and the priests have exploited it immensely.

They have made sex such a serious phenomenon while in fact it is the most non-serious thing. It is fun! It is god’s gift to enjoy and celebrate. It is participating in the great festival that existence is. But the so-called leaders are all against it. Even to say that sex is fun is to provoke their anger. Sex is subversive to them. Sex is dangerous to them.

Mahatma Gandhi used to say that unless you want to produce a child don’t make love. If you make love and you don’t want to produce a child then it is sin. Now these so-called mahatmas are the people who have destroyed all the joy of humanity.

Mahatma Gandhi was a workaholic; he was addicted to work. His vision of life was that of a businessman. Everything has to be productive – even love! There is no place for play in his perverted philosophy of life. Life is not an end unto itself but always a means to something else. This kind of teaching has reduced the whole of humanity to a nervous breakdown... it drives people neurotic.

Here it will be different because my whole effort is by and by to bring people to a point where life becomes a play, not a serious affair. And then there can really be bliss and benediction. One goes one day beyond sex – it is true – but one goes beyond it only when one has known its fun, its joy, and transcended it. I don’t believe in any inhibitions; there are not to be any. Even if you find some taboos around me still, sooner or later... I’m working hard, mm? – within two, three years, inhibitions and taboos will be gone and people will be simply enjoying.

Sex should be as simple as a handshake, a hug. It is a hug! It should not have any other implications; it should not demand anything else. It is enough unto itself, it is an end unto itself. That’s what I mean when I say to have reverence for it.

Now, Gandhi has no reverence for it. He is using it as a means: to produce a child. Then sex becomes a means; it is not the end. Then it becomes a kind of factory to produce children. This is sacrilege... this is obscene. This is what I would like to call a sin. To me it is not a means; it is a joy. When two opposite energies meet and mingle and melt into each other they create a kind of new energy, an orchestra of energies... just as when you dance with somebody...

To dance alone is one thing. To dance with somebody is another thing: then two energies start meeting and merging. You sing alone; that is one thing. Then to sing together with somebody else is another thing. To play one instrument solo is one thing. To play it in an orchestra is a totally different thing. The orchestra has something multidimensional to it. You can play an instrument solo. It has beauty but it is a little poor. It has not so much richness in it because it is not multidimensional.

You can be happy alone; it will be a solo phenomenon. You can be happy with a woman; it will be more like an orchestra. This idea, once it gets deeper into human consciousness, will create better and bigger harmonies.

In Khajuraho there are statues of group sex. Two persons making love is one thing. Four persons making love is certainly richer: it has more dimensions to it. Tantra has worked deeply in that

direction. There have always existed secret societies who have experimented in that uncharted territory. It has great potential. The future is going to explore it more and more. Man is becoming free and fearless. He would like to go into all the possibilities that he carries within himself as potential, as seeds.

[The sannyasin says: Nonsense, surely, four people? Two is very good, I can see. Why four?]

... You continue to cling to your inhibitions. Become an explorer. Move into the unknown! Don’t go on clinging to the known. Decide only after you have experimented, never a priori. That habit has to be dropped. That is very detrimental to inner growth... moreover it is very unscientific. And your logic is just the same old logic; that is the same idea. Why not one? – it creates less trouble. And many people have decided to remain autoerotic; it is certainly less trouble!

But trouble is not the question. The question is growth. One grows by going into the not-done- before. One grows with the new, never with the old. The old is convenient, comfortable – but so too is the grave! Avoid the grave. Be a little more alive and sporting. Entertain new, eccentric, bizarre ideas and you will never be at a loss.

[The sannyasin says: Still, two seems natural but four seems extra.]

That is just our idea of nature. Man is the only animal for whom nothing is natural. Man is the only animal whose nature is an open nature. Nothing is determined and decided a priori. Man is a continuous opening. Man comes into existence as freedom. Man is not only free: man is freedom. Freedom means that man is without nature. He creates his nature; he chooses his nature. He projects himself. In that way man is unique. All other animals have their natures, except man. Or you can say that that is his nature: to be free and without any predetermined nature. In the name of human nature man has been dominated for thousands of years. Now it is time to get out of it. Each society and culture has its own idea of human nature. Those ideas are not only different but sometimes diametrically opposite to each other. And man has shown his flexibility by adjusting to all kinds of patterns. These patterns are all inventions. They arc the source of human misery and enslavement.

What is natural and what is unnatural? Whatever is practised we think is natural. Once the practice changes the new thing becomes natural. What I am saying is only this – that it looks nonsensical because our puritanical minds somehow feel very much afraid. But once the idea becomes prevalent... And it is going to become prevalent because man is going to search, explore every possibility of joy.

The coming century will be of group sex. One may like it or one may not like it; that is not the point. Once sex is freed from the bondage of marriage then there is nothing to prevent people moving into bigger groups. And that has an altogether different quality to it.

It looks nonsense to you... and it is nonsense to me too! But for an altogether different reason. It is nonsense because life is nonsense. It is nonsense because joy is nonsense. I hope that you will start becoming a little nonsensical because that keeps people sane. Too much sanity, and all the time, is insane! There is no one more insane than the person who is nothing but sane. A little dose of the absurd never harms. It is very reasonable!

And if you ask me, then even two persons making love is nonsense! Then love itself is nonsense! But one has to pass through many nonsensical things to come to one’s senses. Right?

And remember, if you want to drop any nonsense from your life, then the best way is to pursue it to its logical end. And that’s what group sex is! It is the ultimate in nonsense, and once you have experienced it you can go not only beyond it but beyond sex itself. That’s how it was used by the tantrikas and in the Dionysian orgies.

Listen to your body. You are no more young so no need to force anything but no need to withdraw either. If sometimes it happens, allow it. No need to think about it – for or against it. By and by understanding will arise through it and one day you will go beyond it. One has to go beyond it, because unless one can come to a point where one’s joy is simply free from every dependence, one cannot be absolutely joyful. Even the dependence on the body has to be dropped, dependence on the mind has to be dropped, dependence on the other has to be dropped. That is the whole search for ecstasy, samadhi – where one is simply happy for no reason at all. But that comes only when you have passed all these challenges. And there is still time: you can still pass through it.

If you had come two, three, four years later, then it would have been difficult; it would have remained a hangover. When the body is no more ready to go into it even if the mind wants to go – and the mind will want to go because there is repression... But then nothing can be done, it becomes more and more difficult. You have come at the right time!

[Another sannyasin says: I did the whole Tantra group and I never once had an erection the whole time.]

Mm mm... there is no need to force. Sometimes if you want to will an erection that very will will be the hindrance. You cannot will it. It is something that is beyond your will, and if you try to bring it you will find yourself completely impotent. And once the idea settles in your mind that something Is wrong then you will be in trouble. There is no need to will it. If it is there, good, if it is not there, perfectly good.

That simply means that the body is not in the mood in that moment; the body does not want to go into it. The body says no, that’s all. Listen to the body; don’t force anything. It is just as when you are eating: the mind says ‘Eat a little more because it is very tasteful’ and the body says ‘no!’ because the stomach is full and the body is feeling nauseous. But you go on forcing. Sometimes the body says ‘Now you are hungry – eat!’ but you are doing something else. You say ‘Wait! I am interested in a far more important thing!’

The mind continuously goes on enforcing things on the body and it tries the same in sex too. That should not be done. At least about sex the mind is completely powerless; it cannot do anything. And it is good that it cannot, otherwise it would destroy the body.

Simply listen to the body and go with the body!

[A sannyasin asks: I want to know why I am so afraid of you.] Everybody is!...

That’s very natural... it is natural. Here, some danger exists, mm? and you are naturally alert about it. But that will disappear. The more and more you trust me, the more it will disappear. It is a kind of fear of something I may do for which you are not ready, that’s all.

You are afraid of something that I can do which you may not like or for which you are not yet ready; you are not willing to go that far yet. But I never do that. Unless I see that you are ready I never push you, and I push you only as far as you can go easily. And before I start pushing you further I persuade you. Just now I was persuading [this sannyasin] to go a little further, but he says it is nonsensical. But he will go... and he is thinking.

The idea has got into his head and once he has gone into it he will be freed of sex. But that’s how I have to persuade sometimes. That is the secret: if he can go into group sex without any inhibitions, that very day he will be free of sex.

But it is difficult – one has to go on persuading, mm? Good!

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