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Chapter 1 - The Hidden Harmony
If there is no change life is static. If you cannot move to the opposite everything will go stale and it will become boring. That's why people who are too cultivated become boring --
because they always go on smiling, they are never angry. You insult them and they smile; you praise them and they smile; you condemn them and they smile. They are unbearable. Their smile is dangerous, and their smile cannot be very deep; it remains just on the lips, it is a face.
They are not smiling, they are just following a code. And their smile is ugly.
People who are always in love and never hate, never get angry, you will always find superficial -- because if you don't move to the opposite, from where will you gain depth?
Depth comes through a movement to the opposite. Love is hate. In fact, we should not use the words love and hate, we should use a single word: lovehate. A love relationship is a lovehate relationship -- and it is beautiful!
Nothing is wrong in hate, because it is through hate that you gain love.
Nothing is wrong in being angry, because it is through anger that you come to a silent stillness.
Have you observed? Every morning airplanes pass over here with a loud sound. And when the airplane has passed, a deep silence follows in its wake. It was not so silent before the airplane came, no. When the airplane has gone, it is more silent. You are walking down a street on a dark night, suddenly a car comes. With full speed it passes by you; your eyes are dazzled by the light -- when the car has passed it is more dark than before.
Through the opposite, through the tension of the opposite, everything lives -- and becomes deeper. Go away so that you can come near; move to the opposite so that you can come closer again.
A love relationship is a relationship of falling again and again into honeymoons.
If the honeymoon is over and the thing has settled, it is already dead -- anything that is settled is dead. Life remains through an unsettled movement -- anything that is secure is already in the grave. Your bank balances are your graveyards; that is where you have died. If you are totally secure you are no longer alive, because to be alive is basically to move between the opposites.
Illness is not bad: it is through illness that you regain health. Everything fits in the harmony -- that's why Heraclitus is called the Riddler. Lao Tzu would have understood him deeply, but Aristotle could not understand him. And, unfortunately, Aristotle became the source of Greek thought. And Greek thought, even more unfortunately, became the whole base of the Western mind.
What is the message of Heraclitus, the deepest message? Understand so you can follow.
He does not believe in things, he believes in processes -- process is God to him. And if you watch closely, you will see that THINGS don't exist in the world; everything is a process. In fact to use the word "is", is existentially wrong, because everything is becoming. Nothing is in a state of isness, nothing!
You say, "This is a tree." By the time you say it, it has grown; your statement is already false. The tree is never static, so how can you use the word, is? It is always becoming, becoming something else. Everything is growing, moving, in a process. Life is movement. It is like a river -- always moving. Says Heraclitus, "You cannot step in the same river twice,"
because by the time you come to step into it the second time, it has moved. It is a flow. Can you meet the same person twice? Impossible! You were here yesterday morning also -- but am Osho - The Hidden Harmony
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