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Chapter 1 - The Hidden Harmony
are you the same man? Much has passed; the Ganges has flowed too much -- you are no longer there.
I have heard: One night Mulla Nasruddin's wife said, "You no longer love me, you no longer kiss, you no longer hug me. Remember when you were courting me? -- you used to bite me and I loved that very much! Can't you bite me once more?"
Nasruddin got out of his bed, started walking. His wife said, "Where are you going?"
He said, "To the bathroom to get my teeth."
No, you cannot step in the same river twice. It is impossible. Don't cling; if you cling you create a hell. Clinging is hell, and a nonclinging consciousness is always in heaven. One moves with the mood, one accepts the mood, one accepts the change; there is no grudge, no complaint about it because this is how life is, things are. You can fight, but you cannot change.
When somebody is young, of course there are different moods because youth has different seasons and moods. How can an old man have the same? And an old man will look very foolish with those moods. How can an old man say the same thing? Everything has changed.
When you are young you are romantic, inexperienced, dreamy. When you are old all the dreams have gone. Nothing is bad in it, because when the dreams are gone you are nearer and closer to reality -- now you understand more. You are less of a poet because you cannot dream now, but nothing is wrong. Dreaming was a mood, a season -- it changes. And one has to be true to the state in which one finds oneself at a certain point.
Be true to your changing self, because that is the only reality. That's why Buddha says there is no self. You are a river. There is no self because there is nothing unchanging in you.
Buddha was thrown out of India because the Indian mind, particularly the
brahmins, the Hindus, believed in a permanent self, ATMA. They always said that something is permanent, and Buddha said only change is permanent -- nothing is permanent.
Why do you want to be a permanent thing? Why do you want to be dead?... because only a dead thing can be permanent. Waves come and go, that's why the ocean is alive. If waves stop, everything will stop in the ocean. It will be a dead thing. Everything lives through change --
and change means changing to the polarity. You move from one pole to another; that's how you again and again become alive and fresh. In the day you work hard, and in the night you relax and go into sleep. Again in the morning you are alive and fresh to work. Have you ever observed the polarity?
Work is against relaxation. If you work hard you become tense, tired, exhausted, but then you fall into the deep valley of rest, a deep relaxation. The surface is far away, you move to the center. You are no more the identity you are on the surface, no more the name, the ego; nothing from the surface is carried. You simply forget who you are, and in the morning you are fresh. This forgetfulness is good, it makes you fresh. Just try for three weeks not to sleep --
you will go mad, because you have forgotten to move to the opposite.
If Aristotle is right, then if you don't sleep at all, if you don't move to the opposite, then you will become an enlightened man. You will be MAD. And it is because of Aristotle that there are so many mad people in the West. If they don't listen to the East, or to Heraclitus, sooner or later the whole West is going to be mad. It is bound to be so because you have lost the polarity. Logic will say something else. Logic will say rest the whole day, practice rest the whole day, so that in the night you can go into a deep sleep -- this is logical. This is logical: Osho - The Hidden Harmony
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