9

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‌CHAPTER 9

29 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says she is confused because she sometimes feels lower than ever before: It begins with the fact that I don’t feel anybody loves me or that I’m worthy of being loved. This happened last night, and I’m very frightened of having that experience for a long time when I’m alone.]

Sometimes it happens that you can be more confused here than anywhere else because a possibility for fusion exists here. If you absorb me rightly, if you understand me and what I am saying and what I am being here, if you digest it, it becomes a fusion in you. It becomes an integral part of you. It becomes your insight. Then it has nothing to do with me.

It is just as if you take fruit from the tree and you eat it. It is absorbed, circulates in your blood, moves in your muscles, has become part of your body. Just a few hours before, it was part of the tree. Just a few hours before, it was the other. Now it is no more the other – it is you. It has entered your boundary. It is fused in you. This is what I mean by fusion.

If you don’t understand me, if you are not rightly digesting me, then there will be confusion. Confusion simply shows that so many things are bombarding you and you are not able to digest them. It creates an indigestion – indigestion in the head, indigestion in your psyche... a psychic disturbance. So there is more possibility here than anywhere else, because the more possibility there is for fusion, simultaneously the more possibility there is of confusion.

If you don’t eat anything, there cannot be indigestion. Or if you eat just the minimum – that which is enough for survival – there will be no indigestion. But if rich food is available, very vital food is available and you eat too much of it.And that happens. If a person has been starving for many

days and then rich food becomes available, he simply cannot stop himself. He goes on eating.

When you come to me, you come in a starved state – not of the body but of the mind. Then I am available here. It creates indigestion and one feels confused, but nothing to be worried about. It simply shows that you will have to find a way to absorb me.

Another problem is also there and you know it; you have rightly pinpointed it – that you have a certain wrong notion that for love one first has to be worthy. That is absolutely absurd. Then nobody will be able to love, and nobody will ever feel worthy.

Love is nothing like that. Nothing more is required but you. Worth is not significant. Whether you are worthy or not is not a question for love. As you are, you can become a love object, but from your childhood you have been wrongly conditioned. Every child is wrongly conditioned because parents go on using this need of the child – the need to be loved, the need to be hugged, the need to be cuddled. They use it as a technique to educate him. They exploit this need. They are in trouble as to what else they can do and how to educate the child, so they make a bargain with him.

They say, ‘If you do things we like you to do, then we will love you. You have to deserve it. If you are good in the school, if you are good in the house, if you are good with the neighbours, with the guests, with your mother, with your father, then you will receive love. If you are not good, if you are not worthy, then you will starve. We will not love you; we will withdraw ourselves.’

And the need of the child is so much. It is just like food. He cannot survive without food, and he cannot survive without love. In fact the need for love is even deeper than food, because without food, only his body will wither away; without love, his very soul.

So the child has to compromise. He cannot say, ‘Just love me as I am.’ He cannot demand that – and even if he demands, nobody is going to supply it. So by and by he has to force himself to do things which he never wanted to do, which he does not like to do. But there is a bait – that he can get love; mother’s love, father’s love, brother’s love. They will approve of him, they will make him worthy. So he works hard in the school, he tries to be dutiful. He tries to fetch a little more love from you, and then he learns something which is very dangerous. He learns that unless you are worthy, you will never be loved.

Now this is absurd. It is as if somebody is saying ‘Unless you are worthy, you will never breathe.’ It is just as irrelevant. You are breathing whether you are worthy or not. Whether you are a saint or a sinner, you breathe the same. Can’t you see that life goes on giving itself to everybody without any conditions? The sun shines on the sinner and the saint alike. There is no distinction. The clouds come and shower on each and every body with no distinction.

Life is available. You are not to earn it. You are not to make yourself in some way capable of having it; it is already available. It is available as grace, as a gift. Love is a gift. But parents down the centuries have corrupted it. But they are not at fault – their parents corrupted them. So it is such a vicious chain that you cannot find out who the culprit is. And if you go down and down, finally you will find God as the culprit, because He was the first parent. He told Adam and Eve, ‘Unless you obey me, I am going to throw you out of your happiness. I am going to throw you out of this heaven, this paradise. Be obedient! Be worthy! Only then can you live here.’ Since then every parent has been doing that. And every child is afraid – his paradise may be lost.

But now you are a grown-up. You can look back at the whole thing. You can contemplate upon it. There is no need to remain confined by this conditioning. Just by being aware of it, you will be free of it. Nothing else is needed because it is an absolutely false idea. It is as if somebody has taught you that two plus two is five, so whenever you put two with two, you make five. Then suddenly today I tell you that it is not five. How can it be five? You understand then that yes, two plus two cannot be five; they can only be four. The moment you become aware that some wrong notion has been there, the very awareness helps you to drop it. Next time you will make four, not five. It is just that easy.

All these unconscious conditionings exist only because you are not aware of them. So whatsoever the problem is, try to become aware of it, of the whole process from the very beginning up to now. There is no need to be worthy of love. In fact exactly the reverse is true. The more you love, the more you are loved, the more worthy you become. Love makes you worthy. The moment somebody loves you, he has started transforming you. Just the very look of two loving eyes on you, and suddenly you are no more the same. You start opening, you start flowing... you are exhilarated, you are ecstatic. For the first time you feel the thrill of being alive and you start doing things that you had never done before. Love makes people worthy – that’s my attitude. So I am not going to tell you to first become worthy. It is not a business. Just love!

And the second thing to be understood – never think in terms of others having to love you. That again is a wrong attitude; that again is rooted in your wrong childhood. A child simply waits to be loved. And of course it is natural for a child, because how can the child-love? A one-day-old child – how can he love? He cannot even hold the mother’s hand. He cannot even fix his eyes on the mother; everything is blurred. He does not know who the mother is and who is who. How can you expect him to love? He simply gets love.

By and by he learns one thing – that others have to love him. This is wrong; good in childhood, but one has to go beyond it – then only you become an adult. A man becomes adult the day he starts feeling that now he has to love. It is not a question of somebody loving him.

So why be a beggar? You are no more a child. You are behaving in a childish pattern. Start loving. Go out of the way to love. And the more you love, the more you will see that more people are coming to you to love you, because love attracts love just as hatred attracts hatred. If you hate, people will hate you. If you love, people will love you. But don’t be bothered about whether others are loving you or not. Just love. Love is such a joyous activity – who bothers whether something returns or not? It is just like singing. You sing and enjoy. If somebody claps, good. If nobody claps, that is their business. You enjoyed it all the same.

So start loving, and love will be coming. By loving and being loved, you will become worthy; that’s my arithmetic. You have tried your arithmetic; it has failed. Give me a chance.

And the fusion will come. I don’t see any problem. Your whole confusion is with your childhood and here it becomes very very focused. Listening to me your desire becomes aflame. Then you start longing for the stars – and good; that’s good! Because I say that religion is the passion for the impossible.

A person becomes religious only when he starts longing for the impossible – that which never seems possible but still happens. With intense passion it becomes Possible. So when you are close to me,

you start becoming aflame. You become very ambitious for the unknown, for love, for prayer, for meditation, for God, and then suddenly all your limitationsYou feel all your boundaries. You feel,

for the first time, imprisoned – hence the confusion. It is as if somebody has lived in a prison and has completely forgotten what freedom is. Then somebody sings a song about freedom, and his fast asleep desire, almost oblivious, again surges up, surfaces, comes to the conscious mind, and he realises that he is a prisoner.

Up to now he was completely oblivious of the fact. He was thinking that this prison was his home. He had been decorating it. He had made a beautiful thing out of it. He had learned to live in it. He was thinking the guard is his protector and the gaoler is his friend. He had started feeling that this gaol was a security and that he was absolutely protected against the enemy world.or something

like this. And he was at ease.

Now suddenly someone comes – a bard who can sing about freedom, who can dance freedom... whose eyes have a glow of freedom, whose every movement brings a taste of the open sky. His very breath is fragrant with freedom. He has brought the contrast – and the confusion. Now this prisoner can never be at ease again. But good! – because that is the only way for him to get out of the prison.

So something has become very very clear to you. Now do something about it. If you don’t do anything, the confusion will remain and it will become a chaotic mess. By doing something you will be able to absorb whatsoever you have felt here and whatsoever you have heard here. So the three things...

One – start loving, and don’t ask for love. Love will be coming as a natural consequence; one can forget all about it. Don’t think in terms of first being worthy. Nobody is. If love has to be earned, nobody is worthy. It is a grace. It is a gift. It comes to you because the whole existence is full of love. It is not because you are capable of it, not because you have some worth that it has come to you. No, it comes to you because the whole existence is full of it.

It is not the worthy earth on which the clouds are raining just now. They are raining because they have too much. What to do with it? Yes, after raining the earth will become more worthy. It will become alive with new life. New trees will come up... new flowers will bloom – but that is a consequence. It is not that this earth has in any way earned these clouds. The clouds were there and were too burdened. They have to release themselves.

The whole existence is full of love. Existence is made of the stuff we call love. It is just like air surrounding you. You just breathe in and it goes on. So forget about worthiness. Start loving, and you will see that love is coming, flowing. It comes one thousand fold. Just share, and continue to meditate. Whatsoever you have heard and felt with me will soon come to a fusion. The confusion will disappear.…

[A sannyas couple came about their relationship. The woman was unsure about their relationship, as sometimes she felt very much in love, other times she felt bored. She added that she also felt attracted to other men.

Her partner said for his part that he was very much in love. Some moments were better than others, but he felt that was just normal.]

[to the woman] Mm ... a few things to be understood. First – because you are divided, your love cannot be the same and constantly the same. It has nothing to do with your love object, with your boyfriend. It has something to do with you.

Sometimes you feel very loving and sometimes you feel bored. That simply shows your two aspects, because if he is boring, then he is boring for twenty-four hours; he is himself for twenty-four hours. If he is not boring and he is very beautiful, then he is beautiful, because he is always the same person.

Something inside you changes, just like day and night. So when you feel bored with him, look deep inside – you must be feeling bored with yourself. When you feel beautiful with him, look inside – you must be feeling beautiful with yourself. In fact we go on projecting on ,the other’. Whatsoever happens, happens on the inside. The other functions as a screen, and we project. When you are feeling beautiful, then he looks beautiful. It is your eyes which are full of beauty and they reflect in his being. When you are bored, he looks boring.

You can watch a full moon. If you are bored, the full moon will look boring. If you are sad, the full moon will look sad. If you are happy and ecstatic, you will find the moon so beautiful, so ecstatic.

And of course it reflects the most in the person you love, because he is closer to you. He functions like a mirror.

So make it a point to meditate. And look inside. You can change your lover from A to B, from B to C, but the same will happen again and again with everybody. So the problem has to be tackled from within you. By changing the lover it is not going to be changed. It is just like changing the screen when the projector and the screen are the same. So you can change the screen – maybe a better screen, a bigger screen, a wider screen, but it is not going to make any substantial difference, because the projector is the same and the film is the same.

You are the projector and you are the film, so again you will project the same things on a different screen. The screen is almost irrelevant. Once you understand this, then you can see the whole life as maya, as a magic show. Then everything is inside; the problem is not outside. Nothing has to be done there. So first one has to realise that it is oneself; then the whole problem shifts and comes to the right place from where it can be tackled and solved. Otherwise you can go on looking in wrong directions; there is no possibility for any change.

[Osho said that many people keep changing their partners but time and again they choose a similar type of person, because they have certain criterions of beauty and what is attractive and they look for them in each potential lover. The West is caught up in the illusion that if the external is changed, so will be the problem, hence the changing of partners, cars, houses.]

The second thing: when you are feeling bored, don’t relate to him, because that is destructive. When one is feeling bored, one should drop out of all relationship, otherwise those moments are going to be destructive. When you are feeling bored, just close your room, sit silently, meditate. Use those moments with yourself. If you are feeling bored, then feel bored with yourself; that is your right. To feel bored with somebody is violent because you will show in every way that you are bored. Somehow deep down you will go on condemning him, thinking it is he who is boring you. You may say so, you may not, but in every way you will show ‘You are boring me’. And that becomes

poisoning. Don’t’ poison any relationship, never. Only beautiful moments are to be shared. Then a relationship goes deeper and deeper, higher and higher.

[Osho said that whenever one is feeling bored it is good to tell the other that you are not feeling good, and just to be alone.]

The human animal is the only animal who feels bored. It is a very very intelligent thing. It is not ordinary. Buffaloes are not bored, donkeys are not bored. They are never bored, because for boredom a certain level of intelligence is needed. Only man is bored. In man also, only people who are really intelligent are bored, rather than people who are stupid. That’s why very intelligent people sometimes commit suicide – very intelligent people. Stupid people don’t commit suicide. They don’t have any boredom. They live happily in a way. Their happiness is shallow, but they are happy in a way. In ordinary things they are happy. Smoking cigarettes, they are happy. Sitting in a movie, they are happy. Reading the newspaper – the same news every day – they are happy. ether,ing love, going to the office, they are happy. So nothing is wrong in it. It is simply an indication that the repetition makes you bored. So go into it. Use moments of boredom, sadness, depression, for meditation, to be with yourself, and soon you will see that you become capable of getting out of them.

And when you are feeling beautiful, happy, when you are full of euphoria, bubbling, only then relate, because then you have something to share. Then love him, call him. Sit together, sing together, dance together, love each other. Go for a morning walk. Sit under the stars or on the beach, because now you are overflowing and you need somebody to share it with.

When you are happy, that means you want somebody else also to be with you. That’s the meaning of happiness. It has an intrinsic flow of sharing. So when you are feeling good, share. When you are feeling bad, withdraw. Keep this up for six months and go on noting what is happening. Within six months you will become very very aware.

Don’t be worried about the other thing – that you become interested in other men. That is natural; that is simply natural. If he becomes interested in other women, don’t feel hurt. That too is natural. In fact lovers who love each other deeply don’t become disinterested in other human beings. For the first time they become really interested, but in spite of their interest they would like to share with each other only. That’s a different thing.

[Osho said that if your lover is attracted to another woman, it is because he sees you reflected in her. There is nothing wrong in feeling attraction for others. If love is there, it is good.]

Humanity has been taught very wrong things. They have been taught that if you love a woman, then you cannot be attracted to any other woman. If you are attracted to another woman, your love is false; you are betraying. This is foolish. This creates g ult, unnecessary guilt. It creates jealousy and a thousand and one sorts of conflicts and naggings. The whole beauty of love is lost. It becomes almost hell-fire. It becomes dirty and ugly.

So if you are feeling loving towards him, work it out; don’t be in a hurry. Love likes time to grow. And on his side there are no problems. It is very difficult to find a man who has no problems on his side. So half the problems are solved.

[A sannyasin says: When I write for myself I have no difficulty, but as soon as I write to someone, I start trembling.]

It is simple then. You have no problem in the body; the problem is just in the mind. The problem arises when you become self-conscious. When you are writing to yourself, there is no question of being self-conscious. When you are writing to somebody else, you become conscious about what to write, what not to write, whether this will be good or not; whether you will be impressing the other in the right way or not. Then you become puzzled and you become too self-conscious, and that creates the trouble.

[Osho recounted the story of the centipede who, with his hundred legs, impressed a passing hare, who asked him how he could possibly cope with so many legs, trying to work out which should come first, etc. The centipede, who had never given it any thought before, began to study the way he walked, but found the whole process so confusing that he fell down, unable to walk a step!]

Self-consciousness creates many problems. So do one thing now – just a small exercise before you write. For five minutes sit silently and feel that everybody is you, the whole existence is one; the other is not the other. You are the other, the other is in you. Don’t feel as if you are an island; become part of the continent.

Address the letter to ‘Myself – in the form of such and such’, and then write. For five minutes simply meditate on your being one with the whole. There is no one else, so there is no question of being self-conscious. All letters are written to oneself.

[Osho said that as soon as one felt self-conscious, one began to feel awkward, ill at ease. y someone is watching you painting, you start to lose the feeling of unity with your work.

Osho recounted Winston Churchill’s reply as to how he managed to speak so eloquently in front of audiences. He said he simply told himself that he was addressing an audience of donkeys, idiots, and then was able to proceed quite smoothly.

Another famous public speaker, Mark Twain, was asked by his wife how his lecture had gone. He asked if she was referring to the one he had prepared, the one he gave, or the one he wanted to deliver.

Osho said Churchill’s was the western way; his method, the eastern.]

Do the eastern way – all are one. And there is no need to count the legs – they are functioning well. Everything is going so well spontaneously. The moment you start thinking about it, things go wrong. You are too much of a thinker, that’s all!

Just write a letter tonight, and don’t even read it twice. You can write a good letter to me. Try it. At least I will not judge you. Whatsoever you write will be good. I approve a priori!

[A sannyasin says: I’m so confused. You say sometimes to think of the whole and being one – and it helps sometimes. But sometimes when I feel angry then I can’t see that. When I’m blocked I just don’t feel like that, and I don’t know whether I’m deceiving myself or]

I understand. No, you are not deceiving yourself. Only when one is blocked,when one is angry or sad or depressed and energy is not flowing is it very difficult to conceive that there is only one. When you are flowing, happy, silent, in a certain celebrating mood, it comes easily. You can feel that you and the whole existence are one. Both are true, but in angry, depressed moments, sad moments, you will start being suspicious about whether those moments when you were thinking everything is one, were illusory, because now they are lost.

They were real. They are now lost; that too is real. Both are realities – two different planes of reality. There is no need to be confused about them. So when you are feeling angry, don’t try that, because that is not the right moment. It is as if one is sowing seeds on a rock. When nothing comes you will wonder whether these are real seeds or just stones because nothing is coming up Seeds need the right soil.

So when you are happy, the Vedanta is true. It is applicable only to happy minds. God exists only for happy minds. You can conceive of what I am saying only in a happy mood because in that mood you have wings and you will fly into the sky. Then the sky is true. But when your wings are cut and you have fallen on the ground, it is almost impossible to fly. Even to move is difficult, even to crawl is difficult. What to think about the sky? What about those wings? That all looks unreal.

And in this moment it is unreal. Not that it was unreal. So don’t try. In these moments, something else has to be done. When you are feeling angry, when you are feeling sad, then to try this feeling of cosmic unity is absurd. It is as if somebody is paralysed and he wants to swim or run, or to take part in a race. These are paralysed moments.

[Osho said that in such moments one should be alone in one’s room with a pillow and release the anger and negative feelings onto the pillow until the energy is flowing once again. He said we expect that we should be happy for twenty-four hours, and for us right now that is not possible]

Even if in twenty-four hours there is a single moment where you can feel the truth that everything is one, enough; that will do. By and by these moments will grow.

There are millions of people who cannot imagine for a single moment that only one exists. Think of those. They think God is dead. They think prayer is nonsense. They think meditation is stupid. They call it navel-gazing, they call it lotus-eating. They call all these things names. For them it’s okay, because they don’t have the wings, so what to say to them? They don’t know anything of the sky.

So I don’t see the problem. You are creating the problem by trying to fly in wrong moments. These are right moments to take off. All moments are not right to take off. When the sky is clear and you are in a happy mood, a radiant mood, when you are feeling weightless and gravitation doesn’t matter – in those moments, pray, in those moments think of God. In those moments think of me, and you will be immediately related to me. Your hand will be in my hand.

[The sannyasin then said that she and her husband did not always move together, and said that she sometimes felt hurt because he said she did not love him. This made her try to prove her love, which meant she found herself doing things she didn’t want to. Still, she felt it necessary if she were to prove her love.]

No, there is no need to do that. Love is such an impossible thing that nobody believes in it anyway. It is very easy to believe that somebody does not love you. It is very difficult to believe that somebody loves you, because love is not of this world; that is the trouble. Love is immaterial.

It is very difficult to believe that somebody loves you. You can only believe that you love somebody because that you know from the inside. But how to trust that the other loves you? It remains always a vague thing. And when somebody feels suspicious, doubtful, not certain whether you love him or not, you try to prove that you do, but your every effort is suicidal. The more you try to prove it, the more suspicious the other will become, because if you really love, why are you trying to prove it?

[Osho said that she should stop trying to prove her love; just to love was enough. If her husband did not believe her, that was his problem, but as he grew in love, he would come to feel her love. Trying to prove oneself could bring more complications.]

So drop the effort of proving. Many people do it. They go out of the way to prove it. Husbands do it. They will bring ice-cream and flowers. In fact if the husband brings flowers, brings ice-cream and sweets and this and that – a new sari for you – you feel suspicious. He must have done something, otherwise why? He must have done something against you. He must have looked at another woman, or he must have laughed and talked with some other woman and is feeling guilty, otherwise why these things?

And that too has a point. Husbands only bring ice-creams when they feel guilty, otherwise who bothers? I’m not saying stop loving him; I’m not saying stop doing things for him. You love him, so continue to do things for him – but not to prove anything... just out of your love.

And there is no need to move with him for twenty-four hours. Lovers should never be together for twenty-four hours, otherwise they destroy the whole beauty of it. They become heavy on each other. It is good to have every day a few hours divorce and a few minutes honeymoon. Good.

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