When two masters meet

Question: Should one first come to terms with one's own Loneliness before entering into Relationship?

Osho: Yes, you have to come to terms with your loneliness, so much so that the loneliness is transformed into aloneness. Only then will you be capable of moving into a deep enriching relationship. Only then will you be able to move into love. What do I mean when I say that one has to come to terms with one's loneliness, so much so that it becomes aloneness?

Loneliness is a negative state of mind. Aloneness is positive, notwithstanding what the dictionaries say. In dictionaries, loneliness and aloneness are synonymous -- they are synonyms; in life they are not. Loneliness is a state of mind when you are constantly missing the other, aloneness is the state of mind when you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable, aloneness is blissful. Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring for something; aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness you are off center, in aloneness you are centered and rooted. Aloneness is beautiful. It has an elegance around it, a grace, a climate of tremendous satisfaction. Loneliness is; beggarly; all around it there is begging and nothing else. It has no grace around it. In fact it is ugly. Loneliness is a dependence, aloneness is SHEER independence. One feels as if one is one's whole world, one's whole existence.

Now, if you move into a relationship when you are feeling lonely, then you will exploit the other. The other will become a means to satisfy you. You will use the other, and everybody resents being used because no man is here to become a means for anybody else. Every man is an end unto himself. Nobody is here to be used like a thing, everybody is here to be worshipped like a king. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else's expectations, everybody is here just to be himself.
So whenever you move in any relationship out of loneliness, the relationship is already on the rocks. Even before it has started, it is already on the rocks. Even before the birth, the child is dead. It is going to create more misery for you. And remember, when you move from your loneliness you will fall in relationship with somebody who is in the same plight, because no man who is really living his aloneness will be attracted towards you. You will be too below him. He can, at the most, sympathize, but cannot love you. One who is on his peak of aloneness can only be attracted towards somebody who is also alone. So whenever you move out of loneliness, you will find a man of the same type; you will find your own reflection somewhere.

Two beggars will meet, two miserable people will meet. And remember, when two miserable people meet, it is not an ordinary addition, it is a multiplication. They create much more misery for each other than they could have created in their loneliness.

First become alone. First start enjoying yourself. First love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn't matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay -- YOU are not missing. You are not waiting for somebody to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes, good, beautiful. If nobody comes, that too is beautiful and good.

THEN move into relationship. Now you move like a master, not like a beggar. Now you move like an emperor,. not like a beggar. And the person who has lived in his aloneness will always be attracted to another person who is also living his aloneness beautifully, because the same attracts the same. When two masters meet -- masters of their being, of their aloneness -- happiness is not just added, it is multiplied. It becomes a tremendous phenomenon of celebration. And they don't exploit, they share. They don't use each other. Rather, on the contrary, they both become one and enjoy the existence that surrounds them.

Two lonely people are always facing each other, confronting. Two people who have known aloneness are together, facing something higher than both. I always give this example: two ordinary lovers who are both lonely always face each other; two real lovers, on a full moon night, will not be facing each other. They may be holding hands, but they will be facing the full moon high in the sky. They will not be facing each other, they will be together facing something else. Sometimes they will be listening to a symphony of Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner together. Sometimes they will be sitting by the side of a tree and enjoying the tremendous being of the tree enveloping them. Sometimes they may be sitting by a waterfall and listening to the wild music that is continuously being created there. Sometimes, by the ocean, they will both be looking to the farthest possibility that the eyes can see.

Whenever two lonely persons meet, they look at each other, because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other: how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two persons who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travellers; they move on a pilgrimage. The goal is high, the goal is far away. Their common interest joins them together.

Ordinarily the common interest is sex. Sex can join two persons momentarily and casually, and very superficially. Real lovers have a greater common interest. It is not that sex will not be there; it may be there, but as part of a higher harmony. Listening to Mozart's or Beethoven's symphony, they may come so close, so close, so close, that there may be love. They may make love to each other, but it is in the greater harmony of a Beethoven symphony. The symphony was the real thing; the love happens as part of it. And when love happens of its own accord, unsought, unthought, simply happens as part of a higher harmony, it has a totally different quality to it. it is divine, it is no longer human.

The word 'happiness' comes from a Scandanavian word 'hap'. The word'happening' also comes from the same Scandant the most, you can be available to it. Whenever it happens, it happens.

Two real loavian root. Happiness is that which happens. You cannot produce it, you cannot command it, you cannot force it. Avers are always available, but never thinking, never trying to find happiness. Then they are never frustrated, because whenever it happens it happens. They create the situation. In fact, if you are happy with yourself, you are already the situation, and if the other is also happy with himself or herself, she is also the situation. When these two situations come close, a greater situation is created. In that greater situation much happens -- nothing is produced.

Man has not to do anything to be happy. Man has just to flow and let go.
So, the question is: should one first come to terms with his own loneliness before entering into relationship? Yes; yes, absolutely. It has to be so, otherwise you will be frustrated, and in the name of love you will be doing something else which is not love at all.

Source - Osho Book "Come Follow To You, Vol 4"

A very superficial question

Question:Do you advocate vegetarianism? Would you object to the inclusion of an egg in your diet?

Jiddu Krishnamurti: Is that really a very great problem, whether we should have an egg or not? Perhaps most of you are concerned with non killing. That is really the crux of the matter, is it not? Perhaps most of you eat meat or fish. You avoid killing by going to a butcher, or you put the blame on the killer, the butcher - that is only dodging the problem. If you like to eat eggs, you may get infertile eggs to avoid killing. But this is a very superficial question - the problem is much deeper.

You don't want to kill animals for your stomach, but you do not mind supporting governments that are organized to kill. All sovereign governments are based on violence; they must have armies, navies, and air forces. You don't mind supporting them, but you object to the terrible calamity of eating an egg! (Laughter) See how ridiculous the whole thing is; investigate the mentality of the gentleman who is nationalistic, who does not mind the exploitation and the ruthless destruction of people, to whom wholesale massacre is nothing - but who has scruples as to what goes into his mouth.

(Laughter) So, there is much more involved in this problem - not only the whole question of killing, but the right employment of the mind. The mind may be used narrowly, or it is capable of extraordinary activity; and most of us are satisfied with superficial activity, with security, sexual satisfaction, amusement, religious belief - with that we are satisfied and discard entirely the deeper response and wider significance of life. Even the religious leaders have become petty in their response to life. After all, the problem is not only killing animals but human beings, which is more important.

You may refrain from using animals and degrading them, you may be compassionate about killing them, but what is important in this question is the whole problem of exploitation and killing - not only the slaughter of human beings in wartime, but the way you exploit people, the way you treat your servants and look down on them as inferiors. Probably you are not paying attention to this because it is near home. You would rather discuss God, reincarnation - but nothing requiring immediate action and responsibility.

So, if you are really concerned with not killing, you should not be a nationalist, you should not call yourself Sinhalese, German, or Russian. Also you must have right employment, make right use of machinery. It is very important in modern society to have right employment because today every action leads to war, the whole thing is geared for war; but at least we can find out the wrong professions and avoid them intelligently.

Obviously, the army, the navy, are wrong professions; so is the profession of law which encourages litigation; and the police, especially the secret police. So, right employment must be found and exercised by each one, and only then can there be the cessation of killing, which will bring about peace among men. But the economic pressure is so great in the modern world that very few can withstand it. Almost no one is concerned with seeking right profession, and if you are concerned not to kill, then you have to do far more than merely avoid the killing of animals, which means you have to go into this whole problem of right employment.

Though the question may appear very petty, if you go into it a little more carefully, you will see that it is a very great question because what you are, you make the world to be. If you are greedy, angry, dominating, possessive, you will inevitably create a social structure that will bring about further conflict, misery, further destruction. But unfortunately, most of us are not concerned with any of these things. Most of us are concerned with immediate pleasures, with everyday living; and if we can get them, we are satisfied.

We do not want to look into the deeper and wider problems; though we know they exist, we want to avoid them. By avoiding these problems, they are increased, you have not solved them. To solve them, they cannot be approached through any particular ideology, either of the left or of the right. Look at these problems more closely and effectively, and you will begin to understand the total process of yourself in relation to others, which is society.

But you will tell me that I have not answered the question about the egg, whether to eat an egg or not. Surely, intelligence is the important thing - not what goes into your mouth, but what comes out of it; and most of us have filled our hearts with the things of the mind, and our minds are very small, shallow. Our problem is to find out how to bring about a transformation in that which is shallow and small, and this transformation can come about only through understanding the shallow.

Those of you who want to go into the question more deeply will have to find out whether you are contributing to war and how to avoid it, whether indirectly you are the cause of destruction. If you can really solve that question, then you can easily settle the superficial matter of whether you should be a vegetarian or not. Tackle the problem at a much deeper level, and you will find the answer.

Like a thief in the night, it comes darkly

I do not know if you have noticed that there is understanding when the mind is very quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when the verbalization of thought is not.

Just experiment with it and you will see for yourself that you have the flash of understanding, that extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the mind is very still, when thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its own noise. So, the understanding of anything -of a modern picture, of a child, of your wife, of your neighbor, or the understanding of truth, which is in all things- can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness cannot be cultivated because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind.The more you are interested in something, the more your intention to understand, the more simple, clear, free the mind is. Then verbalization ceases. After all, thought is word, and it is the word that interferes.

It is the screen of words, which is memory, that intervenes between the challenge and the response. It is the word that is responding to the challenge, which we call intellection. So, the mind that is chattering, that is verbalizing, cannot understand truth -truth in relationship, not an abstract truth.

There is no abstract truth. But truth is very subtle. Like a thief in the night, it comes darkly, not when you are prepared to receive it. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life