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"

Accept Yourself

The moment you accept yourself you become open, you become vulnerable, you become receptive. The moment you accept yourself there is no need for any future because there is no need to improve upon anything. Then all is good, then all is good as it is. In that very experience life starts taking a new colour, a new music arises.
If you accept yourself, that is the beginning of accepting all. If you reject yourself you are basically rejecting the universe; if you reject yourself you are rejecting existence. If you accept yourself you have accepted existence; then there is nothing else to do but to enjoy, to celebrate. There is no complaint left, there is no grudge; you feel good. Then life is good and death is good, then joy is good and sadness is good, then to be with your beloved is good and to be alone is good. Then whatsoever happens is good because it happens out of the whole.

But you have been conditioned for centuries not to accept yourself. All the cultures of the world have been poisoning the human mind because they all depend on one thing: Improve yourself. They all create anxiety in you - anxiety is the tense state between that which you are and that which you should be. People are bound to remain anxious if there is a "should" in life. If there is an ideal that has to be fulfilled, how can you be at ease? How can you be at home? It is impossible to live anything totally because the mind is hankering for the future. And that future never comes - it cannot come. By the very nature of your desire it is impossible. When it comes you will start imagining other things, you will start desiring other things. You can always imagine a better state of affairs. And you can always remain in anxiety, tense, worried-that's how humanity has been living for centuries.

Only rarely, once in a while, has a man escaped out of the trap.
That man is called a Buddha. a Christ. The awakened man is one who has slipped out of the trap of society, who has seen that this is just absurdity. You cannot improve yourself. And I am not saying that improvement does not happen, remember – but you cannot improve yourself. When you stop improving yourself, life improves you. In that relaxation, in that acceptance, life starts caressing you, life starts flowing through you. And when you don't have any grudge, any complaint, you bloom, you flower.
So I would like to say to you: Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world because it goes against your training, your education, your culture. From the very beginning you have been told how you should be. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are; they have all put programs in your mind. You have been programmed by parents, by priests, politicians, teachers - you have been programmed for only one thing: Just go on improving upon yourself. Wherever you are, go on rushing for something else. Never rest. Work unto death.
My teaching is simple: Don't postpone life. Don't wait for tomorrow, it never comes. Live it today!
Jesus says to his disciples "Look at the lilies in the field. They toil not, they weave not, they spin not - yet even Solomon was not so beautiful as these poor lily flowers." What is the beauty of the poor flower? It is in utter acceptance. It has no program in its being to improve. It is here now - dancing in the wind, taking a sunbath, talking to the clouds, falling asleep in the afternoon warmth, flirting with the butterflies ... enjoying, being, loving, being loved.
And the whole existence starts pouring its energy into you when you are open. Then the trees are greener than they look to you now, then the sun is sunnier than it looks to you now; then everything becomes psychedelic, becomes colorful. Otherwise everything is drab and dull and gray.
Accept yourself - that is prayer. Accept yourself - that IS gratitude.
Relax into your being-this is the way God wanted you to be. In no other way did he want you to be; otherwise he would have made you somebody else. He has made you you and nobody else. Trying to improve upon yourself is basically trying to improve upon God, which is just stupid, and you will get madder and madder in trying that. You will not arrive anywhere, you will have simply missed a great opportunity.
Let this be your colour: acceptance.
Let this be your characteristic: acceptance, utter acceptance. And then you will be surprised: Life is always ready to shower its gifts on you. Life is not a Miser, existence always gives abundantly - but we cannot receive it because we don't feel that we are worthy to receive it.
That's why people cling to miseries - they suit their programming. People go on punishing themselves in a thousand and one subtle ways. Why? Because that fits with the program. If you are not as you should be, you have to punish yourself, you have to create misery for yourself. That's why people feel good when they are miserable.
Let me say it: People feel happy when they are miserable; they become very, very uneasy when they are happy. This is my observation of thousands and thousands of people: When they are miserable, everything is as it should be. They accept it - it fits with their conditioning, with their mind. They know how horrible they are, they know that they are sinners.
You have been told that you are born in sin. What stupidity! What nonsense! Man is not born in sin, man is born in innocence. There has never been any original sin, there has only been original innocence. Each child is born in innocence. We make him feel guilty; we start saying, "This should not be. You should be like this." And the child is natural and innocent. We punish him for being natural and innocent, and we reward him for being artificial and cunning. We reward him for being phony-all our rewards are for phony people. If somebody is innocent, we don't give any reward; we don't have any regard for him, we don't have any respect for him. The innocent is condemned, the innocent is thought to be almost synonymous with the criminal. The innocent is thought to be foolish, the cunning is thought to be intelligent. The phony is accepted - the phony fits with the phony society.
Then your whole life will be nothing but an effort to create more and more punishments for yourself. And whatsoever you do is wrong, so you have to punish yourself for every joy. Even when joy comes in spite of yourself - mind you, when joy comes in spite of yourself, when sometimes God simply bumps into you and you cannot avoid him - immediately you start punishing yourself. Something has gone wrong - how can this happen to a horrible person like you?
Just the other night a man asked me, "You talk, Osho, about love, you talk of offering your love. But what have I got to give to anybody? What have I got to offer to my beloved?"
This is the secret idea of everybody: "I have nothing." What do you not have? But nobody has told you that you have all the beauties of all the f1owers, because mall is the greatest flower on this earth, the most evolved being. No bird can sing the song that you can sing-the birds' songs are just noises, although they are still beautiful because they come out of innocence. You can sing far better songs, of greater significance, of much more meaning. But you ask, "What have I got?"
The trees are green, beautiful, the stars are beautiful and the rivers are beautiful-but have you ever seen anything more beautiful than a human eye? Have you ever come across anything more beautiful than human eyes? On the whole earth there is nothing more delicate than the human eyes - no rose can compete, no lotus can compete. And what depth! But you want to know, "What have I got to offer in love?" You must have lived a self-condemning life; you must have been putting yourself down, burdening yourself with guilt.
In fact, when somebody loves you, you are a little bit surprised.
"What-me? A person loves me?" The idea arises in your mind: "Because he does not know me, that's why. If he comes to know me, if he comes to see through me, he will never love me." So lovers start hiding themselves from each other. They keep many things private, they don't open their secrets because they are afraid that the moment they open their heart, the love is bound to disappear - because they cannot love themselves, how can they conceive of anybody else loving them?
Love starts with self-love. Don't be selfish but be self-full; they are two different things. Don't be a Narcissus, don't be obsessed with yourself. But a natural self-love is a must, a basic phenomenon. Only then out of it can you love somebody else.
Accept yourself - love yourself: you are God's creation. God's signature is on you, and you are special - unique. Nobody else has ever been like you, and nobody else will ever be like you - you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this - and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms.

Yet we must not be foes

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

Then if for my love thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;

But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

- Shakespeare

And then suddenly it is there

I feel that whatever I do, even in beautiful things, there is always something missing, something that is somewhere out of tune. Even in my relationship - I have been now one year with my boyfriend - and still even in the beautiful moments I feel that something is tense somewhere, something is fighting somewhere....

You can make a problem out of it, and then there will be no solution. In the first place don't make a problem out of it. It is not a problem. If you understand it well you will feel it to be a blessing.

Every lover feels that something is missing, because love is unfinished. It is a process, not a thing. Every lover is bound to feel that something is missing - but don't interpret it wrongly. It simply shows that love in itself is a dynamic thing. It is just like a river, always moving, always moving. In the very movement is the life of the river. once it stops it becomes a stagnant thing; then it is no longer a river. The very word river shows a process, the very sound of it gives you the feeling of movement.

Love is a river, it is not a thing, a commodity. So don’t think that something is missing; it is part of love's process. And it is good that it is not completed. When something is missing you have to do something. That is a call from higher and higher peaks. Not that when you reach them you will feel fulfilled; love never feels fulfilled. It knows no fulfillment, but it is beautiful because then it is alive forever and ever.

And you will always feel that something is not in tune. That too is natural, because when two persons are meeting, two different worlds are meeting. To expect that they will fit perfectly is to expect too much, is to expect the impossible, and that will create frustration. Something will always be out of tune. If you fit completely and there is nothing out of tune, the relationship will become stagnant. At the most there are a few moments when everything is in tune. Rare moments. Even when they come you may not be able to catch them they are so swift, so rare. They have not come and they are already gone - just a glimpse. And that glimpse will make you more frustrated, because then you will see more and more that things are out of tune.

This is how it has to be.

Make all efforts to make that in-tuneness, but always be ready if it doesn’t happen perfectly. And don’t be worried about it, otherwise you will fall more and more out of tune.

It comes only when you are not worried about it. It happens only when you are not tense about it. When you are not even expecting it - just out of the blue. It is a grace, a gift of existence.

Love is not a thing you can do. But by doing other things, love will happen. There are small things you can do - sitting together, looking at the moon, listening to music - nothing directly to do with love.

Love is very delicate, fragile. If you look at it, gaze at it directly, it will disappear. It comes only when you are unaware, doing something else. You cannot go directly, arrow-like. Love is not a target. It is a very subtle phenomenon... it is very shy. If you go direct, it will hide. If you do something direct, you will miss.

The world has become very stupid about love. They want it immediately. They want it like instant coffee - whenever you want, order, and it is there. Love is a delicate art; it is nothing you can do rally.

Sometimes those rare blissful moments come... then something of the unknown descends. You are no longer on the earth, you are in paradise. Reading a book with your lover, both deeply absorbed in it, suddenly you find that a different quality of being has arisen around you both; something surrounds you both like an aura, and everything is peaceful.

But you were not doing anything directly. You were just reading a book, or just going for a long walk, hand in hand against the strong wind - suddenly it is there. It always takes you unawares. So learn to do things together.

I have watched so many people, thousands of couples. People have completely forgotten the language of doing things together, or not doing anything, just being together, just being. People have forgotten that. If they have nothing to do they make love. Then nothing happens, and by and by they are frustrated by love itself. and then the whole of life loses meaning, because if love loses meaning, life loses meaning.

Man and woman are different - not only different, they are opposite; they cannot fit together. And that s the beauty - when they fit together it is a miracle, a magic moment. Otherwise they conflict and fight. That is natural and can be understood, because they have different minds. Their outlooks are polar opposites. They cannot agree on anything, because their ways are different their logic is different.

To fit in a deep tune, to fall in deep harmony, is almost miraculous. It is like a Kohinoor and one should not ask for it every day. One should not ask for it as part of a routine. One should wait for it. Months, sometimes years pass, and then suddenly it is there. And it is always out of the blue, uncaused,mm? Do you follow me? Don’t be worried - it will take care of itself. And don’t become a seeker after love; otherwise you will miss it completely.

Osho

Above All Don't Wobble

So, is it possible for man to be totally free of fear?

So, is it possible for man to be totally free of fear? And what is fear? Does fear exist in the past, the present or the future? Do I know I was afraid or do I know I am afraid or that I shall be afraid? Is there such a thing as immediate fear or when you know you are afraid, is it not already over?

Please follow this carefully step by step because to understand clearly time is involved, and without understanding the whole structure of time we will not be able to understand fear. Now how do I know that I am afraid? When I am face to face with danger, at the very moment of confrontation, am I conscious of fear or is the response to danger so immediate that fear does not exist at all? The response is immediate. When you know the danger of nationalism which is spreading more and more throughout the world, when you know it, not theoretically but actually, then there is an immediate response to that danger and therefore you are free from nationalism because you see very clearly it is a threat to the security of man.

So fear is the product of thought. Right? Otherwise there is no fear. Fear is related to pleasure and pleasure is the product of thought as fear. I wonder if you are following this? You know, this is not an analytical talk. Analysis, however deep or clever, however true does not solve any problems. Analysis is merely a description of what is, and we are not analysing but just observing. It is very important to understand this, the art of looking, the art of seeing. We are seeing fear, listening to fear, to all its murmurs, not theoretically but actually. If we could see fear with eyes that are very clear then fear would completely come to an end. And that's what we are doing.

Fear, as we said, is the result of thought. Yesterday I was healthy and enjoyed walking through the woods, but today or tomorrow I am afraid that I may fall ill. Do go into this with me! Please, if I may suggest, don't just listen but observe this thing operating in yourself. Yesterday there was a beautiful sunset and I enjoyed it tremendously. There is the memory of it and I want that pleasure repeated and when it is not repeated then I am afraid, which is all part of thinking. I am afraid of death, the tomorrow and the many tomorrows; thought is observing the fact of living - what it calls living - and also the fact that it is going to end, so thought is afraid of the thing it calls death. Therefore it puts death far away in the distance. This is very clear isn't it? Thought creates distance as well as time, so thought breeds fear.

After all, there is in the Christian world original sin, whatever that may mean, and Christians everywhere have been conditioned through propaganda to believe in this original sin. And, of course, that has bred a great deal of fear. That original sin is the invention of thought, so thought is responsible for fear. The ending of fear therefore is the understanding of the whole structure and mechanism of thought. No doubt you will say that if fear is to end, thought must also stop; we are not saying thought must stop, but that thought is responsible for fear. That is obvious.

Then one begins to enquire what is the nature of thought. To understand the structure of thought, not intellectually, you must see it as you would see a sensuous thing, feel it and then you will realize - if you go into it very deeply - that thought begins to understand itself as the origin of fear and it will act upon itself. You will see this for yourself if you go into it very deeply with the speaker.

Thought is the product of time, time being memory, the accumulated knowledge of the many days, the many yesterdays, the many experiences. From that accumulated knowledge, experience, memory, there is a response which is thought and thought is matter. A mind that is concerned with going beyond the sensual, beyond matter, must understand thought; thought breeds sorrow as well as fear and pleasure. Yesterday you had an experience - sensual, sexual, or otherwise - and that experience leaves an imprint on the mind, on the brain. We mean by that word 'mind' not only the whole nervous organism, the brain cells, but the totality of all human intelligence, its activity, fears, thoughts, despairs and anxieties. All that is included when we use the word 'mind'.

As long as thought is seeking pleasure, there must be fear because pleasure means pain. We will go into that a little bit and you will see it for yourself. Please follow this carefully because it is your life, not mine! You and I together are making this terrible world; we are causing so much destruction, so much misery and we are responsible. And without understanding the nature of this thought with its pleasure and pain, its fear and its sorrow, we shall continue to bring about tremendous chaos in the world through our actions, our selfishness and our violence. As we said, thought breeds pleasure.

Yesterday you had an experience which gave you pleasure and thought wants that pleasure repeated, so it thinks about it. The more it thinks about it, the greater the pleasure it derives from that experience. Thought also thinks about pain and it doesn't want that pain; so thought creates both pleasure and pain and gives them continuity. Right? And fear is also bred by thought. I am afraid of tomorrow; I don't know what is going to happen, I may lose my job, I may fall ill and I haven't fulfilled myself and I may die. I haven't understood this monstrous life and there's nobody to tell me; I am lost and afraid, I seek somebody, an authority to tell me what to do.

So thought creates fear of tomorrow, tomorrow being death. Actually if you observe, there is no tomorrow at all; if you really faced that fact psychologically you would no doubt be terribly afraid because tomorrow matters very much - psychologically. Tomorrow is going to give you a great deal of pleasure, you are going to paint a better picture or compose with greater feeling, you'll make it up with your wife or husband. So for you tomorrow is extraordinarily important. And is there tomorrow psychologically or has thought invented it? And if there is no fear, there is no tomorrow; then one lives with that complete sense of wholeness, always in the present.

To understand the present you have to understand the nature of time which is yesterday with all its memories, the culture and the tradition, today and tomorrow. You cannot live totally, completely in the present when there is the image of the past or the concept of the future. To live in the present is only possible when there is love, and love has no tomorrow. But love is not pleasure nor desire; pleasure and desire have a tomorrow, have a future - I am going to be happy tomorrow.

So thought creates fear, thought gives continuity to desire as pleasure. Thought puts together yesterday, today and tomorrow as time; that's how we live. And beyond this we are seeking immortality through the son, through the family, through ideas. Fear breeds authority and obedience; and that obedience - whether of the son to the father or the wife to the husband - is violence because in it fear and dependence are involved.

One of the major factors of fear is death; the older one grows, the more one is afraid of death. You know what is happening in the world; the older people are pretending to be very young because they are afraid of old age, disease and death, so to be free of fear one must understand death. And if you don't understand death, you can't possibly know what love and beauty are. We don't know love; we only know jealousy and pleasure and the beauty that's put together by man.

We are talking of beauty in a totally different sense of that word. And therefore we must understand, not intellectually but actually, what it means to die. You know, it's only when a thing ends that there is a new beginning; whatever has continuity, goes on day after day, week after week, the same old repetition becomes tiresome and rather boring. It's only the thing which comes to an end that has a possibility of newness. After all, innocency is not a symbol - it is a fact.

It is only the innocent mind that can see clearly, that can see something new. You may have looked at that flower by the roadside a hundred times, but if the mind and the eye of the mind are not innocent, you can't see the total beauty and the newness of that flower. That which has continuity cannot possibly be innocent.

Therefore belief - please follow this - destroys innocency. Belief is the result of fear. Whether you believe in God or don't believe in God, there's very little difference; they are both the result of your conditioning. You are conditioned to believe in God and the Communist is conditioned not to believe. But the believer and the non-believer has his own continuity and therefore there is no innocency to find what truth is. There is only innocency when every psychological memory comes to an end and out of that comes a totally new dimension. Death is after all a fact; we are all going to die whether we like it or not, through disease, through an accident or naturally, that is inevitable.

Some scientist perhaps may discover a drug that will keep us alive fifty years longer, but it will be the same chaos. Death then is inevitable; through usage, through conflict, through constant struggle the physical organism wears itself out. Emotional stress and strain wear out the heart more quickly than actual physical activity. So there is physical death.

And is there any other form of death? We shall see. You are brought up, as most of the world, to believe in a soul, in a spiritual entity which is constant; that is, you will be resurrected. And in Asia they believe in reincarnation; that is, the believer is born over and over again until in time he becomes perfect. And when he has reached perfection - through being born over and over again and passing through these thousands of experiences - he is at one with whatever it is. That's the whole concept of reincarnation; you also have a similar concept only you put it a different way.

Now fear is at the bottom of these concepts otherwise how do you know that there is anything permanent, like a soul or the atman, as the Hindus call it, within you? How do you know there's anything permanent in you? Is there anything permanent?

Do please examine it, forgetting your belief! Is your relationship with anybody permanent? Aren't your thoughts changing every day, either being modified or added to? And isn't your physical organism undergoing tremendous changes all the time? So one has to ask if there is anything permanent at all? And yet that's what the mind is seeking because it says: 'If I die tomorrow what have I lived for? There must he something permanent, lasting, enduring!' But if you observe very deeply, psychologically you will find there is nothing permanent, nothing! Whatever it is - your thoughts, your relationships, your ideas and ideals, your gods - nothing is permanent.

We know this very deeply and we are frightened of it, so we invent another god and say I cannot live without hope, but actually all we know is despair. Out of that despair we become cynical, bitter, hard, brutal and violent. Then one sees that the thing one imagined to be permanent is thought itself. It is thought which has said there is a permanent soul, a permanent entity that eventually will evolve, become more beautiful till it reaches perfection.

So the soul, the atman is the result of thought but the fact is, there is nothing permanent. When you face it as a fact it doesn't create despair; on the contrary, it is only when you do not face the fact that there is hope, fear and despair. So thought creates the fear of death because you think the little property in your name is permanent. You are afraid to let go and die every day to your house, your home, your wife, your children, your relationship with your husband, everything that thought clings to as me and mine. And to die to all that every day is a total renewal.

Last time we met we were saying that the relationship of human beings is based on images; the husband has an image about the wife and the wife has an image about the husband. These two images - which are memories and have no reality whatsoever except as memories - are related, they have a relationship, but if one dies to all images then relationship has quite a different meaning, then there is a direct, living relationship which is constantly changing. It does not mean that I pursue another man or a woman. Relationship means movement; it is not a static state as my wife, my husband, my family which is all based on an image. When the relationship is between two images then it becomes destructive and full of conflict.

So we have an image about death; the thing known and the thing not known. We are really afraid of letting go of the known, not of facing the unknown; you cannot be afraid of the unknown because you don't know what it is.

You can only know the unknown when there is freedom from the known, so you have to die to everything you have built up psychologically, inwardly, inside the skin as it were, this whole structure of experience to which the mind desperately clings. That is real death not the physical organism coming to an end, but to die psychologically to everything you have known. I wonder if you have ever tried it? Of course not.

To die to a single pleasure, an enchanting remembrance, without argument, without a motive, just to drop it. Do it some time and you will see what is involved, how frightened you are to have a mind that is constantly renewing itself. What is this thing called life to which you cling so desperately? Look at it factually, not imaginatively or intellectually, this thing you call living!

Have you ever examined it? If you have, you will see that from the moment you are born until you die life is a battlefield with the occasional joy and flutter of happiness. It is a long battle full of ambition, competition, comparison, envy and jealousy, the struggle for power, prestige, position, making a name for oneself; and that's what you call living. And you are afraid to let all that go; you would rather cling to this ugly, violent, confusing existence instead of trying to find out for yourself whether it is possible to be free from the known.

You know, it is only the innocent mind, the new mind that can be free from the known, not the old mind with its thousands of experiences which are pouring in consciously or unconsciously all the time. When you are outside, waiting for a bus, seeing people, looking at the sky or a beautiful sunset, or when you see a bird on the wing, a passing cloud, all these leave an imprint on the mind. And only a mind that is free from experience can be innocent.

We think experience is necessary. I wonder if it is. As human beings we have had twenty-five or thirty million years of experience. Historically during the last five thousand years there have been twelve thousand wars; that means two and a half wars every year. We have experienced sorrow, disease, confusion, misery, aching loneliness, separation, guilt and agony. After so many experiences, have we learnt anything? Is the mind chaste, virgin? Technologically, scientifically, we may learn from experience, but psychologically it doesn't teach us a thing.

So only a mind which is free from the known, dying every day and therefore renewing itself, can possibly understand this whole business of time, fear, pleasure and sorrow. And it is only such a mind that can see what is truth.

Truth is not a word, it is not a concept; it isn't your truth and my truth, the Christian truth and the Muslim truth. Truth, like love,has no nationality, but to love and to see truth there must be no hate, no jealousy, no division and no anger. So one has to die to all that, to all the things which we call living and only then is there a possibility of that dimension in which time does not exist.

J. Krishnamurti Talks in Europe 1968 Rome 3rd Public Talk 17th March 1968

On Love and Compassion

Beloved Osho, You speak about love and compassion. I know of and feel different forms of love and compassion. Can You explain the different forms of love, and what You mean by compassion?

Osho: Love is a ladder, a ladder of three rungs. The lowest rung is sex, the middle is love, and the highest is prayer. Because of these three rungs there are a thousand and one combinations possible.Real compassion appears only at the third rung when sex energy becomes prayer -- the compassion of a buddha, the compassion Atisha is talking about. When passion has been transformed so totally, so utterly that it is no more passion at all, then compassion appears.

Real compassion appears only when your sex energy has become prayer.But compassion can appear on the second rung too, and compassion can appear on the first rung also. Hence there are so many different compassions. For example, if compassion appears on the first rung, when you are living at the lowest level of love-energy, sex, then compassion will be just an ego trip.

Then compassion will be very egotistic: you will enjoy the idea of being compassionate. You will really enjoy the other's suffering, because it is the other's suffering that is giving you the opportunity to be compassionate.

Somebody has fallen in the river and is drowning. The sexual person can jump in and save him, but his joy is that he was so good, that he did something beautiful, something great. He will talk about it with pride, he will brag about it. Compassion on the lowest rung, that of sex, will appear only as an ego trip.

That's what millions of missionaries all over the world are doing -- serving the poor, serving the ill, serving the uneducated aboriginals, primitives. But the whole joy is that, "I am doing something great." The 'I' is strengthened. That is an ugly form of compassion. It is called duty. Duty is a four-letter dirty word.

The second kind of compassion appears when love has arrived. Then compassion is sympathy: you feel, you really feel for the other. You fall into a harmony with the other, the other's suffering stirs you. It is not something to brag about.

On the second rung, you will never talk about your compassion, never; it is not something to be talked about. In fact you will never feel that you have done anything special, you will simply feel you have done whatsoever was to be done. You will see that it was human to do it. There is nothing special in it, nothing extraordinary; you have not attained some spiritual merit in doing it.

There is nothing like merit in it: it was natural, spontaneous. Then compassion is becoming more soft, more beautiful.At the third rung, where sex energy becomes prayer, compassion appears as empathy -- not even sympathy, but empathy. Sympathy means feeling the other's suffering, but you are still at a distance; empathy means becoming one with the other's suffering -- not only feeling it but suffering it, actually going into it.

If somebody is crying, sympathy means you feel for the one who is crying, empathy means you start crying. You are not only in a feeling space, you become attuned, you become really one: at-one-ment happens.

A man came to Buddha and asked, "I am very rich and I have no children, and my wife has also died. Now I have all the money in the world. I would like to do some meritorious work. I would like to do something for the poor and the downtrodden. Just tell me, what should I do?"And it is said Buddha became very sad and a tear rolled down from his eye.

The man was very much puzzled.

He said, "Tears in your eyes? And you look so sad -- why?"Buddha said, "You cannot help anybody, because you have not even helped yourself yet. And you cannot do anything compassionate, because your energies are still at the lowest. Your base metal has not yet become gold. In fact," Buddha said, "I am feeling so sorry for you. You want to be of some help to people, but you are not. You don't exist yet, because awareness has not happened, and without awareness how can you be? You don't have a real center from where compassion can flow."

Compassion can have these three categories, and love also has three categories. First, sex. Sex simply means: "Give me -- give me more and more!" It is exploitation, it is what Martin Buber calls the I-it relationship: "You are a thing and I want to use you." The man uses the woman, the woman uses the man, the parents use the children and the children use parents, friends use friends.

They say, "A friend is a friend only; a friend in need is a friend indeed." Use, reduce the other into a commodity.To live in the I-it world is to miss the whole wonder of existence. Then you are surrounded by things -- not by persons, not by people, not by life, but just material things. The poorest man in the world is one who lives in the I-it relationship. Sex is exploitation.Love is totally different.

Love is not exploitation. Love is not an I-it relationship, it is an I-thou relationship. The other is respected as a person in his own right; the other is not a thing to be used, to be possessed, to be manipulated. The other is an independent person, a freedom. The other has to be communicated with, not exploited. Love is a communication of energies.Sex is only "Give me, give me, give me more!" Hence the sexual relationship is continuously that of war, conflict, because the other also says "Give me!"

Both want more and more, and nobody is ready to give. Hence the conflict, the tug-of-war. And of course whosoever proves more strong will exploit the other. Because man has been muscularly stronger than woman, he has exploited, he has reduced women to utter nonentities; he has destroyed the soul of women. And it was easier for him if the soul was completely destroyed.

For centuries women were not allowed to read; in many religions women were not allowed to go to the temple, women were not allowed to become priests. Women were not allowed any public life, any social life. They were imprisoned in the houses; they were cheap labor, the whole day working, working, working. And they were reduced to sex objects. There has not been much difference between prostitutes and wives in the past.

The wife was reduced into a permanent prostitute, that's all. The relationship was not a relationship, it was an ownership.Love respects the other. It is a give-and-take relationship. Love enjoys giving, and love enjoys taking. It is a sharing, it is a communication. Both are equal in love; in a sexual relationship both are not equal.

Love has a totally different beauty to it.The world is slowly slowly moving towards love relationships; hence there is great turmoil. All the old institutions are disappearing -- they have to disappear, because they were based on the I-it relationship.

New ways of communication, new ways of sharing are bound to be discovered. They will have a different flavor, the flavor of love, of sharing. Nonpossessive they will be; there will be no owner.Then the highest state of love is prayer. In prayer there is communion. In sex there is the I-it relationship, in love the I-thou relationship.

Martin Buber stops there; his Judaic tradition won't allow him to go further. But one step more has to be taken: that is "neither I nor thou" -- a relationship where I and thou disappear, a relationship where two persons no more function as two but function as one.

A tremendous unity, a harmony, a deep accord, two bodies but one soul. That is the highest quality of love: I call it prayer.Love has these three stages, and compassion accordingly has three stages, and both can exist in different combinations.Hence, Dorothy Kaplan, there are so many kinds of love and so many kinds of compassion. But the basic, the most fundamental, is to understand this three-rung ladder of love.

That will help you, that will give you an insight into where you are, what kind of love you are living in and what kind of compassion is happening to you. Watch. Beware not to remain caught in it. There are higher realms, heights to be climbed, peaks to be attained.

Let your senses stream

The first thing to be understood is that you have senses but you have lost sensitivity.

Your senses are dull, almost dead.

They are there hanging with you, but energy is not flowing in them; they are not alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies that are against the body have crippled you. You live only in name's sake.

So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive. Only then can they be mastered.

You see but you don't see deeply. You see only the surface of things. You touch but your touch has no warmth; nothing flows in and out from your touch. You hear also. The birds go on singing and you hear and you can say, "Yes, I hear," and you are not wrong – you are hearing it but it never reaches to the very core of your being. It does not go dancing within you; it doesn't help a flowering, an unfolding within you.

These senses have to be rejuvenated.

You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so mysterious, and so many dimensions open through it. And those senses are the only doors and windows through which you will reach the divine – so don't deaden them. Make them more alive.

Let them vibrate, pulsate, and, what Stanley Keleman has said, let them stream.

That is exactly the right word: let them flow like a stream, rushing. You can have the sensation. If your hand is rushing like a stream of energy you will feel a tingling sensation. You will feel something inside the hand is flowing and wants to make contact, wants to be connected.

When you love a woman or a man and you take her hand in your hand, if your hand is not streaming, this love is not going to be of any use. If your hand is not jumping and throbbing with energy and pouring energy into your woman or into your man, then this love is almost dead from the very beginning. Then this child is not born alive. Then sooner or later you will be finished; you are already finished. It will take a little time to recognize it because your mind is also dull; otherwise you would not have entered into it, because it is already dead. For what are you entering? You take time to recognize things because your sensitivity, brilliance, intelligence, is so clouded and confused.

Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming.

Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See his eyes, the brilliance, the light that comes to his eyes. He is streaming. His eyes are almost dancing on the petals of the flower. This is the way to be: be river like. And only then is it possible to master these senses.

In fact people have had a very wrong attitude. They think that if you want to master your senses you have to make them almost dead. But then what is the point of mastering? You can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master. But you have killed the body.

Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use.

But this has been found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don't be in contact. Remove yourself. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are you going to gain from this mastery?

Right now when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes?

So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes. Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was on your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.

When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine.

It is the divine that has moved through your hand. It is the hand of the divine…all hands are of the divine. It is the divine that has loved through you. All love affairs are of the divine. How can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela: the divine play. It is the divine that is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is the divine that is listening through you. It is the divine and it alone spread all over.

Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy – unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes in rare moments lovers know how to touch.

You will become alive, streaming.

Now you know about how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. Unblock yourself! Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again.

You are like a disconnected telephone-line. Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected. Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.

All my meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That's why I call them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. I give you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.

- Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and Omega

Drop seeking and start living..

This is my effort here - to make you aware. That' s why I give you so many situations. Sometimes I force you to be alone and sometimes I force you to be together with someone.

Sometimes if you are not moving in a love affair, I will almost push you into one. Sometimes I will pull you out. It is just to give you many situations in which you can see how the mind functions, how the mechanism functions.

The mind is discontent with everything that is. If you become aware of that, you will start working in a different direction. Whatsoever is, be content with it, and then the mind disappears.

Contentenment is a great meditation to help the mind disappear. Whatsoever is, be content with it. Sometimes when you are alone, be content with that and enjoy that moment, because you will hanker for it when there is a relationship. Feel blessed that this moment is there, because sooner or later somebody is going to disturb it. There are fools and fools - somebody will come and start an affair.

Before he comes, enjoy this peace, this silence, this freedom of being yourself. There is no need to compromise. There is nobody to hamper your space' enjoy it. And when somebody happens and you feel an appetite to be in a relationship, be in a relationship. But then enjoy the passion and the fever, the excitement. Enjoy the situation that love brings; the pain, the pleasure. Because sooner or later it will disappear and you will be alone again. Before it disappears, have the taste of it totally.

Love and aloneness go on happening like day and night. You have to enjoy every situation. And don’t be too much in the mind, otherwise it will poison you. Just keep a little aloof. Forget what has gone; it has gone! It is no more. And don’t be too concerned with what is going to happen; remain with what is happening, and enjoy this moment before it flies, because it is already on the wing. It will not be there if you miss it and it cannot be repeated again.

It may grow into love, it may not, but friendship is good in itself. And one never knows when he becomes a lover you may miss his friendship and you will think 'Why did I destroy the friendship?'

Friendship has its own beauty, and if you can enjoy it, it is better than a love affair. A love affair is always jumpy. There are moments of happiness but they are few and far between. There are also many miserable moments. A friendship is a more solid thing; moves on plainer ground. Friendship has a deeper equilibrium than love.

In the Vedas, there is a sutra, Madbyam Abhyam - 'The one who is in the middle need not be afraid of anything.' The middle is beyond fear. The middle means the balanced and love is not balanced. Friendship is balanced. . Love is an extreme. Friendship is a very delicate middle, a very peaceful affair. So don’t be in a hurry. Just cherish each moment as it comes.

[ a sanyasin says that she was frustrated at seeing her continual deceptions, her lying, and that she just didn’t seem to have any clarity about herself]

Once you are aware that you are being deceptive, it is not possible to continue for much longer. There are two problems that affect you - in fact that were not just your problems, but universal problems.

One is that you are missing meaning. You cant see what to live for. You somehow just drag. You get up in the morning, go to work, but there seems to be no meaning in it. This is a basic human problem.

People who are a little intelligent are bound to become aware that there is no meaning in life, but one has to live, so one has to befool oneself. One pretends that there is meaning - this meaning, that meaning - and one goes on doing this and that to help oneself believe that there is some meaning. But you know there is none.

You have to come to the understanding that there is no meaning as such in life and cannot be. Life is a meaningless energy and there is no need to find any meaning because all meanings are false, projected, man-made, do they are all lies.

This is very difficult to accept because it is very shattering. But once you understand it, many problems will disappear and you will be clear about your life.

Life is purposeless, meaningless. It is not going anywhere. There is nothing to be achieved. One has to live moment to moment but of sheer delight.

There is no need to connect one moment to another moment by a certain imposed meaning because there is none. Meaning is a lie. Somebody is living to impress people, somebody is living for political power. Somebody is living for money, somebody is trying to achieve god. And somebody is going to work out his liberation.

But a really liberated person is one who has understood that there is no meaning, so he is not seeking, searching for anything. He lives the moment. It is there - he enjoys it. If he is eating, he eats well. he enjoys. God has come in the form of food. The whole has extended its hand in the form of food. If he talking, he talks because god wants to say something and another form of god wants to listen to it, so let there be communication. If one sings, one sings totally. If one dances, one dances. Each moment in itself complete. One does not carry the past and one is not worried about the future. One lives herenow.

So this is one of the things that I see is your problem. So drop seeking meaning and start living. The second thing - and that too is nothing to do with you, that too, is human – it is that you don’t accept yourself. Deep down you feel a certain rejection of yourself. You would like to be in some other way, so whatever is there you try to overlook somehow. Then it becomes a lie. But this is my experience and observation, that nobody i came across loves himself and accepts himself. People always find excuses.

Deep down the human mind is a rejector. It goes on rejecting. You have to drop that. This is the way God wanted to be in you - fat and beautifully fat. This is the form that God wanted to take in you and he is enjoying, so why be worried? Just accept.

And when I say accept, I don’t mean accept in a frustrated state of mind. No. Accept with a deep welcome. If you can tackle these two things, your problems will disappear.

I accept you, so why cant you accept yourself?

Accept yourself, delight in your being. And there is no need to hanker for any meaning. Moment to moment is full of meaning. And whenever you lose trust, come back to Poona, so that I can hit it back into your head again, mm? you don’t have a thick head , so don’t be worried! ( a chuckle)

And sometimes stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself with very loving eyes. Sometimes touch your own face with a loving hands. One should learn how to love oneself. Lie down on the bed and feel yourself.

Fill each other's cup..

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love; Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together; For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

- Khalil Gibran on Marriage

And you think that is not important!

"The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. For millions of years the sheep have been eating them just the same.

And is it not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them?

Is the warfare between the sheep and the flowers not important? Is this not of more consequence than a fat red-faced gentleman's sums?

And if I know-- I, myself-- one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing-- Oh! You think that is not important!"

His face turned from white to red as he continued:

"If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself, 'Somewhere, my flower is there...' But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened... And you think that is not important!"

He could not say anything more. His words were choked by sobbing.

Chapter VII, The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This Life of Ours

To what shall I compare this life of ours?
Even before I can say
It's like a lightning flash
or a dewdrop
It's no more.

On Fear

Fear is a negativity, an absence. This has to be understood very, very deeply. If you miss there you will never be able to understand the nature of fear. It is like darkness. Darkness does not exist, it only appears to be. In fact it is just an absence of light. Light exists; remove the light - there is darkness.

Darkness does not exist, you cannot remove darkness. Do whatsoever you want to do, you cannot remove darkness. You cannot bring it, you cannot throw it. If you have to do something with darkness, you will have to do something with light, because only something which has an existence can be related to. Put the light off, darkness is there; put the light on, darkness is not there - but you do something with LIGHT. You cannot do anything with darkness.

Fear is darkness. It is absence of love. You cannot do anything about it, and the more you do, the more you will become fearful because then the more you will find it impossible.

The problem will become more and more complicated. If you fight with darkness you will be defeated. You can bring a sword and try to kill the darkness: you will only be exhausted. And, finally, the mind will think: Darkness is so powerful, that's why I am defeated.

This is where logic goes wrong. It is absolutely logical that if you have been struggling with darkness and you could not defeat it, could not destroy it; it is absolutely logical to come then to the conclusion that darkness is very, very powerful. I am impotent before it. But the reality is just the opposite. You are not impotent, darkness is impotent. In fact darkness is not there - that's why you could not defeat it. How can you defeat something which is not?

Don't fight with the fear otherwise you will become more and more afraid: and a new fear will enter into your being, that is: fear of fear, which is very dangerous. In the first place fear is absence and in the second place the fear of fear is the fear of the absence of absence. Then you go into a madness. You have taken a wrong step.

Fear is nothing but absence of love. Do something with love, forget about fear. If you love well, fear disappears. If you love deeply, fear is not found. Whenever you have been in love with someone, ever for a single moment, was there any fear? It has never been found in any relationship - if even for a single moment two persons are in deep love and a meeting happens, they are tuned to each other, in that moment fear has never been found. Just as if the light is on and darkness has not been found There is the secret key: Love more.

If you feel there is fear in your being - love more. Be courageous in love, take courage. Be adventurous in love, love more, and love unconditionally, because the more you love the less will be the fear. And when I say love I mean all the four layers of love: from sex to samadhi. Love deeply.
- Osho

Love and Death

I wonder if you have ever known what love is?

Because I think death and love walk together. Death, love, and life are one and the same. But we have divided life, as we have divided the earth. We talk of love as being either carnal or spiritual and have set a battle going between the sacred and the profane.

We have divided what love is from what love should be, so we never know what love is. Love, surely, is a total feeling that is not senti- mental and in which there is no sense of separation.

It is complete purity of feeling without the separative, fragmenting quality of the intellect. Love has no sense of continuity. Where there is a sense of continuity, love is already dead, and it smells of yesterday, with all its ugly memories, quarrels, brutalities. To love, one must die.

-J Krishnamurti

Accept Life, Thank Life

Junnaid, a Sufi mystic thanked existence everyday for its compassion, its love, its care.

Once, Junnaid was traveling. For three days, he and his disciples went from village to village, but people everywhere were every antagonistic and turning against Junnaid. They thought his teachings were not exactly the teaching of Mohammed. His teachings seemed to be his own. They said, “He is corrupting the people.” So from three villages, they got no food, not even water.

On the third day, they were in really bad shape. His disciples thought, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to existence, ‘You are compassionate to us. You love us. You care about us. We are grateful to you’?” But when prayer time came, Junnaid prayer a usual. After the prayer, his followers said, “This is too much. For three days, we have suffered hunger and thirst. We are tried, we have not slept and still you are thanking existence and telling it that it takes so much care of us that we are grateful to it!”

Junnaid said, “My prayer does not depend on any condition. Those things are ordinary. Whether I get food, I don’t want to bother existence about it. Such a small thing in such a big universe. If I don’t get water, even if I die, it does not matter. My prayer will remain the same. Because to this vast universe, it makesno difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”

This is what I mean when I say, don’t take anything seriously, not even yourself. And then you will see that anger simply has not happened. There is no possibility of anger. Anger is certainly one of the great leakages of your spiritual energy. If you can manage to be playful about your desires, and still be the same whether you succeed or you fail, you will be happy.

Start thinking about yourself at ease – nothing special, not that you are meant to be victorious, not that you have to succeed always in every situation. This is a big world and we are small people. Once this settles into your being, then everything is acceptable. Anger disappears, and the disappearance brings a new surprise, because when anger disappears it leaves behind tremendous energy of compassion, love and friendship.

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence

Every creative soul -- it does not matter what he creates -- should be respected and honored, so that creativity is honored. But even politicians get Nobel Prizes -- who are nothing but clever criminals.

It does not matter whether you paint, sculpt, or make shoes; whether you are a gardener, a farmer, a fisherman, a carpenter -- it does not matter. What matters is, are you putting your very soul into what you are creating? Then your creative products have something of the quality of divine.
Except creativity, there is nothing divine.

If you want to create, you have to get rid of all conditioning otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; it lives a life of drag, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical.

Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical: respectability you will get, honors you will get. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate, but this whole thing is ugly.

A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honored because you have been a good slave, obedient, that you have not gone astray, that you have followed the well-trodden path.

The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path, he has to search out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little more superior than the collective idiocy.

But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honors people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way. It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds -- the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors -- had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.

My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself.

Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live.

In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What you see as humanity is only a very hocus-pocus phenomenon. Unless we give individual freedom to each person, absolute freedom to each person to be himself, to exist in his own way.... And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody -- that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody.

But in the past everybody has been poking his nose into everybody else's affairs -- even into things which are absolutely private, which have nothing to do with the society.

For example, you fall in love with a woman -- what has that got to do with the society? It is purely a personal phenomenon, it is not of the marketplace. If two persons are agreeing to commune in love, the society should not come into it, but the society comes into it with all its paraphernalia, in direct ways, in indirect ways.

The policeman will stand between the lovers; the magistrate will stand between the lovers; and if that is not enough then the societies have created a super-policeman, God, who will take care of you.
The idea of God is that of a peeping Tom who does not even allow you privacy in your bathroom, who goes on looking through the keyhole, watching what you are doing. This is ugly. All the religions of the world say God continuously watches you -- this is ugly. What kind of God is this? Has he got no other business but to watch everybody, follow everybody? Seems to be the supreme-most detective!

Humanity needs a new soil -- the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within