"I would like to see whether you have guts to clap or not." - OSHO Talks

"During the month that followed Sheela’s exit flight Osho talked three times a day (about seven to eight hours) to disciple and journalists. For such a self-acclaimed lazy man He was doing a tremendous amount of “work,” and was obviously getting tired.
When asked by a journalist how was it possible that He did not know everything that was going on if He was enlightened, Osho replied:
“To be enlightened means I know myself, it does not mean that I know my room is bugged.”
September 26th, 1985. It takes a diamond to cut a diamond, and I recognized that what was coming was going to hurt when in discourse Osho said:
“And today I would like to declare something immensely important – because I feel perhaps this helped Sheela and her people to exploit you, I don’t know whether tomorrow I will be here or not, so it is better to do it while I am here, and make you free from any other possibility of such a fascist regime.”
“That is, from today, you are free to use any color of clothes. If you feel like using red clothes, that is up to you. And this message has to be sent all over the world to all the communes. It will be more beautiful to have all the colors. I had always dreamed of seeing you in all the colors of the rainbow.
Today we claim the rainbow to be our colors.
The second thing: you return your malas – unless you wish otherwise. That is your choice, but it is not a necessity anymore. You return your malas to President Hasya. But if you want to keep it, it is up to you.
The third thing: from now onwasrds, anybody who wants initiation into sannyas will not be given a mala and will not be told to change to red clothes.
So, we can take over the world more easily!” (From Bondage to Freedom)
These words from Osho had an ominous feel to them, but it was the clapping and cheering that frightened me. It was like a stupid mob; like the clapping that had accompanied Sheela’s meetings. Many people left Rajneesh Mandir very happy and went to buy new color clothes in the boutique. I saw Vivek, we were both wary of the change, and she said to me, “He may disband the commune next.”
Ocotober 8th, 1985, Osho said in discourse:
“…You have been clapping because I have dropped red clothes, malas. And when you clap, you don’t know how it hurts me. That means you have been a hypocrite!”
“Why have you been wearing red clothes if dropping them brings you so much joy? Why have you been wearing the mala? The moment I say, ‘Drop,’ you rejoice. And people rushed to the boutique to change their clothes, they have dropped their malas.
“But you don’t know how much you have wounded me by your clapping and by your changing.”
“Now, I have to say one thing more, and I would like to see whether you have guts to clap or not; that is, now there is no Buddhafield. So if you want enlightenment, you have to work for it individually, the Buddhafield exists no more. You cannot depend on the energy of the Buddhafield to become enlightened.
Now clap as loudly as you can. CLAP!…”
“Now you are completely free: even for enlightenment only you are responsible. And I am completely free from you.”
“You have been behaving like idiots!…”
“And this has given a good chance to see how many people are really intimate with me. If you can drop your malas so easily… Even in my own house there is one sannyasin who immediately changed to blue clothes, with great joy. What does it show? It shows that those red clothes were a burden. She was somehow managing to be in red clothes against her will.
But I don’t want you to do anything against your will.
Now I don’t want even to help you towards your enlightenment against your will. You are absolutely free and responsible for yourself.” (From Bondage to Freedom)
When He shouted “Clap!” it was as though a bomb had exploded and we were all sitting in its fallout, frozen.

- Ma Prem Shunyo
(Source : From the Book "My Diamond Days with Osho,")

"Those who have left will repent, as they will have fallen into somebody's hands who will satisfy & gratify whatever the desire."- OSHO

Question: BELOVED MASTER,MANY OF YOUR SANNYASINS, SOME OF WHOM HAVE BEEN WITH YOU FOR MANY YEARS,
HAVE LEFT YOU TO FOLLOW THE TEACHINGS OF CHANNELS OR PSYCHIC CLAIRVOYANTS.I HAVE VISITED SOME OF THESE PEOPLE, PARTLY OUT OF CURIOSITY AND PARTLY THROUGH THE RECOMMENDATION OF FRIENDS, AND HAVE FOUND NOTHING THAT COMES EVEN CLOSE TO THE LOVE AND BENEDICTION IN BEING WITH YOU.

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS THE ATTRACTION TO THESE DEAD MASTERS OR SO-CALLED
ENTITIES WHEN YOU ARE HERE, A LIVING ENLIGHTENED MASTER?

Answer:
Satyam Samved, the question you have raised has many layers and a simple answer won't be justified. But I would like to go into it as deeply as possible, because it is something of much concern to each of you.
I am not in any way a bondage. I do not create a program in you, a belief system. I don't ask you to surrender; in fact, I don't ask anything from you. All I want is to help you to be yourself. This is one of the reasons a few are bound to leave me, because they are in search of someone who can take their responsibility. But they are not aware that the moment you lose your responsibility you also lose your freedom. The moment you surrender to anyone, dead or alive, you destroy yourself - you commit a suicide as far as your individuality is concerned.
But there are people who will feel much relief, relief in being free of responsibilities. Somebody has taken the burden on himself; he is your savior. Now it is easier for you just to believe in him. There is nothing easier in the world than belief, because you don't have to do anything at all.
With me there is no possibility of any belief. I will destroy all your beliefs so that you can be a freedom, a bird on the wing in the open sky. But very few are the people who are in search of freedom. Those who are not in search of freedom are bound to leave me; it is natural. And I don't prevent anyone, because even to interfere is against my approach and my respect for individual dignity.
Secondly there are many who are not interested in understanding existence, their own being, but are very much interested like small children in puzzles, esoteric ideologies, occult phenomena. Just because something is irrational, illogical does not mean that it is truth, does not mean that it is going to give you your innermost being and its treasure. There are thousands of esoteric schools, theologies, theosophies and they are very interesting in a way - but they are interesting because you are retarded! They look very magical and there are people who exploit your retardedness.
The founder of the Theosophical movement, Madame Blavatsky, was found guilty of strange kinds of things; you cannot call them crimes, you can simply call them fraud. She had a servant named Damodar. While she was traveling by train she would be in first class and Damodar would be in third class. Suddenly Damodar would fall flat on the floor of the compartment, unconscious, foaming.
Naturally, the train was stopped, people gathered and then Madame Blavatsky would come and do some abracadabra. Damodar would immediately open his eyes and everybody would see "what a tremendously spiritual powerful woman..." And nobody knew that he was her servant and that was his only job. Finally in a court case Damodar was forced to admit that he had played a part in many kinds of frauds.
Beautiful letters still exist, that were written by Blavatsky herself. She made a special ceiling... Her followers would sit in Adyar, Madras, with closed eyes in the dark night - no light because divine masters don't want to be seen. Damodar was hiding and would slip a letter from the ceiling. A light would be brought in... the letter was coming from Master K.H.
Those are beautiful letters; they are collected and published. There was no need... the letters themselves are significant, but this way they became very mystical.
Now the followers were not just reading letters written by human hands, but by a great master who is the guide of all those who are in search of the ultimate truth.
I have been in the place in Adyar from where those letters have been dropped, and strange is the gullibility of human beings.... The writing is clearly human, the paper is material, the ink is material, and looked at closely, anybody could have figured that it is the writing of Blavatsky herself and nobody else. But when you want to believe you become blind. When you want to believe you don't listen to any rationality, your own reason ... it feels good to believe.
Blavatsky created one of the greatest esoteric schools in the world, the Theosophical movement.
And the reasons people believed in that movement were all neither rational nor mystical, nor based on spiritual experience. In a certain way they were cunning, fraudulent, but very sufficing, very satisfying, very gratifying.
Just today one of my secretaries, Anando, informed me that a nice French gentleman is here.
Nothing is wrong with the person, he just believes that he can heal spiritually - and there are thousands of "spiritual healers" in the world. If they are really true there should be no need of any hospitals. Naturally, because he does not understand much English - he is French - all the French sannyasins immediately gathered around him and he talked about me.
These are the ways people are tricked. First he said, "Your master has the biggest spiritual aura that I have seen in my lifetime." Naturally you feel very gratified: your master has the biggest aura. He has to have, because he is your master, he is no ordinary master!
And he must have heard - it is all over the world in every newspaper, in every language - that I have been poisoned in America, and the poison has affected my body badly. So he said, "Your master's aura is the biggest, but on his left hand, just on the top of the left hand there is a black hole."
Now there he missed! The problem is with my right hand, not with my left hand! And the poison cannot create black holes. But just this mistake reveals what he was trying to do....
Everybody knows that I walk like a drunkard. Now nothing can be done about it; I have been walking that way my whole life. I am a man who is utterly drunk.
So he said, "His aura is great, but the energy of the aura is not flowing into his legs. I can heal him and I have come here to heal him."
Naturally my people would think that this is good if somebody has come from France, from far away to heal me. But I receive dozens of letters from this corner or that corner of the world that their desire is to heal me.
Why this desire...? They don't want to learn something here; they don't want to heal themselves here. The simple arithmetic is that if I allow anybody to heal me then all of you will naturally think that the greatest healer has come. These people are not necessarily cunning, are not necessarily deceptive, they may authentically believe that they are capable of healing.
Just a few days ago Doctor Shyam Singha came from London. He was once my disciple, but because he was doing things which are absolutely against humanity, sincerity, truth - he was exploiting people in my name - I had to expel him from the sannyas movement. He was moving around the world, telling sannyasins that he can do this, he can do that and all that he can do is to manage to take as much money from people as possible. He was exploiting on every excuse in the name of healing, in the name of opening your chakras, in the name of raising your kundalini, in the name of cleansing your past life and its evil effects...!
When so many people reported that he was exploiting simple people I had to debar him and announce in the papers that he does not belong to the sannyas movement. And I had to inform him that he cannot enter into the campus. He has been here two times, but was turned away from the gate; he was not allowed in. He must have seen this as a great opportunity - that I have been poisoned.
Nobody knows who has made him a doctor! He does not have any qualifications for it - but there are many doctors in the world and they go on healing people, homeopathically, naturopathically, spiritually... Many are the names but the business is the same.
So he wrote a letter asking if he can come and heal me; if I would simply send my signature on my letterhead so that nobody prevents him at the gate and he is allowed in the campus.
I am not sick, and I don't need any healing. The poison was given to me two years ago. Because it has not been able to kill me, the man who was responsible for prosecuting me has been fired from his job as Attorney General of Oregon in America. He has been fired because he could neither manage thirty to forty years of jail punishment for me, nor a good dose of poison to kill me, nor to put a bomb in my room and destroy me.
One of my attorneys was here just a few days ago. He said, "That poor government attorney tried hard; he did his best." But I have not committed any crime - all is fiction. He had a list of thirty-four crimes that I was supposed to have committed. It would have needed at least one thousand years of jail.
"That long," I said, "I would not be able to live! You should consider the fact: one thousand years of jail? It is hilarious; just think of something practical. The whole list is an absolute lie."
They could not give me the poison in such a dose that I would have died in the jail. It became clear from the statement of the United States Attorney, Charles Turner, that they did not want to make me a martyr. They were afraid that if I were to die then again another Christianity will be born; then again another religion, another fanatic fundamentalist group of people will gather in sympathy with me.
The court ordered that I leave the court, that I go to the airport immediately. My airplane was waiting; I had to leave immediately. Perhaps they were afraid that if I died before leaving then the sympathy of the whole world would be with me, and against Ronald Reagan and his company. Out of fear they could not give the whole dose; otherwise one dies within twelve hours.
That's what the experts from England have informed me, who have presumed that the poison given to me was thallium. It kills within twelve hours, but if given in small doses it takes time. It may kill within six months, but now even that time has passed.
The poison is out of my system.
Existence cannot be so cruel! And there is no black hole on the left hand.... So please, next time when you talk, remember: my right hand has some pain, but that too is not something that needs spiritual healing. It is a physical thing and it needs physical healing; no spiritual healing is needed.
And as far as the spirit is concerned, it is never sick; it is intrinsically healthy and whole. It is the body which is bound to become sick and some day old and some day it dies.
But there have been spiritualists of all kinds who don't understand that there is an immense difference between spirituality and physical existence.
I have heard about a young man whose father was a member of a Christian Science group.
In England there has been a very influential group and in America also: Christian Science. The young man was asked, "What is the problem, your father has not been seen for three weeks?" They were meeting every Sunday.
The young man said, "It is difficult; he is very sick."
The old man said, "Nonsense, sickness is only a belief, imagination! And he is an old member of our group. We don't believe in sickness, just remind him, 'You are not sick!'"
He said, "I will remind him."
After two weeks they met again. The old man said, "What happened, he has not come?"
The young man said, "What can I do? Now he believes he is dead."
The body has to become sick, the body has to become dead also. One should think of experiencing the spiritual, the eternal, the immortal. One should not waste time on such stupid ideologies, which have been prevalent all over the world.
There are people, simple people, who immediately think that miracles can happen. And the greatest problem is that if you are very trusting something can happen. Seventy percent of sicknesses are illusory; they are only because you believe you are sick. That's why seventy percent of people are helped by any kind of medical approach other than allopathy - even simple sugar pills work, the scientific name of which is homeopathy.
I used to live next to a Bengali fellow....
He was a great homeopath, but he himself used to go to the hospital when he was sick.
I asked him, "What is the matter? You are such a great homeopath, you have treated so many people." And it is true, he had treated...
He said, "I have treated, but I cannot treat myself; I know they are sugar pills. Somebody who does not know and believes in me, may be helped."
And it has been found that seventy percent of people are helped by any kind of medical approach, except a very few stubborn people who are determined not to be healed whatever happens. They torture doctors, they torture allopaths, they torture homeopaths, they torture spiritual healers, they torture everybody. They are very inventive; they go on finding new diseases, even diseases for which the doctors don't know the name.
Because of this homeopath doctor - I used to sit in his dispensary... A woman used to come almost every day, and the moment the woman would come, he would say, "My God, this woman is not going to die. She has no disease, she is perfectly healthy, but she goes on reading medical periodicals and finds out new diseases. Even I don't know," he said. "When she tells me that this kind of disease is happening to her, then I know. But it makes no difference, because I have only one medicine whatever the disease."
There was a doctor who was tired of a young man, because every day he was standing there. He was poor, he could not pay, and the doctor had tried in every way to convince him, "You are perfectly healthy."
But every day something new. One day it is stomachache, one day it is a headache.... He told me, "What should I do? It seems cruel because he is poor, an orphan, uneducated, unemployed..."
I said, "Do one thing: send him to me and just tell him, 'He is a very difficult person; he knows, but he does not want to waste his time, so he is very secretive - but he has the power ... if he touches water, the water can heal anything - but he will not touch it. But you remember, remain insistent. Sit in front of his door.'"
He came nearabout nine o'clock in the evening and he said, "I am suffering badly from stomachache."
I said, "I am not a doctor and if you are suffering, suffer. Why should you bother me? When I have stomachache have I ever gone to you and tortured you?"
He said, "No, you have never come."
I said, "That makes it simple; just go home."
He said, "It is strange, I have been told by Doctor Barat, the famous doctor, that you have a power, a spiritual power. If you can give me a glass of water and touch the water I will be healed."
I said, "I cannot do that."
He said, "Why can't you do that? It is not much I am asking. I can bring my own water, I can bring my own glass; you simply touch...!"
I said, "I cannot touch at all! Why should I lose my spiritual power?"
He said, "Now, you have accepted that you have spiritual power."
He ran home and brought a big bottle full of water.
I said, "I am not going to do it because a stomachache is not something immortal, it will disappear sometime. It will teach you patience, suffering, acceptability and it will give you great qualities. I cannot disturb your life."
He said, "You seem to be a very hard person. You cannot just touch my bottle?"
I said, "I cannot touch it."
Twelve o'clock in the night... I used to live with my aunt; she was listening from her room. Finally, she came out and said, "You are also almost insane! If he wants to be touched, just touch the water and get rid of him. Wasting time for three hours. I have been listening - there is a limit!"
I said, "Nobody can convince me, you simply go and sleep!"
She said, "I cannot sleep because this man is sitting there."
And the man said, "This is a good opportunity." He touched the feet of my aunt and said, "Just help me, he seems to have no heart at all... three hours and I am suffering so much from stomachache."
I said, "Listen, I can touch, but you have to promise me not to tell anybody, because I don't want a queue the whole day, I have to do something else too."
He said, "I promise, absolutely promise: in the name of God I will never tell anybody."
I touched his bottle. He immediately drank the whole bottle and he said, "My God, I have never felt so high, not only is the stomach completely cured, other small diseases, they are gone and I feel so much power."
I said, "Remember the promise."
He said, "Just one thing, my mother is very sick."
I said, "You have started."
He said, "No, I will not tell anybody, I will just fill the same bottle."
I said, "That you can do, but don't bring anybody here and don't bring your bottle again! Once I have touched, that's all!"
And you will be surprised to know that he became a healer instead of being a crackpot hypochondriac. He would fill the same bottle with new water. But because I had touched the bottle, even though the water went on changing, he was curing everybody. People started coming to his home from faraway villages, and he enjoyed it very much. He came to thank me.
I said, "You should not come here."
He said, "No, I have not come to ask anything, but just to tell you that the bottle is working."
I said, "You cure as many people as possible."
After many years I passed from that village again. By that time he had become a very famous healer.
Doctor Barat, a very famous doctor, said to me, "What have you done? Because I used to have migraine once in a while and I had to ask that stupid boy, 'Will you give me some water from your bottle?' And it is a miracle - the migraine disappeared."
I said, "It is spiritual healing, but never tell anybody about it."
He said, "But I had never thought that you really have that power. I was just joking and just wanted to get rid of that fellow. And now whenever I have any trouble, instead of my own medicines, I send my car to find that boy. He comes in the car with the bottle - just a cup of water and it works!"
I said, "It has to work... spiritual power."
The question is if you trust, then anything...
Only thirty percent of diseases cannot be cured by your trust. They are really diseases; they need right diagnosis and right treatment.
I don't want any kind of stupidity here. I have heard of a few people who have already started feeling great well-being, experiencing "spaces that they have never known." My librarian, Kavisho - because she is French she has almost become the leader of other sick people.
I warn you: just forget all about this "great space"; don't corrupt my simple people. And you don't think that you are a cunning person; you believe that you have spiritual powers, but you don't even know what meditation is. You have not encountered your own being. So you are simply wasting your time in spiritually curing people.
First find yourself.
That's exactly what Socrates said, "Healer, first heal thyself."
First know thyself.
Unless you know yourself all is fiction - your sickness, your health, both are meaningless because the reality is the grave. Perhaps somebody will die from disease and somebody will die with spiritual healing. It makes no difference. The only difference that makes a difference is that when death comes, in your innermost being you are absolutely alert and aware of your immortality. That is the only real healing: real being.
These are just childish games, and because people want something great to happen to them, anybody can convince them: "Look, great things have started happening."
Great things happen, but not through anybody else.
You have to follow the path absolutely alone.
The people, Satyam Samved, who may have come and left must have found that I am not a man in any way to nourish your stupidity. I am not the man to help you believe in great things: in God...
I am not the man to make you believe that your heaven is certain. On the contrary, I start destroying your beliefs and people become afraid and escape. Those who have left will repent, because they will have fallen into somebody's hands who will satisfy and gratify whatever the desire, but that is all imagination.
An authentic experience that makes you free from mind and from body - I am interested only in that experience, not in anything else; anything else does not matter.
Police Officer O'Leary is cruising around in his patrol car one night. He is on the lookout for trouble.
He sees two little old ladies in the front seat of a Chevrolet convertible, parked in a used car lot. The car lot is closed so O'Leary drives up alongside the Chevy and asks, "Are you two ladies trying to steal this car?"
"Certainly not," says one of the ladies, "we purchased the car this afternoon."
"Well," says the cop, "why don't you start it up and drive out of here?"
"We don't drive," replies the other little old lady. "And besides we are waiting. We were told that if we bought a car here we would get screwed."
People are just waiting in used car lots.
This is not that kind of place...!

Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Beloved Master."
OSHO

(Source: Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, chapter 6)

"There are three rings of love: the engagement ring, the wedding ring and the suffering ring." - OSHO Talks

Question: BELOVED MASTER,I REMEMBER YOU SAYING, "DON'T SURRENDER TO A PERSON, SURRENDER TO LOVE."I'M IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH A BEAUTIFUL AND POWERFUL WOMAN AND WE BOTH DEFINITELY DON'T WANT TO SURRENDER TO EACH OTHER. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SURRENDER TO LOVE WHILE BEING IN RELATIONSHIP? I'M QUITE IN A MESS.
Answer:
Prem Avida, I can understand; you are really in a mess and there is no way out.
I have heard that there are three rings of love: the engagement ring, the wedding ring and the suffering ring.
Your question makes it clear that you have not understood what I mean when I say, "Don't surrender to a person, surrender to love." And love is never a relationship; this is your problem. Relationship is bound to be a bondage. In relationship either you have to surrender or the other has to surrender.
And you yourself are recognizing that you are in relationship with a beautiful and powerful woman, "and we both definitely DON'T want to surrender to each other."
Then just live in coexistence. Live the way all poor husbands are living. Show to the world that your wife is so surrendered to you... who is preventing? You just have to tell a lie and there is no mess - and surrender to the powerful and beautiful woman. But remember, the moment a man surrenders to a woman he loses dignity in her eyes. She starts looking here and there for someone who has the guts not to surrender.
You don't seem to have guts. There is no need to surrender to each other. Surrender to love means:
enjoy in the happiness of the other, rejoice in the being of the other; be in tune with each other, dance in harmony.
The question of surrender is political, it is not a question of love. And relationship is not love at all; it means love has ended and relationship has begun. It begins very soon after the honeymoon - mostly in the middle of the honeymoon. It is not easy to live with another person whose life-style is different, whose likings are different, whose education and culture is different, and above all the other happens to be a woman - even their biology is different.
But one thing you have to understand clearly, Avida, is that it is the man who longs for domination, and it is the woman who dominates. This is what I call coexistence: live and let live. More than that is all imagination. If you really had known what love is... The basic thing is not to create a relationship.
Stand aloof as the pillars of a temple stand aloof, but support the same roof. Don't destroy the individuality of the other, enhance it if you can; otherwise, at least leave it as it is, uninterfered with.
Freedom is not to be destroyed in the name of love.
Freedom is a far higher value than your so-called love.
The moment you create a relationship you are entering into a contract, a business deal. Love disappears, it becomes law. Now you are not very far away from the divorce court. Unless you are a person who loves to be dominated, who likes to be henpecked - then you have got a perfect woman.
Then don't make any fuss, simply surrender, declare, "I am a henpecked husband. I am your poor servant; you are my master. You order and I will follow."
Actually that is what is happening all over the world but nobody says it. There are many things which are not asserted in the society.
A small child was asked by the teacher, "Can you name an animal which changes color?"
The small boy stood up and said, "What colors do you mean? I have not only known, but I live with such an animal who even changes his whole being."
Even the teacher could not understand. She said, "What is that animal?"
He said, "He is my dad. When he goes out he is a lion - just look at his chest and his mustache - and when he comes back to the house he is just a rat!"
It has a long history which persists in humanity's unconscious. The man is always afraid of a few things. Somebody may disturb their relationship, he wants to make a prison cell for his wife, but it doesn't matter. Even in that prison there are people: the chauffeur... You cannot make it a hundred percent foolproof, because then even you cannot enter into it.
The fear, the jealousy that your object of love - and remember when I use the word 'object', I use it very emphatically. Man has treated woman as a sexual object, not as a human, an equal spiritual being - just a commodity!
For thousands of years women were sold in the marketplace, auctioned. And even today - although the form has changed the reality remains the same - you prevent your wife from having any kind of friendship with any other man. It is an ugly way. In this vast universe you are not alone. There are so many unique people and your wife is just a human being and it is a human frailty that sometimes she may see somebody and a great love may arise in her.
It may be casual, but your fear is very strange, it arises out of your financial mind, your greed. You are afraid - your son has to be your son; the empire that you are creating should not go into the hands of somebody else. You will die one day - your son should receive as a heritage your desires, your ambitions, your riches. All that you have achieved and all that you wanted to achieve, your son has to fulfill it.
Your son is a projection of yourself. In a certain way it is true. Your son is nothing but a miniature cell of your being. You will die, but you will live in your children, they will be your blood and your bones.
The fear is that if the wife is allowed freedom then it will be very difficult to know whether your son is actually yours or somebody else's.
A man was consulting an astrologer. He was very skeptical of the whole thing. Just out of curiosity and to prove the astrologer wrong, he said, "You are talking about faraway things, past lives, future lives... I want to ask you a simple question. This is your test piece: can you tell me where my father is at this very moment?"
The man closed his eyes and said, "Your father has gone fishing."
He said, "I knew already that you are cheating people. My father is dead; he has been dead for four years. How can he go fishing?"
The astrologer said, "The man you think is dead was not your father. Your father has gone fishing, just go and ask your mother."
To make it a certainty and a guarantee that your son is your son the whole problem of bondage and contract and relationship, and doubts and jealousies, and fights and fears... the whole mess has descended on humanity for this stupid reason. It does not matter who owns what, when you are in your grave. Your palace and your money... what difference does it make? Just an ego trip, a very deep ego trip.... When I say surrender to love I am saying that loving is enough, don't make it a relationship. I am absolutely against marriage. Marriage is one of the causes of human misery, one of the most fundamental causes. And unless man drops this whole idea of marriage he cannot drop jealousy, he cannot drop fighting; the wife cannot drop nagging and questioning and inquiring.
A man was tired because the wife would somehow always find out that he has been with a woman.
Women have a very intuitive approach towards life. The man may deny, "I have not been..." but the fragrance from his coat shows that he has been with a woman; it is not the fragrance that he uses or is used in his house. Or just a hair on his coat will be enough proof....
So the man consulted a psychiatrist, "What should I do? Every day it is a problem and she finds something somehow and humiliates me, tortures me. Her way of torture is very simple. Whenever I say that I want to make love to her, she turns to the other side and says, 'I'm suffering from a headache.'"
This headache has been so much of a problem to the husbands. The wife is suffering from a headache, but the real headache is happening to the husband.
The psychiatrist said, "How does she find out?"
The man said, "She has thousands of ways to find out. There is a time limit and if I don't come home within that time limit, then 'Where have you been?' is the first question on entering the house.
I have to think continuously where I have been! That question has to be answered and I know that she is not going to believe it, because I myself don't believe it. There is no authority in saying it, no sincerity. I cannot look her in the eyes and say that I have been with friends or I have been at the Lions Club.
"The moment I see her, my mind starts getting confused about which answer to give, because she is going to find out. I said one day that I had been playing cards with a friend. She immediately phoned the friend and he said, 'I have not seen your husband for months.' I never thought that she would do this! One day she found a hair, a long hair - and that was enough!"
The shrink suggested to him, "Shave your hair completely, and before you go into the house, take care that there are no hairs on your coat, on your shirt."
He said, "My God! I have to shave my head?"
The shrink said, "Even your own hair may create trouble - and you have long hair."
He said, "First I will try to clean my clothes. First I should go to the cleaners to be certain that there are no hairs."
And he reached home and the wife looked at him, searched about for some clue... not even a single hair around? She started crying, "This is the end of our relationship. You have started moving with bald women. There is a limit! There is not even a hair on your coat. Where have you been?"
Husbands and wives are continuously fighting, fighting unnecessarily and destroying their lives miserably. To be a husband or to be a wife is such a misery that looking around the world one cannot imagine that man is a rational being as defined by Aristotle. If he was rational, at least marriage would have been dropped long ago. But Aristotle himself married two women and they used to beat him. And he is the father of Western logic...!
Just a few days ago there was a survey in America showing that women have started to confess for the first time that their husbands beat them. Previously it was thought that it is an ugly tradition of the poor countries of the East where women are beaten by their husbands.
In countries like India it is prescribed in the scriptures that if you want to live in peace, once in a while, a good beating of your wife is an absolute necessity. But nobody has ever thought that the same is the situation in Europe, in America. The only difference is that in the East it has been a very long tradition, and even religious scriptures give it sanction.
In the West people used to think that husbands didn't beat their wives, but the reality is surfacing.
Because of the women's liberation movement, women are confessing that they are being beaten by their husbands. They have not told it to anybody because of the prestige of the family, but the truth is that it is not only women who are beaten by men, men are also being beaten by women, although there is no scripture that says that every wife should beat the husband once in a while just to bring him to his senses.
In reality it happens every night all over the world, wives are throwing things at husbands. A pillow fight is almost a religious thing: every day it has to be done - anyway it is good exercise and nobody is harmed. Wives go on breaking things, but they always break things which are worthless. They are wiser than men. Even in their anger they keep an alert eye not to destroy something valuable, not to destroy the TV...! Old dishes...? Break them. They make a good noise also, a language which is understood in the whole neighborhood.
They throw things at their husbands, but they make certain that they don't hurt the poor fellows; otherwise they will have to take care of them. They never make them a real target. They throw things here and there avoiding the poor fellows.
But it goes on and after all this fight - as happens in every war - some kind of peace, some kind of treaty and the husband goes out to buy ice cream. And people are living together in this misery without any analysis of where it is coming from. It is coming from private property and the desire to keep the property in the hands of our own children.
Karl Marx used to think that when communism comes, marriage would automatically disappear. He was logically right, but life is strange; it never follows logic. It always goes surprisingly, shockingly, illogically, irrationally... Karl Marx's theories were tried in the Soviet Union just in the beginning years of communism. For three years they tried to dissolve marriage, but then finally they found that if marriage is dissolved, misery is dissolved. Then to keep people enslaved is impossible. They are enslaved because they are in such suffering they cannot think of freedom. They cannot be free from their wives - what kind of freedom can they think of? And where is the time?
One man was packing his suitcases and his wife said, "Where are you going?"
He said, "I am going to Paris. I have heard that there you make love to a woman and the woman gives you ten dollars."
The wife said, "Wait, I am coming with you."
The man said, "But what are you going to do? What is your purpose?"
She said, "My purpose is to see how you manage to live on twenty dollars for the whole month."
After three years of effort the Soviet government understood that marriage is absolutely necessary to keep the nation. If marriage disappears the nation cannot remain any longer. It will follow, because marriage is certainly the unit of the nation. Once there is no marriage, thousands of things will change. And the government became afraid: Who is going to take care of the children? What will happen to the ancient prejudice of morality? It will disturb the whole structure...
They dropped the idea, thinking that Marx was only a theoretician, he was not a man of practicality.
He had not taken into consideration the consequences of his idea. The idea is still great, but just as an idea it cannot be practiced. But the strange fact is that Marx himself never practiced it. He was a married man with children and he lived the same miserable life as every husband and every wife lives.
A world which accepts individuals and their freedom of love has certainly to take care that unless your society, your community wants children, you cannot produce children. When the society wants children, the children will belong to society and will be brought up by the society.
You can meet your children, you can love your children and it will be far better that children grow away from you; otherwise seeing the mother and father continuously fighting, do you think the children are getting a right direction for their lives? They are being conditioned to repeat the same thing! They will fight with their husbands, they will fight with their wives, because that is how things are; that is how things have always been!
An ancient story says that whenever Adam used to go to sleep, Eve used to count his ribs. She was created out of one of the ribs of Adam; one rib was missing. That's okay, but if another rib goes missing then there is danger; there is some other woman in the bushes.
Jealousy is perhaps the ugliest attitude in life. But the way life has been managed up to now you cannot avoid jealousy. About everything there is jealousy. The wife is worried that the husband goes out; one never knows where he is going, what he is doing. She takes every care in her own way.
Every month on the first day she takes all the money that he earns, so he cannot go anywhere.
One man rushed into his general manager's office and said, "You are such an idiot, and I used to think you were my friend..."
They worked in the same office and had the same status. But the first man got a pay raise and just to make his friend's wife jealous, his friend phoned to say, "Your husband has got a raise this month."
The wife waited the whole month....
The husband was feeling very happy that she accepted the old salary and she did not know that now he was getting more: "That much I can use for my own purposes."
But the moment the wife took the money she said, "Bring out the rest; you got a raise."
Now he was caught red-handed deceiving his own wife. She took all of the money and she was crying and weeping. The husband had to console her and he was feeling guilty: "I am sorry that I did it, but how did you manage to know?"
She said, "Your friend phoned so I was waiting for the whole month to see... You talk so much about trust and faith. What happened to the trust and faith? You were being faithless and what were you going to do with the money? You tell me in detail what was in your mind! There must be some woman... I have always suspected! The way you enter the house always looks as if you are hiding something. Your very face gives the idea of a suspicious, faithless man. Now you are caught red-handed."
And this goes for every point....
I was traveling to Kashmir, and in my air-conditioned coupe there were only two seats. I was there and there was one other person, a woman. On every station a man would come and would bring fruits and sweets.
I asked the woman, "I think your husband loves you very much?"
She said, "Yes, we have been married for seven years."
I said, "Don't lie to me."
She became angry saying, "Why are you saying that?"
I said, "No husband will bring sweets and flowers and whatever is available at every station. I can say with guarantee that the man is not your husband." She looked at me.
She said, "Strange, but I have to confess he is my husband's friend."
I said, "If he was your husband, once he had put you in the compartment he would have disappeared.
If he had to travel in another compartment he would not have missed that great opportunity. You would have been fortunate enough if he had met you at the destination where you were going!"
Whenever you see people, if the husband and wife are together you can immediately see that they are married because the husband does not look to this side or to that side, but keeps looking straight down. The wife keeps an eye on the husband, and both look sad.
We have made such a sad world unnecessarily, when the same people could be so happy. I sometimes think that just a twenty-four hour experiment is enough to prove what I am saying.
Exchange your wives and there will be such joy and such great laughter and singing and dancing.
Life will become aflame. Just those twenty-four hours will prove what I am saying that marriage is a very subtle, psychological imprisonment.
If you really love the woman you say you love, then give her freedom, and in that freedom it is implied that she can have weekends and you cannot interfere. You also can have weekends. It is strange; simple things can make this world very beautiful - just weekends.
But you say that you want a relationship and you also don't want to surrender, neither of you. Then why drag me into the trouble? Just fight it out. Sooner or later one starts cooling - the hot affair dies down.
Two small kids were sitting on the steps of a school. The smaller one said, "Every boy has a girlfriend, but I can't find a girlfriend."
The other said, "You are too small to have that much trouble. Just grow up, enjoy your freedom.
Once you are grown up you cannot enjoy your freedom. You will find a woman. The real problem is not how to find a woman, the real problem is how to get rid of her."
Getting is very easy - you can ask Niskriya! Now he is trying to get rid of the witch that he has found, avoiding in every way... and that was so joyous. He confessed to the witch in the middle of the night - under the influence of booze - "This is my greatest life experience." And in the morning all was finished - he is back to his camera. And now other women are torturing him. He himself has invited the trouble; otherwise nobody was bothering him. Looking at him everybody thought that he is a very meditative person.
Just looking at him any woman would bypass him, but now women know that he is a great lover, he has just got the face of a meditator. That does not mean anything. He waited long and finally he blurted out. How long can one wait just because he has got a face which appears to be that of a meditator? It is not his fault.
Sally Goldberg goes to the doctor to ask for some help in losing weight before her wedding day. He prescribes a course of pills for her.
A few days later she returns to his office, "These pills have awful side effects," she says worriedly.
"They make me feel terribly passionate and I get carried away. Last night I actually bit off my boyfriend's ear."
"Don't worry," says the doctor, "an ear is only about sixty calories."
OSHO

(Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, chapter 15)

Osho on Psychic & Spiritual Exploitation by Fake Gurus

It is possible. Much spiritual exploitation is possible in the name of shaktipat. In fact, where there is a demand, a declaration, there is always exploitation. When a person declares that he will give, he will take something in return also, because giving and taking go together. Then whatsoever form it is in – in the form of wealth, in the form of reverence, in the form of trust – he will take. Where there is giving with insistence, then for sure there is taking.

Jesus was passing through a town. A sick man was brought to him. Jesus embraced him and he was cured of all his ills. This man told Jesus, ”How can I thank you? You have rid me of all my woes.” It must have happened by the grace of God.” So your thanks will not be acknowledged by such a one; he won’t even acknowledge that he was a medium for the happening. He will insist that grace descended because you were worthy of it – that was God’s compassion falling on you. Who is he? Where does he stand? What is his worthiness? He does not come in at all: that is what he will say. So whenever you come across anyone who claims to do shaktipat, who claims to give you wisdom and take you to samadhi, who makes a thousand other claims, beware. Be aware, because he that belongs to the realm of the beyond makes no claims for himself. If you tell such a person, ”Because of you I experienced grace,” he will say, ”How can it be? I do not even know. You must be mistaken.
He is not even ready to own the worm, let alone the hook. So wherever a person claims results, be on your guard. When he claims to do this for you and that for you, he is only covering the hook with the worm. Jesus said, ”You and I are not. You are unable to see he who is – and all happens through him. He has healed you.” The man said, ”But there is no one else except you here.”
He is raising your expectations; he is inciting your hopes and desires. And when you are possessed by desire and you say, ”Oh, beloved master, give...!” he will begin his demands. Very soon you will come to know that the worm was just on the top and the hook was inside. So watch your step wherever there are miraculous claims. It is dangerous territory. Avoid the path where someone waits to be your guru. There is fear of entanglement there.

So how is the seeker to guard himself? He should guard himself from those who make big claims, and thus he will save himself from all evil
Any hook will work; the main question is of the coat. But we do not have the coat, while the hook calls out: ”Come here! I am the hook.” You will be caught if you go. You do not have the coat so what will you do by going to the hook? There is every danger of your hanging yourself on it. You have to seek your own worthiness, your own capability. You have to make yourself ready in order to be able to receive grace when it comes.
You do not have to worry about the guru at all; that is not your concern. That is why what Krishna says to Arjuna is correct. He says, ”Carry out your action and leave the fruits to the divine.” You have not to worry about the result of your action; that will become a hindrance. Then all kinds of complexities will arise: concern over what your action will yield, over what will be the result. And in your anxiety about the result your performance will go off. That is why the action itself should be our main concern.
We should be concerned about our own worthiness and receptivity. The moment our effort is complete –
So don’t go seeking the sun; get involved in developing your bud. The sun is there for ever and is always available. No vessel remains unfilled for even a moment in this world. Any kind of receptacle becomes filled immediately. In fact, to be receptive and to be filled are not two happenings; they are the two sides of the same happening. If we were to remove all air from this room, fresh air from outside would at once fill the vacuum.
These are not two happenings, because as we remove the air in the room the outside air rushes in. Such are also the laws of the inner world. We are hardly even ready on our side when the fulfillment of our efforts begins to descend. Our difficulty is, however, that our demands start long before our preparedness. Then there are always false supplies for false demands. Some people really amaze me.
One man comes and says, ”My mind is very restless; I want peace.” He talks to me for half an hour, and in the course of his talk he confesses that the cause of his unrest is that his son is jobless. If the son gets a job his mind will be at rest. Now this man came with the excuse that he wanted peace of mind, but his actual requirement was absolutely different; it has nothing to do with peace of mind. He only wanted a job for his son. Thus, he had come to the wrong man.
Then these ten slowly spread word of the ”miracle,” and the crowd around increases. This is why every such shop has salesmen and advertisers. Those who say their son got a job are not telling an untruth; nor have they been bought over by the shopkeeper. Such a man had also come seeking, and it happened that his son got a job. Those whose sons did not get a job left long ago to seek other gurus who would fulfill their desires. Now a few people will gather around the ”shop” who will tell you, ”My son got a job.” Another will say, ”My wife was saved from death.” A third will say, ”I won my lawsuit.” A fourth will say, ”Wealth is pouring on me.” It is not that these people are telling lies or that they are hirelings; nor are they the agents for this business. It is nothing like that. When a thousand men come asking for jobs ten of them are bound to get employed in the normal course of things. Now these ten remain while the remaining nine hundred and ninety go away. Now, one who has gone into the business of religion will say, ”You want a job? Come here. I will get you a job and I will give you peace of mind too. Whoever comes here gets a job; whoever comes here, his wealth increases and his business runs well.”
If it does not happen we will know we are not yet ready to receive. The fact is that you will feel the need for shaktipat again and again only when the happening has not yet taken place. And you will find the need to take from others only when your experience with the first has been in vain. Those whose desires are fulfilled begin to frequent the shop often; they come on each festival every year. The crowd increases day by day, and a group forms around such a so-called guru. Then what they tell becomes his indisputable testimony. If so many people’s wishes were fulfilled, why not yours? Now this is the worm; the hook which traps the man is within.
If the first shaktipat is successful, the matter ends there. It is like trying many doctors because the disease has not yet been cured. Naturally, the doctors have to be changed. But the patient who is cured never raises the question of changing doctors. The slightest experience of a glimpse due to shaktipat makes this question irrelevant. Besides, once this glimpse is attained from someone it makes no difference if it is attained again from another.
It is the same energy coming from the same source, only the medium is different – but this does not result in any difference. Whether it comes from the sun or an electric bulb or oil lamp, the light is the same. It makes no difference and there is no harm, if the happening has taken place. But we do not go seeking for the happening. If it comes to you along the way, accept it and go further – but do not seek it.
If you seek there are hazards, because then only the tricksters will come your way and not someone who can really give. He will appear only when you are not seeking, when you have prepared yourself. So to seek him is wrong, to ask is wrong. Let the happening take its own time and let the light come from a thousand paths. All paths will prove the authenticity of the same original source. It is the same; only it is appearing from all sides.
Then I explained to this friend that Krishna’s experience was his own. When he says that ”so and so got it from so and so,” he means that this wisdom that has revealed itself to him has not been revealed to him alone; it was revealed to so and so also, before him. Then this person had shared the happening with another person, and this happening took place in him also. But what is to be noted here is that the revelation did not take place by mere telling; it was told after the happening. Someone was saying the other day that he went to a sadhu, a religious man, and said that wisdom should be one’s own. The sadhu retorted that it cannot be – that wisdom ”always pertains to another, and that such and such a monk gave it to such and such, then he passed it on to another.”
Do not beg for truth or else some businessman might lure you with lucrative suggestions. Then a spiritual exploitation will begin. Go along your way always preparing yourself, preparing yourself, and wherever you happen to find it, accept it. Offer your gratitude and move on; then at the moment of full attainment you will not be able to say that you got it from so and so. That moment you will say, ”What a miracle I got from existence. Whosoever I approached, I received from him.” Then the final thanksgiving will be to existence and not to anyone in particular. A blind man may pass by a lamp or an electric light or go out in the sun, but he will never see light. Then one day if his sight is restored he will be shocked to see that he was always surrounded by light. So on the day of the happening you will see it all around you. And until the time comes when it takes place, offer your respects wherever you get the glimpse of truth. Take it from wherever you can get it, but please do not beg for it like a beggar – because truth is never obtained by a beggar. Do not go begging for it, because it is not attained from anyone. Prepare yourself for it and it will begin to come from all directions. Then one day when the happening takes place you will say, ”How blind I was that I could not see that which was coming to me from all sides.” So Krishna says to Arjuna, ”This wisdom I am conveying to you is the same that has come to me. But my telling of it will not bring it about in you. When it happens to you, you will be able to tell others that it is like this.”
OSHO

(Source: from Osho Book "In Search of the Miraculous Vol 2")

SEXUAL Exploitation on the name of TANTRA - OSHO Talks

Osho on Shortcoming in Tantra Teachings 

Question - Beloved Osho, Do You see shortcoming in the Teachings of Tantra that incline you to feel Tantric methods are not suitable for us?
Osho - It is not a complete system. There is  a basic fallacy that human beings fall into: they find a small truth, a part of the truth, and rather than discover the whole, the remaining part they imagine to fill up the gap. Because they have part of the truth, they can argue and they can manage to make a system, but the remaining part is simply their invention.

All the systems have done that. Rather than discovering the whole truth, it is the human tendency to say, "Why bother? We have found a small piece which is enough for the showcase, which is enough to silence any enemy who raises any question" -- and the remaining is just invention.

For example, tantra is right that sexual energy is the basic energy, so this energy should be transformed into higher forms. It is a truth. But what happened is that they never went very deep into meditation; meditation remained just secondary. And man's sexuality shows itself so powerfully that in the name of tantra it became simply sexual orgy.

Without meditation that was going to happen. Meditation should have been the most primary thing because that is going to transform the energy, but that became secondary. And many people who were sexually perverted, sexually repressed, joined the tantra school. These were the people who brought all their perversions, all their repressions. They were not interested in any transformation, they were interested only in getting rid of their repressions; their interest was basically sexual.

So although tantra has a piece of truth, it could not be used rightly. Unless that piece of truth is put in second place, and meditation moves into first place, it will always happen that in tantra, people will be doing all kinds of perversions. And with a great name, they will not feel that they are doing anything wrong; they will feel they are doing something religious, something spiritual.

Tantra failed for two reasons. One was an inner reason -- that meditation was not made the central point. And second, tantra had no special methodology for the perverted and the repressed, so that first their repressions and perversions are settled and they become normal. And once they become normal, then they are introduced to meditation. Only after deep meditation should they be allowed in tantra experiments. It was a wrong arrangement, so the whole thing became, in the name of a great system, just an exploitation of sex.

That's what many of the therapists are doing. Just the other day I saw Rajen's advertisement for a tantra group -- with an obscene picture. It will attract people because this is real pornography. Why bother to go to see just pictures printed on paper when you can see real people doing pornography? And Rajen has no understanding of meditation, has never meditated.

And these people will feel good, relieved, because the society does not allow them... In the group they will be allowed to do everything they want to do, so much repression will be thrown out, and they will feel relieved and light and they will feel thankful that they have gone through a great tantra experience. And there has been no tantra experience -- it was simply a sexual orgy. And within a few days, they will again collect repressions because they cannot do it outside in the society. So they become permanent customers, chronic tantrikas.

And the so-called therapists enjoy the money that they bring. They have nothing to lose, they simply allow freedom. They start with all the great words that I have been using -- "freedom," "expression," "no repression," "just be yourself, and don't be worried what others are thinking," "do your own thing." And those idiots start doing their own thing! First people should be introduced to meditation, and then they should be introduced to tantra methods. This is not tantra. Tantra methods are totally different. These people who are doing tantra, they don't know anything about tantra.

For example, Ramakrishna meditated deeply, and whenever he felt any sexual urge disturbing his meditation he would ask his wife Sharda -- who was a beautiful woman -- to sit on a high stool, naked, and he would sit in front of her just looking at her, meditating on her till that sexual urge subsided. Then he would touch the feet of Sharda, his own wife, and he would thank her, saying, "You have been helping me immensely; otherwise, where would I have gone? The urge needed some expression, and just watching you was enough."

The temple of Khajuraho has beautiful statues in all sexual postures. It was a tantra school that made the temple and those statues. And the first thing the student had to do was to meditate on each statue -- and they are arranged in such a way that from one corner you go around the temple in a circle. It may take six months, but you have to watch each statue until you can see it just as a statue with no sexuality in it -- and it is in a sexual posture. But just in your watching it, seeing it for months, it becomes a pure piece of art; all pornography disappears. Then you move to another. And all the perversions of human mind have been put into the statues.

And when you have circled the whole temple, only then will the master allow you inside the temple. Those six months are of immense meditation and of tremendous release, all repressions gone: you are feeling absolutely light. Then the master allows you in. And inside the temple there is no sexual statue; inside the temple there is nothing -- emptiness.

Then the master teaches you how to go deeper into your meditation which has arisen in the six months, and now you can go very deep because there is no hindrance, no problem, no sexuality. And this going deep into meditation with no sexual disturbance means the sexual energy is moving with the meditation, not against it. That's how it is transformed and takes higher forms.

All these so-called therapists know nothing about tantra, know nothing of why it failed. But they are not interested in that, they are interested in exploiting repressed people. And the repressed people are happy because after a seven or ten day tantra session, they feel relieved; they think this is some spiritual growth. But within two or three days all that spiritual growth will be gone, and they are ready for another group. There are some people -- you can call them "groupies" -- that move from one group to another group to another group. Their whole life is just a movement from group to group. Just like hippies... but you can call them "groupies."

Source: from Osho Book "The Path of Mystic"

"Life, Career and your Genius"- OSHO Talks

Osho – It is always good to find something that you like – because it is your life; it should not be wasted in any way. And if you have the feeling that you don’t like any job and that you have to do it, it becomes destructive. Then you are pushing somehow, dragging yourself… and any kind of dragging is destructive. When there is no joy, there cannot be any creation.
When you are simply doing it for the sake of doing and your heart is not in it, then so much time is wasted. One should not do a job only for a living. A living is a consideration, but is only secondary; life is the most primary consideration. And a job should be such that it gives you a living and life too.
One should not sell one’s life for a living. Otherwise one day or other One is bound to be in deep misery about it, and then nothing can be done when the time is lost. Change your work! There was no need to remain in it so long if you were not liking it. It is not too late yet change it.
It always happens: the mind clings to the known, to the familiar, to the secure. Now that your job is secured, changing a job means moving into new difficulties, new situations. One never knows whether one will be able to cope with them or not. Maybe the new job will not pay so much – but these things should never be considered. A little less pay will do, a little more inconvenience will do, but if you are happy doing it then everything should be sacrificed for happiness.
And the work that you do is a major part of your life. It is not only that you do it; by and by it shapes you into a certain pattern. You do it and at the same time it is creating you. So people who are in certain jobs which they don’t like – in fact which they hate – by and by become full of hatred towards life itself. So get out of it. There is no need to be in it any more!

[A sannyasin who is a photographer said she was feeling low energy and disinterested in photography.]

Osho – This comes again and again in everybody’s life: whatsoever you are doing you get tired of, you get fed up, you get bored with it. It is very easy to be interested in a new thing – it needs great guts to remain interested in an old thing. That’s what makes a person a genius. Otherwise everybody will become a genius. The only difference between a genius and an ordinary person is that the genius has the guts to stick at something even when he is feeling bored, fed up.
These are plateaus that come. Mm? you work with great joy because something is new – there is a great exploration, new territory and you are enchanted… it is like a romance, a honeymoon. But by and by you become acquainted with the territory; you have looked into all the corners of it and there seems to be nothing new. Now you know all about it so the sensation is no more there, the thrill is no more there.
Now, it is at this point that if you can stick at it and make efforts to find something new in it, you will break through one plane, and on another plane the exploration starts again. If you simply listen to this boredom and you drop out, then those seven years will have gone down the drain.
That’s how many people lose their life energy: they don’t stick at things. It really needs courage to remain with the old, because when the plateau comes and everything seems to be just a repetition, doing the same thing again and again and again, one feels to change – change the wife, change the husband, change the job, change the friend, change the town, go somewhere else, do something new. But with the new again after seven years the same will happen!
You can change ten times in your life and after each seven years the same will happen, so the whole life will be a wastage. If you go on digging on the same spot for seventy years you will reach to some depth – and it can be reached from anywhere.
Now photography is such a creative thing and it is going to be more and more creative in the future because more sophisticated instruments will be available – they are available. You can do a thousand and one things with photography now; just a few years ago they were just impossible to do. One has to be creative, inventive… one has to look for new ways, new visions, new dreams. And sometimes this is natural, this is part of nature: one feels stuck.
Those who drop out are the rolling stones: they don’t gather any moss. And it has nothing to do with the work itself – it is just the tendency of the mind. Photography or painting or music, or dancing – anything – will come to the same point, and once you have made a pattern it will be repeated. This is really a sheer wastage of energies.

Go on working in it. If you are feeling stuck, that simply means that you have to explore new ways, new directions, new dimensions in it; and they are always there! Life is so mysterious that it is never finished. A man can go on working with a small thing and can devote his whole life to it and still there will be much to be explored after he has died.
This is the whole art of being a genius. The genius is just a little more stubborn than ordinary people, that’s all. He does not listen to the mind – he goes on hammering: he digs a hole. A sufi master – Jalaluddin Rumi – once took his disciples to a field. There were eight holes in the field and no hole had any water; the whole field was wasted. The disciples asked, ’Master, why have you brought us here?’
He said, ’To teach you something. This farmer wants to dig a well. He digs eight feet, ten feet, then he gets fed up with it and he thinks that this place is not right; he is bored so he starts digging at some other place. He has done this work the whole year round – he has destroyed the whole field and not a single hole has become a well. Now if he had dug at the same spot that well would have been one hundred feet deep.’ Jalaluddin said to his disciples, ’Remember this – the same applies to the inner world too.’
Just gather yourself together and don’t try to find excuses – simply start working with your total energy. From tomorrow morning start without thinking about it! Just go ahead, and within a few days it will be broken… and when it is broken, you will feel so thrilled. Whenever any plateau is broken, life takes on such a beauty and the work becomes such a joy. Then it is a second honeymoon and on a deeper level. And I am saying this to you to be remembered as a golden rule – it is so in every way, in every direction of life.
If you love a man, one day you will feel finished; that is the right moment to go on loving, to gather your energies and to explore the man again. If you can break that plateau you will see a new man arising before you… fresher than ever, younger than ever, more beautiful than ever. In fact you had never known such beauty and such depth. You have broken one more screen – the man is more available to you… again one day you will feel stuck! And remember: those who lose heart and escape, are great losers. Be a little more stubborn, stick to it. For three months do all that you can do with effort and then you tell me, mm?"

OSHO
Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”

"Marriage" - OSHO Talks

Question - Why do you appear to put down Marriage and yet tell people to get Married?

Osho - This is from Anurag. To me, marriage is a dead thing. It is an institution, and you cannot live in an institution; only mad people live in institutions. It is a substitute for love. Love is dangerous: to be in love is to be in a storm, constantly. You need courage and you need awareness, and you are to be ready for anything. There is no security in love; love is insecure. Marriage is a security: the registry office, the police, the court are behind it. The state, the society, the religion -- they are all behind it. Marriage is a social phenomenon. Love is individual, personal, intimate.

Because love is dangerous, insecure.... And nobody knows where love will lead. It is just like a cloud -- moving with no destination. Love is a hidden cloud, whereabouts unknown. Nobody knows where it is at any moment of time. Unpredictable -- no astrologer can predict anything about love. About marriage? -- astrologers are very, very helpful; they can predict.

Man has to create marriage because man is afraid of the unknown. On all levels of life and existence, man has created substitutes: for love there is marriage; for real religion there are sects -- they are like marriages. Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Jainism -- they are not real religion. Real religion has no name; it is like love. But because love is dangerous and you are so afraid of the future, you would like to have some security. You believe more in insurance companies than in life. That's why you have created marriage.

Marriage is more permanent than love. Love may be eternal, but it is not permanent. It may continue forever and forever, but there is no inner necessity for it to continue. It is like a flower: bloomed in the morning, by the evening gone. It is not like the rock. Marriage is more permanent; you can rely on it. In old age it will be helpful.

It is a way to avoid difficulties, but whenever you avoid difficulties and challenges you have avoided growth also. Married people never grow. Lovers grow, because they have to meet the challenge every moment -- and with no security. They have to create an inner phenomenon. With security you need not bother to create anything; the society helps. Marriage is a formality, a legal bondage. Love is of the heart; marriage is of the mind. That's why I am never in favor of marriage.

But the question is pertinent, relevant, because sometimes I tell people to get married. Marriage is a hell, but sometimes people need it. What to do? So I have to tell them to get into marriage. They need to pass through the hell of it, and they cannot understand the hell of it unless they pass through it. I am not saying that in marriage love cannot grow; it can grow, but there is no necessity for it. I am not saying that in love marriage cannot grow; it can grow, but there is no necessity, no logical necessity in it.

Love can become marriage, but then it is a totally different kind of marriage: it is not a social formality, it is not an institution, it is not a bondage. When love becomes marriage it means two individuals decide to live together -- but in absolute freedom, nonpossessive of each other. Love is nonpossessive; it gives freedom.

When love grows into marriage, marriage is not an ordinary thing. It is absolutely extraordinary. It has nothing to do with the registry office. You may need the registry office also, the social sanction may be needed, but those are just on the periphery; they are not the central core of it. In the center is the heart, in the center is freedom.

And sometimes out of marriage also love can grow, but it rarely happens. Out of marriage love rarely happens. At the most, familiarity. At the most, a certain kind of sympathy, not love. Love is passionate; sympathy is dull. Love is alive; sympathy is just so-so, lukewarm.

But why do I tell people to get married? When I see that they are after security, when I see that they are after social sanction, when I see they are afraid, when I see that they cannot move into love if marriage is not there, then I tell them to go into it -- but I will go on helping them to go beyond it. I will go on helping them to transcend it.

Marriage should be transcended; only then real marriage happens. Marriage should be forgotten completely. In fact the other person you have been in love with should always remain a stranger and never should be taken for granted. When two persons live as strangers, there is a beauty to it, a very simple, innocent beauty to it. And when you live with somebody as a stranger....

And everybody is a stranger. You cannot know a person. Knowledge is very superficial; a person is very profound. A person is an infinite mystery. That's why we say everybody carries a god within. How can you know a god? At the most you can touch the periphery. And the more you know about a person, the more humble you will become -- the more you will feel that the mystery is untouched. In fact the mystery becomes more and more deep. The more you know, the less you feel that you know.

If lovers are really in love, they will never reduce the other person to a known entity; because only things can be known -- persons never. Only things can become part of knowledge. A person is a mystery -- the greatest mystery there is.

Transcend marriage. It is not a question of legality, formality, family -- all that nonsense. Needed, because you live in a society, but transcend; don't be finished at that. And don't try to possess a person. Don't start feeling that the other is the husband -- you have reduced the beauty of the person into an ugly thing: husband. Never say that this woman is your wife -- the stranger is no longer there; you have reduced it to a very profane level, to a very ordinary level of things. Wives and husbands belong to the world. Lovers belong to the other shore.

Remember the sacredness and holiness of the other. Never impinge on it; never trespass it. A lover is always hesitant. He always gives you space to be yourself. He is grateful; he never feels that you are his possession. He is thankful that sometimes in rare moments you allow him your innermost shrine to enter and to be with you. He is always thankful.

But husbands and wives are always complaining, never thankful -- always fighting. And if you watch their fight it is ugly. The whole beauty of love disappears. Only a very ordinary reality exists: the wife, the husband, the children, and the day-to-day routine. The unknown no longer touches it. That's why you will see dust gathers around -- a wife looks dull, a husband looks dull. Life has lost meaning, vibrancy, significance. It is no longer a poetry; it has become gross.

Love is poetry. Marriage is ordinary prose, good for ordinary communication. If you are purchasing vegetables, good; but if you are looking at the sky and talking to God, not enough -- poetry is needed. Ordinary life is proselike. A religious life is poetrylike: a different rhythm, a different meter, something of the unknown and the mysterious.

I am not in favor of marriage. Don't misunderstand me -- I am not saying to live with people unmarried. Do whatsoever the society wants to be done, but don't take it as the whole. That is just the periphery; go beyond it. And I tell you to get married if I feel that this is what you need. In fact if I feel that you need to go in hell I would allow you -- and push you -- to go in hell, because that is what you need, and that is how you will grow."

OSHO

Source: from Osho Book "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6" (New Title : Essence of Yoga)

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