Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # THE RADICAL REVOLUTION Question 4

 

Osho,

Is it possible for two people in a relationship to be bad
for each other? Does it happen that two people’s energy just does not mix? How
to know the difference between the thorns of a healthy relationship and an
unhealthy relationship?

I have never come across a single individual who is bad, but
I have come across couples - thousands and thousands of couples - who are bad.
In fact I have never come across a couple who is not bad. Persons are beautiful
and couples are ugly. Something goes wrong somewhere. It should not be so but
it is so.

The way love has been understood has been wrong. What you
call love is not love; it is something else. Sometimes you are alone and you
cannot tolerate your loneliness, and just to fill the gap, the inner hole, you
find somebody. It is not love. And of course things are going to be bad. From
the very beginning the very basis is wrong. 

Love is a sharing of two
individuals. And I call a person individual when he is happy with his
aloneness. Otherwise he is not an individual, if he cannot be happy alone. Just
think. If you cannot be happy alone, how can you be happy together? Two persons
are unhappy separately, and you think there is going to be a miracle? - two
unhappy persons together and suddenly happiness arises? Unhappiness is doubled
- not only doubled, multiplied.

Out of your unhappiness you seek the other; then the
relationship is going to be wrong. Seek the other out of happiness, and then
the relationship will never be wrong. Seek out of happiness.

First meditate, first feel your own being, first pray. First
grow into love; otherwise what are you going to do when you have found the
lover? Then you don’t know what to do.

An anecdote:

His friend was a shy one, but after being told that if he
went to the dance all he would have to do would be stand in the corner, he went.
The friend shoved him immediately into the arms of a pretty girl on the dance
floor.

For an hour or so he lost track of his shy friend, but then
spotted him standing happily next to the girl he had been shoved upon. What is
more, he had his arm around her waist and she was looking up at him with
adoring eyes.

“We are engaged,” the shy one told his friend.

“Good heavens!” said the friend. “How did that happen?”

“Well,” said the shy one, “I danced with her six times and I
just could not think of anything else to ask her.”

Your love affairs are so stupid. And then you are waiting
for something great to happen out of them. In the first place you don’t have
any love in your heart. That’s why everybody wants to be loved. You want to be
loved; your woman also wants to be loved. 

Naturally there is conflict: both are
ready to take and nobody is ready to give. And how to give? You don’t have it
in the first place. Only a loving person - one who is already loving - can find
the right partner.

This is my observation. If you are unhappy you will find
somebody who is unhappy. Unhappy people are attracted toward unhappy people.
And it is good, it is natural. It is good that the unhappy people are not
attracted towards happy people, otherwise they will destroy their happiness. It
is perfectly okay. Only happy people are attracted towards happy people. The
same attracts the same. 

Intelligent people are attracted towards intelligent
people, stupid people are attracted towards stupid people.

You can watch it. In Pune there are thousands of people, but
only a few people will be attracted toward me - only those who are really
concerned with knowing who they are. Others won’t be attracted. Even my
neighbors, just the next-door neighbors. They have not come to listen. In fact
they are very worried.

It happened.

I lived in one town for ten years, and a person used to live
just over my head, but he never came to see me. Thousands of people would come
and go, but he never came. He was simply puzzled as to why people came to me.

Then he was transferred - he was a principal in a college -
he was transferred to another town. I visited the other town. I was invited to
his college to speak to the students; then he heard me for the first time. He
had to because he was the principal. Then he became more puzzled. He said, “For
ten years I lived just on top of you, and I missed, I never came. And I never
knew that you had something to share, that you had something to give to us.” He
started crying.

I said, “Don’t be worried. Just tell me, during these two
years you have not been in that town, what has happened?”

He said, “My wife died and I became very miserable. Then I
started meditating, thinking maybe it will help. Then something really started
happening in me and I started feeling very happy. I was worried I would not be
able to be alone without my wife, but now I am so happy that I don’t want to
get entangled with anybody.”

I told him, “Maybe that’s why you could understand me. The
meditation that you tried, the happiness that you are feeling - then there is a
possibility to have contact with me. Before you were on a different plane.”

You meet people of the same plane. So the first thing to
remember is: a relationship is bound to be bitter if it has grown out of
unhappiness. First be happy, be joyful, be celebrating, and then you will find
some other soul celebrating and there will be a meeting of two dancing souls
and a great dance will arise out of it.

Don’t ask for a relationship out of loneliness, no. Then you
are moving in a wrong direction, then the other will be used as a means and the
other will use you as a means. And nobody wants to be used as a means. Every
single individual is an end unto himself. It is immoral to use anybody as a
means. First learn how to be alone. Meditation is a way of being alone.

And if you can be happy when you are alone, you have learned
the secret of being happy. Now you can be happy together. If you are happy,
then you have something to share, to give. And when you give you get; it is not
the other way. Then a need arises to love somebody. Ordinarily the need is to
be loved by somebody. It is a wrong need. It is a childish need; you are not
mature. It is a child’s attitude.

A child is born. Of course, the child cannot love the
mother; he does not know what love is and he does not know who the mother is
and who the father is. He is totally helpless. His being has still to be
integrated; he is not one piece, he is not together yet. He is just a
possibility. The mother has to love, the father has to love, the family has to
shower love on the child. Now he learns one thing: that everybody has to love
him. And he never learns that he has to love. 

Now the child will grow, and if
he remains stuck with this attitude that everybody has to love him, he will
suffer his whole life. His body has grown, but his mind has remained immature.

A mature person is one who comes to know the other need:
that now I have to love somebody. The need to be loved is childish, immature.
The need to love is mature. And when you are ready to love somebody, a
beautiful relationship will arise; otherwise not.

“Is it possible for two people in a relationship to be bad
for each other?” Yes, that’s what is happening all over the world. To be good
is very difficult. You are not good even to yourself. How can you be good to
somebody else? You don’t even love yourself - how can you love somebody else?
Love yourself, be good to yourself.

And your so-called religious saints have been teaching you
never to love yourself, never to be good to yourself - be hard on yourself!
They have been teaching you to be soft toward others and hard toward yourself.
This is absurd.

I teach you the first and foremost thing is to be loving
toward yourself. Don’t be hard, be soft. Care about yourself. Learn how to forgive
yourself again and again and again - seven times, seventy-seven times, seven
hundred and seventy-seven times. 

Learn how to forgive yourself. Don’t be hard,
don’t be antagonistic toward yourself. Then you will flower.

And in that flowering you will attract some other flower. It
is natural. Stones attract stones, flowers attract flowers. And then there is a
relationship which has grace, which has beauty, which has a benediction in it.
And if you can find such a relationship, your relationship will grow into
prayerfulness, your love will become an ecstasy, and through love you will know
what God is.

Osho Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language

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Osho Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # THE RADICAL REVOLUTION Question 3

Osho,

What is the meaning of surrender? How is surrender?

There are a few things - you have to do them if you want to know them. There is no way to tell anything about them. And surrender is one of those things. It is a dimension of love, let-go.

If you ask me what is surrender and what is the meaning of surrender, yes, something can be told to you, but that won’t carry any meaning. You have to taste it. It is a taste. If you taste it you know it. If you don’t taste it, I can talk about it, but you will not know it. Without your own experience, whatsoever I say will be a tautology. You ask, “What is surrender?” I say surrender is a let-go. 

But what am I saying? You will ask, “What is a let-go?” It is a tautology; I have not answered you. I say a let-go is falling in love. It is a tautology again. I am not saying anything. You will say, “What is falling in love then?” The question remains the same, and all answers will go round and round and round.

I have heard about a prudish, tight-lipped old maid who would not even allow her pet cat out of the house after dark. Headed for New York on one of her infrequent outings, she paused to remind the maid about locking up that cat each evening.

This time in New York, however, the old maid encountered a handsome old rogue who swept her off her feet. After four nights of blissful romancing she wired her maid, “Having the time of my life. Let the cat out too! Let the cat out!”

Let the cat out! When you know what love is, only then you know. There is no other way to know it.

I am creating a situation here for you to surrender. Don’t ask for the meaning. Do it. Be courageous. Let it be an experience. Accept my invitation. My doors are open; enter and be my guest. Surrender.

By surrender, in the West, a very wrong idea arises - as if you will be dominated by somebody - because surrender has a very wrong association. It has become almost a political word in the West. The Nazis surrendered: that’s how it has become associated with politics. A surrendered one is the one who is defeated. In the East we have a totally different meaning for the term. It has nothing to do with war and nothing to do with defeat. 

Have you not heard the proverb that in love defeat is the only victory? If you are defeated in love you have become victorious. Yes, that’s how it is in surrender. It has nothing to do with defeat. It is not that you are being dominated by somebody. It is not that now somebody else is going to oppress you, exploit you; that you are becoming a slave. 

No, it is nothing of the sort. Surrender in the East is used as a technique.

And the surrender has to be made only to a person who is no more, so he cannot dominate you. So this has to be remembered: don’t surrender to a person who is still there, otherwise he will dominate you and he will give you a discipline and he will start forcing you to do this and not to do that and he will create a prison around you.

That’s why I don’t give you any discipline. Even if you ask, I don’t give. You ask continuously because you want to depend, because you want to be a slave, because you don’t want to take your own responsibility. You want to throw the responsibility on somebody else. You are in search of a father figure. You want somebody to lead you.

But I am not going to give you any discipline and I am not going to give you any clear-cut direction to do this and don’t do that. All that I am going to do is to share my awareness with you so you can become a little more aware, to share my love with you so you can become a little more loving. It has nothing to do with any discipline.

Coming closer to me, you will be able to imbibe my spirit. That is the meaning of surrender: that you are ready to come close to me, that you are not afraid, that you will not protect yourself against me, that you will not be defensive, that simply you are ready to come closer to me, that you are attracted, that you have listened to my call, that something has clicked in your heart and you will try to know who this man really is, what manner of man. You would like to enter into my emptiness and be surrounded by my emptiness.

Sannyas is the visible effort of surrender. Many people come to me and they say, “We don’t take sannyas. Can’t you help us?” I say, “I will try my best, but it won’t be of much help because you will continuously protect yourself. You will be defensive.” Sannyas is just a gesture, that “Now I drop my defenses and I am ready to go with you.”

Of course, it is risky. You don’t know me yet. How can you know? If you surrender you will know; you cannot know beforehand. So it is only for very courageous people. The daredevils - it is only for them. And I exist for daredevils, those who are ready to risk their lives and to go into the unknown and to see if something happens.

If you are ready to go, it is going to happen; and then you will know the meaning. Then too you will not be able to tell somebody else what the meaning is. The meaning is in the taste, in the experience.

And you ask, “How is surrender?” Apparently, sannyas is the “how,” obviously. The deeper “how” will open its doors when you have entered the porch. Sannyas is the porch; once you enter the porch - you have accepted me and I have accepted you - then there is a deep agreement, that you trust me. Now I can invite you to deeper realms of my being. You become an initiate.

The second thing happens someday. Sometimes it happens with the sannyas itself. If you are totally surrendered, then the first moment of contact with me and it happens - you become an initiate. 

Sometimes it takes time. The outward sannyas happens first; then you wait, then you watch, then you see things, then slowly, slowly you relax, inch by inch, you drop your ego, and more and more I penetrate in you. Then one day, without any warning, suddenly it has happened - you suddenly become aware it has happened. Now my light exists in you and my heart beats in you. Sometimes it takes years, sometimes days, sometimes minutes, sometimes not a single minute. It depends on you, how much courage you have.

And of course, Westerners are gaining much more from me than the Easterners, because the East has become very cowardly. So by and by you will see more and more Western people around here. The East is very cowardly. They have become almost corpses. They don’t have the spirit - the spirit that Kabir calls the spirit for the quest of truth - they don’t have it. Either they believe they already know what truth is or they think there is enough time and there is no hurry - if not in this life, then in the next life.

And for them, to be religious has become more a way of being respectable, and of course my sannyas will not appeal to them because if they are respectable, by becoming my sannyasin they will lose all respect. They will not become respectable through my sannyas. Through my sannyas they will become rebellious; they will start falling out of society. People will start avoiding them. People will start feeling they are dangerous and infectious, and people will think that they have gone mad or something.

But in the West something new is happening - a new courage, a new spirit of inquiry. It always comes whenever a country becomes materially rich. It always happens. When a country becomes materially poor, it loses spirit. It becomes very poor, not only outwardly. It becomes inwardly poor. It loses confidence, it loses courage, it loses potentiality. It starts dragging. In the West people have become materially rich: they are well-fed, science has come to a certain point from where religion can be contacted, and people have seen material affluence. Now they would like to see something beyond it. It is not enough.

So if you are ready, don’t ask how is surrender? Surrender.

Once it happened, Jesus was staying with his friends in a house, and the friends said, “Tell us how to pray.”

Jesus said, “But how to say how to pray? I will pray, and if you are ready you can participate.”

And Jesus started praying. Now the others were standing there and they couldn’t see what to do. He started moving into some unknown realm. They watched and he prayed; and when he came back from the world of his prayer, they said again, “But tell us how to pray.”

He said, “I showed you how to pray, and you ask how to pray!”

Remember, maybe the question arises out of your cowardliness. Maybe you want to be certain about everything, what it is, whether it is worth it or not.

I am here, surrendered. I am here in prayerfulness. I am here in godliness. Come closer to me.

And I have made it easier than it has ever been, because I am not putting any conditions on you. I accept you as you are. It has never been done before. I accept you as you are - I have no condemnation, no evaluation, no judgment. If you are a drunkard, good. If you are a gambler, good, exactly right - because this is a sort of gamble and this is a way of becoming drunk. Whatsoever you are, you are accepted.

Come closer.

Sannyas will be a visible thing for you to do, and leave the next thing to me. I will do it. You do one thing, I will do the other. There is a saying in Arabian countries, “If you walk one foot towards God, he walks one thousand one feet towards you.” You walk one foot towards me; I will walk one thousand and one feet towards you. You do the first, the second I will do.

But you come and ask, “But sannyas.just by changing the clothes. It is too outward. Tell us something inward.” You are not even ready to do the outward and you ask for the inward. And you are an outwardly-oriented man. That’s why I am talking about the outward sannyas - that’s where you are. That’s from where the journey has to start. You are yet outside yourself; from there the journey has to start. The inward can happen only later on, not right now.

Osho: 

Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language

http://oshoite.blogspot.it/2016/04/osho-ecstasy-forgotten-language-radical.html 

Osho Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # 2 THE RADICAL REVOLUTION Question 2

Osho,

Sometimes listening to you, an overwhelming feeling comes over me of how absurd and ridiculous we all are and yet at the same time how incredibly beautiful life is. I feel there is so much I want to say to you, but it can’t be put into words, and I would like to just run up and hug you.

Good idea - but don’t do it. Because even then you will not be able to say what you want to say, even by a hug. You will be able to show your helplessness, but nothing will be said.

When something overwhelming is happening, it cannot be expressed. It is inexpressible by its very nature. It is intrinsically inexpressible, ineffable. So whenever it happens a very deep helplessness arises. Words seem to be futile, meaningless, trivial, and then one would like to say it in some other way. One would like to hug or kiss or hold the hand - but even then nothing is said. Only your helplessness is shown. One would like to cry or weep, but then too nothing is said. Only your helplessness is expressed.

Rather than trying to express it, my suggestion is, when this happens, remain with it. Don’t make any effort to express or not to express - because if you become occupied with expression, you will miss it. You are already diverted, distracted. That’s why I say the idea is good but don’t try to do it.

If you feel the benediction around you, the greater, the vaster surrounding you, the infinite just around you, rather than trying to express it, get lost in it - because now the ego is trying another way, now the ego wants to express it. And if you become too interested in expressing it, you may become a painter, because the painter is trying to express the inexpressible through colors on the canvas, but who has been able to express it? Or you may become a poet. The poet is trying to express the inexpressible in words, but who has ever been able to express it?

9

This is the difference between art and religion. When the vast surrounds you, the artist starts making efforts to express it, and the mystic simply gets lost in it. And the mystic comes to know it. The artist misses at the very last moment.

It will be happening to more and more people around here. This is a very crazy place to be. It is really far out. To more and more people it is going to happen, so keep it as a deep remembrance that whenever you feel that something unknown has knocked on your doors, don’t be worried about expression, don’t start thinking how to say it or how to write it. Let it be. Go into it. Be drowned in it. Be drunk with it. Don’t make any effort.

These are the two efforts. First, people try - how to achieve it? They miss. I don’t teach you any “how.” Then when it happens they start thinking how to express it; again the “how” comes from the back door. Again I would like to remind you, don’t bring the “how.” It is good as it is. Unexpressed, what is wrong in it? Let it be so. Amen. Let it be so.

“Sometimes listening to you, an overwhelming feeling comes over me of how absurd and ridiculous we all are, and yet at the same time how incredibly beautiful life is.” There is no contradiction in the absurd and the beautiful. In fact the absurd is the beautiful and the beautiful is always absurd. Don’t see any contradiction.

The mind is always very tempted to see contradictions because the mind has been trained in a certain logic which does not allow contradictions to be together. The mind has been trained by Aristotelian philosophy, all over the world. Aristotle says A is A and never not A. This is the whole logic of the mind: A is A and never not A; A is A and never B. How can A be B? But in reality A is B and C and D - and the whole alphabet. In reality things have multidimensional qualities.

You see a man is loving. When the man is loving you think, “Yes, how beautiful a man.” But the next moment he is angry; then there is a contradiction. You say, “This man deceived me. Has this man not heard of Aristotle yet? A is A and never B. You are a loving man. Don’t be angry!” But man is man. He is angry and loving and jealous and possessive, and sometimes so sharing, and sometimes so mean. Have you not watched it? Sometimes your friend is so sharing and sometimes so mean. This is how reality is. Reality contains all contradictions.

You say, “.how absurd and ridiculous we all are and yet how incredibly beautiful life is.” Nothing is contradictory in it. If you were all very, very consistent, life would not be so rich. It would be stale and gray. Life is rich because it is a rainbow, it is psychedelic. It has so many colors and so many changing colors. And it is so unpredictable - that’s why it is absurd.

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Why do you call it absurd? - because you cannot contain it in your logic. Your logic falls short; it is bigger than your logic. It destroys your logic. Somehow you make a small part of your mind clear, and life comes and destroys everything.

Have you not seen somebody who for forty years has been absolutely logical and has never allowed anything in his life which is illogical, has said God does not exist because he is not visible, has said prayer is foolish and love is not possible? Then one day he comes across a beautiful woman and falls in love. Forty years’ training and logic, and all gone to the dogs within a single moment! Life is absurd.

But by absurd you simply say one thing: that it is not logical. But why should it be logical? It has no obligation to be logical. It has never pretended to be logical. It is man’s mediocre mind that has been trying to fix it somehow so you can be secure about it. No, it cannot be fixed. It is a constant flux.

And it is ridiculous, yes, because it is not serious. It is ridiculous because it is a play. In India we call it leela; it is a play.

God loves children. Can’t you see it? Every day old people are taken away, and he goes on sending babies. How absurd. A person has been trained his whole life, for seventy years. He has become a great philosopher, a professor, a scholar - so many PhDs and DLitts and the DD - and now suddenly this mad God takes him away. What type of economics is this? And instead sends a baby, crying and howling. Again train him, send him to the school and the college and the university. And by the time he is ready and looks of any use, here comes God and takes him away. It is absurd.

God loves the absurdity. God is not a utilitarian. He does not believe in utility, he believes in play. The moment you become too serious, he says, “Now it is time. Please come back home. I will dismantle you and send you again. Now you need a mind wash: you have become too trained, too disciplined, too much of a commodity. You are no longer a freedom.” That’s why old people are taken away. He destroys them, again creates small babies, and sends them; and again they are there with all the nonsense. And again we are after them to teach them. Neither do we learn anything nor does God learn anything. It goes on.

It is ridiculous, but that’s why it is so beautiful. If God was a mathematician as Vinoba Bhave says. He says that God is a mathematician. Now this seems to be the most sacrilegious statement ever made. God a mathematician? No, he is not, not at all. The mathematician is an ugly thing. The mathematician is a computer. The mathematician is clever and cunning, but mechanical. Mathematics has no poetry in it. Mathematics is the only absolutely fictitious science created by man. In the room you say there are six chairs. There are chairs - but not six. Six is man’s concept. If you go out of the room, chairs will be there, but six has disappeared. Mathematical concepts are human creations. God is not a mathematician, otherwise such beautiful play will become impossible.

11

Don’t you see, sometimes there are many things man is destroying, thinking that by destroying them the world will be better? God has never destroyed them. Trees have existed. Sometimes you think what is the point of a tree? You make furniture, cut it; make doors and furniture and then it is useful. Hills are there, the Himalayas are there, and the virgin snow on their tops, which nobody has walked on it. For what? What is the point of them? Why are the Himalayas needed? Make them a plain so people can live there and townships can grow. That’s how man has destroyed the whole of nature.

God is very playful. There are many absurd things. So many stars - for what? They go on moving. It is not a mathematical arrangement. God is very luxurious. He does not believe in necessity. He is a spendthrift; he is not a miser. He goes on throwing his energy - it is playful energy, it is just like a child splashing in water. Don’t ask why. He will not be able to answer. But he is enjoying it. It has no economical value, but life is not economics, nor is it politics. It is poetry, and poetry is by its very nature, by its very definition, illogical. Poetry is beautiful because there are sudden leaps and jumps. Prose is not so beautiful, because there are no sudden jumps and leaps. Prose moves on plain ground, in a logical sequence.

Sooner or later, when you are ready, I am going to drop talking in a sequential way. Sooner or later, when my sannyasins are ready, my talks will be more like a collage. You will have to find out what I mean. You will have to find out your own meaning. I will say a few things, but I will go on jumping and I will not connect as I connect right now. Once you are ready - more attentive, more aware, more alert - I will not connect with logic, I will drop the logic. The unity will be there, but not on the surface. The unity will be there because they will all be my statements - the unity will consist in me. And the unity will be there because they are to be understood by your awareness - the unity will come in your awareness. But taken directly, if a visitor comes, he will think this man is mad. Right now I connect, I connect because I know you will not be able to understand the absurd yet. I am waiting for the day you are ready, so I can be as absurd as God is.

Have you seen anywhere any symmetry in nature? It is not. Man makes things in a symmetrical way. If he makes a house he makes it symmetrical. But in nature there is no symmetry. A great pine tree, and just by the side a small rosebush. And you cannot ask what the connection is between the rosebush and the pine tree. God will laugh. He will say, “Who said that there is any need for a connection? The rosebush is a rosebush and the pine is a pine - and both are happy. There is no need to bridge them.”

Sooner or later I am going to become just like God. I will say something and then I will forget about it and I will tell a joke which is completely unrelated. Then it is for you to work it out. Then it will be more beautiful, certainly more beautiful, because it will be more playful. That is the meaning of a collage - so many fragments from so many dimensions together. On the surface, no unity, but if you look deep there is an organic unity. That unity exists in the painter, not in the painting.

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If you really want to know the meaning of poetry, you will have to go deep into the heart of the poet. For prose you need not go into the heart. Prose is plain, prose is worldly, prose is of the marketplace, prose is human. Poetry is divine. That’s why all the great scriptures of the world are in poetry - the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Koran, the Dhammapada. They are all poetry, beautiful poetry, outpourings of a singing heart. Logic, there is none. Love, there is much.

Osho Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language