Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # 6 Q 2

 

Osho,

Is it not harmful to an individual and also to society to live without the barriers of norms? If so, then why do you preach that your sannyasins should live as they like? Mind always goes the wrong way if not restricted.

And who is going to restrict the mind? The mind of the society? Who is going to restrict the mind? The-mind of the dead people, the dead moralists, the dead priests? Who is going to restrict the mind? You? Who are you, except the mind?

The first thing to be understood: up to now humanity has lived under a curse, and the curse is that we have never been allowed to trust our nature. We have always been told, “Trust your nature and you will go wrong.” Mistrust, restrict, control - don’t go according to your feelings. We have been told that human nature is somehow basically evil. This is stupid, this is foolish and poisonous. Human nature is not evil. Human nature is divine. And if the evil has arisen, it has arisen because of restrictions. Now let me explain it to you.

You never see animals going to war. Of course there are fights sometimes, but they are individual fights - not world wars with all the crows of the East fighting with all the crows of the West, or all the dogs of India fighting all the dogs of Pakistan. Even dogs are not so foolish, neither are crows! Yes, sometimes they fight, and there is nothing wrong in it. If their freedom is violated, they fight, but the fight is individual. It is not a world war.

Now what have you done? You have repressed humanity and you have not allowed individuals to be angry sometimes - which is natural. The ultimate total result is that everybody goes on gathering his anger, goes on repressing the anger - then one day everybody is so full of poison that it explodes in a world war. Every ten years a world war is needed. And who is responsible for these wars? - your so-called saints and moralists, do-gooders, the people who have never allowed you to be natural.

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Have you ever seen any dog killing another dog? Yes, they fight sometimes - but just fight. Never has a dog killed another dog. Man is the only animal who kills another man. No crow has ever killed any other crow, no lion has ever killed another lion. Man is the only species of animal who kills its own kind. What has happened to man? Has he fallen lower than the animals? Then who is responsible? Only one thing is missing from the animals: they don’t have saints, moralists. Priests - Christian and Hindu and Mohammedan and Jaina - they don’t have. They don’t have temples, mosques, Bibles and Vedas, that’s all. That is the only difference.

There are still a few primitive societies where, down through the ages, murder has never happened, because nobody has poisoned their mind for morality, nobody has trained them to be moral. They are natural people. When you are natural you function harmoniously. Sometimes you become angry, but that is natural - and it is momentary.

A person who never becomes angry and goes on controlling his anger is very dangerous. Beware of him, he can kill you! If your husband never becomes angry, report him to the police. A husband who sometimes becomes angry is just a natural human being, there is no fear about it. A husband who never becomes angry will one day suddenly jump and suffocate you. And he will do it as if he is possessed by something. Murderers have been telling the courts down through the ages, “We committed the crime, but we were possessed.” Who possessed them? Their own unconscious - repressed unconscious - exploded.

Have you watched a simple fact? If you have a picture of a beautiful bitch and bring it to a dog, he will not be interested at all. Dogs are not playboys. Not that they don’t love bitches, they love them tremendously, but they will not be interested in a picture, in pornography - because to create pornography you need saints. First repress the sexual instinct, the natural instinct, and tell people that it is wrong and evil. When they repress their sexual instinct, the repressed instinct finds outlets. Now it is difficult to go and watch a beautiful woman passing by on the road. Then what to do? Lock your room and look at the Playboy magazine. That is safer, nobody comes to know. You can hide your Playboy magazine in the Bible and you can pretend you are reading the Bible. Only man is pornographic. No other animal is pornographic. These are simple facts.

Who has made man pornographic? Primitives are not - still are not. Women are naked and move naked - and without any fear. And what type of civilization do you say you are living in? A woman cannot pass through the roads without being pinched on the bottom, without being treated inhumanely. A woman cannot walk in the night alone - and this is civilization! And people are just obsessed with sex twenty-four hours a day.

Who has given this obsession to man? Animals are sexual but not obsessed; they are natural. When sex becomes an obsession, it takes perverted forms; and these perverted forms are rooted in the moralizers and their teachings.

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The so-called religious people have never trusted human nature. They talk about trust, but they have never trusted existence. They trust rules, laws; they never trust love. They talk about God, but the talk is just empty talk. They trust in the police, in the courts. They trust in hellfire. They trust in creating fear and in creating greed. If you are saintly and good and moral, you will have heaven and all the pleasures of paradise, firdaus. Or, if you are not moral, then you will suffer hellfire - and eternally, remember, forever and forever.

These are fear and greed. They have been manipulating the human mind through fear and greed. And they want you to become free of fear and greed - and their whole teaching is rooted in it. They don’t trust.

I trust you and I trust your nature. I trust animal nature. If nature is allowed its own course, yes, there will be a little anger sometimes and there will be a little flaring up too, but nothing is wrong in it. It is human and it is beautiful. But there will be no war.

Psychologists say all your weapons are phallic. Because you could not penetrate a woman’s body, you penetrate somebody’s body with a sword. The sword is a phallic symbol. It is beautiful to love a woman, but to penetrate somebody’s body with a sword is ugly. But this is how things have been.

You ask me: “Is it not harmful to an individual and also to society to live without the barriers of norms?” You have lived with barriers and with norms. What has happened? Look at the state of humanity today: it is a neurotic earth, a great madhouse. This is what has happened because of your norms, idealism, perfectionism, morality; this has happened because of all your commandments. The whole earth has turned into a neurotic camp, a big madhouse. And still you are afraid, and still you go on. This is a vicious circle.

It is as if you make a person fast and when he fasts of course he becomes hungry, and he starts looking obsessively for food. Then, thinking and seeing that he has become obsessed with food, you put him in chains, because otherwise he will break into somebody’s kitchen. Now you put him in chains because you say that if he is not put in chains, he is dangerous - he can break into somebody’s kitchen, he cannot be relied upon. Then you put him in chains and you continue forcing him to fast. And then you become more and more afraid because he is going mad. This is a vicious circle. In the first place, why has he become so obsessed with food? Your disciplining him too much with fasting has created this illness. Fasting is not natural.

Yes, sometimes it happens in animals, but they don’t believe in fasting, they don’t have a philosophy of fasting. Sometimes it happens. One day the dog feels sick and he will not eat. This is natural. He simply does not eat because he does not feel like eating. He moves with his feeling, it is not a rule. Nobody has taught him to fast. In fact he will go and eat grass and vomit; the grass functions and helps him to vomit. He will vomit. Nobody has taught him. And he will not eat unless the desire to eat arises again. He moves with nature. When he feels like eating, he eats; when he does not feel like eating, he does not eat. This is what I would call real life.

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Sometimes when you feel like not eating, don’t eat. I am not against fasting. I am against the philosophy of fasting. Don’t make a rule that every Sunday you have to fast. That is foolish, because how can you decide that every Sunday you will not feel like eating? Sometimes it may be Friday when you don’t feel like eating. Then what will you do? You will force yourself to eat because it is Friday. When you feel like eating, eat. When you don’t feel like eating, don’t eat. Move with your feeling, and by and by you will be in tune with your nature.

To me, to be in tune with nature is to be religious. My definition of religion is to be in tune with nature. And that is the meaning of the Indian word dharma; it means nature, intrinsic nature. Trust nature and don’t violate it.

But you have been taught to violate it, so when people who have lived starved lives come here, to this place - which is a totally different phenomenon, they have never seen a place like this, no ashram like this has ever existed - they are very surprised. They come here to see sad people, dead people - dragging themselves around somehow, chanting mantras, reading books - and when they see people dancing, men and women dancing together, holding hands; people hugging each other, people so full of love and joy, they say, “What type of religion is this? Religion has to be of the cemetery, it cannot be of life. Religion has to be negative. Men and women holding hands? This is dangerous. We cannot trust men, we cannot trust women. This is dangerous; this is playing with fire. Create restrictions, make Great Walls of China!”

No, I trust nature. I don’t trust your laws. Your laws have corrupted the whole of humanity. Enough is enough! The time has come. Now all the old, rotten religions have to be burned completely and a totally new concept of religion has to arise - life-affirmative, a religion of love and not of law, a religion of nature and not of discipline, a religion of totality and not of perfection, a religion of feeling and not of thinking. The heart should become the master, and then things settle on their own.

If you can trust nature, by and by you become quiet, silent, happy, joyful, celebrating - because nature is celebrating. Nature is a celebration. Look all around. Can you see any flower which looks like your saints? Can you see any rainbow which looks like your saints - or any cloud, or any bird singing, or the light reflecting in the river, or the stars? The world is celebrating. The world is not sad. The world is a song, an utterly beautiful song, and the dance continues. Become part of this dance and trust your nature.

If you trust your nature, by and by you will come closer to the cosmic nature. That is the only way. You are part of the cosmic. When you trust yourself, you have trusted the cosmic in you - through that goes the way. From that small thread, you can reach to the very goal. Trusting yourself, you have trusted existence which has made you. Not trusting yourself, you have distrusted existence which has made you.

Who has given you sex? Of course existence has given you sex. And who has taught you brahmacharya and celibacy? Your so-called saints. Your saints are against existence. Who has given you hunger? Existence. And who has taught you fasting? Your saints.

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I am for life and against your saints because your saints are against existence. I teach you to be natural, to be spontaneous. And I don’t teach you repression, restriction. I teach you freedom. If you restrict yourself too much and repress yourself too much, you will die before your death, and then you will live a stale life.

Let me tell you one beautiful story:

They tell about a wise old rabbi in the heart of Russia whose advice was slavishly followed by the members of his synagogue. One morning he was cornered by a troubled follower who explained, “I invested all my savings in two hundred chickens. When I went out to the coop this morning, a hundred of them had died. What should I do?”

“It is the voice of the Lord,” quoth the rabbi. “Say a prayer. Then double the sales price of the chickens you have left and you will not have lost a single kopek.”

But the next morning the villager was back to report, “Another fifty of my chickens perished last night.”

“The ways of the Lord are sometimes mysterious,” said the rabbi. “The fifty chickens that have survived are obviously the finest and the most valuable of the flock. Say another prayer of thanks and again double the sales price and you will not have lost a single kopek.”

Alas! The next morning the last fifty chickens had bitten the dust. “Now what should I do?” wailed the villager.

“My son,” quoth the rabbi, “I have lots more invaluable advice I could give you, but what use would that be to you? You have no more chickens.”

When I look at your so-called religious people, I see they have no more life. No advice can be of any help to them. They are dead people. They should really be in their graves. They are walking illegally. They are ghosts; they are living a posthumous existence. They have committed suicide and are still walking and moving. I feel sorry for them, but these people are dangerous too because they go on doing the same to others that has been done to them by others. They go on teaching the same nonsense to other people. They go on crippling small children, paralyzing new life springs, poisoning new wells. That’s what they can do. That’s all that they know. They have been unable to live; they make others unable to live.

Watch. Never get into the trap of a man who is dead. It is better to be irreligious. It is better not to believe in God and not to go to the church and the mosque and the temple, but be alive - because life is the real church of God. Forget all about God and nothing is lost, but start destroying life and everything is lost - because life is God.

I teach you life, love, because that’s how I see God is.

And these bondages that have been created by religion are just your idea. If you become aware, you can drop them immediately, instantly.

11

“How come,” the hostess of a kid’s birthday party asked a little girl in attendance, “that your younger brother is so shy? He has not moved from that corner all afternoon.”

“He is not shy at all,” answered the little girl. “He has never had on a necktie before - and he thinks he is tied to something.”

All your religions are just neckties. You are not tied to anything. It is just your idea that you are tied.

Drop all discipline and all ties and start moving - and let God live through you, and let God live through you in freedom. Trust freedom and trust God, and you will never be a loser.

I am not saying there will always be flowers and more flowers in your life. No, there are thorns, but they too are good. And I am not saying that your life will always be sweet. Many times it will be very, very bitter, but that’s how life grows - through dialectics. I am not saying you will always be good. Sometimes you will be very bad, but one thing will be certain about you: when you are bad you will be authentically bad, when you are good you will be authentically good. One can trust, one can rely upon you. When you are angry, one can rely on it that your anger is not false, not cold; it is hot and alive. And when you love, one can rely upon you that it is hot and warm.

Remember, a person who cannot be angry cannot be loving. The roses grow only with the thorns. If you cannot be hotly angry in some moment, you cannot be hotly in love. Because you cannot be hot, you cannot be warm; you remain frozen. And if you have repressed anger too much, you are always afraid to move in love, because who knows?

A man came to me and he said he could not move into deep orgasm while making love - a perfectly healthy young man. What has gone wrong with him? He cannot move into orgasm, or at the most the orgasm remains only local, it does not spread all over his body - and a local orgasm is not of much significance. When the orgasm is total and every fiber of your being throbs with new life - you are refreshed, rejuvenated - for one moment you become part of existence, part of the tremendous creativity that surrounds you. You lose yourself. You are no longer an ego, you melt. You don’t have any boundaries then.

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I inquired about his anger. He said, “But why are you asking about anger, because my question is about love? I cannot love deeply.” I said, “Forget about love because first we have to think about anger. Because if you cannot love deeply, that means you cannot be angry deeply.” He was surprised, but that’s how it turned out to be. From his very childhood, he had been brought up in a very religious family and he had always been told not to be angry, to control anger. He has learned to control. He has become so efficient that he does not know that he controls. He has really become a controller. Now the control has become unconscious. He is a very controlled person. Everybody respects him; he will succeed everywhere in society. He is a success, but in his inner life he is a failure - he cannot even love.

I told him, “Start by being angry, because my understanding is that when you are coming to a peak in your orgasm, you cannot allow it, because if you allow it, you are afraid that with it, maybe the anger - the repressed anger - may also be allowed.”

He said, “What are you saying? I always dream that I have killed my woman. And I always dream that I kill her, suffocate her, while making love to her. And I am afraid that if I lose control I will not be able to resist the temptation to suffocate and kill her.”

Now the anger has become a great force inside him. He is so afraid to uncontrol, how can he love? It is impossible. And if you miss love, you will miss prayerfulness and you will miss godliness too.

This repressive society, this repressive civilization has failed utterly. Yet you are not aware.

I have heard a beautiful story:

In the days when Khrushchev - and somehow we miss him - was Mr. Big in the Soviet Union, he often admitted that Stalin occasionally treated him like a court jester or clown, and ordered him, “Dance the gopak!” “And,” Khrushchev would add, “I danced.”

Somebody in the crowd would always cry out, “Why did you let him make a fool of you?” and Khrushchev would demand sternly, “Who asked that question? Stand up!”

Inevitably, nobody answered, and after the appropriate pause, Khrushchev would conclude, “That, comrades, is why I danced.”

Just out of fear: Stalin can kill, Stalin is death. And your priests have been death - representatives of death, not of God.

I represent life. Your priests have been in conspiracy with death and they have crippled life. Your priests talk about God, but it seems they are partners with the Devil. A great conspiracy.

And they have destroyed the whole human mind. They have uprooted you from your feeling part; they have made you hung up in your head. Now you don’t know how you feel; that’s why you cannot trust your feelings and you always have to look to somebody to tell you what to do.

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In childhood the parents go on telling you, “Do this” and “Don’t do that.” Then in the school, you have the teacher; then in the university, the professor; then in society, the boss, the politician, the leader. Everywhere you are being told what to do and what not to do. And you are always seeking somebody to dominate you so that you can become dependent - because you don’t know how to get commandments from your own heart, from your own being. You always depend on some authority outside. This is ugly, this is miserable, this should not be.

I am not an authority here, at the most a midwife, but not an authority. I can help you to be reborn, but I cannot dominate you, I cannot dictate things to you. You hanker for it. People come to me and they say, “Osho, tell us exactly what we have to do.” But why can’t you listen to your own heart? You have life bubbling inside you. The spring is there, the source is there. Go in. I can tell you how to go in, I can teach you the devices for going in, but take your commandments from there. There is a Bible inside you - the real book, the Veda, the real knowledge.

Get your instructions from there, and once you start getting your instructions from your innermost core, you will be a free man and a happy man. A free man is happy; an unfree man is never happy. You are not meant to be slaves. You are meant to be masters. That’s why I call my sannyasins “swami.” Swami means a master, one who has taken his reins in his own hands.

Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language