Zorba and Buddha

In the East people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter "illusory," maya - it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation.

Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world. The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented. You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me.

I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself...unless you become existential, you cannot become whole. This is my contribution to humanity: the whole person.
---
Osho, Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind, Chapter 2

beard

Every child, if left and helped to grow according to his own sensibilities, will bring something beautiful into the world, some unique personality. Right now everybody is a copy of everybody else.

This very vice-chancellor, when for the first time I entered the university, looked at me and asked, "Why are you growing a beard?"

I said, "I am not growing it, it is growing. Don't ask nonsense questions. On the contrary, I can ask why you are cutting your beard."

He said, "Settled. I will not ask anything and you will not ask anything."

I said, "No. You can ask anything, but you have to have the courage to receive the answer. You have to say that you asked a wrong question. I am not growing it, I am not pulling my hairs every day so that they grow; I am not watering them. You are shaving twice a day. My hairs are natural and you are unnecessarily becoming a woman."

He said, "What?"

I said, "It is so easy to understand. Do you think a woman would look good with a beard? The same is true about you--without a beard, you look just like a woman. A little weird, but..."

He said, "I promise never to disturb you, but don't spread these ideas in the university, that I look like a woman, a little weird."

I looked as I wanted. I lived as naturally as I wanted. That has given me a tremendous sense of peace and integrity. There is no regret. There is no complaint against life, only deep gratitude. turnin07

beard

He said, "No, your case will be considered, but I'm becoming curious about something else... you sit down. Would you like to have some coffee or some tea?"
I said, "No, you just first tell me what your curiosity is."
He said, "My curiosity is about your small beard" -- it was just starting to grow -- "Why you are growing a beard and moustache and long hair?"
I said, "You are asking a wrong question. I'M not growing them, they are growing. In fact, I should ask you why you have been shaving your beard and your moustache, because that is a positive act, and you have to be responsible for it and answerable. Nature has not given beards to women -- just think of a woman who starts growing beard and a moustache! And it is not impossible; she just needs a few injections, a few of the hormones that grow the hair of the beard and the moustache."
I said, "Just imagine -- would that woman look like a woman? Could you fall in love with her if, by some magic, you can again be given your youth?"
He said, "My God! A woman with a beard?"
"But," I said, "yours is a similar case; a man without a beard is no different. You have been imitating women."
And there is an unconscious reasoning, because the man feels women are beautiful -- perhaps if he also takes away the beard and the moustache, he may look more beautiful. He's a hundred percent wrong. It is one thing that women go on tolerating, him because it is a man's society and he develops ideas and enforces them on everybody else who is in some way dependent on him. But if women are free to express their feelings, a beard is as natural, a moustache is as natural as your nose. You don't shave it.
Be proud of your qualities. Increase them, refine them because they are the path towards godliness.
---
Osho
Sermons on Stones
Chapter17, 1987

Self Hypnosis

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER EVENING I TRIED THE TECHNIQUE YOU SUGGESTED FOR BEING HYPNOTIZED. ALTHOUGH I BECAME MORE DEEPLY RELAXED THAN I EVER HAVE, I STILL REMAINED QUITE CONSCIOUS, SO IT SEEMS I DID NOT TAP INTO THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ANY UNCONSCIOUS MEMORIES. BUT I DID HAVE MANY IMAGES PASSING RAPIDLY THROUGH MY MIND, WHICH I DESCRIBED ALOUD. IS THERE ANY POINT IN DOING THIS, OR SHOULD ONE BYPASS ANY IMAGES AND WAIT UNTIL ONE FINDS THE KNACK OF FALLING INTO THE UNCONSCIOUS?

Self-hypnosis takes a little longer time, but there is no need to repeat or say the images, because that becomes a disturbance. You simply let them pass by. You just watch and go on relaxing more and more. A moment will come that all those images are gone, and for a period of time that you have decided beforehand you will not be alert. In that gap you have entered into the unconscious. Coming out of the unconscious, you will feel immensely refreshed.

So first don't repeat the images, so that you can enter into the unconscious. When you have become capable of entering into the unconscious for a period of time and you simply lose track of where you have been -- you cannot give any account of it... That time is simply not recorded by your memory, because the memory system is in the conscious mind. The unconscious has no memory system, and the unconscious has no idea of the calendar, the time, the day, the date -- nothing.

So first let that happen. And when you wake up, in the first moment when you feel that you are out of the unconscious, repeat three times, "Next time when I do the experiment, I will go faster into it, deeper into it."

When it becomes a small thing to you, no problem at all -- you just relax and go into it -- then you can do the second part. After coming out of the unconscious, the first thing you have to repeat is, "Now I will remember whatever I see in the unconscious. I will not be unconscious. I will be in the unconscious but a small consciousness will be with me, so I can see what is there." That will be the second part.

With that second part you can start releasing, because some part of the conscious enters into the unconscious. Then there is a way for memories that are repressed to be released. Then coming out of the unconscious you will not only feel refreshed, you will feel relieved, unburdened. Those subtle feelings have to be remembered. First you will only feel refreshed, as after a good night's sleep. Second you feel unburdened. Something was on your chest; it was heavy, and now it is no longer there -- or is less there. Then continue in that way, and go on repeating, "I will be more and more conscious, so more and more unconscious can be released."

And in the third stage you should repeat, "I should be completely conscious so that the barrier between consciousness and unconsciousness is broken." When you come out of it, then you will feel not only freshness, not only unburdened, but an absolute freedom -- as if you had been chained, handcuffed, and they have been removed.

Self-hypnosis takes a little longer time, but it is good. You are totally your own master. But don't repeat the images, because repeating them, you will not fall into unconsciousness; just let them pass. Your whole effort right now should be how to move from the conscious to the unconscious through relaxing, through being silent, through just witnessing. And everything has to be done in a very soft way -- even witnessing.

If you stare, that will not allow you to enter into the unconscious. Just see by the way; just as if you are sitting by the side of the road and by the way people are passing -- you don't even care who is passing, whether he is a man or a woman. You just see them because you are looking that way, but no staring.

So you have done everything right -- just the repeating was wrong. That you should not do. And then slowly, slowly, as I described in three parts, keep going.

---The Path of the mystic, #10

hugging

OSHO,

WHY IS HUGGING SUCH AN INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE THERAPEUTIC TOOL?

P.S. I USED TO THINK THAT CLARITY, WIT AND ANALYSIS WAS THE WAY, BUT THEY ARE ALL GARBAGE ALONGSIDE HUGGING.

PREM AMIDA,

MAN NEEDS TO BE NEEDED. It is one of the most fundamental needs of human beings. Unless one is cared for one starts dying. Unless one feels that he is significant to somebody, at least to somebody, his whole life becomes insignificant.

Hence love is the greatest therapy there is. The world needs therapy because the world is missing love. In a really loving world no therapy will be needed at all; love will be enough, more than enough. Hugging is only a gesture of love, of warmth, of caring. the very feel of the warmth flowing from the other person melts many illnesses in you, melts the ice-like, cold ego. It makes you again a child.

The psychologists are well aware of the fact now that unless a child is hugged, kissed, he misses some nourishment. Just as the body needs food, the soul needs love. You can give to the child all the physical needs, all the physical comforts, but if hugging is missing the child will not grow in a wholesome being. He will remain somewhere deep down sad, uncared for, neglected, ignored. He was nursed, but he was not mothered.

It has been observed that if a child is not hugged he starts shrinking -- he can even die -- although everything else was provided for. As far as the body is concerned every care was taken, but no love surrounded the child. He became isolated, he became disconnected with existence.

Love is our connection, love is our very root. Just as you breathe -- for the body it is absolutely essential: stop breathing and you are no more -- in the same way, love is the inner breath. The soul lives by loving.

Analysis won't do it. Wit and clarity, knowledge and scholarship won't do it. You can know all there is to know about therapy, you can become an expert, but if you don't know the art of love you remain only on the surface of the miracle of therapy.

The moment you start feeling for the patient, for the one who is suffering... out of hundred cases, ninety people are suffering basically because they have not been loved. If you start feeling the need for love of the patient, and if you can fulfill the need, there will be almost a magical change in the condition of the patient.

Love is certainly the most therapeutic phenomenon. Sigmund Freud was very much afraid of it, so much so... hugging was beyond the question -- he was not even ready to face the patient, because listening to his misery, listening to his inner nightmares, he may start feeling sympathetic. His eyes may become wet, tears may start flowing, or maybe in an unguarded moment he may hold the hand of the patient.

He was so much afraid of any loving relationship between the therapist and the patient that he created a certain device: the patient has to lie down on the couch and behind the couch the psychoanalyst has to sit, so they are not facing each other.

And remember one thing: it is by facing each other that love grows. Animals cannot grow love because they make love to each other without facing each other, so there is no friendship, no relatedness. Once they are finished with lovemaking they go their ways -- separately, not even saying a thankyou, or goodbye, or see you soon! Animals have not been able to create friendship, family, society, for the simple reason because when they are making love they are not looking into each other's eyes, they are not looking into each other's face; as if their lovemaking is almost mechanical; there is no human element in it.

Man created the whole dimension of all kinds of relationships for the simple reason because he is the only animal who makes love facing each other. Then eyes start communicating, then facial expressions become a subtle language. Then the changes of mood and emotions -- the joy, the ecstasy, the orgasmic glow -- and intimacy grows. Intimacy needs it; it is a basic requirement.

Hence it is good to make love in light, not in darkness -- at least a dim light, a candle light. Making love in darkness is just something animal in us, avoiding to face each other... a strategy to avoid.

Sigmund Freud was very much afraid of love; he was afraid of his own repressed love. He was afraid that he may get into some entanglement, involvement. He wanted to be just outside, not to be involved with the person, not to become part of his interiority, not to enter into deep waters but just to remain a scientific observer, aloof, detached, cool, far away. He wanted to create psychoanalysis as if it is a science. It is not a science, and it is never going to be a science! It is an art, and it is far more closer to love than to logic.

And the real psychoanalyst will not avoid getting deep into the interiority of the patient -- he will take the risk. It is risky, it is going into troubled waters. You may be drowned yourself -- after all, you are also human! You may get into some trouble, complexity; you may create some problems for yourself, but that risk has to be taken.

That's why I love Wilhelm Reich very much. He is the man who transformed the face of whole psychoanalysis -- by getting involved with the patient. He discarded the couch, he discarded this detached aloofness. He is a far greater revolutionary than Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud remained traditional; he was really afraid of his own repressions.

If you are not afraid of your own repressions you can help tremendously. If you are not afraid of your own unconscious, if you have solved your problems a little bit, you can help greatly by getting involved into the world of the patient, by becoming a participant rather than remaining just an observer.

In fact, because psychoanalysts are having their own problems, sometimes even more than the patient himself, one can understand Sigmund Freud's fear. As far as I am concerned, I would like to make a categorical statement about it: unless a person is really awakened, enlightened, he cannot be a real, authentic therapist. Only a Buddha can be a real therapist because he has no problems left. He can merge and melt into the patient; in fact, for him the patient is not the patient at all.

That's the difference between the relationship that exists between a patient and his therapist and the relationship that exists between a disciple and a Master. The disciple is not a patient, the disciple is a beloved, a loved one. The Master is not just an observer, he has become a participant. They have lost their separate entities, they have become one, and that oneness helps.

Hugging is only a gesture of oneness -- even the gesture helps. Prem Amida, you are right. You ask:

WHY IS HUGGING SUCH AN INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE THERAPEUTIC TOOL?

It is, and it is only a gesture. If it is true -- not only a gesture but your heart is also in it -- it can be a magical tool, it can be a miracle. It can transform the whole situation instantly.

Few things have to be understood about it. One is: the idea that the child dies and the man becomes adolescent, then the adolescent dies and the man becomes young, then the young man dies and he becomes middle-aged, and so on, so forth, is wrong. The child never dies -- nothing ever dies. The child is there, always is there, wrapped by other experiences -- wrapped by adolescence, then by youth, then by middle age, then by old age -- but the child is always there.

You are just like an onion, layers upon layers, but if you peel the onion soon you will find fresher layers inside. Go on deeper and you find more and more, fresher layers. The same is true about man: if you go deep into him you will always find the innocent child -- and to contact that innocent child is therapeutic.

Hugging gives you an immediate contact with the child. If you hug somebody with warmth, love, if it is not just an impotent gesture, if it is meaningful, significant, true, if your heart is flowing through it, immediately you come in contact with the child, with the innocent child. And the innocent child even for a single moment surfacing makes a tremendous difference because the innocence of the child is always healthy and whole; it is uncorrupted. You have reached to the innermost core of the person where no corruption has ever entered, you have reached to the virgin core, and just making the virgin core throb again with life is enough. You have started, triggered a process of healing.

Hence all the religions have used this phenomenon in different ways. Whenever Jesus prays to God he always calls him ABBA. Christians have translated it as "God the Father"; that translation is not right, is very inaccurate -- in a way literally true, but the metaphor has changed. ABBA can only be translated as "daddy", not as "father"; "father" seems to be cold. Just repeat the word father and it looks so far away. "God the Father"... Looks like an institution! Father is really an institution, it is not a natural phenomenon. The mother is natural, the father is only a creation of a certain society. There have been societies before where father never existed.

The word uncle is far more older than the word father. In a matriarchal society people knew about the mother, but because the marriage has not come into existence yet no child knew about the father. So all the people who have been the lovers of the mother -- somebody out of them must be the father but that is not known -- so all the people who could have been the lovers were known as uncles.

In Talmud, the Jewish God says: "Remember, I am not nice, I am not your uncle!" The uncle is always nice, the father almost never. It is very difficult to be friendly with the father, it is very easy to be friendly with the uncle. I would rather say it is better to call "God the Uncle" than to call him "God the Father". It is closer, nicer, more friendly. But to call him ABBA is the best. Jesus is giving him a name which creates intimacy.

When you call God ABBA -- Daddy -- you are saying, "I am just a child. Take care of me, don't ignore me. I cannot live without you -- you are my life. Your love is my very nourishment."

All the religions have used the idea that unless a man becomes a child again he cannot be truly religious. But to be a child means to be innocent, means to be full of wonder, means to be full of awe. For the child everything is a mystery -- everything. He has no answers, he has only questions. He is immensely interested in knowing, he is open. The moment you have an answer you become closed, to that extent. If you have all the answers for all the questions you are absolutely closed, then you are not open. Your enquiry is finished, and with the enquiry finished you are dead.

A real being is always enquiring, he is always on the pilgrimage. He remains always an agnostic. All children are agnostics, neither theists nor atheists, nor Hindus nor Mohammedans, nor Catholics nor Protestants. They are simply innocent! They don't believe in anything but they are ready to enquire, to investigate. And the enquiring heart is a healthy heart. When you are loaded with beliefs you are ill.

The Christian is ill, the Hindu is ill, the Jaina is ill -- ill because they are prejudiced, ill because without seeing they have believed, ill because they are behaving stupidly. How can you believe in something that you have not known! And when you know something there is no need to believe at all, so belief in any case is ridiculous. Either you know or you don't know. If you know there is no need to believe; if you don't know, how can you believe? So belief is only for the mediocres, the stupids, the idiots. And no child is an idiot. Every child is so fresh, so alive, so full of zest that his very aliveness makes him healthy.

If you can touch the child in the patient in any way... and hugging is simply one of the most important things.

Because I have allowed my sannyasins to hug and kiss I am condemned all over the country -- that I am telling my people to be indulgent. If this is indulgence, then let it be indulgence. This is not indulgence at all; there is something more in it. I am telling to you to be loving, and just sitting with somebody and telling him again and again, "I love you," is not enough. At least hold the hand! Make it a reality -- hug the person.

A very shy Englishman... and he must be very shy, otherwise just to be an Englishman is enough; there is no need to use the adjective "shy". They are all shy! They are the most perfect gentlemen in the world -- and, of course, in the same proportion they are dead too! Who has ever heard about a gentleman who is alive? If you are alive you are a man, why gentle? For what? Corpses are always gentle: they cannot do any harm, and they look so polite, so humble!

This shy gentleman was seeing a young woman for months. One full-moon night they were sitting together in the porch, looking in the garden, and beyond the garden the moon was rising. And the shy Englishman gathered courage; it must have been a real great mighty effort! My own feeling is it must be because of the moon; the moon drives people crazy, hence the word "lunatic". Lunatic means "struck by the moon". Lunatic comes from "lunar", the moon -- the moonstruck. He must have gone lunatic.

He asked the lady, "Can I..can I kiss you?"

And the lady was really getting tired, so she said, "And what do you think? Am I waiting here for a bus?"

When you love a person just verbal expressions are not enough, words are not enough; something more substantial is needed; words are only abstract. You have to do something! Hold the hand, hug the person, kiss the person, embrace the person. It is going to help you both: if you can melt in the hug you both will become again younger, fresher, livelier. And that's the whole process of healing.

Prem Amida, analysis is the way of the mind, hugging is the way of the heart. The mind is the cause of all diseases and the heart is the source of all healing.

--The Wild Geese and the Water, #4

east west

Original Question:

Whenever you speak of our failings, you usually mention anger, sex and jealousy. Anger and sex seem fairly straightforward, but there’s some confusion about exactly what jealousy is, and it’s harder to get to the core. Would you tell us about jealousy?

* * *
Yes, I make more mention of anger, sex, and less of jealousy, because jealousy is not a primary thing. It is secondary, it is a secondary part of sex.

Whenever you have a sexual urge in your mind, a sexual happening in your being, whenever you feel sexually attracted and related to somebody, jealousy enters because you are not in love. If you are in love, jealousy never enters.

Try to understand the whole thing. Whenever you are sexually related you are afraid, because sex is really not a relationship, it is an exploitation. If you are attached to a woman or man sexually, you are always afraid that this woman may go to somebody else, this man may move to somebody else. There is no relationship really, it is just mutual exploitation. You are exploiting each other, but you don't love and you know it, so you are afraid.

This fear becomes jealousy so you may not allow things, you will guard; you'll make every security arrangement so this man cannot look at another woman.Even looking will be a danger signal. This man should not talk to another woman because talking.... and you feel afraid he may leave. So you will close all the paths, all the ways of this man going to another woman, of this woman going to another man; you will close all the ways, all the doors.

But then a problem arises. When all the doors are closed, the man becomes like, the woman becomes dead, a prisoner, a slave, and you cannot love a dead thing. You cannot love one who is not free because love is beautiful only when it is given freely, when it is not taken and demanded and forced.

First you make security arrangements, then the person becomes dead, becomes like an object. A beloved may be a person, a wife becomes an object; a beloved may be a person, a husband becomes an object to be guarded, possessed,controlled. But the more you control, the more you are killing, because freedom is lost. And the other person may be there for other reasons, but not for love,because how can you love a person who possesses you? He looks like an enemy.

Sex creates jealousy but it is a secondary thing. So it is not a question of how to drop jealousy; you cannot drop it because you cannot drop sex. The question is how to transform sex into love, then jealousy disappears.

If you love a person, the very love is enough guarantee, the very love is enough security. If you love a person, you know he cannot go to anybody else.And if he goes, he goes; nothing can be done. What can you do? You can kill the person, but a dead person will not be of much use.

When you love a person you trust that he cannot go to anybody. If he goes,there is no love and nothing can be done. Love brings this understanding. There is no jealousy.

So if jealousy is there, know well there is no love. You are playing a game,you are hiding sex behind love. Love is just a painted word, the reality is sex.

In India, because love is not allowed much, not allowed at all -- marriage is arranged -- tremendous jealousy exists. A husband is always afraid. He has never loved so he knows -- and the wife is always afraid because she has never loved, so she knows -- that this has been an arrangement. The parents arranged, astrologers arranged, society arranged; the wife and husband were never asked.In many cases they never knew each other, they had never seen each other. So fear exists. The wife is afraid, the husband is afraid, and both are spying on each other. The very possibility is lost.

How can love grow in fear? They can live together, but that living together is also not living together; they only tolerate together, they some how carry on together. It is just utilitarian, and out of utility you may manage, but ecstasy is not possible. You cannot celebrate it, it cannot become festive; it will be a burden some affair.

So a husband is dead before death, and a wife is dead before death. It is two dead persons taking revenge on each other, because each thinks that one has killed the other. Taking revenge, angry, jealous -- the whole sourly becomes sourly.

But in the West a different type of phenomenon is happening which is the same on the other extreme. They dropped arranged marriage and it is good, that institution is not worth keeping, but by dropping it, love has not arisen, only sex has become free. And when sex is free you are always afraid because it is always a temporary arrangement. You are with this girl to she will tomorrow she will be with somebody else, and yesterday she was with Yesterday these. Yesterday the girl was with somebody else, tomorrow she will again be with somebody else; only tonight she is with you.

How can this be very intimate and deep? It can only be a meeting of the surfaces. You cannot penetrate each other because penetration needs seasoning,it needs time, it needs depth, intimacy, living together, being together. A longtime is needed then depth opens -- depths talking to each other....

This is just acquaintance. It may not even be acquaintance -- in the West you can meet a woman on the train and make love, and at midnight you drop her at some station. She never bothers that she may never know you again; she may not even have asked your name.

If sex becomes such a trivial thing -- just a bodily affair where surfaces meet and separate -- your depth remains untouched. You are again missing something -- something great, something very mysterious -- because you become aware of your own depth only when somebody else touches it. Only through the other do you become aware of your inner being; only in deep relationship does somebody's love resound in you and bring your depth into being. Only through somebody else do you discover yourself.

There are two ways of discovery. One is meditation -- without the other you search for the depth; another is love -- with the other you search for the depth. He becomes a root to reach to yourself. The other creates a circle, and both lovers help each other. The deeper love goes, the deeper they feel they are; their inner-beings are revealed. But then there is no jealousy. Love cannot be jealous, it is impossible. Love is always trusting, and if something happens that breaks your trust you have to accept it; nothing can be done about it because whatsoever you do will destroy the other.

Trust cannot be forced; jealousy tries to force it. Jealousy tries, makes you make every effort so that trust can be maintained, but trust is not something to be maintained. It is there, or it is not there, and I say that nothing can be done about it. If it is there, you go through it; if it is not there, better separate.

But don't fight for it because you are wasting time, life. If you love someone and your depth speaks to the other's depth -- you have a meeting in being -- it is okay, beautiful; if it is not happening, separate. But don't create any conflict, struggle or fight for it, because it cannot be achieved through fight, and time is lost -- and not only time, your capacity will be damaged. You may start again with another person repeating the whole pattern.

If there is no trust, separate -- the sooner, the better -- so you are not destroyed, so you are not damaged, so your capacity to love remains fresh and you can love somebody else. This is not the place, this is not the man, this is not the woman for you. Move, but don't destroy each other.

Life is very short and capacities are very delicate. They can be destroyed,and once damaged there is no possibility of repairing them.

I have heard that once it happened that Winston Churchill was invited to speak in a small club of friends. Everybody knew that Churchill was a drunkard and loved alcohol very much, and the man who introduced him, the president of the club, said, "Sir Winston has drunk so much wine up to now, that if we pour all the wine into this hall the level will come up to my head." It was a big hall, and he was just joking.

Winston Churchill stood, looked at the imaginary line, looked at the ceiling-- the ceiling was high -- became very sad, and he said, "So much still to be done, and so little time left to do it."

As far as love is concerned, so much is to be done for everyone and so little time is left to do it. Don't waste your energy in fighting, jealousy,conflict; move, and move in a friendly way.

Search somewhere else for the person who exists who will love you. Don't get fixed with someone who is wrong, not for you. Don't be angry, there is no point in it, and don't try to force trust; nobody can force it, it never happens. You will miss the time, you will miss the energy, and you may only become aware when nothing can be done. Move. Either trust or move.

Love always trusts, or if it finds that the trust is not possible it simply moves in a friendly way; there is no conflict and fight. Sex creates jealousy; find, discover love. Don't make sex the basic thing -- it is not.

India missed with arranged marriage; the West is missing with free love.

India missed love because parents were too calculating and cunning. They would not allow falling in love: that is dangerous, nobody knows where it will lead. They were too clever, and through cleverness India missed all possibility of love.

In the West they are too rebellious, too young; not clever -- too young, too childish. They have made sex a free thing, available everywhere: no need to go so deep to discover love, enjoy sex and be finished.

Through sex, the West is missing: through marriage, the East has missed. But if you are alert you need not be Eastern, you need not be Western. Love is neither Eastern nor Western.

Go on discovering love within you. And if you love, sooner or later the person will happen to you, because a loving heart, sooner or later, comes to a loving heart -- it always happens. You will find the right person. But if you are jealous you will not find, if you are simply for sex you will not find, if you live only for security you will not find.

Love is a dangerous path and only those who have courage can travel it. And I say to you it is the same, just like meditation -- only for those who are courageous. And there are only two ways to reach the divine: either meditation or love. Find out which is your way, which can be your destiny.

---Osho, A Bird on the Wing, #6

Smoking

NB: This is from one of the darshan diaries, Osho's personal interaction with individuals, and as far as i have heard, Osho later asked that they don't be published. Read it if u want, but I feel this info is required..... Osho also answered a question on smoking in "Beyond Psychology , #2"

[A sannyasin has had a problem with smoking -- since he dropped sucking his thumb, at sixteen.]

Mm mm. Sucking the thumb is better than smoking.

You can try it again. And it will be easier to drop smoking. This is one of the things to be understood: if you were sucking and then you stopped that, you have chosen smoking as a substitute. Smoking is not your problem. You cannot do anything with it. Howsoever hard you try, you will never succeed, because it is not in the first place a problem -- the problem was something else. You have changed the problem. The real problem has been dropped, and a false problem has been put there instead. You cannot change it!

My suggestion is: forget about fighting with your smoking -- you start sucking the thumb (she giggles a little self-consciously). And don't be worried -- it is beautiful, it is just beautiful. There is nothing wrong in it, because it is not harmful. Start sucking the thumb, and once you start sucking the thumb, smoking will disappear. When smoking disappears, we are on the right track. Then for a few months go on sucking the thumb so this long habit of so many years -- smoking -- drops. For six or nine months suck the thumb, and don't be ashamed of it -- because there is nothing wrong with it.

Smoking basically is somehow concerned either with the sucking of the thumb or with inadequate breast-feeding. When a child is taken away from the breast and he was not ready to, and he wanted to continue -- then he starts sucking the thumb. It is a substitute. What else can he do?

Later on sucking the thumb looks so ugly and so childish that one starts finding some substitutes for it: chewing gum or smoking, or chewing pan; one finds something. And of course when you find smoking, smoking fits better than the sucking of the thumb. It is more similar to the breast than the thumb, because when you drink the milk from the breast, it is warm. The smoke is warm, and it gives you again the same feeling of warmth . The thumb cannot give that. So once the child has discovered that smoking is more suitable, then the thumb is dropped -- but the thumb was innocent.

So first drop the smoking and instead start sucking your thumb go back regress back. After six, nine months, when smoking has completely disappeared and again the thumb-sucking is replaced, then start to drink milk every night, from an artificial bottle that you use for children... every night. Enjoy it like a breast, mm?

and don't be shy about it. Enjoy it every night -- fifteen minutes regularly -- and it will give you very very deep sleep. And then go to sleep -- just Lying down with the bottle. In the morning also when you open your eyes, again you can find the bottle and suck a little warm milk. In the day also -- two, three times. Not much -- just a little milk.

So first the cigarette has to be dropped, then you come to the thumb; then the thumb has to be dropped. Then you come back to the breast -- this time artificially -- and from that, things will disappear. Just after a few days you will see that now there is no need. First you will be drinking four, five, six times a day, then three times, then two times, then one. And then one day you will suddenly feel that there is no need... but this is how it has to disappear.

If you fight with smoking, you will never succeed. Millions of people are fighting and they never succeed, because they never follow the whole procedure. You have to go about it in a very scientific way. You have to come to the root cause. The root cause is -- you missed your mother's breast. You could not get as much as you wanted. That desire is lingering, that desire has not gone. And with that desire, something of the unsatisfied child will always remain in you. So it is not really smoking that is the problem: that unsatisfied child will be there.

And once this whole problem is tackled rightly, you will find that for the first time you have become grown-up. Once that child disappears, and the desire to suck the mother's breast disappears, you will suddenly feel an upsurge of energy -- something caged has been freed. You will become grown-up.

A person who smokes is not a grown-up, and he is never going to become a grown-up.

But smoking is not the problem, so I never say to not smoke -- that is not the problem. Mm? you have substituted many problems before it. It is a shadow of the shadow of the shadow.

Go to the root, to the original problem. There things can be settled, nowhere else. And not only about smoking -- about every problem, always go to the root; always find out where the root is. Once you know the root, it can be cut. But without knowing the root, you can go on fighting with the shadow. With shadows, you will be defeated; you can never be victorious.

So you make it a one year program, mm?

And it will be a better world if everybody -- these smokers -- are sucking their thumbs, sitting in the train, in the bus, moving around. It will be a better world! It will be more innocent, harmless. It is your thumb! You are not sucking anybody else's. Or if two persons decide to suck each other's thumb, that is their business -- they can do it! (laughter) Nothing wrong in it! It will be a loving gesture.

But smoking is patent foolishness. It is not a sin -- it is simply stupidity. But move slowly, and don't be in a hurry in dropping the smoking. First start sucking. The moment you are really into sucking, smoking will disappear. You will simply feel uninterested. Even if somebody offers you a cigarette, you will not feel any interest. For six, nine months you continue sucking; then move to a false breast. And in a one year program it will disappear.

And not only this will disappear -- you will be transformed through it. Something very basic in you -- which is holding you back -- will disappear. Your body will become more healthy, your mind will become more sharp and intelligent. In every way you will become more grown up. You are tethered to this small problem. Something in the past is holding you back, so you cannot move smoothly into the future.

---Osho, Blessed are the ignorant

“If you are feeling miserable, let it become a meditation. Sit silently, close the doors. First feel the misery with as much intensity as possible. Feel the hurt. Somebody has insulted you: now, the best way to avoid the hurt is to go and insult him, so that you become occupied with him. That is not meditation.

If somebody has insulted you, feel thankful to him that he has given you an opportunity to feel a deep wound. He has opened a wound in you. The wound may be created by many many insults that you have suffered in your whole life; he may not be the cause of all the suffering, but he has triggered a process.

Just close your room, sit silently, with no anger for the person but with total awareness of the feeling that is arising in you — the hurt feeling that you have been rejected, that you have been insulted. And then you will be surprised that not only is this man there: all the men and all the women and all the people that have ever insulted you will start moving in your memory.

You will start not only remembering them, you will start reliving them. You will be going into a kind of primal. Feel the hurt, feel the pain, don’t avoid it. That’s why in many therapies the patient is told not to take any drugs before the therapy begins, for the simple reason that drugs are a way to escape from your inner misery. They don’t allow you to see your wounds, they repress them. They don’t allow you to go into your suffering and unless you go into your suffering, you cannot be released from the imprisonment of it.

It is perfectly scientific to drop all drugs before going into therapy — if possible even drugs like coffee, tea, smoking, because these are all ways to escape. Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous you immediately start smoking. It is a way to avoid nervousness; you become occupied with smoking. Really it is a regression. Smoking makes you again feel like a child — unworried, non-responsible — because smoking is nothing but a symbolic breast. The hot smoke going in simply takes you back to the days when you were feeding on the mother’s breast and the warm milk was going in: the nipple has now become the cigarette. The cigarette is a symbolic nipple. Through regression you avoid the responsibilities and the pains of being adult. And that’s what goes on through many many drugs.

Modern man is drugged as never before, because Modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged they don’t allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain. The first thing to do is close your doors and stop any kind of occupation — looking at the TV, listening to the radio, reading a book.

Stop all occupation, because that too is a subtle drug. Just be silent, utterly alone. Don’t even pray, because that again is a drug, you are becoming occupied, you start talking to God, you start praying, you escape from yourself. Atisha is saying: Just be yourself. Whatsoever the pain of it and whatsoever the suffering of it, let it be so. First experience it in its total intensity. It will be difficult, it will be heart-rending: you may start crying like a child, you may start rolling on the ground in deep pain, your body may go through contortions. You may suddenly become aware that the pain is not only in the heart, it is all over the body — that it is aching all over, that it is painful all over, that your whole body is nothing but pain. If you can experience it — this is of tremendous importance — then start absorbing it.

Don’t throw it away. It is such a valuable energy, don’t throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful to it. And say to yourself “This time I’m not going to avoid it, this time I’m not going to reject it, this time I’m not going to throw it away. This time I will drink it and receive it like a guest. This time I will digest it.” It may take a few days for you to be able to digest it, but the day it happens, you have stumbled upon a door which will take you really far far away.

A new journey has started in your life, you are moving into a new kind of being — because immediately, the moment you accept the pain with no rejection anywhere, its energy and its quality changes. It is no longer pain. In fact one is simply surprised, one cannot believe it, it is so incredible. One cannot believe that suffering can be transformed into ecstasy, that pain can become joy. Whenever anything is total it turns into its opposite.

This is a great secret to be remembered. Whenever something is total it changes into its opposite, because there is no way to go any further; the cul-de-sac has arrived. Watch an old clock with a pendulum. It goes on and on: the pendulum goes to the left, to the extreme left, and then there is a point beyond which it cannot go, then it starts moving towards the right. Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised…you will not be able to believe it when it happens for the first time, that your own suffering absorbed willingly, welcomingly, becomes a great blessing. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss.”

Osho, excerpted from The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 5

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