"Find ecstasy within yourself. It is not out there. It is in your innermost flowering. The one you are looking for is you. You are the traveler and you are the destination. In experiencing the ecstasy of your own being, you have achieved the final goal."

Meditation is a transcendence, a transcendence of all identities. We are identified with the body. The first step of meditation destroys that identity; we become aware that we are not the body. Then we become aware that we are identified wi...th the mind, with the thought process. That is the second step of meditation: it destroys that identity and makes us aware that we are not minds either. And the third and the most important and the deepest step is that we are identified with the heart, with our feelings, emotions. Meditation destroys that too.

These are the three steps, the three great negations, and out of these three negations comes the most positive phenomenon in existence: suddenly you become aware of who you are. But you become perfectly aware of who you are not.

To know the false as false is the beginning of knowing the true as true. So real religion starts in negation and ends in absolute affirmation. It starts with no, three no ss no to the body, no to the mind, no to the heart.

And then a miracle happens: out of these three no’s you suddenly attain to the biggest yes that you have ever seen in your life, ever experienced in your life — a total yes, an absolute yes. That yes is the transcendence of all misery, all bondage, all ignorance, all darkness, all death. You become part of eternity, you become part of god. You become god himself! That is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

Health: Being in Cosmic Harmony

      
 
Osho warned the planet about AIDS, right back in Osho Times International 1984. The disease would, he cautioned, reach epidemic proportions unless we took prophylactic measures — such as using condoms for lovemaking and avoiding oral/anal sex. Of course if one could drop sex altogether, without repression, that was the best prevention. Otherwise, it was good to remain with same partner. Later, he was to add that sweat and saliva could also carry the disease, so “French kissing” was not smart.
Just a few months before he made this announcement, in the US there were 750 cases of AIDS. Osho was considered an alarmist and was laughed out of town.
Today, according to a recent report from the BBC: “The Aids pandemic is growing despite years of prevention work. UNAIDS, the United Nations’ program on Aids, says it manages to bring down HIV rates in some countries only to find them rising in others. Aids has now become the leading cause of death in Africa, overtaking malaria.”
Enough said?
“When you are in tune with the whole you are healthy. The music flows between you and the whole; there is no obstruction. You feel a well being. There is no noise, everything is in harmony. When the individual is in tune with the universal, health exists. When you fall out of tune then so many wrongs arise. There is no limit to them, they are endless. And you can invent new wrongs.
“Humanity has invented many new diseases which were not prevalent before. In the old scriptures, ayurvedic scriptures, many diseases are not mentioned. People think they are not mentioned because ayurveda was not yet enough of a science, so they could not diagnose those diseases. That is not true; ayurveda became a perfect science. But those diseases were not in existence, so how can you diagnose a disease which doesn’t exist? They were non-existential. There were a few diseases that existed only for rich people, very rich people. They were called royal diseases. Tuberculosis was called ‘royal’. It was not an ordinary disease. Now the whole world has become royal; now the whole world suffers from richness, affluence. Leisure has made many things available, many new diseases available.
“Cancer is a very new disease. It can exist only when the mind is very worried, when worry becomes like a wound. And around that subtle wound in the psyche arises a disease in the body corresponding to it. That’s what cancer is: That’s why cancer seems to be incurable. There is no way to cure it from the body side. It can be cured only from the mind side because basically it arises there.
“Each age has its own diseases.”

One
  
 
From outside we are separate from each other; from the inside we are one. That’s why awareness is universal. That does not mean that it becomes outside you. It simply means that only awareness is, only consciousness is: there is no longer any distinction of inner and outer.
The distinction between inner and outer is created because there is a mind which is dividing things, making things outside and inside. In awareness mind disappears, and with it all distinction of inner and outer are gone. There is a single oneness.
For thousands of years in India people have been working on the same problem and they don’t even say, “Oneness remains,” because of a logical difficulty; if there is one, that means there must be two, there must be three. One cannot exist without the whole spectrum of numbers. What meaning will “one” have? If there is no two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then what meaning will “one” have? It will not have any meaning.
So in India they don’t say, “Only oneness remains,” they say, “What remains is nondual” — just a roundabout way not to get caught in any logical difficulty. What remains is a nondual phenomenon. It is not two. They won’t say it is one; they will say it is no longer divided. And I think they have a certain insight into it.
When you say “nondual” the other numbers are not implied. But when you say “one” the other numbers are implied. But you need not go crazy; just be aware and don’t bother what is in and what is out. Your awareness will make you clear that it is a nondual existence: nothing is in, nothing is out.
In Jaipur in India there is a palace made by a mystic king. He was really a great architect; he planned Jaipur. His name was Jai Singh; hence the name of the city. Jaipur is the only planned city in India, and planned so beautifully! His idea was to defeat Paris, and he would have succeeded but he died. The city remained incomplete, but even the incomplete city gives the sense that he was on the right lines to defeat Paris.
It was one color, the red color of the sannyasin — a whole city of red stones. All the houses, all the shops, made exactly the same, to give you the feeling that all is one: neither is there any possibility of two. And the roads are so beautiful. Just in the middle of the roads are very shadowy trees — the roads are wide enough — and on both sides the pavement is covered so that in the rainy season you need not walk with an umbrella...or in the hot sun with an umbrella. You do not need an umbrella in Jaipur. And everything is exactly the same, made of the same red stone.
This man was trying to make a city which had no differences of any kind. Only one tree was used on all the roadways, miles long. Only one color, only one stone was used, and the same design — a beautiful design.
He made a temple with red stones outside, and inside it is made of small mirrors...millions of mirrors inside. So when you go inside you see yourself reflected in millions of mirrors. You are one, but your reflections are millions.
It is said that once a dog entered and killed himself in the night. Nobody was there: the guard had left the temple, locked it, and the dog remained inside. He would bark at the dogs...millions of dogs. And he jumped from this side to that side and hit himself against the walls. And all those dogs were barking...You can see what would have happened to the poor dog: the whole night he barked and he fought, and he killed himself by hitting himself against the walls.
In the morning when the door was opened the dog was found dead and his blood was all over the place — on the walls — and the neighbors said, “The whole night we were puzzled about what was the matter. This dog continued barking.”
That dog must have been an intellectual. Naturally he thought, “So many dogs, my God! I am alone and it is nighttime and the doors are closed, and surrounded by all these dogs.. they are going to kill me!” And he killed himself; there was no other dog at all.
This is one of the basic and essential understandings of mysticism: the people we are seeing all around are only our reflections. We are unnecessarily barking at each other, unnecessarily fighting with each other, unnecessarily afraid of each other. There is so much fear that we are gathering nuclear weapons against each other — and it is just one dog, and all others are just reflections.
The way the dog died, there is every possibility that man will die the same way. And against whom? Against his own reflections.

Character or Consciousness?   

How to develop a strong enough character that I don’t get disturbed by anything and don’t lose my cool?

Go to the sea, and watch the sea. Millions of waves are there, but deep in its depth the sea remains calm and quiet, deep in meditation. The turmoil is just on the surface, just on the surface where the sea meets the outside world, the winds. Otherwise, in itself, it always remains the same, not even a ripple; nothing changes.
It is the same with you. Just on the surface where you meet others there is turmoil, anxiety, anger, attachment, greed, lust...just on the surface where winds come and touch you. And if you remain on the surface you cannot change this changing phenomenon; it will remain there.

Many people try to change it there, on the circumference. They fight with it, they try not to let a wave arise. And through their fight even more waves arise, because when the sea fights with the wind there will be more turmoil: now not only will the wind help it, the sea will also help — there will be tremendous chaos on the surface.
All the moralists try to change man on the periphery. Your character is the periphery: you don’t bring any character into the world, you come absolutely characterless, a blank sheet, and all that you call your character is written by others. Your parents, society, teachers, teachings — all are conditionings. You come as a blank sheet, and whatsoever is written on you comes from others; so unless you become a blank sheet again you will not know what nature is, you will not know what Brahma is, you will not know what Tao is.
So the problem is not how to have a strong character, the problem is not how to attain no-anger, how not to be disturbed — no, that is not the problem. The problem is how to change your consciousness from the periphery to the center. Then suddenly you see that you have always been calm. Then you can look at the periphery from a distance, and the distance is so vast, infinite, that you can watch as if it is not happening to you. In fact, it never happens to you. Even when you are completely lost in it, it never happens to you: something in you remains undisturbed, something in you remains beyond, something in you remains a witness.
So the whole problem for the seeker is how to shift his attention from the periphery to the center; how to be merged with that which is unchanging, and not to be identified with that which is just a boundary. On the boundary others are very influential, because on the boundary change is natural. The periphery will go on changing — even a buddha’s periphery changes.
The difference between a buddha and you is not a difference of character — remember this; it is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue or nonvirtue, it is a difference in where you are grounded.
You are grounded on the periphery; a buddha is grounded in the center. He can look at his own periphery from a distance; when you hit him he can see it as if you have hit somebody else, because the center is so distant. It’s as if he is a watcher on the hills and something is happening in the valleys and he can see it. This is the first thing to be understood.
The second thing: it is very easy to control, it is very difficult to transform. It is very easy to control. You can control your anger, but what will you do? — you will suppress it. And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress it, it starts going in — just its direction changes.
And for anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole body mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time...as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation.
The society says, ‘Control yourself,’ and through controlling, all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not — you are simply angry. Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don’t explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!
You are angry. Because you have suppressed so much anger, now there are no moments when you are not angry; at the most, sometimes you are less angry, sometimes more. Your whole being is poisoned by suppression. You eat with anger — and it has a different quality when a person eats without anger: it is beautiful to watch him, because he eats nonviolently. He may be eating meat, but he eats nonviolently; you may be eating just vegetables and fruits, but if anger is suppressed, you eat violently.
...Then this will move in every way, in every arena of your life: you will make love, but it will be more like violence than like love, it will have much aggression in it. Because you never observe one another making love, you don’t know what is happening, and you cannot know what is happening to you because you are almost always so much in aggression.
That’s why deep orgasm through love becomes impossible — because you are afraid deep down that if you move totally without control, you may kill your wife or kill your beloved, or the wife may kill the husband or the lover. You become so afraid of your own anger! Next time you make love, watch: you will be doing the same movements as are done when you are aggressive. Watch the face, have a mirror around so you can see what is happening to your face! All the distortions of anger and aggression will be there.
...Through suppression, mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious. This division is not natural, the division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects — but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat. Now psychologists say that almost eighty percent of diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.
Why? Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? Because the society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different. For one thing, it is not the way of control at all, it is just the opposite.
The first thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the ‘somebody else’ is just irrelevant. Next time you feel angry go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else — because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you — if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.
Don’t throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don’t go and vomit on somebody. Anger needs a vomit. You go to the bathroom and vomit! It cleanses the whole body — if you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy. Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejects it. Don’t go on forcing it inside.
Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody. Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.
There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk; it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.
The first thing in transformation, then, is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You may like to kill, but it is not possible; you may like to bite, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow. A pillow means ‘already enlightened’; the pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court, and the pillow will not bring any enmity against you, and the pillow will not do anything. The pillow will be happy and the pillow will laugh at you!
The second thing to remember: be aware.
In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism; suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful control may not be so easy.
Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful, he is wide open. That is part of awareness. One is open, and if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory, it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in...don’t allow even a small window for anything to go out.
But remember: when nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in; you look at a flower, nothing goes in: your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person; nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.
Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead. That is part of the mechanism of control: if you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as if the body has become a citadel, a defense. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.
But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost; then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself — and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die. And the life becomes a dull and dead thing; you somehow carry it on.
The society teaches you control and condemnation, because a child will control only when he feels something is condemned. Anger is bad; sex is bad; everything that has to be controlled has to be made to look like a sin to the child, to look like evil.
A deep condemnation enters about all that is alive. And sex is the most alive thing — has to be! It is the source. Anger is also a most alive thing, because it is a protective force. If a child cannot be angry at all, he will not be able to survive. You have to be angry in certain moments. The child has to show his own being, the child has to stand in certain moments upon his own ground; otherwise he will have no backbone.
Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine. Anger transformed becomes compassion...because the energy is the same. A buddha is compassionate: from where does his compassion come? This is the same energy that was moving in anger; now it is not moving in anger, the same energy is transformed into compassion. From where does love come? A Buddha is loving; a Jesus is love. The same energy that moves into sex becomes love.
So remember, if you condemn a natural phenomenon it becomes poisonous, it destroys you, it becomes destructive and suicidal. If you transform it, it becomes divine, it becomes a God-force, it becomes an elixir; you attain through it to immortality, to a deathless being. But transformation is needed.
In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening: you have to be aware that anger is happening — watch it! It is a beautiful phenomenon...energy moving within you, becoming hot!
It is just like electricity in the clouds. People were always afraid of electricity; they thought in olden days, when they were ignorant, that this electricity was the god being angry, being threatening, trying to punish — creating fear so that people would become worshippers, so that people would feel that the god was there and he would punish them.
But now we have domesticated that god. Now that god runs through your fan, through your air conditioner, through the fridge: whatsoever you need, that god serves. That god has become a domestic force, it is no longer angry and no longer threatening. Through science an outer force has been transformed into a friend.
The same happens through religion for inner forces.
Anger is just like electricity in your body: you don’t know what to do with it. Either you kill somebody else or you kill yourself. The society says if you kill yourself it is okay, it is your concern, but don’t kill anybody else — and as far as society goes that is okay. So either you become aggressive or you become repressive.
Religion says both are wrong. The basic thing that is needed is to become aware and to know the secret of this energy, anger, this inner electricity. It is electricity because you become hot; when you are angry your temperature goes hot, and you cannot understand the coolness of a buddha, because when anger is transformed into compassion everything is cool. A deep coolness happens. Buddha is never hot; he is always cool, centered, because he now knows how to use the inner electricity. Electricity is hot; it becomes the source of air conditioning. Anger is hot — it becomes the source of compassion.
Compassion is an inner air conditioning. Suddenly everything is cool and beautiful, and nothing can disturb you, and the whole existence is transformed into a friend. Now there are no more enemies...because when you look through the eyes of anger, somebody becomes an enemy; when you look through the eyes of compassion, everybody is a friend, a neighbor. When you love, everywhere is God; when you hate, everywhere is the devil. It is your standpoint that is projected onto reality.
Awareness is needed, not condemnation — and through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body — a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.
Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don’t fight, just look at what is happening — the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty — just lie down on the ground and look at the sky and watch. Then do the same inside.
Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning — dark clouds are there, thoughts. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you, somebody has said this or that...many clouds, dark clouds in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch! It is a beautiful scene, terrible also, because you don’t understand. It is mysterious, and if mystery is not understood it becomes terrible, you are afraid of it. And whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes a grace, a gift, because now you have the keys — and with keys you are the master.

LET GO QUESTION

Recently I heard you say that transcendence of life’s misery and confusion can occur by either a let-go of life or by fight – as long as either is done with totality. Mahavira’s way was fight, and yours is let-go. Could you say more about let-go and its relationship to intelligence and responsibility? I don’t have this understanding, and my life seems to be an odd mixture of let-go and fight. Let-go seems more natural, and fight seems more responsible.


It is not only your question, it is everybody’s question – a mixture of let-go and fight. But your let-go is not my let-go; your let-go is simply a defeatist attitude. Basically you want to fight, but there are situations where you cannot fight, or perhaps you have come to the very end of your energy for fighting. Then, to cover up your defeat, you start thinking of let-go. Your let-go is not true, it is phony.

Real let-go is not against fight. Real let-go is absence of fighting. You cannot mix real let-go with fighting attitudes, for the simple reason that the presence of let-go means the absence of a fighting attitude. How can you mix something which is present with something which is absent? Just as you cannot mix light and darkness, however great an artist you may be – you cannot mix light and darkness for the simple reason that darkness is only an absence of light. You cannot bring them together; only one can be present.

So the first thing to remember is that the basic attitude of every human being is to fight. So don’t think of it particularly as your problem. It will help you immensely to understand that it is a human problem. Then you can stand aloof and watch it, observe it, understand it.
Fighting is a basic attitude because it feeds the ego. The more you fight, the more your ego becomes stronger. If you become victorious the ego has great joy. You are giving life to the ego by your victories. On the other hand, as the ego becomes stronger, your being is receding farther and farther away from you.

As your ego becomes stronger you are losing yourself. You may be fighting and being victorious, not knowing at all that it is not a gain but a loss. Each child is taught to fight in different ways. Competition is a fight, to come first in your class is a fight, to win a trophy in a game is a fight. These are preparations for your life. Then fight in the elections, fight for money, fight for prestige. This whole society is based on fighting, competition, struggle, putting each individual against the whole. So it is almost everybody’s situation.

Then you listen to me about let-go. Let-go means no competition, no struggle, no fight…just relaxing with existence, wherever it leads. Not trying to control your future, not trying to control consequences, but allowing them to happen…not even thinking about them. Let-go is in the present; consequences are tomorrow. And let-go is such a delightful experience, a total relaxation, a deep synchronicity with existence.

SPIRITUALITY

The old concept has been, that spirituality is something against materialism. To renounce the pleasures of matter, of body, of mind has been defined as spirituality. To me it is nonsense.

Spirituality is to be disidentified wIth everything that you can see, that can be an object to you — so that finally you remain only the subject. Pure subjectivity is spirituality. It has nothing to do with renouncing anything. In fact, the spiritual being will be able to enjoy everything more intensely, more totally than the materialist. The materialist is very poor. All the religions have condemned the poor materialist. He has nothing worth condemning. His life is superficial.

Spirituality is life in depth, in ultimate depth. You are centered at your very being. But you can go on living on the circumference, moving freely anywhere — still remaining at the center. Your identity is at the center. You know who you are. Then there is no problem, if you enjoy food, if you enjoy clothes, if you enjoy a beautiful house, if you enjoy music, painting. There is no problem. There is no need to renounce it.

Old spirituality has killed so much of creativity in man, that some day if man becomes aware of what the old spirituality has done, all your saints will be condemned as the greatest criminals — for the simple reason because they have prevented all creativity. Condemned it as materialism. They tried to live a juiceless life, and they enforced on other people also to live in the same way. Spirituality was something like living in a corpse.

To me spirituality is living totally, intensely, burning your torch on both the ends. Still remaining aware of your center, never losing for a single moment the awareness of who you are. Then it doesn’t matter where you are. If you remember who you are, it does not matter where you are. You will be in absolute bliss.

 

 

This very body, the Buddha: yes, you.
      
 “If everything is okay (with your body) you remain completely unaware of it and, really, that is the moment when contact can be made — when everything is okay — because when something goes wrong then that contact is made with illness, with something that has gone wrong and the wellbeing is no longer there. You have a head right now; then the headache comes and you make contact.
“But we have almost lost that capacity. Try to make contact with your body when everything is good.
“Just lie down on the grass, close the eyes and feel the sensation that is going on within, the wellbeing that is bubbling inside. Lie down in a river. The water is touching the body and every cell is being cooled. Feel inside how that coolness enters, cell by cell, and goes deep into the body. The body is a great phenomenon, one of the miracles of nature.
“Sit in the sun. Let the sunrays penetrate the body. Feel the warmth as it moves within, as it goes deeper, as it touches your blood cells and reaches to the very bones. Sun is life, its very source. So with closed eyes just feel what is happening. Remain alert, watch and enjoy.
“By and by you will become aware of a very subtle harmony, a very beautiful music continuously going on inside. Then you have the contact with the body; otherwise you carry a dead body.
“Your body can be used as a mechanism; then you need not be very sensitive about it. The body goes on saying many things you never hear because you don’t have any contact. So try to be more and more sensitive about your body. Listen to it; it goes on saying many things, and you are so head-oriented you never listen to it.
“Whenever there is a conflict between your mind and body, your body is almost always going to be right more than your mind, because the body is natural, your mind is societal. The body belongs to this vast nature, and your mind belongs to your society, your particular society, age and time. The body has deep roots in existence and the mind is just wavering on the surface. But you always listen to the mind, you never listen to the body. Because of this long habit contact is lost.
“The whole body vibrates around the center of the heart just as the whole solar system moves around the sun. You became alive when the heart started beating, you will die when the heart stops beating. The heart remains the solar center of your body. Become alert to it. But you can become alert, by and by, only if you become alert to the whole body.”

Growing Old or Growing Up?
    
 
I’m feeling loving towards people, feeling warmth, but I don’t feel very sexual. I don’t know if my sexuality is slightly repressed or if it’s okay.
 
    There’s no need to feel sexual — and there is no need to be worried about it. Just feel loving and warm. That one has to remember, that one should not become cold. If one starts feeling cold, then it is a problem. And if sex disappears completely, there is no problem; warmth should not disappear.
It almost always happens together. When people’s sex disappears, their warmth disappears. When their warmth comes, their sexuality comes. That’s why people think that sexuality and warmth are two aspects of the same energy. They are not.
It is a good experience to be warm and non-sexual. Then you are growing; then you are really growing. Just to grow older is not real growth. To be grown is not to be a grown up. Growing up means exactly what it says: growing up, growing upwards. And this is a beautiful step — that one retains the warmth, and sex by and by disappears. Sex is beautiful because of its warmth; there is nothing else. So if you can retain the warmth when sex disappears, perfectly good; as it should be. Then the goal is preserved, and only the non-essential is gone. Never lose sight of warmth. Sex is not an essential thing; warmth is essential.
So everything is going well. Don’t force sexuality on yourself, otherwise that will be a destructive step. Be more and more warm. There is no need to become anti-sexual. There is no need to repress sexuality. If sometimes just your warmth takes you into sex, it’s okay, it’s beautiful. But if you go into it because of the warmth, then the motive is warmth, not sex. It happens, but it is the periphery. The center remains your loving heart, your warmth.

The Goose Called Awareness
    
 
I often panic, and worry that I might go mad.
 
 
“The basic thing to be understood is that you are not the mind — neither the bright one nor the dark one. If you get identified with the beautiful part, then it is impossible to disidentify yourself from the ugly part; they are two sides of the same coin. You can have it whole, or you can throw it away whole, but you cannot divide it.
“The whole anxiety of man is that he wants to choose that which looks beautiful, bright; he wants to choose all the silver linings, leaving the dark cloud behind. But he does not know that silver linings cannot exist without the dark cloud. The dark cloud is the background, absolutely necessary for silver linings to show.
“Choosing is anxiety.
“Choosing is creating trouble for yourself.
“Being choiceless means: the mind is there and it has a dark side and it has a bright side — so what? What has it to do with you? Why should you be worried about it?
“The moment you are not choosing, all worry disappears. A great acceptance arises, that this is how the mind has to be, this is the nature of the mind — and it is not your problem, because you are not the mind. If you were the mind, there would have been no problem at all. Then who would choose and who would think of transcending? And who would try to accept and understand acceptance?
“You are separate, totally separate.
“You are only a witness and nothing else.
“But you are being an observer who gets identified with anything that he finds pleasant — and forgets that the unpleasant is coming just behind it as a shadow. You are not troubled by the pleasant side — you rejoice in it. The trouble comes when the polar opposite asserts — then you are torn apart.
“But you started the whole trouble. Falling from being just a witness, you became identified. The biblical story of the fall is just a fiction. But this is the real fall — the fall from being a witness into getting identified with something and losing your witnessing.
“Just try once in a while: Let the mind be whatever it is. Remember, you are not it. And you are going to have a great surprise. As you are less identified, the mind starts becoming less powerful, because its power comes from your identification; it sucks your blood. But when you start standing aloof and away, the mind starts shrinking.
“The day you are completely unidentified with the mind, even for a single moment, there is the revelation: mind simply dies; it is no longer there. Where it was so full, where it was so continuous — day in, day out, waking, sleeping, it was there — suddenly it is not there. You look all around and it is emptiness, it is nothingness.
“And with the mind disappears the self. Then there is only a certain quality of awareness, with no ‘I’ in it. At the most you can call it something similar to ‘am-ness,’ but not ‘I-ness.’ To be even more exact, it is ‘is-ness’ because even in am-ness some shadow of the ‘I’ is still there. The moment you know its is-ness, it has become universal.
“With the disappearance of the mind disappears the self. And so many things disappear which were so important to you, so troublesome to you. You were trying to solve them and they were becoming more and more complicated; everything was a problem, an anxiety, and there seemed to be no way out.
“I remind you of the story The Goose is Out. It is concerned with the mind and your is-ness.
“The master tells the disciple to meditate on a koan: A small goose is put into a bottle, fed and nourished. The goose goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and fills the whole bottle. Now it is too big; it cannot come out of the bottle’s mouth — the mouth is too small. And the koan is that you have to bring the goose out without destroying the bottle, without killing the goose.
“Now it is mind-boggling.
“What can you do? The goose is too big; you cannot take it out unless you break the bottle, but that is not allowed. Or you can bring it out by killing it; then you don’t care whether it comes out alive or dead. That is not allowed either. “Day in, day out, the disciple meditates, finds no way, thinks this way and that way — but in fact there is no way. Tired, utterly exhausted, a sudden revelation...suddenly he understands that the master cannot be interested in the bottle and the goose; they must represent something else. The bottle is the mind, you are the goose...and with witnessing, it is possible. Without being in the mind, you can become identified with it so much that you start feeling you are in it!
“He runs to the master to say that the goose is out. And the master says, “You have understood it. Now keep it out. It has never been in.”
“If you go on struggling with the goose and the bottle, there is no way for you to solve it. It is the realization that, “It must represent something else; otherwise the master cannot give it to me. And what can it be?” — because the whole function between the master and the disciple, the whole business is about the mind and awareness.
“Awareness is the goose which is not in the bottle of the mind. But you are believing that it is in it and asking everyone how to get it out. And there are idiots who will help you, with techniques, to get out of it. I call them idiots because they have not understood the thing at all.
“The goose is out, has never been in, so the question of bringing it out does not arise.
“Mind is just a procession of thoughts passing in front of you on the screen of the brain. You are an observer. But you start getting identified with beautiful things — those are bribes. And once you get caught in the beautiful things you are also caught in the ugly things, because mind cannot exist without duality.
“Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality.
“Awareness is non-dual, and mind is dual. So just watch. I don’t teach you any solutions. I teach you the solution: Just get back a little and watch. Create a distance between you and your mind.
“Whether it is good, beautiful, delicious, something that you would like to enjoy closely, or it is ugly — remain as far away as possible. Look at it just the way you look at a film....
“Identification is the root cause of your misery. And every identification is identification with the mind.
“Just step aside, let the mind pass.
“And soon you will be able to see that there is no problem at all — the goose is out. You don’t have to break the bottle, you don’t have to kill the goose either.”

Truth is a discovery
And naturally all that we know about truth
Has to be dropped
Because we have not discovered it.

Anybody else truth is not your truth
 And can never be your truth.
To believe in others’ truths
Is to remain in bondage.

Meditation is the way of dropping
All knowledge, all belief, all that is borrowed
So that you can discover on your own.

Unless truth is found by you
It cannot liberate you.
Meditation simply is a method
Which does two things.

First, it destroys all knowledge,
Leaves you like a child, utterly innocent
In a state of not-knowing.
This is the negative part of meditation,
And then the positive follows on its own accord,
Then great wonder arises in you
And that wonder leads to discovery

One can get bliss only if one deserves it, if one is worthy. and the way to deserve it is to disappear, not to be. To be is a hindrance.

The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is not, from every nook and corner of existence bliss starts reaching you as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear. Ego is a closed state of consciousness: all window, doors, are closed. You are living almost insulated, encapsulated; ego surrounds you like a capsule. Ego is like the egg: there is not even a small window to allow anything to enter. Ego is very much afraid; out of fear it closes itself, it shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery. Bliss is to be in the flow with existence, to be totally with it.

Ego is like frozen ice and egolessness is melted ice. Then you become part of the ocean. Then you don’t have any private goal, you have no destination. Then each moment is so blissful, so incredibly ecstatic, that the mind cannot comprehend it, cannot conceive it. Mind is part of the ego. It knows how to close, it does not know how to open up.

To be a sannyasin means that now your whole effort will be to open up to existence — to the flowers and to the bees and to the stars; how to open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of existence; how to open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of existence; how to open up to this celebration that goes on and on — flowers dancing in the wind and trees enjoying the wind and the stars, always in a state of bliss. Except for man everything is in harmony. Man falls out harmony because he has consciousness.

Consciousness can do two things: it can create ego, it can create egolessness. If it creates ego you live in hell, if it creates egolessness you are in paradise. The whole world is in paradise without knowing it. When man enter paradise he will be entering with full knowing. That is the grandeur, the beauty of man — and that is the danger also, because out of thousands of people only once in a while does a person enter; others simply go on falling into the trap of the ego. Be egoless and all the grace of God is yours. Bliss is by the grace of god.

 

 

"One thing has to be understood: you remember only things which you have not understood. Things that you have understood need not be remembered – they will act, they will be in your eyes. They will be in your gestures, they will be in your life, they will be in your love, they will be in everything that you do; but they will not be part of your memory system. They are far higher than the memory because they don’t belong to the mind.

Mind is the lowest part of your consciousness. It is good enough as far as the world is concerned, but it is not of any use if you are thinking to go on an inner pilgrimage. You will have to leave that mind behind. Its whole training is for the outside world. It will create all kinds of hindrances if you start moving inwards."

Everybody is after being extraordinary. That is the search of the ego: to be someone who is special, to be someone who is unique, incomparable. And this is the paradox: the more you try to be exceptional, the more ordinary you look, because... everybody is after extraordinariness. It is such an ordinary desire. If you become ordinary, the very search to be ordinary is extraordinary, because rarely does somebody want to be just nobody, rarely does somebody want to be just a hollow, empty space. This is really extraordinary in a way, because nobody wants it. And when you become ordinary you become extraordinary, and, of course, suddenly you discover that without searching you have become unique.

In fact, everybody is unique. If you can stop your constant running after goals for even a single moment, you will realize that you are unique. Your uniqueness is nothing to be invented, it is already there. It is already the case - to be is to be unique. There is no other way of being. Every leaf on a tree is unique, every pebble on the shore is unique, there is no other way of being. You cannot find two identifcal pebbles anywhere on the whole of earth.

Two identical things do not exist at all, so there is no need to be "somebody." You just be yourself, and suddenly you are unique, inconmparable. That's why I say that this is a paradox: those who search fail, and those who don't bother, suddenly attain.

It is said by one of Lao Tzu's great disciples, Lieh Tzu, that once an idiot was searching for fire with a candle in his hand. Said Lieh Tzu: "Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice sooner." He remained hungry the whole night because he was searching for fire but couldn't find it - and he had a candle in his hand, because how can you search in the dark without a candle?

You are searching for uniqueness, and you have it in your hand; if you understand, you can cook your rice sooner. I have cooked my rice and I know. You are unnecessarily hungry - the rice is there, the candle is there, the candle is fire. There is no need to take the candle and search. If you take a candle in your hand and you go searching all over the world, you will not find fire because you don't understand what fire is. Otherwise you could have seen that you were carrying it in your hand.

You need not search for uniqueness, you are unique already. There is no way to make a thing more unique. The words "more unique" are absurd. It is just like the word "circle." Circles exist; there is no such thing as "more circular." That is absurd. A circle is always perfect, "more" is not needed.

There are no degrees of circularity - a circle is a circle, less and more are useless. Uniqueness is uniqueness, less and more don't apply to it. You are already unique. One realizes this only when one is ready to become ordinary, this is the paradox. But if you understand, there is no problem about it, the paradox is there, and beautiful, and no problem exists. A paradox is not a problem. It looks like a problem if you don't understand; if you understand, it is beautiful, a mystery.

Become ordinary and you will become extraordinary; try to become extraordinary and you will remain ordinary.

 

Looking in the Mirror Meditation

When I am looking in the mirror I feel that the reflection is not mine. Why is it so? I am looking daily in the mirror. I feel that whatever I am looking at is not me.

Answer
perfectly beautiful, this experience – because you are not your body, you are not your face. Your body is just like your clothes, it is just your garment. Go on looking; the feeling will become more and more clear and loud. One day you will suddenly see that whatsoever you are seeing in the mirror is not you at all, and that will be a great insight. It is not you! People think that they are seeing themselves in the mirror because they are identified with their bodies.

Something is changing inside: the identification is breaking It is a beautiful sign.... It should not be thought of as a trouble but as a blessing. Yes, when you look in the mirror and you feel this is not you, it is very disorienting. Nothing to be worried about – enjoy it! This is how it should be; this is truth. If you think you are mirrored in the mirror, that is a lie... although an accepted lie and everybody believes in it. You will feel at ease with it, because everybody also thinks that way. Otherwise this is a lie we have agreed upon.

You are not it. It is just a reflection of your body, not your reflection. Your consciousness cannot be reflected by the mirror; there is no mirror to reflect it. If anything comes to reflect consciousness – the closest to the mirror – that is love.

Only in very deep love do you sometimes feel some reflections of your being which are not of your body but of your consciousness. But those too are very rare, because love, to go that deep, needs great courage, great surrender... and people are not ready to surrender that much. They want the other to surrender; then it never happens.

But once in a while it happens to lovers; they can function like mirrors for each other. And when two lovers are in deep intimacy and have become mirrors reflecting each other, a great experience happens, because if two mirrors are reflecting each other nothing will be reflected. Infinity will be reflected. There will be no end to it. This mirror will reflect that, and that mirror will reflect this mirror, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. If two mirrors are facing each other they will create an infinity.

And that’s the beauty of love: at its climax, when two persons become really intimate, they reflect each other and suddenly persons disappear; there is only presence and infinite presence. Only love comes a little bit close to the mirror, but the ordinary mirror cannot do that.

The experience is something beautiful, very significant. Disorienting, I understand, but if once you understand that this is right, the disorientation will disappear and it can become a meditation for you. Make it a meditation: whenever you have time, just look at the mirror and see that it is not you.

Now see it consciously; don’t avoid it. In fact, make it a meditation: sit before the mirror for as long as you can, continuously seeing that this is not you. And this can give you a great satori, a great insight, one day. Suddenly you will see that your body has disappeared: there is only consciousness, pure witness.
Make a meditation out of it. It has been used in the past as a meditation.

Meditation is a transcendence, a transcendence of all identities. We are identified with the body. The first step of meditation destroys that identity; we become aware that we are not the body. Then we become aware that we are identified wi...th the mind, with the thought process. That is the second step of meditation: it destroys that identity and makes us aware that we are not minds either. And the third and the most important and the deepest step is that we are identified with the heart, with our feelings, emotions. Meditation destroys that too.

These are the three steps, the three great negations, and out of these three negations comes the most positive phenomenon in existence: suddenly you become aware of who you are. But you become perfectly aware of who you are not.

To know the false as false is the beginning of knowing the true as true. So real religion starts in negation and ends in absolute affirmation. It starts with no, three no ss no to the body, no to the mind, no to the heart.

And then a miracle happens: out of these three no’s you suddenly attain to the biggest yes that you have ever seen in your life, ever experienced in your life — a total yes, an absolute yes. That yes is the transcendence of all misery, all bondage, all ignorance, all darkness, all death. You become part of eternity, you become part of god. You become god himself! That is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

"The 'truth' is only a way of speaking; there is not something labeled 'Truth,' that one day you will find and open the box and see the contents and say, 'Great! I have found the truth.' There is no such box. Your existence is the truth, and when you are silent you are in truth. And if the silence is absolute then you are the ultimate truth. But don't think of the truth as an object -it is not an object. It is not there, it is here."

You are not to do anything to be happy. In fact you have done too much to become unhappy. If you want to be unhappy, do too much. If you want to be happy, allow things, allow things to be. Rest, relax, and be in a letgo. Letgo is the secret of life. Letgo is the secret of religion. Letgo is the greatest secret. When you are in a letgo many things, millions of things, start happening. They were already happening but you were never aware. You could not be aware; you were engaged somewhere else, you were occupied.

What Is Tantric Sex
“Tantra is the natural way to God, the normal way to God. The object is to become so completely instinctual, so mindless, that we merge with ultimate nature – that the woman disappears and becomes a door for the ultimate..., the man disappears and becomes a door for the ultimate.

“This is the tantric definition of our sexuality: the return to absolute innocence, absolute oneness. The greatest sexual thrill of all is not a search for thrills, but a silent waiting – utterly relaxed, utterly mindless. One is conscious, conscious only of being conscious. One is consciousness. One is contented but there is no content to it. And then there is great beauty, great benediction.

“The questioner asks: “What is tantric sex…a sex which is a meditation based on certain techniques?”

“If you are too technique oriented you will miss the mystery of Tantra. It is pseudo-Tantra that is based on techniques because if techniques are there, ego will be there, controlling. Then you will be doing it – and doing is the problem, doing brings the doer. Tantra has to be a non-doing; it cannot be technical. You can learn techniques – you can learn a certain breathing so that coitus can become longer. If you breathe very, very slowly, if you breathe without any hurry, then coitus will become longer, but you are controlling. It will not be wild and it will not be innocent, and it will not be meditation either. It will be mind – how can it be meditation? The mind will be controlling. You cannot even breathe fast, you have to keep your breathing slow – if the breathing is slow then ejaculation will take a longer time, because for ejaculation to happen the breathing has to be fast and chaotic. Now, this is technique but not Tantra.

“Real Tantra is not technique but love. Is not technique but prayer. Is not head oriented but a relaxation into the heart. Please remember it. Many books have been written onTantra, they all talk about technique but the real Tantra has nothing to do with technique. The real Tantra cannot be written about, the real Tantra has to be imbibed. How to imbibe real Tantra? You will have to transform your whole approach.

“Pray with your woman, sing with your woman, play with your woman, dance with your woman, with no idea of sex. Don’t go on thinking, “When are we going to bed?” Forget about it. Do something else and get lost into it. And some day love will arise out of that being lost, suddenly you will see that you are making love and you are not making it. It is happening, you are possessed by it. Then you have your first Tantra experience – possessed by something bigger than you. You were dancing or you were singing together or you were chanting together or you were praying together or meditating together, and suddenly you find you both have moved into a new space. And you don’t know when you have started making love; you don’t remember either. Then you are being possessed by Tantra energy. And then for the first time you will see a non-technical experience.”

 

 

Tantra Is the Science of Transforming Ordinary Lovers into Soul Mates

“In the East, we have developed a science: if you cannot find a soul mate, you can create one. And that science is Tantra. To find a soul mate means to find the person wi...th whom all your seven centers meet naturally. That is impossible. Once in a while, a Krishna and a Radha, a Shiva and a Shakti. And when it happens it is tremendously beautiful. But it is like lightning – you cannot depend on it. If you want to read your Bible, you can’t depend on it that when the lightning is there you will read. The lightning is a natural phenomenon, but not dependable.

“If you wait for your natural soul mate to meet with you, it will be just like waiting for lightning with which to read your Bible. And you will not be able to read much either. For a moment it is there, and by the time you have opened the Bible it is gone.

“Hence, Tantra was created. Tantra is a scientific approach. Tantra is alchemy; it can transform your centers, it can transform the other’s centers, it can create a rhythm and harmony between you and your beloved. That is the beauty of Tantra. It is like bringing electricity into your house. Then you can turn it on and off whenever you want. And you can have a thousand and one uses of it; it can cool your room, it can heat your room. Then it is a miracle. These seven centers in you are nothing but centers of body electricity. So, when I am talking about lightning, don’t think of it only as a symbol – I mean it literally.

“In your body, there exists a subtle current of electricity, very subtle. But the subtler it is, the deeper it goes. It is not very visible. Scientists say that all the electricity that is in your body, if put together, can be used to light a five-candle bulb. It is not much. Quantitatively it is not much, quantitatively the atom is not much, but qualitatively… If it explodes, it has tremendous energy in it.

“These seven centers, these seven chakras Yoga and Tantra have talked about down the ages, are nothing but five knots in your body electric current. They can be changed; they can be rearranged. They can be given a new shape, form. Two lovers can be transformed so deeply that all their seven centers can start meeting.

“Tantra is the science of transforming ordinary lovers into soul mates. And that is the grandeur of Tantra. It can transform the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul mates.”

 

Samadhi and Sex Are Both Expressions of the Same Energy

“Tao has its own Tantra. The first thing: Tao never divides into the lower and the higher, that is the beauty of it. The moment you divide reality into the lower and the higher you are... getting schizophrenic. The moment you say something is sacred and something is profane you have divided. The moment you say something is material and something is spiritual you have divided, you have split reality. Reality is one. There is neither matter nor spirit. Reality is one. It expresses itself in many forms: on one level as matter, on another level as spiritual. The spiritual is not higher and the material is not lower – they stand on the same level. That is the Taoist attitude. Life is one. Existence is one. It is a tremendous oneness and there is no evaluation.

“The first thing in Tao is to drop duality. Sex is not lower and samadhi is not higher. Samadhi and sex are both expressions of the same energy. There is nothing laudable about samadhi and there is nothing condemnable about sex. The Tao acceptance is total, absolute. There is nothing wrong about the body and there is nothing beautiful about the spirit – they are both beautiful. Devil and God are one in Tao, heaven and hell are one in Tao, good and bad are one in Tao – it is the greatest non-dual understanding. There is no condemnation and no preparation. To prepare for what? One has simply to relax and be.”

 

 

God is a great consolation, but it is not a cure. Existence is not a consolation. To be in tune with it is to be healthy and whole. All the religions of the world have been teaching God; I teach you existence. I teach you to be in tune with that which surrounds you, which is within you and without you. Once you are in tune with it, there is no death for you, no misery, no tension, no worry, but a tremendous peace surrounds you, a contentment which you have never even dreamt of.

 

 

You may not have observed this because it is impossible before you go into deep meditation; you cannot observe the fact that the whole universe breathes. And just as you expand and shrink the whole existence shrinks and expands. Just as you inhale and the chest fills, and then you exhale and the air goes out and the chest shrinks, the same rhythm exists in existence. The whole existence breathes, expands, inhales, exhales -- and if you can find the rhythm of existence and become one with the rhythm, you have attained.

The whole art of ecstasy, meditation, samadhi, is: How to become one with the rhythm of the universe. When it exhales, you exhale. When it inhales, you inhale. You live in it, are not separate, are one with it. Difficult, because the universe is vast. A master is the whole universe in miniature. If you can learn how to inhale with the master and how to exhale with the master, if you can learn simply that, you will learn all.

Aloneness is the joy of being just yourself. It is being joyous with yourself, it is enjoying your own company. There are very few people who enjoy their own company. And it is a very strange world: nobody enjoys his company and everybody wants others to enjoy his company! If they don't enjoy he feels insulted -- and alone he feels disgusted with himself. In fact, if YOU cannot enjoy your own company, who else is going to enjoy it?
Aloneness, solitude is positive. It is overflowing joy for no reason. It is our very nature to be joyous; hence there is no need to depend on anybody else. There is no other motive in it, it is simply there. Just as the water flows downwards, your being rises upwards. Just give it a chance -- give it solitude. And remember again, solitude is not solitariness, just as aloneness is not loneliness.

Health Is Immoral?
     
 
Priests are afraid of health because health is immoral in their eyes. You may or may not have heard of one of the thinkers of this century, a German thinker, very famous in his day — Count Keyserling. He was thought to be a great religious philosopher and he wrote in his diary: Health is the most immoral thing.
Because health is energy, and energy is delight, energy is enjoyment, energy is love, energy is sex, energy is everything that is natural.
Destroy the energy, make it feeble and dim. Hence so many fasts — just to destroy the energy, just to prevent so much energy from arising that it starts overflowing.
An ill person needs sex, a healthy person loves, and love is a totally different thing. And when two healthy persons meet, health is multiplied. Then they can become helpers to each other for the ultimate. They can go together for the ultimate, helping each other. But the need disappears. It is no more a need, it is no more a dependence.
In the West this is happening too much because something very basic is being misunderstood. People think that relationships are for when they are happy, good. When something goes wrong — even a physical illness — then why bother? Find another woman, another man — this seems very inhuman. If this attitude remains, love cannot grow. Then whatsoever you call love is nothing but sex, because love means that you care for the person in health, in illness. You care for the person. When the person is loving — and sometimes the person is not loving — then too you care. You care for the person and you accept all summers and winters. You accept everything that is in the person. Health is there, illness is there, old age is going to be there, youth is there, anger is there, hatred is there — everything is possible.
For example, if a man lived his whole life obsessed with sex, if he knew nothing beyond sex, if sex was all he lived for — he earned wealth to enjoy sex, he went after a high position in the pursuit of sex, he wanted to have good health so that he could indulge more into sex — if sex was the most predominant center functioning in his life, then that is where the entire energy will converge at the moment of death.

Then his new journey will begin from the sex center.

Why? — Because his next birth will be an ongoing journey of the same sex-obsessed center. This man’s consciousness will gather at the sex center in the dying moments, and that is the point where his life will come to an end. His life energy will leave through his genitalia. Had this man lived through a different center, the energy would have concentrated and left from that center.

Nice is not Enough
    
 
I can’t communicate with my sister. I feel she has some jealousy towards me, which I can’t understand.
 
There may be many hidden things involved. Some childhood jealousies are bound to be there. You repressed them, she repressed them, because we are taught to be nice to each other, and that is one of the most dangerous things. We are taught that one has to be nice to one’s sister, to one’s brother. The emotions are repressed and one is not honest with emotions.
Now that you are meditating, those emotions will bubble up and they will bubble up in her also. So you will have to pass through a period in your childhood that you missed. But there is nothing to be worried about. It is natural, because all that is repressed and inhibited will start being expressed. So you will lose communication.
In fact, it never existed. Just being polite is not communication. Just being nice is not enough for communication because if you are repressing something, communication is superficial, just verbal. You are simply making empty gestures, just meaningless motions. You can say ‘hello’ to a person without saying ‘hello’. You can smile towards a person without smiling at all. You can talk and be pleasant, as one is expected to be, without being pleasant at all. This whole gesture may be a deep avoidance. Your politeness, your niceness, your goodness, may be just an armour because you are afraid that if you become true, the emotions that have been repressed will bubble up. And the other person is also trying to be nice. She is as afraid as you.
So it can appear that there is communication but there is not. If there were, then meditation would have made it even deeper. If there were any communication, meditation would have made it a communion, something deeper than communication. But if it is not there, meditation would make you aware of it.
That which is not can be taken away. That which is not is always taken away by meditation because it is false, and meditation is an effort to be true, authentic. That which is, is always enhanced by meditation. That which is not, is always taken away. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying, ‘Those who have will be given more, and those who don’t have, even that will be taken away.’
So, in effect, it is better because now you are becoming aware of a reality that you have avoided your whole life. Brothers, sisters, only appear to be nice to each other. Otherwise they are enemies because they are the first competitors.
In a small house, when the first child is born, he is the whole and sole. Then comes the next child. He starts competing; competition is natural. This child wants more attention and the first child feels offended by the presence of this child. He feels as if his monopoly is broken. And it is natural that the mother may pay more attention to the new child; the new child needs more. Then jealousies will arise.
When there are many children in a house, it is bound to be that one child will get more attention than others. There is going to be a hierarchy; that’s how the mind functions. The mother may love one child more, the other a little less. There are pets, because the mother is also human. You cannot expect that she should love absolutely equally; that is not possible. She may pretend. She pretends hard, but children are very perceptive They can immediately see that somebody is liked more, somebody is liked less and that this pretension is just bogus.
Then an inner conflict, fight, ambition arises. Each child is different. Somebody is very talented, somebody is not. Somebody has a musical talent, somebody has not. Somebody has a mathematical talent and somebody has not. Somebody is physically more beautiful than the other or one has a certain charm of personality and the other is lacking in it. Then problems arise more and more, and we are taught to be nice, never to be true.
If children are taught to be true, they will fight it out and they will drop it by fighting. They will be angry, they will fight and say hard things to the other and then they will be finished, because children get rid of things very easily. If they are angry, they will be angry, hot, almost volcanic, but next moment they are holding each other’s hands and everything is forgotten. They are very simple, but they are not allowed that simplicity. They are told to be nice, whatsoever the cost. They are prohibited from being angry with each other: ‘She is your sister, he is your brother. How can you be angry?’
Those angers, jealousies and a thousand and one wounds, scars, go on collecting. One day later in your life, if you come across something like meditation, then they will all bubble up. That’s what’s happening. So this time, please don’t repress them again. Now face the situation this time. If you are angry, if she is angry, then be angry. Fight it out. Finish it! Say things that you always wanted to say and have not said, and she should say things she always wanted to say and did not because both of you were playing the game of being nice. Drop that nonsense and immediately you will see: if you can face each other in true anger, jealousy, if you can fight it out — immediately after it, in the wake of it, a deep love and compassion will arise. And that will be the real thing. Then communication will be possible.
So this is a great opportunity. It looks difficult, but if you can face it, something of tremendous value will happen to you. Once you are at ease with your sister, something like a block will drop from your chest. That will help you to be more communicative with others also because your whole communication is blocked. It will help you in all directions: with your friends, with your lover, with parents, with the whole society. You will start feeling different. You are carrying something, she is carrying something. Now be courageous and face it. Talk it over with her.
And don’t be dishonest. Bring the whole thing out. Pour out your whole unconscious and tell her, request her to also pour out hers. And this can be done only when you are hot. It can never be done when you are cold. When you are heated and boiling, things come out. When you are cold, they freeze, they cannot flow. When you are hot, you become liquid. When you are cold, they become solid.
So what I am telling to you, tell her and have a good encounter with her. You and she will both be unburdened and both will be benefited. This time, let truth be the goal...not etiquette, not formality. Just open your heart and let her also open her heart. And after it, as if a storm has passed, a great silence arises and that silence will make you communicative. Even communion is possible.
It will happen...just have a little courage.

Freedom From and Freedom For
    
 
If I were to condense your approach to emotional ecology, would I be correct in saying it is freedom from suppression?

You would be absolutely right. But only negatively. To be freed from suppressions is the negative part, and to express the hidden, the potential, that which you are meant to be, is the positive part. But you are right, because the negative comes first. Unless you are free from suppression, you will not be able to express yourself; you will not be able to achieve your potential.
Society exists at the cost of the individual. It has existed that way up until now. The individual is not allowed total freedom to express himself. Through this suppression, society creates an image by which you can be exploited.
For example, if individuals become totally expressive, there will not be any war in the world. It is impossible. But if you suppress the individual, then the suppressed energy is there and it can be used for violence. The whole of politics, and the whole history of man, depends on war. The whole society has been based on war, but war is possible only if the individual is not allowed to express himself.
This suppressed energy has been used for many reasons, for many causes, for many purposes: for war, for politics, for exploitation. I am against all suppression. I am for natural growth.
I am not against discipline; I am against suppression. Discipline is a creative thing. It is never against something; it is always for something. For example, I am for the discipline of sexual energy, not for the suppression of it. The energy must be allowed to move in a creative direction. It should not be suppressed. If it is suppressed, it becomes perverted. You become less than natural.
Expression means that you must become more than natural. If you cannot become more than natural, then it is better to be natural than to be perverted. The whole culture that has existed all over the world is a perverted culture.
That’s why it rarely happens that a Buddha or a Jesus is born. Otherwise, Buddha and Jesus would be the normal case. They would not be so exceptional. If the whole society was creative rather than suppressive, then not to be a Buddha would be the exception. To be a Buddha would be a natural, normal thing.

The whole is your mother. The whole is not indifferent to you. Let this truth penetrate as deeply as possible in your heart, because even this awareness that the whole feels happy with you will change you. Then you are not alienated, then y...ou are not a foreigner here. Then you are not a homeless wanderer, then this is a HOME. And the whole mothers you, cares about you, loves you. So it is natural that when somebody becomes a buddha, when somebody reaches the ultimate peak, the whole existence dances, the whole existence sings, the whole existence celebrates. Literally true it is. It is not a metaphor, remember; otherwise you will miss the whole point. Blossoms shower, and then they go on showering -- they never stop.

The blossoms that showered for Buddha are still showering. The blossoms that showered for Subhuti are still showering. You cannot see them, not because they are not showering but because you are not capable of seeing them. Existence goes on celebrating infinitely for all the buddhas that have happened, for all the buddhas that are happening, and for all the buddhas that will happen -- because for existence, past, future and present don't exist. It is a continuity. It is eternity. Only the now exists, infinite now.

They are still showering, but you cannot see them. Unless they shower for you, you CANNOT see them; and once you see them showering for you, you will see that they have been showering for every buddha, for every enlightened soul.
The first thing: existence CARES what happens to you. Existence is continuously praying that the ultimate should happen to you. In fact you are nothing but a hand extended by the whole to reach the ultimate. You are nothing but a wave coming from the whole to touch the moon. You are nothing but a flower opening, so that the whole is filled with fragrance through you.

 

 

Meditation is simply the only pure way of coming in contact with existence. And this contact immediately becomes a merger and a melting. You become existence yourself. Then you are in the clouds and you are in the stars and you are in the flowers and you are in the rains. You are everywhere. You are no longer a drop, you have become the ocean.

Meditation doesn't lead you to silence; meditation only creates the situation in which the silence happens. And this should be the criterion -- that whenever silence happens laughter will come into your life. A vital celebration will happen... all around. You will not become sad, you will not become depressed, you will not escape from the world. You will be here in this world, but taking the whole thing as a game, enjoying the whole thing as a beautiful game, a big drama, no longer serious about it. Seriousness is a disease.

Osho

The Ultimate Science of the Body?

 

A scientist has written to me. He works in a scientific lab where artificial human organs are made — hands, legs, liver, heart — all human parts. His confusion is “whether I am going against nature, because the factory-produced heart is not as good as the natural heart. Am I doing something wrong by being in this profession, by creating artificial hands?”

His confusion is absolutely unfounded.

Remember, nature has given you intelligence, and the function of intelligence is to improve upon nature. It is just the beginning.

If your artificial limbs are not so good as the natural ones, don’t be worried: within a few years your artificial limbs will be better than the natural ones, because natural limbs are created by blind biology and your limbs will be created by conscious intelligence. And that conscious intelligence is part of nature, so you are not doing anything against nature.

Yes, those who are preaching celibacy are against nature. Those who are preaching against birth control methods are against nature. Those who are making nuclear bombs are against nature. They are all destructive — your work is creative. If your limbs are not yet superior to natural limbs, make more effort, put in more energy. It is just a question of bringing more intelligence into your work.

And it will be a tremendous blessing to humanity if you can create superior parts for the human body, because when somebody dies of a heart attack — life never dies — only his heart has failed; if it can be replaced, he will be again alive.

You are in the service of life.

Somebody has a fracture: now, rather than joining the fractured bone, which will never be as strong as it was before, it is better to change the whole bone completely for a new, artificial and better bone. We can make bones which cannot have such accidents.

We can make man capable of changing anything that is not functioning well. There is no need for glasses if eyes can be changed. And there will be real beauty — at the age of seventy, having fresh eyes like a child!

There is no need to feel confused. You are to remember only one single criterion: anything in the service of life is in the service of nature; anything against life is against nature. And intelligence is nature’s only hope to improve upon itself....