If you understand me, live that understanding, that's all. If somebody is ready to understand it, good. If nobody is ready to understand it, that is nothing to bother about, that is their business. Don't become too concerned about others be...

cause that concern will disturb your own growth. Grow according to your inner light, and if you are full of light maybe some people will start understanding.

If my sannyasins start living exactly what I mean, then that's enough. A few people will certainly understand you, and only a few are capable of understanding it; the larger mob is incapable of understanding anything that goes beyond them. But that is their freedom. If they don't want to understand, it has not to be forced upon them.

 

 

You had cancer. And it often happens that cancer can become a great opportunity, because now death is certain. Now there is no question of holding yourself back – death is going to take you away anyway. And because death was so close, you remembered me more, you loved me more – because there was no more time to postpone. For the first time you allowed me totally to be with you, and the cancer disappeared.

Cancer has many reasons. One of the reasons is that your life is meaningless, loveless, that you are not really living – just dragging. You don’t have any reason to live, and the trouble is you don’t have any reason to commit suicide either. So in a sleepy way – like somnambulists, sleepwalkers – people go on from their cradle to the grave. It is a long journey, yet sleeping, they manage. They reach to the grave – or wherever they reach it turns out to be the grave.

But a disease like cancer gives a totally new opportunity. You were not aware, so aware, so intensely aware of death; then suddenly you find you have cancer. Now all engagements of your life – the tickets that you have purchased for the theater, for the football match, for the boxing match – simply become meaningless. You were preparing for an examination, now it is useless. You were getting ready to fight an election, it no longer makes any sense. Now death is so strong – and surrounds you – that everything in your life is nullified, is cancelled.

I have been telling you continually to love, to be total. And for these few days there was no other alternative: death was coming already – you loved totally. You allowed me to be within you, and the cancer disappeared. Not that I have done anything; you have done something. If you had listened to me before, the cancer would not have happened at all. If you had loved with such intensity and totality before, you would not have been available to cancer.

Now, after the cancer has disappeared, you are again getting into the mind, thinking that perhaps I have done a miracle. I have not done anything. You have done a miracle, and because you have been telling your friends, “My master has done the miracle,” they are telling you be more realistic. And then doubts arise in you.

Your friends are right. Be realistic – although they themselves are not realistic. The only real thing is that the cancer disappeared because for the first time you had a totality of being, a togetherness of being which was more powerful than any cancer.

Now doubts are arising, and you will ask friends, and anybody will say, “Don’t be foolish. Don’t be superstitious” – although they cannot explain how and why the cancer disappeared. And they are asking you to be realistic. You ask them, “Then you be realistic and tell me how the cancer disappeared.” Let them have a little experience of cancer! Just let them think it over, let them waste their sleep over it – how did the cancer disappear? – because that is where the reality has to be decided.

And don’t expect a miracle from me. That is fiction. You have done a miracle; there is no doubt about it. And everybody is capable of doing such miracles. Life is such a mystery that if we really become silent, total, loving, it will change many things in you – in the body, in the mind, in the soul.
 

Love and Friendliness

It is something to be understood: the girlfriend you get or the boyfriend you get, you deserve. You don’t get any boyfriend or girlfriend whom you don’t deserve; those kinds of relationships only last for one or two days.

The other person has to be different, distant, a mystery that invites you to explore. With two mysteries meeting together, once they drop the idea that they have to agree on everything, there is no question of any fight. The fight arises because you want agreement.

Harmony is not something very great, it is boring. Once in a while, even if you fight, once in a while even if you get really hot, that does not mean that love disappears; that simply means love is capable of absorbing even disagreements, fights, overcoming all these hindrances.
Love has to be a friendly affair in which nobody is superior, in which nobody is going to decide about things, in which both are fully aware that they are different, that there approach towards life is different, that they think differently, and still, with all these differences, they love each other.
Be human, accept the other person’s humanity with all the frailty humanity is prone to. Your partner will commit mistakes just as you commit mistakes, and you have to learn. To be together is a great learning: of forgiving, forgetting, understanding that the other is as human as you are. Just a little forgiveness.
Out of freedom meet with each other, and the moment you feel that you have explored the whole topography of the woman and the woman knows that she has experienced whatever is possible to experience in the man, then it is time to say good-bye to each other in deep friendliness. There is no need to hang around each other’s neck. A world completely free from any contracts between man and woman will be immensely lovely, beautiful, unboring, interesting.

If you are just friendly and don’t make your friendliness a legal affair of husband and wife, things will be far better because then you are not a burden to anybody, not a bondage. There will be no question of having to fit with each other. You can have your individuality totally free from each other, and yet be in love. And really to be totally different in your individuality creates the best possibility of love.

painting credit: Anna Shaw

(http://www.redbubble.com/people/annashaw/works/4332942-the-lovers?p=photographic-print)

 

LIfe as Dance

Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you — silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness — maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness. But you have to begin from being innocent.

So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying. Everybody is carrying so much crap, and one wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles.... You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself.

Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. The whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy when the climate is such that you have been told continuously that it is a punishment? — that you are suffering because you have done wrong things and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don’t enjoy.

It will be against existence if you don’t beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.

 

 

Beyond habits

I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking. I have tried hard but I have always failed. Is it a sin to smoke?


Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill! Religious people are very skillful in doing that. Now, what are you really doing when you are smoking? Just taking some smoke inside your lungs and letting it out. It is a kind of pranayama...filthy, dirty, but still a pranayama! You are doing yoga, in a stupid way. It is not sin. It may be foolish but it is not a sin, certainly.

There is only one sin and that is unawareness, and only one virtue and that is awareness.

Do whatsoever you are doing, but remain a witness to it, and immediately the quality of your doing is transformed.

I will not tell you not to smoke; that you have tried. You must have been told by many so-called saints not to smoke: “Because if you smoke you will fall into hell.” God is not so stupid as your saints are. Throwing somebody into hell just because he was smoking cigarettes will be absolutely unnecessary.

One morning Weintraub went to a restaurant and ordered bacon with his eggs. He was an orthodox Jew and his wife kept a strictly kosher home, but Weintraub felt the need just this once.

As Weintraub was about to leave the restaurant, he stopped in the door frozen with terror. The sky was filled with black clouds, there was lightning, and the ground shook with the rumble of thunder.

“Can you imagine!” he exclaimed. “All that fuss over a little piece of bacon!”

But that’s what your so-called saints have been telling you down through the ages, for centuries.

Smoking is unhealthy, unhygienic, but not a sin. It becomes a sin only if you are doing it unconsciously. It is not smoking that makes it a sin but unconsciousness.

Let me emphasize the fact. You can do your prayer every day unconsciously; then your prayer is a sin. You can become addicted to your prayer. If you miss the prayer one day, the whole day you will feel something is wrong, something is missing...some gap. It is the same with smoking or with drinking; there is no difference in it. Your prayer has become a mechanical habit; it has become a master over you. It bosses you; you are just a servant, a slave to it. If you don’t do it, it forces you to do it.

So it is not a question of smoking. You may be doing your Transcendental Meditation every day regularly, and it may be just the same. If the quality of unconsciousness is there, if mechanicalness is there, if it has become a fixed routine, if it has become a habit and you are a victim of the habit and you cannot put it aside, you are no longer a master of yourself, then it is a sin. But its being a sin comes out of your unconsciousness, not out of the act itself.

No act is virtuous, no act is a sin. What consciousness is behind the act — everything depends on that.

You say: “I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking.” I am less interested in your chain-smoking; I am more interested in your habit. Any habit that becomes a force, a dominating force over you, is a sin. One should live more in freedom. One should be able to do things not according to habits but according to the situations.

Life is continuously changing — it is a flux — and habits are stagnant. The more you are surrounded by habits, the more you are closed to life. You are not open, you don’t have windows. You don’t have any communication with life; you go on repeating your habits. They don’t fit; they are not the right response to the situation, to the moment. They are always lagging behind, they are always falling short. That’s the failure of your life.

So remember: I am against all kinds of habits. Good or bad is not the point. There is no good habit as such, there is no bad habit as such. Habits are all bad because habit means something unconscious has become a dominating factor in your life, has become decisive. You are no longer the deciding factor. The response is not coming out of awareness but out of a pattern, structure, that you have learned in the past.

I have seen many rich people living very poor lives. Before they became rich their habits became settled — and their habits became settled when they were poor. That’s why you find so much miserliness in rich people; it comes from the habits that became ingrained in them when they were poor.

One of the richest men in the world — not one of the richest but the richest man in the world, it is thought — was the Nizam of Hyderabad. His collection of diamonds was the greatest in the world because he owned the diamond mines of Golconda, which have provided the greatest diamonds to the world. The Kohinoor comes from Golconda. It was once in the Nizam’s possession. He had so many diamonds that it is said that no one has ever been able to calculate exactly the price of his collection. Thousands and thousands of diamonds — they were not counted, they were weighed!

But he was one of the most miserly men in the world. He used a single cap for thirty years. It was stinking but he wouldn’t change it. He continued to wear the same coat for almost his whole life and he would not give it to be washed because they might destroy it. He was so miserly — you cannot imagine — that he would collect half-smoked cigarettes from the guests’ ashtrays and then smoke them. The richest man in the world smoking cigarette butts smoked by others! The first thing he would do whenever a guest left was to search in the ashtrays and collect the ends of the cigarettes.

When he died, his greatest diamond was found in his dirty shoes. He was hiding it in his shoe! Maybe he had some idea behind it — that maybe he would be able to take it with him to the other world. Maybe he was afraid: “When I am dead, people may steal it.” It was the greatest diamond; he used that diamond as a paper-weight on his table. Before he died he must have put it inside his shoe.

Even when one is dying one is moving in old habits, following old patterns. I have heard:

The old Mulla Nasruddin had become a very rich man. When he felt death approaching he decided to make some arrangements for his funeral, so he ordered a beautiful coffin made of ebony wood with satin pillows inside. He also had a beautiful silk caftan made for his dead body to be dressed in.

The day the tailor delivered the caftan, Mulla Nasruddin tried it on to see how it would look, but suddenly he exclaimed, “What is this! Where are the pockets?”

Smoking or no smoking, that is not important. Maybe if you continue to smoke you will die a little earlier. So what? The world is so overpopulated, you will do some good by dying a little earlier. Maybe you will have tuberculosis. So what? Tuberculosis is now almost like the common cold. In fact, there is no cure for the common cold but there is a cure for tuberculosis I know it because I suffer from a common cold. To have tuberculosis is to be very fortunate.

So it is possible that you may die two years earlier, you may get tuberculosis — but it is not a sin. Don’t be worried about that. If you really want to do something about your life, dropping smoking is not going to help — because I know people who drop smoking; then they start chewing gum. The same old stupidity! Or if they are Indians they start chewing pan; it is the same. You will do something or other. Your unconsciousness will demand some activity, some occupation. It is an occupation. And it is only a symptom; it is not really the problem. It is not the root of the problem.

Have you not observed? Whenever you feel emotionally disturbed you immediately start smoking. It gives you a kind of relief; you become occupied. Your mind is distracted from the emotional problem. Whenever people feel tense they start smoking. The problem is tension, the problem is emotional disturbance — the problem is somewhere else; smoking is just an occupation. So you become engaged in taking the smoke in and out and you forget for the time being...because mind cannot think of two things together, remember it. One of the fundamentals of mind is: it can think only of one thing at one time; it is one-dimensional. So if you are smoking and thinking of smoking, then from all other anxieties you are distracted.

That’s the whole secret of the so-called spiritual mantras: they are nothing but distractions, like smoking. You repeat “Om, Om, Om,” or “Ram, Ram, Ram,” or “Allah, Allah, Allah” — that is just giving mind an occupation. And all these people who teach mantras say, “Repeat it as quickly as possible, so that between two repetitions there is not even a small gap. Let them overlap — so ‘Ram Ram Ram’ — don’t leave a gap between two Rams, otherwise some thought may enter. Repeat it like crazy!”

Yes, it will give you a certain relief — the same relief that comes from smoking, because your mind will be distracted from the anxieties and the world. You will forget about the world; you have created a trick. All mantras are tricks, but they are spiritual. Chain-smoking is also a mantra. It is a worldly mantra; non-religious you can call it, secular.

The real problem is the habit.

You say: “I have tried hard to drop it....”

You have not tried to be conscious of it; without trying to be conscious you have tried to drop it. It is not possible. It will come back, because your mind is the same; its needs are the same, its problems are the same, its anxieties, tensions are the same, its anguish is the same. And when those anxieties arise, what will you do? Immediately, mechanically, you will start searching for the cigarettes.

You may have decided again and again, and again and again you have failed — not because smoking is such a great phenomenon that you cannot get out of it, but because you are trying from the wrong end. Rather than becoming aware of the whole situation — why you smoke in the first place — rather than becoming aware of the process of smoking, you are simply trying to drop it. It is like pruning the leaves of a tree without cutting the roots. And my whole concern here is to cut the roots, not to prune the tree.

By pruning the leaves and the branches the tree will become thicker, the foliage will become thicker. You will not destroy the tree; you will be helping it, in fact. If you really want to get out of it you will have to look deeper, not into the symptoms but the roots. Where are the roots?

You must be a deeply anxiety-ridden person, otherwise chain-smoking is not possible; chain-smoking is a by-product. You must be so concerned about a thousand and one disturbances inside, you must be carrying such a big load of worries on your heart, on your chest, that you don’t even know how to forget them. You don’t know how to drop them; smoking at least helps you to forget about them.

You say: “I have tried hard....”

Now one thing has to be understood. The hypnotists have discovered a fundamental law; they call it the Law of Reverse Effect. If you try hard to do something without understanding the fundamentals, just the opposite will be the result.

It is like when you are learning how to ride on a bicycle. You are on a silent road, no traffic, early in the morning, and you see a red milestone just standing there by the side of the road like Hanuman. A sixty-foot-wide road and just a small milestone, and you become afraid: you may get to the milestone, you may hit the milestone. Now you forget about the sixty-foot-wide road. In fact, even if you go blindfolded there is not much chance of your encountering the milestone, crashing into the milestone, but with open eyes now the whole road is forgotten; you have become focused. In the first place, that redness is very focusing. And you are so afraid, you want to avoid it. You have forgotten that you are on a bicycle; you have forgotten everything. Now the only problem for you is how to avoid this stone; otherwise you may harm yourself, you may crash into it.

Now the crash is absolutely inevitable; you are bound to crash with the stone. And then you will be surprised: “1 tried hard.” In fact it is because you tried hard that you reached the stone. And the closer you come, the harder you try to avoid it; but the harder you try to avoid it, the more focused you become on it. It becomes a hypnotic force, it hypnotizes you. It becomes like a magnet.

It is a very fundamental law in life. Many people try avoiding many things and they fall into the same things. Try to avoid anything with great effort and you are bound to fall into the same pit. You cannot avoid it; that is not the way to avoid it.

Be relaxed. Don’t try hard, because it is through relaxation that you can become aware, not by trying hard. Be calm, quiet, silent.

I will suggest: smoke as much as you want to smoke. It is not a sin in the first place. I give you the guarantee — I will be responsible. I take the sin on myself, so if you meet God on Judgment Day you can just tell him that this fellow is responsible. And I will stand there as a witness for you that you are not responsible. So don’t be worried about its being a sin. Relax and don’t try to drop it with effort. No, that is not going to help.

Zen believes in effortless understanding. So this is my suggestion: smoke as much as you want to smoke — just smoke meditatively. If Zen people can drink tea meditatively, why can’t you smoke meditatively? In fact, tea contains the same stimulant as the cigarettes contain; it is the same stimulant, there is not much difference. Smoke meditatively, very religiously. Make it a ceremony. Try it my way.

Make a small corner in your house just for smoking: a small temple devoted, dedicated to the god of smoking. First bow down to your cigarette packet. Have a little chit-chat, talk to the cigarettes. Inquire, “How are you?” And then very slowly take a cigarette out — very slowly, as slowly as you can, because only if you take it very slowly will you be aware. Don’t do it in a mechanical way, as you always do. Then tap the cigarette on the packet very slowly and for as long as you want. There is no hurry either. Then take the lighter, bow down to the lighter. These are great gods, deities! Light is God, so why not the lighter?

Then start smoking very slowly, just like Vipassana. Don’t do it like a pranayama — quick and fast and deep — but very slowly. Buddha says: Breathe naturally. So you smoke naturally: very slow, no hurry. If it is a sin you are in a hurry. If it is a sin you want to finish it as soon as possible. If it is a sin you don’t want to look at it. You go on reading the newspaper and you go on smoking. Who wants to look at a sin? But it is not a sin, so watch it — watch each of your acts.

Divide your acts into small fragments so you can move very slowly. And you will be surprised: by watching your smoking, slowly slowly smoking will become less and less. And one day suddenly...it is gone. You have not made any effort to drop it; it has dropped of its own accord, because by becoming aware of a dead pattern, a routine, a mechanical habit, you have created, you have released, a new energy of consciousness in you. Only that energy can help you; nothing else will ever help.

It is not only so with smoking, it is so with everything else in life: don’t try too hard to change yourself. That leaves scars. Even if you change, your change will remain superficial. And you will find a substitute somewhere; you will have to find a substitute, otherwise you will feel empty.

When something withers away of its own accord because you have become so silently aware of the stupidity of it that no effort is needed, when it simply falls, just like a dead leaf falling from a tree, it leaves no scar behind and it leaves no ego behind.

If you drop something by effort, it creates great ego. You start thinking, “Now I am a very virtuous man because I don’t smoke.” If you think that smoking is a sin, naturally, obviously, if you drop it you will think you are a very virtuous man.

That’s how your virtuous men are. Somebody does not smoke, somebody does not drink, somebody eats only once a day, somebody does not eat in the night, somebody has even stopped drinking water in the night...and they are all great saints! These are saintly qualities, great virtues! We have made religion so silly. It has lost all glory. It has become as stupid as people are. But the whole thing depends on your attitude: if you think something is a sin, then your virtue will be just the opposite of it.

I emphasize: not-smoking is not virtue, smoking is not sin; awareness is virtue, unawareness is sin. And then the same law is applicable to your whole life.

 

Love Is Dangerous, Sex Is Not Dangerous

"People who are afraid of love are not afraid of sex. Love is dangerous; sex is not dangerous, it can be manipulated. There are now many manuals on how to do it. You can manipulate it – sex can become a technique. Love can never become a technique. If in sex you try to remain in control, then even sex will not help to reach the ultimate. It will go to a certain point and you will drop back, because somewhere it also needs a let-go.

"That's why orgasm is becoming more and more difficult. Ejaculation is not orgasm, to give birth to children is not orgasmic. Orgasm is the involvement of the total body: mind, body, soul, all together. You vibrate, your whole being vibrates, from the toes to the head. You are no longer in control; existence has taken possession of you and you don't know who you are. It is like a madness, it is like a sleep, it is like meditation, it is like death."

 

 

Osho on Intimacy – Just to be sexually related to somebody is not intimacy

Prem means love, devarahi means a divine pilgrim. The full name will mean a divine pilgrim of love. Life is a pilgrimage, and unless love is attained, it remains only a pilgrimage never reaching anywhere. It goes on moving in circles and never does the moment of fulfillment come when one can say ’I have arrived. I have become that for which I had come. The seed is fulfilled in the flowers.’

Love is the goal – life is the journey. And a journey without a goal is bound to be neurotic, haphazard; it will not have any direction. One day you are going north and another day you are going south. It will remain accidental – anything can lead you anywhere. You will remain a driftwood unless the goal is clear. It may be a very distant star, that doesn’t make any difference, but it should be clear. Distant – if it is distant it is okay, but it should be there. Your eyes can remain focussed on it, then the journey of ten thousand miles is not a long journey.

If you are moving in the right direction then the longest journey is not such a problem. But if you are moving in a wrong direction or not moving in any direction at all or moving in all directions together. then life starts collapsing. That’s what neurosis is: the collapse in energy, not knowing where to go, what to do, what to be. Not knowing where to go, not knowing what it is all about, leaves a gap inside, a wound, a dark hole, and constant fear will arise out of it.

That’s why people live in trembling. They may hide it, they may cover it up, they may not show it to anybody, but they live in fear. That’s why people are so afraid of being intimate with somebody. The fear is that the other may see the black hole inside you if you allow him too close an intimacy.

The word ’intimacy’ comes from a Latin root: ’intimum’. ’Intimum’ means your interiority, your innermost core. Unless you have something there you can’t be intimate with anybody. You cannot allow intimum, intimacy, because he will see the hole, the wound and the pus oozing out of it. He will see that you don’t know who you are, that you are a madman, that you don’t know where you are going, that you have not even heard your own song, that your life is a chaos, it is not a cosmos.

Hence the fear of intimacy. Even lovers rarely become intimate. And just to be sexually related to somebody is not intimacy. The genital orgasm is not all that is there in intimacy. It is just the periphery of it; intimacy can be with it, can be without it.

Intimacy is a totally different dimension. It is allowing the other to come into you, to see you as you see yourself, to allow the other to see you from your inside, to invite somebody to that deepest core of your being. In the modern world intimacy is disappearing. Even lovers are not intimate. Friendship is only a word now – it has disappeared. And the reason? The reason is that there is nothing to share. And who wants to show one’s inner poverty? One wants to pretend ’I am rich, I have arrived, I know what I am doing, I know where I am going.’

One is not ready and courageous enough to open up, to show one’s inner chaos and to be vulnerable. The other may exploit it – that fear is there. The other may become too dominant seeing that you are a chaos. Seeing that you need a master, that you are not a master of your own being, the other may become the master. Hence everybody tries to protect themselves, so nobody knows their inner helplessness, otherwise they can be exploited. This world consists of much exploitation.

Love is the goal, and once the goal is clear you start growing an inner richness. The wound disappears and becomes a lotus; the wound is transformed into a lotus. That is the miracle of love, the magic of love. Love is the greatest alchemical force in the world. Those who know how to use it can reach the highest peak called god. Those who know not how to use it remain crawling in the dark recesses of existence; they never come to the sunlit peaks of life.

 

 

What is satori and how to attain it?

Osho : Pratima, SATORI IS EXACTLY YOUR ORDINARY NATURE; it is not anything special. Hence there is no question of attaining it – it is already the case. You are in it, you have just forgotten. You have become too occupied with the outside world. You have forgotten your own kingdom, you have forgotten your own treasure, you have forgotten yourself. You have become too concerned with others. You are too much in the world and you don’t give any time, any space for your inner nature to have a dialogue with you, to whisper a few things to you. You have become artificial.

You have created a false ego because nobody can live without a center. You have forgotten your real center, and nobody can live without a center, so you have created a false center as a substitute. That’s the ego. Ego simply means living with a false center. Satori is dropping the false, entering into the real; just being yourself, your natural self, your ordinary self.

The word “ordinary” has to be remembered because the mind is not interested in the ordinary at all; it wants to be extraordinary, it wants to be special. It is through being special that the ego survives. It is constantly striving to be more special, more special. It wants to be more rich, more powerful, more respectable; it is ambitious. Hence the word “ordinary” has no appeal for the mind. And that is the beauty of the word “ordinary” – because it has no appeal for the mind.

Mind is an achiever and the ordinary need not be achieved; it is already the case. The extraordinary has to be achieved, the extraordinary becomes the goal. It is far away; you have to make all kinds of efforts, you have to struggle for it, you have to fight for it because there are so many competitors.

To be ordinary… and there is no competition at all. You can just be ordinary, nobody has any objection. People will simply feel sorry for you that you have dropped out of the competitive race. One competitor less – they will feel good but sorry for you. They will say, “Poor fellow! What happened to him? Why did he have to drop out?” The dropouts are not respectable people.

Buddha is a dropout. All real Masters are dropouts. To be a sannyasin means to be a dropout. To drop out of the rat race is to drop in, because when you are in the race you cannot enter in. When you are no longer in the race there is nowhere to go. You start moving inwards because life is a flow: if there is no outer direction it takes the inner direction. If the goal is not there far away in the future, then you start moving into your nature in the present. That is satori.

Satori is very ordinary. Satori means your nature. You have come with it; it is your original face – all other faces are masks.

Have you ever looked lovingly at any object? You may say yes because you do not know what it means to look lovingly at an object. You may have looked lustfully at an object – that is another thing. That is totally different, diametrically opposite. So first, the difference; try to feel the difference.

A beautiful face, a beautiful body – you look at it, and you feel that you are looking at it lovingly. But why are you looking at it? Do you want to get something out of it? Then it is lust, not love. Do you want to exploit it? Then it is lust, not love. Then really, you are thinking of how to use this body, how to possess it, how to make this body an instrument for your happiness.

Lust means how to use something for your happiness; love means your happiness is not at all concerned. Really, lust means how to get something out of it and love means how to give something. They are diametrically opposite. If you see a beautiful face and you feel love toward the face, the immediate feeling in your consciousness will be how to do something to make this face happy, how to do something to make this man or this woman happy. The concern is not with yourself, the concern is with the other.

In love the other is important; in lust you are important. In lust you are thinking how to make the other your instrument; in love you are thinking how to become an instrument yourself. In lust you are going to sacrifice the other; in love you are going to sacrifice yourself. Love means giving; lust means getting. Love is a surrender; lust is an aggression.

What you say is meaningless. Even in lust you talk in terms of love. Your language is not very meaningful, so do not be deceived. Look within, and then you will come to understand that you have not once in your life looked lovingly toward someone or some object.

 

 

The First Ripple of Love Has to Be Around Yourself

"The healthy love of oneself is a great religious value. The person who does not love himself will not be able to love anybody else, ever. The first ripple of love has to rise in your heart. If it has not risen for yourself it cannot rise for anybody else, because everybody else is farther away from you.

"It is like throwing a stone in the silent lake – the first ripples will arise around the stone and then they will go on spreading to the further shores. The first ripple of love has to be around yourself. One has to love one's body, one has to love one's soul, one has to love one's totality.

"And this is natural; otherwise you would not be able to survive at all. And it is beautiful because it beautifies you. The person who loves himself becomes graceful, elegant. The person who loves himself is bound to become more silent, more meditative more prayerful than the person who does not love himself.

"If you don't love your house you will not clean it; if you don't love your house you will not paint it; if you don't love you will not surround it with a beautiful garden with a lotus pond. If you love yourself you will create a garden around yourself. You will try to grow your potential, you will try to bring out all that is in you to be expressed. If you love, you will go on showering yourself, you will go on nourishing yourself.

"And if you love yourself you will be surprised: others will love you. Nobody loves a person who does not love himself. If you cannot even love yourself, who else is going to take the trouble? And the person who does not love himself cannot remain neutral. Remember, in life there is no neutrality."

 

 

Celebrating Suffering

When I say enjoy it I don’t mean become a masochist; I don’t mean create suffering for yourself and enjoy it. I don’t mean: go on, fall down from a cliff, have fractures and then enjoy it. No.
I am not saying be a masochist; I am simply saying suffering is there, you need not seek for it. Enough suffering is there already, you need no go in search. Suffering is already there; life by its very nature creates suffering. Illness is there, death is there, the body is there; by their very nature suffering is created. See it, look at it with a very dispassionate eye. Look at it — what it is, what is happening. Don’t escape.
Immediately the mind says, “Escape from here, don’t look at it.” But if you escape then you cannot be blissful.
When: Next time you fall ill and the doctor suggests to remain in bed.
The Method: Close your eyes and rest on the bed and just look at the illness. Watch it, what it is. Don’t try to analyze it, don’t go into theories, just watch it, what it is. The whole body tired, feverish — watch it.
Suddenly, you will feel that you are surrounded by fever but there is a very cool point within you; the fever cannot touch it, cannot influence it. The whole body may be burning but that cool point cannot be touched.
So when you are lying on your bed, feverish, on fire, the whole body burning, just watch it. Watching, you will recede towards the source. Watching, not doing anything.... What can you do? The fever is there, you have to pass through it; it is no use unnecessarily fighting with it. You are resting, and if you fight with the fever you will become more feverish, that’s all. So watch it.
Watching fever, you become cool; watching more, you become cooler. Just watching, you reach to a peak, such a cool peak, even the Himalayas will feel jealous; even their peaks are not so cool. This is the Gourishankar, the Everest within. And when you feel that the fever has disappeared.... It has never really been there; it has only been in the body, very, very far away.
Infinite space exists between you and your body — infinite space, I say. An unbridgeable gap exists between you and your body. And all suffering exists on the periphery. Hindus say it is a dream because the distance is so vast, unbridgeable. It is just like a dream happening somewhere else — not happening to you — in some other world, on some other planet.
When you watch suffering suddenly you are not the sufferer, and you start enjoying. Through suffering you become aware of the opposite pole, the blissful inner being. So when I say enjoy, I am saying: Watch. Return to the source, get centered. Then, suddenly, there is no agony; only ecstasy exists.
Those who are on the periphery exist in agony. For them, no ecstasy. For those who have come to their center no agony exists. For them, only ecstasy.
When I say break the cup it is breaking the periphery. And when I say be totally empty it is coming back to the original source, because through emptiness we are born, and into emptiness we return. Emptiness is the word, really, which is better to use than God, because with God we start feeling there is some person. So Buddha never used “God” he always used sunyata — emptiness, nothingness. In the center you are a nonbeing, nothingness, just a vast space, eternally cool, silent, blissful. So when I say enjoy I mean watch, and you will enjoy. When I say enjoy, I mean don’t escape.

The Fear of Commitment

Only through decisions do you become more and more conscious, only through decisions do you become more and more crystallized, only through decisions do you become sharp. Otherwise one becomes dull.
People go on from one guru to another, from one master to another, from one temple to another — not because they are great seekers but because they are incapable of decision. So they go from one to another. This is their way to avoid commitment.
The same happens in other human relationships: a man goes from one woman to another, goes on changing. People think he is a great lover; he is not a lover at all. He is avoiding, he is trying to avoid any deep involvement because with deep involvement problems have to be faced, and much pain has to be gone through. So one simply plays safe; one makes it a point never to go too deeply into somebody. If you go too deep you may not be able to come back easily. And if you go deeply into somebody, somebody else will go deeply into you also; it is always proportionate. If I go very deep in you the only way is to allow you also to go that deep in me. It is a give and take, it is a sharing. Then one may get entangled too much, and it will be difficult to escape and the pain may be much. So people learn how to play safe: just let surfaces meet — hit-and-run love affairs. Before you are caught, run.
This is what is happening in the modern world. People have become so juvenile, so childish; they are losing all maturity.
Maturity comes only when you are ready to face the pain of your being; maturity comes only when you are ready to take the challenge. And there is no greater challenge than love.
To live happily with another person is the greatest challenge in the world. It is very easy to live peacefully alone, it is very difficult to live peacefully with somebody else, because two worlds collide, two worlds meet...totally different worlds. How are they attracted to each other? Because they are totally different, almost opposite, polar opposites.
It is very difficult to be peaceful in a relationship, but that is the challenge. If you escape from that, you escape from maturity. If you go into it with all the pain, and still continue going into it, then by and by the pain becomes a blessing, the curse becomes a blessing.

By and by, through the conflict, the friction, crystallization arises. Through the struggle you become more alert, more aware.
The other becomes like a mirror to you. You can see your ugliness in the other. The other provokes your unconscious, brings it to the surface.

You will have to know all hidden parts of your being and the easiest way is to be mirrored, reflected, in a relationship.
Easier, I call it, because there is no other way — but it is hard. It is hard, arduous, because you will have to change through it.
And when you come to a Master an even greater challenge exists before you: you have to decide, and the decision is for the unknown, and the decision has to be total and absolute, irreversible. It is not a child’s game; it is a point of no return. So much conflict arises. But don’t go on continuously changing, because this is the way to avoid yourself. And you will remain soft, you will remain babyish. Maturity will not happen to you...
Only the unknown should have a call for you because that you have not yet lived; you have not moved in that territory. Move! Something new may happen there.

Always decide for the unknown, whatsoever the risk, and you will grow continuously.
But go on deciding for the known and you move in a circle with the past again and again. You go on repeating it; you have become a gramophone record.
And decide. The sooner you can do so, the better. Postponement is simply stupid. Tomorrow you will also have to decide, so why not today? And do you think that tomorrow you will be wiser than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be livelier than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be younger than today, fresher than today?
Tomorrow you will be older, your courage will be less; tomorrow you will be more experienced, your cunningness will be more; tomorrow death will come closer; you will start wavering and being more afraid. Never postpone for the tomorrow. And who knows? Tomorrow may come or may not come. If you have to decide you have to decide right now.

The witness is neither the mind nor the heart. Mind is a division which thinks, and heart is another division of the same mind which feels. Feeling and thinking, thoughts and emotions… but witnessing is separate from both. Whether you are thinking, the watcher watches… a thought is passing by, or you are feeling angry — the witness still watches. An emotion is passing by, just like clouds pass and you see them. You are neither the good nor the bad. You are neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant. You are neither the thought nor the emotions. .You are neither the mind nor the heart.

Osho

Be Playful in Activity

Work should be considered as play, not as work. Work should be considered as play, just a game. You should not be serious about it; you should be just like children playing. It is meaningless, nothing is to be achieved; just the very activity is enjoyed. You can feel the distinction if you play sometimes. When you work it is different: you are serious, burdened, responsible, worried, anxious, because the result, the end-result, is the motive. The work itself is not worth enjoying. The real thing is just in the future, in the result. In play there is no result, really. The very process is blissful. And you are not worried, it is not a serious thing. Even if you look serious, it is just pretending. In play you enjoy the very process; in work the process is not being enjoyed -- the goal, the end, is important. The process has to be tolerated anyhow. It has to be done because the end has to be achieved. If you could achieve the end without this, you would drop activity and jump to the end. But in play you would not do that.

The businessman is not playful. And if you are not playful, you cannot be meditative. Be more and more playful. Waste time in play. Just playing with children will do. Even if there is no one, you can jump and dance alone in the room and be playful. Enjoy. But your mind will go on insisting, "What are you doing, wasting time? You can earn something out of this time. You can do something, and you are just jumping, singing, and dancing. What are you doing? Have you gone mad?
Try it. Snatch whatsoever time you can get out of your business, and be playful. Whatsoever. You can paint, you can play on a sitar, anything you like -- but be playful. Look for no profit out of it, see no future in it, just the present. And then, then you can be playful inside also. Then you can jump on your thoughts, play with them, throw them here and there, dance with them, but not be serious about them.

Aum, Sweet Aum

Patanjali believes — and not only believes, he knows also — that sound is the basic element of existence. Just as physicists say that electricity is the basic element, yogis say that sound is the basic element. They agree with each other in a subtle way.
Physicists say that sound is nothing but a modification of electricity and yogis say that electricity is nothing but a modification of sound. Then both are true. Sound and electricity are two forms of one phenomenon and, to me, that phenomenon is not known yet and will not be known ever. Whatsoever we know will be just a modification of it. You may call it electricity, you may call it sound, you may call it fire, like Heraclitus, you may call it water, like Lao Tzu: that depends on you. But all these are modifications, forms of the formless. That formless will always remain unknown.

For the yogi, electricity is not relevant. He is working in the inner lab of being. There, sound is more relevant, because through sound he can change many phenomena inside and through sound he can change the inner electricity also. Yogis call it prana — the inner bio-energy or bio-electricity. Through sound that can be changed immediately.

That’s why, when listening to classical music, you feel a certain silence surrounding you: your inner body energy is changed. Listen to a madman and you will feel you are also going crazy: because the madman is in a chaos of body electricity and his words and sounds carry that electricity to you. Sit with an enlightened person and suddenly you feel everything within you is falling in a rhythm. Suddenly you feel a different quality of energy arising in you.

That’s why Patanjali says the repetition of Aum and meditation on it destroys all obstacles.

For Patanjali, disease means dis-ease. It is a non-rhythmic way of your inner bio-energy. You feel uncomfortable. If this uncomfort, this disease, continues, sooner or later it will affect your body. Patanjali will agree with acupuncture absolutely, and in Soviet Russia a man named Kirlian will agree with Patanjali absolutely. All the three trends.... Acupuncture is not concerned with enlightenment, but acupuncture is concerned with how the body becomes diseased, how illness happens. Acupuncture has discovered seven hundred points on the body where the inner bio-energy touches the physical body — touchpoints — seven hundred all around the body.

Whenever the electricity is not flowing in a circle in these seven hundred points — some gaps are there, a few points are no longer functioning, through a few points the electricity is no longer moving, blocks are there, electricity is cut, it is not a circle — then disease happens. So acupuncture believes that without any medicine, without any other treatment, if you allow the bio-energy flow to become a circle, the disease disappears. And for five thousand years... acupuncture was almost born when Patanjali was alive.

In the days of Patanjali, a principle was born. You can call it the Principle of Prana — bio-energy. In China it took the form of acupuncture, in India it took the form of the whole system of Yoga. How does it happen that when the body energy is not flowing rightly you feel discomfort? Because a gap exists in you, an absence, and you feel something is missing. This is disease in the beginning. First it will be felt in the mind. As I told you, first it will be felt in the unconscious.

You may not be aware of it; in your dreams it will come first; in your dreams you will see illness, disease, somebody dying, something wrong. A nightmare will happen in your unconscious because the unconscious is nearest to the body and nearest to nature. From the unconscious it will come up to the subconscious; then you will feel irritated. You will feel that your stars are wrong, that whatsoever you do goes wrong. You would like to love a person, and you try to love but you cannot. You would like to help somebody, but you only hinder them. Everything goes wrong.

You think some bad influence, some star high in the sky; no, something in the subconscious, some discomfort, and you get irritated, angry, and the cause is somewhere in the unconscious. You are finding the cause somewhere else. Then the cause comes to the conscious. Then you start feeling that you are ill, and then it moves to the body. It has been always moving to the body, and suddenly you feel ill.

Disease for Patanjali is some disturbance in the body aura, in the prana, in the bio-energy, in the electricity of your body. That’s why through Aum it can be cured. Some time, you sit lonely in a temple. Go through some old temple where nobody goes, and sit under the dome — a circular dome is just to reflect the sound.... So sit under it, chant Aum loudly and meditate on it. Let the sound reflect and fall upon you like rain. Suddenly you will feel, after a few minutes, that your whole body is becoming peaceful, calm, quiet: the body energy is getting settled.

Patanjali makes it a first rule that you should be healthy, because if you are not healthy you cannot go far. Your illness, your discomfort, your inner broken circle of energy, will be a stone on your neck. When you will meditate you will feel ill at ease. When you would like to pray, you cannot pray, you would like to rest. A low energy level will be there, and with low energy how can you go far? How can you reach the divine? And for Patanjali the divine is the farthest point: much energy is needed. A healthy body, a healthy mind, a healthy being is needed. Disease is disease — disease in the body energy. Aum will help, and other things also we will discuss.

If a man can become a perfect chanting so that the chanter is completely lost — only a pure consciousness, a flame of light and all around, chanting — the energy falls into a circle, becomes a circle. Then you have one of the most euphoric moments in life. When the energy falls into a circle, becomes a harmony, when there is no discord, no conflict, you have become one. But ordinarily, also, disease will be a hindrance. If you are ill, you need treatment.

Patanjali’s Yoga system and Hindu system of medicine, Ayurveda, developed simultaneously. Ayurveda is totally different from allopathy. Allopathy is suppressive of the disease. Allopathy has developed side by side with Christianity; it is a byproduct. Because Christianity is suppressive, allopathy is suppressive. If you are ill, allopathy immediately suppresses the illness. Then the illness tries to come up in some other weak point; then from somewhere else it explodes. You suppress it there; then from somewhere else it explodes. But with allopathy, you go on from one illness to another, from another to another, but it is never-ending process.

Ayurveda has a totally different concept. Illness should not be suppressed: it should be released. A catharsis is needed. Ayurvedic medicine is given to the ill person so that the illness comes up and is thrown out...a catharsis. So the beginning doses of Ayurvedic medicine may make you more ill, and it takes a long time because it is not a suppression. It cannot be done right now: it is a long process. The illness has to be thrown, and your inner energy has to become a harmony so the health comes from within. The medicine will throw the illness out, and the healing force will replace it from your own being.

They developed Ayurveda and Yoga together. If you are doing yogasanas, if you are following Patanjali, then never go to an allopathic doctor. If you are not following Patanjali, then there is no problem. But if you are following the Yoga system and working many things in your body energy, then never go to Allopathy because they are contrary. Then seek an Ayurvedic doctor or Homeopathy or Naturopathy — anything that helps catharsis.

But if there is a disease, first tackle it. Don’t move with the disease.

With my methods it is very easy to get rid of a disease. Patanjali’s method of Aum, of chanting and meditating, is a very mild one. But in those days, that was strong strong enough because people were simple, they lived with nature. Illness was rare; health was common. Now just the opposite is the case: health is rare, illness is common, and people are very complex; they don’t live near nature.Then Patanjali’s mild methods won’t help much.

Hence, my dynamic, chaotic methods.... Because you are almost mad, you need mad methods which can bring out all that is suppressed within you and throw it out. But health is a must.

Through the chanting of Aum and meditating on it, your low energy level will become high.

How does it happen? Why are you on a low energy level always, always feeling exhausted, tired? Even in the morning when you get up, you are tired. What is happening to you? Somewhere in your system there are leakages; you leak energy. You are not aware, but you are like a bucket with holes. Every day you fill the bucket, but you see it is always empty, getting empty. This leakage has to be stopped.

How does energy leak through the body? These are deep problems for bio-energetics. The body leaks always from fingers of the hand, of the feet, eyes. The energy cannot leak through the head: it is round. Anything round helps the body to preserve. That’s why Yoga postures — siddhasana, padmasana: they make the whole body round.

A person who is sitting in a siddhasana puts his hands together because the body energy leaks through the fingers. When both the hands are put together on top of each other, the energy moves from one hand into the other. It becomes a circle. Feet, legs, are also put on each other so that the energy moves in your own body and doesn’t leak.

The eyes are closed because eyes release almost eighty percent of your bio-energy. That’s why, if you continuously are traveling and you go on looking out of the train or the car, you will feel so tired. If you travel with closed eyes you will not feel so tired. You go on looking at unnecessary things, even reading advertisements on the walls. You use your eyes too much, and when eyes are tired the whole body is tired. Eyes give the indication that now it is enough.

A yogi tries to remain with closed eyes as much as possible, with hands and legs crossing each other, so the energy moves into each. He sits with the spine straight. If the spine is straight while you are sitting, you will preserve more energy than any other way — because when the spine is straight, the gravitation of the earth cannot force much energy out of you: it touches only one point of the spine. That’s why, when you are sitting in such a leaning posture, slanting, you think you are resting. But Patanjali says you are leaking energy, because more of your body is under the influence of gravitation.

When the energy is flowing into yourself again and again, not moving out, then languor disappears. It will not disappear by talking; it will not disappear by reading scriptures; it will not disappear by philosophizing. It will disappear only when your energy is not leaking.

Try to preserve it. The more you preserve, the better. But in the West, something just the opposite is being taught — that it is good to release energy through sex, this and that; release energy. It is good if you are not using it in any other way; otherwise you will go mad. And whenever there is too much energy, it is better to release it through sex. Sex is the simplest method to release it.

But it can be used, can be made creative It can give you a rebirth, a resurrection. You can know millions of euphoric stages through it; you can rise higher and higher through it. It is the ladder to reach the divine. If you go on releasing it everyday, you will never have such built up energy that you can take even the first step towards the divine. Preserve it.

Patanjali is against sex, and that is the difference between Patanjali and Tantra. Tantra uses sex as a method; Patanjali wants you to bypass it. There are people, almost fifty percent, whom Tantra will suit; and fifty percent whom Yoga will suit. One has to find what will suit him. Both can be used, and through both, people reach. Neither is wrong or right; it depends on you. One will be right for you and one wrong for you, but remember, for you. It is not an absolute, categorical statement. Something may be right for you and wrong for somebody else.

The systems were born together, Tantra and Yoga...twin systems, exactly at the same time. This is the synchronicity. Just as man and woman need each other, Tantra and Yoga need each other; they become a complete thing. If there is only Yoga, then only fifty percent can reach; fifty percent will be in trouble. If there is only Tantra, then fifty percent can reach; the other fifty percent will be in trouble. This has happened. Trouble arises whenever you don’t understand who you are.

Authenticity

Know what is the real, your fact, because only a fact can be changed. If you want to transform yourself, you must know your facticity. You cannot change a fiction. You are violent and you think you are nonviolent-- then there is no possibility of any transformation. That non-violence is nowhere, so you cannot change. And the violence is there, but you are not aware of it, so how can you change it?

First know the facts as they are. How to know the facts? Encounter them without your interpretations.

If this consideration is there, by and by you will become authentic. And this authenticity will not be like that of an animal. This authenticity will be like that of a saint, because the more you know how ugly you are, the more you know how violent you are, the more you penetrate inside your facts and become aware of the nonsense that you are doing, the more this awareness will help you. And by and by your ugliness will drop away, will wither away, because if you are aware of your ugliness it cannot continue.

You cannot deceive anyone unless someone is ready to be deceived; that is another thing. By authenticity I mean: remember you facticity. Always sort it out from your interpretations. Throw away your interpretations and look at the fact of what you are. And do not be afraid, then you will never be able to change it. If it is there, accept that it is there; consider it.

This is what consideration means: consider it, look at it in its total nakedness. Move around it, go to its roots, analyze it. See why it is there, how you help it to be there, how you feed it, how you protect it, how it has grown to be such a big tree. See your ugliness, your violence, your hatred, your anger, how you have protected it, how you have helped it to grow up to now. Look at the roots; look at the whole phenomenon.

It is you who have been helping it to become rooted in you. It is your creation. You can drop it immediately-- just now. You can leave it, and then there is no need to look again toward it. But before you can do this, you will have to know it-- what it is, the whole mechanism, the whole complexity of it, how you help it every moment.

Osho

Why are you against marriage?

I know you are against marriage, but I still want to get married. Can I have your blessings?

Meditate over Murphy’s maxim: A fool and his cool are soon parted.
Meditate over it: A fool and his cool are soon parted.

That’s what marriage is going to be. Only fools think in terms of legality; otherwise, love is enough. And I am not against marriage – I am for love. If love becomes your marriage, good; but don’t hope that marriage can bring love. That is not possible. Love can become a marriage. You have to work very consciously to transform your love into a marriage.
Ordinarily, people destroy their love. They do everything to destroy it and then they suffer. And they go on saying, “What went wrong?” They destroy — they do everything to destroy it.
There is a tremendous desire and longing for love, but love needs great awareness. Only then can it reach its highest climax — and that highest climax is marriage. It has nothing to do with law. It is a merging of two hearts into totality. It is the functioning of two persons in synchronicity — that is marriage.
But people try love and because they are unconscious...their longing is good, but their love is full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of anger, full of nastiness. Soon they destroy it. Hence for centuries they have depended on marriage. Better to start by marriage so that the law can protect you from destroying it. The society, the government, the court, the policeman, the priest, they will all force you to live in the institution of marriage, and you will be just a slave. If marriage is an institution, you are going to be a slave in it. Only slaves want to live in institutions.
Marriage is a totally different phenomenon: it is the climax of love. Then it is good.
I am not against marriage — I am for the real marriage. I am against the false, the pseudo, that exists. But it is an arrangement. It gives you a certain security, safety, occupation. It keeps you engaged. Otherwise, it gives you no enrichment, it gives you no nourishment.
So if you want to get married according to me, only then can I give you my blessings.
Learn to love, and drop all that goes against love. It is an uphill task. It is the greatest art in existence, to be able to love. One needs such refinement, such inner culture, such meditativeness, so that one can see immediately how one goes on destroying.
If you can avoid being destructive, if you become creative in your relationship; if you support it, nourish it; if you are capable of compassion for the other person, not only passion.... Passion alone is not able to sustain love; compassion is needed. If you are able to be compassionate towards the other; if you are able to accept his limitations, his imperfections; if you are able to accept him the way he is or she is and still love — then one day a marriage happens. That may take years. That may take your whole life.
You can have my blessings, but for a legal marriage you need not have my blessings — and my blessings won’t be of any help either. And beware! Before you jump into it, give it a second thought.

A woman walks into a pet shop and sees a bird with a big beak. “What is that strange looking bird?” she asks the proprietor.
“That is a gobble bird,” he answers.
“Why do you call him a gobble bird?”
The man says to the bird, “Gobble bird, my chair!”
The bird immediately starts pecking away and gobbles up the chair.
“I will buy him,” the woman says. The owner asks why.
 “Well,” she says, “when my husband comes home he will see the bird and ask, ‘What is that?’ I will say, ‘A gobble bird.’
And then he will say, ‘Gobble bird, my foot!’”
Just be a little aware before you move! My blessings won’t help. Marriage is a trap and your wife sooner or later will find a gobble bird.

Mrs. Moskowitz loved chicken soup. One evening she was spooning it up when three of her husband’s friends came in. “Mrs. Moskowitz,” the spokesman said, “we are here to tell you that your husband, Izzy, has been killed in an automobile accident.”
Mrs. Moskowitz continued eating her soup. Again they told her. Still no reaction.
“Look,” said the puzzled speaker, “we are telling you that your husband is dead!”
She went right on with the soup. “Gentlemen,” she said between mouthfuls, “soon as I am finished with this chicken soup, you gonna hear some scream!"
Marriage is not love; it is something else.

A woman at the grave of her husband was wailing, “Oh, Joseph, it is four years since you have gone, but I still miss you!”
Just then Grossberg passed by and saw the woman crying. “Excuse me,” he said, “who are you mourning?”
“My husband,” she said. “I miss him so much!”
Grossberg looked at the stone and then said, “Your husband? But it says on the gravestone ’Sacred to the memory of Golda Kreps’.”
“Oh, yes, he put everything in my name.”
So be a little aware before you are trapped! Marriage is a trap: you will be trapped by the woman and the woman will be trapped by you. It is a mutual trap. And then legally you are allowed to torture each other forever. And particularly in this country, not only for one life but for lives together! Divorce is not even allowed after you are dead. Next life also you will get the same wife, remember!

Body Wisdom

I’ve had a recurring sickness over the last ten years. I think it may be because I am going too fast for my body. I guess I go off-center and then the body is affected.

“Your understanding seems to be on the right track. Everybody has to understand his body’s functioning. If you try to do something that is more than the body can tolerate, then sooner or later you will fall ill.
“There is a certain limit you can pull on against the body, but that cannot go on forever. You may be working too hard. It may not look too hard to other people, but that is not the point. Your body cannot tolerate that much; it has to rest. And the total result will be the same. Rather than working for two or three weeks and then resting for two or three weeks, work all the six weeks and reduce the work to half...simple arithmetic.
“This is very dangerous because it can destroy many fragile things in the body — being continuously overworked and then exhausted, depressed, and lying in bed and feeling bad about the whole thing. Reduce your speed, move slowly, and do it in an all-round way. For example, stop walking the way you walk. Walk slowly, breathe slowly, talk slowly. Eat slowly; if you take twenty minutes usually, take forty minutes. Take your bath slowly; if you usually take ten minutes, take twenty minutes. All around, activities should be reduced to half the pace.
“It is not only a question of your professional work. The whole twenty-four hours should be reduced; the speed brought back to the minimum, to half. It has to be a change of your whole life pattern and style. Talk slowly; even read slowly, because the mind tends to do everything in a particular way.
“A person who is too much of a worker will read fast, will talk fast, will eat fast; it is an obsession. Whatsoever he is doing, he will do fast, even when there is no need. Even if he has gone for a morning walk, he will go fast. Going nowhere... it is just a walk, and whether you go two or three miles makes no difference. But a man obsessed with speed is always speedy. This is just his automatic mechanism, automatic mechanical behavior. It becomes almost inbuilt. So stop this.
“From today, reduce everything to half. T’ai Chi will be very good for you. You will enjoy it tremendously. Stand, stand slowly; walk slowly, and that will give you a very deep awareness also, because when you do a certain thing very slowly — for example, moving your hand very slowly — you become very deeply alert about it. Move it fast and you do it mechanically.
“If you want to slow down, you will have to slow down consciously; there is no other way. You have been doing more than your body can keep pace with so the body drops, collapses.
“A few basic things have to be understood. There is no such thing as human nature. There are as many human natures as there are human beings, so there is no criterion.
“Somebody is a fast runner, somebody is a slow walker. They cannot be compared because they are separate; both are totally unique and individual. So don’t be worried about that. This is because of comparison. You see that somebody is doing so much and never goes to bed and you do something and have to go to bed, and so you feel bad and think your capacity is not as much as it should be.
“But who is he and how are you going to compare yourself to him? You are you, he is he. If he is forced to start moving slowly, he may start getting ill. Then it will be against his nature; what you are doing is against your nature. So just listen to your nature. “Always listen to your body. It whispers, it never shouts, because it cannot shout. Only in whispering does it give you messages. If you are alert you will be able to understand it. And the body has a wisdom of its own which is very much deeper than the mind. The mind is just immature. The body has remained without the mind for millennia. The mind is just a late arrival. It does not know much yet. All the basic things the body still keeps in its own control. Only useless things have been given to the mind — to think; to think about philosophy and God and hell and politics.
“So listen to the body and never compare. Never before has there been a man like you and there will never be. You are absolutely unique...in the past, the present, or in the future. So you cannot compare notes with anybody and you cannot imitate anybody. So drop that idea. For two weeks slow down. Start from this moment!”

Four Levels of Relaxing

More Passive Techniques

Four Levels of Relaxing

This particular method is useful for those time when you are sick because it helps build a loving connection, to create a rapport between yourself and your bodymind. Then you can take an active part in your own healing process.



Step 1: The Body
“Remember as many times as possible to look into the body and see whether you are carrying some tension in the body somewhere – the neck, the head or the legs…. Relax it consciously. Just go to that part of the body, and persuade that part, say to it lovingly ‘Relax!’

You will be surprised that if you approach any part of your body, it listens, it follows you – it is your body! With closed eyes, go inside the body from the toe to the head, searching for any place where there is a tension. And then talk to that part as you talk to a friend; let there be a dialogue between you and your body. Tell it to relax, and tell it, ‘There is nothing to fear. Don´t be afraid. I am here to take care; you can relax.’ Slowly slowly, you will learn the knack of it. Then the body becomes relaxed.”



Step 2: The Mind
“Then take another step, a little deeper; tell the mind to relax. And if the body listens, the mind also listens. But you cannot start with the mind, you have to start from the beginning. You cannot start from the middle. Many people start with the mind and they fail; they fail because they start from a wrong place. Everything should be done in the right order.

If you become capable of relaxing the body voluntarily, then you will be able to help your mind relax voluntarily. The mind is a more complex phenomenon. Once you have become confident that the body listens to you, you will have a new trust in yourself. Now even the mind can listen to you. It will take a little longer with the mind, but it happens.”



Step 3: The Heart
“When the mind is relaxed, then start relaxing your heart, the world of your feelings, emotions, which is even more complex, more subtle. But now you will be moving with trust, with great trust in yourself. Now you will know it is possible. If it is possible with the body and possible with the mind, it is possible with the heart too.”



Step 4: Being
“Then only, when you have gone through these three steps, can you take the fourth. Now you can go to the innermost core of your being, which is beyond body, mind and heart: the very center of your existence.

You will be able to relax it, too, and that relaxation certainly brings the greatest joy possible, the ultimate in ecstasy and acceptance. You will be full of bliss and rejoicing. Your life will have the quality of dance to it.”