Discourse on Jealousy

Osho Discourse on Jealousy

Question - What is Jealousy and why does it Hurt so much?

Osho - Jealousy is one of the most prevalent areas of psychological ignorance about yourself, about others and more particularly, about relationship. People think they know what love is -- they do not know. And their misunderstanding about love creates jealousy.

By `love' people mean a certain kind of monopoly, some possessiveness -- without understanding a simple fact of life: that the moment you possess a living being you have killed him.

Life cannot be possessed. You cannot have it in your fist. If you want to have it, you have to keep your hands open. But the thing has been going on a wrong path for centuries; it has become ingrained in us so much that we cannot separate love from jealousy. They have become almost one energy.

For example, you feel jealous if your lover goes to another woman. You are disturbed by it now, but I would like to tell you that if you don't feel jealous you will be in much more trouble -- then you will think you don't love him, because if you loved him you should have felt jealous.

Jealousy and love have become so mixed up. In fact, they are poles apart. A mind that can be jealous cannot be loving, and vice-versa: a mind that is loving cannot be jealous.

We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone

Osho on Aloneness - We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone

Question: You said the other day that we are born alone, we live Alone and we die alone. Yet it seems as if from the day we Are born, whatever we are doing, whoever we are, we Seek to relate to others; in addition, we are usually

Attracted to being intimate with one person in Particular. Would you please comment?

Osho: The question that you have asked is the question of every human being. We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Aloneness is our very nature, but we are not aware of it. Because we are not aware of it, we remain strangers to ourselves, and instead of seeing our aloneness as a tremendous beauty and bliss, silence and peace, at-easeness with existence, we misunderstand it as loneliness. Loneliness is a misunderstood aloneness. Once you misunderstand your aloneness as loneliness, the whole context changes. 

Aloneness has a beauty and grandeur, a positivity; loneliness is poor, negative, dark, dismal. Everybody is running away from loneliness. It is like a wound; it hurts. To escape from it, the only way is to be in a crowd, to become part of a society, to have friends, to create a family, to have husbands and wives, to have children. In this crowd, the basic effort is that you will be able to forget your loneliness. But nobody has ever succeeded in forgetting it. That which is natural to you, you can try to ignore -- but you cannot forget it; it will assert again and again. 

And the problem becomes more complex because you have never seen it as it is; you have taken it for granted that you are born lonely. The dictionary meaning is the same; that shows the mind of the people who create dictionaries. They don't understand at all the vast difference between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness is a gap. Something is missing, something is needed to fill it, and nothing can ever fill it because it is a misunderstanding in the first place. As you grow older, the gap also grows bigger. 

People are so afraid to be by themselves that they do any kind of stupid thing. I have seen people playing cards alone; the other party is not there. They have invented games in which the same person plays cards from both sides. Somehow one wants to remain engaged. That engagement may be with people, may be with work.... There are workaholics; they are afraid when the weekend comes close -- what are they going to do? And if they don't do anything, they are left to themselves, and that is the most painful experience.

You will be surprised to know that it is on the weekends that most of the accidents in the world happen. People are rushing in their cars to resort places, to sea beaches, to hill stations, bumper to bumper. It may take eight hours, ten hours to reach, and there is nothing for them to do because the whole crowd has come with them. Now their house, their neighborhood, their city is more peaceful than this sea resort. Everybody has come. But some engagement....

People are playing cards, chess; people are watching television for hours. The average American watches television five hours a day; people are listening to the radio... just to avoid themselves. For all these activities, the only reason is -- not to be left alone; it is very fearful. And this idea is taken from others. Who has told you that to be alone is a fearful state? 

Those who have known aloneness say something absolutely different. They say there is nothing more beautiful, more peaceful, more joyful than being alone. But you listen to the crowd. The people who live in misunderstanding are in such a majority, that who bothers about a Zarathustra, or a Gautam Buddha? These single individuals can be wrong, can be hallucinating, can be deceiving themselves or deceiving you, but millions of people cannot be wrong. And millions of people agree that to be left to oneself is the worst experience in life; it is hell.

But any relationship that is created because of the fear, because of the inner hell of being left alone, cannot be satisfying. Its very root is poisoned. You don't love your woman, you are simply using her not to be lonely; neither does she love you. She is also in the same paranoia; she is using you not to be left alone. Naturally, in the name of love anything may happen -- except love. Fights may happen, arguments may happen, but even they are preferred to being lonely: at least somebody is there and you are engaged, you can forget your loneliness. 

But love is not possible, because there is no basic foundation for love. Love never grows out of fear. You are asking, "You said the other day that we are born alone, we live alone and we die alone. Yet it seems as if from the day we are born, whatever we are doing, whoever we are, we seek to relate to others." 

This seeking to relate to others is nothing but escapism. Even the smallest baby tries to find something to do; if nothing else, then he will suck his own big toes on his feet. It is an absolutely futile activity, nothing can come out of it, but it is engagement. He is doing something. You will see in the stations, in the airports, small boys and girls carrying their teddy bears; they cannot sleep without them. Darkness makes their loneliness even more dangerous. The teddy bear is a great protection; somebody is with them.

And your God is nothing but a teddy bear for grown-ups. You cannot live as you are. Your relationships are not relationships. They are ugly. You are using the other person, and you know perfectly well the other person is using you. And to use anybody is to reduce him into a thing, into a commodity. You don't have any respect for the person. 

"In addition," you are asking, "we are usually attracted to being intimate with one person in particular."

It has a psychological reason. You are brought up by a mother, by a father; if you are a boy, you start loving your mother and you start being jealous of your father because he is a competitor; if you are a girl, you start loving your father and you hate your mother because she is a competitor. These are now established facts, not hypotheses, and the result of it turns your whole life into a misery. 

The boy carries the image of his mother as the model of a woman. He becomes conditioned continuously; he knows only one woman so closely, so intimately. Her face, her hair, her warmth -- everything becomes an imprint. That's exactly the scientific word used: it becomes an imprint in his psychology. And the same happens to the girl about the father. When you grow up, you fall in love with some woman or with some man and you think, "Perhaps we are made for each other." Nobody is made for anyone. 

But why do you feel attracted towards one certain person? It is because of your imprint. He must resemble your father in some way; she must resemble your mother in some way. Of course no other woman can be exactly a replica of your mother, and anyway you are not in search of a mother, you are in search of a wife. But the imprint inside you decides who is the right woman for you. The moment you see that woman, there is no question of reasoning. You immediately feel attraction; your imprint immediately starts functioning - - this is the woman for you, or this is the man for you.

It is good as far as meeting once in a while on the sea beach, in the movie hall, in the garden is concerned, because you don't come to know each other totally. But you are both hankering to live together; you want to be married, and that is one of the most dangerous steps that lovers can take. The moment you are married, you start becoming aware of the totality of the other person, and you are surprised on every single aspect -- "Something went wrong; this is not the woman, this is not the man" -- because they don't fit with the ideal that you are carrying within you.

And the trouble is multiplied because the woman is carrying an ideal of her father -- you don't fit with it. You are carrying the ideal of your mother -- she does not fit with it. That's why all marriages are failures. Only very rare marriages are not failures -- and I hope God should save you from those marriages which are not failures, because they are psychologically sick. There are people who are sadists, who enjoy torturing others, and there are people who are masochists, who enjoy torturing themselves. 

If a husband and wife belong to these two categories, that marriage will be a successful marriage. One is a masochist and one is a sadist -- it is a perfect marriage, because one enjoys being tortured and one enjoys torturing. But ordinarily it is very difficult to find out in the first place whether you are a masochist or a sadist, and then to look for your other polarity.... If you are wise enough you should go to the psychologist and enquire who you are, a masochist or a sadist? and ask if he can give you some references which can fit with you.

Sometimes, just by accident, it happens that a sadist and masochist become married. They are the happiest people in the world; they are fulfilling each other's needs. But what kind of need is this? -- they are both psychopaths, and they are living a life of torture. But otherwise, every marriage is going to fail, for one simple reason: the imprint is the problem. Even in marriage, the basic reason for which you wanted to have the relationship is not fulfilled. You are more alone when you are with your wife than when you are alone. 

To leave husband and wife in a room by themselves is to make them both utterly miserable. his whole effort -- whether of relationships or remaining busy in a thousand and one things -- is just to escape from the idea that you are lonely. And I want it to be emphatically clear to you that this is where the meditator and the ordinary man part. The ordinary man goes on trying to forget his loneliness, and the meditator starts getting more and more acquainted with his aloneness. 

He has left the world; he has gone to the caves, to the mountains, to the forest, just for the sake of being alone. He wants to know who he is. In the crowd, it is difficult; there are so many disturbances. And those who have known their aloneness have known the greatest blissfulness possible to human beings -- because your very being is blissful. After being in tune with your aloneness, you can relate; then your relationship will bring great joys to you, because it is not out of fear. 

Finding your aloneness you can create, you can be involved in as many things as you want, because this involvement will not anymore be running away from yourself. Now it will be your expression; now it will be the manifestation of all that is your potential. Only such a man -- whether he lives alone or lives in the society, whether he marries or lives unmarried makes no difference -- is always blissful, peaceful, silent. His life is a dance, is a song, is a flowering, is a fragrance. Whatever he does, he brings his fragrance to it.

But the first basic thing is to know your aloneness absolutely. This escape from yourself you have learned from the crowd. Because everybody is escaping, you start escaping. Every child is born in a crowd and starts imitating people; what others are doing, he starts doing. He falls into the same miserable situations as others are in, and he starts thinking that this is what life is all about. And he has missed life completely.

So I remind you, don't misunderstand aloneness as loneliness. Loneliness is certainly sick; aloneness is perfect health. 

Ginsberg visits Doctor Goldberg. "Ja, you are sick."

"Not good enough. I want another opinion."

"Okay," said Doctor Goldberg, "you are ugly too."

We are all committing the same kinds of misunderstandings continually.

I would like my people to know that your first and most primary step towards finding the meaning and significance of life is to enter into your aloneness. It is your temple; it is where your God lives, and you cannot find this temple anywhere else. You can go on to the moon, to Mars....

Once you have entered your innermost core of being, you cannot believe your own eyes: you were carrying so much joy, so many blessings, so much love... and you were escaping from your own treasures. Knowing these treasures and their inexhaustibility, you can move now into relationships, into creativity. You will help people by sharing your love, not by using them. You will give dignity to people by your love; you will not destroy their respect. And you will, without any effort, become a source for them to find their own treasures too. 

Whatever you make, whatever you do, you will spread your silence, your peace, your blessings into everything possible. But this basic thing is not taught by any family, by any society, by any university. People go on living in misery, and it is taken for granted. Everybody is miserable, so it is nothing much if you are miserable; you cannot be an exception. But I say unto you: You can be an exception. You just have not made the right effort.

Osho discourse on Love - Am I in Love?

Question: During my whole life, I always thought that I loved Somebody. Now, being here for the first time with you, I Ask myself: have I ever really been in Love? Am I even able To love? Am I able to Love you?

Osho : The basic fallacy that you are carrying within you is that you always loved somebody. This is one of the most significant things about all human beings; their love is always for somebody, it is addressed -- and the moment you address your love, you destroy it. It is as if you are saying, "I will breathe only for you -- and when you are not there, then how can I breathe?"

Love should be like breathing. It should be just a quality in you -- wherever you are, with whomsoever you are, or even if you are alone, love goes on overflowing from you. It is not a question of being in love with someone -- it is a question of being love. People are frustrated in their love experiences, not because something is wrong with love... they narrow down love to such a point that the ocean of love cannot remain there. You cannot contain the ocean -- it is not a small stream; love is your whole being -- love is your godliness. 

One should think in terms of whether one is loving or not. The question of the object of love does not arise. With your wife, you love your wife; with your children, you love your children; with your servants, you love your servants; with your friends, you love your friends; with the trees, you love the trees; with the ocean, you love the ocean. You are love. Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity -- a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul. 

The wider spread are the wings of your love, the bigger is the sky of your being. You have lived under a common fallacy of all human beings. Now you are asking, "Am I able to love You?" -- again, the same fallacy. Just ask: Am I able to become love? When you are in my presence, you need not think of loving me; otherwise, you have not come out of your ordinary fallacies. Here, you have to learn... just being loving. Of course your love will reach me too; it will reach others too. 

It will be a vibe surrounding you, spreading all over; and if so many people are simply broadcasting their love, their song, their ecstasy, the whole place becomes a temple. There is no other way of making a temple. Then the whole area is filled with a new kind of energy, and nobody is at a loss -- because on you is showering the love of so many people: on each single person, so many people's love is showering.

Drop that fallacy. And because of that fallacy, another question arises in you: "... or has life brought me to the point where happiness in love does not happen anymore?" 

Life is nothing but an opportunity for love to blossom. If you are alive, the opportunity is there -- even to the last breath. You may have missed your whole life: just the last breath, the last moment on the earth, if you can be love, you have not missed anything -- because a single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love.

Before you can Love yourself you have to know yourself

Before you can Love yourself you have to know yourself

Question - Beloved Osho, What does it mean to Love Myself?

Osho - Prem Kabir, one has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are. Who are you going to love? If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, "How beautiful you are," will not refuse to accept it.

I have heard... Two old men meet on a street corner. "Where have you been for the past eight weeks?"

"In jail," says the second man.

"In jail? How come?" says the first man.

The second old man replies, "Well, about eight weeks ago I was standing on a street corner and this beautiful young girl rushes up with a policeman and says, `He is the man, officer. He is the one who attacked me.' And you know, I felt so flattered, I admitted it."

How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest -- and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about.

Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary.

And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence -- no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence -- suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love.

Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all.

In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love.

And you have to understand the difference. When you say, "I love you," what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings.

Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening. Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed.

Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around. Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love.

You are asking, Prem Kabir, "What does it mean to love myself?" It means meditation. It means to be yourself. And nature will bring love as a reward. Just don't listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don't claim any right. You have not earned it.

So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That's what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives?

You will hate yourself. And that's what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion.

The old priest was warning his congregation about sin.

"Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed -- and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex."

"Father," came a voice from the back of the church, "are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?"

You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears -- but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it.

An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio.

"Okay folks," he began, "God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick."

The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly. His wife looked at him with contempt and said, "You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!"

Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence... in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty.

In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason -- not to get any reward in heaven -- because compassion is a reward unto itself.

A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, "You are not poor! Paradise is within you.

You need not be beggars, you are born emperors." You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home. Love will come, and will come in abundance -- so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions.

Just discover your hidden splendor. Life can be simply a song, a song of joy. Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle. I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not.

A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home. We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it. In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra.

To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid. It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness.

There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise. All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness. Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too.

Source - Osho Book "The Invitation"

NO DIMENSION MEDITATION

“No Dimensions Meditation is a powerful method for centering one’s energy in the hara – the area just below the navel. It is based on a Sufi technique of movements for awareness and integration of the body. It is to be done empty stomach and preferably done around mid day.”
No Dimensions one-hour meditation has three stages. During the first two stages the eyes are open but not focused on anything. During the third stage the eyes are closed. The music, created especially for this meditation, begins slowly and gradually becomes faster and faster as an uplifting force.
No Dimensions Meditation Steps:
No Dimensions Meditation First stage: Sufi Movements 30 minutes A continuous dance in a set of six movements. With your eyes open, begin by standing in one place and placing the left hand on the heart and the right hand on the hara. Stand still for a few moments just listening to the music to get centered. When the bell rings, start the sequence as described below.
The movements always come from the center, or hara, using the music to keep the correct rhythm. The hips and eyes face the direction of the hand movement. Use graceful movements in a continuous flow. Loud “Shoo” sounds are made from the throat in synchronicity with the sounds from the recording. Repeat this six-movement sequence continuously for 30 minutes.
1) Touch the backs of the hands together pointing downward on the hara. Breathing in through the nose, bring the hands up to the heart and fill them with love. Breathing out make the sound “Shoo” from the throat and send love out to the world. At the same time move the right arm (with fingers extended, palm downward) and right foot straight forward, and move the left hand back down to the hara. Return to the original position with both hands on the hara.
2) Repeat this movement with the left arm and foot. Return to the original position with both hands on the hara.
3) Repeat this movement with the right arm and foot, turning sideways to the right. Return to the original position with both hands on the hara.
4) Repeat this movement with the left arm and foot, turning sideways to the left. Return to the original position with both hands on the hara.
5) Repeat this movement with the right arm and foot, turning directly behind from the right side. Return to the original position with both hands on the hara.
6) Repeat this movement with the left arm and foot, turning directly behind from the left side. Return to the original position with both hands on the hara.This stage is over when the music comes to a stop. The second stage begins with new music.

No Dimensions Meditation Second stage: Whirling 15 minutesBegin by placing the right toe over the left toe. Fold your arms across your chest and embrace yourself. Feel love for yourself. When the music starts bow down to existence for bringing you here for this meditation.
When the tempo changes, begin whirling either to the left or to the right, whichever feels best for you. If you whirl to the right put the right foot and the right arm to the right and the left arm in the opposite direction. As you start to whirl you can change your hands to any position which feels good to you.If you have not whirled before then go very very slowly at first and once your mind and body get acclimated to the movements the body will naturally go faster. Do not force yourself to go too fast too soon.
If you do get dizzy or it feels like it is too much for you, it is okay to stop and stand or to sit down. To end the whirling, slow down and fold the arms over the chest and heart.Third stage: Silence 15 minutesLie down on the belly with your eyes closed. Leave your legs open and not crossed to allow all the energy you have gathered to flow through you. There is nothing to do except to just be with yourself. If it is uncomfortable to lie on your belly, lie on your back. A gong will indicate the end of the meditation.

Being lost is the beginning of finding oneself

[A sannyasin, who is returning to the West, says he is feeling emotionally exhausted since he completed the primal group two months ago: I feel there's just big wounds inside me, and I'm just a bit afraid that they won't heal when I go back to the west. I feel very vulnerable.]

Wounds heal only when they are open - wounds never heal when they are protected, defended.

It is painful; to have an open wound but that's the only way it heals. So don't try to close it again.

Remain vulnerable, mm? - let the wind and the sun rays touch it, play with it. Yes, many times it will hurt, but remember only one thing: this time let it hurt but don't create a wall to protect it. Those walls ultimately become our imprisonment.

First we create them so that we are not hurt. It looks very rational to create a wall around oneself, an armour, so one is never hurt. Good - it feels very reasonable, logical - but by and by they not only protect you from being hurt; they also protect you from being communicative. Then nobody can communicate with you: you become unapproachable, unavailable, and then you are a prisoner inside.

Yes, you will not feel much hurt but you will not feel blissful either; how can one feel blissful in a grave? And this is a self-created grave. It is suicide... a slow, gradual, suicide. That's why you can't see it, because it comes so slowly and so logically that you never become aware of what you have been doing. If for your whole life you have been protecting your wounds and then suddenly they are open, one feels exhausted; hut it's natural. It is such a new phase: you have again become a child, vulnerable in exactly the same way as when you were a child. You don't feel strong enough, you feel helpless.

But remain that way this time - don't miss this opportunity - then you will start growing from your childhood towards maturity... and that is a totally different route. The maturity that you think you had was just a false maturity: hidden behind the wall was a child - that's how it has come out. If you were really mature then by destroying your walls, your protections, why should you feel such a situation? Why should you feel so much like a wound and vulnerable?

Hidden behind was a child and you were wearing the mask of an adult man. Now the mask has been torn apart and suddenly you look in the mirror and you are a child - helpless, exhausted, afraid, scared of the world. How are you going to manage? Because you don't know how to manage the world without the mask... you don't know how to talk to people directly, immediate, without the mask.

You are afraid people will cheat you because they will see that you are a child. You can again start wearing the old man but you will be back in the old rut. It has not helped... it is not going to help.

This time be vulnerable; don't commit this mistake that you had to commit when you were a child, because that was not done consciously, you had to do it. The whole society and the family and the whole system that surrounds a child helps to create it. The first time you did it unconsciously.

You were not at fault, you can be forgiven. But if this time you do it you are at fault, you cannot be forgiven.

Let it be so. If you feel helpless, say 'Okay, so I am helpless but I will not create a wall. This time I Will grow in my inner strength.' These are two different things. To grow in inner strength is one thing; to remain weak inside and just to create an iron wall around yourself is a totally different thing. It simply gives you the feeling that you are strong because the wall is there and you are protected and nobody can come and hurt you. But if nobody can hurt you, nobody can love you either because hurts come from the same window, from the same aperture, as love, as joy, as friendship, as celebration.

If you are too much afraid of thorns you will miss the roses too because they are there together...

and what is life without a rose?

I was reading a book in which the author plays with the word 'eros'. He says, 'If something goes wrong, the same word "e-r-o-s" becomes "sore", "s-o-r-e". If everything goes right the same word becomes rose, "r-o-s-e"; those letters remain the same'. I liked the play with the word... it remains eros, those four letters.

If you go on protecting yourself and your energy, your eros energy will become sore. That's what has happened: it has become a wound. The same wound can become a rose, it can become a flower, it can bloom with great joy, but then you will need open sky and winds and the sun. Yes, there is danger. You can put the rose in your protected home under the shelter; it will die! It needs all the challenge of the open world; all the dangers are needed. Those are nourishing dangers: they are nutritious, they are essential vitamins.

Something very essential has happened, I can see it: you are like a wound. This is the same energy that can become a flower but for that you will have to be courageous enough to remain open whatsoever comes. Accept it if sometimes you feel hurt. Nothing is wrong in feeling hurt: it simply shows that one is alive. To feel hurt shows that you are not dead.

It is very very good and indicative that the person is still alive. Many people have become dead. The only way they know how to protect themselves is to become completely insensitive so nothing hurts; they grow a thick skin around their consciousness. They become thick, dense, mm? but nothing hurts. Then you remain protected, certainly, but you are no more living, you are no more celebrating this life. This eternal celebration goes on and you remain far away stuck in your fear, stuck in your defence, stuck with yourself.

My suggestion is: be courageous. This time don't protect... and if you don't protect you will start growing because the same energy that you put into your protection and into creating the wall will fall into your being and will start helping you grow and you will become mature.

That's what the difference is between right education and wrong education: wrong education gives only a false idea that you are strong and behind it you remain weak. Right education will really make you strong without creating an armour around you. You will not need the armour because you will be strong. Only weaklings need armour - why should a really strong man need any armour? He will trust himself and he will trust life and he will play a thousand and one games with life. Sometimes it will be dangerous too but he will be adventurous.

So, this time don't fall back into the old pattern. And this is good, that you are going, mm? There you will be really hurt by many people... and this is going to be a blessing to you. Accept those hurts...

respond!

If sometimes you feel hurt and you feel like crying, cry like a baby; what can you do? And sometimes you feel angry, then be angry. Don't hide it: be true to your feelings.

I don't see that your emotional energy is exhausted, no, only your repressive energy is exhausted...

and these are different things. Emotional energy is there, really coming up for the first time, and that's why you are so afraid. You are not only afraid from the outside, that is a secondary fear; you are more afraid from the inside, and you have not even mentioned it.

You are more afraid from the inside because if all these emotions.... The armour protects you from the outside and the armour protects you from the inside too: it does not allow anything to enter in you so there is no need to respond. Somebody insults you and you are dense; it does not reach you. Somebody dies and you are thick, it does not penetrate you so you remain perfectly okay; no emotional response is needed.

Now if somebody dies you will feel almost like dying. If you love somebody and he dies or she dies, for a few days you are going to be really in death. When a beloved dies, for a few days at least one has to go with the beloved into deep depth, into deep death... into those gloomy nights, into that shaken, shocked, uprooted world. And you will feel a thousand and one things, small things:

sometimes just a bird crying in the trees and you will feel so full of joy that you will cry - for no visible reason.... Sometimes just a breeze comes and you are surrounded by the cool breeze and you feel so joyous that tears come.

These are the basic fears, more primary than fears from the outside. This is what you really mean when you say you have become like a wound. Everything is going to hurt, but by and by through those hurts, through your real response for the first time without any mask, you will start growing in strength; you will become more integrated.

And I don't mean that when a man becomes really integrated he is never disturbed - I'm not saying that He is disturbed but that is momentary... he is totally disturbed, but that is momentary. He is innocently disturbed but he is total in it: it comes and it goes and after one second he is out of it.

These disturbances disappear only when you are no more.

These are the three stages of human life: the disintegrated human being - a crowd, split... a polypsychic state, many minds, many selves, not one self. Then there is the second state - the integrated human being: one self has arisen, strong, really strong, self-confident, trustful, loving, alert, aware. All those small selves have dissolved into it; a big self has arisen. Those small selves are no more there; a new self with a capital 'S' has arisen. This is the second state - that has to happen to you if you allow: if you give this gift to yourself this will happen.

And then the third state is when the self disappears and no-self arrives; then there is no disturbance, nothing. There is no outside, no inside: all has disappeared... the whole drama has disappeared.

This is the total end... this is what nirvana is, but on the way to nirvana, from the third stage one cannot jump to this highest state of no-self. From many selves one cannot jump to no-self - from many selves one has to come to one self and from one self to no-self.

... Really be courageous and allow this wound to heal on its own - don't create any armour for it!

[A sannyasin says she is feeling weak and helpless and lost like a child, and feels that she is rejected.

This causes a lot of pain which she finds difficult to simply sit back and watch. Osho says that sitting back and watching won't help; that will just be a trick. When you really start growing, he explains, First you regress to the point where natural growth stopped.... ]

If you really want to grow, you will have to move back to the point where you stopped being natural.

That is the whole point of primal therapy. And my family is a primal family - the therapy is on-going; you may know it, you may not. And this is only the beginning: soon, when things will really take shape, you will see incredible things happening for no reason at all. Just the vibe of the commune will create those things.

So, if you are doing primal therapy you know why it is happening. But you are not doing a primal therapy, you are just working in the garden. But it is going to happen in the garden - it is my garden!

It is going to happen to everybody whether they are doing groups or not. If you become associated with me, to become associated with me, you will have to fall back to your reality. Now this is the beginning....

All those years that were false are a barrier between me and you, and you think those years are of wisdom, strength, knowledge, hence you are feeling weak, otherwise you are not weak at all; this is just a wrong interpretation.

But naturally, a four, five year old child, seems lost because he does not know anything. All that has been imposed on you is disappearing; all conditionings are being washed away so you will feel lost.

But this is the beginning of real search, the beginning of finding oneself. Being lost is the beginning of finding oneself... so don't be worried.

And if weeping and crying comes, which is natural to a child, allow it. It will disappear when is work is finished but till its work is finished you need not stop it. That stopping is harmful, it will stop your growth.

So first you will fall back, you will regress, and then by and by you will start growing again - from five to six, from six to seven... and it is not going to take that much time. Mm? you can just jump years in months because your body is grown-up; the mind just needs to come up and be with it. The mind is hanging somewhere around the age of four and the body has become forty; that gap has to be fulfilled. Once the mind comes close to your body age and both are synchronised you will feel tremendous joy and health. That's why you are feeling ill and you are feeling weak and exhausted:

it is the gap, the yawning gap, and it seems unbridgeable.

Right now it is unbridgeable but it will be bridged, so just relax; continue working. And that's why the feeling - that you feel rejected, unworthy, unaccepted; that's how every child feels because a child has no utility in the world. He is not an engineer, not a doctor, he is not a bread-earner. He is just dependent on others for everything; he demands and demands and he is nothing and not doing anything for anybody. He is a dictator, and he feels 'I go on demanding but I don't do anything'. He suspects that everybody hates him... that is your suspicion - but nobody is hating you.

Here at least in this community nobody is worried about anybody else. People are working on their own growth - they have their problems; who bothers about [your] problems? Only I can bother because I have no problems so I have to create some problems for myself to hang around a little bit more, otherwise who bothers? They have their problems to solve. And my whole teaching is be selfish - first solve your problems.

Nobody is rejecting you, this is your idea, but it comes to a four, five year old, child; it feels 'I am rejected. Nobody loves me.' No proof is enough proof for a child that people love him because deep down he understands he is useless, just a nuisance around the house. That consciousness is there in the child so he himself feels he is unworthy but he projects it onto others, that others think he is unworthy... and that's what you are doing. But it is natural at that age, at that age it is natural.

So you will project that nobody loves you, everybody seems to be against you; everybody is rejecting you and you are left alone. Nobody is left alone - I am with you and that's enough!

Nothing to be worried about. Just enjoy this space and soon vou will start growing. Good!

The Happiness that comes from Within EMPTY HANDS

We come with empty hands and we will go with empty hands, so what is the point of claiming so much in the meantime? But this is what we know, what the world tells us: Possess, dominate, have more than others have. It may be money or it may be virtue; it does not matter in what kind of coins you deal– they may be worldly, they may be otherworldly. But be very clever, otherwise you will be exploited. Exploit and don’t be exploited– that is the subtle message given to you with your mother’s milk. And every school, college, university, is rooted in the idea of competition.

A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are the first– that is sheer nonsense. You can’t be happy just by being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.

By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature. You don’t know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You don’t know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does not change your inner quality at all.

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone. You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born.

Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result– that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto– then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can’t paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t "be"– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why he said to Arjuna: "Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there."

Krishna says to Arjuna, "Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it."

Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law– he has given you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth. You can start trying to be the last– but then you miss the whole point. Then another competition starts: "I have to be the last"– and if somebody else says, "I am the last," then the struggle, the conflict, begins again.

I have heard a Sufi parable:

A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, "I am nobody. I am just a servant– a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants."

A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying to God, "I am nobody, a servant of your servants."

The king said, "Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant of God’s servants– who are you to say that you are the servant of his servants?"

Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: "I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last." The mind can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very intelligent.

Never try to be happy at the expense of another man’s happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy… That’s what your holy people are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory. And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything– so it is impossible to feel that you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You don’t get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you don’t go to bed early in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.

Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early in the morning… in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems to be impossible.

My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness in a totally different way. Don’t live at the expense of others’ pleasures– that is holiness. Don’t destroy others’ happiness, help others to be happy– that is holiness. Create the climate in which everybody can have a little joy.