Love – Sat Sangha Salon

This Light in Oneself – J. Krishnamurti

One can talk endlessly, describing, piling words upon words, coming to various forms of conclusions, but out of all this verbal confusion if there is one clear action that action is worth ten thousand words. Most of us are so afraid to act because we ourselves are confused, disorderly, contradictory and rather miserable. And we hope through this confusion, through this disarray, that some kind of clarity could come into being, a clarity that can never be clouded over, a clarity that is not of another, a clarity that is not given or induced or taken away, a clarity that keeps itself without any effort, without any volition, without any motive, alive; a clarity that has no end and therefore no beginning. Most of us do desire, or most of us, if we are at all aware of our inward confusion, want such clarity.

This morning, if we may – and I’m sorry you have to sit in a hall like this when there are lovely clouds, clear sunshine and waving trees; to sit in a hall is rather unpleasant – I would like this morning, if I may, to see if each one of us could come upon this clarity, so that when you leave this hall your mind and your heart are very clear, undisturbed, with no problems and no fear. If we could go into this it would be immensely worthwhile to see for each one of us if we could be a light to ourselves, a light that has no dependence on another and that is completely free. To go into that one has to explore rather a complex problem. Either one can explore it intellectually, analytically, taking layer after layer of confusion and disorder, taking many days, many years, perhaps a whole lifetime – and then not finding it. Either you do that, this analytical process of cause and effect; or perhaps you can side-step all that completely and come to it directly – without the intermediary of any authority of the intellect, or of a norm. To do that requires that much abused word ‘meditation’. That word has unfortunately become a monopoly of the East and therefore utterly worthless.

I don’t know why the mysticism, if it is mysticism at all and not self-hypnosis and illusion, why the Orient, the East, has this peculiar dominance over the West about spirituality, as though they have got it in their pocket and give it out to you. Most of them do at a considerable expense, you have to pay for it: or they use that as a means of exploiting you in the name of an idea or a promise. I don’t know why, both in India and those unfortunate people who come out of that country, including myself – though I am not an Indian, I refuse to have any nationality – there is a peculiar feeling that being an old civilization, having talked a great deal about this peculiar quality of spirituality, that they therefore have this authority. I’m afraid they haven’t – they are just like you and me, they are as confused, dull, clever with their tongues, and they have learnt one or two tricks and try to convey to others the method, the system of meditation.

So that word has become rather spoilt; like love it has been besmirched. But it is a lovely word, it has a great deal of meaning, there is a great deal of beauty, not in the word itself but the meaning behind that word. And we are going to see for ourselves, each one of us, if we cannot come upon this state of mind that is always in meditation. To lay the foundation for that meditation one must understand what living is – living and dying. The understanding of that life and the extraordinary meaning of death is meditation; not searching out some deep mystical experience; not – as it is done in the East – a repetition of words, as the Catholics and others also do, a constant repetition of a series of words, however hallowed, however ancient. That only makes the mind quiet, but it also makes the mind rather dull, stupid, mesmerized. You might just as well take a tranquillizer, which is much easier. So that is not meditation, the repetition of words, the self-hypnosis, the following of a system or a method.

I think we should be very clear about these two facts: experience and following a method, a system, that promises a reward of vast transcendental experience and all that silly nonsense. When one talks about experience, the word itself means, does it not, ‘to go through something, to be pushed through’. And to experience also implies, doesn’t it, a process of recognition. I had an experience yesterday, and it has either given me pleasure or pain. To be entirely with that experience one must recognize it. Recognition means something that has already happened before and therefore experience is never new. Do please bear this in mind. It can never be new because it has already happened before and therefore there is a recollection, a remembrance, a memory of it and therefore a person who says, ‘I’ve had great transcendental experience, a tremendous experience’, such a person is obviously either exploiting others, because he thinks he has had a marvelous experience, which already has happened and therefore is utterly old. Or, a person who says, ‘I’ve had the most extraordinary spiritual experience’ wants to exploit others. Truth can never be experienced, that is the beauty of it, because it is always new, it is never what has happened yesterday. That must be totally, completely, forgotten or gone through – what has happened yesterday – the incident of yesterday must be finished with yesterday. But to carry that over as an experience to be measured in terms of achievement, to convey to others that one has something extraordinary in order to impress, to convey, to convince others, seems to me so utterly silly.

So one must be very cautious, guarded about this word experience, because you can only experience and remember that experience only when it has already happened to you. That means, there must be a center, a thinker, an observer, who retains, holds the thing that is over and therefore something already dead; and therefore nothing new. It is like a Christian steeped in his particular conditioning, burdened with two thousand years of propaganda; when he perceives or has a vision of his savior, whatever he may call him, it is merely a projection of what has been, his own conditioning, his own wish, his own desire. It is the same in the East, their own particular Krishna or whoever it is.

So one must be tremendously cautious about this word. You cannot possibly experience truth. As long as there is a center of recollection as the ‘me’, as the thinker, truth is not. And when another says that he has had an experience of the real, distrust him, don’t accept his authority. We all want to accept somebody who promises something, because we have no light in ourselves, and nobody can give you that light, no one – no guru, no teacher, no savior, no one. Because we have accepted so many authorities in the past, we have put our faith in others, either they have exploited us or they have utterly failed. So one must distrust, deny all spiritual authority. Nobody can give us this light that never dies.

And the other thing is this acceptance of authority – the following of another who promises through a certain form, certain system, method, discipline, the eventual ultimate reality. To follow another is to imitate. Please do observe all this, listen to all this simply. Because that is what one has to do: one has to deny completely the authority of another, however pretentious, however convincing, however Asiatic he be. To follow implies not only the denying of one’s own clarity, of one’s own investigation, one’s own integrity and honesty, but also it implies that your motive in following is the reward. And truth is not a reward. If one is to understand it, any form of reward and punishment must be totally set aside. Authority implies fear. And to discipline oneself according to that fear of not gaining what the exploiter in the name of truth or experience, and all the rest of it says, denies one’s own clarity and honesty. And if you say you must meditate, you must follow a certain path, a certain system, obviously you are conditioning yourself according to that system or method. And what that method promises perhaps you will get, but it will be nothing but ashes. Again the motive there is achievement, success and at the root of it is fear, and fear is pleasure.

It is clearly understood between yourself and myself that there is no authority in this. The speaker has no authority whatsoever. He is not trying to convince you of anything, or asking you to follow. You know, when you follow somebody, you destroy that somebody. The disciple destroys the master and the master destroys the disciple. You can see this happening historically and in daily life, when the wife or the husband dominate each other, they destroy each other. In that there is no freedom, there is no beauty, there is no love.

So, having laid that clearly then we can now proceed to meditate about life, about death, about love. Because if we do not lay the right foundation, a foundation of order, of clear line and depth, then thought must inevitably become tortuous, deceptive, unreal, and therefore valueless. So the laying of this order, this foundation, is the beginning of meditation. Our life, the daily life which one leads, from the moment we are born till we die – through marriage, children, jobs, cunning achievements – our life is a battlefield, not only within ourselves but also outwardly, in the family, in the office, in the group, in the community and so on. Our life is a constant struggle: that is what we call living. Pain, fear, despair, anxiety, with enormous sorrow constantly our shadow, that is our life. Some of us, perhaps a small minority, and it is always a small minority that create, bring about a vital change, perhaps a small minority, neither accepting or denying this disorder, this confusion, this frightening mess in ourselves, and in the world, can look at it, can observe this disorder without finding external excuses – though there are external causes for this confusion – to observe this confusion, to know it, not only at the conscious level but also at a deeper level.

You know a great deal, especially in the West, has been written about the unconscious. They have given such extraordinary significance to it. It is as trivial, as shallow as the conscious mind. You can observe it yourself, not according to any specialist; if you observe it you will see that what is called the unconscious is the residue of the race, of the culture, of the family, of your motives and appetites and all the rest of it – it is there, hidden. And the conscious mind is occupied with the daily routine of life, going to the office, sex and all the rest of it. To give importance to one or to the other seems to me so utterly empty. Both have very little meaning, except that the conscious mind has to have technological knowledge in order to have a livelihood.

This constant battle, both within the deeper layer as well as at the superficial layer, is the constant way of our life, and therefore a way of disorder, a way of disarray, contradiction, misery. And such a mind trying to meditate, by going to some school in the East, is so utterly meaningless, infantile. And so many do, as though they can escape from life, put a blanket over their misery and cover it up. So meditation is bringing about order in this confusion, not through effort, because every effort distorts the mind. That one can see. To see truth the mind must be absolutely clear, without any distortion, without any compunction, without any direction.

So this foundation must be laid; that is, there must be virtue.

Order is virtue. This virtue has nothing whatsoever to do with the social morality, which we accept. Society has imposed on us a certain morality, and the society is the product of every human being. Society with its morality says you can be greedy, you can kill another in the name of god, in the name of your country, in the name of an ideal; you can be competitive, you can be greedy, envious, monstrous, within the law. And such morality is no morality at all. You must totally deny that morality within yourself in order to be virtuous. And that is the beauty of virtue; virtue is not a habit, it is not a thing that you practice day after day in order to be virtuous. Then it becomes mechanical, a routine, without meaning. But to be virtuous means, does it not, to know what is disorder, the disorder which is this contradiction within ourselves, this tearing of various pleasures and desires and ambitions, greed, envy, fear – all that. Those are the causes of disorder within ourselves and outwardly. To be aware of it; to come into contact with this disorder. And you can only come into contact with it when you don’t deny it, when you don’t find excuses for it, when you don’t blame others for it.

Then in the denial of that disorder there is order. Order isn’t a thing that you establish daily; virtue which is order comes out of disorder, to know the whole nature and structure of that disorder. This is fairly simple if you observe in yourself how utterly disorderly we are, which is how contradictory we are. We hate, and we think we love. There is the beginning of disorder, this duality. And virtue is not the outcome of duality. Virtue is a living thing, to be picked up daily, it is not the repetition of something which you called virtue yesterday. Then that becomes mechanical, worthless.

So there must be order. And that is part of meditation. Order means beauty and there is so little beauty in our life. Beauty is not man made; it is not in the picture, however modern, however ancient it is; it is not in the building, in the statue, nor in the cloud, the leaf or on the water. Beauty is where there is order – a mind that is utterly unconfused, that is absolutely orderly. And there can be order only when there is total self-denial, when the ‘me’ has no importance whatsoever. The ending of the ‘me’ is part of meditation. That is the major, the only meditation.

Also we have to understand another phenomenon of life, which is death – old age, disease, and death accidentally through disease or naturally. We grow old inevitably and that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows in our face, how we have satisfied our appetites crudely, brutally. We lose sensitivity, the sensitivity that one has had when one was very young, fresh, innocent. And as we grow older we become insensitive, dull, unaware and gradually enter the grave.

So there is old age. And there is this extraordinary thing called death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened. If we are not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually and have accepted the edicts of the intellect. But it is still there. And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body. And we accept that naturally because we see everything dying. But what we do not accept is the psychological ending of the ‘me’, with the family, with the house, with the success, the things I have done, the things I have to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations – and there is something more to do before I end! And the psychological entity, the ‘me’, the I, the soul, the various words that we give to this center of myself as my being, we are afraid that will come to an end. Does it come to an end? Does it have a continuity? The East has said it has a continuity, reincarnation, perhaps being born better next life if you have lived rightly. And you have here other forms of resurrection and a new way – you know, all that. After all if you believe in reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does – I don’t know why they do, what they do, because it gives them a great deal of comfort – if you do believe in that idea then in that idea is implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now, every day, matters tremendously, because in the next life you’re going to pay for it or be rewarded for how you have lived. So what matters is not what you believe will happen next life, but what you are, how you live. And that is implied also when you talk about resurrection. You have symbolized it in one person and worship that person, because you yourself don’t know how to be reborn again in your life now – not in Heaven at the right hand of god, or the left hand, or behind, or forward of god, whatever that may mean.

So what matters is, how you live now – not what you think, what your beliefs are, what your dogmas, superstitions are, what your achievements are, but what you are, what you do. And we are afraid that the center, called the ‘I’, should come to an end; and we say: does it come to an end? If you have lived in thought – please listen to this – if you have lived in thought, that is when you have given tremendous importance to thinking, and thinking is old, thinking is never new, thinking is the continuation of memory – if you have lived there, obviously there is some kind of continuity. And it is a continuity that is dead, over, finished, it is something old. Therefore only that which ends can have something new.

So dying is very important to understand: to die, to die to everything that one knows. I don’t know if you have ever tried it? To be free from the known, to be free from your memories, even for a few days; to be free from your pleasure, without any argument, without any fear, to die to your family, to your house, to your name, to become completely anonymous. It is only the person who is completely anonymous who is in a state of non-violence; he has no violence. And to die every day, not as an idea but actually; do it sometime.

You know, one has collected so much, not books, not houses, not the bank account, but inwardly, the memories of insults, the memories of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of holding on to your own particular experience, which gives you a position. To die to all that, without argument, without discussion, without any fear just to give it up. Do it sometime, you’ll see. It used to be the old tradition in the East that a rich man every five years or so, gave up everything, including his money and began again. You can’t do that nowadays, there are too many people, everyone wanting your job, the population explosion and all the rest of it. But to do it psychologically. It is not detachment, it is not giving up your clothes, your wife, your husband, your children or your house, but inwardly not to be attached to anything. In that there is great beauty. After all, it is love, isn’t it? Love is not attachment. When there is attachment there is fear. And fear inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.

So meditation is the understanding of life, which is to bring about order. Order is virtue, which is light, which is not to be lit by another, however experienced, however clever, however erudite, however spiritual. Nobody on earth or in heaven can light that, except yourself, in your own understanding and meditation. And to die to everything within oneself, for love is innocent and fresh, young and clear.

Then, if you have established this order, this virtue, this beauty, this light in oneself, then one can go beyond. Which means then the mind, having laid order, which is not of thought, then the mind becomes utterly quiet, silent – naturally, without any force, without any discipline. And in the light of that silence all action can take place, the daily living, from that silence.

And if one has or if one were lucky enough to have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not measurable by thought, because it is always new; it is that immeasurable something that man has everlastingly sought. But you have to come upon it; it cannot be given to you. It is not the word, not the symbol, those are destructive. But for it to come, you must have complete order, beauty, love, and therefore you must die to everything that you know psychologically, so that your mind is clear, not tortured, so that it sees things as they are, both outwardly and inwardly.

-J. Krishnamurti

From Public Talk #4, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 19 May 1968

Here you can listen to the talk This Light in Oneself.

My Deepest Secret

What to do when my heart and mind are in the midst of tremendous turmoil, confusion, anger, disappointment?

I find a not uncomfortable place to sit and in that sitting just give a little space and time for all of the turmoil to completely reveal itself, the swirling thoughts, the clouds of despair, the murkiness of confusion, the fire of anger, and without turning away, I remain staying with it all. And the key, the most important key, is that I do not try to end any of this. I do not engage in thought to rationalize, I do not push away that which is uncomfortable, nor judge my feelings, I do not analyze why all of this is happening, nor jump onto the bandwagon and go for a ride into the maelstrom, but simply allow all of the thoughts and even more importantly all of the sensations and feelings that come along. And these too are allowed without judging, without hanging on to those that I like and without pushing away those that are uncomfortable. There is no spiritual bypassing of anything that arises. It is all welcome.

But of course, this is not true, I do, do all of those things. I do judge, I do push away, I do grasp, I do analyze, but by seeing that I am doing them, a little space opens up for love. And again, I am back to watching the whole drama but with just a little bit more awareness, a little bit freer of the grasping clutches of mind and emotion. But once again, the cycle repeats itself, not just once or twice but many times. But with each return to center the gap has widened.

And sometimes, there does come those special moments when the thoughts subside completely, when the hot feelings turn into “a peace that passeth all understanding.” In those moments there are no conclusions, just a remaining in a vast unknownness, and there is a gratefulness to all that has preceded, all that has contributed to creating this opportunity, to all that has led to this moment and I bow down to existence.

This secret is the art of watching, the art of witnessing, and it is the greatest gift that I received from Osho, but it is not unique to him. Below is a post where the Zen Master, Charlotte Joko Beck, who lived for some time in Prescott, AZ, describes a similar process which she names, get “a bigger container.”

-purushottama

A Bigger Container – Charlotte Joko Beck

Surrendering to Nobody – Osho

You say that religion is total freedom or moksha, and you also stress the importance of surrender in religion. But are not freedom and surrender contradictory in terms?

They appear contradictory but they are not. And they appear so because of the language; existentially they are not. Try to understand two things. First: you cannot be free remaining as you are, because as you are is your bondage. Your ego i s the bondage. You can be free only when this ego point disappears – this ego point is the bondage.

When there is no ego, you become one with existence, and only that oneness can be freedom. While you exist separate, this separation is false. Really, you are not separate; you cannot be. You are part of existence – and not a mechanical part, but an organic part. You cannot exist for a single moment separated from existence. You breathe it every moment; it breathes you every moment. You live in a cosmic whole.

Your ego gives you a false feeling of separate existence. Because of that false feeling, you start fighting existence. When you fight you are in bondage. When you fight you are bound to be defeated, because the part cannot win against the whole. And because of this fight with the whole, you feel in bondage; everywhere limited. Wherever you move, a wall comes. That wall is nowhere in existence – it moves with your ego; it is part of your separate feeling. Then you struggle against existence. In that struggle you will be defeated constantly; in that defeat you feel bondage, limitation.

By surrender it is meant that you surrender the ego, you surrender the separating wall, you become one. That is reality, so whatsoever you are surrendering is just a dream, a concept, a false notion. You are not surrendering reality; you are just surrendering a false attitude. The moment you surrender this false attitude you become one with existence. Then there is no conflict.

And if there is no conflict you have no limitation; nowhere there comes a bondage, a boundary. You are not separate. You cannot be defeated, because there is no one to be defeated. You cannot die, because there is no one to die. You cannot be in misery, because there is no one to be in misery. The moment you surrender the ego, the whole nonsense is surrendered – misery, bondage, dukkha, hell – everything is surrendered. You become one with existence. This oneness is freedom.

Separation is bondage. Oneness is freedom Not that you become free, remember this – you are no more. So it is not that you become free – you are no more. Really, when you are not, freedom is. How to express it is a problem. When you are not, freedom is. Buddha is reported to have said, ‘You are not going to be in bliss. When you are not, the bliss is. You are not going to be liberated. You are going to be liberated from yourself.’

So freedom is not freedom of the ego. Freedom is freedom from the ego. And if you can understand this – that freedom is freedom from the ego – then surrender and freedom become one, then they mean one. But if you take the ego as the standpoint from which to think, then the ego will say, ‘Why surrender? – because if you surrender, then you cannot be free. Then you become a slave. When you surrender, you become a slave.’

But really, you are not surrendering to someone. This is the second point to be understood: you are not surrendering to someone; you are simply surrendering. There is no one who will take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender to him, then it is a sort of slavery. Really, there is not even a god to whom you are surrendering. And when we talk about a god, that is just to find you something to help you to surrender.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, God is talked about just to help you to surrender. There is no God. Patanjali says there is no God, but it will be difficult for you to surrender to one; it will be difficult for you to simply surrender. To help surrender, God is talked about. So God is just a method. This is rare, very scientific – God is just a method to help you surrender. There is no one who is going to take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender, then it is a slavery, a bondage. This is a very subtle and deep point: there is no God as a person; God is just a way, a method, a technique.

Patanjali relates many techniques. One of them is ishwara prandihan – the idea of God. There are many methods to reach the surrender; one method is the idea of God. That will help your mind to surrender, because if I say, ‘Surrender,’ you will ask, ‘To whom?’ If I say, ‘Simply surrender,’ it will be difficult for you to conceive. Try to understand in a different way. If I say to you, ‘Simply love,’ you will ask, ‘Whom? What do you mean by “simply love”? If there is no one to be loved, how to love?’ If I say, ‘Pray,’ then you will ask, ‘To whom? Worship to whom?’ Your mind cannot conceive non-duality. It will ask, it will raise a question, ‘To whom?’

Just to help your mind, so that the mind’s question is satisfied, Patanjali says that God is just a way, a technique. Worship, love, surrender – to whom? Patanjali says, ‘To God.’ Because if you surrender, then you will come to know that there is no God – or you yourself are that to which you have surrendered. But this will happen when you have surrendered. God is just a trick.

It is said that even to surrender to a god who is nowhere seen, who is invisible, is difficult, so scriptures say, ‘Surrender to the guru, to the master.’ The master is visible and a person, so then the question becomes relevant – if you surrender to a master then it is a slavery, because a person is there and you are surrendering to him. But then too you will have to understand again a very subtle point – even more subtle than the notion of God. A master is a master only when he is not. If he is, then he is not a master. A master becomes a master only when he is not. He has achieved non-being; there is no one.

If someone is sitting here in this chair, then there is no master; then it is going to become a slavery. But if there is no one sitting in this chair, a non-being, one who is not centered anywhere, one who has surrendered – not to anyone, but simply surrendered and achieved non-being, has become a non-person – who is simply there, not concentrated in an ego, diffused, not concentrated anywhere, then he can become a master. So when you are surrendering to a master, again you are surrendering to nobody.

This is a deep question for you. When you are surrendering, if you can understand that this is simply surrendering, not a surrender – surrendering, not a surrender. . . A surrender is to someone. A surrendering is something on your part. So the basic thing is surrendering – the act, not the object. The object should not be important, but the one who is surrendering is important. The object is just an excuse – just an excuse.

If you can understand, then there is no need to surrender to anyone – you can simply surrender. Then there is no need to love someone – you can simply love. You are significant, not the object. If the object is significant, you will create a bondage out of it. So even a god who is not, will become a bondage; even a master who is not, will become a bondage. But that bondage is created by you; it is a misunderstanding. Otherwise surrendering is freedom. They are not contradictory.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #60, Q1

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Feel Alone and Feel Love – Osho

Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone. Thank you, Osho…

Prem Turiya, it is something very deep to be understood, something of great significance. Love always brings aloneness. Aloneness always brings love. They are never separate.

People think just the opposite. People think, “When you are in love, how can you be alone?” They don’t make any distinction between two words: loneliness and aloneness. Hence the confusion.

When you are in love, you cannot be lonely; that is true. But when you are in love, you are bound to be alone — that is even far truer. Loneliness is a negative state. Loneliness means you are hankering for the other. Loneliness means you are dark, dismal, in despair. Loneliness means you are frightened. Loneliness means you are feeling left behind. Loneliness means nobody needs you. It hurts. Loneliness is like a wound.

Aloneness is like a flower. I know your dictionaries will say that loneliness and aloneness are synonyms — they are not. They are totally different phenomena. Loneliness is a wound and can turn into a cancer. Many more people die of loneliness than of any other disease. The world is full of lonely people, and because of their loneliness they go on doing all kinds of stupid things to somehow stuff that wound, that hollowness, that emptiness, that negativity.

The lonely person starts eating too much, just to feel full. The lonely person starts gathering fat. The lonely person starts taking alcohol or other drugs, from soma to LSD — because he wants to forget himself the loneliness is so ugly, so scary, so deathlike that one wants to escape from it. The lonely person sits before his TV glued to the chair for four, five, even six hours. The average American sits for six hours before the TV — just burning his eyes. But what else to do? Where to go? With whom to commune?

Communication has stopped. People are not talking to each other; at the most they talk at the other, but not to the other. People have forgotten how to reach the other; people have become parallel lines, running very close but meeting nowhere. Even husbands and wives, even friends, even so-called lovers, are parallel lines never meeting anywhere. Running very close, hoping that tomorrow the meeting will happen, but that is just a hope, that is just an illusion. That keeps people somehow going on.

It is like if you go to the rail-track and you see the rails running parallel — far away in the distance they appear to be meeting, but they never meet. You can go to that place and you will not find them meeting. As you move closer, the meeting-point will move farther away. The distance between you and the so-called meeting-point will remain the same.

The world is very lonely; hence people go into drugs or into sex, or into any kind of entertainment that keeps them, at least for the time being, forgetful of the loneliness. The wound is oozing with pus. We hide it in many ways — with great possessions, with a big palace, with much money, with new gadgets — but the wound continues, gadgets won’t hide it. You can have the biggest house in the world and still you will be as lonely in it as you were in your small cottage. It is not going to make any difference — possessions cannot change your inner loneliness.

And then people go on relating with others, but because they are both lonely, relationship is not possible; relationship cannot grow out of need. Relationship grows only out of overflowing energies, never out of needs. If one person is needy and the other is also needy, then both will try to exploit the other. The relationship will be that of exploitation, not of love, not of compassion. It will not be of friendship. It will be a kind of enmity — very bitter, but sugar-coated. And sooner or later, the sugar wears out; by the time the honeymoon is over the sugar is gone and all is bitter. And now they are caught. First, they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together — which hurts even more. Just see a husband and a wife sitting in the room, both lonely. On the surface together, deep down lonely. The husband lost in his own loneliness, the wife lost in her own loneliness. The saddest thing in the world is to see two lovers, a couple, and both lonely — the saddest thing in the world!

Aloneness is totally different. Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart.

Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.

Yes, when you are in love, Turiya, you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is a blessing. But only lovers can feel it, because only love gives you the courage to be alone, only love creates the context to be alone. Only love fulfills you so deeply that you are no more in need of the other — you can be alone. Love makes you so integrated that you can be alone and ecstatic. Love becomes the contrast: love and aloneness are two polarities of one energy.

And it is good to understand it, because sometimes it happens that lovers don’t allow each other space enough to be alone. If lovers don’t allow each other space to be alone, then love will be destroyed, because it is out of aloneness that love gets fresh energy, fresh juices. When you are alone, you accumulate energy to a point from where it starts overflowing.

That overflowing becomes love — then you can go and share with your friend, with your woman, with anybody you love. You have enough to share now; in fact, too much — you have to share. And it is not that you are obliging the other; in fact, you are being obliged by the other. When the cloud is heavy it has to rain, and it is grateful to the earth that it allowed it to rain, that it absorbed it, that it received it like a guest, that it welcomed it. When the flower opens, it has to release its fragrance. It is thankful to the winds that they have taken its fragrance in all directions.

When alone, one gathers energy. Energy is life and energy is delight, and energy is love and energy is dance and energy is celebration. Then everything is possible if energy is there.

Then it will become a song, then it will become a dance, then it will become love. And when energy is too much there, only then can it become orgasmic.

Many people make love but have no idea of what orgasm is, because they are already dissipated. When they are making love, they are empty; when they are making love there is no energy to be shared. When they are making love, they cannot overflow. Their orgasm is at the most genital. Their orgasm is a very small, mediocre thing; nothing of any spiritual value. It is like a sneeze. Yes, after a sneeze you feel a little better. Or like scratching your back — it feels good. You are relieved.

Orgasm is not a relief: orgasm is a celebration. And orgasm is a meeting of you, through the other, with the whole. Orgasm is always divine — the other becomes the door and you enter into the divine. Orgasm is always spiritual; it is never sexual. Those who think that orgasm is sexual have not understood anything at all; they don’t know anything about sex and they don’t know anything about orgasmic experiences. Orgasm is always samadhi, ecstasy. But people don’t know because they meet out of need, not out of overflowing energies.

So when you are in love, a great need arises to be alone — only in love, remember, a great need arises to be alone. And real lovers are those who give freedom to the other to be alone. They will be full of energy soon and they will come together and shower their energy on each other. When alone, the great desire to share will arise. See the rhythm: when in love, you would like to be alone; when alone, soon you would like to be in love. Lovers come close and go away, come close and go away — there is a rhythm. Going away is not anti-love; going away is just getting your aloneness again, and the beauty of it and the joy of it. But whenever you are full of joy, an intrinsic, inevitable necessity arises to share it. Nobody can contain joy — and the joy that can be contained by you is not of much worth. The joy is bigger than you, it cannot be contained by you. It is a flood! You cannot contain it; you have to seek and search for people to share it with.

What happens in your love affairs happens on a higher plane to all the Buddhas. When Buddha became enlightened, he became so full of energy, so full of joy, that he had to share it. For forty-two years he went from one village to another, constantly sharing his joy.

That’s what I am doing with you. I am not a teacher. I have nothing to teach, no teaching to impart, no information … but I am here to share my being. I am too full, the cloud is too heavy. And if you can receive me, I will be grateful to you.

It is out of too much that sharing arises. And enlightenment, Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, bridge you with the God. Infinite sources of energy become available to you. Inexhaustible sources are yours. You can go on sharing, and the more you share, the more goes on coming to you.

Aloneness has reached its ultimate peak. The Master is the most alone person in the world, and hence the Master is the greatest lover in the world. You cannot find a greater lover than a Buddha or a Christ. But now the love is so qualitatively different that it has the quality of friendship, compassion, empathy. The passion has disappeared.

Passion is tiny, small; compassion is immense, huge, enormous, infinite. When passion becomes infinite it is compassion.

Turiya, your experience is beautiful, and you have understood its beauty; hence, you have felt like thanking me.

You say: Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone. Those are two aspects of the same coin.

And you say: Thank you, Osho.

You have understood it. I am happy that you have been able to see the connection between love and aloneness. Enjoy both. Never choose one out of the two, because if you choose one both will die. Allow both to happen. When aloneness happens, move into it; when love happens, move into it. Aloneness means moving in, love means moving out.

Aloneness is the breath going in, love is the breath going out. And if you stop one, you will die. You cannot hold the breath in; you cannot hold the breath out. Breathing is a total process, and in the total process the incoming breath is as much essential as the outgoing breath. Love is the outgoing breath; aloneness is the incoming breath. And that’s how your soul lives; that’s how you become soulful.

Allow both. Never choose! Choicelessly allow both. And go with wherever the breath is going. Aloneness is interiority, love is exteriority.

Carl Gustav Jung has made these words very famous. He divided people basically into two types: the introverts and the extroverts. That is a wrong division. People cannot be categorized that way. People cannot be pigeon-holed this way. I have never come across anyone who is just introvert — he will die immediately, because he will have only the in-breath. I have never come across a person who is just extrovert — he will die too. People are both.

It is possible that one is more of an extrovert than an introvert, and vice versa. And that’s what brings imbalance to your personality. One should be both simultaneously. One should be balanced.

My sannyasins have to be extrovert introverts, introvert extroverts — both together. This is one of the most important things to be understood, because in the past the monks have tried to be just introverts. They were called the other-worldly people, the people who renounce the world and move into the monasteries and the mountains and the deserts. They decided that only to be an introvert is the right way to connect with God — as if God is not without, but only within.

And the other, the worldly person, has remained extrovert. He thinks he has nothing to do with introversion, meditation, prayer. His interest is in money, power, prestige, people, crowds — the world. He never looks in. This is a very schizophrenic arrangement.

I would like my sannyasins not to be schizophrenic but whole. Be in the world and yet be not of it. Move between the outside and the inside, and let the movement become as smooth as possible, as simple as possible. Just as you come out of your house into the garden: it is too cold inside, you come out. It is too sunny outside; soon you start feeling hot, soon you start perspiring, and you move in — into the house, into the coolness and the shade of the house. Just as you move inside the house and outside the house, go on moving in and out — both are yours.

The old sannyasins, the old monks, claimed only the inner, they denied the outer. My message is: Nothing has to be denied — the whole belongs to you. I give you the whole universe, the inner and the outer both. And I would not like you to become introverts, because those who are introverts against extroversion become ill, pathological, dormant, stagnant, closed, disconnected, uprooted. They start living a windowless existence. They start living in unnecessary misery. They never come to know what aloneness is, because aloneness cannot be known without love — they only know loneliness. And loneliness is not health; loneliness is illness.

And the people who live only in the outside world and never think of the inner, they are on the other extreme. They know something of love, but their love is never more than lust — because love cannot happen unless aloneness has also happened in you. Their love is a beautiful name for lust. They need the other, they exploit the other, they possess the other. And when you possess the other, the other possesses you. People become slaves, and people are reduced to things. People are no more people.

The person who lives only on the outside, without knowing his inside, is poor, very poor — unaware of his inner treasures. And the person who lives only in the inside is also poor, because he never becomes aware of the beauty of existence, of the stars, of the sands and the sun, of the trees and the birds.

The inner and the outer are not two. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. My sannyasin has to be both together. I would like to create a new man whom Carl Gustav Jung cannot categorize, whom he cannot call extrovert or introvert, for whom he will have to find a new word — because he will be whole, he will be both. He will be as much in his body as in his soul; he will be a materialist as much as a spiritualist. He will be of this world as much as of that, and he will have no division in his mind, and no choice.

Turiya, something beautiful has happened to you go on moving in the same direction.

Don’t go astray, because it is very easy to go astray. Our old habits, our old concepts, go on dragging us back to the old patterns. Your mind will say, “This is not aloneness, this is loneliness.” Your mind will try to destroy it by calling it loneliness. Beware! Beware of your own mind! because there is no greater enemy than your own mind.

And by ‘mind’ I mean your past. Go on dying to the past and go on learning new things.

You have stumbled upon something tremendously valuable, utterly new and fresh. Love brings aloneness: aloneness brings love. That too will happen.

Now you have said: Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone.

I would like each of my sannyasins to feel like Turiya — feel alone and feel love. And never create any conflict between the two. Create a symphony out of the two, and you will have a richness which is very rare.

-Osho

From The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, Discourse #2

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A Cloud of Unknowing – Author Unknown

How a man’s love is wonderfully transformed in the interior experience of this nothingness and nowhere.

How wonderfully is a man’s love transformed by the interior experience of this nothingness and this nowhere. The first time he looks upon it, the sins of his whole life rise up before him. No evil thought, word, or deed remains hidden. Mysteriously and darkly they are burned into it. No matter where he turns, they confront him until after great effort, painful remorse, and many bitter tears he has largely rubbed them away.

At times the sight is as terrible as a glimpse of hell and he is tempted to despair of ever being healed and relieved of his sore burden. Many arrive at this juncture in the interior life but the terrible, comfortless agony they experience facing themselves drives them back to thoughts of worldly pleasures. They seek without for relief in things of the flesh, unable to bear the spiritual emptiness within. But they have not understood that they were not ready for the spiritual comfort which would have succored then had they waited.

He who patiently abides in this darkness will be comforted and feel again a confidence about his destiny, for gradually he will see his past sins healed by grace. The pain continues yet he knows it will end for even now it grows less intense. Slowly he begins to realize that the suffering he endures is really not hell at all, but his purgatory. Then will come a time when he recognizes in that nothingness no particular sin but only the lump of sin itself, which though but a formless mass is none other than himself; he sees that in himself it is the root and pain of original sin. When at other times he begins to feel a marvelous strengthening and untold delights of joy and goodness, he wonders if this nothingness is not some heavenly paradise after all. And finally, there will come a moment when he experiences such peace and repose in that darkness that he thinks it must be God himself.

Yes, he will suppose this nothingness to be one thing and another, yet to the last it will remain a cloud of unknowing between him and his God.

-unknown

From The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 69

Osho says about The Cloud of Unknowing:

“One of the most important statements about mysticism in the Western hemisphere is the book called The Cloud of Unknowing. The name of the author is not known; it is good that we don’t know who wrote it. It indicates one thing: that before he wrote it he had disappeared into a cloud of unknowing. It is the only book in the Western world which comes close to the Upanishads, The Tao Te Ching, The Dhammapada. There is a rare insight in it.

First he calls it a cloud. A cloud is vague, with no definable limits. It is constantly changing; it is not static – never, even for two consecutive moments, is it the same. It is a flux, it is pure change. And there is nothing substantial in it. If you hold it in your hand just mist will be left, nothing else. Maybe your hands will become wet, but you will not find any cloud in your fist.”

-Osho

From Theologia Mystica, Discourse #11

You Are Forgiven – Osho

Jesus says: God is love. But I say unto you: Love is God. ‘Love’ is a far more important word than the word ‘God’; ‘love’ has existential meaning. The word ‘God’ is utterly empty; it signifies nothing, it relates to nothing in you. It is a pure word, pure in the sense that it has no corresponding reality in your experience.

Although both words indicate the same truth: ‘love’ is the poet’s word, ‘God’ is the word of the theologian. But obviously the poetic insight is deeper, profounder, and the poet’s sensibility is also far more refined, far more subtle than that of the theologian. The poet’s vision is more aesthetic too, more beautiful, more exquisite; it has more grace, more meaning, more significance. And moreover, the theologian’s choice has been contaminated down the ages by so many people – Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans – by so many churches, so many religions, that have pretended to be religious and were not.

Love still remains uncontaminated; it is still virgin.

So let me repeat: rather than saying God is love, say love is God, and you will be closer to the truth. And not only closer – you will be immediately related to truth, because love is your experience. It may not be so profound that it becomes God, but still, even unrefined gold is gold. Even the uncut, unpolished diamond is diamond. The diamond may be lost in the mud, but it can be cleaned any moment; the mud cannot enter into its being.

Love is your being. And the moment we use the word ‘God’ great controversies arise. Use the word ‘love’, and theism, atheism, and all kinds of unnecessary arguments are discarded.

Love also represents the innermost core of existence itself. Existence is not indifferent to you, it is not detached. It is committed to you, it cares for you. It may not care the way you want to be cared for, but it still cares in its own way. And what you expect may not really be your need, it may be just the opposite.

Existence really fulfills your needs – not your likes and dislikes, not your wants, but your real, true, authentic needs are always taken care of. Existence cannot be indifferent to you: you are part of it. To be indifferent to you will mean it is indifferent to itself – that is impossible. Existence would have disappeared long ago if it was so.

We are its waves. We are flowers of this tree of life and existence. Your desire to be loved, and your desire to love, is your supreme most desire. It must show something of your basic fundamental nature, it must represent your innermost core – it does represent it.

Once you understand love as God, your whole vision of life will change. Then you will not go to worship in a temple or a church or a mosque: then love will be your worship. And then you will not be afraid of existence, because it cares for you. Fear will disappear. You will not be afraid even of death, because death can take away only that which is not needed any more, but it cannot destroy you.

Existence is your mother, it cannot allow destruction. Nothing is ever destroyed. Now even physicists agree with it: nothing is ever destroyed and nothing is ever created. Not even a small grain of sand can be destroyed or created. Existence contains the same quantity of matter, life, love and energy as it has contained always, as it will contain always.

Martin Luther has said a tremendously significant thing. He says “Pecca fortiter: sin boldly.” It is strange. The statement seems to be unbelievable – a man like Luther saying, “Sin boldly.” But the meaning is really worth pondering over. He is saying: Love permeates the whole of existence, so don’t be afraid. Even if you are in sin, be boldly in it, because existence is always ready to forgive, is forgiving. Love always is forgiving. He does not mean that you should go and sin. He is simply saying: Your greatest sin is nothing compared to the forgiveness that goes on flowing from existence towards you.

Just the other day, somebody asked me, “I am a great sinner. Can I also realize God?”

You cannot be that great a sinner. You cannot be so fallen that God’s hand cannot reach you, you cannot be so weighted and burdened by sin that God cannot uplift you. The gravitation of sin cannot be more than the grace of God.

This is one of the fundamentals of Sufism that God is unconditionally forgiving – he has to be, because his nature is love. Love is his reality. It is not that love forgives: love is forgiveness. There is no question of forgiving you. The question arises only if God has already becomes angry with you. Only then does the question of forgiving arise.

But God cannot be angry with you. You are the way he has made you, you are not your own creation. How can he be angry with you? That would amount to being angry with himself; that would be a self-condemnation.

But you start thinking about small things as if you are doing great sins. The ego always loves to do great things. Even if you are doing something wrong, you want to pretend that this is the greatest wrong that has ever been done or will ever be done. You want it to be unique, incomparable; you want it to be on the top. The ego always feels good if something great is being done. It may be a sin – that doesn’t matter.

What great sin can you commit? All our sins are nothing but small things: we are small, our sins cannot be great. Our hands are small: whatsoever we do is going to remain small, because it will have our signature on it.

Your life, virtuous or wicked, is not going to be a barrier or a bridge – because you are already bridged, and there is no way of disconnecting yourself from God. And it is not a question that when you sin, God forgives you. He is forgiveness: he is continuously flowing in tremendous love towards you.

His love is like a flood; your sins are like straw: the flood will take them away. And the flood does not come to take your sins away; it is already there. To understand this, to see the point of it, is a great relief, as if a mountain suddenly disappears off your chest. You become light, weightless. And only in that weightlessness can you worship.

The sinner cannot worship, he is continuously frightened. Fear cannot create prayer. Prayer created by fear remains political, a strategy of the mind to persuade God; it is a kind of bribery. Real prayer arises out of understanding, out of love.

Luther is really right when he says, “Pecca fortiter: sin boldly.” Whatsoever you are doing, do it boldly. You belong to God and God belongs to you. This is your home. Don’t live like a stranger; don’t be here like a guest: you are part of the host. Live without fear.

But our egos continuously go on magnifying things.

A man was in love with a woman for many years. And the woman was waiting and waiting, “Now he is going to propose. Now he is going to propose.” And one day he proposed. She could not believe her own ears; she could not believe her own eyes. She has waited so long that she had almost become settled into believing that it was not going to happen.

She hugged the man, she kissed the man, and she said, “I cannot believe my own ears. I have waited so long for this!”

The man said, “Will you marry me?” And she said, “Yes, yes! A thousand times, yes!”

The man took out a small black box from his pocket, opened it, and gave her a ring. She looked very minutely at it – the diamond was so small that it was almost impossible to see it with bare eyes.

The man said, “Don’t be worried” – because she looked worried, shocked too, that after waiting so many years this man brings a wedding ring with such a small diamond. And the man was very rich. The man said, “Don’t be worried, don’t look puzzled.” And from another pocket he pulled out a magnifying glass, and he said, “Look! Look through this glass.”

Our minds are continuously magnifying. That’s how the ego exists. We magnify our virtues, we magnify our sins, we magnify everything. We make much fuss about nothing, much ado about nothing.

This magnifying glass has to be dropped absolutely. And then suddenly you see things in their perspective. We are small: our virtues are small, our sins are small. Neither are our virtues of any worth, nor are our sins of any worth. All that we can do is so small that it is irrelevant.

Your sins are not going to take you to hell. All those priests who go on telling you that are simply magnifying. And your virtues are not going to take you to heaven either, because all those virtues are so tiny, so shallow.

Then is there any hope, or not? There is no need of any hope. You are already in paradise. All that is needed is an unburdened heart to look around. You are already in paradise: you need not go anywhere. You are in God. Drop the magnifying glass, and your sins and your virtues both will disappear, because they both are creations of the magnifying glass.

An elephant was having an awful time in the jungle because a horsefly kept biting her near her tail and there was nothing she could do about it. She kept swinging her trunk, but he was far out of reach.

A little sparrow observed this and snipped the horsefly in half with his beak.

“Oh, thank you!” said the elephant. “That was such a relief.”

“My pleasure, ma’am,” said the sparrow.

“Listen, Mr. Sparrow, if there’s anything I can ever do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The sparrow hesitated. “Well, ma’am…” he said.

“What is it?” said the elephant. “You needn’t be shy with me.”

“Well,” said the sparrow, “the truth is that all my life I wondered how it would feel to make love to an elephant.”

“Go right ahead,” said the elephant. “Be my guest!”

The sparrow flew around behind the elephant and began to make love immediately. Up above them, a monkey in the tree watched and began to get very excited. He started to shake the tree, and a coconut got loose and fell from the tree, hitting the elephant smack on the head. “Ouch!” said the elephant.

At which point, the sparrow looked from behind and said, “Am I hurting you, dear?”

Drop the magnifying glass, and there is neither sin nor virtue, and there are neither sinners nor saints – simple human beings, just simple human beings.

In that simplicity, God arrives. In that simplicity, existence starts pouring love. It is already pouring, but because of your ideas, great ideas about yourself, you are not receptive.

Hakim Sanai says:

From him forgiveness comes so fast,
It reaches us before repentance
Has even taken shape on our lips.

See the beauty of Sanai’s statement. This sutra is worth writing in gold in your heart.

From him forgiveness comes so fast,
It reaches us before repentance
Has even taken shape on our lips.

He is forgiveness, he is already flowing towards you. You need not even repent. You have just to be simple, unpretentious; you have to drop your sinners’ and saints’ masks. And even before repentance has taken any shape on our lips, even without that, you are forgiven.

This is the experience of all the great mystics of the world. Luther is right when he says, “Pecca fortiter: sin boldly” – because his forgiveness is immense, infinite. And whatever you do is just tiny straws: the flood will come and take them all away.

Sufism is the path of grace. No effort is needed on your part: only receptivity, openness, a loving heart, a state of surrender, a let-go. And all that so-called yogis cannot attain in millions of lives, you attain in a single instant. His forgiveness comes so fast: it is immediate, because God knows only one time, and that is now. God cannot postpone; he has no future. He cannot say ‘Tomorrow’, because there is no tomorrow for him – time means this time, this moment.

For God, all is the present. Because our vision is limited, that’s why something is past and something is future and something is present. Our vision is so limited that our present is very tiny. That is the proportion of our vision. We are looking through a keyhole into reality: we can see only this much, all else is the past.

Just sit behind a keyhole and watch. Somebody comes: you see a person suddenly emerge out of nowhere, because just a moment ago you were not able to see him. When he comes in front of the keyhole you see him, and then next moment he is gone, he has passed, again he is no more. Just a moment ago he was in the future, just a moment afterwards he is in the past.

Do you think that man has disappeared? Do you think that man suddenly appeared from nowhere and now suddenly disappears into nowhere again, and he appeared only for a single moment? It is our vision that is creating the fallacy. Come out of your hiding place, open the door, and you will be surprised: he was before you saw him, and he is after you see him. Now you will have a better vision.

For God, all is eternal now.

The thief who was crucified with Jesus asked him, “Lord, will I be able to see you again sometime in the future?” Jesus says, “Today you will be able to see me in the kingdom of my God.”

The word is ‘today’ – that is very significant. “Today you will see me in my kingdom of God.” There cannot be any question of tomorrow.

God is immediate, God is always present, so all that happens through God happens now. And it is not happening to you, God is not happening to you, because you live either in the past or in the future, and he is never in the past and never in the future.

Hence the science of meditation: it brings you to the present, it brings you to this moment. The past is a thought; it disappears when thoughts disappear. The future is also a thought; it disappears when you drop thinking. When you are in a state of no-thought – there is no past, no future, there is only the present – in that state of no-thought you are ONE, in tune with God. And suddenly the flood is there: you are flooded with light, with love, with grace. You are no more a man, you are divine. You have surpassed humanity.

-Osho

Excerpt from Unio Mystica, V. 2, Discourse #5

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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This Coolness is Your Meditation – Osho

[A sannyasin asked about watching ‘a lot of shit going through his head]

It is natural, so don’t feel in any way depressed by it. If you do, it is impossible to get rid of it because you lose all energy in it. People who become interested in meditation, sooner or later start feeling hopeless, because the chatter of the mind seems non-ending; it goes on and on, and the more you try to finish with it, the more it bubbles up. Don’t be in a hurry, and don’t take any negative attitude about it.

Even shit can be used; it can become good manure. So don’t be negative about it. We are going to use it. There is no better fertilizer than it, and when you see a rose flower coming, it is out of a fertilizer. Meditation arises out of the mind. It is no-mind but it is based in the mind. It is just like a lotus born out of mud, just ordinary mud.

And the second thing: don’t try to stop it. Be loose. Tell the mind to just go on and to finish its trip. Remain unconcerned, as if it is none of your business, as if it is just a traffic noise—and it is. It is an engine that goes on continuously from the time of your birth to your death. It goes on making noises, chattering, rehearsing, projecting, remembering the past, desiring the future. Accept it in aloofness.

By and by you will see that there arises a distance and the distance between you and the noise of the mind goes on becoming bigger and bigger and wider and wider. One day suddenly you realize that it is not there. There is a tremendous silence. For moments you will realize that everything stops, and then starts again, but you remain aloof. Remain aloof even to the stopping, because if you rejoice too much in it you are immediately distracted. The mind will come in again and the whole functioning will start. If it stops that is okay. If it starts again, that too is okay.

But this is how the distance is created—and this distance is meditation. As I see it, nothing is needed. Simply be unconcerned and watch. That word ‘watch’ is a little too positive—watchfulness plus aloofness. Then the danger of that positive watching is avoided—a passive watchfulness.

Much is going to happen. Change to orange and forget the old identity. Now you are part of my family.

This word himalaya is very meaningful. Him means cool, ice-cool, and laya means a house—a house of coolness. That’s why we call the mountain Himalaya—the house, the very abode of ice-coolness. And anand means bliss.

Bliss and coolness go together. If you attain to bliss you will become cool, and if you attain to coolness you will attain to bliss. Bliss has no excitement in it. It is simple coolness, silence. It has no fever, no passion in it. So remember these two things – they are going to help you.

Remain cool whatsoever the situation, whatsoever the excitement, suddenly remember that you have to be cool, and relax, and catch hold of your inner coolness. If somebody is insulting you, remember that you have to be cool, and this man is giving you an opportunity. Be thankful to him and don’t be distracted by him. If you can remain cool and indifferent where ordinarily you get easily excited and passion is aroused, when anger comes and distracts you and you become feverish, suddenly you will see that bliss is showering all around you.

You manage coolness, God manages bliss. You take one step, and he takes one step towards you immediately. It is fifty/fifty.

This coolness is your meditation.

.. It is flowing… it is not deadness. Just remain cool like a cool breeze. The moment that you see that your flowing is becoming feverish, stop, because then you are going out of your being. Flow to the extent that you can retain your coolness, and then there is no problem.

Prem means love and dhyana means meditation, and love is going to be your meditation—love meditation.

Be loving as much as you can. Just go on remembering that you have to be loving – to the trees, to the rocks. Even if you are sitting in an empty room, be loving to the empty room. But whatsoever you do and wherever you move, carry a climate of love around you, and by and by you will start feeling it working.

It is everybody’s capacity. Nothing is to be learned about it. Everybody is born with it, just as we are born with the capacity to breathe. But somehow society has destroyed the capacity to love, because love is very dangerous for the society. It is the greatest rebellion there is. Society cannot exist, or this society cannot exist, if people are really loving.

Wars and exploitation and all nonsense will be impossible if people are loving, so society does not want anybody to be loving. But unless you love, God remains unavailable, and unless you move deep in love, you cannot move in God.

So let this be your constant remembrance. Even when you touch things, even a chair, touch them as if they are your beloved. In the beginning it will look crazy, but by and by you will get the knack of it, and everything else will become crazy.

-Osho

From Nothing to Lose but Your Head, Chapter Twelve

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Don’t Start with Love – Osho

Start from anywhere. You are a perfect circle, and so deeply interconnected, with everything in your life. You can start by being more meditative, which is the simplest because it does not involve other human beings. The others are a little complex; it is better to let them come on their own.

My own understanding is, don’t start with love, because your understanding of love is not the authentic love. It is simply biological infatuation, and if you start with that you have gone astray.

Start with meditation because meditation is the only thing that biology has not given to you. It has a tremendous force of its own. That’s why the physiologist or the biologist will account for everything but will never mention the word ‘meditation’.

Meditation is the only bridge between you and the beyond. Start with meditation – and that’s what is happening to you, effortlessly. Sitting with me, listening to me, a silence enters into your heart and suddenly you feel springs of love unaddressed, radiating in all directions. It is not love to someone, it is simply being loving.

But if it comes from meditation, from silence, it will have purity, because it is not coming from biology.

It is not coming from your past, it is not coming from all your conditionings; it is coming from the spontaneous experience of silence. And suddenly you see a great aroma of love around you.

-Osho

From Om Mani Padme Hum, Discourse #28

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Love and Meditation, Yoga and Tantra – Osho

The ultimate search is individual, but can you explain the integral part of the beloved in tantra and the search for our inner self?

A very intricate, complex thing has to be understood:
If you are not in love, you are lonely.
If you are in love, really in love, you become alone.

Loneliness is sadness; aloneness is not sadness. Loneliness is a feeling of incompleteness. You need someone and the needed one is not available. Loneliness is darkness, with no light in it. A dark house, waiting and waiting for someone to come and kindle the light.

Aloneness is not loneliness. Aloneness means the feeling that you are complete. Nobody is needed, you are enough. And this happens in love. Lovers become alone – through love you touch your inner completeness. Love makes you complete. Lovers share each other, but that is not their need, that is their overflowing energy.

Two persons who have been feeling lonely can make a contract, can come together. They are not lovers, remember. They remain lonely. Now, because of the presence of the other, they don’t feel the loneliness – that’s all. They somehow deceive themselves. Their love is nothing but a deception to deceive oneself: I am not lonely – somebody else is there. Because two lonely persons are meeting, their loneliness basically is doubled, or even multiplied. That’s what happens ordinarily.

You feel lonely when you are alone, and when you are in relationship you feel miserable. This is an everyday observation. When people are lonely they feel lonely, and they are in a deep search for somebody to be related to. When they are related to somebody, then misery starts; then they feel it was better to be lonely – this is too much. What happens?

Two lonely persons meet – that means two gloomy, sad, miserable persons meet. The misery is multiplied. How can two uglinesses become beautiful? How can two lonelinesses coming together become completion, totality? Not possible. They exploit each other, they somehow try to deceive themselves through the other. But that deception doesn’t go far. By the time the honeymoon is finished, the marriage is also finished. It is very temporary. It is just an illusion.

Real love is not a search to go against loneliness. Real love is to transform loneliness into aloneness. To help the other – if you love the person, you help him to be alone. You don’t fill him or her. You don’t try to complete the other in some way by your presence. You help the other to be alone, to be so full out of her or his own being that you will not be a need.

When the person is totally free, then out of that freedom sharing is possible. Then he gives much, but not as a need; he gives much, but not as a bargain. He gives much because he has much. He gives because he enjoys giving.

Lovers are alone, and a real lover never destroys your aloneness. He will always be totally respectful about the aloneness of the other. It is sacred. He will not interfere in it, he will not spoil that space.

But ordinarily, lovers, so-called lovers, are very much afraid of the other and the other’s aloneness, independence; they are very much afraid – because they think if the other is independent then they will not be needed, then they will be discarded. So the woman goes on trying… that the husband should remain dependent, always in need, so that she can remain valuable. And the husband goes on trying in every way so that the woman always remains in need, so that he remains valuable. This is a bargain and there is continuous conflict, struggle. The struggle is that everybody needs his freedom.

Love allows freedom; not only allows, but strengthens freedom. And anything that destroys freedom is not love. It must be something else. Love and freedom go together, they are two wings of the same bird. Whenever you see that your love is going against your freedom, then you are doing something else in the name of love.

Let this be your criterion: freedom is the criterion; love gives you freedom, makes you free, liberates you. And once you are totally yourself, you feel grateful to the person who has helped you. That gratefulness is almost religious. You feel in the other person something divine. He has made you free, or she has made you free, and love has not become a possessiveness.

When love deteriorates it becomes possessiveness, jealousy, struggle for power, politics, domination, manipulation – a thousand and one things, all ugly. When love soars high, to the purest sky, it is freedom, total freedom. It is moksha – it is absolute freedom.

Now the question: “The ultimate search is individual, but can you explain the integral part of the beloved in Tantra and the search for our inner self?”

Tantra is purest love. Tantra is the methodology of purifying love of all its poisons. If you are in love, the love I am talking about, your very love will help the other to be integrated. Your very love will become a cementing force for the other. In your love the other will come together, because your love will give freedom; and under the shade of your love, under the protection of your love, the other will start growing.

All growth needs love – but unconditional love. If love has conditions then growth cannot be total, because those conditions will come in the way. Love unconditionally. Don’t ask anything in return. Much comes on its own – that’s another thing. Don’t be a beggar. In love be an emperor. Just give it and see what happens… a thousand fold it comes back. But one has to learn it. Otherwise one remains a miser; one gives a little and waits for much to come back, and your waiting, your expectation, destroys the whole beauty of it.

When you are waiting and expecting, the other feels that you are manipulating. He may say it or not, but he feels you are manipulating. And wherever you feel manipulation, one wants to rebel against it – because it is against the inner need of the soul, because any demand from the outside disintegrates you. Any demand from the outside divides you. Any demand from the outside is a crime against you, because your freedom is polluted. Then you are no more sacred. You are no more the end – you are being used as a means. And the greatest immoral act in the world is to use somebody as a means.

Each being is an end unto himself. Love treats you as an end unto yourself. You are not to be dragged into any expectations. Tantra is the highest form of love. Tantra is the science, the yoga of love.

So a few things to be remembered. One: love, but not as a need – as a sharing. Love, but don’t expect – give. Love, but remember your love should not become an imprisonment for the other.

Love, but be very careful; you are moving on sacred ground. You are going into the highest, the purest and holiest temple. Be alert! Drop all impurities outside the temple. When you love a person, love the person as if the person is a god, not less than that. Never love a woman as a woman and never love a man as a man, because if you love a man as a man your love is going to be very, very ordinary. Your love is not going to be more than lust. If you love a woman as a woman, your love is not going to soar very high. Love a woman as a goddess, then love becomes worship.

In Tantra, the man who is going to make love to the woman has to worship her for months as a goddess. He has to visualize in the woman the mother-goddess. When the visualization has become total, when no lust arises, when seeing the woman sitting naked before him he simply feels thrilled with a divine energy, no lust arises, the very form of the woman becomes divine, and all thoughts stop and only reverence is felt – then he is allowed to make love.

It looks a little absurd and paradoxical. When there is no need to make love, then he is allowed to make love. When the woman has become a goddess, then he is allowed to make love – because now love can soar high, love can become a climax, a crescendo. Now it will not be of the earth, it will not be of this world; it will not be of two bodies, it will be of two beings. It will be a meeting of two existences. Two souls will meet, merge and mingle, and both will come out of it tremendously alone.

Aloneness means purity. Aloneness means that you are just yourself and nobody else. Aloneness means that you are pure gold; just gold and nothing else… just you. Love makes you alone. Loneliness will disappear, but aloneness will arise.

Loneliness is a state when you are ill with yourself, bored with yourself, tired of yourself, and you want to go somewhere and to forget yourself into somebody else. Aloneness is when you are thrilled just by your being. You are blissful just by being yourself. You need not go anywhere. Need has disappeared. You are enough unto yourself. But now, a new thing arises in your being. You have so much that you cannot contain it. You have to share, you have to give. And whosoever accepts your gift, you will feel grateful towards him that he accepted. He could have rejected it.

Lovers feel grateful that their love has been accepted. They feel thankful, because they were so full of energy and they needed someone to pour that energy into. When a flower blooms and releases its fragrance to the winds it feels grateful to the winds – the fragrance was growing more and more heavy on it. It was becoming almost a burden. It was just as if a woman is pregnant and nine months have passed and the child is not being born, is delaying. Now she is so much burdened; she wants to share the child with the world. That is the meaning of birth.

Up to now she has been carrying the child in herself. It was nobody else’s but her own. But now it is too much; she cannot contain it. It has to be shared; the child has to be shared with the world. The mother has to drop her miserliness. Once the child is out of the womb, it is no more only of the mother; by and by it will go away, and far away. It will become part of the great world. The same happens when a cloud comes full of rain water ready to shower, and when it showers, rains, the cloud feels unburdened and happy and grateful to the thirsty earth because it accepted.

There are two types of love. One: love when you are feeling lonely – as a need, you go to the other. Then love when are not feeling lonely, but alone. In the first case you go to get something; in the second case you go to give something. A giver is an emperor.

Remember, Tantra is not ordinary love. It has nothing to do with lust. It is the greatest transformation of lust into love. The ultimate search is individual – but love makes you individual. If it doesn’t make you individual, if it tries to make you a slave, then it is not love – it is hate pretending love. Pretending to be love, it is hidden hatred just managing somehow; managing somehow and pretending that it is love.

Love of this type kills, destroys the individuality. It makes you less of an individual. It pulls you down. You are not enhanced, you don’t become graceful. You are being pulled into the mud. And everybody starts feeling that he is settling with something dirty. Love should give you freedom – never settle for less. Love should make you a white cloud, completely free, a wanderer in the sky of freedom, with no roots attached anywhere. Love is not an attachment; lust is.

Meditation and love are the two ways to attain to that individuality I am talking about. Both are very, very deeply related together. In fact they are both aspects of the same coin: love and meditation.

If you meditate, sooner or later you will come upon love. If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before – a new quality to your being, a new door opening. You have become a new flame and you want to share now.

If you love deeply, by and by you will become aware that your love is becoming more and more meditative. A subtle quality of silence is entering in you. Thoughts are disappearing, gaps appearing – silences. You are touching your own depth.

Love makes you meditative if it is on the right lines.

Meditation makes you loving if it is on the right lines.

And there are only two types of people in the world, basically: those who will find their meditation through love, and those who will find their love through meditation.

For those who will find their meditation through love, it is Tantra; that is their science. For those who will find love through their meditation, for them it is Yoga; that is their science.

Tantra and Yoga, these are the only two ways – basically, very foundational. But both can go wrong if you don’t understand well. And the criterion is – listen – if you meditate and it doesn’t become love, know well you have gone wrong somewhere. And you will find ninety-nine yogis out of a hundred have gone wrong. The more they enter into their meditation, the more they become against love. They become, in fact, afraid of love. They start thinking of love as a distraction. Then their meditation is not real meditation. A meditation out of which love does not arise is not meditation at all. It is an escape, not a growth. It is as if a seed has become afraid of becoming a plant and blossoming in flowers, and has become afraid of releasing its fragrance to the winds – a seed has become a miser.

You will find this type of yogi all over India. Their meditation has not come to bloom. Their meditation got constipated somewhere on the way. They are stuck. You will not find grace on their faces, and you will not find intelligence in their eyes. You will see around them a certain climate of dullness and stupidity. You will not find them alert, aware, alive. A certain deadness… because if you are alive you have to become loving. To avoid love they avoid life.

And these people will always be escaping towards the Himalayas, anywhere where they can remain without others. Their aloneness will not be aloneness, it will be a loneliness – you can read it on their faces. They are not happy being alone. On their faces you will see a certain type of martyrdom – which is foolishness! – As if they have been sacrificing. Ego you will find there; humbleness, no – because whenever humbleness comes, love comes. If the ego becomes too strong, then love can be destroyed completely. Ego is the opposite of love.

Yoga is in the hands of the wrong people. And the same happened with Tantra. In the name of Tantra, people started just fulfilling their lust and sex and their perversions. It never became meditative. It became a subtle rationalization of lust, sex and passion. It became a trick; you can hide behind it. For all sorts of perversions, Tantra became a blanket to hide behind.

So remember this. Man is very cunning. He has destroyed Yoga, he has destroyed Tantra. Remain alert! Both are good, both are tremendously beneficial, but the criterion to remember is that if you are doing one rightly, the other is to follow as a shadow. If the other is not following, then you are wrong somewhere.

Move back, start again. Go into your mind, analyze your mind. Somewhere you have tricked yourself. And it is not difficult – because you can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself. That is impossible. If you just go within and watch, you will come to know where you have been deceiving. Nobody can deceive himself; it is impossible. How can you deceive yourself?

-Osho

From The Search, Discourse #6

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Dialogues with Jean Klein

Here you have an opportunity to spend some time with Jean Klein. There are two links for Dialogues, parts 1&2. In total they are approximately 2 1/2 hours in length.

Dialogues with Jean Klein, part 1

Dialogues with Jean Klein, part 2

Here you can find more from Jean Klein.

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