Monthly Archives: February 2009

[A sannyasin who had recently left hospital after an attack of typhoid fever, said that she was feeling paranoid and that her partner did not love her. Osho said it was natural to feel negative after illness, unless one was aware, and that illness was a great catharsis. He then asked her partner how he was feeling. He replied that he didn’t hate her, he loved her, but that his initial response to her paranoia was one of anger.]

Osho – It is natural. There is a little misunderstanding that you have to understand, and which is a good thing to understand. When you love somebody, and when you are happy with somebody, of course health is part of that happiness. You share the energy with somebody because the person is healthy, flowing. Then suddenly the partner is ill, health disappears; you are left alone.

The very reason to be with the person is no more there. You were with the person because you were feeling happy and healthy, because the other person was healthy and happy. So everything was good. Now the other person is ill. He or she is no more flowing, and the whole point of being with them is lost – you feel angry. Unless you understand that this is a part of love, that sometimes the other will be ill and that it is natural…. Sometimes you will be ill.

You have to be aware and responsible and see that when the other was healthy and happy, you enjoyed her health and happiness. Now the other person is ill. You have to serve, you have to care so that the person becomes healthy and loving and flowing again. In the West this is happening too much because something very basic is being misunderstood. People think that relationships are for when they are happy, good. When something goes wrong – even a physical illness – then why bother? Find another woman, another man – this seems very inhuman.

If this attitude remains, love cannot grow. Then whatsoever you call love is nothing but sex, because love means that you care for the person in health, in illness. You care for the person. When the person is loving – and sometimes the person is not loving – then too you care. You care for the person and you accept all summers and winters. You accept everything that is in the person. Health is there, illness is there, old age is going to be there, youth is there, anger is there, hatred is there – everything is possible.

When you choose a person, you commit yourself to the person’s totality. I’m not saying that you should celebrate her illness. I’m not saying that you should want her to remain ill, because that is a part of life. Try in every way to bring her back to health but don’t be angry with her. If you want to be angry, be angry with the illness. Don’t create any trouble for her in any way, and then she will come out of the illness sooner.

The illness is frustrating you, but don’t direct it towards her. Of course Geeta is ill, but she is not ill on her own accord – she has not chosen to be ill. One day you will be ill. And this is part of the game of being together – that we care about each other. In fact love is known only when the other partner is in tremendous need of you. When everything is going well, it is nothing much.

When things are going wrong and you still stick to the person, still stand by the person, then only you show that you belong, that the person belongs to you; that you are really together. A togetherness is a sacred commitment. It is a great involvement – for better, for worse, for life, for death. If you really love a person even death can not destroy that love. Death may come and your beloved may die, but your love and your commitment remain. When love reaches to that depth and height, it has a fragrance of the divine – otherwise it is very low, animal-like.

So nothing is wrong. These are the situations one has to grow through. Put your anger against her illness. Because you are feeling angry, she is feeling that you don’t love her, that you hate her or something. So a misunderstanding has been created. Make it clear to her that you don’t want her to be ill and that you are angry because you don’t want her to be ill. You are angry with the illness but not with her. In fact you are angry because you love her. Do you follow me? Put your anger in the right direction and help her to come out of this, mm? She loves you very much. Good.

[At a previous darshan (see ’The Passion For The Impossible’, September 1 st), Osho had advised a couple to work on their relationship. The woman was jealous about the man being with other women. Now they report back to Osho. The woman says that before her energy was more with her man, now it is moving outside more... I’m afraid of becoming attracted to other people.]

Osho – There is nothing wrong in that – it is better than jealousy. It is better than jealousy, because there is nothing worse than jealousy: it is the worst poison. So do whatsoever you want to do but never be jealous. And this is one of the feminine tricks: they concentrate on one man, and they concentrate only to be jealous. So when I say to drop jealousy, then there is no point in concentrating on [your man].

The whole point was that you were enjoying the jealousy and the misery that was being created out of it for you and for him; now there is no point. You were in such a great love – you were thinking it was love, that’s why you were feeling jealousy. What I am trying to show you is that it is not love that feels jealousy. So when you drop jealousy and even love is disappearing… Just see what is happening. You were thinking it is because of love that the jealousy is there, and he was thinking that if the jealousy is dropped, your love will become pure.

And see what actually happens – you drop jealousy and love disappears. So your love was just a garb for your jealousy, a trick to be jealous. And that’s why you were not looking at other men, because if you look at other men you cannot torture him. Then you cannot say, ’Why do you look at other women…?’ because you yourself do it. Women play that trick perfectly. They will never look at any other man so you cannot find fault with them, you cannot find any flaw.

[Your man] cannot say, ’… you look at other people,’ so you can torture him. He is simply in your hands because he sometimes talks with a woman or laughs with a woman. So you can torture him and he feels guilty, you can create much guilt in him. This trick has been so ancient that it has destroyed much in humanity. If you want to torture a man, you have to be almost a saint; only then can you torture. That’s why saints can torture more than anyone else, because they are so good, you cannot find any fault. Their very goodness creates guilt in you.

And women have been very saintly. They pretend to be saintly, but in their saintliness, deep down is a very violent, aggressive attitude. I wanted you to see it because to see it is to get out of this whole nonsense, is to go beyond all this stupidity. Now when I say to drop your jealousy. the whole point is lost; the game is no more meaningful. Then why go on loving only [your boyfriend]? Start looking elsewhere.

Try to understand what is happening inside you. This way you will never be able to find love. You will get attached to another man and you will start torturing him. Either you will torture a man or you will become driftwood. This is something – try to understand it: either a woman becomes saintly or she becomes a prostitute… as if there were no middle course. And. as far as I can see, both are two aspects of the same coin.

If you love the man, drop jealousy and put your whole energy that is released by it into love; because jealousy is taking so much energy – put that energy into love. Looking at everybody is not going to give you any depth of being. I’m not saying to cling to [him]. If you feel there is no love, be finished. The sooner you finish, the better; why waste time? But you will repeat the same thing with everybody else.

You can go on repeating it your whole life and you will always feel miserable, because unless love happens, unless deep intimacy happens, a man is never content. For a woman particularly, it is impossible to feel happy unless she has a shelter of love, unless she can trust in a man, and unless she can feel that a man trusts in her. A woman is very fragile – she needs somebody to support her, to protect her – a woman is like a flower.

So first I told you to drop your jealousy. Now I tell you the second step – to love him as deeply as possible and not to start fooling around. This is a chance. You have done one thing – half the work is done – you dropped jealousy. Now if you miss, the whole point is lost. Dropping jealousy is not going to help, if with jealousy you have also dropped your love.

So for one month try another thing. This will be a great experiment for your life: now love him without jealousy. And this is not the time to wander around and to become a vagabond. Jealousy is dropped, the energy is there – now pour it into love, and something of a very different quality will arise in you. So for one month at least simply forget that anybody else exists in the world – only [him]. Pour your love into him and watch, because the moment you start pouring love, jealousy may come again.

That has to be watched – that’s the whole work to be done: love has to be taken beyond jealousy. The jealousy has to be dropped, discriminated from – love has to be made pure of jealousy. So you can do both things very easily: either you can love him and be jealous, or you can drop both. Both are easy and simple. In both ways you will not be growing. What I am insisting on is to drop jealousy and to go on loving. At least for one month give it a try. You will not lose anything by giving it a try and you will gain much.

This is a great chance to grow – love brings the greatest situations for growth. You have done one thing very well – you tried to drop jealousy. But now you are falling into another error. Do you follow me?

[To the man] Help her, mm? Help her, because she has done something beautiful. But it is natural when jealousy is dropped that immediately love starts disappearing. That is one of the dilemmas. So help her and don’t give her a chance to bring back her jealousy. Don’t give her a chance to look for love with somebody else. For one month at least, give your total love to her. This can be something meaningful, very meaningful for you both.

Source: from Osho Book “The Great Nothing”

Osho – One thing has always to be remembered – that we are not to control the energy. We are just to help it wherever it is moving. We are not to direct it into a certain direction. We are just to help it wherever it is going. We have to go with it. Ordinarily the mind tries to control. It tries to give direction, it tries to give a discipline, it has some ideals to force on the energy. Those ideals are the most dangerous things; that’s what has created so much misery in the world.

My whole effort is to make you natural, spontaneous, and to let the energy control you, not vice
versa. It is not you, your mind, that has to control the energy – it is the energy that has to control you, the energy has to possess you.

[The new sannyasin says she is a doctor.]

Osho – You will become capable. You just need a little more love flowing. It works more than any medicine. Up to now medical science has not been able to find anything more potent than love. If you can be loving to the patient, you will be tremendously successful, because medicines are secondary. They are still not primary. Therapy is a function of love. Love is therapeutic.

You can even sometimes just give water to the patient with deep love, deep compassion, and it will function. There have been many experiments in which the proportion is almost the same. You give the medicine; it works. You give water; it works the same way – what you call a placebo. But if it is given with love and the patient trusts, it functions. When you love, you create trust. And it is one of the most beautiful professions to choose because it allows you to be loving.

It becomes ugly, it has become ugly, because it has become a sort of exploitation. You are exploiting people’s diseases, illnesses. That’s why one feels it is a little heavy. Otherwise it is one of the most beautiful professions – if you love. You may not become very rich if you love, but you will feel tremendously enriched inside.

So if you don’t bother about money too much, there is no problem. Then you can help many people to be healthy and whole. Their prayers will be for you,. and their hearts will be for you and you will be tremendously fulfilled. But if you make money the consideration, then it is one of the worst professions. In a better world, money should not be a relationship at all between the doctor and the patient because it destroys love.

Money is the most anti-love thing in the world. And when you are treating a patient for money, of course the patient becomes irrelevant. He is just a number; he has no being in him. Because he pays you, you treat him, but you become impersonal, indifferent. In fact, deep down, if the patient is very rich, in your unconscious you want him to remain ill a little longer. It creates guilt also, because if a rich patient is cured easily, he will not be paying too much.

So if the patient is rich, the unconscious desire remains in the doctor to let him linger a little. This is very dangerous, but it is so. So make it more meditative, make it more loving. Whatsoever time you are here for, meditate as deeply as possible. Your meditation has started. I have started working on you. Forget everything, and let your love grow.

By the time you go back, you will be able to have a totally different outlook about your profession. I cannot guarantee that that will help you to earn much money, but money is not a consideration. You can always get enough for your needs, but that’s all… more than enough.

But make it a function of your loving heart. Let it be a service, and then you will see that it is helping you. It will help you to grow. What more can you expect? If you are serving human beings, you are doing one of the best things that can be done.

Somebody is painting on the canvas, somebody is writing a poem, and somebody is playing on a musical instrument – you are playing on human beings, you are painting on a human canvas. You are doing something with the most evolved phenomenon in the world. One should be happy. But a different vision is needed, that’s all. It will come….

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”

[A sannyasin says she is not doing the meditations because: It feels too much of an effort. I enjoy just sitting and walking, and being with friends.]

Osho – Then don’t create problems! – because that sitting and enjoying you have been doing your whole life. That has not changed you. Your problems are there. When something is to be done, you don’t want to do it – you enjoy sitting – but the sitting is not going to help you. If it is helping, then there is no difficulty. If you can just change yourself by sitting with friends and enjoying, then I am not here to force you into any discipline, any hard work.

But it is not changing you. That’s what you have been doing for your whole life. You will remain the same Some hard work is needed. And when you have done hard work and you have earned rest, then sit silently and enjoy friends. It is beautiful… nothing is wrong in enjoying friends and sitting silently – it is good, but earn it first.

But how can you-think that sitting and enjoying friends is going to help? It may be just an occupation – just getting into things so that one can pass time, or it may be just an escape from yourself. It may be just a trick of the mind to waste time. If you are really interested in changing and in dropping your problems, then there are two things: either drop them… then I will not say to do any hard work. Simply drop them.

Then you are allowed to sit silently and enjoy and do whatsoever you like, but then drop the problems – and never raise them again. I’m not saying don’t talk about your problems to me – not even to yourself. Drop them completely. And if you cannot drop them, start meditating.

It is hard but it has to be done. At least two, three months hard work is needed. It will cleanse you and it will purify you. It will destroy the old structure and a new possibility will arise. Otherwise you will continue with the old.

And I see that there is a problem. If you want to avoid hard work, drop the problem. But I don’t see that you will be able to drop it so easily. It is a real problem – it is there hanging in your unconscious. And my feeling is that you are avoiding meditations. They are not hard… because so many people are doing them. You are perfectly healthy, full of energy; you are not old. It is just the mind that is avoiding meditation, because the mind knows if it goes into meditation, sooner or later the structure will explode and you will have to change.

My feeling is that you are enjoying your problems, your depression, your sadness; you are enjoying it in a subtle way. If you want to enjoy it, then too, there is no problem – but then enjoy it deliberately, knowingly. Then depression is no more depression.

So tomorrow, think about it – these two things. Sit silently tonight. The alternatives are there: either you drop the problems or you have to start meditating. And not so-so, lukewarm. You have to really work hard and go into it. Tomorrow write a letter about whatsoever you have chosen. And I am happy whatsoever you choose, so don’t bother about me; don’t think about what I would like.

Both are good, perfectly good. In fact if you can drop problems simply like that, that’s beautiful; nothing could be better. But if you cannot, then tomorrow morning get up and start Dynamic meditation. And all five you have to do. When the camp is finished, do two meditations and the Nadabrahma, the humming meditation, at home – three meditations. And after three weeks I am going to give you a meditation – but first you decide, mm? Good.

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”