Osho – Being in Love means you have to Seduce the other person every day

[A sannyasin said that he had been living under a tree in Goa for five years, until he fell in love with a woman and tried to settle down with her, but has been too much for him. When they are apart he loves her; when they are together it is heavy.]
Osho – This is the old story! Love is an old story. Nothing is new in it – it is always the old and the same pattern, and everybody repeats the same thing. Nothing new ever happens in love; it is just a rut… A few things to be understood….
One: love is always beautiful in the beginning, very rarely beautiful in the middle, and almost never beautiful in the end; that’s the whole process of love. So there are two ways: one is to go on changing the partner. Each time you think that the beginning is ending, change immediately. That is one way, and is what the west is doing. The moment you feel that the love is no more the same as it used to be, that the honeymoon is over, you change the partner. Then again you are at the beginning and you can go on changing… but you never grow like that.
The East has another trick: get married to a person with whom you are not in love. Then there will be no bad ending because there is no beginning: it is just finished from the very beginning, it has ended before it begins. That’s what the East has done… but both the eastern and western ways are meaningless. The third possibility – and this is my suggestion – is to be in love but not to start thinking of marriage. That’s what you did – you started thinking of making a home; then you are getting into trouble, the old rut.
Be in love as birds and animals are in love. Be in love but don’t start thinking of settling. Settling is very unsettling, because once you start settling the romance is over. The ordinary life is so heavy that it crushes the flower of romance and kills it. Once you start settling, small things become very important and love becomes secondary.
How to manage for money and where to purchase a house and how to manage for furniture, and
these things become more important, and love becomes secondary. These things are infinite – the list is long – and love comes only in the end and so it never comes! By the time you are finished with the house and the money and the furniture, you are falling asleep.
By and by you completely forget that you were trying to make this house to love this woman.
So don’t do that again – remember it! Always keep a distance between the person you love and
yourself. There is no need to settle: settling means that you start taking the other for granted.
That is the meaning of being a wife and a husband: the other is taken for granted.
You are only lovers if you don’t take the other for granted. Being in love means you have to seduce the other person every day: you cannot take him for granted, you don’t have any property right, you will have to persuade the other, so the cooing continues. And that’s what love is. Once things have settled and you know that you possess the woman and the woman knows that she possesses you, then through that possessiveness all sorts of jealousies, anger, hatred, fight and nastiness arise.
Then you will start repeating the pattern that you have learned from your parents and she has learned from her parents. Remember one thing: you don’t know what your mother did when she fell in love, you don’t know what your father did when he fell in love, but you know what they did when they were settled. You know them as wife and husband, you have not known them as
lovers. This is something very important to understand.
You cannot repeat anything when you are a lover, but when you become a husband or a wife and a householder, then you know. And you have only one programme, your mind is programmed.
… Friendship is always good. It is more civilised than love, mm ? And you are an ancient sannyasin, not a new one, mm?… … So it will be very difficult for you.
[The sannyasin answers: That’s why I was clinging so much. She was the only female that I could come close to in this life time.]
That happens to ascetic people, mm? They get starved and worked up, then one day suddenly they start clinging to a woman. They can cling too much and that can destroy the whole thing.
Just continue to be yourself, the way you used to be… and remember one thing: she fell in love with you who was sitting under a tree and meditating.
She never fell in love with a man who was under a roof. Mm? – when you are under a roof you are another man, she is no more in love with you. Always remember that! She had fallen in love with a vagabond and then you start settling. … Start living in Goa under some tree and [she] will be in love again!
Women are always attracted to an ascetic person rather than to householders. So start being in
samadhi again … and you can watch out of the corner of the eye whether [she] is coming, mm?
Little holidays are good; but basically you are an ascetic person, so remain that way!
Source: from Osho Book “This is It”

Osho on Prostitution – Prostitution is a betrayal of the Body

[A sannyasin says she has been working as a prostitute in the West. Returning there now to earn money to return here, she wonders whether to return to prostitution or not. A voice inside her says no – on the other hand it is a quick way to make money.... ]

Osho – Then do something else, mm? do something else… because prostitution is a betrayal of the body. There is nothing morally wrong in it but spiritually much is wrong in it. You are allowing your body to be used like a thing – that’s a great insult to the body.
When the other so-called religious leaders say they are against prostitution their reasons are
different. When I say that it is not good my reasons are totally different. My first reason is that
one needs to be in deep reverence with one’s own body, one needs to be in love with the body, so
how can one allow somebody to use it as a thing? It is a sacred thing! Yes, you can share when you love a person, but for money it is ugly. It is one of god’s gifts to you – you can give it as a gift, but don’t sell it. You have not purchased it, so you have no right to sell it!
Mm? – it is a gift: we should be grateful to god that he has given us such a beautiful body. It is a
temple. So when I say not to go into prostitution, my reasons are just the opposite to those other religious people will give. They are against sex, they are against joy. They are against anything that makes people delighted – that is their reason. They are sex-repressive people: they want everybody to be very limited in their sexual relationships.
And a prostitute brings a freedom, that’s why they are against them. They want a very rigid
monogamy in the world: man possessing woman, woman possessing man, one-to-one. They are all for man being used as property and woman being used as property. To me, that too is prostitution. What they call marriage, to me is nothing but a permanent prostitution.
Yes, you prostitute yourself to the same man again and again, that’s all. You don’t change the man, but it is prostitution because it is based on money – it is a permanent license. To me the so-called marriage is nothing but a sort of prostitution. I am all for love and I am completely against marriage. Because I am against marriage, I am against prostitution too. Try to understand me: to me prostitution is just a by-product of marriage. The day marriage disappears from the earth, prostitution will also disappear.
Where will you find a woman or a man to share his body with you because of money? It will be
impossible. People will love and respect their body so much that will it be impossible. Yes, they can share their love energy with you but only when they love. . .there will be no other kind of relationship. Right now the marriage is a prostitution; there is no love. The wife goes on yielding to the husband because she has to, and the husband can force sex – legally! He can threaten that he will throw her out of the house, that he will not take any financial responsibility; then she will be on the streets.
To avoid the streets she chooses this permanent kind of prostitution, otherwise she will be with many people. And one man is so ugly – how much more ugly will it be with so many men? So it is better; it is the lesser evil. Never treat your body as a thing. It is divine, it is divine energy. Yes, if you love a man give your total heart, give your total body, being, all that you have. But when the love disappears, or if the love is not there, then there is no other way. The body can be shared only in love: don’t share even with your husband if the love is not there.
If today you find that you are not in a love mood with your husband, say simply that it will be
prostitution! When love is there, love makes everything beautiful. When love is not there, everything becomes a nightmare, ugly.
So it may take a little longer for you to work, but that’s good. Go, do something else – be respectful about your body. It is a god’s gift, and you are responsible! God will ask you finally what you did with your body. So go, mm? and go with tremendous trust – there is no problem in it. It will take a little longer to come back, but that’s not a problem. Avoid the old trap. It will be easier for you to fall into the trap because easy money always can have an appeal, but that is dangerous. And you are strong enough now – nothing to be worried about.

Source: from Osho Book “This is it”

Osho on whole art of being a genius. Genius is just a little more stubborn than ordinary people

[A sannyasin who is a photographer said she was feeling low energy and disinterested in
photography.]
Osho – This comes again and again in everybody’s life: whatsoever you are doing you get tired of, you get fed up, you get bored with it. It is very easy to be interested in a new thing – it needs great guts to remain interested in an old thing. That’s what makes a person a genius. Otherwise everybody will become a genius. The only difference between a genius and an ordinary person is that the genius has the guts to stick at something even when he is feeling bored, fed up.
These are plateaus that come. Mm? you work with great joy because something is new – there is a great exploration, new territory and you are enchanted… it is like a romance, a honeymoon. But by and by you become acquainted with the territory; you have looked into all the corners of it and there seems to be nothing new. Now you know all about it so the sensation is no more there, the thrill is no more there.
Now, it is at this point that if you can stick at it and make efforts to find something new in it, you will break through one plane, and on another plane the exploration starts again. If you simply listen to this boredom and you drop out, then those seven years will have gone down the drain.
That’s how many people lose their life energy: they don’t stick at things. It really needs courage to remain with the old, because when the plateau comes and everything seems to be just a repetition, doing the same thing again and again and again, one feels to change – change the wife, change the husband, change the job, change the friend, change the town, go somewhere else, do something new. But with the new again after seven years the same will happen!
You can change ten times in your life and after each seven years the same will happen, so the whole life will be a wastage. If you go on digging on the same spot for seventy years you will reach to some depth – and it can be reached from anywhere.
Now photography is such a creative thing and it is going to be more and more creative in the
future because more sophisticated instruments will be available – they are available. You can do
a thousand and one things with photography now; just a few years ago they were just impossible to do. One has to be creative, inventive… one has to look for new ways, new visions, new dreams. And sometimes this is natural, this is part of nature: one feels stuck.
Those who drop out are the rolling stones: they don’t gather any moss. And it has nothing to do with the work itself – it is just the tendency of the mind. Photography or painting or music, or dancing – anything – will come to the same point, and once you have made a pattern it will be repeated. This is really a sheer wastage of energies.
Go on working in it. If you are feeling stuck, that simply means that you have to explore new ways, new directions, new dimensions in it; and they are always there! Life is so mysterious that it is never finished. A man can go on working with a small thing and can devote his whole life to it and still there will be much to be explored after he has died.
This is the whole art of being a genius. The genius is just a little more stubborn than ordinary people, that’s all. He does not listen to the mind – he goes on hammering: he digs a hole. A sufi master – Jalaluddin Rumi – once took his disciples to a field. There were eight holes in the field and no hole had any water; the whole field was wasted. The disciples asked, ’Master, why have
you brought us here?’
He said, ’To teach you something. This farmer wants to dig a well. He digs eight feet, ten feet, then he gets fed up with it and he thinks that this place is not right; he is bored so he starts digging at some other place. He has done this work the whole year round – he has destroyed the whole field and not a single hole has become a well. Now if he had dug at the same spot that well would have been one hundred feet deep.’ Jalaluddin said to his disciples, ’Remember this – the same applies to the inner world too.’
Just gather yourself together and don’t try to find excuses – simply start working with your total energy. From tomorrow morning start without thinking about it! Just go ahead, and within a few days it will be broken… and when it is broken, you will feel so thrilled. Whenever any plateau is broken, life takes on such a beauty and the work becomes such a joy. Then it is a second honeymoon and on a deeper level. And I am saying this to you to be remembered as a golden rule – it is so in every way, in every direction of life.
If you love a man, one day you will feel finished; that is the right moment to go on loving, to gather your energies and to explore the man again. If you can break that plateau you will see a new man arising before you… fresher than ever, younger than ever, more beautiful than ever. In fact you had never known such beauty and such depth. You have broken one more screen – the man is more available to you… again one day you will feel stuck! And remember: those who lose heart and escape, are great losers. Be a little more stubborn, stick to it. For three months do all that you can do with effort and then you tell me, mm?
Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”

Osho – Never fight over children because then the child starts feeling ’What is happening?'

[A sannyasin asks about returning to the West to take custody of her son, as she and her husband are divorcing.]

Osho – This is my suggestion: if you feel that you are too disturbed you can go and do whatsoever you want to do. But this is my suggestion – that going and fighting for the son is not going to help you, is not going to help the father, is not going to help the son either! If you really love the son then there is no problem you can leave him with the father. There is no problem.

The father loves the son as much as you do, and he may be simply worried that you have gone
berserk or something. Mm? – you have become a sannyasin in orange clothes, and you have fallen into some hypnotic situation, the father must be thinking. And of course he has to think about his son too. If you bring the son, he will become a sannyasin, so the father is afraid, mm?

But my feeling is that there is no harm for the son. And it is always good for the son…. He has been with you for five, seven years; that is quite enough education you have given, as much as he needs from a woman. Let him be with the father and he will be enriched by that; he will not suffer through it. But if he feels this conflict – that the father wants to pull him towards him and you want to pull him towards you – he will be torn. Think of him. If you love him, then think of him.
Never fight over children because then the child starts feeling ’What is happening?’ – he is in a
conflict then. … This is hurting your ego, nothing else, so you want to take the revenge on the son. If he is settled and feeling good, then perfectly good. That’s all love wants – that the child should be happy. If he is happy there, perfectly good! That’s why I am saying that you can be here for three or four months more. First you become really orange, not only from the outside but from the inside too.
When even your blood has become orange juice then you can go. And then the child will see what a beautiful mother! What has happened to the mother? – something beautiful, something tremendous! Then he will be able to come. He will become interested in me. Right now there is no point. Right now you will go and you will be anxious and anxiety-ridden and you will start fighting and that will create a mess. The thing can go to the court and things become ugly, mm? That’s not good, not good for the child.
And what is wrong? He is seven years old, almost old – because children learn fifty percent by the age they are seven. He will learn only fifty percent more in the rest of his life, so he has been taught almost fifty percent by you. Now let fifty percent be done by the father. Nothing Is wrong in it. But if you are worried too much, you can go and have your trip. It is meaningless. Then it will be having it the american way. You can go and fight and force the child… but I don’t see that it has any point. Even there the child can say ’I don’t want to come’ – then? Then you will feel more hurt.
The child must be feeling more freedom with the father, because the father cannot be such a guard for twenty-four hours as the mother can be. The father has a thousand other things to do, so he must be free – looking at tv the whole day! He will be enjoying… more! When he is with you you are after him twenty-four hours!
My feeling is: let him enjoy, and after three months you can go. Then it will be possible. Let him
become interested. Just go on writing letters to him about what is happening to you, that’s all. Let the child be acquainted, and once he wants to come there is no problem. Just wait, mm?
And it will help you, your growth also, to wait. This is just egoistic – and you understand it, but it is hard to follow your own intelligence sometimes. Other things become more valuable: revenge, and ’what does this man think – that he can have the child? I will show him!’ No need to do that, no need.
You have taken such a turn, things are growing and much is possible now. Just going in the middle of it will not be good. You are very fragile. The plant has just come out of the earth. It is very soft and weak; it can be destroyed by anything. By any accident it can be destroyed.
I always allow people to go when I feel they are strong enough and there is no fear, they can go
anywhere, and they will be growing anywhere they are… then I send them. But to you I will not
suggest that right now. And you are going for a very wrong purpose… almost immoral. Wait, mm? just wait. Just enjoy it here and the child will come…

Osho – It is very difficult to communicate with a wife, with a husband

[A sannyasin who was leaving for the West, said he would like to share what he has found with Osho with his wife. They have been separated for a long time, and plan to divorce. She is very negative against him.]

Osho – I think divorce will be good and then there may be some possibility, not before it. Let there be a divorce but make it as pleasant as possible – don’t make it an ugly affair, not at least from your side. Her side is her responsibility, from your side make it absolutely easy. Whatsoever you can do to make it easier, do it. Let it be a very very silent, pleasant thing.

Don’t say good-bye in a bad mood; that much we always owe to the other person. She has lived for sixteen years with you, shared her life, has given you children, has been mother to your children… sometimes things go wrong. Nothing to be worried about – that’s human.

So the first thing: let the divorce be there… and this can make a bridge between you and her. If you can allow this divorce to be really pleasant so that she can feel your compassion and love for her – can feel your love for the children, and that you are trying to make everything as cheerful for her as possible – out of that a friendship can arise, and only then can you share me with her.

Right now it will be very difficult, right now communication has broken, mm? You live in different worlds, you don’t speak the same language any more. So right now any effort from your side to convey anything will simply make her angry, antagonistic. She will argue: just to prove you wrong she will say anything and she will not listen, so this is not the right moment.

Always remember, when you want to communicate something to somebody, choose a right moment and a right climate. You can do the right thing in a wrong moment and then it is meaningless. And sometimes when the moment is right, even a small effort brings great harvest, and when the moment is wrong, great effort brings only frustration. Always watch out for the right time – that is immensely valuable.

It is very difficult to communicate with a wife, with a husband. Even when things are going well it is very difficult to communicate, because the relationship is somehow inimical, the relationship is that of domination. Whatsoever we say on the surface is not the point, but deep down it is a question of domination – it is political. The husband is trying to dominate in a thousand and one ways, the wife is trying to dominate in her own subtle and feminine ways. Her being sad may be nothing but an effort to dominate you, to make you more frustrated, to take revenge.

So even when ordinarily things are going well, then too it is difficult to communicate. It is very difficult for the husband to convert his wife to his philosophy, to his religion – so is the case for the wife: the wife cannot convert the husband… it is even more difficult. The husband feels very much offended. The very thing that the wife understands more than him is offending… it is very against the male ego.

And wives always know that husbands are foolish. In the first place if they were not foolish, why
should they fall in love with them ? There is a deep self-condemnation. The moment you fall in
love with a woman, she understands that you are a fool. It may not be very conscious, she may not say so, she may not even understand it, but deep down she has understood that you are a fool… otherwise who can fall in love with her? She is not in love with herself, so how can you be in love with her? She does not see anything beautiful in her, so how can you? You are deluded, you are a fool.

No wife believes that the husband can be wise – not even the wife of Socrates believed it, not even the wife of Buddha believed it. No wife has ever believed that the husband can be wise. The whole world may believe… but the wife cannot. She knows your foolishness, she knows your childishness, she knows your sexuality, she knows your lust. How can you be wise? She has seen you make love to her. How can she think that you can meditate, how can she think that now you have become a sannyasin? Whom are you trying to deceive? You can deceive the whole world; you cannot deceive the wife!

So many centuries of condemnation of sex has made it so. The wife knows that a sexual person is not a spiritual person. Now who knows better that you are a sexual person? Your whole relationship is that of sex, and if sex is sin then the husband and wife are joined together by sin. So the husband cannot believe that the wife has become holy and the wife cannot believe that her husband has become holy.

Sometimes it is possible that the husband may think that the wife has become spiritual… because wives don’t take much interest; at least they don’t show it. They are always passive partners in the love affair, and they show that they are just tolerating sex. But the man is very active, too interested; the wife cannot believe that the husband can become spiritual. So many centuries of wrong conditioning, and then continuous effort to dominate each other – things are bound to go wrong.

Even when you are on a honeymoon, when there exists a certain rapport between you and
the wife which will never exist again, when the romance is fully alive, even then communication is impossible – and the reason is that then whatsoever you say, the wife will say ’yes’ Not that she understands, no – understanding is not possible at all – but she will say ’yes’ Whatsoever you say is great and whatsoever she says is great. Nobody is in any mood to understand. You are so much foolishly in love, hypnotised by each other, that ’no’ does not come, ’yes’ comes. Then too there is no communication.

First ’no’ does not come, ’yes’ comes, and later on when you are settled, only ’no’ comes, ’yes’ does not come. Either way understanding cannot happen. Understanding needs a clarity where there is no hurry to say no or yes: you are neither enchanted, magnetised by each other, nor are you antagonistic to each other. You simply look with clarity at what the other is saying. I have never seen wives and husbands in a dialogue. The honeymoon is a monologue and later on also, the marriage is a monologue.

So the first thing I would like to say is: go back home, make this divorce as easy as possible, don’t blame her, don’t fight. If she wants the children, give the children to her… give everything that she wants. That will give her an insight into you and that will become the possibility of sharing me with her, otherwise there is no possibility. If she can feel that really you have become a sannyasin – you don’t fight, you don’t want to damage her in any way, you are ready to give whatsoever she wants: the children, the money, the house, whatsoever she wants…. Only that will give her an inkling into your being – that you are not the same person with whom she is taking the divorce; it is not the same person with whom she has lived the sixteen years.

This is not the man who has fathered her children – this is a new man, a new being. That has to be the beginning…. After the divorce go on taking care as you have been, because marriage or no marriage is meaningless. Go on taking care, doing whatsoever you can do even after the divorce. The children will be taken care of by her; you take care of her and the children too.

Go on doing whatsoever you have been doing, as if it doesn’t matter – divorce or no divorce – and then there is a possibility of a friendship ari
sing which will be far more valuable than your so-called love. Then you can share. It will depend on how you behave with this divorce thing… and it will be a great experience to you. If you can give unconditionally, it will be a great experience….

Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”