Question – Beloved Osho, Why it is so difficult for Sannyasins to have deep relationships with Non-Sannyasins?

Osho – It is natural. To be a sannyasin means you are deprogrammed. To relate with non-sannyasins is bound to be difficult because they are programmed people. Their programmed minds and your deprogrammed minds cannot have anything in common. You will think them stupid; they will think you licentious, rebellious.

There is no possibility of communication. It will become more and more difficult the more sannyasins get deeper into meditation. Then those people will not be able to understand at all. They will think that you have been corrupted, you have beenbrainwashed, you have been hypnotized. All kinds of condemnation will come upon you from their side. And from your side, you cannot conceive how people can go on believing in such stupid ideas. Everything they believe in will look idiotic — their God, their heaven and hell, and their churches, their prayers.

You have become an outsider. You do not belong to the crowd. You have been able to see something of which they are not aware. It is just like a man having eyes trying to communicate with a group which is blind. There will be a thousand and one difficulties. You cannot mention colors, you cannot mention light; you cannot mention a beautiful sunset, because they will start laughing: “You are living in fantasies — these things don’t exist.”

And for you the problem is that you know they exist, and you know that these people are blind and they need some treatment for their eyes. But you cannot force them; they don’t think they are blind. They simply think that this is how one has to be. And they are in the majority. They may even violently force your eyes to be destroyed just to help you, so that you don’t talk nonsense. You talk about colors and rainbows and flowers and sunsets and stars — which are not part of their mind at all. But they are powerful. They are in the majority; they have the government in their hands — they can do anything they want. And you cannot do anything against them, nor would the heart of a sannyasin like to do anything against them — you can only feel compassion for them. You can try to convince them, argue with them, but your arguments and your efforts to convince them are not going to lead you anywhere, because you are speaking two different languages.

It is one of the most difficult things, and it has always been so. Not only to sannyasins, but to all people of greater perceptivity, greater sensitivity, the masses have been antagonistic. Vincent van Gogh… just a few days ago I saw a copy of one of his paintings in which he makes his stars like spirals. Nobody has painted stars like spirals — you don’t see them as spirals. He was condemned even by the painters of his day. All the critics were against him; all the painters thought that he was crazy. Every night you can see the stars, but have you ever seen spirals?

It was just a few months ago that astronomers came to realize that every star is a spiral. The distance is so much — that’s why we cannot see the spiral. But it is strange how Vincent van Gogh got the idea. He was not a physicist — he had no instruments. It took one hundred years for scientists to develop delicate instruments, sensitive instruments which can see stars as they actually are. But he had painted them a hundred years ago exactly as they are finding them now. Their photographs and Vincent van Gogh’s paintings are exactly the same!

But the poor fellow was not understood at all. He was turned out of his home because his parents were poor, and they said, “We cannot afford to keep you. You are now grown up. We have given you all the education that we could manage — now you can become a priest in a church. We cannot afford for you to be a painter.”

His father was working in a coal mine; his parents were really poor, and you cannot say anything against them. And Vincent van Gogh’s first works are just coal sketches — but they are tremendously beautiful. Now even those coal sketches have a value of millions of dollars. But his parents would not give him money for paints, for canvases, and finally they had to turn him out.

One of his friends took pity on van Gogh and asked him to stay with him until he got some employment. And he fell in love with the sister of the friend — just love at first sight. The first day in the house of the friend, he proposed to the girl. The girl simply laughed; they were more comfortably-off people — better educated, middle class, higher than Vincent van Gogh and his family.

She could not believe that this poor beggar could even dare to ask her. Jokingly, she said, “Can you give me any proof of your love? Can you put your hand on this candle?” — it was burning by their side.

He said, “Yes!” and he kept his hand on the burning candle. His whole hand was burnt. The woman got frightened: this man seems to be mad also! She pulled his hand away, but he said, “Why are you pulling it away? Let me keep it there until you say yes.”

The whole family gathered there. They pulled him away from the candle — he had burned his hand for his whole life — and he was turned out of the house the next day.

A man of great sensitivity — but no woman was ready to love him, because he looked crazy. Nobody was buying his paintings, and still he went on painting. His brother was employed — his younger brother — and was sending van Gogh the exact amount of money so that he could have his food every day. Each week he would send money — enough for one week only. And Vincent van Gogh would only eat four days in the week, and three days he would fast and purchase canvases and paints. And nobody was buying his paintings. People were simply laughing and saying, “He is simply mad! We have never seen such paintings. What is he doing?”

But it seems whatever he was doing is going to come true, slowly, slowly. If his vision of stars is now confirmed by physics, it is simply a miracle that with bare eyes, he could see that they are spirals. Nobody in the whole of history has even thought about it, so you cannot think that he borrowed the thought from somebody. Nobody has seen stars like that. And he could not prove anything; he simply went on saying, “This is how I see them.” But everybody laughed, because they also could see the stars but they didn’t see spirals.

This tremendous sensitivity… but he was misunderstood everywhere. And finally. when he was only thirty-three, they drove him mad. Hungry, starving, and everybody laughing and condemning… not a single painting was sold. His brother tried to send a man with money and said, “At least purchase one painting. He will have the consolation that somebody has purchased one painting.”

The man went — he had no idea about painting. Van Gogh was so ecstatic that somebody had come finally to purchase a painting — so he was showing him all his paintings. And the man said, “Don’t waste my time — any will do. This is the money.”

You can understand how much van Gogh would have been shocked. He simply said, “That means this money has been given to you by my brother — because you are not even looking at the paintings. I cannot sell any painting to you. These paintings are not for people who cannot understand them. And just tell my brother never to do such a thing to me — it hurts more.” And it was found actually that that was the case.

Van Gogh died without selling a single painting. Now only two hundred paintings have survived, and each painting is worth not less that one million dollars; each painting has a certain quality that has never been found in any other painting.

He became mad, but he continued to paint even while he was mad; in his madhouse he continued to paint. Even the paintings he has done in the madhouse are tremendously beautiful. Perhaps he was not mad; perhaps he was simply forced by the medical profession and other painters to feel that he was doing mad things.

After one year he was released, because he was absolutely nonviolent; he created no trouble for anybody, he simply continued to paint. In fact he was not willing to leave because it was far easier in the hospital. The hospital was paying everything for his paintings, and he was getting food for seven days, so this was far easier than to be outside.

But they forced him; they said, “We don’t think you are mad, and if you are mad then there is no way to cure you. You simply get out.” Outside he could not manage and simply committed suicide. He wrote a letter to his brother in which he says, “What is the point of living in a world where nobody understands you? And there is no hope that anybody will ever understand me — at least not in my life. It is better to withdraw.”

So this is not only with sannyasins, it is an old story. People of immense qualities, but with a different perspective and different sensitivity than the ordinary mind has, have been tortured, and there has been no way to communicate.

All that the sannyasins can do, rather than arguing with those people, is accept whatever condemnation they have and still ask them, “Do you see that we are happier than you? Do you see that we love more than you? Can you see that we are more silent, more integrated than you? We may be brainwashed, hypnotized — all your condemnations we accept.” Just raise the question, “Are you more contented than we are? — although we have nothing. Are you less worried than we are? — although we don’t have anything that makes us not worry, and we have everything that would make you commit suicide.”

Don’t argue — simply make it clear to them, “We are homeless, we don’t have any money, we don’t belong to any society, we have abandoned all the nations, all the religions. Still, we are happy. We don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, but today is enough. When tomorrow comes it will take care of itself.”

Rather than intellectual arguments, existential comparison perhaps may help them. Perhaps they may start thinking about it, that there is some truth in it. And that is the only possible way to bring them closer. And once they are closer and open and ready to listen, then there is every possibility of communion. First, you have to melt the ice — and that is the biggest problem. Once the ice is melted, then things become easier.

So first, accept all their condemnation rather than retaliating, arguing against it. That will not help. What is going to help is to just accept what they are saying, then make an existential comparison and tell them, “You can think about it, and if you feel that we have got something that you have not got, we are ready to share it with you.”

And those people are in misery. They may be pretending they are not, but they are in misery, they are in suffering. If you can just make a question arise in their mind, so that they can look at their fake masks and can see their reality for a moment, they will be ready to listen to you. There is no other way. You cannot force, you cannot argue, because on that ground the conflict cannot be resolved. It can be resolved only on existential grounds. And that’s where many sannyasins miss the point.

If people say, “You are hypnotized,” you start arguing, “We are not!” No, you should say, “It is possible; you may be right, we may be hypnotized. But what do you think: being in misery and not hypnotized, or being in bliss and being hypnotized — what alternative will you choose? And what is wrong in being hypnotized? Have you ever been hypnotized? Do you know what it is? Have you ever experienced anything of it — or just heard the word?”

There are millions of people who have just heard words, and they go on throwing those words around: hypnotism, mesmerism, brainwashing — and they don’t understand a thing they are saying.

So rather than arguing, you can say, “If you know about brainwashing, I am ready: brainwash me, so I can see what brainwashing is. If you know what hypnotism is, hypnotize me, so I can experience what hypnotism is.”
Make one thing certainly clear to them: “You don’t know — you are simply throwing words about.”

I was a student of a professor, and there was always conflict with him for the simple reason that he went on throwing words about and he did not know what they meant. I would insist, “You explain that word. And I will not be satisfied only by an intellectual explanation. I am ready — brainwash me, hypnotize me, I am ready.” But he was just throwing words about.
He reported to the vice-chancellor of that university that I was a continual trouble because I would contest each word, that he had to prove…. The vice-chancellor asked me to come to see him. The professor was present there — I immediately understood what the problem was.

The vice-chancellor said to me, “Why do you create trouble?”
I said, “I don’t create trouble. You just wait and see.” I asked that professor — he was a Bengali man, Professor Bhattacharya — I asked, “Have you read the book written by Ouspensky, TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS?”

He said, “Yes! It is such a famous book. I loved it when I read it.”
And I told the vice-chancellor, “Phone the library and enquire if there is any such book — because I have simply made up the name of the book. There is a book TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS, but it is not written by P.D. Ouspensky, it is written by Ludwig Wittgenstein — and this man has never seen the book. This is my whole problem in the class.

“Do you think I am creating trouble or is this man the trouble? Can’t he be honest and say, `I have never heard of such a book’? But he cannot accept his ignorance — about anything.”
The vice-chancellor phoned to the librarian; the librarian said, “P.D. Ouspensky has never written such a book. There is a book of this name, but the author is Ludwig Wittgenstein.”

The vice-chancellor said to the professor, “You have to understand that if you don’t know, you should not pretend to know. And this boy has made his point absolutely clear.”
I said to the vice-chancellor, “This has been happening almost every day. This man never goes to the library. I have looked through the whole philosophy department in the library: his name is not on a single book’s card. And I have looked in his house, because he lives by the side of one of my friends” — who was a professor of economics — “and the houses are joined together, they are sharing half and half. So I just made an arrangement with my friend, `Someday let me into his house. I want to see what books he has.’

“And all that he has are magazines like PLAYBOY, which I don’t think have any philosophy. I have not seen a single book which is concerned with philosophy — and he is a professor of philosophy! And do you think a professor of philosophy reading PLAYBOY is going to discuss philosophy with me? He has passed his examinations — that must have been thirty years ago, but in thirty years philosophy has moved on further and further.”
That was the last time that the professor allowed me in the class. The next day when I went into the class he said, “Listen, you may be right. Yesterday you put me in such a bad situation — I don’t want to argue at all. Either you promise me not to argue in the class or just don’t come to my class.”
I said, “I always wanted not to come to your class because it is so worthless. But you have to give me ninety percent attendance.”

He said, “I will give you one hundred percent, but don’t come to my class.”
I said, “Can I come to your house sometime?”
He said, “I don’t want to see your face!”
I said, “It is up to you: if you have decided to remain retarded, what can I do? But once in a while I will try to come to your house, because I want to help you to come out of your retardedness.”

He was very angry with the economics professor: “You allowed him in my house to look into my books — and certainly there are no books, just magazines and other things. He brought the whole thing before the vice-chancellor, and I felt so insulted!”

I went to the vice-chancellor and I said, “This is the situation: he is willing to give me hundred percent attendance, but he does not want me to attend the class. And I want to inform you that this is absolutely criminal. You go to the class and check how many days I have been present.”

The vice-chancellor did it; he went to the class at the end of the month, and I was marked as present the whole month. He asked Bhattacharya, “Are you sure that this person has been present the whole month?”

Bhattacharya became suspicious that I must have been doing something behind his back. He said, “Yes, I am certain; otherwise why should I give him that percentage of attendance unless he was present?”
The vice-chancellor asked the students. They said, “No, we have not seen him for one month.”

Bhattacharya came to my room in the hostel that evening and said, “Please, come to the class from tomorrow. I am very sorry, and I accept that I don’t know anything about the latest developments in philosophy. But you have given me so much trouble that if you don’t come to my class, I am going to lose my job.”

I said, “Don’t be worried — I will not do any harm to you. I simply want you to understand that you should not throw names around. You go on throwing names around like Martin Heidegger, Jaspers — you know nothing about these people, and I have been wasting my whole nights with these people. You simply stop! What is the point? — if you are not knowledgeable, accept it.

“I am trying to become knowledgeable, and I think it honorable of you to recognize that you DON’T know. I don’t think there is any disrespect in it, because one cannot know everything in the whole world. There are millions of things, for everybody, that he does not know. So you learn one thing: when you don’t know, you have to accept in the class that you don’t know.”

That discussion with him… I went to the class the next day and he really accepted three times in one hour that he did not know anything about something. And afterwards he thanked me, “It was such a great release and freedom to say, `I don’t know.’ I have never known such a relief. It was a tension and anguish to tell a lie, knowing perfectly well that I didn’t know this man, this philosophy, and still saying I do — because this was my conditioning, that the professor has to know everything, at least more than the student.”

I said, “Forget that, and there is no problem” — and since that day there was no problem. In fact, even in the class he would stop sometimes and ask me, “Perhaps you have some idea about this that you can explain to the class.”

He had been a very disrespected person; he became a person very respected by the students — just by accepting that he was ignorant about some things. His humbleness created respectability.

It is a difficult task with people, and you have to deal with different people in different ways. No certain method can be given, because it may work with one person, it may not work with another person. So you have to be very watchful about the person to see what will work.

One thing is certain, that they are all in suffering, all in tension and anguish, and they all want to get out of it. So from there you have to find your clue, and the key. And if you are watchful enough, you can always find the clue and the key, and a communion is possible.

And you have nothing to lose. That person really wants to lose many things — his misery, his suffering, his anguish. And he has nothing else; his whole being is full of hell. Don’t fight with the person. Try to accept whatever he is saying. Ask him questions about what he says and let him feel that he knows nothing about these things. Once he accepts his ignorance about anything, you have a loophole from where you can enter into his being.

His knowledge is a protection of his personality, his ego. So first you have to make a dent somewhere. So just listen to him and ask a few questions, and you will be able to find where he is just absolutely ignorant. Then you can make possible a little space to connect through. And let him feel your love, your compassion, your peace, your blissfulness.

It will take a little time for him to ask you, “What has happened to you?” But sooner or later he is bound to ask, because he is sick, and nobody wants to remain sick. If you can prove that you have come out of the ordinary sickness of human beings… Only then can a sannyasin have a communication with non-sannyasins.

Source – Osho Book “Light on the Path”

Question – Should one first come to terms with ones own Loneliness before entering into relationship?

Osho -Yes, you have to come to terms with your loneliness, so much so that the loneliness is transformed into aloneness. Only then will you be capable of moving into a deep enriching relationship. Only then will you be able to move into love. What do I mean when I say that one has to come to terms with one’s loneliness, so much so that it becomes aloneness?

Loneliness is a negative state of mind. Aloneness is positive, not withstanding what the dictionaries say. In dictionaries, loneliness and aloneness are synonymous — they are synonyms; in life they are not. Loneliness is a state of mind when you are constantly missing the other, aloneness is the state of mind when you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable, aloneness is blissful.

Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring for something; aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness you are off center, in aloneness you are centered and rooted. Aloneness is beautiful. It has an elegance around it, a grace, a climate of tremendous satisfaction. Loneliness is; beggarly; all around it there is begging and nothing else. It has no grace around it. In fact it is ugly. Loneliness is a dependence, aloneness is SHEER independence. One feels as if one is one’s whole world, one’s whole existence.

Now, if you move into a relationship when you are feeling lonely, then you will exploit the other. The other will become a means to satisfy you. You will use the other, and everybody resents being used because no man is here to become a means for anybody else. Every man is an end unto himself. Nobody is here to be used like a thing, everybody is here to be worshipped like a king. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations, everybody is here just to be himself.

So whenever you move in any relationship out of loneliness, the relationship is already on the rocks. Even before it has started, it is already on the rocks. Even before the birth, the child is dead. It is going to create more misery for you. And remember, when you move from your loneliness you will fall in relationship with somebody who is in the same plight, because no man who is really living his aloneness will be attracted towards you. You will be too below him.

He can, at the most, sympathize, but cannot love you. One who is on his peak of aloneness can only be attracted towards somebody who is also alone. So whenever you move out of loneliness, you will find a man of the same type; you will find your own reflection somewhere.

Two beggars will meet, two miserable people will meet. And remember, when two miserable people meet, it is not an ordinary addition, it is a multiplication. They create much more misery for each other than they could have created in their loneliness.

First become alone. First start enjoying yourself. First love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn’t matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay — YOU are not missing. You are not waiting for somebody to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes, good, beautiful. If nobody comes, that too is beautiful and good.

THEN move into relationship. Now you move like a master, not like a beggar. Now you move like an emperor,. not like a beggar. And the person who has lived in his aloneness will always be attracted to another person who is also living his aloneness beautifully, because the same attracts the same. When two masters meet — masters of their being, of their aloneness — happiness is not just added, it is multiplied. It becomes a tremendous phenomenon of celebration. And they don’t exploit, they share. They don’t use each other. Rather, on the contrary, they both become one and enjoy the existence that surrounds them.

Two lonely people are always facing each other, confronting. Two people who have known aloneness are together, facing something higher than both. I always give this example: two ordinary lovers who are both lonely always face each other; two real lovers, on a full moon night, will not be facing each other. They may be holding hands, but they will be facing the full moon high in the sky. They will not be facing each other, they will be together facing something else.

Sometimes they will be listening to a symphony of Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner together. Sometimes they will be sitting by the side of a tree and enjoying the tremendous being of the tree enveloping them. Sometimes they may be sitting by a waterfall and listening to the wild music that is continuously being created there.

Sometimes, by the ocean, they will both be looking to the farthest possibility that the eyes can see. Whenever two lonely persons meet, they look at each other, because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other: how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two persons who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travellers; they move on a pilgrimage. The goal is high, the goal is far away. Their common interest joins them together.

Ordinarily the common interest is sex. Sex can join two persons momentarily and casually, and very superficially. Real lovers have a greater common interest. It is not that sex will not be there; it may be there, but as part of a higher harmony. Listening to Mozart’s or Beethoven’s symphony, they may come so close, so close, so close, that there may be love. They may make love to each other, but it is in the greater harmony of a Beethoven symphony. The symphony was the real thing; the love happens as part of it. And when love happens of its own accord, unsought, unthought, simply happens as part of a higher harmony, it has a totally different quality to it. it is divine, it is no longer human.

The word ‘happiness’ comes from a Scandanavian word ‘hap’. The word’happening’ also comes from the same Scandanavian root. Happiness is that which happens. You cannot produce it, you cannot command it, you cannot force it. At the most, you can be available to it. Whenever it happens, it happens.

Two real lovers are always available, but never thinking, never trying to find happiness. Then they are never frustrated, because whenever it happens it happens. They create the situation. In fact, if you are happy with yourself, you are already the situation, and if the other is also happy with himself or herself, she is also the situation. When these two situations come close, a greater situation is created. In that greater situation much happens — nothing is produced.

Man has not to do anything to be happy. Man has just to flow and let go. So, the question is: should one first come to terms with his own loneliness before entering into relationship? Yes; yes, absolutely. It has to be so, otherwise you will be frustrated, and in the name of love you will be doing something else which is not love at all.

Source – from Osho Book “Come Follow to You, Vol 4″

[Another sannyasin says that she tends to avoid the very people with whom she would like a
relationship. She wonders if leaving Poona is not an attempt to avoid Osho. She feels confused
and depressed about the whole thing .... ]

Osho – It is a very common phenomenon: whenever you want to go into a relationship a part of your mind always wants to avoid it. And there are reasons…. First: because you are lonely you want to go into relationship – so you have a desire and a need to go into relationship. But each relationship brings problems, difficulties, challenges, miseries, conflicts, so another part of the mind says ’Why get into this trouble?’ And both are right!

Alone you feel lonely, alone you feel sad, alone you feel ’What is the meaning of life?’ – because the poetry arises only when you are together with somebody. A life takes on meaning only when you are in love, otherwise it seems meaningless – why go on living, for what? for whom?

So one part of the mind thinks, ’Love somebody, be loved by somebody, share your energy,
celebrate.’ Another part of the mind says ’Beware, because each relationship turns out to be a
problem.’ Alone there are no problems – only you are the problem, there is no other problem – but with the second person, the other person, come many problems and then both together you multiply problems.

So one part of the mind goes on saying ’Beware, don’t get into this trouble. Alone, at least You
are peaceful: not happy – right – but at least peaceful. In relationship, who knows if happiness will happen or not? – but one thing is certain: peace will be destroyed!’

That’s why the conflict. It is in every human being! Each likes to love and each likes to avoid.
Now, one has to understand it. One thing is that right now if you avoid relationship you will not
grow, you will remain stuck, because those challenges that relationship brings are a must. They are growth opportunities – don’t take them just as problems; they are tasks to be done.

One has to do that homework, otherwise one never grows. Just think of a man who has never been in any trouble – he will never become mature – who has never been in anxiety, anguish, turmoil; he will never mature, he will remain childish, he will not have any backbone. And any small thing will destroy him. He will not have any stamina to stand up against anything.

So these troubles, conflicts, anger, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness, domination, and a thousand
and one things come with the relationship. They are all great opportunities to be used to go beyond them. It is good! Yes, one day will arrive when you will not need anyone, anybody, but then there is no problem. Then you are so happy alone that there is no problem, there is no question of being related. But right now it will be very very harmful for you to avoid relationships. Plunge into them, and while young go through all sorts of problematic situations so by the time you start becoming physically mature you also attain psychological maturity.

Otherwise what happens? – people become physically mature and psychologically they remain childish. You can find them everywhere: their face looks as if they are fifty – if you just scratch the surface you will find a twelveyear- old child; inside they are just stupid children.

So this is for you to decide… but growth comes through difficulties. I am always for difficulties –
never avoid them! Whenever you find a difficulty, make it a challenge. Forget everything and jump into the difficulty. And to love a difficult person is one of the most beautiful experiences.

Never find a person who has no difficulties! He will not be of any help; nothing will come out of him. Find a really difficult person, mm? And there is no need to go anywhere – be here, meditate and do a few more groups.

Source: from Osho Book “This is It”