[A sannyasin’s father has died after a long illness and she says: I have to go somehow more to be with my mother, to finish something there. There is something there that feels so... unfinished emotionally with her, and now seems the time.]

Osho – It is always so with parents… very difficult to finish. The relationship is such that to finish it needs great awareness – only then can it be finished. Even the idea to finish it may not allow it to finish. So don’t carry that idea – that you have to finish it. Just be there… naturally there, lovingly there. Do whatsoever you can do – because parents have done much, and in the West they are not even thanked for it. Nobody feels any gratitude.

In the East it has been totally different. In the East it is never an unfinished situation. It is always
complete, because parents have given so much and children have always been giving as much reverence as possible, as much respect as possible. Mm? that has become so natural in the East, and it has to be so for a very deep reason.

If you are not in rapport with your patents you will not be in rapport with yourself, because parents are not just an accidental phenomenon – they are deeply in your roots… you come from them. Half of your being comes from your mother, half of your being comes from your father. They both will carry on in you. All their conflict will continue in you… all their anxieties will deep down continue. It is for your sake that you have to come to a rapport. And the easiest way is not to make any effort for it.

Effort will never help – it is very artificial. So drop this idea, otherwise you will come back feeling again that something has remained incomplete. Simply drop that idea. Go there…. In fact in the east it has been always said that there is no way to repay… no way. Whatsoever we owe to our parents, there is no way to repay it – it is not possible. This has been accepted. With this acceptance, repayment becomes easy, because then there is no problem. If it cannot be done, there is no problem. So we love, we respect.

Just go there, be there. And she will need you in this moment. When your father is gone she will be in a great sorrow – she will need you. So don’t make any effort deliberately, mm? Just be with her, caress her, care about her… sometimes meditate with her, help her to meditate if she can. Otherwise just tell her that you will meditate in her room. She can simply rest in her bed – you will meditate. And that very vibration will help her.

Be happy. It will be difficult in a situation, in this situation, but still be happy. Take cheerfulness for her… make the burden light. Help her to accept the situation. And don’t bother about your relationship, mm? simply don’t bother about it, and suddenly you will see that it is healed. It is indirect – you cannot work directly. And if for two, three weeks you can be very loving and helping and she feels happy that you have come – she feels happy that you have some totally different kind of energy that she needed… that you have been a nourishment to her – that’s enough. You will feel a rapport coming.

If we can be loving, no relationship remains hanging. Each moment it has a completion. And I don’t like the word’finished’, because that seems like a dead end, a full stop, as if something has been closed, filled in, and closed… no need to bother about it – finished. The connotation of that word is not very good – that it was something which had to be done. One is happy that it was finished – that one is out of it, that one need not look back again, that one is able to forget all about it now. That is implied in the word’finished’.

I like the word ’completion’. Completion is never finished in a way and yet it is complete. Each moment of it is a complete moment. If I die right now, my relationship with you all is complete. If I live, the relationship continues. Completion is not against continuity. Finishing is against continuity. Completion is each moment but with an opening into the future – it is not a closed thing.

In fact the more complete a relationship is, the more it becomes open – open-ended – and you can look forward; there is no need to look back. Not that it is finished so there is no need to look back – there is no need to look back because now you can look forward. There is future, there is hope, there is thrill. The next moment will bring another completion. We go from completion to completion, from perfection to another perfection.

And nothing should be finished while you are alive – how and why should it be finished? Everything should continue – that’s what your life is. The more rich it is, the more it is related. If you have thousands of relationships of course you have a richer life, because they all pour their love energy in you and they all share your love energy. You live tremendously enriched in that give and take, in that sharing, in that meeting of energies.

In the West that too is happening – people are becoming very very poor in their relationships. It is becoming a very very small circle every day. First the joint family disappeared – otherwise it was a wider circle. Uncles and aunts were all living together, and children of the uncles and the aunts and the cousins and faraway cousins – they were all living together. It was a big family. One had a better possibility of communion, of relationship. One was richer because of it.

Then the joint family dropped, disappeared. The family became a very small unit wife, husband, children. Now even that is dropping! Even wives and husbands are not living together. Even children are like a burden – servants are taking care of them. The wife has her own life, the husband has his own life. They meet like strangers. The home is no more a home – it is more like a hotel.

At the most a house, but not a home. There is no communion left. Yes, people stay overnight, meet and talk and even make love – but the communion is not there. And people are becoming very very poor.

That’s why these growth groups have become so important in the west. A great need to commune, to relate, to touch people, to be touched by people, exists – and that is fulfilled nowhere. Hence so much impact of encounter, gestalt, psychodrama. They will spread because the family has disappeared and they have become now a temporary sort of family. For ten days you meet in a group – twenty people. At least for ten days twenty people become a family. One wants to relate and belong.

In the East it will be difficult. Unless the family disappears these groups cannot function. People ask me why I am not allowing indians in the groups. I am not allowing because it is pointless! They still live in big groups… the family still survives. Maybe it has disappeared in Bombay and Calcutta – then I will allow Bombay, Calcutta people by and by but in the greater india it is not a problem at all.

In small villages the whole village exists like a family – everybody is related to everybody; nobody is unrelated. Everybody is taken care of by the community. So it is impossible for indians to conceive of any need to be touched, hugged, and they cannot see… they will think, ’These people are crazy! What are they doing?’

There is no need to finish any relationship, but there is a need to make every relationship so complete each moment That if you drop dead suddenly there is nothing left which is incomplete. You will not hang… your spirit will not haunt people. You will simply disappear on your path. There will be no need to look backward – everything is complete.

Source – Osho Book “The Buddha Disease”

Osho – Just as you need a mirror to see your face so you need the mirror of relationship to see your being. Love functions as a mirror, it shows you where you are. what you are, who you are. Hence many people become afraid of relationship. They are cowards. They escape to the Himalayas or to Tibet or to the monasteries or to the caves. Why are they escaping and from what? They are escaping from mirrors.

I have heard about an ugly woman who would never look in a mirror because she used to think that mirrors were against her. While she thought she was one of the most beautiful women in the world, they showed her ugliness. If somebody presented her with a mirror she would simply throw it away or break it immediately. She would never go into a room where there was a mirror because she felt that mirrors had always been against her.

These are your mahatmas. They escape from relationship because relationship shows their ugliness, relationship shows where they are, who they are. Sitting in their caves in the Himalayas they feel perfectly beautiful because there is no mirror.

Never escape from relationship. That’s why I have introduced sannyas with relationship, not without it. There is great meaning in it. Never on the earth has sannyas existed with relationship, that’s why I say that sannyas has not really existed. or, the sannyas that has previously existed was anaemic, bloodless. People thought they were beautiful without the mirror they thought they were beautiful. It is very easy to befool yourself when the mirror is not there.

When you are in relationship with people, in a thousand and one ways you are provoked, challenged, seduced. Again and again you come to know your pitfalls, your limitations, your anger, your lust, your possessiveness, your jealousy, your sadness, your happiness all moods come and go, you are constantly in a turmoil. But this is the only way to know who you are.

Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship.

Love is the mirror. Let your meditation be mirrored in love. If you find that something is missing, meditate more – but never escape from love; let it be mirrored in love again and again, because that will be the only criterion of whether you are growing or not. If you are really growing in love soon you will see that love has remained and jealousy has disappeared; love has remained and possessiveness has disappeared: love has remained and hatred has disappeared. A great purity arises. a great innocence. A fragrance is released into your soul. Go on meditating and go on loving. Let love and meditation be two wings. Let them help each other.

I am showing you a path which is arduous, which is really arduous. Love alone is good because there is nothing to reflect, meditation alone is simple because there is no mirror to reflect, but meditation and love together…. I am throwing you into the very eye of the storm. But that is the only way one comes home. And when things become silent after the storm, the silence is alive, it is not the dead silence of a cemetery.

Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 2″

Osho – It has been happening always, that a Buddha moves to the mountains, a Jesus moves to the mountains, a Mahavira goes into the mountains. Why do they move to the mountains, to the loneliness? Why do they become solitaries?

Just to face their inner mountains immediately and directly. In society it is difficult because the whole energy is wasted in day-to-day work and routine and relationship; you don’t have enough time, you don’t have enough energy to encounter yourself — you are finished in encountering others! You are so very occupied — and to come face to face with oneself a very unoccupied life is needed, because it is such a tremendous phenomenon to face oneself. You will need all your energies. It is such an absorbing job, it cannot be done half-heartedly.

Seekers have always moved into solitary existence, just to face oneself. Wherever they go — just to face oneself; to make it uncomplicated, because in relationship it becomes complicated because the other brings his or her miseries and mountains. You are already loaded — and then comes the other! And then you clash, then things become more complex. Then it is two diseases meeting, and a very complicated disease is created out of it. Everything becomes entwined, it becomes a riddle. You are already a riddle — it is better to solve it first and THEN move in relationship, because if you are not a mountain, then you can help somebody.

And remember, two hands are needed to make a sound, and two mountains are needed for a clash. If you are a mountain no more, now you are capable of being related. Now the other may try to create a clash, but it cannot be created because there is no possibility of creating a sound with one hand. The other will start feeling foolish — and that is the dawn for wisdom.

You can help if you are unburdened; you cannot help if you are not unburdened. You can become a husband, you can become a father, a mother, and you will be burdening others with your burdens also. Even small children carry your mountains; they are crushed under you — it has to be so because you never bother to have a clarity about your being before you become related.

That must be the basic responsibility of every alert being: Before I move in any relationship I must be unburdened. I should not carry a hangover; only then can I help the other to grow. Otherwise I will exploit, and the other will exploit me! Otherwise I will try to dominate and the other will try to dominate me. And it will not be a relationship, it cannot be love, it will be a subtle politics.

Your marriage is a subtle politics of domination. Your fatherhood, motherhood, is a subtle politics. Look at mothers, just simply watch! — and you will feel they are trying to dominate their small children. Their aggression, their anger, is thrown on them — they have become objects of catharsis, and by this they are already burdened. They will move in life carrying mountains from the very beginning, and they will never know that life is possible without carrying such loaded heads; and they will never know the freedom that comes with an unloaded being. They will never know that when you are not loaded you have wings and you can fly into the sky and into the unknown.

And God is available only when you are unburdened. But they will never know. They will knock at the doors of temples but they will never know where the real temple exists. The real temple is freedom: dying moment to moment to the past and living the present. And freedom to move, to move into the dark, into the unknown — that is the door to the divine!

Source – Osho Book “And the Flowers Showered”

Osho – The miserable person can pretend to be a friend but in fact he cannot be. Friendliness is a luxury. It is overflowing energy — so much energy that you cannot contain it, you have to share it. That sharing becomes friendliness. And when you share because of your abundance there is no idea of getting, anything in return. In fact you feel obliged to the person who has helped you to be unburdened of a little of your overflowing energy.

The miserable person is a black hole. He is utterly empty. He has nothing to give. He is a beggar. He is hungry to get. He pretends to be a friend because that is the only way he can exploit, but he functions like a parasite.

The friendship that he shows is only a facade a strategy. Once you are caught in relationship with a miserable person then you come to know his reality; then he is exposed in his true colours. But then it is too late. He has entangled you. Now to leave him creates guilt in you — that you deserted a friend, a lover. If you don’t leave him you will become miserable, your life will become a curse. So to be with him is difficult, to leave him is difficult. And that’s what is happening all over the world, in all kinds of loving relationships.

Miserable people are intrinsically incapable of love, of friendship. They don’t have anything to give. Before you can give you have to have; hence I say only a blissful person can be a friend, can be a lover, can be a blessing to others. The miserable person is a curse, a calamity.

So my whole approach is how to make people more blissful — and then everything is taken care of. Once your bliss starts growing, it is bound to spread, bound to radiate, bound to reach others. And that reaching is friendship. And when you give for the sheer joy of giving there is beauty, there is grace, there is something divine in that. It is no more an ordinary phenomenon. The beyond has penetrated into it. It is pregnant with something transcendental.

Source – Osho Book “The Old Pond Plop”

Osho – A relationship is always a problem because the other becomes the mirror and the presence of the other help you to see your own face in many ways. And the same happens to the other – you become the mirror. Nobody wants to know his real face. That’s why down the centuries people have been escaping to the monastery. These are the cowards! They are avoiding relationship, because in a relationship they are reflected as they are. Alone, they can think of themselves whatsoever they want to think; they can create any image about themselves. So the first problem with relationship is that relationship reflects you and you reflect the other person. And your totality comes up – you are not just the surface.

The deeper you get involved in your relationship, the deeper feelings it will bring up. If you are really into a relationship it will shatter you. All your images will be shattered. All your faces will be tom. All your masks will start dropping. And whenever this happens the person starts to take revenge on the other. That’s why [your girlfriend] goes on saying no. Behind her no there is yes. In fact, she wants to say yes – that’s why she says no – but she is afraid of her own totality.

People have cleared a little ground of their being and they try to live comfortably there. Mm? – the whole is like a vast canvas. They don’t even want to remember. And whenever you are in love your deepest feeling is stirred. With that feeling all other feelings are stirred. Love is almost like a backbone to the feeling body. If your backbone is taken out you will be spineless . . . just a heap, a blob. Your spine holds you together. Exactly in the same way the feeling body is held together by the spine of love. If you are not in love you can control your anger very easily. In fact, if you are not in love at all there will not be any opportunities to be angry. You can control your sadness very easily if you are not in love. You can manage your life very conveniently; that’s what is being done in monasteries.

The so-called saints are nothing but people who have come to know one thing about themselves: that if they love, all chaos comes into being. If they don’t love the whole chaos disappears. It is a very cheap way to become peaceful. But this peace I don’t teach because this peace is the peace of death. I teach you living peace. I would like you to pass through the chaos and transcend it – rather than escaping from it. Escaping is not going to really change you. You have to pass through these situations.

Source – Osho Book “God Is Not For Sale”

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”

[A sannyasin says she feels something is wrong in the way she relates. She doesn’t commit herself easily but holds back, feeling that maybe it isn’t quite right for her. She says she would like to really go deep with someone but she is just not letting go.]

Osho – Mm mm. Don’t wait for the ’quite right’ otherwise it never comes, and don’t wait for a very deep relationship, otherwise it never happens. It is as if a person just wants to be in the deepest point in the river, but you have to go from the shallow, you have to enter the shallow river first. You cannot just jump into the deepest – the deepest is far away.

So whatsoever is available, don’t miss it! By missing it again and again, you will miss the deeper points, the deeper possibilities. And each relationship is a step towards a higher relationship. That higher relationship may happen with the same person, it may happen with another person, that is not the point. You follow me? It may happen with the same person, it may happen with another person, but this relationship will help you to go into that.

[Osho repeats what he often says – to be committed not to an individual lover but to love itself. If you become committed to a person rather than to love, you lose track of and kill love. It doesn’t mean that you have to change partners all the time – just don’t become attached to the one you’re with. Love can grow deeply with just one person but that depends on many things.... ]

For example, the person may be capable only of a certain depth. Up to that depth it will be easy to flow in love with him; beyond that he will not be able to go with you. Mm? – then you have to move with deep gratitude to this person, because he made even this much available.

Each love helps… small loves, big loves, all help… and life consists of a thousand things. The day you really fall deeply in love all your loves of the past will be involved in it – even small things: you were passing along a road and you saw a small boy standing there. He smiled, you smiled, and then you went on and nothing else happened. That too will be there when you fall in a deep love – that smile will be there, part of it, because it is part of you.

So don’t wait for the ’quite right’, otherwise it never comes. Take hold of any opportunity that comes by, and use it. Maybe this person can grow… your love may help him to go deeper. Together you may be able to go very very far – go as far as possible.

And remember that the person is not the point! Mm? – then when you find that the relationship has become stuck and stale, you can move; it was not a commitment at all! The ultimate commitment is towards love, and everything has to be used as a jumping board for it.

This idea – that it is not quite right or maybe it is not going to be that deep – is dangerous! The energy that has been released in you, if it is not used, will become stuck; sooner or later it will disappear. Energy not used disappears; energy used, grows, becomes bigger and bigger. The group has been really good for you – I can feel it. Just flow with this energy and don’t be a miser, mm? Good!

Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”