“In India we have pictured Shiva as Ardhanarishwar – half-man, half-woman.”

That is the only symbol of its type all over the world. Shiva – half is man, half is woman; half Shiva and half Parvati, his consort. Half the body is of man and half of woman: Ardhanarishwar, half-man, half-woman. That is the symbol. Lovers join together but on the surface they remain two. Shiva is one, the body is two – half comes from Parvati, half he contributes. The body is two, on the surface the banks are two; in the depth the souls have mingled and become one.

Or look at it in this way: the room is dark, you bring two lamps into it, two candles into it. Those two candles remain two, but their light has mingled and become one. You cannot separate the light; you cannot say, “This light belongs to this candle and that light belongs to that candle.” Light has mingled and become one. The spirit is like light, the body is the candle.

Two lovers are only two bodies, but not two souls. This is very difficult to achieve. That’s why love is one of the most difficult things to achieve, and if even for moments you can achieve it is worth it. If even only for moments in your whole life, if even for moments you can achieve this oneness with someone, this oneness will become the door for the divine. Love achieved becomes the door for the divine, because then you can feel how this universe exists in the many and remains one.

But this can come only through experience – if you love a person and you feel that you are two and still one. And this should not be just a thought but an experience. You can think, but thinking is of no use. This must be an experience: how the bodies have remained two and the inner beings have merged, melted into each other – the light has become one.

Once experienced, then the whole philosophy of the Upanishads becomes exactly clear, absolutely clear.

The many are just the surface; behind each individual is hidden the nonindividual, behind each part is hidden the whole. And if two can exist as two on the surface, why not many? If two can remain two and still one, why can’t many remain many and still one?

One in the many is the message of the Upanishads. And this will remain only theoretical if you have never been in love.

But people go on confusing love with sex. Sex may be part of love, but sex is not love. Sex is just a physical, biological attraction, and in sex you remain two. In sex you are not concerned with the other, you are concerned with yourself. You are simply exploiting the other, you are simply using the other for some biological satisfaction of your own, and the other is using you. That’s why sexual partners never feel any deep intimacy. They are using the other. The other is not a person, the other is not a thou; the other is just an it, a thing you can use, and the other is using you. Deep down it is mutual masturbation and nothing else. The other is used as a device. It is not love, because you don’t care for the other.

Love is totally different. It is not using the other, it is caring for the other, it is just being happy in the other. It is not your happiness that you derive from the other; if the other is happy you are happy, and the other’s happiness becomes your happiness. If the other is healthy you feel healthy. If the other is dancing you feel a dance inside. If the other is smiling the smile penetrates you and becomes your smile.

Love is the happiness of the other; sex is happiness of your own, the other has to be used. In love the other’s happiness has become even more significant than your own. Lovers are each other’s servants, sex partners are each other’s exploiters.

Sex can exist in the milieu of love, but then it has a different quality; it is not sexual at all. Then it is one of the many ways of merging into each other. One of the many – not the only, not the sole, not the supreme. Many are the ways to merge into each other. Two lovers can sit silently with each other and the silence can become the merger. Really only lovers can sit silently.

Wives and husbands cannot sit silently, because silence becomes boredom. So they go on talking about something or other. They go on talking even nonsense, rubbish, rot, just to avoid the other. Their talk is to avoid the other, because if there is no talk the other’s presence will be felt, and the other’s presence is boredom. They are bored with each other so they go on talking. They go on giving each other news of the neighborhood, what was in the newspaper, what was on the radio, what was on the TV, what was in the film. They go on talking and chattering just to create a screen, a smokescreen, so the other is not felt. Lovers never like to chatter. Whenever lovers are together they will remain silent, because in silence merging is possible.

Lovers can merge in many ways. Both can enjoy a certain thing, and that enjoyment becomes a merger. Two lovers can meditate on a flower and enjoy the flower – then the flower becomes the merger. Both enjoying the same thing, both feeling ecstatic about the same thing, they merge. Sex is only one of the ways. Two lovers can enjoy poetry, a haiku, two lovers can enjoy painting, two lovers can just go for a walk and enjoy the walk together. The only thing necessary is togetherness. Whatsoever the act, if they can be together they can merge.

Sex is one of the ways of being together, bodily together. And I say not the supreme, because it depends…. If you are a very gross person, then sex seems to be the supreme. If you are a refined person, if you have a high intelligence, then you can merge in anything. If you know higher realms of happiness, simply listening to music you can move into a deeper ecstasy than sex. Or simply sitting near a waterfall and the sound of the waterfall, and in that sound you both can merge. You are no more there; only the water falling and the sound, and that can become a higher peak of orgasm than can ever be attained through sex. Sex is for the gross. That is only one of the many ways in which lovers can merge and forget their I and thou and become one.

And unless you transcend sex and find out other ways, sooner or later you will be fed up with your lover, because sex will become repetitive, it will become mechanical. And then you will start looking for another partner, because the new attracts. Unless your partner remains constantly new you will get fed up. And it is very difficult; if you have only one way of enjoying each other’s togetherness, it is bound to become a routine. If you have so many ways to be together, only then can your togetherness remain fresh, alive, young, and always new.

Lovers are never old. Husbands and wives are always old; they may be married only for one day but they are old – one day old. The mystery has gone, the newness disappeared. Lovers are always young. They may have been together for seventy years but they are still young, the freshness is there. And this is possible only if sex is one of the ways of being together, not the only way. Then you can find millions of ways of being together, and you enjoy that togetherness. That togetherness is felt as oneness.

If two can exist as one, then many can exist as one. Love becomes the door for meditation, prayer. That is the meaning when Jesus goes on insisting that love is God – because love becomes the door, the opening towards the divine.”

Osho: Vedanta-Seven Steps To Samadhi - Click To Download Audio Talk

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

Detoxing Mind and Body

“Detoxing the body to find inner harmony. Dispense with moderation food to the body and to the mind repose.”

Health  has two aspects to it. One is the physical, the other is the spiritual. The body is your temple — don’t neglect it. Your foolish, stupid ascetics have been telling you to neglect it — not only to neglect but to destroy your body. Pythagoras is not an ascetic: he is a man of understanding.

He says: Respect, don’t neglect, your body. If your body is neglected, you will not be able to find the inner harmony — because if the body is harmonious it helps to attain to inner harmony. Take every care of your health, of your body; love it, respect it, it is a great gift. It is a miracle! a mystery.

What food is for the body repose is in exactly the same way for the soul: food nourishes the body and repose nourishes the soul. The materialist forgets about repose; that’s why in the West there is so much restlessness — they have forgotten repose, they don’t know how to relax. They don’t know how to be in a state of unoccupiedness; they don’t know how to sit silently doing nothing. They have completely forgotten! The materialist is bound to forget. He goes on eating too much, and he has forgotten that only his body goes on becoming fatter and fatter, and his soul goes on becoming thinner and thinner.

Repose is far more essential even than food. If sometimes you go on a small fast it is good, but repose should never be forgotten — because basically the body is only a temple: the deity is within. The body has to be loved only because it is a temple of the deity. The body is only a means; the end is inside.

Repose is food, meditation is food, for the soul. Repose means silence, rest, relaxation, calmness, coolness, collectedness, meditativeness. A state of unoccupied mind, empty, silent, with no idea of any doing, not going anywhere, not rushing anywhere — just being herenow. That is repose. And to be herenow is tremendously nourishing, because then you are deeply in tune with godliness, then music showers on you.

The past is no more, it is dead; the future is not yet, it is unborn. Only the present is. Only the present is alive. When you are herenow, life flows in you. When you are herenow, you are in godliness. And that is nourishment, that is real food.

In that sense the Upanishads have said: anam brahm — food is God, God is food. In the sense of repose it is really food. As the body will die without food, the soul dies without repose.

The materialist thinks only of the body, and the spiritualist thinks only of repose, and both remain lopsided. One has a very nourished soul but an undernourished body; the temple is in ruins. And one has a beautiful temple, a marble temple, but the deity is dead, or has not come yet. Both are missing something.

We need a music of earth and sky, of body and soul; we need a harmony between the visible and the invisible. The food is visible, repose is invisible. And you need both, and you need a rhythm between the two.

The person who has not known what repose is starts stuffing too much food in himself. Nothing can help him unless he learns repose — no dieting is going to help, no exercises are going to help, no disciplining is going to help. Sooner or later he will start eating again, because his inner being feels so empty and he knows no other way to fill it — he knows only one way: to go on throwing food inside himself.

When people come to me with the problem of too much obsession with food, my only suggestion is: become more meditative. Don’t be worried about food. Become more loving, become more meditative, and the problem will disappear. When you are full of love and meditativeness, you need not stuff yourself with food. The food is only a substitute — because you are missing the inner food, you are trying to substitute it by outer food.

The man of repose always remains very very alert, aware, of what he is eating, how much he is eating. He cannot eat more than is needed, and he will not eat less than is needed. He is always in the middle, he is a balance.

 Too much attention or too little shun…

Don’t hanker for too much attention from people — that is an ego trip. Don’t try to become very famous, well-known, this and that — that is an ego trip. But that does not mean start trying to become a nonentity — that nobody should know you, that you should remain anonymous — that is again the same trip on the other extreme. Avoid both.

All extremes have to be avoided. Excess is evil according to Pythagoras — and it is. And to be in the middle, to be exactly in the middle, is virtue. Never be an ascetic, and never become indulgent. Don’t eat too much food and don’t go on long fasts. Don’t become too much obsessed with luxury, and don’t become too much anti-luxury, anti-comfort.

Excerpted from Philosophia Perennis/courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

To read more about How To Detox Mind and Body go to OSHO Library

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable.

“Jealousy is Born out of comparison” Osho. And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare, always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.

 Otherwise, if you drop comparing, jealousy disappears. Then you simply know you are you, and you are nobody else, and there is no need. It is good that you don’t compare yourself with trees, otherwise you will start feeling very jealous: why are you not green? It is better that you don’t compare with birds, with rivers, with mountains; otherwise you will suffer. You only compare with human beings, because you have been conditioned to compare only with human beings; you don’t compare with peacocks and with parrots. Otherwise, your jealousy would be more and more: you would be so burdened by jealousy that you would not be able to live at all.

Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears. Each is unique and incomparable. You are just yourself: nobody has ever been like you, and nobody will ever be like you. And you need not be like anybody else, either.

Everybody seems to be so happy — except yourself. You are continuously comparing. And the same is the case with the others, they are comparing too. Maybe they think the grass in your lawn is greener — it always looks greener from the distance — that you have a more beautiful wife…. and you may be jealous of him….

Everybody is jealous of everybody else. And out of jealousy we create such hell, and out of jealousy we become very mean.

 An elderly farmer was moodily regarding the ravages of the flood. “Hiram!” yelled a neighbor, “your pigs were all washed down the creek.”

“How about Thompson’s pigs?” asked the farmer.

“They’re gone too.”

“And Larsen’s?”

“Yes.”

“Hum!” ejaculated the farmer, cheering up. “It ain’t as bad as I thought.”

 If everybody is in misery, it feels good; if everybody is losing, it feels good. If everybody is happy and succeeding, it tastes very bitter.

But why does the idea of the other enter in your head in the first place? Again let me remind you: because you have not allowed your own juices to flow; you have not allowed your own blissfulness to grow, you have not allowed your own being to bloom. Hence you feel empty inside, and you look at  everybody’s outside because only the outside can be seen.

 Excerpted from The Book of Wisdom/courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

To read more go to OSHO Online Library

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

How Do I Love Myself? An OSHo Quote

Love has three stages. First you have to learn to love yourself, because only if you love yourself can you love the other. You have to love yourself so much that love starts overflowing. Perhaps that is where you are; you need the other. That is the second stage of love.

Loving the other is a difficult job. Loving oneself is simple. Because the other need not fit with you, need not fulfill your expectations; the other may start power trips, ego trips, all kinds of numbers. And you will need love enough not to be dominated, not to be destroyed by the other; otherwise, the other always destroys it.

Jean-Paul Sartre is not absolutely wrong when he says the other is hell. Alone you can be silent, peaceful. With the other everything becomes difficult, everything becomes a conflict. The very presence of the other makes demands on you. You have to be very compassionate, very kind, not to get caught into an intimate enmity; otherwise the other is going to become a hell to you.

You have to be so loving that your love transforms the other, to such an extent that you can say the other is not hell. You have to be very articulate, very understanding. It is one of the greatest experiments in life. There is no other experiment which is bigger. You have to love in such a way that slowly, slowly it changes the other person, and the other person starts dropping the effort to dominate, the effort to manipulate. It all depends on your love.

In each case you should remember that you have taken the step. It is your experiment, and you have to be grateful to the other that he is participating in your experiment. If you want your experiment to be successful, then you have to go on loving in spite of the other, not bothering about small things.

Only when you can love the other person to such an extent that it becomes a transformation in him or in her does the third stage of love arrive. Then it is not a question of two persons loving each other; then it is love which engulfs two persons and the two persons become, in a certain deeper sense, one whole.

In India we have the statue of Aradhanishwar, half man, half woman. That is the third stage of love: when the man and the woman are no more two persons, they have become half and half into one whole. This third stage of love is, automatically, meditation. One who can reach this stage need not do anything else for meditation; this will be his mysticism. This was the whole approach of tantra, to reach to the third stage of love; then no other religion, no other methods are needed. Love itself becomes your god, your ultimate experience.

But the second stage is really difficult; otherwise, for thousands of years people would not have escaped into monasteries. What was the fear? Why were they trying to hide in monasteries?

The second step is really difficult, and because of the difficulty all religions have chosen to escape from life. But escaping from life is not the answer, it is simply cowardice.

Life has to be changed through understanding. And if you love, love has an alchemy of its own. If love cannot change the other person, it only means you don’t know what love is; you must be misunderstanding something else for love, because love is absolutely capable of changing people. In fact, it is the only way to change.

There is no place where love is being taught. There is no place where love is being nourished. That is one of the functions of the mystery school: to make your love pure, pure of ego and power and domination — just a sheer gift of joy, a delight in the being of the other person, just a sharing of all that you have, holding nothing back.

Love is the greatest magic.

Don’t be afraid of the other; let the other enter your life. I don’t teach escapism. I teach you to go into the world, to transform the world, because only in that transformation will you be transformed. By escaping to the hills and to the monasteries you will miss transformation yourself. You will shrink, you will not expand. And if you cannot love a single person, how are you going to love the whole universe? And that’s what prayer is — loving the whole universe.

People feel that it is easier to love the whole universe, because there seems to be no problem — the universe, the trees, the stars, the moon, the sun… they don’t create any problem.

The other creates trouble because your love is not enough. If your love is overflowing, the other will be showered by it, cleansed by it. And instead of creating trouble for you, the other can become a tremendous help, a complementary part in the organic unity of your being, and can lead you to the third stage.

It all depends on how much you can love.

And I don’t think that one should be miserly about love. It costs nothing. And it is not a quantity, that you have loved one kilo, so now there is one kilo less. It is not a quantity.

The more you love, the more you have it.

The more you give, the more the universe goes on pouring into you from all sides. There are hidden springs, just as in a well.

Love has an underground way of filling you, invisible.

The only way to know is just give it and see — you are always full.

Osho Upanishad # 29/

Courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

To read more go to

http://www.osho.com/online-library-loving-yourself-unreality-freedom-33c7d347-cb2.aspx

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

Touch Has Something That Eyes Cannot Give.

All that is beautiful is inner, and the inner means privacy. 

Do one thing one day: run the bath and then switch on and off the light. When there is darkness you will hear the water falling more clearly, the sound will be sharp. When the light is on, the sound will be not so sharp. What happens in darkness?

In darkness, everything else disappears because you cannot see. Only you and the sound are there. That’s why, in all good restaurants, light is avoided; sharp light is avoided. They are candle-lit. Whenever a restaurant is candle-lit, taste is deeper: you eat well and you taste more. The fragrance surrounds you. If there is very bright light the taste is no longer there. The eyes make everything public.

In the very first sentence of his Metaphysics, Aristotle says that sight is the highest sense of man. It is not. In fact, sight has become too domineering. It has monopolized the whole self and it has destroyed all the other senses. His master — Aristotle’s master, Plato — says that there is a hierarchy in the senses: sight at the top, touch at the bottom. He is absolutely wrong. There is no hierarchy.

All senses are on the same level and there should not be any hierarchy. But you live through the eyes: eighty percent of your life is eye-oriented. This should not be so; a balance has to be restored. You should touch also, because touch has something which eyes cannot give. But try: try to touch the woman you love or the man you love in bright light and then touch in darkness. In darkness, the body reveals itself; in bright light, it hides.

Have you seen Renoir’s paintings of feminine bodies? They have something miraculous in them. Many painters have painted the feminine body, but there is no comparison with Renoir. What is the difference? All other painters have painted the feminine body as it looks to the eyes. Renoir has painted it as it feels to the hands, so the painting has a warmth and a closeness, an aliveness.

When you touch, something happens very close. When you see, something is far away. In darkness, in secrecy, in privacy, something is revealed which cannot be revealed in openness, in the marketplace. Others are seeing and observing; something deep within you shrinks, it cannot flower. It is just as if you put seeds down on the open ground, for everybody to look at. They will never sprout. They need to be thrown deep in the womb of the earth, in deep darkness where nobody can see them. There they start sprouting and a great tree is born.

Excerpted from Come Follw To You, Vol 1/courtesy Osho International Foundation/

http://www.osho.com/online-library-outer-inner-beauty-body-627e94f8-fb7.aspx

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

No statue will make you a slave. On the contrary, the statue makes you a master craftsman, it makes you a creator, an artist. There is no conflict. The real test for love is with human beings.

 Osho : ”It is easy to be a sculptor because you are working with lifeless objects. You can create beautiful statues but those statues are dead. You cannot relate with them, you are alive. There is no dialogue possible between life and death.

You can appreciate; you can enjoy; it is your creation. You can feel fulfilled — whatever you wanted, you succeeded in doing it. But remember one thing: on the other side, there is no one. You are alone.

Because of this situation, there are people who can love their dogs, who can love their gardens, who can love their cars, who can love anything in the world except man. Because man means you are not alone, the other is there. It is a dialogue. With a statue, it is a monologue. The statue is not going to say anything, is not going to criticize you, is not going to possess you. You possess the statue; you can sell it in the market. But that you cannot do with a human being. That is the problem.

When you start relating with human beings, you have to take into consideration that they are not things, they are consciousnesses. You cannot dominate them…although almost everybody is trying to do that, and spoiling their whole life. The moment you try to dominate a human being, you are creating an enemy, because that human being also wants to dominate. You may call it love, you may call it friendship, but behind the curtain of friendship and love and brotherhood there is a deep will to power. You want to dominate; you don’t want to be dominated.

With human beings, you will be in constant conflict. The closer you are, the more the conflict will hurt you. There are thousands of people who have been so wounded by human relationship that they have dropped out of all human love, friendship. They have turned towards things. It is easier: the other party is always willing, whatsoever you want to do.

You are an artist, you sculpt. But have you ever thought about what you are doing? You are cutting chunks of the marble — that you cannot do to a human being, but people are doing that to human beings too. Parents are cutting their children’s wings, their freedom, their individuality. Lovers are cutting each other continuously.

To be in love with a human being is not an easy affair. The love affair is the most difficult affair in the world for the simple reason that two consciousnesses, two alive beings, cannot tolerate any kind of slavery.

To love a human being is one of the most difficult things in the world because the moment you start showing your love, the other starts going on a power trip. He knows you are dependent on him or on her. You can be enslaved psychologically and spiritually and nobody wants to be a slave. But all your human relationships turn into slavery.

No statue will make you a slave. On the contrary, the statue makes you a master craftsman, it makes you a creator, an artist. There is no conflict. The real test for love is with human beings.

A man is really intelligent if he can make a human relationship work smoothly. It needs great insight. Creating a statue or making a beautiful painting is one thing — those paints won’t say, “I don’t want to be put on this corner of the canvas, I simply refuse!” Wherever you want it, the paint is available. But it is not so easy with human beings.

Every human being has a birthright not to be dominated by anyone — but also a birth duty not to try to dominate anyone. And only then, friendship can flower.

Love needs a clarity of vision. Love needs a cleaning of all kinds of ugly things which are in your mind: jealousy, anger, the desire to dominate.

Love is a new phenomenon that has arisen with human consciousness. You will have to learn it.

Creating beautiful paintings, poetries, sculpture, music, dances — that is all in your hands. But when you come into contact with a human being, you have to understand that on the other side is the same kind of consciousness. You have to give respect and dignity to the person you love. This is the reason why you cannot relate with human beings.

Forget about human beings and love — you simply meditate. That will release in you the insight, the vision, the clarity, and the energy to share.

Love is another name of sharing your abundant energy. You have too much, you are burdened with it. You would like to share it with people you like. Your love — what you call love — is not a sharing, it is a snatching.

You will have to change the meaning of love. It is not something that you are trying to get from the other. And this has been the whole history of love — everybody is trying to get it from the other, as much as possible. Both are trying to get, and naturally, nobody is getting anything. Love is not something to get. Love is something to give. But you can give only when you have it. Do you have love in you? Have you ever asked this question? Sitting silently, have you ever observed? Do you have any love energy to give?

You don’t have; neither has anybody else. Then you get caught in a love relationship. Both are pretenders, pretending that they are going to give you the very paradise. Both are trying to convince each other that “Once you get married to me, a thousand Arabian nights will be forgotten — our nights, our days will all be golden.”

But you don’t know that you don’t have anything to give. All these things you are saying just to get. And the other is doing the same. Once you are married, then there is going to be trouble because both will be waiting for a thousand Arabian nights and not even an Indian night is happening! Then there is an anger, a rage which slowly, slowly becomes poisonous.

Love turning into hate is a very simple phenomenon, because everyone feels betrayed. You show one face at the beach, in the movie hall, on the dance floor. It is perfectly okay for half an hour or one hour sitting on the beach, holding each other’s hands, dreaming about the beautiful life that is ahead of you. But once you are married, all that you have been expecting, dreaming, will start evaporating.

Meditate. Become more and more silent, quiet, calm. Let a serenity arise in you. That will help you in a thousand and one ways…not only in love, it will also help you to create better sculpture. Because a man who cannot love human beings — how can he create? What can he create? A loveless heart cannot be authentically creative. He can imitate, but he cannot create.All creation is out of love, understanding, silence.

Excerpted from Sermons in Stones/Courtesy Osho International Foundation/

To read more go to http://www.osho.com/online-library-meditation-love-difficult-75fde60f-dcc.aspx

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

creativity- genius and rebellion

“Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings, otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy.

You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology.

The mob psychology is uncreative: it lives a life which drags – it knows no dance, no song, no joy, it is mechanical. Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical: you will get respectability, you will get honors. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate – but this whole thing is ugly. A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honored because you have been a good slave, obedient, that you have not gone astray, that you have followed the well-trodden path.

He has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little superior to the collective idiocy. But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honors people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way. It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds – the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors – had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.

My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself. Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live.

In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What you see as humanity is only a very hocus-pocus phenomenon. Unless we give individual freedom to each person, absolute freedom to each person to be himself, to exist in his own way… And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody – that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody.”

OSHO – The Goose Is Out #9

To read more visit OSHO Online Library:

http://www.osho.com/online-library-genius-creative-spots-45a45b3b-6c7.aspx

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

“As you grow up, as the society goes on teaching you to be this way, to behave this way, you start be coming a hypocrite, and you become identified with your hypocrisy.

My function here is to destroy all hypocrisy in you. To me honesty is not a policy.

The man who first made up this maxim, “Honesty is the best policy,” must have been a very cunning man. Honesty is not policy; and if it is policy, then it is not honesty: you are honest because it pays, you will be dishonest if that pays. Honesty is the best policy if it is paying, but if sometimes it is not paying, then dishonesty of course is the best policy. The question is, what is going to pay?

What is politeness? It is a kind of politics. Both words are derived from the same root. All three words — policy, politeness, politics — have the same root, they all mean the same thing. But politeness you think is a nice quality. You would never think of it in terms of politics, but it is politics. To be polite is a defense measure.

In Europe you shake hands. Why do you shake the right hand? — why not the left? It is really part of politics. To shake hands is nothing friendly. It is just a gesture that “My right hand is empty so don’t be worried. And let me see that your right hand also is empty, that there is not a knife or something in it.” And when you are shaking right hands you cannot pull your sword out because with the left hand… unless you happen to be a leftist. It is just a way of giving certainty to the other person, that you are not going to harm him, and he is giving certainty to you that he is not going to harm you. Slowly slowly, it became a symbol of greeting each other.

In India, you greet with both hands, but that too is simply showing that both your hands are empty. It is far better than shaking hands, because who knows about the left hand? Sometimes even the right hand does not know about the left hand, so it is better to show that both hands are empty; that is far better, and far more polite also. But you are saying, “I am completely defenseless. You need not be wary about me or worried about me. You can relax.” These are symbols that people have learned.

Our culture, our education, our religion — they all teach us to be hypocrites in such subtle ways that unless you go deep in search, you will never find out what you have been doing.

Why do you smile when you meet a friend? What is the need? If you are not feeling like smiling, why do you smile? You have to do it. This is a policy that is paying, because some day you may need this man’s help, and if you have always been smiling at him, he cannot refuse. If you have never smiled at him and never even said “Hi,” then you need not bother even to approach him; he will throw you out of his house with a “Go to hell!”

One has to understand all these layers and detach oneself from all of them. Become a watcher so that you cannot become identified with any dream.”

by Osho

To read more visit the OSHO Online Library

http://www.osho.com/online-library-listen-honesty-policy-c1531e7e-998.aspx

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

Dropping Expectations

I’m losing my expectations. I expected to be very different here. I expected great progress to be made… to be more meditative. I thought great things would happen to me, but I feel, if anything, that I have more bad habits, more problems. In fact bad habits I haven’t had for three, four years, have come again. I feel those expectations are going to go if I can drop them, and maybe I can.

“This is the great thing that has happened that you are ready to drop the expectation. That is the greatest thing that can happen to a person, the greatest progress that can be made. The human mind is so stupid, it goes on expecting. It exists through expectations. It is a great moment if you can really drop all expectations. And when all expectations are dropped, then anything that you have repressed in the past will come back. You call them bad habits. Your very word, the choice of the word, says that you must have repressed them. You may not have been able to accept them, so you rejected them.

Now when expectations are falling and you are becoming natural, all those rejected, disclaimed parts will again claim. They would like to be absorbed in your being. They are yours. You have been trying to forget them. You have been throwing them into the basement but now, when you are becoming natural, they will say ‘Let us also come back home.’ So please don’t call them bad any more, otherwise you will again repress them.

I’m not saying that they are going to remain with you. If they are really bad, they will disappear. You need not call them bad. A man who has no expectations cannot be bad. He can only be natural, and whatsoever is natural, is good. To be natural is to be good. They are synonymous to me. I don’t have any other idea of good beyond being natural. If your goodness goes against nature, it is bad. If your badness goes with nature, it is good. That’s what my morality is. That’s what my whole standpoint is.

Somewhere you have been wrong in your interpretations, calling something bad. If it goes with your nature, it is good, whatsoever it is. If it does not go with your nature, there is no need to repress it; it will drop on its own accord. Just be natural. By and by you will see that it is disappearing. Maybe it was there because you were repressing it.

This is the greatest thing that can happen to a person. It has happened. Your expectations are fulfilled. Now drop them! And just be natural. Love and enjoy life. There is no need to fight. And nothing is bad, maybe small human weaknesses, but nothing is bad. This is my observation, that people who have a few human weaknesses are very good people. If you live with them, you will enjoy them. People who are inhumanly good are unbearable. You cannot live with them, they will crush you. Their very presence is ugly, heavy. They will turn you into a thing. Their very gaze will reduce you, and you will feel like a worm because their whole mind will be condemnatory.

It is very difficult to live with saints. It is very good to remain far away and pay your respects and say goodbye, but never come too close. And if you cannot live with a saint, what type of sainthood is this? The real saint is one with whom you can be, and not for a single moment are you reminded of your weaknesses. In fact you tend to forget that he is a saint. He is so human, so accepting, so non-condemning, that you think that he is just a friend, a brother at the most a companion, but not a saint sitting high in the heavens and looking at you, trying to reduce you to something condemned.

I would not like you to become a saint. Be human, with all the human weaknesses. And love it! You will be more relaxed and God will love you more because He will enjoy you more. I have been trying very hard but I cannot think how God can enjoy all those so-called saints. He must be bored to death! [laughter] Just think of your saints all surrounding God. If He is not dead, then He must have committed suicide. He would like to love with human beings. So just be human. That’s a great enough goal. And accept small things. Nothing’s wrong. And this is very good that expectations are disappearing. So you are coming home.

Excerpt  The Passion for the Impossible/Courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

To read more visit OSHO Online library

http://www.osho.com/online-library-expectations-saintly-master-b861c825-037.aspx

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%

Can Money Buy Happiness? by Osho

Don’t be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness.

If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force.

I am not against money – remember. Don’t misinterpret me: I am not against money. I am not against anything. Money is a means. If you are happy and you have money, you will become more happy. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will become more unhappy because what will you do with your money? Your money will enhance your pattern, whatsoever it is. If you are miserable and you have power, what will you do with your power? You will poison yourself more with your power, you will become more miserable.

But people go on looking for money as if money is going to bring happiness. People go on looking for respectability as if respectability is going to give you happiness. People are ready, at any moment, to change their pattern, to change their ways, if more money is available somewhere else.

Once the money is there, then suddenly you are no longer yourself; you are ready to change.

This is the way of the worldly man. I don’t call those people worldly who have money, I call those people worldly who change their motives for money. I don’t call those people unworldly who have no money – they may be simply poor. I call those people unworldly who don’t change their motives for money. Just being poor is not equivalent to being spiritual; and just being rich is not equivalent to being a materialist. The materialistic pattern of life is one in which money predominates over everything.

The non-materialistic life is one in which money is just a means: happiness predominates, joy predominates, your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted.

Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it.

But somewhere along the way everybody has missed. You were brought up by people who have not arrived. You were brought up by people who were unhealthy themselves. Feel sorry for them. I am not saying be against them; I am not condemning them – remember. Just feel compassion for them. The parents, the schoolteachers, the university professors, the so-called leaders of society – they were unhappy people. They have created an unhappy pattern in you.

And you have not yet taken charge of your life. They were living under a misinterpretation – that was their misery. And you are also living under a misinterpretation.

OSHO – A Sudden Clash Of Thunder #7

%%http://oshotimes.blog.osho.com/%%