OSHO on Transformation

A master in Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don't know, and they ask you to believe because there is no way to bring those experiences into objective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers his belief to somebody else.

Zen is not a believer's world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries. But it brings a tremendous transformation.

Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authentic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understood, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called "eighty-four thousand doors" open.

Osho Zen: The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest Chapter 6

Osho – In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot

Osho – Sudhindra means god of remembrance, god of awareness, god of mindfulness. The most important thing in your life will be awareness. Pour your whole energy into that dimension: become more alert, more attentive, more mindful. Whatsoever you are doing, make it a point that you should do it with awareness… small things: washing your clothes, do it with full awareness. You can do it mechanically, you can think of a thousand other things and you can go on washing the clothes. That does not need awareness: you know how to do it, your body has learned the trick of it, it goes on doing it. You are not needed; you can think, you can fantasise, you can dream and the body will do the work. The body is functioning like a robot: it is programmed, so it will do its acts.
Bringing awareness in means dissolving the body robot, its mechanicalness, creating awareness deep in the body. And when awareness penetrates the body it becomes luminous. When awareness penetrates the body there is no separation between the soul and the body; they are one unity, functioning in unison. And that’s a great blessing. It is what blissfulness is all about: when the body and the soul are functioning as one, when they are coupled together in deep loving embrace, when all boundaries dissolve.
But from our very childhood we have been taught one thing, that we are separate from the body. Control the body; we are the master and the body is the slave – manipulate the body. Because of these teachings, every human being on the earth is a victim; no human being finds a harmony between his body and soul. With that harmony missing you can’t feel god; god can be felt only in a harmonious being.
Each child has been forced to become a kind of schizophrenic, a duality, a division: the mind and the body. And between the two a gap has been created; that gap is ugly, that gap is a calamity. Man has lost all joy because of that gap and man has lost contact with nature because of that gap. We are connected to nature through the body but we are disconnected from the body so we have become ghosts in a machine. the body is being used as a machine, as a robot.
Awareness means dissolving the robot, awareness means unlearning the nonsense that has been taught by the society, bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don’t have the division, you don’t possess the body; you are the body – there is no possessor, no possessed. That’s where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic.
So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don’t do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Osho – Mysticism is transcendentalism

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE TRANSCENDENTAL?
Osho: Deva Paro, the moment you start witnessing yourself, you will see three layers of existence within you. One is the outermost; anybody can observe it; it is objective; it is material; it is your body.
The second layer behind it is your mind, your thoughts, your dreams, your expectations. Only you can see them, nobody else can see them from outside. They are not objective: they are subjective, but they certainly are. They exist in their own way; you cannot deny them their existence. Certainly on a different wavelength, not as solid and physical as the body, but you can see them, they direct your life, they are your hopes, your projections, your expectations.
The first layer is called the objective and the second layer is called the subjective. But beyond both there is a witness which can watch both the body and the mind, the material and the nonmaterial. This witness, this consciousness, this awareness, is beyond both. It is neither material nor non-material, because it is beyond both. And you cannot go beyond it. You cannot witness it. You have come to the very end of the rope, you have come to the very bottom of existence. This awareness is called the transcendental, because it transcends the duality of body-mind. And to be centered in it, you have come home, because there is no way beyond it. Here ends the road.
Suddenly you find everything in its perfection. Nothing is missing, nothing needs improvement, refinement; everything is as it should be. And this feeling, that everything is as it should be, brings a tremendous gratitude. The perfection of existence fills you with tremendous joy that you are a participant in a perfect existence, that you are an invited guest, that you are welcome here, that the whole existence needs you. If you were not here, it would miss you. There would remain some place vacant. Nobody else can take your place. This gives you individuality and dignity and a great blissfulness. For the first time you are at ease with existence, with trees, with stars, with the ocean. The whole becomes your home. This is the transcendental. It is called transcendental because it transcends all duality and brings you to a state of oneness. This is the ultimate outcome of a meditative consciousness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls his meditation Transcendental Meditation. That is an unnecessary repetition of words. “Meditation” is enough, or “transcendental” is enough, because both mean the same. Meditation brings you to transcendence and every transcendence is nothing but the ultimate flowering of meditation. And what he calls Transcendental Meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation; it is just chanting a certain name.
You can chant your name. It gives a certain relaxation. The great English poet Tennyson, without being initiated by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — there was no question of it because he existed a long time before Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was born — just found it by himself because he had to sleep in a room separate from his parents. They were rich people, they could provide each child with a separate room of his own. But he was so small and the nights were so dark. There was great fear — and particularly in England, which seems to be the most ghost-haunted country in the whole world.
It is strange, but nowhere in the world will you find so many ghost-haunted houses, so many people concerned about ghosts. So naturally the little child, Tennyson, was very much worried when it became dark and the lights were put off. Finding nothing else to hold on to, he discovered a trick. He would repeat his own name continuously: “Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson,” just to avoid all kinds of ghosts who must have been around in the darkness hiding in the nooks and corners of the room. He became so occupied with his own name that a certain curtain was created protecting him from all sides, so there was not even a small gap for any ghosts to enter in.
He found — strangely, accidentally — what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls Transcendental Meditation. He became utterly silent, peaceful, and fell into deep relaxed sleep. And in the morning when he woke up, he would wake up with the same repetition — Tennyson, Tennyson — that he had gone with into sleep. This is something to be understood. Anything that you go to sleep with, the last thing that you remember before sleep falls over you, will be the first thing you remember as you become awake, even before opening your eyes. Psychologically of course you were not aware of it, but you repeated the same thing the whole night.
If Tennyson repeated his own name while he was falling asleep, slowly, slowly the sleep became deeper and the word Tennyson became farther and farther away like an echo, until finally he forgot all about Tennyson and fell into an unconscious state. But that word continued in the unconscious as an undercurrent. That’s why in the morning, the first thing he remembered was his own name.
You can try it. Anything you fall asleep with will remain flowing within you and you will have to encounter it in the morning when you wake up. This means the whole night he was repeating consciously at first, then unconsciously, then again consciously, the same name. Naturally he could not dream. He could not think of anything else. His sleep became a very silent, deep, dreamless sleep — what Patanjali calls sushupti. Modern psychology is still not aware of it.
Patanjali, the man who first wrote the whole science of yoga … It happens very rarely that a single man creates a whole science. It is now five thousand years old, but in these five thousand years, nothing has been added to the science of yoga. It remains exactly the same. And I don’t think there is any possibility in the future either to make any improvement. A single genius completed the whole thing, not leaving anything out of it that could be added later on. Patanjali calls this state sushupti, dreamless sleep. It is a beautiful state, very healthy, very nourishing, very rejuvenating.
But it is not meditation. It is just a kind of hypnotic sleep. By repeating your own name continuously you create a certain kind of boredom. Obviously, if you repeat Tennyson, Tennyson, how long can you remain interested? Soon you start feeling boredom, and boredom is a very good state for bringing in sleep. Whenever you feel bored you start falling into sleep. The mind finds a way to get out of boredom — by going to sleep. That’s why in every church you will find almost everybody asleep, just having a good Sunday-morning sleep.
I have heard about a priest who was very famous and his congregation was very big. And the reason for his congregation being big was that there was no other preacher who was so boring. It was a strange reason. But he bored people to such an extent that even people who were suffering from insomnia fell asleep. The whole night they could not manage it, with all their sleeping pills, but the preacher was really a genius. His voice was so boring; what he was saying he had said so many times that people could hear it even in their sleep. And he was also happy; with everybody asleep the whole church was silent.
He had only three sermons; there was no need to have more, three were enough. Nobody was awake so nobody knew which he was giving; nobody could repeat what they had heard. Everybody said that the man certainly cast a hypnotic spell.
Just one old man sitting in front of him, the richest man of the city, was a trouble. He snored. His snoring was not a trouble; the trouble was that because of his snoring, many people could not sleep. The preacher was very much disturbed that if it continued many people would stop coming. They came only to have a good morning sleep on Sunday. It was so rejuvenating, one hour’s sleep, that it was enough to keep them relaxed, calm and quiet for the whole week. He had to find some way — and he found it. The old man always used to come with one of his great-grandchildren, just a small boy, but very alive. In fact, in the whole congregation only he was awake.
The priest pulled the boy aside one day and said, “Listen, I will give you a quarter of a dollar if you can keep your old man awake. Whenever you see he is snoring, just start nudging him. Wake him up. Don’t let him sleep. And a quarter dollar every week is certain.” The boy said, “Done.”
The next week the old man could not figure out what had happened to the boy. He used to sit always silently by his side. The moment he started snoring he started waking him up.
Out of the church he asked, “What is the matter with you? You did not let me sleep at all!”
He said, “The priest is giving me a quarter of a dollar to keep you awake.”
The old man said, “Then you should have told me before. I will give you half a dollar to let me sleep!” He said, “Done.”
The next week the preacher watched. Again many times he gestured to the child, gave all indications, but the child simply sat there smiling, not even bothering about the priest.
The priest thought, “What has happened? Has he forgotten completely?” When everybody was sleeping he even showed him a quarter dollar. The child said no, just waved his hand. “Strange …” After the meeting he got hold of the child and asked, “What is the matter?”
He said, “My old man is giving me half a dollar.”
The priest said, “Half a dollar? I will give you one dollar, but don’t let that old man sleep!”
He said, “Done.”
But the priest thought, “I cannot compete with that old man because he is very rich. I am a poor priest.” He said to the boy, “Listen. I am a poor priest, more than that I cannot give.”
He said, “It all depends on the old man. If he says he is going to give me two dollars … You are a man of understanding, business is business.”
And that’s how it happened finally. The old man said, “Two dollars,” and the boy again stopped.
Finally the priest had to talk to the old man himself. “Let us clarify the whole thing. I am not worried about your sleep. My problem is that because of your snoring many people cannot sleep and they are complaining. My congregation is the biggest in the city because they enjoy such a beautiful sleep. Anything boring is helpful.”
Now they have created many machines which simply create the noise of the ocean, the waves coming to the rocks, splashing, making their sound. You just have to plug into the mechanism and it gives you the continuous sound of the waves, and many people are helped by it. They fall asleep, it is so boring.
What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is teaching people is a kind of dreamless sleep. It is not meditation. Meditation is awakening, not going to sleep. I have nothing against it, he just should not call it Transcendental Meditation. It is simply hypnotic sleep. He is using a wrong name and exploiting people because of the wrong name. People think it is meditation. This is sheer conmanship.
In the East we have known for centuries that chanting is good for sleep, and sleep is good for health. So there is nothing wrong in it, just fifteen minutes or ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening. If you can do it, you will have better health, a better sense of well-being, so there is nothing wrong in it. But it is not meditation.
Meditation is just the opposite. It is awakening. It is becoming fully aware of your body, of your mind. And you have simply to be watchful. You don’t have to repeat anything, because repetition means you have fallen into identifying with the thought process.
Chanting is also a thought process. Repeating a mantra or a name of God — Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, it doesn’t matter. You can simply count from one to a hundred and back again, from a hundred to ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, then go back. Go up, go down. Just climb the whole ladder up to a hundred and again come down. Four or five times you will be able to do it and then you will fall asleep. But the whole night you will have to do that, climbing up, coming down, climbing up, coming down. It may even be tiring, so that in the morning you may feel your back is hurting, something has gone wrong, you feel giddy. The first thing that you will find in the morning is that you are coming down or going up. The whole night it has continued. Don’t choose such a thing.
It is perfectly good for Tennyson; he did it his whole life. In his autobiography he says, “I don’t know what the secret of it is. I simply stumbled on it out of fear. But I found it so peaceful, so relaxing, leading me into such deep sleep, that I have used it my whole life. Whenever I have time, I repeat my own name, just sitting in the bus or in the railway train. There is nothing to do. I just close my eyes and go on repeating my name. And it is so peaceful and so silent.” But it is a silence which is of sleep, it is a peace which is of sleep.
You will not become aware at the very moment it is happening; you will become aware when you awake. You will see you have passed through a peaceful land. Only the remnants like a memory hang around you — some fragrance. But you have passed through the garden completely asleep. When you wake up, you find you must have passed through a garden because you can still smell the roses.
I entirely support what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is doing. But I absolutely disagree with his using a name which simply exploits people who do not know what meditation is. He is giving something very cheap in the name of meditation. Meditation is always the essential awakening, witnessing, watchfulness, consciousness. It is never unconscious. It is never a deep sleep. It is a deep awakening. The moment you are alert, you can see the body, you can see your mind, and you can experience yourself. And beyond this `yourself’ you cannot go. You cannot go behind it or beyond it. It is your very being. You cannot jump out of it. It is not a dress that you can jump out of.
It is you yourself.
It is your very essence.
This essence is transcendental.
But all religions have created their own ideas about meditation. Except Gautam Buddha, no other religion has been able exactly to find the right meaning of meditation. Hence he remains a pillar of light to all those who are seeking, searching. All other religions have fallen into the trap of chanting, prayer, mantras, rituals. A single man in the whole of history stands alone like an Everest denying everything except witnessing. That’s what he means by vipassana. It is the art of witnessing all your actions,
physical or mental.
And as you watch them, they slow down. Your body becomes more at ease, tensionless; your mind becomes slowly, slowly thoughtless. And when the body is completely silent, and the mind is without any thought, your whole being is filled with a light that you have never known before. It is not the ordinary light that needs any fuel. It is your very being radiating. From this moment onwards your journey will take a new turn. On each step a new mystery will open its doors. You will be becoming more and more part of the miracles of existence.
And existence is a mystery. It is not something that you have to solve. It is not a problem, nor is it a puzzle; there is no solution to it. No philosophy can demystify it. You can experience it, you can enjoy it, you can dance it, you can live it, but you cannot know it.
The young mother is skeptically examining the new educational toy. “Isn’t it rather complicated for a young boy?” she asks the assistant.
“It is the very latest idea,” replies the girl. “It is designed to adjust the child to live in today’s world. Any way he tries to put it together is wrong.”
But this small anecdote is true about existence. Any way you want to explain it, your explanation is wrong. Those who know it do not try to explain it. They only describe its beauty, its truth, its glory, its blissfulness. They only give you some indications that may create a longing in you to find out what it is.
Once you enter into it, you will forget all about finding out what it is. Enjoying it so much, who cares what it is? And what are you going to do with your explanations? And anyway there is no explanation. The whole existence is only an experience without any explanation. This is its transcendentalness. It transcends all understanding, all knowledge, all explanation, all philosophy. But you can experience it. You can become one with it. It is always ready to absorb you. Just as the ocean is ready to absorb any dewdrop. Existence is always waiting and willing, welcoming. You just you have to learn a little courage, just a little courage.
One jump and you are gone forever into the mysterious. You yourself become a mystery. Every mystic is a mystery. He has become one with the ultimate mystery. Mysticism is not a religion because it has no theology, no philosophy, no doctrine, creed, cult. It explains nothing. It simply shows you the way to move into the unexplainable. It opens the door of the unknowable and pushes you in.
There is a beautiful story about the Great Wall of China. It must be a story because nobody has found the spot up to now. But it has been reported for almost three thousand years that there is a spot on the China Wall … The wall is thousands of miles long and broad enough for a car to move on it. It is one of the miracles man has achieved. Millions of people died in making it. It took hundreds of years to build. They created almost a mountain against invaders.
It was reported again and again that there is a spot somewhere on the China Wall where, if you place a ladder and go up the wall … whoever has done that simply reaches the top of the wall, laughs loudly and jumps down the other side, which is so deep a ditch that you cannot find even his pieces. The man is finished. But before jumping he laughs very loudly, perhaps the first belly laughter that he has ever laughed, with his whole body. It was the most mysterious point on the wall. And many have reported that they have seen people reaching to the point where they will laugh and jump. Nobody knows why they laugh.
Many have tried, determined not to laugh whatever happens, and even if they laugh, not to jump, but whoever has gone to the point, even with absolute determination, suddenly forgets all determination, laughs loudly and jumps. Nobody knows any explanation yet of why it happens. And nobody comes back to tell you.
I don’t think there is any such point on the China Wall, but perhaps it is a parable about mysticism. Something like that happens the moment you reach and the door opens. You have a good laugh and you jump.
But the mystery remains a mystery. And that is the beauty of the mystic, that he does not try to demystify existence. He loves the mystery; the mystery has a certain romance about it, its unknowability is exciting. It is a great challenge, a great adventure for all those who have souls strong enough to go on such a pilgrimage. Mysticism is transcendentalism.
Source: Osho Book “Sat Chit Anand”

Osho – Do real problems exist? Are all problems just mind games?

Question : Do real problems exist? Are all problems just mind games? Does awareness make problems disappear? Or is there a possibility that awareness brings repression? If i’d that whenever i feel a little more centered and aware than usual i don’t feel any problems, but when i am no more centered all the old problems are back and they look even bigger. Is this repression?
Osho : RATNA, ALL PROBLEMS ARE out of unawareness. Unawareness Creates problems, is the ONLY problem really. So when you become alert, aware, problems disappear — they are not repressed! And if you repress them you will never become aware, remember it; because a person why represses his problems will be afraid of becoming aware. The moment one who has repressed problems becomes aware, those problems will come up. Awareness will bring them to light.
It is as if you are hiding rubbish in your house: you will be afraid to bring light in, because then you will have to see all that you have been hiding there. You cannot bring light in.
I used to live in a village once, for a few days. There was a river, so dirty — just such a small river that you cannot even call it a river. And there was no other way, no other water supply. A guest came to stay with me. Now, I was a little puzzled: how to take him to that dirty river? So I took him early, four o’clock in the morning, and we enjoyed and we talked about the beauty because the moon was there and the river was really looking beautiful. And he enjoyed and he said, “I have never seen such a beautiful spot.”
I said, “That’s perfectly okay, but never come in the day.”
He said, “Why?”
I said, “Just don’t come.”
Naturally, he rushed, in the morning he went back. And he came from there saying, “Such a dirty place!”
But it was looking so beautiful.
If you repress, you will be afraid of becoming aware. That’s why millions of people are afraid of becoming aware. Awareness will bring light into you, and then you will see all the scorpions and the snakes and the wolves… and that is frightening. One keeps oneself in darkness. At least one can go on pretending that there is no problem.
Awareness will release all that is repressed. Awareness NEVER represses — on the contrary, it releases repressions. But Ratna’s experience is true. If you become aware, problems disappear. Naturally, the question arises: Is not awareness repressing those problems? — because how can they suddenly disappear? And when awareness is lost, centering is gone, and you are no more so conscious, again the problems pop up — and they are bigger than ever! So the natural conclusion is: awareness repressed them. It is not so.
When you are unconscious, you create problems. Unconsciousness has its own language — that is the language of problems. It is like when you are groping in darkness. One thing falls, you stumble upon another thing. These are problems because of the darkness. If light comes, you will not stumble upon the table, and nothing will fall. You can move easily now. You will be able to see. But when it is dark, try to move in your own house and many accidents will happen. You may not be able to find the door in the night. You may not be able to find where things are.
In darkness, the way you live creates problems. Darkness or unconsciousness only understands the language of problems; it has no solutions. Even if a solution is given to you, In your unconsciousness you will make a problem out of it. That’s what goes on happening: if I say something to you, you understand something totally different. You understand from your standpoint.
A spinster schoolteacher on her summer vacation was visiting the reservation at Yosemite. She spotted a big brave standing against a tree and became very curious about his sex life.
“How does a great big man like you get satisfaction up here where there are no young squaws?” she asked.
The Indian stared at her unbelievingly and then said, “You see cow?”
“Yes, I see cow… you don’t mean?”
“Yes,” said the brave, “me make love to cow. Also, you see horse?”
“Yes,” said the spinster, horrified. “I see horse.”
“Me make love to horse.”
“Oh, dear!” cried the distraught old maid.
“No,” grunted the Indian sadly. “No make love to deer. Run too fast.”
Unconsciousness understands in its own way. That’s why Buddhas are always misunderstood. That’s a natural fate. It can’t be avoided. It is very difficult to understand a Buddha. It is very easy and natural to misunderstand him. To understand him will require great awareness on your part — because he lives in the world where there are no problems! where there are all solutions and solutions and no problems, all answers and no questions. And you live in a world where there are only questions and questions and no answers. You live so far away… as if you are living on different planets.
He goes on shouting from there, but whatsoever reaches to you is totally different. And you can always find rationalizations for whatsoever you understand. You can become very argumentative, defensive too.
William was seated in the witness stand. He had already calmly answered all the questions of the prosecuting attorney. Now it was the judge’s turn.
“Does the defendant really expect this court of law to accept his story that the completely assembled still on his property was not being used for the purpose of producing illicit whiskey?”
“That’s right, Your Honour!” said Gilliam. “I bought that as a novelty, a conversation piece. I do not now, nor have I ever, operated it as a still to produce whiskey.”
“Hogwash!” howled the magistrate. “As far as this court is concerned, possession of the equipment is proof enough of your guilt!”
“Then, Your Honour, I guess you’d also better charge me with raping your daughter!”
“What!” screamed the judge. “Did you rape my daughter too?”
“No, sir,” said Gilliam. “But she was at my place last night — and I sure got the equipment for it!”
Mind is very cunning and clever. It can argue in clever ways. It can even find rationalizations and proofs; it can give you the feeling that you have understood rightly. But Ratna’s question is of immense importance. It is of importance for everybody who is here. Because this is a place where you have to become more and more aware. Awareness has to become the climate.
DO REAL PROBLEMS EXIST?
They exist only when you are unconscious — then they are real. If unconsciousness is there, they are real. Just as dreams exist when you are asleep — are they real? Yes, when you are asleep they are absolutely real. But when you are awake, you know they are unreal, they were unreal. They were part of sleeping consciousness. Exactly like that — problems exist if you are not centered, not alert. If you become centered, alert, watchful, a witness, problems simply dissipate, evaporate.
ARE ALL PROBLEMS JUST MIND GAMES?
Yes. They are all mind games. And ‘mind’ is nothing but another name for unconsciousness.
DOES AWARENESS MAKE PROBLEMS DISAPPEAR OR IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT AWARENESS BRINGS REPRESSION?
It depends on you. There is a little danger of it. If YOU FORCE awareness upon yourself, it will be repressive. If you allow awareness to take possession of you, it will be non-repressive. If you practice awareness, stubbornly, if it is a kind of will, then you will repress. Will always represses. Will is the source of repression. Wherever will is, there will be repression.
So your consciousness has not to be out of will-power. It has to be out of understanding. It has to be relaxed. It has to be a kind of let-go. Not enforced. That is one of the most essential things to understand. If you try to become aware, you will repress.
For example, anger has arisen, and you try to become aware of the anger — stubbornly, forcibly, violently, aggressively. activity, with will. With that effort, anger will recede. It will fall into the reservoir of your unconscious. It will move into the basement of your being, and will wait there. When your effort is gone… and effort cannot be continuous, because effort tires. You can make effort, will for a moment, for a few moments, for a few hours, or for a few days, but sooner or later you will need a holiday. You will be tired of the whole effort. And the MOMENT you are on a holiday, the anger will come back, and with greater force — because while it was repressed it became pressurized. And whenever any energy is pressurized, it gains energy, it becomes more condensed. So whenever the lid is off your effort and will and the weight is removed, it will explode into violent rage.
That’s what happens to people who cultivate things. They can repress their anger but they will be creating only rage. Anger is momentary. Rage is chronic. Anger is nothing to be worried about — it comes and goes. It is just a breeze. But rage is dangerous. It becomes part of you. It becomes your foundation. It is always, there. Don’t you know people who are always angry? And they may not show their anger at all, and they are always angry. Whatsoever they do, they do in anger. The anger is constantly flowing underneath them like an undercurrent. It has become underground. But it affects their love, it affects their friendship, it affects their very vise. They become repulsive, they become ugly. And they may not be angry at all, not showing anger.
Ordinarily what happens is that people who become angry for small reasons are good people, they are never in rage. You can trust them: they cannot murder or commit suicide. They will never gather that much poison. Small poison is created, thrown away. They are always fresh, healthy. Situations create anger, but they don’t collect it, they don’t accumulate it — they are not hoarders.
The so-called good people, respectable people, saints, etcetera, they are the really dangerous people — they go on accumulating. One day it is going to explode. And if-it is not going to explode, it has to become their very life-style. Chronic it will be.
Never bring awareness through willpower. Anything brought by will-power is going to be wrong — let that be the criterion. Then how to bring awareness? Understand. When anger comes, try to understand why it has come; try to understand without any condemnation, without any justification either, without any evaluation. Just watch it. Neutral you should be.
Just as you watch a cloud moving in the sky: in the inner sky an anger cloud moves — watch it. See what it is. Look deep into it. Try to understand it. And you will find there is a chain: the anger cloud disappears, but because you looked deeply into it, something else has been found — maybe ego was hurt, that’s why you become angry. Now watch this ego cloud, which is more subtle. Go on watching it. Get deep into it.
Nobody has ever been able to find anything in the ego. So if you go deep into it, you will not find it; and when you have not found it, it is no more. Then suddenly there is a great light — out of understanding, out of penetration, out of witnessing, with no effort, with no will, with no conclusion that it should be like this or should be like that. A neutral witnessing. And awareness arises. And this awareness has beauty and benediction. This awareness will heal you. And if this awareness comes, you will never be tired of it, because it has not been forced in the first place. So there is no need for any holiday!
Just think: the Christian, the Jewish God, after six days was tired and had to rest on the seventh day. In the East we don’t have any conception for God’s rest. Why? It looks a little hard on him. The Eastern God goes on working, goes on working — no holiday. Why is there no holiday in the East for God? In fact, the holiday that happens here in the East, in the offices, in the schools and colleges, has been brought from the West. Otherwise, there was no question of holiday at all, because life was seen from a totally different vision. It is play, not work.
The Jewish God MUST have got tired. Six days work, such a long work, and such a failure! Must have got tired. And finally, in the end, he created man, and since then he has not created anything. It indicates what has happened to him: he became so fed up with his own creation that after man he stopped it. He said, “Enough is enough!”
But the Eastern God is a continuum of creativity. It is play — LEELA. Then it is possible. Let your awareness be a play. Effortless, relaxed, and then it can become a continuum, it will be there, it will not be lost. My feeling is that Ratna must be making this effort too much. That’s why she says:
I FIND THAT WHENEVER I FEEL A LITTLE MORE CENTERED AND AWARE THAN VISUAL, I DON’T FEEL ANY PROBLEMS, BUT WHEN I AM NO MORE CENTERED, ALL THE OLD PROBLEMS ARE BACK AND THEY LOOK EVEN BIGGER. IS THIS REPRESSION?
There must be a little bit of it, otherwise those problems will never come back. Once you have looked into any problem deeply, relaxedly, it is finished for ever. Because ALL anger is the same. If you have looked into one anger situation deeply, you have understood it for ever. It is finished, you are treed from it And all that energy that was getting involved in anger will be yours. And all that energy that was getting involved in greed is yours. Suddenly one finds oneself a great reservoir of energy. Then one can dance, overflow, with joy. Then life is no more an endurance but becomes enjoyment. Then life is a celebration.
Unless your awareness is without will you will be repressing. And repression can be very subtle. Then always, when the awareness is gone, the repressed thing will come, and in a bigger form, with vengeance. It will take revenge.
Ratna, don’t force awareness on yourself in any way. Let it grow. Become more relaxed, calm, quiet, accepting One has to accept all — the good and the bad, success and failure, love and hate ALL one has to accept. In that acceptance, relaxation happens. And awareness is nothing but the fragrance of relaxation. It is the flowering of let-go.Then problems disappear and disappear for ever….
Source – Osho Book “The Perfect Master, Vol 1″

Osho – Anger is a thought, Sex is a thought. Just watch, Be alert

Osho – If you kill anger you will never be compassionate in your life, because it is anger, and the energy involved in anger, which becomes compassion. If you kill sex you will be simply impotent, that’s all; you will not attain to love. It is sex transformed that creates love energy. Love energy is confined to sex. When you bring awareness to it, sex disappears but love energy is released. Anger disappears but compassion is released. Greed disappears and sharing comes in its place.
It is not a question of killing; these are energies. Don’t be such a fool as to kill anything, because if you kill it you will miss something very essential in your life. Transform. Religion has to be the real alchemy, the science of transformation. It is not murderous.
But the stupid religious people go on murdering, destroying. They are destructive, self-destructive. Hence even if they drop their anger they don’t become graceful, they don’t attain to creativity, they don’t contribute to the world and its beauty. They are burdensome, they are not in any way a help. They are a hindrance in the progress of humanity. Buddha will not suggest to you to kill anything. He says: Just be awake. BE THE WITNESS OF YOUR THOUGHTS.
Anger is a thought, sex is a thought. Just watch, be alert, let them move on the screen — anger, greed, lust — and you remain aloof, cool, just a witness. In the beginning it is very difficult, but only in the beginning. If you persist then within three to nine months you will be able to do the impossible.
One day it happens that your witness has become so perfect that the screen remains empty, nothing passes — no thought, no desire. That day you have attained to the first state of samadhi, the first satori. And the first satori is the beginning; it triggers many satoris in you, culminating ultimately into samadhi, into nirvana. When the mind becomes just a pure mechanism… when you want to use it, you use it, when you don’t want to use it, it remains silent.
Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 9″

Osho – Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness

Osho – To be asleep means to live a life in which awareness has no place. You are doing something, but your mind is somewhere else. You are walking along the street, your body is there in the street, but your mind is having a conversation with your wife, or may already have reached the office ahead of your physical arrival there. Your mind is already making arrangements in the office while you are still walking along the street. Mind in one place, body in another, is the characteristic of lack of awareness. Mind accompanying body is the characteristic of awareness.
You are here, listening to me. In these moments of listening, if your hearing is all, if only your hearing remains and your mind wanders nowhere else but is here and now, if hearing is the only thing happening, as if the rest of the world has disappeared, as if nothing else remains. Here, I am the speaker, there, you are the listener and a bridge is created between us. Your mind does nothing else, it falls silent, utterly silent; it hears, only hears. When only hearing remains, you experience awareness. For the first time, you discover what meditation is.
Meditation means being in the moment, not leaving this moment. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”
Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”
Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?
There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.
Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.
So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.
Someone asked Mahavira what was the definition of a sadhu. Nobody else has ever given the answer that Mahavira gave. He said, Asutta muni, sutta amuni – the one who is not asleep is a sadhu, the one who is asleep is no sadhu”. Who is not asleep? The one whose every action is meditative is not asleep. Religion, liberation, is an experience that happens in such a wakeful consciousness
Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

Osho – Nanak says: Through contemplation awareness is born within the mind and the intellect

Osho – Remembrance is a beautiful word. It corresponds with Buddha’s right mindfulness. Whatever you do, do it mindfully. Be mindful when you talk, when you walk, even when the eyes blink. Do nothing senselessly, unconsciously; for whatever you do in such a fashion will lead invariably to sin. Whatever you do without awareness leads you away from your self. The only method of coming close to your self is to become more and more aware. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the situation, hold fast and never let go of your awareness – even should you stand to lose everything. Even if your house catches fire, move only with complete awareness.
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the philosopher and social reformer, has given the following account in his memoirs. He was once invited by the viceroy who was about to confer an honor on him. He was a poor man, his clothes were old and threadbare, and he dressed in the Bengali style of kurta and dhoti. Friends advised him to get new clothes in keeping with the occasion. At first he refused but later thought better of it and let them order new clothes for him.
One day shortly before the event, as Vidyasagar was returning from his evening walk he saw walking in front of him a well-dressed Mohammedan in coat and pajamas, twirling a stick in his hand. He was walking at his own pace enjoying the evening. Soon a man – by all appearances his servant – came running and told him, ”Hurry, sir, your house is on fire!” There was no change in the man’s stride; he continued walking along as if nothing had happened. The servant, thinking maybe he hadn’t heard, repeated loudly, ”Sir, your house is on fire! Haven’t you heard what I said?”
Even the poor servant, who stood to lose nothing, was trembling and perspiring with fear, but the master remained unaffected. ”I have heard,” he told the servant. ”Should I change my habitual way of walking just because the house has caught fire?” Ishwar Chandra was shocked. Here is a man whose house is actually on fire, and he is not prepared to change his lifelong walk; and there he was, ready to give up his lifelong attire just to see the viceroy!
Ishwar Chandra was curious to know more about this unique man. As he followed, he saw him walking at the same pace twirling his stick; when he reached the house and saw the flames he calmly gave orders to put out the fire, directed it all, but himself stood on one side and watched without one iota of difference in his attitude.
Ishwar Chandra writes: ”My head bowed in reverence to this man. Never had I come across the like of him.” What is it that this man was guarding so zealously? He was guarding his surati, his awareness, and he was not prepared to lose it at any cost. Whatever happens, happens. All that was required to be done was being attended to; that is enough. On no account can contemplation be bartered away. Nothing is so precious in life that you can afford to lose your remembrance for it.
But you abandon your awareness for the slightest thing. A one – rupee note is lost and you go mad looking for it. You look for it even in places where it could not possibly be. A man has lost something and you find him looking in the tiniest box, much too small for such an object. You are always ready to lose your awareness, or is it better to say you have no awareness to lose – you are unconscious!
Nanak says: Through contemplation awareness is born within the mind and the intellect. As the Omkar settles more and more within, the external utterance stops first. The arrow now turns within, for now there is no one without to speak to; in other words, the external relations created by speech are no more. To speak is to build a bridge to reach others. It is the relationship between us and others. By not speaking, this relationship is broken; you have become silent.
To become silent means now the journey is reversed: the arrow has turned inwards, the journey within has begun. As soon as this happens, the first glimpse of awareness begins to appear, and for the first time in full awareness you know that YOU are! So far you could see everything except yourself. Only you were in shadow, as there is darkness directly under the flame. Now you will awaken. As the intensity of Omkar increases, contemplation settles on the word and awareness increases proportionately.
Take it this way: There are two sides to the scales; when one goes up the other comes down to the same extent. Proportional to your going inward, so awareness increases. On the third plane when even the word is lost and only the resonance of Omkar remains – pure sound – suddenly the awareness becomes complete. You get up. You awaken, as if the sleep of a thousand years has been broken. Darkness flees and there is light, and light alone. It is as if you were in a deep slumber through innumerable lives and dreaming away. Suddenly the dream is broken, and lo, It is morning. You see the dawn as if for the first time in your life.
Source – Osho Book “The True Name, Vol 1″

Osho on witnessing sex and anger energy – Circle of sex energy is the strength of a Buddha

Osho – When you are in deep anger you are so concentrated that the whole world disappears. Only the cause of anger is focused. Your total energy is on the cause of anger, and you are so much focused on the cause that you forget yourself completely. That’s why in anger you can do things about which, later on, you can say, ”I did them in spite of myself.” You were not.
For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside – the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy – the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside.
Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. you begin to think of someone – of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D – but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy.
Not only in the sexual act do you dissipate energy, but in sexual thinking you dissipate it even more because a sexual act is a momentary thing. It comes to a peak, the energy is released, and you are thrown back. But sexual thinking can continuously be there. You can continue it in sexual thinking, you can dissipate energy. And everyone is dissipating energy. Ninety percent of our thinking is sexual. Whatsoever you are doing outside, inside sex is a constant concern – you may not even be aware of it.
You are sitting in a room and a woman enters: your posture changes suddenly. Your spine is moire erect, your breathing changes, your blood pressure is different. You may not be aware at all of what has happened, but your whole body has reacted sexually. you were a different person when the woman was not there; now again you are a different person.
An all-male group is a different group, and all-female group is a different group. Let one male come in or one female, and the whole group, the whole energy pattern, changes suddenly. You may not be conscious of it, but when your mind is focused on someone, your energy begins to flow. when you feel sexual, look at the source, not at the cause – remember this.
Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy.
Take an about-turn – look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed, and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together – for millennia – so we don’t know how to look inside.
Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there – a sudden flash has come to you – close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger – from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up, what is the source inside from where this energy is coming?
Are you aware that in anger you can do something which you cannot do when you are not in anger? A person in anger can throw a big stone easily. When he is not angry he cannot even lift it. He has much energy when he is angry. A hidden source is now with him. So if a man is mad, he becomes very strong. Why? From where is this energy coming? It is not coming from anything outside. Now all his sources are burning simultaneously – anger, sex, everything, is burning simultaneously. Every source is available.
Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated.
My energy comes up and moves outside – it can never become a circle now; it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a Buddha.
We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a Buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back – it is beyond you.
A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.
Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress – observe and follow. don’t fight – just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.
Source – Osho Book “The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 1

Osho – Allow the spontaneous to happen, and the spontaneous happens just by living life intensely.

Osho – The message is to never think about yourself in any way which condemns. One has to learn to respect oneself; that is the beginning of a great change. We have been taught to condemn, to despise, to hate. We have been told to love others but we have not been told to love ourselves, so we don’t have a good image of ourselves. And without a good image of yourself, you will never be able to know who you are.
One does not want to look at oneself if one is condemned as a sinner. One can enter into oneself only when one feels that one is going into something beautiful. The beginning of love is to love oneself. The beginning of god is to think of oneself as divine. Nobody is a sinner, but if you believe you are a sinner you remain a sinner; it is only a question of belief.
Swayam means self, bhu means existent – self-existent. There are things which are not self-existent; they depend on others’ existence. For example, water is not self-existent, it depends on hydrogen and oxygen; it is a combination. If hydrogen and oxygen disappear from existence, water will disappear. It is a secondary phenomenon, not primary.
Consciousness is a primary phenomenon. It is not a combination of anything else; it is itself. That is the meaning of swayambhu. You cannot disappear from existence. There is no way to destroy you; no death can kill you, no poison can touch you. The innermost core of your being is eternal. It has been always and it will be always. And it cannot be destroyed because it is not a composition, it cannot be destroyed because it is not caused by anything else.
Sam means right, buddho means awareness – right awareness. Awareness can also be wrong. It is wrong when it is cultivated, practised, forced, somehow managed by effort. Then it is wrong. It creates a tension in your being; rather than relaxing you it makes you more tense, it creates stress.
Awareness is right when it is spontaneous, when it is not forced, when it arises not out of effort but out of understanding. Sambuddho means right awareness. Don’t practise it; a practised thing is always false. And when we start practising something we close the doors for the spontaneous; then the spontaneous cannot happen. You become so full of the practised that your very practice hinders it.
If somebody practises love, his love will be false; it will be a practised phenomenon, it will be rehearsed. He will be simply doing an act. He may perform it perfectly but the real will not be in it, the real cannot be in it. The real can never exist in the performed. It can be skilful, the false can be very skilful, very efficient; it can deceive the whole world but it cannot deceive you. You will know all the time that you were just making it, that it was an empty gesture, that you were not behind it, that it was not supported by you, that it had no roots in your being, that it was just a plastic flower. Allow the spontaneous to happen, and the spontaneous happens just by living life intensely.
Whenever you live anything intensely there arises a kind of awareness which is totally different from the practised one. If you are running, are intensely in it, you will find a floating awareness around you. You need not make it, it is there. You are looking at a sunset: you are thrilled and you come to a peak of experience; suddenly there is awareness. It is always there when the peak comes. Just as at the peak it is always sunlit and the darkness disappears, so at any peak moment you are aware, and that awareness arises on its own accord. That is called sambuddho. So live life intensely, totally; live life at the optimum. Put yourself utterly into each and everything that you do; don’t hold.
Then love becomes awareness, walking becomes awareness; then even sleep becomes awareness, because at each peak awareness automatically happens and then it has a beauty of its own. The practised is a poor thing, a poor substitute.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Osho on Awareness and Unawareness, Be aware in this moment

[An indian visitor said that he would like to ask what was the most important question in his life – and that was that he found it difficult to maintain ever-present awareness, that sometimes awareness came as a delayed response, and this was the problem for him.]
Osho – You are creating the problem, and people who try to be aware, almost always create the problem. The first thing: awareness can only be of the moment. The very idea that it should always remain, that it should become a permanent state, is wrong. And why be worried about the next moment? The very idea of permanence is part of greed. Greed is part of unawareness, so unawareness is playing a trick and creating a problem. It is not out of awareness that the problem is coming; it is out of unawareness.
This moment is enough. Be aware in this moment. I understand – next moment you forget, so forget! Be aware of your forgetfulness. One has to be attentive even to one’s unattentiveness. There are moments you are aware – then you are aware of awareness. It is not a simple awareness. It is complex; you are aware of your awareness. Then there are moments when you are aware of your unawareness, but awareness continues as a substratum.
So whatsoever happens…. Sometimes you forget – what can you do? There is no point in crying for the spilled milk. That which is gone is gone. If one moment has passed and you were not aware, and later you became alert that this moment has gone and you were not aware, don’t waste any moment for it now, because this other moment is passing by. Just be aware of it.
And why ask for permanence? One person never gets two mo-ments together. You always get one moment. When that one is gone, another is supplied. So if you can remain alert in one single moment – enough! Whatsoever time will be coming in front of you, your torch of awareness will be there. Asking for permanent awareness is as if you are going for a long journey, a thousand-mile journey in the night, and I give you a small torch and you say, ’By this torch I can only see a few feet. The journey is very long – one thousand miles. How am I going to manage? It is impossible. This torch is too small.’
But I will tell you to go four, five feet, and then the torch will be falling four, five feet ahead again. Just by a small torch, one can move into the darkest night, and one can go on moving for a thousand miles; there is no problem. But if you start calculating, and you sit down and put it on paper and you see that the torch is only capable of lighting four, five feet, and the journey is one thousand miles – impossible.
One moment is enough for your awareness. Then comes another moment. Your awareness is there. Another moment will be lighted, then another, then another. The whole eternity can pass in front of you. Why be worried about making it permanent? That too is part of greed. Life is momentary. Let awareness also be momentary. That’s why buddha called his philosophy ’chhanikawada’ – the philosophy of the moment. He said it is enough to be mindful of the moment. Only the moment exists – all else is imagination.
So the past is gone. If you missed, you missed. Forget about it. There is no need to worry and beat your head. The future has not come. There is no need to bring it in. Just look at the moment that is passing right now, and look with awareness. Still you will miss many times, but nothing is wrong in it.
When you miss, just note with full alertness that you missed – that’s all. By and by you will miss less and less. Just take a simple note, observe it and finished! Go ahead. By these observa-tions, more and more awareness will be happening. And I’m not saying permanent. I’m saying more – because more has depth. Awareness is going to remain of the moment. It can be shallow, it can be deep. That is a totally different dimension.
It will become more and more deep, more and more deep. It will become so deep one day that whatsoever comes in front of you will be lighted well. But don’t think in terms of permanence. It can become eternal, but not permanent. Permanence is part of time. But we always think of making things stable. If something is fleeting we become worried. Then we think, ’What is the point of making so much effort and it is gone again, gone again?’ Simply drop that worry. Awareness is the key word and the key question. If you can open it, you have found the master key. It opens all the locks. No other question is necessary then. But don’t make it a greed. It will come.
Source – Osho Book “Dance Your Way to God”

Osho on divine rebellion – moving from identification to witnessing

Osho – Revolution is concerned with outer things: the economic structure of the society, the political structure, the state. Rebellion is inner: it is concerned with the state of consciousness. Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual. And a true rebellion transforms you into divinity; it reveals your godhood to you. It makes you aware that you are not the body, nor the mind; that you are nothing but pure consciousness, that you are only a witness. Once this is experienced, realized, life becomes a play.
Misery comes: you witness it, you don’t get identified with it. Happiness comes and you witness it. Sometimes it is cloudy, very cloudy, and sometimes very sunny — but it is all the same to you because, as far as you are concerned, you remain rooted in your witnessing, which never changes. You remain immovable, unchanging.
Life is a flux: everything is changing, everything is in movement. In life there are no nouns, only verbs. There is only one noun and that is God. Everything else is a verb because nothing else is eternal. Everything is momentary: one moment it is there, the next moment it is gone.
Witnessing all, slowly slowly you are neither happy nor unhappy; that is bliss. You are neither cold nor hot; that is Buddhahood. You are neither man nor woman; that is God-realization. And remember: even if you have realized God the world continues to be the same. Illness will happen to you, old age will come, and death too. But because now you have a different vision everything happens and yet nothing happens to you.
A Zen master was asked once, “Before you became enlightened you used to say that you were miserable. Now that you have become enlightened — what is the state? In what state are you now?”
The master said, “I was miserable before enlightenment and I am miserable after enlightenment!”
The questioner was puzzled. He said, “Then what is the difference?”
The master laughed. He said, “The difference is that before I used to get identified with my misery; now I remain aloof, just a witness. The misery comes and goes, clouds gather and disperse — it has nothing to do with me. Before it used to affect me, now it does not affect me at all. I am just a mirror, I only reflect. If it is sunny I reflect it: if it is cloudy I reflect it.”
His answer is tremendously beautiful: “Before enlightenment I was miserable, and after enlightenment I am miserable.” Even being God ain’t a bed of roses, remember. Thorns are always there, but your vision changes. You look in a different way, your attitude is different, your approach is different, because you are different. You are on a different plane: a watcher on the hill, and in the valley the same world continues.
The same master was again asked the same question, by another inquirer, and he said the same thing: “I was miserable before my enlightenment and I am miserable after my enlightenment,” but when he was asked to explain it further, he said something more, he added something more. He said, “Before, I was miserable for myself, now I am miserable for others.” But that is a revolution. To be miserable for oneself is ugly; to be miserable for others is compassion, is beauty, is grace.
This is what I call divine rebellion: moving from identification to witnessing, moving from getting lost in things and the world, to a point where you are always alert, clear, transparent, unaffected, untouched. You become a lotus leaf in the pond: the water can touch it but cannot affect it; in fact it cannot even touch it. It can be as close as possible but the lotus leaf remains utterly untouched by it. It remains in the pond and yet beyond it. This transcendence is divine rebellion.
Sannyas is basically a movement towards such a rebellion, such a radical transformation.
Source – Osho Book “Even Bein’ Gawd Ain’t A Bed of Roses”

Osho – In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot

Osho – Sudhindra means god of remembrance, god of awareness, god of mindfulness. The most important thing in your life will be awareness. Pour your whole energy into that dimension: become more alert, more attentive, more mindful. Whatsoever you are doing, make it a point that you should do it with awareness… small things: washing your clothes, do it with full awareness. You can do it mechanically, you can think of a thousand other things and you can go on washing the clothes. That does not need awareness: you know how to do it, your body has learned the trick of it, it goes on doing it. You are not needed; you can think, you can fantasise, you can dream and the body will do the work. The body is functioning like a robot: it is programmed, so it will do its acts.
Bringing awareness in means dissolving the body robot, its mechanicalness, creating awareness deep in the body. And when awareness penetrates the body it becomes luminous. When awareness penetrates the body there is no separation between the soul and the body; they are one unity, functioning in unison. And that’s a great blessing. It is what blissfulness is all about: when the body and the soul are functioning as one, when they are coupled together in deep loving embrace, when all boundaries dissolve.
But from our very childhood we have been taught one thing, that we are separate from the body. Control the body; we are the master and the body is the slave – manipulate the body. Because of these teachings, every human being on the earth is a victim; no human being finds a harmony between his body and soul. With that harmony missing you can’t feel god; god can be felt only in a harmonious being.
Each child has been forced to become a kind of schizophrenic, a duality, a division: the mind and the body. And between the two a gap has been created; that gap is ugly, that gap is a calamity. Man has lost all joy because of that gap and man has lost contact with nature because of that gap. We are connected to nature through the body but we are disconnected from the body so we have become ghosts in a machine. the body is being used as a machine, as a robot.
Awareness means dissolving the robot, awareness means unlearning the nonsense that has been taught by the society, bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don’t have the division, you don’t possess the body; you are the body – there is no possessor, no possessed. That’s where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic.
So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don’t do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Osho – Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover

Osho – The first thing to remember is how to drop thoughts and become thoughtless — thoughtless but alert, because in deep sleep also you become thoughtless, and that won’t do. It is good for the body, that is why after a deep sleep your body feels rejuvenated. But the mind remains tired even in the morning, because the mind continues its activity. The body relaxes, though it too cannot relax totally because of the mind; but still, it relaxes. So in the morning the body is okay, at least workably okay — but the mind feels tired, even in the morning. You go to bed tired, you get up in the morning more tired because the mind was continuously working, dreaming, thinking, planning, desiring; the mind was continuously working.
In deep sleep for a few moments when you are absolutely unconscious you become one. This same oneness is needed with a conscious and alert mind. As you are in deep sleep — no thought, no distinction of good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the devil, no distinction of any sort, you simply ARE, but unconscious — this has to be attained while you are alert and conscious. Samadhi, the final, the ultimate, the utter meditation, is nothing but deep sleep with full consciousness. Deep sleep you attain, so the only thing to be attained is more and more consciousness. If you can add more consciousness to your deep sleep you will become enlightened. The mountain is transcended and the path opens — one thing.
Second thing: you carry the past within you — that creates multiplicity. You were a child, the child is still hidden in you, and sometimes you can still feel the child kicking; in certain moments you regress and become the child again. You were once young, now you are old; that young man is hidden there, and sometimes even an old man starts being as foolish as a young man.
You carry the whole past, every moment of it, and you have been many things! From the womb up to now you have been millions of persons, and they are all carried within you, layer by layer. You have grown, but the past has not disappeared; it may be hidden, but it is there — and it is not only in the mind, it is even in the body. If, when you were a small child and you were angry and someone said, ‘Stop! Don’t be angry,’ and you stopped, that anger is still being carried by your hand. It has to be so because energy is indestructible, and unless you relax that hand it will persist, unless you do something consciously to complete the circle of that energy which became anger in a certain moment fifty years back or sixty years back, you will carry it within you, and it will color all your actions.
You can touch somebody, but the touch won’t be pure: the whole past is carried by the hand; all repressed anger, all repressed hatred is there. Even if in love you touch a person your touch is not pure, love cannot be — because where will that anger go which is carried by the hand?
Wilhelm Reich worked very much on this somatic repression. The body carries the past, the mind carries the past; because of this loaded state you cannot be here and now. You have to come to terms with your past. So meditation is not only a question of doing something here and now; before that is possible you have to come to terms with your past — you have to dissolve all hangovers, and there are millions of them.
Even when one becomes old he is also a child, a young man, and all that he has ever been is there, because you don’t know how to die every moment. That is the whole art of life — to die moment to moment so that there is no hangover. A relationship has finished — you don’t carry it, you simply die to it! What can you do? Something was happening and now it is not happening. You accept it and you die to it — you simply DROP IT with full awareness, and then you are renewed in a new moment. Now you are not carrying the past.
You are a child no more, but watch yourself and you will feel the child is there — and that child creates trouble! If you were really a child there would be no trouble, but you are young or old….
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was hospitalized. He was eighty — and then came his birthday, and he was waiting for his three sons to bring him some present. They came of course, but they had not brought anything — because he was eighty years old! A child feels happy with a present, but an old man? Eighty years old! His eldest son was sixty. So they didn’t think about it at all, but when they came and Mulla looked and they were empty-handed, he felt angry, frustrated, and he said, ‘What! Have you forgotten your old father, your poor old father’s birthday? It is my birthday!’
The child… at that moment you could have looked into his eyes, and this eighty-year-old man was not there, just a child waiting for some toys.
One son said, ‘Forgive us, we forgot completely.’
Mulla Nasruddin said, ‘I reckon I will forgive you, because it seems this forgetfulness runs in our family. Really, I forgot to marry your mother.’ He was really angry.
So they all three shrieked in unison, and they said, ‘What! Do you mean we are…?’
He said, ‘Yes! — and damned cheap ones at that!’
The child continues somewhere in you: when you weep you can find him, when you laugh you can find him, when somebody gives you a present you can find him, when somebody forgets to, you can find him, when somebody appreciates you, you can find him; when somebody condemns you, you can find him — it is very difficult to be really mature. One can never be mature unless the child simply dies within you, is no longer a part of you — otherwise it will go on influencing your actions, your relationships.
And this is not only true for the child, every moment of the past is there and influencing your present — your present is so loaded. And millions of voices from the body and the mind go on manipulating you; how can you reach the path? You are a mountain. This mountain has to be dissolved. What to do? It can be dissolved consciously — one thing is to live your past again, consciously.
This is the mechanism of consciousness: whenever you live something consciously it never becomes a loaded thing on you; try to understand this. It never becomes a burden on you if you live it consciously. If you go to the market to purchase something and you move consciously, walk consciously, purchase the thing consciously, with full remembrance, mindfully come back home, this will never be a part of your memory. I don’t mean that you will forget it — it will not be a load. If you want to remember it, you can remember it, but it will not be constantly forcing your attention towards it, it will not be a loaded thing.
Whatsoever you do consciously is lived through and is no longer a hangover. Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover, because you never live it totally — something remains incomplete. When something is incomplete it has to be carried — it waits to be completed.
You were a child, and somebody had broken your toy, and you were crying; and your mother consoled you, diverted your mind somewhere — gave you some sweets, talked about something else, told you a story, diverted you — and you were going to cry and weep, and you forgot. That has remained incomplete; it is there, and any day whenever somebody snatches a toy from you — it may be any toy, it may be a girlfriend, and somebody snatches her — you start weeping and crying. And you can find the child there, incomplete. It may be a post: you are mayor of the town and somebody snatches the post, a toy, and you are crying and weeping again.
Find out… regress into the past, move through it again, because there is no other way now; the past is there no more, so if something has remained hanging the only way is to relive it in the mind, move backwards. Every night make it a point to go backwards for one hour, fully alert, as if you are living the whole thing again. Many things will bubble up, many things will call your attention — so don’t be in a hurry, and don’t pay half-attention to anything and then move again because that will again create incompleteness. Whatsoever comes, give total attention to it. Live it again. And when I say live it again I mean LIVE it again — not just remember, because when you remember a thing you are a detached observer; that won’t help. RELIVE IT!
You are a child again. Don’t look as if you are standing apart and looking at a child as his toy is being snatched. No! BE the child. Not outside the child, inside the child — be again the child. Relive the moment: somebody snatches the toy, somebody destroys it, and you start crying — and cry! Your mother is trying to console you — go through the whole thing again, but now don’t be diverted by anything. Let the whole process be completed. When it is completed, suddenly you will feel your heart is less heavy; something has dropped.
You wanted to say something to your father; now he is dead, now there is no way to tell him. Or you wanted to ask his forgiveness for a certain thing you did which he didn’t like, but your ego came in and you couldn’t ask his forgiveness; now he is dead, now nothing can be done. What to do? — and it is THERE! It will go on and on and destroy all your relationships.
I am very much aware of that because to be a master is to be in a certain sense a father — it is to be many things but very importantly it is in a certain sense to be a father. When people come to me, if they are loaded with their relationship with their father, then it becomes very difficult to be related to me because I always feel their father comes in. If they have hated their father they will hate me, if they wanted to fight with their father, they will fight, if they love their father they will love me, if they respected their father they will respect me, if they respected him just superficially and deep down they had a disrespect, it will be the same with me — and the whole thing starts working.
If you are conscious, you can watch. Go back. Now your father is no more but for the eyes of the memory he is still there. Close your eyes; again be the child who has committed something, done something against the father, wants to be forgiven but cannot gather courage — now you can gather courage! You can say whatsoever you wanted to say, you can touch his feet again, or you can be angry and hit him — but be finished! Let the whole process be completed. Remember one basic law: anything that is complete drops, because then there is no meaning in carrying it; anything that is incomplete clings, it waits for its completion.
And this existence is really always after completion. The whole existence has a basic tendency to complete everything. It does not like incomplete things — they hang, they wait; and there is no hurry for existence — they can wait for millions of years.
Move backwards. Every night for one hour before you go to sleep, move into the past, relive. Many memories by and by will be unearthed. With many you will be surprised that you were not aware that these things are there — and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened! You will be again a child, again a young man, a lover, many things will come. Move slowly, so everything is completed. Your mountain will become smaller and smaller — the LOAD is the mountain. And the smaller it becomes, the freer you will feel. A certain quality of freedom will come to you, and a freshness, and inside you will feel you have touched a source of life.
You will be always vital — even others will feel that when you walk your step has changed, it has a quality of dance; when you touch, your touch has changed — it is not a dead hand, it has become alive again. Now life is flowing because the blocks have disappeared; now there is no anger in the hand, love can flow easily, unpoisoned, in its purity. You will become more sensitive, vulnerable, open.
If you have come to terms with the past suddenly you will be here and now in the present, because then there is no need to move again and again. Go on moving every night. By and by memories will come up before your eyes and they will be completed. Relive them; completed, suddenly you will feel they drop. Now there is no more to be done, the thing is finished. Less and less memories will come as the time moves. There will be gaps — you would like to live, nothing is coming — and those gaps are beautiful. Then a day will come when you will not be able to move backwards because everything is complete. When you cannot move backwards, only then do you move forwards.
There is no other way. And to move forwards is to reach the path: the whole consciousness moving ahead every moment into the unknown. But your legs are being pulled back continuously by the past, the past is heavy on you; how can you move into the future, and how can you be in the present? The mountain is really big, it is a Himalaya, uncharted, unmapped; nobody knows how to pass through it — and everybody is such a different Himalaya that you can never make a map, because it differs with everybody. You have your Himalayas to carry, others have their Himalayas to carry, and with these mountains, when you meet with people there is only clash and conflict.
The whole life becomes just a struggle, a violent struggle, and everywhere you can see and feel and hear the clash. Whenever somebody comes near, you are tense and the other is also tense — both are carrying their Himalayas of tension and sooner or later they will clash. You may call it love but those who know, they say it is a clash. Now there is going to be misery.
Be finished with the past. As you become more free from the past, the mountain starts disappearing. And then you will attain a unison: you will become, by and by, one.
Source – Osho Book “And the Flowers Showered”

Osho – Everything that you can watch is part of the mind

Osho – My sannyasins have to do only one thing, that is, they have to become watchers of the mind, not controllers, just watchers. and then allow the process to take its own course. Whenever you have time, just sit silently and watch with no motive. Don’t wait for any result, don’t think that now great light will arise or a one-thousand-petalled lotus will open inside you and chakras and the energy will rise upwards. Don’t be worried about these things. Even if they happen, watch them; they are part of the mind.
Everything that you can watch is part of the mind — that’s the very key to unlock the door. Everything that can be watched — kundalini arising, lotuses opening, beautiful fragrances and light inside… all can be watched, so that simply means they are subtle processes of thought. Mind is playing, trying to play its last tricks, trying to enchant you that ‘Look, what are you doing? Trying to drop me? I can supply such a good circus and I contain so many mysteries. What are you doing? Trying to go beyond me? Then watch this light, watch this energy and see: your third eye is opening. These are all tricks of the mind, subtle tricks. One has to remain absolutely unaffected.
Those are the real temptations. There is no devil other than the mind. If one can go on watching and enjoying these temptations: ‘Yes, you go on playing your tricks — I am ready to watch, I will watch everything. I will watch even nothing…’ Because that is the final and ultimate strategy. The mind says ‘Okay, you are interested in nothing? Have it!’ If you cling to nothing you are back in the mind; the mind has conquered you, you have been defeated.
So you say ‘Okay, I will even watch nothing. I am not going to be entangled in anything again, even by nothing.’ And then the real nothing happens; it is no more a thought. You don’t see it, you can’t hold it, you can’t touch it. All has disappeared; even the idea of nothing is no more there. You are not feeling a great joy, ‘Look, now I have achieved nothing. That’s what happens when a man becomes a Buddha.’ Even that is not there; hence Buddha says ‘If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.’ That’s what he means: even if you come to the idea ‘Now I have become the Buddha’. kill it immediately. That is the last temptation of the mind.
Go on watching and watching and watching till there is nothing to watch, not even nothing to watch. Then the watcher is left alone, then there is no object, when subjectivity is left alone, in that absolute silence is the revolution.
Source – Osho Book “The Golden Wind”

Osho – Just watch and see the association of thought – how thoughts are linked

Osho – Start enjoying the thought process. Just see the nuances of thoughts: how they take turns, how one thing leads to another, how they get hooked with each other.
It is really a miracle to watch. Just a small thought can take you to the farthest end, and if you look you don’t see any connection. A dog starts barking and your thought process is triggered. The dog is forgotten; you remember a friend who had a beautiful dog. Now you are off! Then the friend is forgotten; you remember the friend’s wife who was beautiful, and so you go on, and then other women…. Where you will end, nobody knows; and it all started with a dog barking!
Just watch and see the association of thought – how thoughts are linked, chained with each other – and enjoy it, let it be a game. Play it deliberately, and you will be surprised: sometimes just enjoying it, you will find those beautiful pauses I talk about. Suddenly you will find that the dog is barking and nothing is arising in your mind, no chain starts. The dog goes on barking and you go on listening; no thought arises. Small gaps will arise, but they are not to be produced. They come on their own, and when they come, they are beautiful. In those small gaps you will start watching the watcher; but that will be natural. Again thoughts will start and you will enjoy it. Go on easily, take it easy. Awareness will come to you but it will come indirectly.
Watching, enjoying seeing thoughts taking their turn is as beautiful as seeing the sea with millions of waves. This too is a sea, and thoughts are waves. But people go and enjoy the waves in the ocean and they don’t enjoy the waves in their consciousness. I teach you to enjoy everything, otherwise we go on finding something or other to fight with. Mm? somebody is fighting with sex and somebody is fighting with anger, and somebody starts fighting with thinking, and somebody starts fighting with emotions and somebody with the body. But one thing is the same: they all fight. And to fight is to destroy yourself. There is no need to fight – love! All fighting energy has to be transformed into love energy.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Osho – All that is called sin is not possible if you are aware

Osho – Heraclitus touches the deepest problem of man: that is — fast asleep even while awake. You sleep when you sleep, but you also sleep while you are awake. What is the meaning of it? — because this is what Buddha says, this is what Jesus says, this is what Heraclitus says. You look wide awake, but that is only appearance; deep within you the sleep continues.
Even right now you are dreaming within: a thousand and one thoughts continue and you are not conscious of what is happening, you are not aware of what you are doing, you are not aware of who you are. You move as people move in sleep.
You must have known somebody who moves, does this or that, in sleep, and then goes back to sleep again. There is a disease called somnambulism. Many people in the night get up from their beds; their eyes are open, they can move! They can move, they can find the door. They will go to the kitchen, they will eat something; they will come back and they will go to bed. And if you ask them in the morning, they don’t know anything about it. At the most, if they try to remember it they will see that they had a dream that night, that they woke up, they went into the kitchen. But it was a dream, at the most; even that is difficult to remember.
Many people have committed crimes; many murderers when in the court say that they don’t know, they don’t remember ever having done such a thing. It is not that they are deceiving the court — no. Now psychoanalysts have come to find that they are not deceiving, they are not being untrue; they are absolutely truthful. They did commit the murder — when they were fast asleep they did commit it — as if in a dream. This sleep is deeper than ordinary sleep. This sleep is like being drunk: you can move a little, you can do a little, you can be a little aware also — but drunk. You don’t know what is exactly happening. What have you done in your past? Can you exactly recollect it, why you did what you did? What happened to you? Were you alert when it was happening? You fall in love not knowing why; you become angry not knowing why. You find excuses, of course; you rationalize whatsoever you do — but rationalization is not awareness.
Awareness means that whatsoever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; you are present there. If you are present when anger is happening, anger cannot happen. It can happen only when you are fast asleep. When you are present, immediate, transformation starts in your being, because when you are present, aware, many things are simply not possible. All that is called sin is not possible if you are aware. So, in fact, there is only one sin and that is unawareness.
The original word sin means to miss. It doesn’t mean to commit something wrong; it simply means to miss, to be absent. The Hebrew root for the word sin means to miss. That exists in a few English words: misconduct, misbehavior. To miss means not to be there, doing something without being present there — this is the only sin. And the only virtue: while you are doing something you are fully alert — what Gurdjieff calls selfremembering, what Buddha calls being rightly mindful, what Krishnamurti calls awareness, what Kabir has called SURATI. To be there! — that’s all that is needed, nothing more. You need not change anything, and even if you try to change you cannot.
You have been trying to change many things in you. Have you succeeded? How many times have you decided not to be angry again? What happened to your decision? When the moment comes you are again in the same trap: you become angry, and after the anger has gone, again you repent. It has become a vicious circle: you commit anger and then you repent, then you are ready again to commit it.
Remember, even while you are repenting you are not there; that repentance is also part of sin. That’s why nothing happens. You go on trying and trying and you take many decisions and you take many vows, but nothing happens — you remain the same. You are exactly the same as when you were born, not even a slight change has happened in you. Not that you have not tried, not that you have not tried enough — you have tried and tried and tried and you fail, because it is not a question of effort. More effort won’t help. It is a question of being alert, not of effort.
If you are alert, many things simply drop; you need not drop them. In awareness certain things are not possible. And this is my definition, there is no other criterion. You cannot fall in love if you are aware; then falling in love is a sin. You can love but it will not be like a fall, it will be like a rise.
Why do we use the term falling in love? It is a falling; you are falling, you are not rising. When you are aware, falling is not possible — not even in love. It is not possible, it is simply not possible. With awareness, it is impossible; you rise in love. And rising in love is a totally different phenomenon from falling in love. Falling in love is a dream state. That’s why people who are in love, you can see it from their eyes: as if they are more asleep than others, intoxicated, dreaming. You can see from their eyes because their eyes have a sleepiness. People who rise in love are totally different. You can see they are no more in a dream, they are facing the reality and they are growing through it.
Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. And by and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Then it is not that you love this and you don’t love that, no — you are simply love. Whosoever comes near you, you share with them. Whatsoever is happening, you give your love to it. You touch a rock and you touch as if you are touching your beloved’s body. You look at the tree and you look as if you are looking at your beloved’s face. It becomes a state of being. Not that you are in love — now you ARE love. This is rising, this is not falling.
Love is beautiful when you rise through it, and love becomes dirty and ugly when you fall through it. And sooner or later you will find that it proves poisonous, it becomes a bondage. You have been caught in it, your freedom has been crushed, your wings have been cut; now you are free no more. Falling in love you become a possession: you possess and you allow somebody to possess you. You become a thing, and you try to convert the other person you have fallen in love with into a thing.
Look at a husband and a wife: they both have become like things, they are persons no more. Both are trying to possess each other. Only things can be possessed, persons never. How can you possess a person? How can you dominate a person? How can you convert a person into a possession? Impossible! But the husband is trying to possess the wife; the wife is trying the same. Then there is a clash, then they both become basically enemies, then they are destructive to each other.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Harmony”