Osho on Difficulty in Loving Oneself - learning to love oneself

 
Question : Why it is so difficult for me to love myself?
Osho : Every child is born with tremendous love for himself. It is the society that destroys that love, it is the religion that destroys that love -- because if a child goes on growing in loving himself, who is going to love Jesus Christ? Who is going to love the president, Ronald Reagan? Who is going to love the parents? The child's love for himself has to be distracted. He has to be conditioned so that his love is always towards an object outside himself.

It makes man very poor, because when you love somebody outside of yourself, whether it is God, the pope, the father, the wife, the husband, the children -- whoever is the object of your love -- it makes you dependent on the object. You become secondary in your own eyes, you become a beggar. You were born an emperor, utterly contented within yourself. But the father wants you to love him, the mother wants you to love her. Everybody around you wants to become an object for your love.

Nobody bothers that a man who cannot love himself cannot love anybody else either. So a very mad society is created where everybody is trying to love somebody -- and they have nothing to give. Nor has the other person anything to give. Why are lovers continuously fighting, nagging, harassing each other? The simple reason is they are not getting what they were thinking to get. Both are beggars, both are empty.

A rightly brought up child will be allowed to grow in love towards himself so that he becomes so full of love that sharing becomes a necessity. He is so burdened with love that he wants somebody to share it. And then love never makes you dependent on anybody. You are the giver; the giver is never a beggar. And the other is also a giver. And when two emperors, masters of their own hearts, meet, there is tremendous joy. Nobody is dependent on anybody else; everybody is independent and individual, well-centered in himself, well-grounded in himself.

He has roots which go deep down within his being, from where the juice called love comes towards the surface and blossoms in thousands of roses. This type of person has not been possible up to now because of your prophets, your messiahs, your incarnations of God, and all other kinds of idiots. They have destroyed you for their own glory, for their own ego. They have crushed you utterly. You can see the logic.

Either the messiah, the savior, becomes the object of your love, and you become just shadows blindly following him; or if you are fully contented, overflowing with love and blossoming in thousands of roses, then who cares to be saved? -- you are already saved. Who cares about paradise? -- you are in it. The priest will die if you learn how to love yourself, the politician will not have followers; all the vested interests in society will go bankrupt. They are all thriving on a very subtle psychological exploitation of you.

But learning to love oneself is not difficult, it is natural. If you have been able to do something which is unnatural, if you have learned how to love others without loving yourself, then the other thing is very simple. You have done the almost impossible. It is only a question of understanding, a simple understanding, that "I am to love myself; otherwise I will miss the meaning of life. I will never grow up, I will simply grow old. I will not have any individuality. I will not be truly human, dignified, integrated."

And moreover, if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love anybody else in the world. So many psychological problems have arisen because you have been distracted from yourself. You are unworthy, you are not what you should be; your actions have to be corrected. You have to be molded into a certain personality. In Japan they have four-hundred-year-old trees, but their height is only six inches. They think that it is a form of art. It is murder, sheer murder! The tree looks ancient, but is only six inches high.

It would have been one hundred feet high, reaching towards the stars. What have they done? What strategy have they used? The same strategy has been used against humanity, human beings. They put the tree in a pot which has no bottom. So whenever the tree grows its roots, they go on cutting them, because there is no bottom to the pot. The roots they go on cutting, and unless roots grow deeper, the tree cannot rise higher. It grows old, but it never grows up. Exactly the same has been done with human beings.

Your love for yourself is a basic necessity for your growth. Hence, I teach you to be selfish which is natural. All your religions have been teaching you to be altruistic. Sacrifice yourself for any idiotic idea: the flag -- just a rotten piece of cloth. You sacrifice yourself to the nation -- which is nothing but fantasy, because the earth is not divided anywhere into nations. It is the politicians' cunningness, to divide the earth on the map. You are sacrificing for the lines drawn on the maps!

Die for your religion: Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism. And they have managed it in such a way that the individual is caught. If you die for your nation you will be called a martyr -- you are simply committing suicide, and that too for a foolish reason. If you die for your religion you will reach paradise, you will enjoy eternal blessings. They have manipulated you. But one thing is basic in that manipulation, that is, don't love yourself; hate yourself, because you are not worth anything.

Everybody is full of hate for himself. And do you think if you hate yourself you can find someone who is going to love you? Even you are not ready to love yourself; it is impossible for anybody else to love you. You have accepted the idea that unless you follow certain rules, religious dogmas, political ideologies, you are not of any worth. When you were born, you were not born as a Christian, as a Catholic; you were not born as a communist. Every child comes into the world as a tabula rasa, completely clean.

Nothing is written on him -- the Bible, Koran, Gita, Das Kapital-- no, nothing is written on him. He brings no holy book with himself. He comes in utter innocence. But his innocence becomes his greatest trouble, because all around him are wolves -- hiding in politicians, in priests, in parents, in teachers. They all jump upon your innocence. They start writing things on you which later on you will believe is your heritage. They have destroyed your heritage. Now it is possible for them to enslave you, to make you do anything they want.

If they want you to murder innocent people. There are religious mafias, there are political mafias, and they go on exploiting you. They may be enemies to each other, but on one point they all agree: that a man should not be allowed to love himself. That cuts his roots from his own being, and then he is helpless, rootless, just a driftwood, so whatever you want to make of him you can. The people of this country were killing innocent, poor people in Vietnam. What business was it of theirs? And it was not one-sided.

You were sending your own, who have not tasted anything of life, to kill and to be killed in the name of democracy, in the name of America. But why should one sacrifice oneself in any name? Mohammedans and Christians have been fighting, killing each other, in the name of God. Both are fighting and killing in the same name -- God. A strange world we have created! But the strategy is very simple: destroy the person's natural love for himself.

Then he is so unworthy in his own eyes, he is ready to do anything for a gold medal, just to feel a little worth -- that he is also somebody. Do you see on your generals many colored stripes? What kind of stupidity is this? Those stripes go on growing as the general goes on killing himself, destroying himself. You can have all those colors on your shirts. I don't think there is any law that can prevent it, but you will look simply foolish. Those generals, they don't look foolish, they are respected;they are great heroes. And what have they done?

They have murdered many people of your country, they have murdered many people of other countries. These murderers are rewarded. Have you seen any society rewarding its lovers? No, lovers are to be condemned. No society allows lovers any respect; love is an anathema to society. So the first thing all these vested interests have to do is distract you from love -- and they have succeeded up to now.

Millions of years... and man has remained a slave, feeling a deep inferiority complex in himself, unworthiness, because he is not able to fulfill all that is required of him. In fact, whatever is required is so unnatural that there is no way to fulfill it. And on your worthlessness the messiahs go on becoming bigger and bigger, because they say, they promise that they are the saviors; they are going to save you. You cannot save yourself. They never allowed you to learn swimming. On your own you can only be drowned.

The politicians go on giving you hope that soon there will be no poverty -- and poverty goes on growing. It is not decreasing it is increasing In Ethiopia thousands of people are dying every day. And you will be surprised, in America there are half a million people who are suffering from overeating, obesity; they go on becoming fatter and fatter. In Ethiopia people are shrinking, starving and dying. In America people are dying from overeating, in Ethiopia they are dying because they have nothing to eat.

Do you think this world that we have created is sane? Half of India is going to face the same fate as Ethiopia soon -- and India's government is selling wheat, exporting wheat to the outside world. Their own people are going to die -- not in small numbers: fifty percent of India is just on the borderline. Any moment it can become a bigger Ethiopia. But the political leaders are selling the wheat to other countries because they want nuclear plants, atomic energy, so they can also compete in the foolish race that is going on.

Anybody can see that it will take at least three hundred years for India to be a nuclear power equal to America or the Soviet Union. And do you think for these three hundred years America and the Soviet Union will simply wait? They will be growing in the same direction of destruction and death. All this has happened in the name of altruism.
I want you to become absolutely selfish. Love yourself, be yourself. Don't be distracted by any type of people -- religious, political, social, educational. Your first responsibility is neither towards religion nor towards nation.

Your first responsibility is towards yourself. And just see: if everybody is loving himself, caring about himself, his intelligence will come to its peak, his love will be overflowing. To me, the philosophy of selfishness will make him really altruistic because he will have so much to share, so much to give, that giving will become a joy to him, that sharing will be a celebration to him. Altruism can only be a by-product of self-love. Because you don't love yourself, you feel weak -- because love is nourishment, it is your strength.

Naturally, how can you feel responsible? You go on throwing your responsibility on somebody else's shoulders. God is responsible, fate is responsible, Adam and Eve are responsible. The serpent who seduced Eve to disobey God -- that serpent is responsible. Can you see the idiocy of all this dumping your responsibility on somebody? -- a serpent, perhaps millions of years ago.... I have tried hard to make some little conversation with a serpent, with a snake -- they don't speak. In fact, they don't even hear.

I discovered that serpents don't have ears, ears are not part of their physiology. And if they cannot hear, how can they speak? And how could they persuade Eve? But we have to dump our responsibility on somebody else. Adam dumps it on Eve. Eve dumps it on the serpent. The serpent -- if he could speak -- would dump it on God. This way we go on throwing our responsibility, without understanding that unless your are responsible for yourself you are not truly an individual.

Shirking responsibility is destructive to your individuality. But you can accept responsibility only when you have tremendous love for yourself. I accept my responsibility, and I rejoice in it. I have never dumped my responsibility on anybody else, because that is losing freedom, that is becoming enslaved, at the mercy of others. Whatsoever I am, I am wholly and solely responsible for it. This gives me a great strength. It gives me roots, centering. But the source of this responsibility is, I love myself.

I have also been through the same type of mass exploitation. But from the very beginning I made it clear that if I am going to be pushed into heaven I will refuse it. Of my own will I am ready to go to hell. At least I will have my independence, my choice. My parents, my teachers, my professors struggled with me. But I said, "One thing is certain: I cannot accept any bribery to become a slave. I would rather suffer for the whole eternity in hellfire, but I will remain myself. At least that much joy I will have -- that this is my choice, nobody has forced me."

Taken as a prisoner into paradise, do you think you can enjoy it? Going into paradise following Jesus Christ, or Moses, or Buddha, or Krishna -- what kind of paradise will that be, where you are expected to be blind believers; you cannot ask a question, you cannot inquire about anything. That paradise will be worse than hell. But people have been distracted from their very source. I want you to come back home.

Respect yourself. Feel the joy and the pride that existence needs you; otherwise you would not have been here. Rejoice that existence cannot be without you. In the first place that's why you are here: existence has given you an opportunity, a life with tremendous treasures hidden within you -- of beauty, of ecstasy, of freedom. But you are not existential! You are Christian, you are Buddhist, you are Hindu. And I want you only to believe in one thing: existence. There is no need to go to any synagogue or any church.

If you cannot experience the sky, the stars, the sunset, the sunrise, the flowers blossoming, the birds singing.... The whole of existence is a sermon! Not prepared by some stupid priest -- it is all over the place. You just need to trust yourself; that is another name for loving yourself. And when you trust and love yourself, obviously you have taken all the responsibility of whatever you are, whoever you are, upon your own shoulders. That gives such a tremendous experience of being that nobody can enslave you again.

Can you see the beauty of an individual who is capable of standing on his own feet? And whatever happens -- joy or sorrow, life or death -- the man who has loved himself is so integrated that he will be able not only to enjoy life, he will be able to enjoy death too. Socrates was punished by his society. People like Socrates are bound to be punished, because they are individuals and they don't allow anybody to dominate them. He was given poison. He was lying in the bed and the man who was going to give him poison was preparing it.

The sun was setting -- that was the right time. The court had given the exact time, but the man was delaying in preparing the poison. Socrates asked the man, "Time is passing, the sun is setting -- what is the delay?" The man could not believe that somebody who is going to die is so particular about the right time for his own death. In fact, he should be thankful for the delay. The man loved Socrates. He had heard him in the court and seen the beauty of the person: he alone had more intelligence than the whole of Athens.

He wanted to delay a little more so Socrates could live a little more. But Socrates would not allow him. He said, "Don't be lazy. Just bring the poison." The man giving poison to Socrates asked him, "Why are you so excited? I see such radiance on your face, I see such enquiry in your eyes. Don't you understand? -- you are going to Die."

Socrates said, "That's what I want to know. Life, I have known. It was beautiful; with all its anxieties, anguishes, still it was a joy. Just to breathe is joy enough. I have lived, I have loved; I have done whatever I wanted to do, I have said whatever I wanted to say. Now I want to taste death -- and the sooner the better.

"There are only two possibilities: either my soul will go on living in other forms as the Eastern mystics say -- that is a great excitement, to go on that journey of the soul free from the burden of the body. The body is a cage, it has limitations. Or perhaps the materialists are right, that when your body dies everything dies. Nobody remains afterwards. That too, is a great excitement -- not to be!

"I know what it means to be, and the moment has come to know what it means not to be. And when I am no more, what is the problem? Why should I be worried about it? I will not be there to worry, so why waste time now?"

This is the man who loves himself. Even the responsibility of death he has chosen -- because the court had nothing against him; it was just public prejudice, the prejudice of the mediocre people who could not understand the great flights of intelligence of Socrates. But they were in the majority, and they all decided on death for Socrates.

They could not answer a single argument proposed by him. I think they could not even understand what he was saying -- answering was out of the question. And he destroyed all their arguments; still, it was a city democracy -- the people decided that this man is dangerous, he should be given poison. What was his fault? His fault was that "He makes our youth rebellious, he makes our youth skeptical, he makes our youth strange. He creates a gap between the older generation and the younger generation.

They don't listen to us anymore, they argue about everything -- and it is because of this man."
But the judges were a little better than the common people. They said to Socrates, "We give you a few alternatives. If you leave Athens and promise never to come back again, you can save yourself from death. Or, if you want to remain in Athens, then stop speaking, go into silence. Then too we can persuade the people to let you live. Otherwise, the third alternative is: tomorrow as the sun sets you will have to drink poison."

What did Socrates do? He said, "I am ready to take the poison tomorrow or today, whenever the poison is ready, but I cannot stop saying the truth. If I am alive I will go on saying it till my last breath. And I cannot leave Athens just to save myself, because then I will feel always a weakling who became afraid of death, who escaped death, who could not take the responsibility of death also. I have lived according to my own thinking, feeling, being; I want to die that way also.

"And don't feel guilty. Nobody is responsible for my death, I am responsible. I knew that it was going to happen, because to talk about truth in a society which lives on lies, deceptions, illusions, is to ask for death. Don't blame these poor people who have decided for my death. If anybody is responsible, I am. And I want you all to know that I lived on my responsibility, and I am dying on my responsibility. "Living, I was an individual. Dying, I am an individual. Nobody decides for me; I am decisive about myself."

This is dignity. This is integrity. This is what a human being should be. And if the whole earth is full of people like this man, we can make this earth so beautiful, so ecstatic, so abundant in everything.... But the individual is missing, so you have to take responsibility for yourself. But you will be able to take it only if you start loving whatever you are: this is the way existence wanted you to be. If existence wanted another Jesus Christ, it would have created one. To be Christian is ugly, to be Mohammedan is ugly, to be Hindu is ugly.

Be yourself, just yourself, simply yourself. And remember, you are taking a great risk when you declare that you are simply yourself. You don't belong to any crowd, any herd. These are all herds: Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, communists. You are declaring yourself an individual, knowing perfectly well that it is risky. The crowd may not forgive you at all. But it is so beautiful to take the risk, to move on the razor's edge where every step is dangerous. The more dangerously you live, the more you live.

And it is possible to live, in a single moment, the whole eternity, if you are ready to live with totality, risking all and everything. I don't want you to be a businessman, I want you to be a gambler. And when you are gambling, put everything at stake. Don't save anything for the next moment. Then whatever happens will bring great blessing to you. Even if you become a beggar, your being will be far more dignified than that of an emperor. Man cannot fall into a worse state. But he has fallen; he has forgotten the laughter every child is born with; he has lost his way to health and wholeness.

The door opens right this very moment -- always here now, where life and death are continuously meeting. You have chosen death orientation because it was in the interests of those who are in power, and you have forgotten that life is passing by while you are being drowned in sadness. Once Confucius was asked by a disciple how to be happy, how to be blissful.

Confucius said, "You are asking a strange question; these things are natural. No rose asks how to be a rose." As far as sadness and misery are concerned, you will have enough time in your grave; then you can be miserable to your heart's content. But while you are alive, be totally alive. Out of this totality and intensity will arise happiness, and a happy man certainly learns to dance. I agree with the old Bali proverb.

We want the whole of humanity to be happy, and to be dancing, and to be singing. Then this whole planet becomes mature, evolves in consciousness. A sad man, a miserable man, cannot have a very sharp consciousness; his consciousness is dim, dull, heavy, dark. Only when you laugh heartily, suddenly like a flash all darkness disappears.

In your laughter you are your authentic self. In your sadness you have covered your original face with a fake identity that the society expects of you. Nobody wants you to be so happy that you start dancing in the street. Nobody wants you to have a hearty laughter; otherwise the neighbors will start knocking on your walls, "Stop. Misery is okay; laughter is a disturbance." Miserable people cannot tolerate anybody who is not miserable.

The only crime of people like Socrates was that they were immensely happy people, and their happiness created immense envy in the great masses which are living in misery. The masses could not tolerate such happy people; they have to be destroyed because they provoke inside you a possibility of revolt, and you are afraid of that revolt. Once a man falls in love with rebellion, he is on the right path.

Osho – I am trying to create here not Zorba the Greek but Zorba the Buddha

Question – Sometimes when you speak, i get the vision of living a kind of zorba the greek life — eat, drink and be merry — lusty and passionate, and i think this is the way. Other times i feel you are saying that the way is to sit silently, watchful and unmoving, like a monk. So who are we to be — zorbas or monks — and how can a blend of them be possible? I sense that you have managed to integrate the contradictions, but can we be both zorbas, moved by passion and desire, and buddhas, dispassionate, cool and calm?
Osho – THAT IS THE ULTIMATE SYNTHESIS — when Zorba becomes a Buddha. I am trying to create here not Zorba the Greek but Zorba the Buddha. Zorba is beautiful, but something is missing. The earth is his, but the heaven is missing. He is earthly, rooted, like a giant cedar, but he has no wings. He cannot fly into the sky. He has roots but no wings.
Eat, drink and be merry is perfectly good in itself: nothing is wrong in it. But it is not enough. Soon you will get tired of it. One cannot just go on eating, drinking and marrying. Soon the merry-go-round turns into a sorry-go-round — because it is repetitive. Only a very mediocre mind can go on being happy with it. If you have a little intelligence, sooner or later you will find the utter futility of it all. How long can you go on eating, drinking and marrying? Sooner or later the question is bound to arise — what is the point of it all? Why? It is impossible to avoid the question for long. And if you are very intelligent, it IS ALWAYS there, persistently there, hammering on your heart for the answer: Give me the answer! — why?
And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life — no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet — how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes. A poor man always desires that something is going to happen, hopes that something is going to happen. If not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. If not in this life then in the next life.
What do you think? Who are these people who have depicted heaven as a Playboy Club — who are these people? Starved, poor, who have missed their life. They are projecting their desires in heaven. In heaven there are rivers of wine. Who are these people who are imagining rivers of wine? They must have missed here. And there are KALPAVRAKSHAS — wish-fulfilling trees. You sit underneath them, desire, and the moment you desire, immediately it is fulfilled. Not even a single moment passes by between the desire and its fulfillment, no shadow between the desire and the fulfillment. It is immediate, instant!
Who are these people? Starved, have not been able to live their life. How can they be frustrated with lithe? They have not experienced — it is only through experience that one comes to know the utter futility of it all. Only Zorbas come to know the utter futility of it all.
Buddha himself was a Zorba. He had all the beautiful women available I his country. His father had arranged for all the beautiful girls to be around him. He had the most beautiful palaces — different places for different seasons. He had ALL the luxury that is possible, or that was possible in those days. He lived the life of a Zorba the Greek — hence, when he was only twenty-nine he became utterly frustrated. He was a very intelligent man. If he had been a mediocre man, then he would have lived in it. But soon he saw the point: it is repetitive, it is the same. Every day you eat, every day you make love to a woman… and he had new women every day to make love to. But how long…?! Soon he was fed up. The experience of life is very bitter. It is sweet only in imagination In its reality it is very bitter. He escaped from the palace and the woman and the riches and the luxury and everything….
So, I am not against Zorba the Greek because Zorba the Greek is the very foundation of Zorba the Buddha. Buddha arises out of that experience. So I am all for this world, because I know the other world can only be experienced through this world. So I don’t say escape from it, Prabhu Maya; I will not say to you become a monk. A monk is one who has moved against the Zorba; he is an escapist, a coward; he has done something in a hurry, out of unintelligence. He is not a mature person. A monk is immature, greedy — greedy for the other world, and wants it too early, and the season has not come, and he is not ripe yet. Live in this world because this world gives a ripening, maturity, integrity. The challenges of this world give you a centering, an awareness. And that awareness becomes the ladder. Then you can move from Zorba to Buddha.
But let me repeat again: only Zorbas become Buddhas — and Buddha was never a monk. A monk is one who has never been a Zorba and has become enchanted by the words of Buddhas. A monk is an imitator, he is false, pseudo. He imitates Buddhas. He may be Christian, he may be Buddhist, he may be a Jain — that doesn’t make much difference — but he imitates Buddhas.
When a monk goes away from the world, he goes fighting with it. It is not a relaxed going. His whole being is pulled towards the world. He struggles against it. He becomes divided. Half of his being is for the world and half has become greedy for the other. He is torn apart. A monk is a schizophrenic basically, the split person, divided into the lower and the higher. And the lower goes on pulling him, and the lower becomes more and more attractive the more it is repressed. And because he has not lived the lower, he cannot get into the higher.
You can get into the higher only when you have lived through the lower. You can earn the higher only by going through all the agony and the ecstasy of the lower. Before a lotus becomes a lotus it has to move through the mud — that mud is the world. The monk has escaped from the mud, he will never become a lotus. It is as if a lotus seed is afraid of falling into mud — maybe out of ego that “I am a lotus seed! And I cannot fall into the mud. ” But then it is going to remain a seed; it will never bloom as a lotus. If it wants to bloom like a lotus, it has to fall into the mud, it has to live this contradiction. Without this contradiction of living in the mud there is no going beyond.
You ask me, Maya: SOMETIMES WHEN YOU SPEAK, I GET THE VISION OF LIVING A KIND OF ZORBA THE GREEK LIFE — EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY — LUSTY AND PASSIONATE, AND I THINK THIS IS THE WAY. OTHER TIMES I FEEL YOU ARE SAYING THAT THE WAY IS TO SIT SILENTLY; WATCHFUL AND UNMOVING LIKE A MONK.
No. I will be the last person to make a monk out of you — otherwise, why are the monks and nuns so much against me? I would like you to become rooted into the earth. I am perfectly in agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche who says: “I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe in those who speak of other- worldly hopes! ” Learn your first lesson of trust by trusting the earth. It is your home right now!
Don’t hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond. The other world is hidden in this world. The Buddha is asleep in the Zorba. It has to be awakened. And nobody can awaken you except life itself. I am here to help you to be total WHEREVER you are, in whatsoever state you are — live that state totally. It is only living a thing totally that one transcends it.
First become a Zorba, a flower of this earth, and earn the capacity through it to become a Buddha — the flower of the other world. The other world is not away from this world; the other world is not against this world: the other world is hidden in this. THIS is only a manifestation of the other, and the other is the unmanifest part of it.
Source – Osho Book “Source – Osho Book “The Perfect Master, Vol 1″”

Osho – Journalists can do a tremendous service to humanity if their minds are clear

Question – Beloved Osho, you are the greatest marketing person of a product that gratifies the soul. We are in the business of selling a product that gratifies the mind; there are others who sell products that gratify the body. what lessons can we learn from you to effectively market mind and body products?
Osho – Sameer, I am reminded by your question of an anecdote. H.G. Wells had completed his great work on the history of the world …. And he has made tremendously important statements in his rare book. For example, he has said about Gautam Buddha that ”He was the most godless, yet the most godly man that has ever walked on the earth.”
His book was the talk of all the intellectuals around the world, and one intellectual journalist interviewed him about the book. His first question was, ”What do you think about civilization?” And the answer that H.G. Wells gave is of such depth that it has not to be forgotten; it is still fresh and new. He said, ”The idea of civilization is good, but somebody must do something about it, because it is still an idea. Civilization has not happened. Researching for my book on world history, I have come to know that man is still uncivilized.”
And one of the reasons man is still uncivilized is the division between mind, body, and soul. This division has been preached by all the religions of the world. They have condemned the body; a few of them have condemned the mind, too. And they have all praised the soul. The result has not been as they expected. The result has been a very strange poisoning of humanity. People have not dropped their bodies, they have not dropped their minds, but they have become guilty about them.
They have lost self-respect, they have lost touch with the wisdom of their own bodies, and they have lost the mastery of their own minds. And the reality is that unless all three function in a total organic unity, a man is not whole.
One who is not whole is not holy either.
My basic approach is: I am not against the body, I am not against the mind; I am all for a unity, a symphony, a synchronicity amongst these three spheres. And a man will be fulfilled only, complete only, when all three are functioning in total harmony.
In the East, the body has been so much condemned that the ultimate result is poverty – no science, no technology, a poor, hungry body; starved, condemned, neglected. And in the West, the result has been a healthy body, an evolved technology, richer literature, art, all for the nourishment of the mind, but a poor soul, almost nonexistential. This is a strange tragedy. The West is suffering from a poor soul, and the East is suffering from a poor body and a poor mind.
My suggestion to you, Sameer, is that the work for the future humanity, for a new man, is to drop the old conditioning – of the East, and of the West. Drop all antagonism, either of the spiritualist or of the materialist. Accept the realistic approach that existence is both – matter on the outside and spirit on the inside. And in between the two is the bridge of the mind.
In a miniature form, the same is true about every human being. The new man will come out of this unity. It feels … if somebody says that Gautam Buddha is only half, it hurts. But truth is truth. Mahavira is half – just a soul, anti-life. So is Zorba – against spirituality. So are all the scientists – even the greatest, like Albert Einstein – who cannot conceive the possibility that there is an interior existence of consciousness. Albert Einstein is half; that is the tragedy of the West. Buddha is half; that is our tragedy. And the work for the future is to bring them together.
I have been using one expression, and that is ”Zorba the Buddha.” The body has to be enjoyed as much as your soul. Matter has its own beauty, its own power, just as consciousness has its own world, its own silence, its own peace, its own ecstasy. And between the two is the area of the mind – something of matter and something of the spirit. The poet is just in the middle, between the materialist and the spiritualist; his poetry touches both extremes. I would like all three points – the two extremes and the middle – to become one unity.
A man who rejoices in his body and the wisdom of the body, a man who uses his mind as a tremendously significant mechanism that evolution has brought, and a man who does not stop at mind but goes on searching beyond, into the realms of divineness, into the realms of godliness – to produce this man should be the effort of all those who are in some way concerned with educating the new generation. The educationists, the journalists, the spiritual teachers – all people who are involved in some way in creating a better human being than has been possible in the past – have to accept the totality of man without rejecting anything.
Journalists can do a tremendous service to humanity if their minds are clear, if they are not themselves prejudiced, either in favor of spiritualism or in favor of materialism. A journalist has to be of an open mind, receptive to all kinds of possibilities. He has to be a seeker and a searcher and an agnostic; he has not to be a believer. The moment you believe in something, you start enforcing your belief, whether it is right or wrong. The journalist has to be open to all dimensions, ready to accept anything that is going to beautify existence and make man more blissful, more healthy, more intelligent, more aware of the tremendous mystery that surrounds us.
To me, that is the only prayer: to become aware of the miraculous, the mysterious that surrounds us. And only a man who has come to a unity within himself is capable of understanding the mystery of existence.
Source – Osho Book “The New Dawn”

Osho on New Man – My message to humanity is: Create a new man — unsplit, integrated

QUESTION – OSHO, WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HAVE FOR THE WORLD SYMPOSIUM ON HUMANITY?
OSHO – Krishna Prem, I TEACH A NEW MAN, a new humanity, a new concept of being in the world. I proclaim HOMO NOVUS. The old man is dying, and there is no need to help it survive any more. The old man is on the deathbed: don’t mourn for it — help it to die. Because only with the death of the old can the new be born. The cessation of the old is the beginning of the new.
My message to humanity is a new man. Less than that won’t do. Not something modified, not something continuous with the past, but utterly discontinuous. Man has lived up to now not truly, not authentically; man has lived a very pseudo life. Man has lived in great pathology, man has lived in great disease. And there is no need to live in this pathology — we can come out of the prison, because the prison is made by our own hands. We are in the prison because we have decided to be in the prison — because we have believed that the prison is not a prison but our home.
My message to humanity is: Enough is enough. Awake! See what man has done to man himself. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. You cannot call this humanity healthy. And only once in a while has a Buddha bloomed. If in the garden only once in a while a plant brings a flower, and otherwise the whole garden remains without flowers, will you call it a garden? Something very basic has gone wrong. Each person is born to be a Buddha: less than that is not going to fulfill you. I declare to you your Buddhahood.
But what has gone wrong? Why has man lived for thousands of years in a kind of hell? For thousands of years we have lived with an either/or concept of man as a kind of battleground between the lower and the higher, the material and the spiritual, the worldly and the other-worldly, between good and evil, between God and the Devil. The consequences of such have severely limited human potential.
To destroy man, to destroy his power, a great strategy has been used — and that is to divide man in two. Man has lived with the concept of either/or: either be a materialist or be a spiritualist. You have been told you cannot be both. Either be the body or be the soul — you have been taught you cannot be both.
This has been the root cause of man’s misery. A man divided against himself is going to remain in hell. Heaven is born when man is no more divided against himself. Man split means misery and man integrated means bliss. Up to now, humanity has been schizophrenic — because you have been told to repress, to reject, to deny, many parts of your natural being. And by rejecting them, by denying them, you cannot destroy them — they simply go underground. They go on functioning from your unconsCious; they become really more dangerous.
Man is an organic whole. And all that God has given to man has to be used; nothing has to be denied. Man can become an orchestra; all that is needed is the art of creating a harmony within oneself. But your so-called religions have been teaching you ways of disharmony, ways of discord, ways of conflict. And when you are fighting with yourself you go on dissipating your energy. You remain dull, unintelligent, stupid — because without great energy nobody is ever intelligent. When energy overflows there is intelligence. Energy overflowing is what causes intelligence to grow. And man has lived in an inward poverty.
My message to humanity is: Create a new man — unsplit, integrated, whole. Buddha is not whole, neither is Zorba the Greek. Both are half and half. I love Zorba, I love Buddha. But when I look into the deepest core of Zorba something is missing: he has no soul. When I look into Buddha something again is missing: he has no body.
A great meeting I teach: the meeting of Zorba and Buddha. I teach ZORBA THE BUDDHA — a new synthesis. The meeting of the earth and the sky, the meeting of the visible and the invisible, the meeting of all the polarities — of man and woman, of day and night, of summer and winter, of sex and samadhi. Only in that meeting will a new man arrive on the earth.
My sannyasins, my people, are the first rays of that new man, of that HOMO NOVUS. The inner division has led humanity into a state of suicide. It has created only slaves — and slaves CAN’T really live, they have nothing to live for. They are living for others. They have been reduced to machines — skillful, efficient, but a machine is a machine. And the machine cannot have the joy of living. It cannot celebrate, it can only suffer.
The old religions believed in renunciation. Renunciation has been a curse. I bring a blessing to you: I teach rejoicing, not renunciation. The world has not to be renounced, because God has not renounced it — why should you? God IS… why should you be out of it?
Live it in its totality — and living life in totality brings transcendence. Then the meeting of the earth and the sky is tremendously beautiful; there is nothing wrong. Then the polarities disappear into each other and the polar opposites become complementaries. But the old man was not really human. He was a humanoid, a HOMO MECHANICUS — a man who is not really whole. And the man who is not whole can never be holy.
The new man is coming, arriving, every day. He is in a minority, it is natural — but the new mutants have arrived, the new seeds have arrived. And this century, the end of this century, is going to see either the death of all humanity or the birth of a new human being. And it all depends on you. If you remain clinging to the old, then the old man has prepared in every way to commit a great suicide, a universal suicide. The old man is ready to die; the old man has lost the zest to live.
That’s why all the countries are preparing for war. And the Third World War will be a total war. Nobody is going to be a winner, because nobody is going to survive it. Not only is man going to be destroyed but all life on earth.
Beware! Beware of your politicians — they are all suicidal. Beware of the old conditioning which divides you as Indians, as Germans, as Japanese, as Americans. The new man has to be universal. He will transcend all barriers of race, religion, sex, colour. The new man will not be of the East or of the West; the new man will claim the whole earth as his home.
Only then can humanity survive — and not only survive — with the coming of a new concept of man…. The old is the concept of either/or: the new will be both/and. Man has to live a rich life outwards and a rich life inwards; there is no need to choose. The inner life is not against the outer life; they are part of one rhythm.
YOU need not be poor on the outside just to be rich in the inside. And you need not be rich on the outside and drop being rich in the inside. That’s how it has been up to now — the West has chosen one way: Be rich on the outside! The East has chosen another: Be rich on the inside! Both are lopsided. Both have suffered, both are suffering. I teach you total richness. Be rich on the outside through science, and be rich in your innermost core through religion. And that’s what will make you one, organic, individuals.
The new man is no battle ground, no split personality, but an image of man unified, unique, fully synergic with life in its totality. The new man embodies a more viable, mutant image of man, a new way of being in the cosmos, a qualitatively different way of perceiving and experiencing reality. So please don’t mourn the passing of the old. Rejoice that the old is dying, the night is dying, and the dawn is on the horizon. I am glad, utterly glad, that the traditional man is disappearing — that the old churches are becoming ruins, that the old temples are deserted. I am IMMENSELY glad that the old morality is falling flat on the ground.
This is a very great crisis. If we take the challenge, this is an opportunity to create the new. It has never been so ripe at any time in the past. You are living in one of the MOST beautiful ages — because the old is disappearing, or has disappeared, and a chaos is created. And it is only out of chaos that great stars are born. You have the opportunity to create a cosmos again. This is an opportunity that comes only once in a while — very rare. You are fortunate to be alive in these critical times. Use the opportunity to create the new man. And to create the new man you have to begin with yourself.
The new man will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. He will not look at life through old rotten divisions. He will be a mystic, because he will feel the presence of God. He will be a poet, because he will celebrate the presence of God. And he will be a scientist, because he will search into this presence through scientific methodology. When a man is all these three together, the man is whole. That is my concept of a holy man.
The old man was repressive, aggressive. The old man was bound to be aggressive because repression always brings aggression. The new man will be spontaneous, creative. The old man lived through ideologies. The new man will live not through ideologies, not through moralities, but through consciousness. The new man will live through awareness. The new man will be responsible — responsible to himself and to existence. The new man will not be moral in the old sense; he will be amoral.
The new man brings a new world with him. Right now the new man is bound to be a mutant minority — but he is the carrier of a new culture, the seed. Help him. Announce his arrival from the housetops: that is my message to you.
The new man is open and honest. He is transparently real, authentic and self-disclosing. He will not be a hypocrite. He will not live through goals: he will live herenow. He will know only one time, now, and only one space, here. And through that presence he will know what God is. Rejoice! The new man is coming, the old is going. The old is already on the cross, and the new is already on the horizon. Rejoice! I say again and again, Rejoice!
Source – Osho Book “Philosophia Perennis, Vol1″

Osho on Hedonism, The physical hedonist can rise to the higher hedonism

Question – Are there different levels of Hedonism? I suspect ‘eat, drink and be merry’ means different things to different people.
Osho – Yes, Anurag. There are two levels of hedonism, and they are almost polar opposites to each other. Because of that, much misunderstanding has prevailed down the ages. The lower hedonism is of the body, and the higher hedonism is of the soul. They both speak the same language: Eat, drink, be merry. They both propound the same philosophy of life: Live in the moment, don’t think of the morrow. They both want that one should not be worried about the past, should not be concerned about the future. This moment is enough unto itself. Their language is the same, their proposal is the same, yet they are diametrically opposite.
To the first hedonism – the material, the physical, the outer hedonism – belong the philosophies of Charvaka in India and Epicurus in Greece. To the second philosophy, the spiritual hedonism, belong all the great Masters: Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra. Where do they differ? Where do they go diametrically opposite?
If you live only as a physical being, then you will remain unaware of the non-physical dimension that is continuously penetrating you. Then you will know only the visible, and the invisible will remain unknown to you. And the invisible is far bigger, far more essential. The visible is just a covering, the visible is just a shell around the invisible. It is there to protect the invisible. The body is the shrine of the soul. If you live only in the body, and you only take care of the body and the physical sensations dominate you, you will never become aware of the non-physical dimension – the divine dimension. If you are utterly lost in the body – as you will be if you think ’Eat, drink and be merry’ is the goal – then you will live at the very superficial level.
It is as if you have been given the Bible and you go on looking at the cover, and you start worshipping the cover and you never open the book, and you never go inside and you never see what is there. The cover can be beautiful – it can be leather bound, printed in gold, maybe diamonds are studded on top of it; it can be beautiful, it can be very precious – but still it is nothing compared to that which is inside the book.
Your body is only a cover. It is beautiful, it is precious, but it is carrying something far more precious in it. The man who thinks of ’Eat, drink and be merry’ in the physical sense is a man who receives a letter and worships the envelope. and forgets the message. The message is important. What a message you are carrying inside you! What a destiny you are carrying inside you!
The second level hedonism is not against the body, it is for the soul. It also lives in the moment, but when the first hedonist is eating, he is only. concerned with the food. When the second hedonist is eating, he is more concerned with the awareness of the taste of the food. That is where they differ. When the first hedonist has gone for a walk, he looks around – the trees, the birds, the people, the dewdrops, the morning sun – but he does not look at WHO is looking at all these things. When the second hedonist goes for a morning walk, he enjoys the birds, the trees, the people, the sun, the sky, but he also goes on enjoying the one who is enjoying it all. He remains aware.
The first hedonist lives an unconscious life, the second hedonist lives a very very conscious life. The second hedonist gets all that the first is getting… plus. The first hedonist gets only the bodily sensations, and he goes on missing the REAL life. Because the first hedonist lives in the body, there are people who are against the first hedonist and
they think they are spiritual. They are not. That’s a logical fallacy. Because the first goes on living in the body, there are people who Logically think ’We have to go against the body, then only can we enter into the second realm of our being, then only can we attain to happiness, to heaven, to bliss. Because the first is missing – and the first is missing because he is too much obsessed with the body – the second, this so-called spiritualist, becomes obsessed AGAINST the body. This is not a real spiritualist.
The real spiritualist is a hedonist. Let me repeat it: He is not against the body, he is for the soul. So now there are three kinds of people: the ordinary hedonist who lives in the body, the REAL hedonist who lives in the soul. And naturally lives in the body too, and between these two is the spiritualist, the so-called spiritualist, the ascetic who fights with the body, who destroys the body, who is against the body, who tortures the body. And he thinks that in torturing the body he will attain to the soul; he cannot.
The first goes on missing, but the second – the false spiritualist – misses even more. So if you have a choice, then I will say it is better to be a physical hedonist than to be an anti-physical spiritualist, because at least you will be enjoying the body; the physical part of God will remain available to you. To the spiritualist, even that is not available. He is completely blind.
But if you really want to enjoy life, then you have to choose the second kind of hedonism, the spiritual hedonism, the divine hedonism. The second is already available to the first if he starts becoming a little alert. It is not available to the false spiritualist. He is closed to both kinds of hedonisms.
The physical hedonist can rise to the higher hedonism because he has to grow in the same way but deeper. He has to dig a little deeper into his being. So if you are to choose between Epicurus and Mahatma Gandhi, choose Epicurus. But if you have to choose between Epicurus and Buddha, Jesus, then choose Jesus or Buddha. Never become a so-called saint. He falls from grace. He misses the body, how can he attain to the soul? The body has to be used as a stepping-stone. The body has to become a staircase, it has to become a boat for the other shore. Use the body.
I am a hedonist. My whole teaching is: love the body, use the body, go into the body as deeply as you can, be sensitive to its feelings, be available to its wisdom, its joys, but don’t be confined there. There is MUCH MORE in your life. That is just a beginning. Use the body as a jumping-board. And the secret is the same. So the secret can be used on the second, higher, level too. Be in the present. Live moment to moment. Don’t allow the past to interfere, and don’t allow the future to cloud your vision. Let the present moment be crystal clear. Enter into it with the body, with the soul. Enter into it as a unity of body and soul. Enter into it not AS body or AS soul but as a unity. There are these two kinds of hedonism. The higher contains the lower. The lower cannot contain the higher. I teach you the higher hedonism.
Source – Osho Book “I Say Unto You, Vol 2″

Osho – I teach silence — sitting silently, doing nothing — and I also teach dance, music, singing

Osho – One thing has to be understood, when the pendulum is moving to the left it is gathering momentum to go to the right, when it is going to the right it is gathering momentum to go to the left. That momentum is not visible but we can infer it easily.
The farther right it goes, the farther left it will go. And the mind is continuously doing this. One will cat too much, then one will diet or go on a fast or one may become a fanatic naturalist and may start believing in naturopathy. First one eats too much, then fasts and then soon one starts eating again. And this is the story of all the people who go on dieting they will lose a few pounds by dieting and then they will jump to the other extreme one day and will start eating ice cream and everything. And they have missed it so much that they jump on it with a vengeance.
They may have lost only a few pounds in few weeks; they will gain more than that within days. And again, the misery, and again the desire to diet… This goes on, this vacillation, in everything. When you are with people you feel to be alone, to have your own space, uninterfered with — just like a bird on the wing, the whole sky is yours. And when you are alone you are simply lonely, not alone. There is no sky, no bird on the wing, nothing — you are just sitting, looking foolish to yourself. And there is the great desire to find somebody, to become engaged in something, to be occupied. The mind is rushing: what to do, what not to do, where to go, where not to go? Soon you will be somewhere and again you will fall in love and you will think of the beauty of aloneness; you will be alone and you will think of the beauty of love. The sannyasin has to avoid these extremes.
There is the same extreme between bliss and silence. If you are silent you will feel that something is missing. Silence is there but there is no joy in it. There is no disturbance, but it is like the peace of the cemetery, the silence of a grave, — no song, no laughter, no dance. And the desire will arise to rush into some dance, into some song, into some celebration. Yes, there you will fee cheerful — but feverish, tired, exhausted, and suddenly there will be the desire for silence, to be left alone, to be with yourself, unoccupied.
One has to avoid both, and the best way to avoid both is to create a synthesis between both. Be silent and blissful together, be blissful and peaceful together, otherwise you cannot avoid that vacillation, because they are essential needs. If you deny one then sooner or later it will take its revenge. There should be no denial of anything. My sannyasins are not to deny anything. They have to listen to their needs and to find a balance, a synthesis. And the greatest synthesis is between silence and bliss.
So I teach both: I teach silence — sitting silently, doing nothing — and I also teach dance, music, singing, celebration, but in such a way that the silence still goes on like an undercurrent in you. You are dancing but the silence is there, undisturbed, unpolluted. And in fact that silence gives a depth to your dance. It is not against it, it gives a new dimension to it. And if you can dance with silence undisturbed, then you can be silent and there will be a subtle dance inside like an undercurrent, a joy running like a small stream. You can feel it, nobody will be able to see it but you can hear its whisper.
When this happens then a man is both. I call that man Zorba the Buddha — and that’s my definition of a sannyasin. Buddha is silent, the Zorba part is missing. Zorba is cheerful, blissful, dancing, rejoicing, but the silent part is missing. Now the world has come to a point where we can create a man who is both, Zorba the Buddha. If my sannyasins can do it they will be introducing a totally new age in human consciousness, a new beginning, a new history. And it is immensely needed because man is fed up with the old pattern. It has done its work, it has become almost irrelevant; we have gone far beyond it. Now a new synthesis is the demand of the moment — and I don’t see it happening anywhere else, I don’t see that it is even being tried anywhere.
What is happening is that the Zorbas are tired of being Zorbas and they are trying to be Buddhas, and the Buddhas are tired of being Buddhas and they are trying to be Zorbas. That is the same game again — it won’t change anything. The West is turning East and the East is turning West. The West, particularly the most intelligent, the most young and alive people is coming to the East and the East, the most alive and intelligent people, is rushing towards Oxford Cambridge, Harvard, to learn more technology and more science.
Both look at each other in a very strange way. The intelligent western person coming to the East cannot believe that the eastern intelligence is rushing towards the West, and the eastern person cannot believe why these western people are coming to the East. For what?
Rudyard Kipling wrote that the West is West and the East is East and the twain shall never meet. And when he wrote it he was perfectly right. What is happening is not going against Kipling; the West may become East, the East may become West and again they shall never meet again. It may remain the same thing; the labels change but the meeting does not happen.
My sannyasins may be the only people in the whole world where the meeting is happening, at least the basic groundwork is being done, the foundation is being laid. My whole effort is to try in every possible way to prove Rudyard Kipling wrong, absolutely wrong. He has to be proved wrong — and that is possible only if Zorba the Buddha is born. And I am very hopeful that he will be born. The situation is ripe. If he cannot be born in this situation then he will never be born.
Source – Osho Book “Going All the Way”

Osho – When buddha has blossomed, zorba disappears

Osho – I have first to reply to the question that I had before. The question was important. I never postpone a question because one never knows what is going to happen tomorrow. I may be here to answer it or not. You may be here to listen to it or not.
But I had to postpone, because the question was important, and the time was already 9:30. I never want to do an imperfect job, so I took the risk. I hoped for the best — that tomorrow we will be meeting — and by chance it has come true. The questioner said that within his personality, the buddha and the zorba are in constant conflict.
My whole philosophy is to bring a harmonious unity between the zorba and the buddha within every human being. But the questioner is asking only from the mind. In reality, in actual experience, zorba and buddha can never be in conflict. This has to be underlined — because in reality the zorba is completely asleep, he does not know anything about the buddha, and you cannot fight with something you know nothing about. The zorba is not even suspicious that there is anything more in life than to eat, drink and be merry. That is his whole philosophy of life, there is nothing beyond it. How can he be in conflict with the buddha? Both have to be present simultaneously to be in conflict. This is very simple arithmetic.
If the buddha has arisen in you, if that awakening has happened in you, zorba disappears. It is just like you were asleep, and now you are awake. When you are awake, sleep is no more. Zorba is the name of your spiritual sleep. They cannot co-exist. The moment you are conscious, alert, aware, the darkness of the unconscious disappears. Either there is zorba, and buddha is dormant…. Buddha is just a seed as far as zorba is concerned, it is non-existential. When buddha has blossomed, zorba disappears, just as darkness disappears when you bring the light in. You cannot have light and darkness together.
I have always loved an ancient story. God made the world, and from that very day the sun went running after darkness. And darkness could not understand: it has not harmed the sun, it has not even talked with the sun, it has not even met the sun, yet the sun is continuously harassing her.
After millions of years of harassment, she finally got tired and went to God and said, “It is ungrateful to complain, but there is a limit to everything. I have been harassed for millions of years, and I cannot conceive of any fault on my part. The sun goes on expelling me from everywhere. It is even difficult to take a rest without anxiety — the sun may be coming, the sunrise may be close. I have not slept for millions of years — the anguish would not allow it. The sun has been almost a continuous torture, and without any reason. I simply want to know: what have I done wrong?”
God said, “You should have come earlier. There was no need to wait so long. This is very ungentlemanly on the part of the sun. The sun should be called immediately.”
The sun was called. He asked the messenger, “What is the problem? — because I have never done anything wrong. I simply go on doing the same routine every day. Since God made me, I have not done anything else.”
But the messenger said, “God is very angry. You have been hurting, harassing a poor woman — darkness.”
He said, “My God, I have never heard of her. I have never met her. I am not interested in women at all — I am a born celibate. I am coming, I want to see who this woman is.”
And as the sun came to the house of God, darkness disappeared.
God said, “Where has that woman gone?” They searched everywhere; darkness was not found.
Millions of years passed again, and one day the woman appeared and she said, “You have not done anything; it is still continuing, the same torture.”
God said, “You are strange. When the sun was here, where did you go?”
She said, “You are behaving like a simpleton. If the sun is here, I cannot be here; if I am here, the sun cannot be here. We cannot stand each other. You will have to hear our story separately and then decide.”
God said, “That is not my way. You both have to be present here so I can be certain that nobody is lying.”
The woman said, “Then it is better I take my complaint back.”
Since then, the woman has not appeared again. Once in a while the sun comes to inquire, “What happened to the woman — because I want to clear it up, it has become a worry on my head that somebody is being hurt by me, perhaps unknowingly.”
God said, “You need not be worried. The problem is such that it cannot be solved. I cannot give any decision unless you are both present in my court together and I have listened to both sides in the presence of each other. But by the very nature of things, you cannot both be present. That woman is your absence. So of course you cannot be present and absent simultaneously. Drop your worry. You are doing perfectly fine, and that woman is not going to report against you again. The file in your case is closed.”
Exactly the same is the case with zorba and buddha. The moment buddha arrives with all his light and beauty, with all his awareness, with all his joy, zorba disappears, dissolves. Conflict is impossible. Conflict is possible only in your mind. You have been listening to me so you have made a concept of zorba and a concept of buddha; neither have you lived zorba nor have you lived buddha. These are only words in your mind.
Then conflict is very easy; then you can go on arguing within your mind: “How can zorba and buddha become one? They are antagonistic, they are enemies; harmony is not possible.”
Yes, in the mind it is not possible.
That’s why I am telling you constantly to go beyond mind, where it is possible — not only possible, it is already happening. Beyond mind, zorba is the buddha; there is no dividing line. All that is beautiful in zorba becomes even more beautiful when buddha arrives, everything becomes a thousandfold more glorified. And all that is wrong and ugly in zorba disappears like darkness. That which can be absorbed is absorbed, and that which is not worth absorbing is dissolved.
But don’t make it a mental problem. My approach is not of the mind, it is of meditation. It is an existential approach. The zorba loves singing, playing on his musical instruments, dancing. Buddha will make it perfect, absolute. Even silence will become a song, even stones will become sermons, and whatever you touch will become a musical instrument because your hands will now have the magic of the whole existence; they will have the grace, the beauty, the poetry….
Your life will not be a struggle between zorba and buddha, but a love affair — so deep that two lovers disappear into each other, never to separate again. The union, the harmony, the accordance is going to be eternal. But avoid the mind.
Mind knows only conflict. Even where there is no conflict, mind creates it; even where there is no problem, mind creates it. Mind cannot exist without problems; problems are its nourishment. Conflict, fight, disharmony — and the mind is perfectly at ease and at home. Silence, harmony — and the mind starts becoming afraid, because harmony, silence and peace are nothing but death to the mind.
So just shift your problem from the mind. Start living. And with me, it is easy; it has never ever in history been so easy, because I am not telling you to disown the zorba, I am telling you to live the zorba to its utmost. There is nothing to be afraid of. Only add one more thing, and that is meditation.
Meditation is the bridge between zorba and buddha. Once the bridge is complete and the buddha descends there will be a tremendous change in your zorba — all that is ugly will be gone, and all that is beautiful will be beautified tremendously.
The zorba is not going to lose anything. Without buddha, zorba is just a mundane existence. Without zorba, the buddha has no roots — only flowers. But how long can flowers live without roots? Roots are ugly; that’s why they remain hiding underneath the ground — but they are the source of life and juice. Those beautiful flowers cannot exist without those ugly roots underneath the ground; those roots are continuously nourishing them, giving their life to the flowers.
And this miracle is happening everywhere. But we are so blind that we cannot see. When you see a roseflower, you don’t see that in that roseflower is hidden the whole philosophy of life — the leaves are not red, nor are the thorns red nor are the roots red. Yet out of this green foliage comes a beautiful red rose. It is nourished by everything: by the roots, by the leaves — because the leaves are breathing constantly; otherwise, the rose would die. Branches are constantly doing a miracle — bringing juice and water from the depths in the earth upwards, against gravitation. And there is no pumping system.
In the beginning scientists were puzzled at how trees one hundred and fifty feet high managed to keep their leaves green — lush green, at a hundred and fifty feet high. Water goes against gravitation with no apparent mechanism. Miracles are all over; one just needs a sensitive heart, a perceptive eye, and you will see matter and spirit dancing together everywhere.
Zorba and buddha are never separate. There is just one possibility: buddha can be asleep; then zorba has to live a mundane life. Or, under the stupid influence of the past, you can disown your body, become destructive of your body and try to achieve the impossible — living like a buddha without having anything to do with zorba.
Thousands of saints have done that, but you will not find in their life roses flowering; you will not find in their life the lush greenery of existence; you will not find in their life songs and dances. They are almost the living dead. I am fighting against that whole past.
I want you to be a zorba and a buddha together; then whatever is ugly in zorba will disappear on its own accord — you are not to renounce it. And whatever is beautiful will be absorbed in the new consciousness, in the new awakening. But don’t make it a mind problem.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho – Meditative awareness does not kill your experience of juice, rasa, it deepens it

Question – Beloved Osho, I am a Rasa addict, and I can see how this dependency leads to misery. the coolness of meditation scares me though. Can Zorba survive the Buddha, or can the Buddha really remain juicy?
Osho – It has not been possible in the past, or only with very few individuals. With the majority of humanity it has not been possible — the coexistence of Zorba and Buddha in one being. But the difficulty is not in Zorba and Buddha, in being a materialist and a spiritualist simultaneously: the difficulty is in our idea of what is spiritual and what is material.
We go with the division from the very beginning — we start with the split. Then the problem arises: Can Zorba survive Buddha? Can Buddha survive Zorba or remain juicy? We begin with the split.
If you begin with the split and you accept the idea of division, certainly it will be very difficult for Buddha to be juicy, because he will fall from your respectability. You will not accept him as a Buddha. It will be difficult for Zorba to be with Buddha, because your idea of Buddha is too serious — and Zorba is not serious. You start with a certain idea, and then there is difficulty. It is created by you. Start living both together. In fact you are living both together without being aware of it. You are a spiritual being, and you have a material body; and both are functioning in deep synchronicity, without any conflict.
Do you see there is any conflict between your body and your soul? You can’t even see where the body ends and the soul begins. They are one whole. Your awareness, your meditation, your physical health, your physical well-being — what is the conflict between them?
Your meditation and your enjoying music — why should it be a problem? Your meditation will make you capable of enjoying music more than an ordinary man who has no idea of meditation. And your experience of music and its depth will help to make your meditation more juicy, more musical, not so dry, not so dead — more alive.
Where is the contradiction? Why should there be any contradiction? Your love and your spiritual growth are the same process. It is just like you cannot walk with one leg alone; you need two legs to walk. There is no conflict. Both legs function in a deep synchronicity. And that twoness is all over you. Both my hands are making one gesture. They are not making two gestures, they are making one gesture. Although the hands are two, the gesture is one — and there is no conflict. And both of your hands are connected with the two sides of your brain, and while both hands are making one gesture, both sides of the brain are speaking; it is not just one side.
Man should be aware that many musical instruments can play together, and they will create one music; it will be an orchestra. So there will be no question that Zorba cannot survive Buddha. It is Zorba who is becoming Buddha. The Buddha is not somebody else; it is Zorba, finding not only joy in small things of life, but also joy in his own being. That’s all that a Buddha is. And there is no contradiction.
If I enjoy being silent, I enjoy speaking too, because whatever happens in silence needs to be given and shared in words — however difficult it may be. But my silence and my words are just two wings. If a man is dumb and deaf, do you think he will be in silence? Logically it would seem he will be in silence — that’s why I say logic is not relevant to life. The man who is dumb and deaf will not be in silence, because he has not known sound. Without knowing sound you cannot know silence. That is the basic complementary which looks contradictory in logic.
When silence becomes sound, it is expression. When sound becomes silent, it is the gathering of the juice. When silence becomes sound, it is sharing. But they are both together, in a different way.
People think that blind people must be living in darkness. That is logically right, existentially wrong. The man who has not seen light cannot see darkness. It is impossible. And if a man can see darkness, he is not blind. How can he see darkness? Seeing needs eyes.
So the blind man does not have any idea of darkness because he cannot see light. When you close your eyes you certainly see darkness because you are aware of light. But the blind man has never opened his eyes and has never seen light; so he lives in a third space which cannot be named because there is no word for him. Seeing is nonexistential to him: he simply does not see, neither light nor darkness.
What I am indicating is that where you see a duality between body and soul, between Zorba and Buddha, your question is: Can Zorba survive Buddha? Can Buddha remain juicy? In fact only a Zorba can be a Buddha, and only a Buddha can be a Zorba. Zorba alone, without being a Buddha, is very superficial. Buddha alone, without being a Zorba, has depth, but no life. Together there will be depth, and there will be playfulness — and life and love and celebration.
So you need not be afraid of meditation; it will not kill your experience of rasa, it will enhance it. And your experience of rasa, juice, will enhance your meditativeness. Never be afraid of opposites. Don’t choose one; that’s where man has got into trouble. Choose both together and you will remain whole. Perhaps people will not see Buddha in you — so what? Who cares whether people recognize the Buddha or not? Certainly a Buddha cannot care; he is not worried about recognition.
Perhaps it will be difficult for people because they have always accepted a Buddha who has killed his Zorba, who is almost a murderer of half his being. They have accepted, they have respected him. They cannot accept and they cannot respect… at least for the time being, till it becomes a universal phenomenon. It will not fit with their old categories.
But you need not be worried. The worry is also coming from the old categories; somehow they are hanging in the mind: “If I become a meditator, perhaps it will destroy my rasa. All my juice will be finished; then I cannot love, then I cannot paint, then I cannot play music, then I cannot enjoy a joke.” This is sheer stupidity: the Buddha becomes more and more sensitive.
Meditative awareness does not kill your experience of juice, rasa, it deepens it — although it is going to be difficult for the world to accept. But there is no need for any recognition. If you are fulfilled and whole, that’s what is needed. And if both are there — the Zorba and Buddha, the experience of rasa and the experience of meditation together — they will be just like darkness and light.
Don’t choose between darkness and light, because choosing one is dangerous. If you choose light, you cannot close your eyes; your eyes cannot have a rest. You will drive yourself mad because your eyes continuously need to open and close. That is a moment of rest, cleansing. Any dust coming onto your eyes is wiped away. Your eyelids are functioning like wipers, always bringing liquid to the eyes and cleaning them, continuously keeping them clean so you can see with clarity.
If your eyelids are taken away, soon you will be blind because your eyes will get dry, they will shrink. They will be covered with dust, they will lose all juice and life. And they are the most delicate part of your body. So your body is very protective. If you choose darkness, then you cannot open your eyes; then you are choosing blindness. And that’s how it has always been. People have been choosing. I teach choicelessness. And choicelessness means both together, both the opposites together; we are not going to choose one.
In the UPANISHADS there is a prayer, the most famous prayer, but absolutely wrong. The prayer is: “Lead me from darkness to light.” That means, “Lead me from Zorba to Buddha, lead me from death to life, lead me from untruth to truth.” It looks very innocent — it is not so.
If you have understood what I am saying, it is a very dangerous prayer. It is choice: choosing between darkness and light, it chooses light. But you need both. Light alone will drive you insane. You need the silence of darkness, the rest of darkness too.
Light is a tension, it is tiring. Darkness is nourishment, it is rejuvenating. You cannot choose. Whoever wrote that prayer — which is the most famous prayer in Hinduism — is utterly wrong because he is making choices. He is choosing life against death. That is not possible.
Life and death are in a dynamic relationship. Death is a rest and a renewal; life alone will become really boredom. Death is something closer to sleep, a deeper sleep which one needs between two lives, so the old life is completely erased, and you are clean again to be reborn, renewed, fresh. If you choose only life you will be only getting older and older and older — and bored. And if there is no death, it will be terrible.
You would like to die at a certain point because you have experienced everything that life can give. Now how long can you go on repeating the same thing? — a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years, a thousand years… but a day is bound to come when you will wish, “Give me death! I don’t want life anymore because I want to rest.”
And untruth and truth — they are not to be chosen. Untruth and truth, both are needed together, because the untruth makes you aware of the truth. The untruth also has a function to fulfill: without knowing the false, you will never know the true. You have to be capable of knowing both — and the man of awareness knows both.
He knows what is untrue and what is true. It is not that he knows only the truth — awareness simply makes him aware of the distinction between the untruth and the truth. But he knows both, and he knows the essential relationship between the two — that they are as related as life and death, as light and darkness, and they cannot be separated.
Don’t ask for one thing — remain choiceless. And choicelessness will bring the Zorba to Buddhahood, without destroying the Zorba and without taking the juice out of Buddha. And the world will be immensely enriched by people who have the depth of a Buddha and also the playfulness of a Zorba.
Source – Osho Book “Light on the Path”