There is no war going on, you are simply befooled by yourself. Nobody is there to destroy you. The whole supports you; the whole is the very earth on which you are standing, the very sky in which you breathe, you live. In fact, you are not—only the whole is. When one understands this, by and by one drops the inner hardness; there is no need for it. There is no enmity; the whole is friendly towards you. The whole cherishes you, loves you. Otherwise, why are you here? The whole brings you forth, like a tree is brought forth by the earth. The whole would like to participate in all your blessings, in all the celebrations that are possible.

Float, don’t fight

When you flower, the whole will flower through you; when you sing, the whole will sing through you; when you dance, the whole will dance with you. You are not separate. The feeling of separateness creates fear, and fear makes you un-porous. The feeling of insecurity, as if the whole is going to destroy you, the feeling that you are a stranger here, an outsider, and that you have to fight your way inch by inch towards your destiny, makes you a hard steel rod. Of course, then many things simply disappear from your life. You live in anguish, you live in anxiety, you live in intense pain, but you live this of your own accord. Be porous. Be floating. Fight is not needed at all. Rather, a merger is needed.

These are the two attitudes open to man: the attitude of a warrior and the attitude of a lover. It is your choice. But remember… consequences will follow. If you choose the path of the warrior and you become a fighter with everything that surrounds you, you will always be in misery. This is creating a hell around you; in the very attitude of fighting the hell is created. Or you become a lover, a participant, then this whole is your home; you are not a stranger. You are at home. There is no fight. You simply flow with the river. Then, ecstasy will be yours; then each moment will become ecstatic, a flowering.

There is no hell except you and there is no heaven except you. It is your attitude, how you look at the whole. Religion is the way of the lover: science is the way of the fighter. Science is the way of the will, as if you are here to conquer, to conquer nature, to conquer nature’s secrets; as if you are here to enforce your will and domination on existence. This is not only foolish, it is futile also. Foolish because it will create a hell around you, and futile because finally you will become more and more dead, less and less alive; you will lose all possibilities of being blissful. And, in the end, you will have to come back from it, because you can go for a while on the path of the will, but only frustration and more frustration will happen through it. You will be defeated more and more. You will feel more and more impotent, and more and more enmity will be around you. You will have to come back from it—grudgingly, resistant, but you will have to come back from it. Finally, nobody can rest with a fighting attitude, because with a fighting attitude no rest is possible, you cannot relax.

Nobody to conquer

The path of religion is the path of love. From the very beginning you are not fighting anybody. The whole exists for you, and you exist for the whole, and there is an inner harmony. Nobody is here to conquer anybody else. It is not possible. Because how can one part conquer another part? And how can a part conquer the whole? These are absurd notions which only create nightmares for you, nothing else. See the whole situation… you come out of the whole and you dissolve into it, and, in between, you are every moment part of it. You breathe it, you live it, and it breathes through you, it lives through you. Your life and its life are not two things—you are just like a wave in the ocean.

Once you understand this, meditation becomes possible. Once you understand this, you relax. You throw off all the armour that you have created around you as a security. You are no longer afraid. Fear disappears and love arises. In this state of love, emptiness happens. Or, if you can allow emptiness to happen, love will flower in it. Love is a flower of emptiness, total emptiness. It can work both ways. So there are two types of religion. One which creates emptiness in you and around you so that a flowering becomes possible; you have created the situation, now the flower bubbles up automatically. Finding no resistance, the seed suddenly blooms into a flower. There is a jump in your being, an explosion. Buddhism and Zen follow this path—they create emptiness in and around you.

There is another path also, a second type of religion, which creates love in you, which creates devotion in you. Meera and Chaitanya love, and they love the total so deeply that they find their beloved everywhere; on every leaf, on every stone, is the signature of the beloved. He is everywhere. They dance because there is nothing else to do but celebrate. And everything is ready—only the celebration has to start on your part. Nothing else is lacking. A bhakta, a lover, simply celebrates, enjoys. And in that enjoyment of love and celebration, the ego disappears and emptiness follows.

Emptiness and love

Either you create emptiness—like a Buddha, Tilopa, Sekkyo, or you create love—like Meera, Chaitanya, Jesus. Create one and the other follows, because they cannot live separately, they don’t have any separate existence. Love is one face of emptiness; emptiness is nothing but love in another aspect, they come together. If you bring one, you invite one, the other follows automatically as a shadow of it. It depends on you.

If you want to follow the path of meditation, become empty. Don’t bother about love—it will come of its own accord. Or, if you find it very difficult to meditate, then love, then become a lover, and meditations and emptiness’s will follow you.

So this is my definition: if you find being empty easy, then do that. If you find it is very difficult, then don’t be unhappy and don’t feel hopeless. You will always find love easier. I have not come across a man who finds both difficult. So, there is hope for everybody. If meditation is difficult, love will be easier, it has to be. If love is difficult, meditation will be easier. So just feel yourself.

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Men of knowledge have certain answers, absolute certainty—that is part of their stupidity

Socrates was a wise man, not a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge would have given a certain answer. Men of knowledge have certain answers, absolute certainty—that is part of their stupidity. In fact, only stupid minds can be certain. Life is such a vast mystery, unfathomable, unknowable; if you are wise you cannot be certain. Wisdom is cautious. Wisdom hesitates. Wisdom is never certain. That’s why wisdom can never be confined to a theory.

Wisdom doesn’t know

All theories are less than life, all theories are narrow, and life cannot enter into them—life is so vast, so tremendously vast and infinite. A wise man only knows one thing: that he does not know. A man of knowledge knows a thousand and one things and knows that he knows—and therein lies his foolishness. He goes on accumulating facts unlived by himself: theories, words, philosophies—untouched by his own being. He goes on accumulating them in his memory. He becomes a vast reservoir of knowledge, he becomes an Encyclopedia Britannica—but a dead thing.

The more his memory becomes filled with knowledge the less and less he lives in his being. The more and more he moves into the head, becomes a part, a fragment, the less and less he is joined to the vast being and the universe and existence. He becomes in a way non-existential. He is no more a part of this existence, alive, radiant, vibrating. He is a frozen phenomenon; he no more flows with life. He is like an iceberg, frozen and stuck somewhere—stuck in the head. Consciousness, when it becomes knowledge, becomes frozen; when consciousness becomes wisdom, it becomes a flow. A wise man lives, lives totally, but knows only one thing—that he doesn’t know.

Knowledge is transferable

To learn from a wise man is very difficult, to learn from a man of knowledge is very easy. He can give you all that he knows, he can transfer it very easily, language is enough of a vehicle. All that he has gathered he has gathered through the mind, through language; it can be communicated easily. A man of knowledge becomes a teacher. He can teach you, and he can teach beautifully, things which he has not known at all. Maybe that’s why he is not as hesitant as a man who knows. Because when a man knows, he also knows the opposite polarity of life. When a man really understands and knows, he also knows that everything is joined with its opposite, everything is meeting and melting into its opposite. Nothing can be said definitely because the moment you say anything definitely you have stopped its flow, you have made it a frozen fact. It is no more part of the river, it is an iceberg. Now you can accumulate it in the storehouse of the mind.

When a man really understands and knows, he also knows that everything is joined with its opposite, everything is meeting and melting into its opposite

A man who is wise is not a teacher—he can be a Master but not a teacher. What is the difference between the two? A teacher is ready to teach—a Master is never ready to teach. A teacher is aggressive, active—a Master is non-aggressive, inactive. A teacher will follow you and force you, so that you can carry his knowledge on your shoulders. A Master waits. You have to snatch from him, you have to partake of him. He will not follow you, he will not force you. He will not even knock at your doors—he will simply wait. You can partake of his being. You can enter his inner emptiness, the inner palace of his being, his inner kingdom, but that is up to you. You will have to do all the work. The Master is only a presence. If you are attracted, you fall into the presence. A teacher calls, a teacher tries, a teacher makes all the effort so that you can understand. A Master simply is there—open of course, not closed, absolutely open for you to come in. But he doesn’t make even a gesture, because that gesture may be aggressive, that gesture may force you to come in without your own will. And then it will be bad, then you have been put on a wrong path.

A master does not teach

A Master is silent presence. You can learn from him, but he will not teach. With a teacher you will be a student. There exists a relationship, a two-way relationship. With the Master you can be only a disciple, it is one-way—you have to learn. If you don’t learn you don’t learn, if you learn you learn. A Master is so happy with his own being he does not bother. If you learn he blesses you; if you don’t learn he also blesses you—he is a blessing, a benediction.

A man of knowledge becomes a teacher and millions of people are attracted towards him, because when you learn something your ego feels strengthened. Very few rare souls are attracted towards a Master because, in fact, with a Master you will have to unlearn, with a Master you will have to die. Your ego will be shattered completely—because only then can you enter into the temple, into the innermost shrine of the Master’s being.

A Master is a wise man but his understanding is so profound that you cannot understand it. You can only live it. A Master knows, but he knows in such depth—where opposites meet, where life and death become synonymous, where existence and nonexistence don’t mean opposites, where all rivers fall into the ocean—in that depth a Master exists.

It is difficult to understand him because understanding will be superficial and all understanding will be more or less misunderstanding. Don’t try to understand him. How can you understand him? How can you understand an infinite phenomenon? You can live it, you can dissolve into it, you can allow it to dissolve into you, that’s possible. It is like love: you cannot understand love, mysterious are its ways. You cannot understand it, you cannot pin down what it is. Thousands of definitions exist but love has not been defined yet and it will never be defined. Whenever you define, immediately you feel something is missing. And that something will always be missed, because that something is the depth. A definition cannot carry depth, it can only be on the surface.

Very few rare souls are attracted towards a Master because, in fact, with a Master you will have to unlearn

Come to your centre

A wise man lives in the depth. A man of knowledge lives on the circumference; a wise man lives at the centre. There is only one way to reach a wise man—you will have to come to your own centre. Centre to centre there is communion with a wise man. Head to head, mind to mind, there is communion with a teacher, the man of knowledge.

The wise man has by and by disappeared from the world. In the West you don’t find philosophers, you find only professors of philosophy. This is something absurd. A professor of philosophy is not a philosopher; a professor of philosophy is just a teacher—a man of knowledge but not a wise man—not like Socrates, not like Lao Tzu, not like Buddha. They are not professors. They are not professing anything, they are not teaching anything to anybody. They are just there—like the sun is there, you open your eyes and the darkness disappears; like the flower by the side of the path, you just be with it for a few seconds and the fragrance fills you to your very depth; like a river flowing, you come to it thirsty and your thirst is quenched. They are not professors, they are alive people. They are more alive than anybody else, and then they become more and more mysterious.

A professor of philosophy is not a philosopher; a professor of philosophy is just a teacher—a man of knowledge but not a wise man

Knowledge grows, changes, moves—wisdom is eternal, it is always the same. Whenever you attain it, it is always the same. It is like the sky which remains eternally the same. Seasons come and go: now it is winter, now it is summer, now it is raining, now the rains have disappeared. Trees come and die, generations come and go and the drama of life goes on moving, but the sky remains as it is, eternally the same, eternally new, ever fresh and always old. Wisdom is like the sky.

Wisdom grows with time

Of course knowledge can be taught in the universities, colleges, schools. Wisdom can never be taught. Nowhere can it be taught. Wisdom has to be imbibed through life, there is no other way. So only an old man can be a wise man. In wisdom the young man can never defeat the old man, but in knowledge he can always defeat him. How can you defeat the old man in wisdom? Wisdom comes through experience; knowledge comes not through experience but through learning. You can cram it in, and if you are a little intelligent, more intelligent than the average, you can know more than your teacher. You can know more than your father, there is no problem about it. Just a little effort on your part is needed. But wisdom—there is no way. It comes by and by through life. If you live and if you live totally, if you live and you live with awareness, only then, drop by drop, does wisdom come into being. It is such a subtle phenomenon! There is no direct way to reach it. Only old people can be wise. That’s why whenever there is somebody who is wise and young, in the East we know that he is old, he is ancient.

There is a beautiful story about Lao Tzu that he was born old; when he was born he was 84 years of age—he had remained in his mother’s womb for 84 years. Absurd, unbelievable, but a beautiful story—says something, says something very significant. It says that from his very childhood he was like an old man, so wise he could not be a child. It says something. It is symbolic. It says that when he was a child he had as much wisdom as ordinarily a man of 84 would have. He must have been tremendously alert.

If you are very alert then a single experience can give you much. If you are not alert you will go on repeating the same experience and nothing will be gained.

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Published by: Osho Dhyan Leela Foundation

ISBN: 978-8192461274

Pages: 226

Price: INR 495

Every thinking person has pondered over his existence at one time or another. Every intelligent individual has raised questions such as, “Who am I?” “Where have I come from?” “What is the mystery of life and this universe?” Many people look to science for answers. Yet, in spite of its giant strides, scientific inquiry has its limits—it is outwardly directed hence can never answer questions about the subject, about the inquirer with the same approach it uses to understand the objective world.

The basis of scientific truth is that, once proved, a postulate should stand the test of experiments consistently. In this respect, the experience of those who have discovered the mystery of life is consistent and can be considered scientific. Shivoham Shivoham by whosoever is only the latest “proof” of this.

This is not a typical book—its presentation, layout, language is as unique as its message. A transcription of discourses the author gave over a 10-day meditation retreat, Shivoham Shivoham gives its readers a taste of the live retreat by retaining the original flavour as much as possible.

The book derives its name from an ancient poem by the great advaita sage Adi Sankaracharya. The first chapter starts off with an exposition of this poem and sets the tone and expectation of what is to follow—a radical insight into the nature of reality. This exposition is in itself capable of triggering a deep shift in the reader and makes the book worth having.

In subsequent chapters, whosoever gently but firmly carries the readers into the inner world of self-realisation, a world that is so close and yet so totally unfamiliar to us. As you read, you get a glimpse of this most precious world and wonder how you never noticed it. To those of you who have never been introduced to Advaita Vedanta concepts, the words in the book will come as a grand revelation. If you are well-versed with the Vedic teachings, you may find the ideas familiar. But even then, the book will be a beautiful reminder of what we miss by being immersed in an illusory world.

What makes Shivoham Shivoham endearing is the way whosoever uses everyday metaphors and examples to explain otherwise abstract ideas. Consider this: “Light does not become dirty when it falls on a dirty wall, the wall cannot even touch the light. In the same way, nothing can touch the person who is stabilised in his being; he remains untouched by attractions and repulsions, rights and wrongs, greed and attachment, by all kinds of inter-related opposites and dualities.”

Apart from Sankaracharya’s poem and a few references to his master Osho’s teachings, whosoever does not use too many quotations from scriptures or other masters; he prefers to talk directly and tries to provoke the reader into self-reflection via meditation. He emphasises the role of meditation for self-realisation enough times to make you want to try it.

The entire book is an effort in reinforcing the core message of why the illusion of the world arises and how you might transcend it. The essence is the same as that of masters like Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Sri Ramana Maharshi and Osho. There’s a fair amount of repetition, as is expected in a transcription of a live talk, but this repetition serves an important purpose—that of demolishing your old habitual way of identification and introducing you to your real Self. The language, too, is not refined but that doesn’t hamper the flow in any way. However, if you are a literary purist, be prepared to overlook occasional grammatical gaffes and knotty sentence structures for the sake of the deeper meaning that those words convey.

Overall, the book has a fresh fragrance to it, and will delight genuine seekers, whether beginners or advanced. It can be read by anyone, regardless of your religious or cultural background. All you need is an open mind.

One piece of advice: don’t try to get over with the book from cover to cover. Approach it with patience and enjoy the path of self-discovery that it points to. This might well be a turning point in your journey to self-realisation.

The publisher of Shivoham Shivoham is offering a 20% discount to Complete Wellbeing readers in India. To order, contact Manoj – 9370678113 or Jaidev – 9370678114

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The desire is there—I can feel it… a tremendous desire to be a mother. Nothing is wrong with that, but you should become a mother knowingly. You are taking one of the greatest responsibilities that a human being can take. Men are a little freer in that way—because they cannot take the responsibility of becoming a mother. Women have more responsibility. So become a mother, but don’t take it for granted that just by being a woman, one is necessarily a mother—that is a fallacy. Motherhood is a great art; you have to learn it. So start learning about it!

A few things I’d like to say to you about motherhood.

The first thing… Never treat the child as yours

Never treat the child as yours; never possess the child. It comes through you, but it is not yours. God has only used you as a vehicle, a medium—but the child is not your possession. Love, but never possess the child. If the mother starts possessing the child, then the child’s life is destroyed—he starts becoming a prisoner. You are destroying his personality, and you are reducing him to a thing. Only a thing can be possessed: a house can be possessed, a car can be possessed, but never a person. So this is the first lesson—get ready for it. Before the child comes, you should be able to greet him as an independent being, as a person in his own right, not just your child.

The second thing… Treat a child with deep respect

Treat the child as you would treat a grown-up. Never treat a child like a child. Treat him with deep respect. God has chosen you to be a host. God has entered into your being as a guest. The child is very fragile, helpless. It is very difficult to respect the child. It is very easy to humiliate the child. Humiliation comes very easy—because the child is helpless and cannot do anything, cannot retaliate, cannot react.

Treat the child as a grown-up, and with great respect. Once you respect the child, you don’t try to impose your ideas on him. You don’t try to impose anything on the child. You simply give him the freedom—freedom to explore the world. You help him to become more and more powerful in exploring the world—but you never give him directions. You give him energy, you give him protection, you give him security, all that he needs—but you help him to go farther away from you to explore the world.

And, of course, in freedom the wrong is also included. It is very difficult for a mother to learn that when you give freedom to a child, it is not freedom only to do good. It is also necessarily the freedom to do bad, to do wrong. So make the child alert, intelligent, but never give him any commandments. So if you really love the child, the one thing has to be remembered: never, never help him in any way, force him in any way, to become a hypocrite.

And the third thing… listen to nature

Don’t listen to the morality, don’t listen to religion, don’t listen to culture—listen to nature. Whatsoever is natural is good—even if sometimes it is very difficult for you, very uncomfortable for you. Because you have been not brought up according to nature. Your parents were not bringing you up with real art, love. It was just an accidental thing. Don’t repeat the same mistakes. Many times you will feel very uneasy…

For example, a small child starts playing with his sexual organs. The natural tendency of the mother is to stop the child because she has been taught that this is wrong. Even if she feels that nothing is wrong, if somebody is there she feels a little embarrassed. Feel embarrassed!

That is your problem; that has nothing to do with the child. Even if you lose respectability in society, lose—but never interfere with the child. Let nature take its own course. You are there to facilitate whatsoever nature is unfolding—you are not to direct nature. You are just to be there as a help.

Start meditating during pregnancy

And start meditating. Before the child is born, you should go as deeply as possible in meditation. When the child is within your womb, whatsoever you are doing continuously goes as a vibration to the child. If you are angry, your stomach has a tension of anger. The child immediately feels it. When you are sad, your stomach has an atmosphere of sadness. Immediately the child feels dull, depressed. The child totally depends on you—whatsoever is your mood is the mood of the child.

The child has no independence right now: your climate is his climate. So no more fighting, no more anger. That’s why I say that to be a mother is a great responsibility. You will have to sacrifice much.

Now during the nine months, you have to be very, very alert. The child is more important than anything else. If somebody insults you, accept it, but don’t get angry. Say, “I am pregnant, and the child is more important than getting angry at you. This episode will pass and after a few days I will not remember who has insulted me and what I have done. But the child is going to be there at least 70 – 80 years in the world. It is a big project.”

If you want, note it down in the diary. When the child is born, then you can be angry—but not right now. Just say, “I am a pregnant mother. I cannot be angry—that is not allowed.” This is what I call sensitive understanding. No more sadness, no more anger, no more hatred, no more fighting… Both parents have to look to the child. When a child is there, you are both secondary; the child has every preference. Because a new life is going to be born, and it is going to be your fruit. If from the very beginning anger, hatred, conflict, enters into the child’s mind, then you are creating hell for him. He will suffer. Then it is better not to bring a child into the world. Why bring a child into suffering?

In the first place, bringing a child into this world is a very risky affair. But even if you want that, at least bring a child who will be totally different in this world—who will not be miserable, who will at least help the world to be a little more celebrating. He will bring a little more festivity into the world… a little more laughter, love, life.

So for these days, be celebrating. Dance, sing, listen to music, meditate, love. Be very soft. Don’t do anything hectic, in a hurry. Don’t do anything in tension. Just go slowly. Slow down absolutely. A great guest is to come—you have to receive him.

Excerpted from The Book of Woman/Courtesy Osho International Foundation

This was first published in the September 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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The World Has Lived in Two Parts

Man has made his own world while the woman has lived in a shadow—she has created her own world in this shadow. It is very unfortunate because a man or a woman, to be complete, to be whole, must have all the qualities together.

Both men and women should be as soft as a rose petal and as hard as a sword—both together. So whatever the opportunity and whenever the situation demands it… if the situation needs you to be a sword, you are ready; if the situation needs you to be just a rose petal, you are ready. This flexibility—between the rose petal and the sword—will make your life richer. And it is not only between two qualities, it is between all the qualities.

One Whole

Man and woman are two parts of one whole; their world should also be one whole, and they should share all the qualities without any distinction—no quality should be stamped as feminine or masculine. When you make somebody masculine that person loses great things in his life. He becomes juiceless, he becomes stale, and he becomes hard, almost dead. And the woman who completely forgets how to be hard, how to be a rebel is bound to become a slave, because she has only soft qualities. Now roses cannot fight with swords, they will be crushed and killed and destroyed.

A total human being has not been born yet. There have been men and there have been women, but there have not been human beings. My whole approach is to bring the whole man to the earth — with all the beautiful qualities of woman and with all the courageous, rebellious, adventurous qualities of man. And they should all be part of one whole.

Also read » Osho on Relationships: Risk Everything for Truth

Divided We Lose

But from the very beginning we start telling children… a small boy, if he wants to play with toys like girls, we immediately stop him and say, “Be ashamed of yourself; you are a boy, you are a man, don’t be girlish. And if a girl tries to climb a tree we stop her immediately: “This is not ladylike, climbing a tree; this is for the boys, it is rough. You just come down!”

From the very beginning we start dividing man and woman into parts. Both suffer—because climbing a tree has a joy of its own, no woman should miss it. To be on top of a tree when the wind is strong, in the sun, with the birds singing… if you have not been to that point, you have missed something. And just because you are a woman? Strange…

To be adventurous, to climb the mountains, to swim the oceans—should not be prevented just because you are a woman, because that thrill is something spiritual. A man should not be prevented when he wants to cry. He is prevented, he cannot bring tears—tears are only for women: “You are a man; behave like a man!” And tears are such a beautiful experience. In deep sadness or in great joy, whenever something is overflowing, tears give expression to it. And if tears are repressed, at the same time what they were going to express—the deep sadness or the great joy—is also repressed.

Be Natural

And remember perfectly well that nature has not made any difference. It has given every man and woman the same tear glands, of equal size. But if you are a man and you are crying, then everybody condemns you, as if, “You are behaving like a woman.”

You should say, “What can I do? Nature itself has given me tear glands. Nature is behaving like a woman. It is not my responsibility; I am simply enjoying my nature. Tears are my right.”

All qualities should be available to everybody.

There are men who become incapable of love because they are trained for certain qualities: “You have to be hard. You have to be competitive. You are not to show emotions. You must not be sentimental.”

Now how do you expect a man who is not emotional, not sentimental, who is not allowed to feel… how can you expect him to love? And when he misses love, his life becomes miserable. And the same is happening on both sides.

Beyond Superficial Distinctions

I would like all distinctions to disappear. Everybody should be allowed everything that is naturally possible to the person whether he is a man or a woman.

And we would have a richer world consisting of richer people.

Excerpted from Beyond Enlightenment/Courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

This was first published in the March 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine.

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The body serves you for 70, 80, 90, even 100 years, and there is no other mechanism that science has been able to invent which can be compared to the body. Its complexities, its miracles that it goes on doing for you… and you don’t even say thank you. You treat your body as your enemy, although your body is your friend.

It takes care of you in every possible way, while you are awake, while you are asleep. Even in sleep it goes on taking care of you. When you are asleep and a spider starts moving on your leg, your leg throws it away without bothering you. The leg has a small brain of its own. So for small matters there is no need to go to the central system, to go to the brain—that much the leg can do. A mosquito is biting you, your hands move it or kill it, and your sleep is not disturbed. The hand is not supposed to have a brain, but certainly it has something which can only be called a very small brain. Even while you are asleep your body is continuously protecting you, and doing things which it is not generally supposed to. Perhaps every cell of your body has a small brain in it. And there are millions of cells in your body, millions of small brains, moving around, continuously taking care of you.

You go on eating all kinds of things without bothering what happens when you swallow them. You don’t ask the body whether its mechanism, its chemistry, will be able to digest what you are eating. But somehow your inner chemistry goes on working for almost a century. It has an automatic system of replacing parts which have gone wrong. It goes on throwing them out, creating new parts; and you have to do nothing about it, goes on happening on its own. The body has a certain wisdom of its own.

And the religions say that the body is your enemy, you have to starve it, you have to hit it hard, because unless you starve it, torture it, how are you going to be free of it? They say the only way to be free of it is to cut all attachments to it. They teach you hatred for your body, and this is something so dangerous. The very idea turns your greatest friend into your greatest enemy.

These religions go on saying to you, “You have to be always fighting, you have to move against the current. Don’t listen to the body—whatever it says, do just the opposite. The body is hungry, let it be hungry. You starve it, it needs that treatment.” It simply serves you without any payment from your side, no salary, no facilities, and religions says go against it. When it wants to fall asleep, try to remain awake.

Gurdjieff was doing the same thing in the twentieth century. It certainly gives you a great ego power. When the body wants food, you say no. ‘No’ has great power in it. You are the master. You reduce the body to a slave – not only to a slave, you force the body to keep its mouth shut: “Whatsoever I decide is going to be done; you are not to interfere.” Gurdjieff used to do just the opposite of what Jainism does. Jainism starves you—but the method is the same and the result is the same; Gurdjieff used to force his disciples to go on eating. When the body was saying no, he would say, “Go on….” Every night, that was the peak point for Gurdjieff’s disciples.

He was a great cook, and as far as exotic foods are concerned he was incomparable, but that does not make him a religious man. He used to cook strange foods which you would have never eaten, your body is absolutely unacquainted with how to absorb them, what kind of ingredients he was putting in those foods! And then he used to stand there, forcing everybody; nobody could say no to the master. The body was in revolt but he would go on forcing them to eat, and then the drinking would begin. Then he would force you to drink. The ritual used to continue from three to six hours, it was not a small affair. In the middle of the night, in that whole place only Gurdjieff was awake. All the others were unconscious, vomiting, everybody falling, in every kind of posture. It was a dead place, ugly.

What was the purpose? The purpose was the same: to teach you how to fight the body. The old disciples would slowly start getting accustomed to it. They would not vomit, although they had eaten so much that it was coming to their throats, but they would not vomit. Now they had controlled it enough. The disciples that had followed him from Russia were the oldest group. They would drink as much wine as he wanted and they would not fall unconscious. That gave great power—that you are no longer a slave of the body, you are a master of the body. It is the same power that the Jain monks get from fasting for months together. The same ego is satisfied.

My request to you is: Do not fight with your body.

It is not your foe, it is your friend. It is a gift of nature to you. It is part of nature. It is joined with nature in every possible way. You are bridged not only with breathing; with sunrays you are bridged, with the fragrance of flowers you are bridged, with the moonlight you are bridged. You are bridged from everywhere; you are not a separate island. Drop that idea. You are part of this whole continent, and yet… it has given you an individuality. This is what I call a miracle.

You are part and parcel of existence, yet you have an individuality. Existence has done a miracle, has made possible something impossible.

So being in harmony with your body, you will be in harmony with nature, with existence. So instead of going against the current, go with the current. Be in a ‘let go.’ Allow life to happen. Don’t force anything, in any good name. For the sake of some holy book, for the sake of some holy ideal, don’t disturb your harmony.

Nothing is more valuable than to be harmonious, in accord with the whole.

From Unconsciousness to Consciousness/Courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

This was first published in the December 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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You can bring perfume from the marketplace and you can start throwing the perfume all over yourself, and of course, it will stink because it will not be your own flowering. It will be artificial and ugly.

And once a person starts feigning love, his whole life becomes false, because love is the centre of life. Love is the very purpose of life, the destiny of life.

If you feign affection, you will feign intelligence, you will feign freedom—you will start pretending everything else. A man who is capable of deceiving himself that he loves without loving, is so stupid that he will imitate everything and will believe it. But his life will show that that’s not so.

Pretension is schizophrenic

If you feign, you become pseudo. A man who has a pseudo personality loses all intelligence, and that is the greatest loss in the world.

Pseudo people are bound to hear something else. They are bound to see that which is not. They are bound to miss that which is, because in their very beings they have deceived themselves. Now their whole lives will be again, and again missing the point.

The first thing one has to remember is to be whole; not to be divided, not to become two persons. And the teaching, ‘be like somebody else’ always creates two persons in you. One is just a facade, superficial, and you have to live a double life. In your drawing-room you are one person, in your bathroom you are another. You have to live a double life. This split can become so deep that you completely forget: when you are one, you forget the other; when you are the other, you forget the first one.

This is what happens to schizophrenic patients. And now, in the world, schizophrenic patients are growing in number every day, as if humanity has come to a climax. Thousands of years of stupid teachings have brought on this sad state of affairs.

Doubting love is unhealthy

Love is something natural. You can doubt God, there is no problem in it. In fact, one should doubt God because unless you doubt, the enquiry cannot begin. One should begin one’s enquiry into God as an atheist; to begin as a theist is to begin in a wrong way. You have already believed, now how can you enquire? I am not saying disbelieve in God, because that again is a belief, a negative belief. Begin with doubt—doubt is natural.

Love and doubt are both God-given gifts, but you should not doubt love because to doubt love is dangerous. One natural gift will start destroying another natural gift. You will be in a conflict. And if you start doubting love you will start repressing it. If you start doubting love you will become incapable of loving, you will become closed.

And the moment your loving becomes encapsulated you are lost, because you lose the very bridge between you and existence.

Love is the juice of life

Love is as perennial as the grass in the aridity and disenchantment. Your life is arid like a desert. If there is no love then your life will be dry, there will be no juice. There will be no flowering in your life, nothing of greenery.

And there is disenchantment, disillusionment at every step, because each desire is bound to come to disillusionment.

Money cannot buy fulfilment

You desire money and you hope that when the money is there you will be happy. The moment money is there, suddenly you realise you are not happy. Money is there, but the happiness has not followed it. Money cannot purchase happiness; it can purchase comfort.

I am not against money and I am not against comfort either, but comfort is comfort; happiness is a totally different phenomenon. Comfort is good, but it is not happiness, it is not blissfulness, it is not fulfilment. You can live comfortably and die comfortably, but that will not make you contented.

Money can purchase many things, but there are a few things it cannot purchase and those are the few things, which are really valuable. The really valuable has no price, it is priceless, you have to deserve it.

Life is bound to be arid, desert-like, if you don’t have any love in you. It is going to be a continuous disillusionment, from one disillusionment to another. By the time you reach the very end, you are nothing but a sad, sad story.

Love is forever

Love is as perennial as the grass. Love is the only experience, which transcends death. All that is God-given to you, which includes many things—intelligence is there, compassion is there, sympathy is there, creativity is there, sensitivity is there, and so on and so forth—but love is the only experience in which time disappears. Love is the only experience in which naturally you enter into meditation. Love is the only experience in which you are not afraid of death at all.

It is love experienced that one day becomes prayer, and it is prayer that one day becomes the experience of godliness.

Excerpted from Guida Spirituale/Courtesy:Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

This was first published in the June 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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A religious person should explore in every possible way, should try to experience life in all its tastes—sweet and bitter, good and bad. The really religious person will be very experimental. He will experiment with music, he will experiment with dance, he will experiment with poetry, with painting, with sculpture, with architecture. He will go on experimenting with everything…everything that becomes available; he will be a child exploring everything. And that makes your inner life rich.

Do you know, all great discoveries are made by people who are not one-dimensional? One-dimensional people can never make discoveries; it is impossible, because a discovery happens only like crossbreeding. A mathematician starts writing poetry: now you can be certain something is on the way. His whole training is that of a mathematician, his approach is that of mathematics, and he starts writing poetry. Now, no poet can write poetry like this; this is going to be something new, because something of the mathematics is bound to filter in. And mathematics and poetry having a meeting is a crossbreeding.

Scientists say children that are born out of crossbreeding are stronger, more beautiful, more intelligent. But man is so stupid that he never learns. Now, everybody knows that it is good to bring an English bull for an Indian cow; that is perfectly beautiful and that is being done. But as far as man is concerned we remain stupid. It would be beautiful if people marry different races, different backgrounds, different cultures. A Siberian marrying someone in Africa—then something, some miracle, is really going to happen.

Experiment, experience as many dimensions as are available to you. Become a gardener, become a shoemaker, become a carpenter. All dimensions have to be made available, and people have to experiment and enjoy and explore. It is not that when you do some scientific work, something happens only in the outside world. When you are doing some scientific work, something happens inside your consciousness: your consciousness starts taking a form, a scientific form. If this person starts painting, then the painting will have something of the science in it. And if the painter starts becoming a physicist, certainly his vision is going to give birth to new things.

All great discoveries up to now have been made by people who were trained for something else, but were courageous enough to enter into arenas where they were amateurs. Less courageous people remain clinging with the thing that they know best. Then they go on doing it their whole life. And the more they do it, the more efficient they become; the more efficient they become, the less capable they become of trying anything new.

A country remains alive only if people are multidimensional. America is now the most alive country in the world for the simple reason that people are trying every kind of thing. From mathematics to meditation, everything is being tried. In America, people go on changing their jobs—three years is the average limit when people change their jobs. Three years also is the average limit when people change their towns. Three years is also the average limit when people change their spouses. The number three is very esoteric.

When a man has lived with many women, has done many kinds of work—has been a cobbler, a carpenter, an engineer, a painter and a musician—naturally he is rich. Each woman that he has lived with has imparted some colour to him, and each work that he has done has opened a new door into his being. Slowly slowly, many doors of his being are opening; his consciousness expands, he becomes huge, enormous.

You are your experience. Hence, experience more. Before settling, experience as much as possible. The real person never settles; the real person always remains homeless, a wanderer, a vagabond, a vagabond of the soul. He remains continually in search, he remains an inquirer, a learner—he never becomes learned. Don’t be in a hurry to become learned, remain a learner. To become learned is ugly, to remain a learner has tremendous beauty and grace in it, because it is life itself.

Whatsoever you are learning, learn it in its totality. Don’t let it be just a hit-and-run affair, go into it as if it is your whole life. Stake everything! Be total, whatsoever you do, because it is only out of totality that one learns. It is only when you are totally into something that mysteries are revealed to you. If you are totally in love, then love reveals its mysteries; if you are totally in poetry, then the world of poetry opens its heart.

If you are totally in love with anything, that is the only possible way to have a rapport with that certain dimension. So be total, and go to the very depth of it. Don’t just go on swimming in many rivers; become a diver, go to the rock bottom of everything—because the deeper you go into anything, the more and more deep you will become. Depth calls the depth, height provokes the height. Whatsoever we are doing outside, simultaneously starts happening inside. This is a fundamental law of life.

Discipline in many, many things. Be total, go into depth, to the very roots of everything—because the secrets are in the roots, they are not in the flowers; flowers are only expressions of joy. Secrets are always hidden in darkness. You will have to go into dark depths, then only you will know the secrets. And the more you experience life in its multidimensionality, the richer your soul will be. It depends on you, how rich you make your soul, or how poor you live.

Millions of people are living a life of poverty—and I don’t necessarily mean the outer poverty. I know rich people, and so poor that sometimes even beggars are richer than they are. They can afford everything but have never experimented with anything. They are simply vegetating comfortably. Simply dying, slowly slowly…existing comfortably, but not living—no intensity, no flair, no flame, no fire, just a cold life. Comfortably they will live and comfortably they will die—but they will never have lived.

Death is the ultimate mystery. That gift is given only to those who have lived really intensely, who have burned their torch of life from both the ends together. Only then it happens sometimes that in a single moment of intensity the whole life is revealed.

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

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

Your body is a temple

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

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

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

Repose is soul food

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

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

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

Repose brings balance

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

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

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

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

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

Extremes are evil

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

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

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

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Freedom from the past

The first, freedom from, is a reaction. It is past-oriented; you are fighting against the past, you want to get rid of it, you are obsessed with it. Psychoanalysis tries to give you this freedom, freedom from—from the past traumas, childhood wounds. Primal therapy is based basically on the past. You have to go backwards to free yourself from the past, you have to reach to the first primal scream, then you will be free. So, freedom means—for primal therapy, for psychoanalysis and for other therapies—that the past has to be dropped. You have to fight with it, you have to somehow manage to disentangle yourself from the past; then you will be free.

As far as this freedom is concerned, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud are not opposed to each other; they both agree. Karl Marx says one has to become free from the past, all past social structures, economic structures. His approach is political, Freud’s approach is psychological, but both are rooted in the idea of ‘freedom from’.

All political reforms are reactions—and when you react, you are never free. This has to be understood. It only gives you an appearance of freedom, but it is never true freedom. Out of reaction, total freedom is not possible. Out of reaction, true freedom is not possible. And only total freedom is true freedom.

Becoming the enemy

You can go against the past, but just in being against it, you are caught by it from the back door. That’s why it has happened again and again that with whomsoever you are fighting, you become like him. Choose your enemies very carefully, because you will be determined by them! Fighting with them, you will have to learn their strategies, obviously. You will have to learn their tactics, you will have to learn their ways. Slowly, slowly enemies become very alike—more alike than friends.

It happened in Soviet Russia…. When the revolution came and the communists changed the whole social structure, the czar was killed, and a strange phenomenon came into existence. The people who had killed the czar turned out to be greater czars than the czars themselves. Persons change but the structures remain the same, because the idea of freedom from is basically wrong.

Freedom for the future

The second idea is freedom for; it is future-oriented. The first is political, the second is more poetic, visionary, utopian. Many people have tried that too, but that too is not possible. Because future-oriented, you can’t live in the present—and you have to live in the present. You don’t live in the past, you don’t live in the future, you have to live in the present.

Visionaries only imagine. Beautiful utopias they have imagined, but those utopias never become reality, cannot become reality.

If you react to the past, you are determined by the past. If you forget the past and look at the future, you are still driven by the past, you just are not aware of it. Looking at the future you dream beautiful dreams, but they can’t change reality. The reality remains the same; dreams are very ineffective, impotent.

The first, freedom from, is a reaction. The second, freedom for, is revolution. The third, just freedom, is rebellion. It is present-oriented. The first is political, the second is poetic, the third is mystic, religious.

Just freedom

What do I mean when I say, “just freedom”? Neither for nor against, no past, no future, just being herenow, just living moment-to-moment with no ideology, with no utopia. The real sannyasin, the real mystic, is not against the past, is not for the future. He is so utterly absorbed by the present that he has no time, no energy, for the past and the future. This is how the rebel is born.

The rebel is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. Buddha is a rebel, so is Jesus; Atisha is a rebel, so is Kabir. These are rebels. You will misunderstand them if you think of them as if they were revolutionaries; they were not. Neither were they reactionaries. Their orientation is totally different; their orientation is now, here. They don’t live for any ideal, and they don’t live against any ideal. They don’t have any ideas; no ideology exists in the consciousness.

The sheer purity of this moment… they live it, they enjoy it, they sing it, they dance it. And when the next moment comes, they live the next moment with the same joy, with the same cheerfulness. They move moment-to-moment, they don’t plan ahead.

That’s why in the East, where mystics have been a great force, nothing like communism has happened. The idea is Western, the idea cannot be conceived to have happened in the Eastern consciousness. And nothing like future utopias has happened either.

But something totally different has happened: a Buddha, an Atisha—individuals living moment-to-moment in such sheer joy that their joy is contagious. Whosoever comes in contact with them is overwhelmed, starts looking at reality with new eyes. They give you a new insight into the herenow. This is ‘just freedom.’ Meditate over it.

The magic of this moment

There is no need for any psychology either, and that’s why psychology has not happened in the East. There is no need to go into past traumas, and in fact, even if you go into past traumas you are never free of them. Maybe you become more accepting, more understanding, but you are never free of them.

The East has not created anything like communism, and it has not created anything like psychoanalysis, for a certain reason. The reason is that the mystic is not trying to be free from the past, the mystic is not trying to be free for something in the future. The mystic’s effort for freedom, what he calls moksha, total freedom, has nothing to do with that which is no more, and has nothing to do with that which is not yet. His whole concern is this moment, this small crystal-clear moment. And to be in this moment is to be in meditation.

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