Osho Quotes on Laughter

1. Laughter is not irreligious. Laughter is one of the most evolved phenomena in human life. No other animal can laugh, it is only man; it is only man who can laugh.
    
2. To be serious is not only not to be alive, it is worse than death. Have you ever seen a dead person serious? Impossible! Seriousness is worse than death. Laughter is life, is love, is light. Laughter in its purest form is a dance of all your energies.
    
3. In a real deep laughter the mind disappears. It is not a part of mind or of the heart. When a real laughter happens -- a belly laughter, as it is called -- then it comes from your very core; from your very center ripples start spreading towards your circumference. Just as you throw a rock into a silent lake and ripples arise and they start moving towards the source, in the same way real laughter arises from your center and moves towards your circumference. It is almost like an earthquake! Each single cell of your body, each fiber dances in tune.
    
4. Laughter has never been used as a meditation. I may be the first person who is using laughter as a meditation. Jokes have never been used as part of a spiritual transformation -- I may be the first person! -- but they can be used; they are tremendously refreshing.
    
5. Laughter is a great medicine. It is a tremendously powerful therapy. If you can laugh at your own unconscious, the unconscious loses its force. In your very laughter your guilt, your wounds, disappear.
    
6. My own experience says to me that if you can laugh rightly, in the right moment, it will bring you out of unconsciousness into the open sky, from the darkness to the light. I am introducing laughter as a meditation because nothing makes you so total as laughter; nothing makes you stop your thinking as laughter does. Just for a moment you are no more a mind. Just for a moment you are no more in time. Just for a moment you have entered into another space where you are total and whole and healed.
    
7. Laughter is beautiful when it comes out of understanding, out of innocence. But when it is hysterical it is insane and stupid.
    
8. If you really want to laugh you will have to learn how to weep. If you cannot weep and if you are not capable of tears, you will become incapable of laughter. A man of laughter is also a man of tears -- then a man is balanced. A man of bliss is also a man of silence. A man who is ecstatic is also a man who is centered. They both go together. And out of this togetherness of polarities a balanced being is born. And that is what the goal is.
    
9. LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others -- the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being.
    
10. Laughter is a mystery. It is better to experience it than to hear someone talk about it. But one becomes curious, "What is laughter?" Laughter is the most intelligent factor in you. Buffaloes don't laugh, and if you meet a buffalo laughing you will go mad! Then it will be impossible to bring you to sanity. No animal laughs. Laughter needs a very sensitive intelligence. It means that you can understand the ridiculousness of a certain situation.
     
11. When you have a hearty laugh, mind stops, because mind cannot laugh. It is structured seriously, its function is to be serious, miserable, sick. The moment you laugh, it does not come from your mind, it comes from the beyond, from your very inner spirit. According to me, all the religions have missed one of the dimensions of the greatest importance, a sense of humor. And they have made the whole world serious.
     
12. I want my people to fill the world with laughter, joy, songs, and dances. We are not seeking for any paradise -- we are seeking how to create the paradise, herenow, because we are not interested in things after death. If we can create a paradise herenow, certainly we will be able -- even if we meet in hell -- to create the paradise there.
     
13. When you become a calm and cool observer of life you are going to laugh -- not ordinary laughter but a belly laughter like a lion's roar. And white lotuses will start showering on you. Life is neither serious nor nonserious. It is a tremendous play, playfulness.
     
14. Laughter brings some energy from your inner source to your surface. Energy starts flowing, follows laughter like a shadow. Have you watched it? When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together. They are diametrically opposite: either you can laugh or you can think. If you really laugh, thinking stops. If you are still thinking, laughter will be just so-so, it will be just so-so, lagging behind. It will be a crippled laughter.
    
    When you really laugh, suddenly mind disappears. And the whole Zen methodology is how to get into no-mind -- laughter is one of the beautiful doors to get to it. As far as I know, dancing and laughter are the best, natural, easily approachable doors. If you really dance, thinking stops. You go on and on, you whirl and whirl, and you become a whirlpool -- all boundaries, all divisions are lost. You don't even know where your body ends and where the existence begins. You melt into existence and the existence melts into you; there is an overlapping of boundaries. And if you are really dancing -- not managing it but allowing it to manage you, allowing it to possess you -- if you are possessed by dance, thinking stops.
    
    The same happens with laughter. If you are possessed by laughter, thinking stops. And if you know a few moments of no-mind, those glimpses will promise you many more rewards that are going to come. You just have to become more and more of the sort, of the quality, of no-mind. More and more, thinking has to be dropped. Laughter can be a beautiful introduction to a non-thinking state. And the beauty is.... There are methods -- for example, you can concentrate on a flame or on a black dot, or you can concentrate on a mantra, but the greater possibility is that by the time the mind is disappearing you will start feeling sleepy, you will fall asleep. Because before the mind disappears there open two alternatives: sleep -- sushupti -- and samadhi: sleep and satori.
     
15. In a few Zen monasteries, every monk has to start his morning with laughter, and has to end his night with laughter -- the first thing and the last thing! You try it. It is very beautiful. It will look a little crazy -- mm? -- because so many serious people are all around. They will not understand. If you are happy, they always ask why. The question is foolish! If you are sad, they never ask why. They take it for granted -- if you are sad, it's okay. Everybody is sad. What is new in it? Even if you want to tell them, they are not interested because they know all about it, they themselves are sad. So what is the point of telling a long story? -- cut it short! But if you are laughing for no reason, then they become alert -- something has gone wrong. This man seems to be a little crazy because only crazy people enjoy laughter; only in madhouses will you find crazy people laughing. This is unfortunate, but this is so.
     
16. Laughter is prayer. If you can laugh you have learnt how to pray. Don't be serious; a serious person can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself also, can be religious. A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the whole ridiculousness and the whole game of life, becomes enlightened in that laughter.
     
17. It is said that when Hotei attained enlightenment he started laughing. He lived at least thirty years afterwards; he continued laughing for thirty years. Even in sleep his disciples would hear him giggling. His whole message to the world was laughter; he would go from one town to another just laughing. He would stand in one marketplace, then in another, just laughing, and people would gather. His laughter had something of the beyond -- a Buddha's laughter. He is known in Japan as 'the laughing Buddha'.
    
    His laughter was so contagious that whosoever heard it would start laughing. Soon the whole marketplace would be laughing; crowds would gather and laugh and they would ask him, "Just give us a few instructions." He would say, "Nothing more, this is enough. If you can laugh, if you can laugh totally, it is meditation." Laughter was his device. It is said many people became enlightened through Hotei's laughter. That was his only meditation: to laugh and help people laugh.
     
18. Laughter is one of the things most repressed by society all over the world, in all the ages. Society wants you to be serious. Parents want their children to be serious, teachers want their students to be serious, the bosses want their servants to be serious, the commanders want their armies to be serious. Seriousness is required of everybody. Laughter is dangerous and rebellious.
    
    When the teacher is teaching you and you start laughing, it will be taken as an insult. Your parents are saying something to you and you start laughing -- it will be taken as an insult. Seriousness is thought to be honor, respect. Naturally laughter has been repressed so much that even though life all around is hilarious, nobody is laughing. If your laughter is freed from its chains, from its bondage, you will be surprised -- on each step there is something hilarious happening.
    
    Life is not serious. Only graveyards are serious, death is serious. Life is love, life is laughter, life is dance, song. But we will have to give life a new orientation. The past has crippled life very badly, it has made you almost laughter blind, just like there are people who are colorblind.

Each death is an opportunity to be awake

Osho Quotes on Death

1. Whoever may have died right now… each death is your death, because each death is a reminder that you are not going to be here forever. Each death is an opportunity to be awake. Before death comes use the opportunity of life to attain something which is beyond death.
2. The secret is, start living more fully, more totally. Be more alert so that you can find within yourself something that is unreachable by death. That is the only shelter, the only security, the only safety. And if you want to help your friends and family, let them become aware of this secret.
3. The danger is more, but as life is itself always in the grip of death, it is a good opportunity to be aware. Otherwise your death comes without any pre-information: suddenly it comes and you don’t have even a single moment. And even in cases where death is certain — in cancer or in AIDS — the doctors, the family, the friends, everybody tries to hide the fact that it is so close… with good intentions, but good intentions won’t do. They are harming the person. The person should be made aware: “Your death is going to come within one month. You don’t have any more life, so this month do the best thing that can give you a taste of immortality.” Then when you die there is no sadness, no misery — you simply move from this body into another body, or if you become enlightened… A sudden awareness of death can make you enlightened.
4. A man of realization knows there is no death. Death is a fiction, you have never died. Yes, you have changed your form many times. You have changed your house many times, many times. But you have never died. Have you ever seen yourself dying? It is always somebody else who dies.
5. life and death are two phases of the same energy. Death is not the end of life. Death itself is part of life, and life goes on. You have died many times, and still you are alive. Your life is eternal. Death is a small episode here and there, when you change your house, but the essential of your being remains the same. How many times you change houses does not matter, but it is inconceivable to the mind.
6. Mind only thinks about things. “What will happen after death?” Why can’t you wait? One thing is certain: you will die — I guarantee it! How you prefer to die, that is another matter.
7. You were a child, you have become a grown-up, you will become old. This is phenomenal, this is unreal. But there is something within you which never becomes anything other than itself. In your childhood it is the same, in your youth it is the same, in your old age it is the same, in your death it is the same. A man of meditation knows his eternal being, his immortal being. There is no deathbed for him.
8. A right kind of education will teach people to live herenow, to create a paradise of this earth, not to wait for death to come, and not to wait for death to come, and not to be miserable till death stops your misery. Let death find you dancing and joyous and loving. It is a strange experience that if a man can live his life as if he is already in paradise, death cannot take away anything from that man’s experience.
9. Because of our mind we always divide everything into opposite polarities. Delusion and enlightenment, night and day, birth and death, they are all one process but the mind cannot conceive it. It is intrinsically incapable of conceiving of the oneness of life and death, of light and darkness.
10. Once enlightened, your death is going to be the last death. In other words, only enlightened people die. The unenlightened … very difficult  — they go on coming back, they never die. Only the enlightened person can afford death; the unenlightened cannot afford it, he is not yet ready. Life is a school, and unless you have learned the lesson you will have to come back again and again to the same class. Once you have learned the lesson, passed the examination, then even if you want to come back into the class you will find all doors are closed for you. You have to move higher, to a different level of being.
11. The authentic man lives the unknown, allows the unknown, moves on the unknown path, risks everything. He may not find gold mines, but he finds a tremendous satisfaction. His life is a life of blessings; his death is a death of fulfillment.
12. The whole function of the master is to create such energy, such a magnetic force that you are pulled in and slowly, slowly start disappearing. And a point comes when you have become one with existence. This I call real death.
13. The ordinary death that you see every day is not real death; It is only a change of the house, or a changing of your clothes. The master is the real death — because once you are consumed in the energy that the master makes available to you, you will not be coming back into any form; you will disappear into the vast universe. It is death from one side: you will not be this small, imprisoned soul.
14. It is life eternal from the other side: you will be freed from the prison and you will become one with life itself. You will not be separate; you will be immortal, you will be universal. Just all your misery, all your limitations — the birth, the death, the old age — all these will disappear. You will be simply young, vibrating, eternal life. On the one hand the master is a death. On the other, he is the resurrection.
15. If you have known life, you will have certainly known death — and then death is not the enemy, death is the friend. Then death is nothing but a deep sleep. Again there is a morning, again things will start. Then death is nothing but rest — a tremendous rest, needed rest. After the whole life of toil and tiredness, one needs a great rest in God. Death is going back to the source, just as in sleep.
16. Every night you die a little death. You call it sleep; it would be better to call it a little death. You disappear from the surface, you move into your innermost being. You are lost, you don’t know who you are. You forget all about the world, and the relationship, and the people. You die a small death, a tiny death, but even that tiny death revives you. In the morning you are full of zest and juice again, again throbbing with life, again ready to jump into a thousand and one adventures, ready to take the challenge. By the evening you will be tired again. This is happening daily. You have not even known what sleep is; how can you know death? Death is a great sleep, a great rest after the whole life. It makes you anew, it makes you fresh, it resurrects you.
17. Live the way existence wanted you to live. Your very life should be so intense and so total that you burn your life’s torch from both ends. In that very intensity you will know that you have touched something of eternity. And if you have known it in your life, in your death you will find a deeper confirmation of the fact. People who live in personality always die unconscious. They have never lived. They don’t know what consciousness is, so before death they become unconscious. That’s why we don’t remember our past lives. You were unconscious, and death happened in your unconsciousness. But if you live consciously, as an individual, then you will die consciously, the way Socrates is dying — so conscious to the last breath. And this memory will be with you in the next life too.

Osho – Mischief is bound to bring its own punishment

Osho – Mischief is bound to bring its own punishment just as certainly as birth is bound to bring its own death. You cannot avoid death, you cannot avoid the outcome of your deeds. So don’t think in these terms, because all that time wasted in avoiding, hiding, is simply wasted. All that energy can be put into one effort: of becoming aware, of becoming meditative. That is going to help.

A man was going to the Ganges. He went to Ramakrishna, he was a follower of Ramakrishna. He asked Ramakrishna, “Paramahansadeva, I am going to the Ganges — bless me. Do you think all my sins will be washed away?”

Ramakrishna said, “Yes, certainly, because the Ganges is so pure; whosoever dives deep into it becomes as pure as the Ganges. But there is a problem that you have to remember.”
The man said, “What is that problem? You just tell me, I will remember.”

Ramakrishna said, “Have you seen the great trees that stand on the banks of the Ganges?”
He said, “Yes, I have seen.”
Ramakrishna said, “Do you know what is the purpose of those trees?”

He said, “That I have never heard and it is not written in the scriptures. What is the purpose of those trees? You tell me.”

Ramakrishna said, “The purpose of those trees is that when you dive in the Ganges, your sins have to leave you because of the power of the Ganges. Those sins sit on the top of those tall trees. When you come back out of the Ganges, they jump upon you again! So it is really futile. If you want to go you can go, but avoid one thing: if you dive in the Ganges, don’t come out! Then be gone forever; otherwise those sins won’t leave you. And they will take revenge, they will jump upon you with vengeance.”

And this is literally true. The religious people, the so-called religious people, think that they can do a certain ritual and the sin is finished, and they are free to do the sin again! And once you know the trick how to finish it, why bother? You can go on doing as many sins as you can — the Ganges is always there.

And now there is no need to go to the Ganges either: you can bring the Ganges in pipes to your home, so every day, early morning or evening, you take a bath. Evening will be better, so the whole day’s sins are finished and you are as pure as a lotus flower.

Buddha says nothing can help you. There is nowhere to hide from two things: the result of your deeds and death. They are going to happen.

Then what should we do? Become conscious, and in becoming conscious both disappear. In becoming conscious your actions automatically go through a transformation. The conscious man cannot do anything wrong, and the conscious man comes to know that, “There is no death for my consciousness. The body will die, the mind will die, but not my innermost being. I am eternal. AMRITASYA PUTRAH — I am the son of eternity, I belong to the eternal existence.”

Consciousness brings these two truths home. First it transforms your world by transforming your actions; secondly it transforms your interiority by making you aware that you are eternal. When you know you are eternal, when you know that you have always been and you will always be, all your values of life immediately start changing. Then whatsoever was important yesterday is no longer important, and whatever was never important before becomes important — because now you think in terms of eternity and not in terms of time.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 4″

Osho – Never reduce anybody to being just a sexual object

Osho – The whole thing seems to be either money or sex. And everybody seems to be reducing life to be just a whorehouse. All sacredness of life is damaged. And then it is natural that if you have a heart which is waiting for love you will remain unfulfilled. Never look at another human being as if he or she is only sexuality. Look at human beings as really they are. Sexuality is part of them, but they are not just sexuality. A very small part, a beautiful part in itself, nothing wrong about it, but if that part becomes the whole then everything goes ugly. Whenever any part claims to be the whole then things go ugly.
If it is your head which claims your whole personality, you are ugly. Then you have lost your roots into wholeness. If it is sex that claims your whole personality and you start living for it, then again you are reduced — reduced to the earth, your sky is lost. Then you are reduced only to the roots and you don’t have any branches which can spread into the sky and greet the sun and the rains and meet with the clouds and communicate with the sky.
Sex is good, healthy, beautiful, in its own place. Try to understand me: if sex follows as a shadow of love it is tremendously holy. But if love is nothing but a seductive measure, if love is nothing but a salesmanship, if love is nothing but a seduction and only sex is the goal, then sex is ugly, love is ugly; then your whole being, by and by, will become ugly. You will exist like a wound, not like a flower.
Never reduce anybody to being just a sexual object, and never allow anybody to reduce you to being just a sexual object. If sex follows love, if it becomes a harmony in love, it has a totally different quality to it. Then it is no more sexual.
When it comes as a part of love… you love a person, you want to share everything with the person. When you love the person you want to share your mind, you want to share your body, you want to share your soul, you want to share your meditation, you want to share your… whatsoever you have. If you have an aesthetic sense, you want the person you love to share your poetry, to share your painting, to share your vision, to share your dreams.
Of course, when you love a person you also want to share your sexuality; then it is beautiful, then it has nothing like sex in it, then it is not the libido of Sigmund Freud. Then the energy has a totally different quality to it, and then it helps you to go higher and higher.
Nothing helps you to go higher than love. Nothing can help you as much as love can help you to go higher — because it becomes such a tranquillity, such a calmness, such content, one feels as if one has arrived. One feels grateful, one feels at home in existence. One is no more a stranger.
Remember: while you are relating with a person never relate only for sexuality, otherwise your whole being will become absurd. And treat sexuality as prayer. It is one of the doors towards the divine. Don’t do any sacrilegious act about it.
I have heard: A pregnant jewish girl asked her doctor what position she would have to lie in to give birth to her baby.
‘The same position you were in when you started it,’ the doctor told her.
‘My god!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you mean I will have to drive around Berlin in a taxi for two hours with my feet hanging out the window?’
But this is happening. Your aquaintance with love happens in such odd and ugly places. Now the back seat of a taxi! It should happen in a church, in a temple. The very association is ugly.
One should make love only when one is feeling tremendously beautiful, happy, celebrating. One should dance before one makes love, one should sing and pray before one makes love, one should read a few sayings of Buddha, or a few sayings of Jesus, or one should recite the Koran — it is beautiful before one makes love. Love should be entered as a shrine of god. Then love will give you such fulfillment as nothing else can give.
Source – Osho Book “The Diamond Sutra”

Need of active meditations given by osho...

Why Osho Active Meditation Techniques is needed in beginning?

Osho : "In Buddha's time, dynamic methods of meditation were not needed. People were more simple, more authentic. They lived a more real life. Now, people are living a very repressed life, a very unreal life.
When they don't want to smile, they smile. When they want to be angry, they show compassion. People are false, the whole life pattern is false. People are just acting, not living. Many incomplete experiences go on being collected, piled up inside their minds.

"Just sitting directly in silence won't help. The moment you will sit silently, you will see all sorts of things moving inside you; you will feel it almost impossible to be silent. First throw those things out so you come to a natural state of rest. Real meditation starts only when you are at rest."

All the dynamic meditations are preparatory to real meditation. They are just basic requirements to be fulfilled so that the meditation can happen. Don't treat them as meditations; they are just introductory, just a preface. The real meditation starts only when all activity has ceased -- activity of the body and activity of the mind.

What is meditation according to OSHO...

What is Meditation?

Meditation is Non-doing

When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously.  Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation - how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.
When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the centre, it settles down towards the centre. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.
Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed - courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that - the courage to be meditative.
But people who are engaged outside - with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think ....and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers. They say that if you are introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: "What are you doing? - Gazing at your navel? What are you doing? - Opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid? Because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside."
Inside doesn't exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case - only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inwards? What are you going to get there? There is nothing.
David Hume, one of the great British philosophers, tried once... because he was studying the Upanishads and they go on saying: Go in, go in, go in - that is their only message. So he tried it.  He closed his eyes one day - a totally secular man, very logical, empirical, but not meditative at all - he closed his eyes and he said, "It is so boring! It is a boredom to look in. Thoughts move, sometimes a few emotions, and they go on racing in the mind, and you go on looking at them - what is the point of it? It is useless. It has no utility."
And this is the understanding of many people. Hume's standpoint is that of the majority: What are going to get inside? There is darkness, thoughts floating here and there. What will you do? What will come out of it? If Hume had waited a little longer - and that is difficult for such people - if he had been a little more patient, by and by thought disappear, emotions subside. But if it had happened to him he would have said, "That is even worse, because emptiness comes. At least first there were thoughts, something to be occupied with, to look at, to think about. Now even thoughts have disappeared; only emptiness....What to do with emptiness? It is absolutely useless."
But if he had waited a little more, then darkness also disappears. It is just like when you come from the hot sun and you enter your house: everything looks dark because your eyes need a little attunement. They are fixed on the hot sun outside; comparatively, your house looks dark. You cannot see, you feel as if it is night. But you wait, you sit, you rest in a chair, and after few seconds the eyes get attuned. Now it is not dark, a little more light........
You rest for an hour, and everything is light, there is no darkness at all.
If Hume had waited a little longer, then darkness also disappears. Because you have lived in the hot sun outside for many lives your eyes have become fixed, they have lost flexibility. They need tuning. When one comes inside the house it takes a little while, a little time, a patience. Don't be in a hurry.
In haste nobody can come to know himself. It is a very very deep awaiting. Infinite patience is needed. By and by darkness disappears. There comes a light with no source there is no flame in it, no lamp is burning, no sun is there. A light, just like it is morning: the night has disappeared, and the sun has not risen.... Or in the evening - the twilight, when the sun has set and night has not yet descended. That's why Hindus call their prayer time sandhya. Sandhya means twilight, light without any source.
When you move inwards you will come to the light without any source. In that light, for the first time you start understanding yourself, who you are, because you are that light. You are that twilight, that sandhya, that pure clarity, that perception, where the observer and the observed disappear, and only the light remains.

LoveOsho discourse on Love

Question : What is Love? Osho : It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes. At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination. And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated. You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation. If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return. Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of partaking, can partake. Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic. Nancy was having coffee with Helen. Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?" "He takes out the garbage every morning." "That's not love. That's good housekeeping." "My husband gives me all the spending money I need." "That's not love. That's generosity." "My husband never looks at other women." "That's not love. That's poor vision." "John always opens the door for me." "That's not love. That's good manners." "John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair." "Now, that's love." Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help. When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear. It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond. That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

OSHO : From Sex to Superconsciousness, Chapter 2

"The psychologist Coue says that the average mind is governed by the Law of Reverse-Effect. We collide with the very thing from which we are trying to save ourselves because the object of our fear becomes the center of our consciousness. In the same way, man has been trying to save himself from sex for the last five thousand years. And the result is that everywhere, in every nook and corner, he is confronted by sex -- in all its various forms. The Law of Reverse-Effect has arrested the soul of man."

"the alien visitor would wonder why man thought about nothing but sex."

"The people who taught man to be against sex are fully responsible for making him so aware of sex. The over-sexuality that exists in man can be blamed on perverted teachings.
Today we are afraid to discuss sex. Why are we so mortally afraid of this subject? It is because of a presupposition that man may become sexual just by talking about sex. This view is totally wrong. There is, after all, a vast difference between sex and sexuality. Our society will only be free of the ghost of sex when we develop the courage to talk about sex in a rational and healthy manner.

 "


Early one morning,before sunrise, a fisherman went to a river. On the bank he felt something underfoot, and found it to be a small sack of stones. He picked up the sack, and putting his net aside, squatted on the bank to await the sunrise. He was waiting for dawn to break in order to start his day's work. Lazily he picked a stone out of the bag and threw it into the water. Then he cast another stone and then another. In the absence of anything else to do, he kept tossing the stones into the water, one by one.
Slowly the sun rose and it became light. By that time he had thrown all the stones away except one; the last stone lay in his palm. His heart almost failed him when he saw, by daylight, what he held in his hand. It was a gem! In the darkness, he had thrown a whole sack of them away! What had he lost unknowingly! Full of remorse, he cursed himself. He sobbed and cried, almost out of his mind with grief.
He had accidentally stumbled upon enough wealth to enrich his life many times over, but unknowingly, and in the darkness, he had lost it. Yet in a way he was fortunate: still one gem was left; the light had dawned before he had thrown it away too. Generally, most people are not even that fortunate.
There is darkness all around and time is fleeting. The sun has not yet risen and we have already wasted all life's precious gems. Life is a vast treasure trove, and man does nothing with it but throw it away. By the time we have realized the importance of life, we have whiled it away. The secret, the mystery, the bliss, the deliverance, heaven -- all is lost. And one's life is spent.
In the next few days I intend to speak on the treasures of life. But it is difficult to enlighten people who treat life like a sack of stones. People are annoyed if you draw their attention to the fact that the very things they are throwing away are jewels, not stones. They flare up, not because what has been said is incorrect but because they have been shown their own folly, because they are reminded of what they have lost. Their egos step in; they get angry.
Even with what has been lost up to now; even if the life that is left is short; even if only one stone is left, your life can still be salvaged. It is never too late to learn. Help is still possible and, especially in the search for truth, it is never too late. There is still reason to feel confident.
But out of our ignorance and in the darkness, we have taken for granted that the sack of life is filled with nothing but stones. The faint of heart simply accept defeat before they make any effort to search for the truth.
To begin with, I want to warn against the pitfalls of fatalism, against this delusion of certain defeat.
Life is not a pile of sand and stones; if you have the right eyes to see it, there is much that is good in life. In life you will find the ladder to reach God.
Within this body of blood, flesh and bones, something or someone aloof from these things exists. It has nothing to do with flesh, blood or bones; it is immortal. It has neither beginning nor end. Formless, it is at the core of each one of us. From the darkness of your ignorance, I urge you, yearn for that imperishable flame!
But the immortal flame is disguised by the smoke of mortality, and so we cannot see the light. We encounter the smoke and step back. Those who are a bit more courageous search a little, but only in the smoke, and so they cannot reach the flame, the source of illumination, either.
How can we make this voyage to the flame beyond the smoke -- to the self within the body? How can we realize the Overself, the Universal? How can we come to know that which is camouflaged by nature, that which is hidden in nature?
I shall talk about it in three stages.
In the first place, we have smothered ourselves with such prejudices, inflated ideas and phony philosophies that we have deprived ourselves of the ability to see the naked truth. Without knowing, without searching, without any curiosity, we have ready-made hypotheses about life. For thousands of years we have been taught that life is meaningless, that it is useless and miserable. We have been hypnotized into believing that our existence is useless, purposeless, full of sorrow; that life is to be despised, to be by-passed. This constant repetition keeps tightening the stranglehold that is smothering us, so now we feel that life is nothing more than a big noise, a big din, a hotbed of misery.
It is only because of this contempt for life that all joy and love have been lost to man. Man is now just a formless lump; he is a turbulent sea of sorrow. And it's not at all astonishing that, because of these misconceptions, man has stopped trying to reflect upon himself. Why try to search for beauty in an ugly lump? And when one firmly believes that life is simply meant to be thrown away, to be rejected, then what sense is there in trying to acknowledge it, in trying to cleanse it and to beautify it? The whole effort seems futile.
Our attitude to life is not unlike that of a man making use of a waiting room in a railway station.
He knows he is only there for a while, that he will be leaving shortly. So of what importance is the waiting room? It is of no importance whatsoever; it is completely insignificant. He tosses odds and ends about; he spits; he dirties it; he is thoughtless; he's not concerned with his behavior: after all, he will be leaving it in a while. In the same way, we regard life as a temporary residence.
The current tendency is to ask why one should bother searching for truth and beauty in life. But I want to emphasize that life will come to an end in due course, and then there is no escaping the reality of life. We can change our houses, change bodies, but the essence of our life remains with us. That is the Self, with a capital "S." There is absolutely no way to be rid of it.
We are formed by what we do. Ultimately, our actions make us or maim us. They change our lives. They shape our lives and mold our souls. How we live and what we do with our lives formulates our futures. One's attitude to life guides the path of one's soul: how it will evolve, what hitherto unknown mysteries it will unravel. If man were aware that his attitude to life melodies his future, he would immediately drop this dismal view that life is discord, that it is useless and meaningless. Then he might realize the fallacy of the belief that existence is meant to be full of woe, that there is no scheme to things. Then he might come to know that everything that is opposed to life is irreligious.
But we are taught the negation of life in the name of religion. The philosophy of religion has always been death-oriented, instead of life-oriented. Religion preaches that what comes after life is important, but that what happens before death has no significance whatsoever.
Up to now, religion has revered death, but shown no respect for life.
Nowhere is the joyous acceptance of the flowers and the fruits of life to be found; everywhere there is an obstinate clinging to dead flowers. Our lives are eulogies on the graves of dead flowers!
The focus of religious speculation has always been on the other side of death -- on heaven, on moksha, on nirvana -- as if what happens before death were of no concern at all. I want to ask, if you are unable to live with what happens before death, how will you be able to cope with what comes after life? It will be almost impossible! If we cannot avail ourselves of what is here, before death, we can never prepare or qualify for what comes after death. The preparation for one's death must be done during one's life! If there is another world after death, there too we will be confronted with what we have experienced in this life. There is no escaping the after-effects of this life, in spite of all the harping about renouncing it.
I say there is not, nor can there be, any God but life itself. I also say that to love life is one's sadhana, one's path to God. The true religion is to avail one's self of life. To realize the ultimate truth that exists in life is the first auspicious step towards achieving total deliverance. The one who misses life is the one who is sure to miss everything else.
However, the tendency of religion is exactly the opposite: cast life away, renounce the world. Religion does not advise the contemplation of life; it does not help you to lead your life; it does not tell you that you will only find life as you live it, but it says that if your life is miserable it is because your perception of life is impure. Life can shower happiness on you if you only know the proper way to live it.
I call religion the art of living.
Religion is not a way to undermine life, it is a medium for delving deeply into the mysteries of existence. Religion is not turning one's back on life, it is facing life squarely. Religion is not escaping from life; religion is embracing life fully. Religion is the total realization of life.
As a result of these basic misconceptions, only elderly people show any interest in religion these days. You will only find old people in the places of God -- in the temples, in the churches, in the gurudwaras and in the mosques. You will not see any young people there. Why? There is only one explanation: our religion has become a religion for people advanced in age; it is for those haunted by the fear of death, for those at the end of their lives, for those full of anxiety about what comes after death.
How can a religion based on the philosophy of death illuminate life? Even after five thousand years of religious teachings, the earth is sinking steadily from bad to worse. Although there is no shortage of temples, mosques, churches, priests, teachers, ascetics and the like on this planet, its people have not yet become religious. This is because religion has a false base. Life is not at the root of religion; religion is built on death. Religion is not a living symbol; religion is a gravestone. This kind of biased religion can never bring life to our lives.
What is the cause of all this ?
During these few days, I shall discuss the religion of life, the religion of the living faith -- and a certain elemental principle the common man is never encouraged to discover, nor even told about. In the past, the utmost was done to throw a blanket over this primary rule of life, to suppress this basic truth. And the result of this grave mistake has grown into a universal disease.
What is the basic drive of the average man? God? No.
The soul? No.
Truth? No.
What is at the core of man? What is the basic urge in the depths of the common man -- in the life of the average man, of the man who never meditates, never searches his soul, never undertakes any religious pilgrimages?
Devotion? No.
Prayer? No.
Liberation? No.
Nirvana? Absolutely not.
If we look for the basic urge in the common man, if we search for the force behind this life, we will find neither devotion nor God, neither prayer nor the thirst for knowledge. We will find something different there -- something that is being pushed into the darkness, that is never faced consciously, that is never evaluated. And what is that something?
What will you find if you dissect and analyze the core of the average man?
Leave man aside for the moment. If we look at the animal or vegetable kingdom, what will we find at the core of anything? If we observe the activity of a plant, what do we find? Where is its growth leading? Its whole energy is directed toward producing a new seed. Its entire being is occupied with forming a new seed. What is a bird doing? What is an animal doing? If we closely observe the activities of nature, we will find that there is only one process, only one wholehearted process going on. And that process is one of continuous creation, of procreation, of creating new and different self-forms. Flowers have seeds; fruits have seeds. And what is the seed's destiny? The seed is destined to grow into a new plant, into a new flower, into a new fruit, into a new seed -- and so the cycle repeats itself. The process of procreation is eternal. Life is a force that is continuously regenerating itself. Life is a creativity, a process of self-creation.
The same is true of man. And we have christened the process "passion," "sex." We have also termed it "lust." This labeling amounts to name-calling; it is a kind of abuse. And this very disparagement itself has polluted the atmosphere.
Then, what is lust? What is passion? What is the force called "sex?"
Since time immemorial, waves have rolled in succession and dashed against the shore. The waves come in, break apart and fall back. Again they rush in. They push, they struggle, they disperse and fall back once again. Life has an inner urge to progress, to march forward. There is a kind of restlessness in these waves, and in life's waves as well. There is a continuous effort to achieve something. What is the aim? It is an intense desire for a better position; it is a passion to reach greater heights. Behind this never ending energy is life itself -- life striving for a good life, life striving for a better existence.
It's not long at all -- only a matter of some thousands of years -- since man first appeared on the earth. Before that, there were only animals. And it's not so very long since animals came into being either. Prior to that there was a time when there weren't any animals, when there were just plants. Nor have plants existed on this planet for a very, very long time. Before that there were only rocks, mountains, rivers and oceans.
And what was this world of rocks, mountains, rivers and oceans restless about? It was striving to produce plants. And gradually, ever so gradually, plants came into existence. The life-force had manifested itself in a new form. Then the earth was covered with vegetation. It continued to bring forth life; it continued to procreate: flowers bloomed and fruit grew.
But the plants were also restless. They were not satisfied with themselves either; their inner urge was also for something higher; they were eager to produce animals and birds. Then animals and birds came into being and occupied this planet for ages. But man was nowhere in sight. And yet man was always there, inherent in the animals, striving to break through the barrier, striving to be born. Then, in due course, man entered existence.
Now, how about man?
Man is ceaselessly endeavoring to create new life. And we have named this tendency "sex"; we have called it "passion," "lust." But what is the meaning of this lust?
The basic urge is to create, to produce new life. Life itself does not want to end. But what is it all for? Can it be that man, from within, is trying to bring forth a better man, a higher form of himself? Can it be that life is expecting a being far better than man himself? Sages from Nietzsche to Aurobindo, from Patanjali to Bertrand Russell have nurtured an image in their heart of hearts, a dream of how a man superior to themselves will come forth -- a superman. They have been asking how another being, better than man, can be produced.
We have deliberately condemned the urge to procreate for thousands of years. Instead of accepting it, we have abused it. We have relegated it to the lowest possible place. We have concealed it and pretended it is not there, as if there were no place for it in life, no room for it in the scheme of things.
The truth is that there is nothing more vital than this urge. And it should be given its rightful place. Man has not freed himself from it by covering it up and by trampling it; on the contrary, he has entangled himself in it even more. This repression has yielded the opposite result from the one expected.
Imagine a novice learning to ride a bicycle. The road may be big and wide, but if there is a small rock lying by the side of the road the cyclist will be afraid he will bump into the stone. There is a hundred-to-one chance against his running into that stone -- even a blind man would, in all probability, pass it safely by -- but because of his fear the rider is only aware of the stone. The stone looms large in his mind and the road vanishes for him. He is hypnotized by that stone, drawn to it, and in the end he dashes against it. He collides with that very thing from which he has done his utmost to save himself.
The road was big and wide, so how did this man have an accident?
The psychologist Coue says that the average mind is governed by the Law of Reverse-Effect. We collide with the very thing from which we are trying to save ourselves because the object of our fear becomes the center of our consciousness. In the same way, man has been trying to save himself from sex for the last five thousand years. And the result is that everywhere, in every nook and corner, he is confronted by sex -- in all its various forms. The Law of Reverse-Effect has arrested the soul of man.
Have you never observed that the mind is pulled towards and hypnotized by the very thing it is trying to avoid?
The people who taught man to be against sex are fully responsible for making him so aware of sex. The over-sexuality that exists in man can be blamed on perverted teachings.
Today we are afraid to discuss sex. Why are we so mortally afraid of this subject? It is because of a presupposition that man may become sexual just by talking about sex. This view is totally wrong. There is, after all, a vast difference between sex and sexuality. Our society will only be free of the ghost of sex when we develop the courage to talk about sex in a rational and healthy manner.
It is only by understanding sex in all its aspects that we will be able to transcend sex. You cannot free yourself from a problem by shutting your eyes to it. Only a madman thinks his enemy will vanish if he closes his eyes. The ostrich in the desert thinks in this way. The ostrich thrusts his head into the sand and, since he cannot see his enemy, he thinks his enemy is not there. This kind of logic is pardonable in the case of the ostrich, but in man it is unforgivable.
As far as sex is concerned, man behaves no better than the ostrich. He thinks that by shutting his eyes, by ignoring it, sex will vanish. If such miracles could occur, life would be very easy indeed. But alas, nothing disappears just by pulling down the blinds. On the contrary, this is proof that we are scared of sex, that its attraction is more powerful than our resistance. Because we feel we cannot conquer sex, we shut our eyes to it.
Shutting one's eyes is a sign of weakness, and the whole of humanity is guilty of it. Not only has man blatantly shut his eyes to sex, he has also entered into innumerable inner conflicts with it. The devastating results of this war with sex are too well known to be enumerated here. Ninety-eight per cent of mental illness, of neurosis, is because of the suppression of sex. Ninety-nine per cent of the women suffering from hysteria and related illnesses suffer from sexual disorders. The major cause of fear, of doubt, of anxiety, of the stress and strain on contemporary man, is the pressure of passion. Man has turned his back on an inherent and powerful urge. Without attempting to understand sex, we have shut our eyes to it out of fear. And the results have been catastrophic indeed.
To see the truth of this, man need only scan his literature, the mirror of his mind. If a man from the moon or from Mars were to come here and go through our literature, were to read our books and our poetry, were to see our paintings, he would be surprised. He would wonder why all our art and literature is centered around sex.
"Why are all man's poems, novels, magazines and stories saturated with sex? Why is there a half-naked woman on every magazine cover? Why is every movie concerned with lust?" he would ask. He would be perplexed.
The alien visitor would wonder why man thought about nothing but sex.
He would be even more confused if he met a man and talked to him, because the man would try, would try very hard, to impress upon him that he was totally innocent of the existence of sex. The man would talk of the soul, of God, about heaven, about emancipation, but he would not say a word about sex, although his whole being would be filled with ideas about sex. The alien would be stunned to learn that man has even invented a thousand and one devices to gratify a desire about which not a breath is uttered.
Man's death-oriented religion has made man sex-minded. And it has perverted him from another angle as well. It shows him the golden pinnacle of celibacy, of brahmacharya, but gives him no guidance in getting a foothold on the first rung, in understanding the base, in understanding sex.
First of all, we have to recognize sex and understand it; we have to comprehend this elemental urge. Only then can we strive to transcend it, to sublimate it, so we can reach the stage of celibacy. Without understanding this basic life-force in all its forms and facets, all man's efforts to restrain and suppress it will only help him degenerate into a sick and incoherent lunatic. But we do not concentrate on the basic illness, we spout the high ideal of celibacy. Man has never been so sick, so neurotic, so wretched or so unhappy. Man is completely perverted. He is poisoned at the root.
Once I was passing a hospital. I read on a sign: "A man stung by a scorpion was treated here. He was cured in a day and discharged."
Another notice read: "A man was bitten by a snake. He was treated and went home, hale and hearty, in three days."
A third report read: "A man was bitten by a mad dog. He has been under treatment for the last ten days and will be well quite soon."
Then there was also a fourth report. "A man was bitten by a man," it said. "It was many weeks ago. He is unconscious and there is a slim chance of his recovery."
I was surprised. Can a man's bite be so very poisonous?
If we are observant, we will see that a lot of poison has accumulated in man.
Perhaps it is because of his quack doctors, but the foremost reason is his refusal to accept what is natural in him, his refusal to accept his fundamental being. We have tried to curb and annihilate our inborn urges in vain; no attempts are made to transform them, to elevate them. We have forced ourselves to control that energy in a wrong way. That energy is bubbling in us like molten lava; it is always pushing from inside: if we are not careful, it may topple us at any moment. And do you know what happens when it gets the slightest opening?
I will illustrate with an example:
A plane meets with an accident. You are nearby and you rush to the scene. What is the first question that will come to your mind when you see a body in the debris?
"Is this person Hindu or Muslim?" No.
"Is this person Indian or Chinese?" No.
In a split second, and first and foremost, you will look to see whether the body is a man's or a woman's.
Are you aware why this question springs to mind first of all? It is because of repressed sex. It is the repression of sex that makes you so conscious of the difference between a man and a woman. You are able to forget the name, face or nationality of someone -- if I had met you, I might forget your name, your face, your caste, your age, your status, everything about you -- but you never forget the sex of a person, you never forget whether someone was male or female. Have you ever had any doubt that the person you had a conversation with, let's say, on the train to Delhi last year, was a man?
Why? When you forget everything else about a person, why can't you erase that aspect from your memory? It is because the awareness of sex is so firmly rooted in man's mind, in his thought processes. Sex is ever-present, ever-active.
Neither our society nor our planet can ever be healthy so long as this iron curtain, this distance, exists between men and women.
Man cannot be at peace with himself so long as this burning fire rages inside him, so long as he sits tightly on it. He has to strive to suppress it every moment of every day. The fire is burning us. It is scorching us. But even so, we are not prepared to face it, not prepared to look into it.
What is this fire? It is not an enemy, it is a friend. What is the nature of this fire?
I want to tell you that once you know this fire it will no longer be an enemy, it will become a friend. If you understand this fire, it will not burn you. It will warm your homes, it will cook for you, and it will also become your lifelong friend.
Electricity has flashed in the sky for millions of years. Sometimes it killed people, but nobody ever thought that this very same energy would someday run our fans and light our homes. Nobody could imagine these possibilities then. But today this electricity has become our friend. How? Had we shut our eyes to it, we would never have fathomed its secrets, we would never have utilized it; it would have remained our enemy, it would always have been an object of fear. But man assumed a friendly attitude towards electricity. He took it upon himself to understand it, to know it, and slowly, slowly, a lasting friendship developed. Had that not happened, we would hardly be able to manage today.
The sex inside man, his libido, is even more vital than electricity. A minute atom of matter annihilated an entire hundred thousand people in the city of Hiroshima, but an atom of man's energy can create a new life, a new person!
Sex is more powerful than an atom bomb.
Have you ever thought about the infinite possibilities of this force, about how we can transform it to better mankind? An embryo can become a Gandhi, a Mahavir, a Buddha, a Christ. An Einstein can evolve from it; a Newton can be manifest in it. An infinitely small atom of sex energy has a towering person like Gandhi manifest in it!
But we are not inclined to even try to understand sex. We have to summon immense courage even to talk about it in public. What kind of fear is it that plagues us, so that we are not prepared to understand the force out of which the whole world is born? What is this fear? Why does sex alarm us so?
People were shocked when I spoke about sex at the first meeting last month, in Bombay. I received many angry letters asking me not to talk in this fashion, letters saying I should not speak on this subject at all. I wonder why one should not discuss this subject? When this urge is already inherent in us, why should we not talk about it? Unless we can understand its behavior, can analyze it, how can we hope to raise it to a higher plane? By understanding it we can transform it, we can conquer it, we can sublimate it. Unless that happens, we will die and still we will be unable to free ourselves from the grip of sex.
My point is that those who forbid talk about sex are the same people who have pushed humanity into an abyss of sex. Those who are frightened of sex, and have therefore convinced themselves they are innocent of sex, are lunatics. They have conspired to make the whole world a gigantic asylum.
Religion is concerned with the transformation of man's energy. Religion aims to integrate the inner being of man -- both his chaste aspirations and his basic urges. It is also true that religion should guide man from the lower to the higher, from darkness to light; to the real from the unreal, to the eternal from the ephemeral.
But to reach somewhere, one has to know the starting point. We have to start from where we are; it is imperative we know this place first. And this is more important at the moment than the place we want to reach. In this context, sex is the fact, the reality; sex is the starting point. But God? God is far from here. We can reach the truth of God only by understanding the starting point of the journey; otherwise we cannot move an inch. We will be lost. We will be on a merry-go-round, going nowhere.
When I spoke to you at our first meeting I could sense you were not prepared to face the realities of life. Then what more, if anything, can we do? What can we achieve? Then all this hullabaloo about God and the soul means nothing. It is all empty of conviction; it is all just false talk.
It is only by acquiring real knowledge about something that we can rise above it.
In fact, knowledge is transcendence. And first of all, one fact must be comprehended fully: man is born out of sex. The whole of his being exists because of the practice of sex. Man is filled with the energy of sex. The energy of life itself is the energy of sex.
What is this sex energy? Why is it such a powerful disturbance in our lives? Why does it pervade our entire beings? Why do our lives revolve around it, even to the end? What is the source of this urge?
Sages and seers have degraded sex for thousands of years, but man is still not convinced. For ages they have preached that we should defy sex, that we should banish all thoughts of it and all desires for it in order to be free from maya, from the illusory world -- yet man has not been able to break his shackles. You cannot be rid of sex like this; the approach is wrong.
Whenever I meet prostitutes, they never speak of sex. They inquire about the soul, and about God. I also meet many ascetics and monks, and whenever we are alone they ask about nothing but sex. I was surprised to learn that ascetics, who are always preaching against sex, seem to be captivated by it. They are curious about it and disturbed by it; they have this mental complex about it, yet they sermonize about religion and about the animal instincts in man. And sex is so natural.
We have neither wanted nor tried to understand this problem. We have never delved into the reason there is such a great attraction to sex.
Who teaches you sex?
The whole world is against its being taught. Parents feel children should not be allowed to know about it, and teachers agree. The scriptures say the same thing. There is no school or university to teach the subject of sex; every institute of learning forbids knowledge of it. But in adolescence, a young man finds out for himself that his whole being, his prana, is filled with an anxiousness about sex. Then the age-old precautions fall. And sex wins.
How does this happen? Truth and love are preached, but the teachings don't hold up; they prove vulnerable.
Sex is firmly rooted in the core of our beings, but where is it anchored? Where is the center of this natural pull, of this pull that is so powerful, so profound? There lies the mystery. And it is necessary to recognize the mystery first; only then can we surpass it.
Fundamentally, what we feel as the attraction for sex is not the attraction for sex at all.
After every act of orgasm, a man feels drained, empty, depressed.
He is sorry, with a pinch of heartburn. He thinks of avoiding this practice in the future. So, what is the source of this state of mind? It is because the desire is for something else, and not just for physical gratification.
Man cannot ordinarily reach the depths of his being that he reaches in the consummation of the sexual act. In the ordinary course of his life, in his daily routine, a man has a variety of experiences -- he shops, does business, earns his living -- but intercourse reveals the deepest of experiences to him. And this experience has profound religious dimensions: there, man reaches beyond himself; there, he transcends himself.
Two things happen to him in those depths. First, in copulation the ego vanishes. Egolessness is created. For an instant, there is no "I;" for an instant, one does not remember oneself. Did you know that the "I" also dissolves completely in the experience of religion, that in religion the ego also dissolves into nothingness? In the sexual act the ego fades away. Orgasm is a state of self-effacement.
The second thing about the experience of sex is that time is undone for an instant. Timelessness is created. As Jesus Christ has said of samadhi: "There shall be time no longer." In orgasm, the sense of time is non-existent. There is no past, no future; there is only the present moment. The present is not a part of time; the present is eternity.
This is the second reason man is so eager for sex. The craving is not for the body of a woman by a man or vice versa, the passion is for something else: for egolessness, for timelessness.
This sexual climax only lasts a moment, but for this brief moment a man loses a considerable amount of energy and vitality and later laments his loss. In some species of animals, males die after one act of intercourse alone. A particular insect in Africa can perform the act only once; its energy ebbs and it passes away in the act itself. It is not that man is unaware that intercourse diminishes his power, lessens his energy and brings death that much nearer. After each experience he regrets his indulgence, but in a short while he feels passionate again. Surely there is much deeper meaning to this pattern of behavior than meets the eye.
There is a subtler level to the sexual experience than the mere physical routine.
It is a level that is religious in essence. To understand this experience you must pay careful attention. If you cannot grasp the meaning of this experience, you will live and die in sex alone.
Lightning shines in the darkness of the night, but the darkness is not part of the lightning. The only relation between the two is that lightning only stands out at night, only in the darkness. And the same is true of sex. There is a realization, an exhilaration, a light that shines in sex, but that phenomenon is not from sex itself. Although it is associated with it, it is just a by-product. The light that shines in orgasm transcends sex; it comes from beyond. If we can comprehend this experience of the beyond we can rise above sex. Otherwise, we will never be able to.
Those who oppose sex blindly will never be able to appreciate the phenomenon in its proper perspective. They will never be able to analyze the cause of this insatiable desire for sex, of this deep craving for sex. What I wish to emphasize is that this strong and recurring pull toward sex is for the momentary realization of samadhi.
You can liberate yourself from sex if you can learn to attain to samadhi without sex. If a man who wants an article costing one thousand rupees is shown where one can be had for free, he would not be in his right senses if he were to go to the market to buy it so expensively. If a man can be shown how he can attain the same ecstasy he derives from sex by some other means and in much greater measure, his mind will automatically cease its rush towards sex; his mind will start racing in the other direction.
Man had his first realization of samadhi in the experience of sex.
But sex is a costly affair, a very costly affair indeed. And it does not last for more than a moment; after a momentary climax, we return again to our original position. For a second, we reach towards a different plane of existence; for a second, we climb towards a peak of immense satisfaction. The momentum is towards the pinnacle, but we have hardly taken a step when we fall back to first base. A wave aspires to reach the sky, but it has hardly risen noticeably when it already starts to fall. We are the same. It is for that ecstasy, for that joy, for that realization, that we accumulate energy from time to time and again start the ascent. We almost touch that subtler plane, that higher realm, but again we fall back to our original position, minus a considerable amount of power and energy.
So long as man's mind remains immersed in this river of sex he will repeatedly rise and fall again. Life is a continuous push towards egolessness, towards timelessness -- whether conscious or unconscious. The intense desire of the being is to know its real self, to know the truth, to know the original, eternal, timeless source -- to unite with that which is beyond time, to attain pure egolessness. It is to satisfy this unconscious inner desire of the soul that the world rotates around the axis of sex.
But how can we understand or develop any kind of rapport with this realization if we continue to deny the existence of this natural, inner and all-encompassing phenomenon.
When we oppose sex as vehemently as we do, sex becomes the center of our consciousness: we cannot free ourselves from it; we become chained to it. The Law of Reverse-Effect comes into play and we become bound to it. We try to run away from sex, but the more we try to rid ourselves of it, the more we become entangled in it.
A man was ill. His illness was that he felt very hungry, but in fact he had no illness at all. He had read that the negation of life was the path to deliverance. He had read that fasting was religious and that eating was sinful. He had also been told that eating was violent and contrary to the precepts of non-violence.
But, the more he thought of eating as sinful, the more he suppressed his hunger. And the hunger asserted itself in equal measure. He used to fast for three or four days and then, the following day, he would eat anything and everything, like a glutton. After eating he felt sorry for breaking his vow -- plus, overeating has its own reactions -- and then, to atone, he would have another spell of fasting. And again, after that, he would eat for a time.
At last he decided it was not possible to follow the righteous path while he lived at home, and so he renounced the world, went to the jungle, climbed a hill and found a solitary cave. The folks at home were sad, and his wife, assuming he must have overcome his eating illness in his retreat, sent him a bunch of flowers. She wished him an early recovery and a speedy return.
The man replied with a note: "Many thanks for the flowers. They were delicious." The man had eaten the flowers. We may not be able to imagine a man eating flowers instead of food, but we have not undertaken the sadhana of a fast, like that man had. Of course, those who are devoted to eating will be able to understand the situation very well indeed. In more or less the same proportion, everybody is committed to sex.
Man has started a war against sex. And the results of this war with sex are difficult to assess correctly. Does homosexuality exist anywhere but in man's so-called civilized societies? Aborigines who live in backward areas cannot imagine a man having intercourse with another man. I have stayed with tribal people, and when I told them that civilized people practiced this, they were stunned; they could not believe it. But in the West there are homosexual clubs, and there are associations that claim that it is undemocratic to prohibit homosexuality when so many people practice it. They declare that the prohibition of homosexuality by law is a violation of fundamental human rights, that it is an imposition by a majority on a minority. The mentality that has given birth to homosexuality is the result of the war with sex.
Prostitution also exists in direct proportion to a society's civilization.
Did you ever reflect on how the institution of prostitution came into being in the first place? Can you find a prostitute in the hilly areas of the tribal peoples, in our far-flung settlements? Impossible. These people cannot even imagine there are women who sell their virtue, who undergo intercourse for remuneration. But this trafficking in sex has developed with the advance of man's civilization. This is an act of eating flowers. And we would be still more astonished were we to take fully into account all the other perversions of sex, were we to examine the full range of all its ugly manifestations.
What has happened to man? Who is responsible for this ugliness and debauchery? Those who have taught man to repress sex instead of understanding it are responsible. Because of this suppression, man's sex energy is leaking from the wrong pores. Man's whole society is sick and wretched, and if this cancerous society is to be changed, it is essential to accept that the energy of sex is divine, that the attraction for sex is essentially religious.
Why is the attraction of sex so powerful? For it surely is powerful. If we can grasp the basic levels of sex we can lift man out of sex. Only then can the world of rama emerge from the world of kama; only then can a world of compassion evolve out of this world of passion.
With a group of friends, I went to Khajuraho to see the world-famous temple there. The outermost wall, the periphery of the temple, is decorated with scenes of the sexual act, with the varied poses of intercourse. There are sculptures of many different poses, all in sexual postures. My friends asked why those sculptures were there, decorating a temple.
I explained to them that the architects who had built that temple were highly intelligent people. They knew that passion and sex exist on the circumference of life, and believed that those who were still caught up in sex had no right to enter the temple.
We entered. Inside, there was no idol to God. My friends were surprised, seeing no idol anywhere. I explained to them that on the outer wall of life itself lust and passion exist, whereas the temple of God is inside. Those who are still enchanted by passion, by sex, cannot reach the temple of God inside; they simply roam about the outer wall.
The builders of this temple were very sensible people. This was a meditation center -- sexuality on the surface, all around; peace and quiet at the core, at the center. They used to tell aspirants to meditate on sex first, to reflect fully on the copulation depicted on the outer wall, and when they had thoroughly understood sex and were certain their minds were free of it, they might go inside. Only then could they face God inside.
But in the name of religion we have destroyed any possibility of understanding sex.
We have declared war on sex, on our basic instinct itself. The standard rule is not to see sex at all, but to shut your eyes and blindly barge into the temple of God. But can anyone reach anywhere with his eyes closed? Even if you reach inside, you will not be able to see God with closed eyes. Instead, you will only see the thing from which you have been running!
Perhaps some people think I am a propagandist for sex. If so, please tell them that they haven't heard me at all. It is difficult these days to find a greater enemy of sex on the face of this earth than me. If people can pay attention to what I say -- without bias -- it is possible to liberate man from sex. This is the only course for a better humanity. The pundits we consider the enemies of sex are not its enemies at all, but its propagandists. They have created a glamour around sex; their vehement opposition has created a mad attraction for sex.
One man told me he wasn't interested in anything that was not disapproved of, challenged or resented. As we all know, the stolen fruit is always sweeter than the one purchased from the bazaar. That's why one's own wife isn't as appetizing as the neighbor's wife seems to be. The other is like a stolen fruit; the other is a forbidden treat. And we have given the same status to sex. It is very tempting. It has been given such a colorful coat of lies that it has become intensely attractive. Bertrand Russell has written that in the Victorian era, when he was a child, ladies' legs were never seen in public. The clothes they wore swept the ground, covering their feet completely. If by chance even a woman's toe were visible, a man would immediately ogle it; it would arouse his passion.
Russell further writes that today's women move about nearly half-naked with their legs fully visible, but notes that it doesn't affect us nearly as much. This proves, he writes, that the more we conceal a thing, the more it arouses our curiosity.
The first step to free the world from sexuality is to allow children to remain nude, as much as possible, in the home. As far as it is feasible, it is advisable to allow children, both boys and girls, to play in the nude, so that they become totally acquainted with each other's bodies. Then, tomorrow, there will be no necessity for them to snuggle up to each other in the streets. Then there will be no need to print nude pictures in books. Then they will be so familiar with each other's bodies that no kind of perverted attraction will be possible in the future.
But the way of the world is just the opposite.
The people who have covered and concealed the body have unwittingly created so great an attraction for it that, although it has overtaken our minds, we still haven't felt the full impact.
Children should remain nude and should play in the nude for a long time, so no seed of madness remains to plague them the rest of their lives.
But the disease is already there, and it is on the increase. The existence of the disease can be observed in the bulk of obscene literature now being published. People read it, hiding it between the covers of the Gita and the bible. We shout that obscene books should be banned, but we never pause to think where the men who read them are coming from; we protest the displaying of nude pictures but never stop to ask why they are exhibited in the first place.
Sex is natural, but sexuality is the product of anti-sex teachings. If these teachings are followed, if the advice given in these unscientific sermons is taken, the soul of man will be totally filled with sexuality. It has almost happened. But, thank God, such teachers are not very successful. And because of their failure, man has been able to salvage some of his conscience, some of his discrimination. If man understands sex properly, he can rise above it. He should rise above it; it is necessary that he rise above it.
All our efforts to date have borne wrong results because we have not befriended sex but have declared war on it; we have used suppression and lack of understanding as ways of dealing with sex problems. The deeper a man's understanding, the higher he can rise above sex; the less his understanding, the greater his attempts to suppress sex will be. And the results of repression are never fruitful, never pleasing, never healthy.
Sex is man's most vibrant energy, but it should not be an end unto itself: sex should lead man to his soul. The goal is from lust to light.
To reach celibacy sex must be understood. To know sex is to be free of it, to transcend it; but even after a lifetime of sexual experience, a man is not able to detect that intercourse gives him a fleeting experience of samadhi, a peek into superconsciousness. That is the great pull of sex; that is the great allure of sex: it is the magnetic attraction of the Supreme. You have to know and to meditate upon this momentary glimpse; you have to focus on it with awareness. On everyone its pull is so tremendously strong.
There are other, easier ways to attain to the very same experience -- meditation, yoga and prayer are other alternatives -- but only the channel of sex has such a powerful influence on man.
It is very important to consider the various ways there are to reach the same goal.
One friend wrote to say that he found my topic very embarrassing. He asked me to imagine the awkward position of a mother sitting in the audience with her daughter; he asked me to think of a mother attending my lecture, accompanied by her son. Further, he advises me that such things should not be discussed in front of just anybody. I replied that his objections were groundless and that he must be out of his mind. If a mother is sensible, she will relate her experiences of sex to her daughter in time, before she slips into a netherland of sex, before she loses herself in unknown, immature ways. If a father is sensitive in discharging his parental responsibility, he must freely discuss the subject with his son and daughter -- to warn them against the common pitfalls and to save their lives from possible perversion in the future.
But the irony of the situation is that neither the father nor the mother has any deep, conscious experience in the matter. They themselves haven't risen above the level of physical sex, and so they fear their children may become entangled at the same level as well. But, I ask you, did anybody guide you? You have entangled yourself. And your children will also entangle themselves. And it will be repeated in the second and third generations and so forth. But isn't it possible if your children are spoken to, if they are taught, if they are allowed to think freely for themselves, that they may save themselves from dissipating their energy? They may conserve their energy. And they may transform it.
We have all seen coal many times. Scientists say that in a period of a few thousand years coal is transformed into diamonds, and that there is no chemical or structural difference between coal and diamonds. A diamond is the transformed manifestation of a piece of coal. A diamond is only coal.
I wish to tell you that sex is coal, whereas brahmacharya, celibacy, is diamond. Celibacy is a form of sex; celibacy is the transformation of sex. Celibacy is coal, but after it has undergone a certain process. And believe me, there is no enmity between the two extremes. No enemy of sex can ever become brahmacharya.
What do we mean by brahmacharya, by celibacy? It is the charya of Brahma; it is communion with God. It is the realization of the divine experience, of the experience of God. And, by the use of conscious understanding, it is possible to direct one's sexual energy on this path, on the path to God.
Tomorrow, I intend to speak to you about how the experience of kama, of lust, can be sublimated into that of Rama, of light. I wish you to listen attentively, so there will be no misinterpretation. And whatever questions come to mind, please ask them honestly. Send them to me in writing so that I can speak to you about them simply and directly in the next few days. It is not necessary to hide any questions that arise in your minds; there is no reason to hide the truth. It is pointless to try to run away from it. Truth is truth whether we shut our eyes to it or not. Only those who have the courage to face the truth are religious men. Those who are weak and cowardly, those who are not even manly enough to face the facts of life, can never be helped to become religious.
In the coming days, I invite you to consider my topic. It is one on which your aged seers and sages cannot be expected to talk. And perhaps you are not used to hearing such discourses either. Your minds may react in fear, but I urge you to be patient and to listen attentively. It is quite possible the understanding of sex may lead you to the temple of your soul. That is my desire.
May God fulfill that desire.

Satya Sai Baba Vs Sai Baba of Shridhi

Osho Story on Shirdi Sai Baba
 
Osho - If you come to meet God, you must meet him without any words. If you have some words, he may not fit and suit your idea. Because if a Hindu thinks he has one thousand hands, and if God comes only with two hands, a Hindu, he will reject: "You are not a God at all. Only with two hands? God has a thousand hands. Show me your other hands. Only then I can believe you."
It happened: One of the most beautiful persons of this past century was Sai Baba of Shirdi. He had a friend and a follower. Sai Baba was a Mohammedan. Or no one knows whether he was a Mohammedan or a Hindu, but he lived in a mosque, so it was believed he was a Mohammedan. And a Hindu follower was there, who loved, respected, has much faith in Sai Baba. Every day he will come for his darshan, and without seeing him he will not go. Sometimes it will happen that for the whole day he will have to wait, but without seeing he will not go, and he will not take food unless he has seen Sai Baba.

Once it happened the whole day passed, there was much gathering and much crowd -- he couldn't enter. When everybody has gone, just in the night he touched the feet.

Sai Baba said to him, "Why you unnecessarily wait? There is no need to see me here, I can come there. And drop this from tomorrow. Now I will do. Before you take your food you will see me every day."

The disciple was very happy. So next day he was waiting and waiting; nothing happened. Many things happened really, but nothing happened according to his conception. By the evening he was very angry. He has not taken the food, and Sai Baba has not appeared so he went again. He said, "You promise and you don't fulfill?"

Sai Baba said, "But I appeared thrice, not even once. First time I came, I was a beggar and you said to me, 'Move away! Don't come here!' Second time I came I was an old woman, and you just won't look at me; you closed your eyes-because the disciple had the habit of not seeing women; he was practicing not seeing women, so he closed the eyes.

Sai Baba said, "I had come, but what do you expect? Should I enter your eyes, closed eyes? I was standing there, but you closed the eyes. The moment you saw me, you closed the eyes. Then third time I reached as a dog, and you won't allow me in. With a stick you were standing in the door."

And these three things had happened. And these things have been happening to whole humanity. The divine comes in many forms, but you have a prejudice; you have a pre-formulated conception; you cannot see. He must appear according to you, and he never appears according to you. And he will never appear according to you. You cannot be the rule for him and you cannot put any conditions.

When all imagination falls, only then truth appears. Otherwise, imagination goes on making conditions and truth cannot appear. Only in a naked mind, in a nude, empty mind, truth appears, because you cannot distort it.

Source - Osho Book "Yoga, Vol1"

Osho on Sathya Sai Baba

1. It happens that when for the first time a meditator attains to some psychic energy, some psychic power, the tendency, a natural tendency, is to exhibit it. And if he exhibits, sooner or later he will lose the power. Then a great problem arises: he cannot do it now, but now he has respectability. He is worshipped and people expect him to do miracles. Now what is he going to do? He will have to turn to magic, he will have to start learning tricks, to maintain his prestige.
   
   That's what happened to Satya Sai Baba and people like that. The first things that they had done were real, the first few experiments that they had done were not phony. But then the energy disappears. And by that time you have become famous, and people start gathering, foolish people, stupid people, and they expect you, and your whole ego depends on your exhibition. Now the only possible alternative is to learn magic tricks so that you can go on maintaining your prestige. If you brag, sooner or later you will become a victim of magical tricks. You will have to learn, and deceive people.
   
2. Satya Sai Baba is neither a mystic nor a philosopher, just an ordinary magician.
   
3. One hypocrite in India is Satya Sai Baba. I call him a hypocrite because he knows nothing of yoga. There is nothing wrong if you don't know anything of yoga -- I don't. I can afford to be sick, nobody can object; it is my birthright to be sick. I don't know yoga. But Satya Sai Baba declares himself a great yogi; then the problem arises. Then for his appendix operation he has to go to Goa secretly. And he has to pay ten times more to the doctor so the secret should not be known, because a great yogi going for an operation? What control has he over his physiology? But it is difficult to hide because his whole ashram became curious: where has Baba disappeared? His own people became curious about where he had gone. And after the operation he had to rest for two or three days in Goa. They found out, and the media and the press -- everybody was there, and the doctor had to confess that he had done the operation.
   
4. You may go and seek Satya Sai Baba, because that will be a deep fulfillment of your greed. You will see: here is the man. If he can produce things out of air, he can do anything. Now your greed is provoked. Now a deep affinity happens immediately. That's why you will see thousands of people around Satya Sai Baba. If a Buddha exists, you will not see multitudes there, because there is no affinity. Satya Sai Baba has an appeal deep inside you: your greed is provoked. Now you know this is the right man. But you are wrong. How can you decide who is the right man? You create your deceivers, you give them the opportunity. You follow magicians, not masters.
   If you really want to seek a master, drop greed and drop your beliefs. Go to a master completely nude in the mind, with no beliefs; as if you are a tree in the fall with no leaves, naked, standing against the sky. You go and seek a master with a naked mind, with no leaves, with no beliefs. Only then, only then, I say, will you be able to see without projection; only then will something penetrate into your life from the above. Then nobody can deceive you.
    
5. Don't ask for miracles. A man of meditation is himself a miracle. Whatever he does is a miracle. It is a beauty, it is magic, but it is all spontaneous. It is not practiced, it is not rehearsed. But most people are interested in supernatural powers, healing people with supernatural powers, or creating things out of nothing, just as Satya Sai Baba is doing. All kinds of frauds... but people become interested in them, thinking that here is a man of miracles. And what is the miracle if you can produce a Swiss watch which was hiding in your sleeve...?
   
   One old Parsi woman came to me in Bombay. Satya Sai Baba used to stay at her place, and she told me, "One day when he had gone into the bathroom, just out of curiosity I looked into his suitcases. They were all full of watches! I could not believe that this man was deceiving." She said, "I kicked him out. I told him, `Never again come in my house!' I cannot be a partner to any kind of fraud." She told me, "I am an old woman. Nobody listens to me, they think I have gone senile. I have come to you... perhaps you can do something about it."
   I said, "I have been challenging Satya Sai Baba, saying that this is stupid. When the country is dying of starvation, produce more food out of your miracles. He should bring rain to Hyderabad" ... where the Shankaracharya of Puri is going to force a woman to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre, and only then rain will come. And Satya Sai Baba is not far away from Hyderabad. Bring rain to Hyderabad -- do some real work! All that he produces is ash, and he gives you the ash and you think it is great. It is so simple that any street magician can do it. In fact the more experienced street magicians can do it in a far better way, and can do many more things than he is doing.
   I have no objection to him as a magician, but he should not pretend to be a spiritual man. It is not only a question of a single person pretending to be spiritual when he is not. The question is that he attracts thousands of people, mediocre people, who believe that this man of miracles may impart something to them, may lead them to the ultimate truth.
6. People ask me why Indians are not here. They cannot be here because we are REALLY interested in meditation. They go to Satya Sai Baba because meditation is not the question there -- miracles are happening. They can hope. They are ill: maybe Satya Sai Baba, by his miracle, can take their illness away. Maybe they are unemployed: by his blessing they will be employed. They are poor: by his blessing they will become rich. They go to Satya Sai Baba -- he deals in things which they need. And they are really surprised when Swiss-made watches appear out of nowhere. That is their real object -- they want Swiss-made watches. Stupid people, and stupid are their saints. Now a saint playing games, magic games, ordinary magic games! We have sannyasins -- Avinash can do it, Sarvesh can do it -- just small games, of no value at all, of no religious value at all. Maybe entertaining.
   
7. The curtain of attachments is so dense and thick that even if you go towards religion you look for miracles. If you find Buddha standing before you, you will not recognize him. If Buddha and Satya Sai Baba are both present you will definitely move towards Satya Sai Baba, and not towards Buddha, because Buddha is not so stupid as to conjures things out of the air! You are in search of magicians. You are impressed by miracles, because your deepest desire is for the world and not for God.