Thorn And Flower: One Energy

Dont’ be afraid to love; all you have to do is to make it more prayerful, advises OSHO

OSHOSPEAK
1. Love is not a single phenomenon; it is stretched between two polarities — sex and prayer
2. The sex part of love brings misery while the prayer part brings joy, so make sex a prayer
3. Dont’ renounce sex. It does bring moments of egolessness, and gives you a glimpse of the Divine

Love is both. It is rich and it is painful, it is agony and it is ecstasy — because love is the meeting of the earth and the sky, of the known and the unknown, of the visible and the invisible.
Love is the boundary that divides matter and consciousness, the boundary of the lower and the higher. Love has roots in the earth; that is its pain, its agony. And love has its branches in the sky; that is its ecstasy.
Love is not a single phenomenon, it is dual. It is a rope stretched between two polarities. You will have to understand these two polarities: one is sex, another is prayer. Love is the rope stretched between sex and prayer; part of it is sex, part of it is prayer.
The sexual part is bound to bring many miseries, the part that belongs to prayer will bring many joys. Hence it is difficult to renounce love, because in renouncing one is afraid the joys that come will also be renounced. One is not able either to be totally in it, because all those pains again and again remind you to renounce it. This is the misery of the lover: the lover lives in a tension, pulled apart.
This is the basic problem of all lovers, because love brings both, many thorns and many flowers, and they both come together. Love is a rosebush. One does not want those thorns, one would like the rosebush to be all flowers and no thorns; but they come together, they are all aspects of one energy.
But I am not asking you to become detached. What I am saying is: make it more and more prayerful. My whole approach is that of transformation, not of renunciation. You must have misunderstood me. I am not against sex but I am all for making sex a prayer. The lowest can be possessed by the highest, then the pain of it disappears.
What pain is there in sexuality? Because it reminds you of your animality — that is the pain. It reminds you of the past, it reminds you of your biological bondage, it reminds you that you are not free, you are under the slavery of the instincts given by nature; that you are not independent from nature, that you are just a puppet in the hands of unknown unconscious forces.
Sex is felt like a humiliation. In sex, you start feeling you are losing you dignity, hence the pain. And then fulfilment is so momentary; sooner or later any intelligent person will become aware that the satisfaction is momentary and followed by long nights of pain.
The ecstasy is just like a breeze, it comes and goes and leaves you in a desert-like state, utterly frustrated, disappointed. You had hoped much; many things were promised by the instinctual part of you, and nothing has been delivered.
In fact, sex is a strategy of nature to perpetuate itself. It is a mechanism that keeps you reproducing, otherwise people will disappear. Just think of a humanity where sex is no longer an instinct and you are free, at your own will, to go into sex or not.
Then the whole thing will look so absurd, the whole thing will look ridiculous. Just think — if there is no instinctive force pulling you, I don’t think anybody will be ready to go into sex. Nobody goes by consent; reluctantly, resisting, one goes into it.
But it brings a few moments of utter purity and joy and innocence too. It brings a few moments of timelessness, when suddenly there is no time left.
It brings a few moments of egolessness too, when in deep orgasmic spasm, the ego is forgotten. It gives you a few glimpses of the Divine, hence it cannot be renounced either.

The Book of Wisdom, courtesy Osho International Foundation.
The Speaking Tree, page: 04, 29, May, 2011

A Constant Civil War

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Don’t be stupid and get drawn into a war with your own self, warns OSHO


OSHOSPEAK
1. No one is divided; every one of us is one harmonious whole. There is just one camp, and that is you
2. Conflicts are created so that one part of you begins to fight with the other. Isn’t that stupid?
3. The body is an illusion; beyond matter is pure energy. Realise inner reality; become conscious

The past has created a constant civil war in every human being. The strategy that has been used is to divide you into two enemy camps: Zorba and the Buddha, the materialist and the spiritualist.
You are not divided in reality, for you are a harmonious whole. But the conditioning in your mind is that you are not whole; you have to fight against your body. If you want to be a spiritual being, the body has to be conquered, defeated, destroyed and tortured in every possible way.

Engineering Divisions
This has been the accepted ideology all over the world. In different cultures, different religions, the formulations may be different, but the basic rule is the same: divide man, create a conflict in him so one part starts feeling higher, becomes holy, and starts condemning the other part as the sinner.
The trouble is that you are one; there is no way to divide you. Every division is going to create misery in you. Up to now, humanity has lived in a schizophrenic (depression) way. Everyone has been cut into pieces, fragments. Your religions, philosophies and ideologies have not been healing processes; they have been the root causes of inner conflict and war.

Soul Versus Body
The west chose to go with Zorba. There was no other way to remain sane — one part had to be completely destroyed, forgotten. The West denied the inner reality of man, his consciousness: man is only a body, there is no soul.
Eat, drink and be merry is the only religion. This was simply a way to find some peace of mind, to get out of the conflict, to come to a decision and a conclusion — by accepting that you are one: just matter, just body.
The East has chosen the other way: you are the soul and the body is an illusion. Matter does not exist, the world is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, so don’t be bothered about it…. It’s not worth taking note of. On the surface, it seems that East and West are doing different things, but they are not. Essentially, they are trying to find a rational way to be one. To be two, means a constant disease, a conflict.

East And West
Why have East and West chosen differently? The Eastern mind, in search of a unitary being, tried to find out all about inner consciousness. Why call the body illusory? To us the body seems real, and consciousness is just a word. The natural tendency will be to decide in favour of the body, because the body is there; consciousness you have to search for; you have to go into an inner pilgrimage.
People like Gautama Buddha and Mahavira were sincere. Their sincerity was so clear, their presence was so impressive, their words were authoritative. It was impossible to deny. These people were their own argument, their own validity. They were so peaceful and joyful, relaxed and fearless. Certainly, they had found a source within themselves. You cannot just deny it without giving to search. Unless you find that there is no consciousness; you cannot deny it.

All-pervasive Energy
We had people so fragrant…. The fragrance was so much that the East tried to look inside, and found taht the soul is far more real. The body is just an appearance. Modern science has come to the same conclusion — that matter is illusory, that matter does not exist, it only appears — from a very different route. They have found, as they reach deeper into matter, that it is less and less substantial. At a point after the atom there is no matter at all. There are only electrons, which are particles of electricity — which is not matter but energy.
The East moved inwards and found that the body, mater, is relatively non-substantial; the ultimate reality belongs to consciousness. In the East there has been at least ten thousand years of a constant, consistent search into the inner reality of man… all the genius fo the East has been devoted to it.

Beyond Enlightement, Osho International Foundation.

The Speaking Tree, Page No: 04, 3rd, April, 2011
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The Ways of Karma

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Every object in this universie is endowed with four characterstics — dharma, karma, prema and gyana. Of these, karma is the most talked about and the most misunderstood. The Bhagavad Gita says ‘Gahna Karmanyo Gathi‘, which means unfathomable are the ways of karma and yet it seems to be the only logic to explain this whole  creation, its existence and the cycle of life and death.

Karma is beyond all logic and reasoning. The more you understand it, the more amazed you are. It causes people to be together or separate. It causes some to be weak and some to be strong. It makes some rich and others pooor. The literal meaning of karma is ‘action’. There are three types of karma — prarabha, sanchita and agami. The first is the latent karma which is karma as an impression or seed of action. The second is karma as an action, and the third is karma as a result.

Prarabha means ‘begun’; the action that is already manifesting and that is yielding its effect right now. You cannot avoid it or change it, as it is already happening. Sanchita is the gathered up or piled up karma, It is latent or manifested in the form of a tendency or impression in the mind. Sanchita karma can be burned off by spiritual practices before it manifests. Agami karma is the future karma of the action; that which has not yet come and which will take effect in the future. If you commit a crime, you may not get caught today, but will live with the possibility that, one day you may get caught.

Karma is also always bound by time, because every action has a limited reaction. If you do something good to people they will come to thank you and be grateful to you as long as they are experiencing the effect of your action.

If is often asked, “Why do good people suffer?” No good action will yield a bad result and no bad action will bring a god result. This is the law of karma. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Karma is that which propels reincarnation. Why are some people born in a very violent environment and others in comfortable environment? The stronger the impression, the greater the possibility of the next life being according to that . So, often you reincarnate like the person you hate or love. The mind which is full of different impressions leaves this body but the impressions wait for a proper situation to come back. So it is the last thought that is very important. Whatever you do throughout your life, in the last moment your mind should be free and happy.

Getting rid of karma means getting rid of impressions. Some karma can be changed and some cannot. As human beings we have the ability to erase fear through meditation. If you meditate, become hollow and empty, whatever the fear is will just dissolve and disappear.

Our perception of suffering, of good and bad, is always relative. God is absolute reality; witness of all. See God as a movie director, rather than as a judge. He has no ill feeling for the villain and no special favour for the hero. Each one is playing his role. Live with the karma and not be attached to it. Awareness, alertness, knowledge and meditation will help erase past impressions. It has the strenght to dissolve and destroy any karma and bring freedom to you.

— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The Speaking Tree, Page No: 18, 13, April, 2011

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Try To Figure Out Love

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You cannot measure love; and love does not diminish when you share it, says OSHO

“When the whole is taken from the whole, behold, the remainder is whole” — Ishavasya

OSHOSPEAK

1. Arithmatically speaking, If I take ten rupees from a safe full of millions, the total will be less.

2. When you give love and feel a sense of loss, know that what you gave wasn’t love

3. As you give love freely, the love within you begins to grow and you experience infinite love.


From the point of view of ordinary arithmetic this is absolutely incorrect. If we remove some part of a thing, the remainder cannot be the same as it was originally. Something less will remain. If I take ten rupees from a safe  conatining millions of rupees, the total will be something less. It will be less even if ten paise are taken out. The remainder cannot be equal to the amount as it originally was. Similarly, however great the fortune may be, ten paise added will make it greater. But according to this sutra, the whole may be taken from the whole, not just ten paise but the entire fortune, and still the remainder is whole.

This seems like the babbling of a madman whose knowledge of arithmetic is nil. Even a beginner knows that a thing will be less if something is taken from it, no matter how little is taken; and if the whole is taken, there will be nothing left at all. But this sutra declares that not just something, but the whole, remains. Those who know only the logic of the money-box will certainly not understand this phenonmenon. Understanding appears from an altogether new direction.

Give To Have More

Does your love decrease when you give it to someone? Do you experience any shortage of love when you give it totally? No! ‘Love’ is the word we need to come to an understanding of this sutra; this is the word we shall have to use. However much you may part with your love, what you are left with remains as much as it was originally. The act of giving it away produces no shortage. On the contrary, it grows, increasing as you give it away, entering you deeper and deeper as you distribute it more and more. As you give it freely away, the wealth of love within you begins to grow. One who gives his total love, freely and unconditionally, becomes the possessor of infinite love.

Simple arithmetic can never comprehend that when the whole is taken from the whole, the remainder is whole. Only love can find the meaning in this statement. Perhaps, through Meera and Chaitanya you can find your way to understanding, for this is a subject relating to some other, unknown dimension, in which nothing decreases when given away. The only experience you have that can enable you to understand this in a sudden flash of insight is love.

If, having given your love, you experience a sense of loss, then know that  you have no experience of love at all. When you give your love to someone, and feel within you that something has disappeared, then know that what you gave must have been something else. It cannot be love. It must be something belonging to the world of dollars and pounds. It must be a measurable thing which can be valued in figures, weighed in a balance and estimated in metres. Remember, whatever is measurable is subject to the law of diminution. Only that which is immeasurable and unfathomable will remain the same no matter how much is taken from it.

Drop Your Delusion

If someone loves me,  I want that she love no one else, because my reasoning says that love divided is love diminished. So I seek to become sole owner and possessor of her love. My demand is that the person loving me give not even a loving glance to anyone else; such glance is poison because “I know” that now her love for me will begin to diminish. If I cling to this notion of love diminishing, I need to accept that I have no idea what love is. If I had any appreciation of true love, I would want my beloved to go out, and give it freely to the whole world, because through  so giving it she would come to understand its secrets and mysteries, and as she falls deeper and deeper into love, her love towards me, too, would overflow. Love is immeasurable. Drop your delusion that true love diminishes when it is shared.

The Heartbeat of the Absolute,

Ishavasya Upanishad. Courtesy Osho Intl. Foundation.

The Speaking Tree, Page No: 04, 10, April, 2011

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Open Heart, Open Mind

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Shed your bias if you want to lead a life of bliss, writes STUTI MALHOTRA

You will agree that life dishes out different kinds of challenges to different people. Everyone has to face difficulties, problems, setbacks at some point or the other. My life appear to be one long-drawn out struggle. Like most people, everytime I faced at yet another problem that sapped my patience and forbearance, I asked myself in despair: Why me? Why can’t life ever be smooth and hassle-free? These questions seemed to have no answers.
Being a religious person in the traditional sense of the word, I concluded that God was unhappy with me. So I made every effort to please Him. But I got no response. Was I dialling a wrong number?
As time passed, I began to lose faith in someone who could not answer my questions and lead me to a more meaningful life. I resolved to find the answer myself. To set my mind at rest, I became a seeker.

Life Is A Test
In the course of my journey as a seeker, I discovered the Creation Plan of God. According to the plan, life is a test and its many problems are part of that test. Once the test comes to an end marked by death, we are either rewarded or punished, in accordance with our deeds.
This world is like an examination hall where a student, with all the freedom to write whatever he wants, takes tests. It is only the result which determines his future. The student is made to confront pleasant and unplesant situations — all meant only to test him. His response determines the life to come.
This was a logic to which my mind yielded without questioning. Everything fell into place. In the framework based on this ideology, I discovered that all phenomena of life were well-explained. To an explanation-seeking entity called man, only true reasoning can initiate him into the process that will eventually help him to discover his Creator.

God Is Generous
I desired little, but God gave me much; for what can be greater in this world than a satisfied mind? It is said, ‘Ask God not for a specific thing but pray to Him to bestow upon you what He deems best’. It is possible that while you might be praying for a small car, God may wish to bless you with a luxury vehicle such as a Rolls Royce!

Looking back, I want to thank God for having granted me the ability to understand and acknoweldge the answers that were presented to me.

I have come to realise that you become receptive to the wisdom of life only when you free yourself of biases. If you are unable to shed your bias, you become a dwarf thinker. It is important to live with an open heart and mind, so that you can think beyond your conditioning and discard inhibition and fear. When you discover the meaning of life, God Himself undergoes a transformation. This metamorphosis develops your personality and helps you to grow spiritually. It also helps you achieve material success.

The Speaking Tree, Page: 05, 6, Feb, 2011,

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God Checks my Patience…

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9 Jan 2011, Sunday,

As soon as I woke up in the morning, I put on my face, sat for vipassana. As long as I continued the meditation the huge loud music went on the very mornig. Well, today, Sunday. Nobody banged any morning before like this. I felt quit absurd but continued. Thought that may God check my patience and didnt hold my breath but did what I was supposed to do.

What happened the next was I went for breakfast. The canteen was filled with few number of students, I sit for there, waited for moments, paratha was being prepared. I noticed, people started to gather more and more. Right there, the first lot came, parathas finished in no time. Well, I waited for some more moments, felt normal and expected for the next lot. Ya, this time it took more minutes. Suddenly, the worker came with huge amount of parathas. One of the worker put parathas into plates and distrbuted among us but except me, lot took no time to finish again. Ah, I wondered with jelousy and guilt and murmered myself, what is that?. I totally felt impatient. Couldn’t stop myself, words started to come from within – hey, dont’ you see this little shit sitting here and waiting since long time? Or am I invisible that one put plates infront of the guyz beside me and not of me? Blah… blah… Bahadur bhaiya became the victim. After few minutes, the third lot arrived. Bahadur bhaiya himself put two parathas for me. As soon as I tore the paratha for my first bite, I felt something inside myself. Now, what I realised was the shame inside me. Ah of me, questioned myself, Why, why?

The greed, cruelty, guilt, jelousy had vanished now. Why did these came for a moment and made me wholely impatient. They remained inside me for just 2-3 minutes. I was totally impure. Oh me, shameless. Was this because I was expecting for something or my valuable time I was wasting for nothing? May because I was jelous with the other guys or people don’t care me. I was filled with egos and selfishness. Yes, because I was silent and covered my face with the hood of my pullover and nobody did recognise me.

Ha ha ha ha… I remembered GOD. So this is you who is taking my test time to time. Well, I failed it. No worry. Sure, I promise you, I will pass it one day. I will pass it one day…. I swear, my heart and soul will be compltetly pure that day.

Let all beings be happy, Let all beings be liberated.

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