A MESSAGE TO HUMANITY ON THIS NEW YEAR'S DAY

Question:- what is your message to humanity on this new year’s day? 

Osho  -My message for new year, is simple. My message is a new man, homo novus. The old concept of man was of either/or; materialist or spiritualist, moral or immoral, sinner or saint. It was based on division, split. It created a schizophrenic humanity. The whole past of humanity has been sick, unhealthy, insane. In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought. This is just utterly mad; it is unbelievable. It is stupid, unintelligent, inhuman.

Once you divide man in two, you create misery and hell for him. He can never be healthy and can never be whole, the other half that has been denied will go on taking revenge. It will go on finding ways and means to overcome the part that you have imposed upon yourself. You will become a battle-ground, a civil war. That’s what has been the case in the past.

In the past we were not able to create real human beings, but humanoids. A humanoid is one who looks like a human being but is utterly crippled, paralysed. He has not been allowed to bloom in his totality. He is half, and because he is half he is always in anguish and tension; he cannot celebrate.

Only a whole man can celebrate. Celebration is the fragrance of being whole.
Only a tree that has lived wholly will flower. Man has not flowered yet.

The past has been very dark and dismal. It has been a dark night of the soul. And because it was repressive, it was bound to become aggressive. If something is repressed, man becomes aggressive, he loses all soft qualities. It was always so up to now. We have come to a point where the old has to be dropped and the new has to be heralded.

The NEWMAN will not be either/or; he will be both/and. The new man will be earthy and divine, worldly and other-worldly. The new man will accept his totality and he will live it without any inner division, he will not be split. His god will not be opposed to the devil, his morality will not be opposed to immorality; he will know no opposition. He will transcend duality, he will not be schizophrenic.

With the new man there will come a new world, because the new man will perceive in a qualitatively different way and he will live a totally different life which has not been lived yet. He will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. He w ill not choose: he will be choicelessly himself.

That’s what I teach: homo novus, a new man, not a humanoid. The humanoid is not a natural phenomenon. The humanoid is created by the society – by the priest, the politician, the pedagogue.

The humanoid is created, it is manufactured. Each child comes as a human being: total, whole, alive, without any split. Immediately the society starts suffocating him, stifling him, cutting him into fragments, telling him what to do and what not to do, what to be and what not to be. His wholeness is soon lost. He becomes guilty about his whole being. He denies much that is natural, and in that very denial he becomes uncreative. Now he will be only a fragment, and a fragment cannot dance, a fragment cannot sing, and a fragment is always suicidal because the fragment cannot know what life is. The humanoid cannot will on his own. Others have been willing for him – his parents, the teachers, the leaders, the priests; they have taken all his willing. They will, they order; he simply follows. The humanoid is a slave.

I teach freedom. Now man has to destroy all kinds of bondages and he has to come out of all prisons – no more slavery. Man has to become individual. He has to become rebellious. And whenever a man has become rebellious.... Once in a while a few people have escaped from the tyranny of the past, but only once in a while – a Jesus here and there, a Buddha here and there. They are exceptions. And even these people, Buddha and Jesus, could not live totally. They tried, but the whole society was against it.

This new year, for newman,
My concept of the new man is that he will be Zorba the Greek and he will also be Gautam the Buddha: the new man will be Zorba the Buddha. He will be sensuous and spiritual, physical, utterly physical, in the body, in the senses, enjoying the body and all that the body makes possible, and still a great consciousness, a great witnessing will be there. He will be Christ and Epicurus together.

The old man’s ideal was renunciation; the new man’s ideal will be rejoicing. And this new man is coming every day, he is arriving every day. People have not yet become aware of him. In fact he has already dawned. The old is dying, the old is on its death-bed. I don’t mourn for it and I say please don’t mourn for it. It is good that it dies, because out of its death the new will assert. The death of the old will be the beginning of the new. The new can come only when the old has died utterly.

Help the old to die and help the new to be born! And remember, the old has all the respectability, the whole past will be in his support; and the new will be a very strange phenomenon. The new will be so new that he will not be respected. Every effort will be made to destroy the new. The new cannot be respectable, but with the new is the future of the whole of humanity. The new has to be brought in. My work consists in creating a Buddhafield, an energy-field, where the new can be born. I am only a midwife helping the new to come into a world which will not be accepting of it. The new will need much support from those who understand, from those who want some revolution to happen. Andthe time is ripe, it has never been so ripe. The time is right, it has never been so right. The new can assert itself, the break-through has become possible.

The old is so rotten that even with all support it cannot survive; it is doomed! We can delay, we can go on worshipping the old; that will be just delaying the process. The new has to come: at the most, we can help it to come sooner, or we can hinder it and delay its coming. It is good to help it. If it comes sooner, humanity can still have a future, and a great future: a future of freedom, a future of love, a future of joy.

I teach a new religion. This religion will not be Christianity and will not be Judaism and will not be Hinduism. This religion will not have any adjective to it. This religion will be purely a religious quality of being whole.

My sannyasins have to become the first rays of the sun that is going to come on the horizon. It is a tremendous task, it is an almost impossible task, but because it is impossible it is going to seduce all those who have any soul left in them. It is going to create a great longing in all those people who have some adventure hidden in their beings, who are courageous, brave, because it is really going to create a brave new world.

I talk of Buddha, I talk of Christ, I talk of Krishna, I talk of Zarathustra, so that all that is best and all that is good in the past can be preserved. But these are only a few exceptions. The whole humanity has lived in great slavery, chained, split, insane.

I say my message in NEW YEAR is simple, but it will be very hard, difficult, to make it happen. But the harder, the more impossible, it is, the greater is the challenge. And the time is right because religion has failed. science has failed. The time is right because the East has failed, the West has failed. Something of a higher synthesis is needed in which East and West can have a meeting, in which religion and science can have a meeting.

Religion failed because it was other-worldly and it neglected this world. And you cannot neglect this world; to neglect this world is to neglect your own roots. Science has failed because it neglected the other world, the inner, and you cannot neglect the flowers. Once you neglect the flowers, the innermost core of being, life loses all meaning. The tree needs roots, so man needs roots, and the roots can only be in the earth. The tree needs an open sky to grow, to come to a great foliage and to have thousands of flowers. Then only is the tree fulfilled, then only does the tree feel significance and meaning and life becomes relevant.

Man is a tree. Religion has failed because it is talking only of the flowers. Those flowers remain philosophical, abstract; they never materialise. They could not materialise because they were not supported by the earth. And science has failed because it cares only about the roots. The roots are ugly and there seems to be no flowering.

The West is suffering from too much science; the East has suffered from too much religion. Now we need a new humanity in which religion and science become two aspects of one man. And the bridge is going to be art. That’s why I say that the new man will be a mystic, a poet and a scientist.

Between science and religion only art can be the bridge – poetry, music, sculpture. Once we have brought this new man into existence, the earth can become for the first time what it is meant to become. It can become a paradise: this very body the Buddha, this very earth the paradise!

Suvira means courageous. Courage is the only bridge from darkness to light, from death to life. Courage is the only possible bridge that can take you to the unknown; and the unknown is god. By courage I mean the courage to drop the familiar. That is the greatest courage. It is very tempting to remain clinging to the familiar: it is so protective, so cosy, so warm, and you have known it all along. You seem to belong to it, you are identified with it. To drop it means to go through a death; but death is the beginning of a new life. Courage is the greatest religious quality.

Osho 

I LOVE MY HUSBAND BUT I HATE SEX, AND THAT CREATES CONFLICT. ISN’T SEX ANIMALISTIC?

It is. But man is an animal – as much of an animal as any other animal. But when I say that man is an animal, I don’t mean that man finishes with animality; he can be more than the animal, he can be less also. That is the glory of man, the freedom and the danger, the agony and the ecstasy. 

A man can be far lower than animals, and a man can be far higher than gods. Man has infinite potentiality. A dog is a dog: he remains a dog. He is born a dog and he will die a dog. A man can become a Buddha, and a man can become an Adolf Hitler too. So man is very open-ended on both sides – he can fall back. Can you find any animal more dangerous than man, more mad than man? Just think of a scene: fifty thousand monkeys sitting in a stadium killing small children – throwing them into a fire. What will you think about them? Thousands of children are being thrown into a fire... A great fire is burning just in the middle of the stadium, and fifty thousand monkeys enjoying with joy, dancing, and children are being thrown – their own children. What will you think about these monkeys? Will you not think that the monkeys have gone mad? But this has happened in humanity. In Carthage it happened: fifty thousand men burning children. They burnt three hundred children at one time. as an offering to their god. Their own children!

But forget about Carthage, it is long past. What did Adolf Hitler do in this century’? Of course, this is a far-advanced century, so Adolf Hitler was capable of doing greater things than Carthage. He killed millions of Jews, thousands at a time would be forced into a chamber and gassed. And hundreds of people would be looking from the outside... watching through one-way mirrors. What you will think about these people? What type of men...? People being gassed, burnt, evaporated, and others are watching? Can you think about animals doing such a thing?

During three thousand years, man has been through five thousand wars – killing and killing and killing.And you call sex animalistic? Animals have never done anything more ’animalistic’ than man. And you think man is not an animal?

Man is an animal. And the idea that man is not an animal is one of the hindrances for your growth. So you take it for granted that you are not animals, and then you stop growing. The first recognition has to be this: ’I am an animal and I have to be alert and and go beyond it.’It happened:

A man wrote to a country hotel in Ireland to ask if his dog would be allowed to stay there. He received the following answer: Dear Sir, I have been in the hotel business for over thirty years. Never yet have I had to call in the police to eject a disorderly dog in the small hours of the morning. No dog has ever attempted to pass off a bad cheque on me. Never has a dog set the bed-clothes alight through smoking. I have never found a hotel towel in a dog’s suitcase. Your dog is welcome.

P.S. If he can vouch for you, you can come too!
Animals are beautiful, whatsoever they are; they are just innocent. Man is very cunning, very calculating, very ugly. Man can fall lower than the animals, because man can rise higher than man higher than gods. Man has an infinite potentiality: he can be the lowest and he can be the highest. He has the whole ladder in his being, from the first rung to the last rung. 

So the first thing I would like to say to you: don’t call sex just animalistic, because sex can be just animalistic – that is possible, but it need not be. It can rise higher, it can become love, it can become prayer. It depends on you.

Sex in itself is nothing like a fixed entity; it is just a possibility. You can make it as you like it, as you want it. That is the whole message of Tantra: that sex can become samadhi. That is the vision of Tantra: that sex can become samadhi, that through sex the ultimate ecstasy can enter in you. Sex can become the bridge between you and the ultimate.

You say: I LOVE MY HUSBAND BUT I HATE SEX, AND THAT CREATES CONFLICT. How can you love your husband and yet hate sex’? You must be playing on words. How can you love your husband and hate sex?

Just try to understand it. When you love a man, you would like to hold his hand too. When you love a man, you would like to hug him sometimes too. When you love a man, you would not only like to hear his sound, you would like to see his face too. When you only hear the sound of your beloved, the beloved is far away, the sound is not enough; when you see him too you are more satisfied.

When you touch him, certainly you are even more satisfied. When you taste him, certainly you are even more satisfied. What is sex? It is just a meeting of two deep energies.

You must be carrying some taboos in your mind, inhibitions. What is sex’? Just two persons meeting at the maximum point – not only holding hands, not only hugging each other’s bodies, but penetrating into each other’s energy realm. Why should you hate sex? Your mind must have been conditioned by the mahatma's, the so-called ’religious’ people who have poisoned the whole of humanity, who have poisoned your very source of growth. Why should you hate? If you love your man, you would like to share your total being with him: there is no need to hate. And if you hate sex, what are you saying’? You are simply saying that you want the man to take care of you financially, to take care of the house, to bring you a car and a fur coat.

You want to use the man... and you call it love’? And you don’t want to share anything with him. When you love, you share all. When you love, you don’t have any secrets. When you love, you have your heart utterly open; you are available. When you love, you are ready to go with him even to hell if he is going to hell.

But this happens. We are very expert with words: we don’t want to say that we don’t love,so we make it look as if we love and we hate sex. Sex is not all love – that’s true, love is more than sex – that’s true; but sex is the very foundation of it. Yes, one day sex disappears, but to hate it is not the way to make it disappear. To hate it is the way to repress it. And whatsoever is repressed will come up one way or other.

Remember, sex is natural. One can go beyond it, but not though repression. And if you repress it, sooner or later you will find some other way to express it; some perversion is bound to enter – you will have to find some substitute. And substitutes are of no help at all; they don't help, they can't help. And once a natural problem has been turned in such a way that you have forgotten about it,and it has bubbled up somewhere else as a substitute, you can go on fighting with the substitute, but it is not going to help.

I have heard...
A stranger got into a suburban railway carriage in which two men were already sitting. One of them had a peculiar mannerism – he scratched his elbow again and again and again. This elbowscratching was nearly driving the stranger mad by the time the victim got out at his station.’Gravely afflicted, your friend’ he said to the other man. ’Yes indeed. He has got a terrible dose of piles.’ ’I’m not talking about piles. I’m talking about all that scratching just now.’ ’Yes, that is right – piles. You see he is a very religious man and a civil servant too. And that scratching of the elbow is just a substitute.’

But substitutes never help; they only create perversions. obsessions. Be natural if you want to go beyond nature some day. Be natural: that is the first requirement. I am not saying that there is nothing more than nature, there is a higher nature – that is the whole message of Tantra. But be very earthly if you really want to rise high in the sky.

Can’t you see these trees? They are rooted in the earth, and the better they are rooted the higher they go. The higher they want to go, the deeper they will have to go into the earth. If a tree wants to touch the stars, the tree will have to go and touch the very hell – that’s the only way. Be rooted in your body if you want to become a soul. Be rooted in your sex if you really want to become a lover. Yes, the more energy is converted into love, the less and less need of sex will be there, but you will not hate it.

Hate is not a right relationship with anything. Hate simply shows that you are afraid. Hate simply shows that there is great fear in you. Hate simply shows that deep down you are still attracted. If you hate sex, then your energy will start moving somewhere else. Energy has to move. Man, if he suppresses sex, becomes more ambitious. If you really want to be ambitious you have to suppress sex. Then only can ambition have energy, otherwise you will not have any energy. A politician has to suppress sex, then only can he rush towards New Delhi. Sex energy is needed. 

Whenever you are suppressing sex, you are angry at the whole world you can become a great revolutionary. All revolutionaries are bound to be sexually repressed. When, in a better world, sex will be simple, natural, accepted without any taboo and without any inhibition, politics will disappear and there will be no revolutionaries there will be no need. When a man represses sex, he becomes too attached to money; he has to put his sexual energy somewhere.

Have you not seen people holding their hundred rupee notes as if they were touching their beloved? Can’t you see in their eyes the same lust? But this is ugly. To hold a woman with deep love is beautiful; to hold a hundred rupee note with lust is just ugly – it is a substitute. You cannot deceive animals... A man went to the zoo and took his son; he wanted to show his son the monkeys there. The son was very interested: he had never seen monkeys. They went there – but no monkeys. So he asked the zoo-keeper ’What has happened? Where are the monkeys?’ 

And the zoo-keeper said ’This is their love season, so they have gone into the hut.’ The man was very frustrated. For months he had been trying to bring the boy. They had travelled far, and now this was love season! So he asked ’If we throw nuts won’t they come out?’ And the zoo-keeper said ’Would you?’ But I think man can come out; if you throw nuts, man HAS to come out. The zoo-keeper is wrong: the monkeys will not come that is certain; if you give them money they will not come. They will say ’Keep your money. The love season is on! Keep your money.’

And if you say ’We can make you President of India’, they will say ’You keep your presidency. The love season is on! But man, if you make him a president, can kill his beloved. If that is the stake, he can do that. These are substitutes. You cannot befool animals.

I have heard...
The spinster had a parrot who kept repeating ’I want to poke! I want to poke!’ She found this slightly irritating, until a married friend explained what it meant. Then she became very alarmed...’I love that bird, but I’ll have to get rid of him, or the vicar will never call again’ she said. But her more experienced friend said ’Well, if you really love him, you’ll get him what he longs for, which is a female, then he won’t keep on about it all the time.’ Off went the spinster to the bird shop, but the man said ’No can do, no lady parrots coming in all season, Miss. But I can do you a lady owl at a reasonable price.’ Anything was better than nothing, so she popped the owl into the parrot’s cage, and waited with thrilled anticipation... ’I want to poke! I want to poke!’ said the parrot.

’Ooo-Ooo’ said the lady owl.
’Not you, you goggle-eyed freak!’ said the parrot ’I can’t stand women who wear glasses!’

Substitutes won’t do. Man is living with substitutes. Sex is natural, money is unnatural. Sex is natural; power, prestige, respectability, are unnatural. If you really want to hate something, hate money, hate power, hate prestige. Why hate love?

Sex is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world. Of course, the lowest, that is true, but the higher moves through the lower – the lotus comes out of the mud. Don’t hate the mud, otherwise how will you help the mud to release the lotus? Help the mud, take care of the mud, so that the lotus is released. Certainly, the lotus is so far away from the mud that you cannot even conceive of any relationship. If you see a lotus, you cannot believe that it comes out of dirty mud. But it comes: it is the expression of the dirty mud.

The soul is released from the body. LOVE is released from sex. SEX is a body thing, love is a spiritual thing. Sex is like mud, love is like a lotus. But without the mud the lotus is not possible, so don’t hate the mud.

The whole TANTRA message is simple; it is very scientific and it is very natural. The message is that if you really want to go beyond the world, go into the world deeply, fully alert. aware.

OSHO, The TANTRA, Vision,

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VIOLENCE- ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

One observes throughout the world there are two fundamental issues, violence and sorrow. That violence and sorrow is not limited to the Orient nor the Occident, to the West nor the East; it is part of the human psychological structure. Violence we have accepted as a way of life - in wars, in our business, in our outward social structure; competition and all the things we know of - how we dislike, hate, get angry, violent. We are familiar with that and have accepted it as a way of life.

Either we accept the way of life as it is, with violence and all the rest of it; or we say there must be a different way which human intelligence can find, where violence doesn't exist. That's all. And we say this violence will exist so long as comparison, suppression, conformity, the disciplining of oneself according to a pattern is the way of life. In this there is conflict and therefore violence.

So can you see the fact of violence—the fact not only outside of you but also inside you—and not have any time interval between listening and acting? This means by the very act of listening you are free from violence. You are totally free from violence because you have not admitted time, an ideology through which you can get rid of violence. This requires very deep meditation, not just a verbal agreement or disagreement. We never listen to anything; our minds, our brain cells are so conditioned to an ideology about violence that we never look at the fact of violence. We look at the fact of violence through an ideology, and the looking at violence through an ideology creates a time interval. And when you admit time, there is no end to violence; you go on showing violence, preaching non-violence.

Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter. You have to understand the central cause of conflict and sorrow and then dissolve it and not merely look to the outside for peace.

With complete attention, what takes place? When you give complete attention to anything—your learning of history or mathematics, looking at your wife or your husband—what takes place? I do not know if you have gone into it—probably most of us have never given complete attention to anything—but when you do, what takes place?

Formally I have condemned violence, I have escaped from it, I have justified it, I have said it is natural. All these things are inattention. But when I give attention to what I have called violence—and in that attention there is care, affection, love—where is there space for violence?

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence. When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent.

There are so many different kinds of violence. Shall we go into each kind of violence or shall we take the whole structure of violence? Can we look at the whole spectrum of violence, not just at one part of it?…The source of violence is the “me”, the ego, the self, which expresses itself in so many ways—in division, in trying to become or be somebody—which divides itself as the “me” and the “not me”, as the unconscious and the conscious; the “me” that identifies with the family or not with the family, with the community or not with the community and so on. It is like a stone dropped in a lake; the waves spread and spread, at the centre is the “me”. As long as the “me” survives in any form, very subtly or grossly, there must be violence.

Man is all the time trying to become non-violent. So there is conflict between “what is”, which is violence, and “what should be”, which is non-violence. There is conflict between the two. That is the very essence of wastage of energy. As long there is duality between “what is” and “what should be”—man trying to become something else, making an effort to achieve “what should be”—that conflict is waste of energy. As long as there is conflict between the opposite, man has not enough energy to change. Why should I have the opposite at all, as non-violence, as the ideal?

If there was no ideal at all, you would be left with “what is”. Would that make one complacent? Or would you then have the energy, the interest, the vitality to solve ‘what is’? Is not the ideal of non-violence an escape from the fact of violence? When the mind is not escaping, but is confronted with the fact of violence—that it is violent, not condemning it, not judging it—then surely such a mind has an entirely different quality and there is no longer violence.

Now, suppose I am violent. How do I observe that violence, because I want to understand the nature of that violence. I want to go, explore, discover the extraordinary factors that contribute to violence. So how do I observe? First, is violence - please listen to this - is violence different from me? Right? You understand my question? I am asking, is that violence which I see when I say I am violent, is that violence different from me or I am that violence? When you are angry, you are angry. It is not you are different from anger. You are different from anger only when you want to control it, only when you say I must suppress it, but are you actually different, separate from violence. Please, we must go into this very carefully because most people say I am different from that object which I call violence. Is that so? Is the word 'violence' separated - you understand?

When there are two dogmatic beliefs, and each trying to convert the other, oppose each other, it is a form of violence. So are we aware of this factor in our life? And when you become aware of it what are you going to do? Do you say, 'Yes, I am aware of it' but carry on with violence? Therefore it becomes a very serious matter. If one is really to be free of violence, to look at it, to live with it, to understand it, to go into it and see all the multiple forms of violence, totally be acquainted with it - and when you are acquainted with something it flowers and then withers away, you don't have to fight it.

Sir, look: I am violent. I observe it. Because I don't run away from it, I don't suppress it, I don't transform it into something else as non -violence, which is absurd - the transformation of violence into non -violence is stupidity, it has no meaning. So as I am violent, I let it come out - not in action. Let it flower, let it grow, as you watch it, it grows and dies. Haven't you done all this? That is, sir, when you are angry, at that moment of anger you are not aware, you are full out. Then a second later you say, 'I have been angry'. Right? So you have divided yourself as not being angry and that you have been angry. So there is a division between the observer who says, 'I have been angry, and I must not be angry'. Right? So the division brings about conflict, saying, 'I mustn't be angry, how am I to get rid of my anger' - and so on and so on, so on. Whereas if you are aware of anger as it arises and let it come out non-verbally (laughs), non-actively, not say, 'I am going to hit you' - let it flower, let it come out, and you will see it disappears very quickly and withers away. And if you do it properly you are never angry again,

 Jiddu Krishnamurti, LOVE,

NATURE OF VIOLENCE

Violence is a thing given to man by nature but it is not the nature of man. It is animal’s nature, it is the nature of beasts. Man has passed-travelled-through this nature and so has carried all the experiences – impressions of that animal life with him. Violence is like this: suppose a man is passing on a road and is covered with particles of dust and when he enters a palace, he refuses to remove those particles of dust saying they have come with me, they are a part of me. Those dust-particles are those things which have stuck on man’s soul while passing through an animal life.

They have become fixed but they are not the nature of man. Violence is natural far beasts, it is their nature because they have no choice in this matter. Violence is not natural for man because he has a choice in this matter. In fact, manhood to be human – begins with this choice. Manhood begins with this decision. Manhood begins with this resolve. Man is standing at the cross roads. All beasts are on a unidimensional road. They can therefore have no choice.

Man can become violent or nonviolent as he wishes. This is man’s freedom. Beasts haven’t got it. It is the helplessness of a beast. That is why there is no difference between the nature of beasts and the fact of being beasts. There is no distance between the future and the past of a beast. There is no difference in being a beast and in the possibility of what it can be. The beast is what it can be. That which is possible, is actual. There is no distinction between the actuality and possibility of beasts. The whole matter is different in the case of man. 

Man can be different from what he is The actuality of man is not his possibility. He can be something else tomorrow from what he is really today. So we can’t tell any dog that you are something less of a dog, but we can tell a man, you appear to be something less of a man. To tell any dog that you are something less of a dog is completely an absurd statement. It doesn’t have any meaning. All dogs are complete dogs. There may be weak dogs, there may be strong ones also but there is no difference in their doghood. But there is a difference of degrees in manhood. We cannot tell any Krishna that there is no difference in manhood – gentlemanliness – between you and Hitler. We cannot tell any Buddha that there is no difference between you and Ravana. It so happens at times, That we have to say about someone, there is hardly any gentlemanliness in him, and we have to say about some other person that there is not much of humanity in him that he can be called divine-god. 

Whenever we use the word God for some person, it means that there is so much humanity in them that it is found insufficient to call him man. What a man is, is not everything; much more can happen to him. There is a very great potentiality in him. His past is linked with his journey – through beasthood, that condition is that of

violence. And what he can be is his nonviolence.

The nature of man is that which it will be when it will evolve itself fully. The reality about man is what he has accumulated in his journey uptil now. That is why I say violence is acquired, nonviolence is the nature. So violence can be given up; but nonviolence can only be achieved, it cannot be given up. It is very necessary to understand this difference.

Every sinner has a future and every sinner has an opportunity to be a saint in future. We can tell every sinner honestly that he is a saint of the future. Every saint has a past and in every saint’s past is the past of a sinner. We can tell every saint honestly that you were a sinner in the past, but then the saint has no further future. The saint means one who has achieved his entire nature, he has now become what he could have become. The flower has bloomed fully. A bud has a future. If a bud wishes to be a flower, it can become a flower. So when we tell a bud that it is your nature to be a flower, it doesn’t mean we are talking of a fact, we simply talk of potentiality. When we tell a bud it is your nature to be a flower, it means, if you wish to be a flower, you can be a flower. Thus if man says violence is my nature, he is talking like the mistaken bud, which thinks that it can be a bud for ever. Violence is not the nature of man; it is the acquisition of his past, it is the impression of

his past. Violence is man’s conditioning which was unavoidable through the process of his evolution from beastly life. Beast is to be pardoned because violence is unavoidable in its life. Man cannot be pardoned, because violence is his choice; it is not inevitable when he chooses violence. 

Violence is inevitable for beasts, it is a responsibility for man. It is a fact for beasts, for man it is merely a historical memory. It is the present for beasts, it is past for man. We have the choice in front of us. Man can take a decision to be nonviolent; he can take a decision to be violent also.

That is why when a certain person takes a decision to be violent, no beast can compete with him. Really, no beast can be as violent as a man can be, because a beast is violent by nature while man becomes violent by planning. So, even after a through search among beasts, we cannot get such violent beasts as Chengez Khan, or Taimur, or Nadir, or Hitler. If we consult the history of beasts and ask them if they had parallel examples they would reply, ’We are very poor in that, we do not have any memory – any record – in this matter.’ It is very interesting to know that no animal except man becomes atrocious towards its own fellow-members. No animal kills another animal of its class, does not commit violence towards it. This distinguishing feature is also there in the violence of animals.

Man is the only animal who kills other men. It is interesting to know that if an Indian wolf is left near a Pakistani wolf, it will not harm the other, but to keep an Indian near a Pakistani is full of danger. Language experts say this is perhaps due to difference in language. The opinion of the linguists seems to be true. They say, as both the wolves do not speak any language, the Pakistani wolf does not speak Urdu and the Indian wolf does not speak Hindi, so they do not know they are foreigners.

But man from one province becomes a foreigner in another province. Gujaratis are foreigners in Marathi province, the Hindi speaking people are foreigners to those speaking Tamil. If what the linguists say is correct and I feel there is truth in it, we shall be compelled one day to make man speechless – silent – so as to make him a human being. Perhaps it would be difficult to create humanity without being speechless in the world.

Man is rational only in the sense that he rationalizes his follies, he is not rational in any other sense. Aristotle definitely said Man is a rational animal but the history of man uptil now does not prove it. History has disproved Aristotle. Man seems intelligent only in one thing and it is this, he is trying to rationalize his follies. Even when he kills someone he rationalizes his action. He says I shall have to kill him because he is a Mohammedan; he is a Hindu, he is not an Indian, he is a Pakistani etc. As if it is a sufficient cause for being killed to be a Pakistani or enough to kill a person if he is a Mohammedan.

Man finds out a cause to kill, such as this man is rich, he should be killed, this man is a communist, he should be killed. When old causes become worthless, new ones are being found out. New causes prove that old ones have become useless, they are not to be used now. Let us find out new ones. Uptil now we have killed many Hindus and Muslims, let us now make Hindus and Jains quarrel. If we do not succeed in Hindu-Jain quarrels, let us start dividing them into the rich and the poor. Let us have a class-war. Thus when man wants to commit violence, to kill, he conveniently finds out causes.

Animals never kill without a cause. I am telling you this that if we understand violence of man we shall see that man becomes violent without any cause. So violence is his choice and that is why no animal can become as cruel and violent as man can be. To be violent is simply the nature of animals, it is not its choice, that is why there can be a Nadirshah and there can be a Mahavira among mankind. Nonviolence is not the choice of animals. But man has to make a choice of nonviolence.

OSHO, LOVE,

THE GOLDEN MEAN -OSHO

Question-OSHO What are you doing and why? how is it different from what we are doing and why? 

OSHO-I am not doing anything at all. I am not interested in any goal, in any plan, in any future. I am simply living moment to moment, spontaneously. Just as the flowers are there in the garden, doing nothing, just being there, or as the stars are in the sky, doing nothing, just being there, I am here. But there is no why and no what, simply because I don't even think of the coming moment. Whatever happens I allow it to happen.

You think I am speaking to you. As far as I am concerned, whatever comes to me I allow it to be spoken. I am just a mirror - a mirror does nothing. In language it seems as if a mirror also is doing something - it reflects. Linguistically, reflection is an action - but the mirror is not doing anything.

When you are in front of the mirror, it reflects you. When you have moved, the reflection disappears. The mirror is simply there, whatever comes in front of it is reflected in it.  That's why it is alost impossible for me to speak to you unless you ask a question - because I don't have anything to say.

Your question becomes a provocation to my consciousness. It is reflected, echoed, and goes back to you, but it is not my doing. What you are doing and why you are doing - how can I manage to know? That is your business, your problem. I can say about myself, and perhaps this is the difference: I know about myself, and you don't know about yourself.

You are doing things and you don't know why you are doing them, what you are doing....

You are living in darkness, in ignorance, in blindness. I know exactly that I am not doing anything. On my own I am just an empty mirror. If you want something to be echoed, you come in front of me, you ask a question. If some answer arises it is a simple happening - not a doing.

Just as water flows downwards, the sun rises, the birds start singing and the flowers start opening. The sun is not doing anything. It is not knocking on each bird's nest - "Get up and start singing..." Just the presence of the sun - and something happens all over existence. Life starts awakening, responding. I am simply a presence. You can draw as much as you want.

It all depends on your questions, your quest, your inquiry. I have to drop a few of your questions just because I don't want anybody to look silly asking a question which is stupid.

For example, one woman has been asking for three days continuously, "I love my ego, what should I do?" What is there to be done? If you love your ego, love is good, at least you love something. It is better than nothing! And you love your ego - then why are you worried about doing something?

Is not love enough? Do you want to do something more? Certainly you are worried that loving your own ego is taking you into a dangerous stage - it is going to become your hell. You know it, otherwise the question of what to do would not have arisen.

Every day I have read the question, and every day it has reminded me of a story.... An old woman died. She was very much afraid - afraid because in her whole life she had done nothing that she could think of as ever getting her into paradise. But strangely enough, a carrot appeared. And the carrot said, "You have forgotten. I am your only act which was virtuous and good. You once gave me to a beggar. I was rotten, and you were going to throw me away, and by a coincidence the beggar came before you were going to throw me, and you gave me to him. But even that much giving is rewarded by existence. I have been sent by God - just hold onto me and I will take you upwards to paradise."

The woman was thrilled, and holding the carrot she started rising. People had gathered, because they heard that she had died. And when they saw this carrot and the woman rising with the carrot... somebody jumped and took hold of the legs of the woman. And then it became a long line, so long that you could not see from one end to the other end.... But the woman was very angry: "So many people are going into paradise" - and the carrot was hers!

Just at the gate of paradise she shouted downwards to the long line that stretched towards earth, "You all get lost. It was my carrot!" And in saying this, she forgot. Speaking to the people and gesturing that "this was my carrot" - the carrot was lost. The carrot entered into paradise and the whole line of people fell back. Falling from paradise to the earth, none of them remained alive....

But just the idea of my carrot is enough to take you back from the very gates of paradise.

You are not at the gates of paradise, you are in love with the ego. So love it as deeply as possible so that soon it creates a hell for you. Only that hell will open your eyes - not my answer. I was dropping that question every day, because I don't want anybody to look stupid before so many people. It is insulting, and I don't want to insult anybody.

Just today another person has asked, "Do enlightened people overeat?" I wonder sometimes what goes on in people's minds - how they can manage such questions. How many enlightened people have you seen? Yes, there are people who overeat, but they are not the people who are enlightened - they are addicted to food, they cannot stop eating.

I was in America... There are thirty million people dying of starvation, and exactly thirty million people are dying of overeating - and man thinks he is a conscious being, intelligent, alert... Now this is a simple thing.

Those thirty million people should not overeat because they are killing themselves. And whatever is saved from them will save the thirty million people who are dying because they have nothing to eat. Sixty million people can be saved without doing anything, just a little understanding.

The enlightened person never goes to the extreme in any way. Neither does he fast and torture his body, nor does he overeat and torture his body in another way. Both are ways of torturing your body. You can torture it by not eating; you can torture it by overeating.

The enlightened person follows the golden mean: he is always in the middle, never at the extreme. In Gautam Buddha's life there is a beautiful story.... He was passing through Shravasti - a very rich and famous city of those days - and the king of Shravasti was one of the most egoistic persons in every way. He was an extremist about everything.

He lived in extreme luxury. The whole day he was sleeping, and the whole night was a night of dining and wining and dancing and gambling - his whole life was upside down.

He had a beautiful palace. Even on the steps he had not made a railing. On each step there were naked young women standing to function as a railing so he could go on putting his hand from one naked young woman to another. This man heard of Buddha because so many people told him, "At least once you should listen to this man. There is some beauty, there is some truth, and there is some magnetic force in the man.

What he says is not theoretical, what he says seems to be coming from the very innermost being, his own experience. He does not quote authorities, he is not a scholar. He says what he has known, and he says it with such authority that it is impossible not to be touched by it."

So many said this to him, that finally he managed one day to get up early in the morning and go to listen to Gautam Buddha. Whatever the people had said was no exaggeration. In fact, the man was much more than the people had said about him. He had a certain gravitation that pulled you towards him. Shron stood up - that was the name of the king of Shravasti - touched Buddha's feet and said, "Please initiate me, I want to become a monk."

It was a surprise. Nobody had ever thought that this man would become a monk. Even Gautam Buddha told him, "You have heard me only once, you should take some time to think it over; there is no hurry." But that was not the type of Shron's personality. He said, "When I said, 'I want to be a monk,' I want to be a monk - and right now!"

He was an extremist. He became a monk. He renounced the kingdom.

Buddhist monks don't live naked, but Shron started living naked. People reported to Buddha that he seemed to be really a great ascetic. Buddha said, "You have not understood the man. He is simply an extremist." Buddhist monks eat one time a day. Shron would eat only once every two days. He defeated all the monks. He defeated even Gautam Buddha. When they were traveling, every monk would travel on the road, but Shron would always go by the side of the road. In the thorns, the rough stones, his feet would be bleeding. And people started respecting him immensely.

Even the other monks thought they were not so great in renunciation as Shron was. Even a few started thinking that they should be followers of Shron rather than Buddha.

After six months, Shron became black - he had been a beautiful man - because he was always standing naked in the hot sun. He destroyed his body by not eating, he destroyed his feet by walking over rough stones, thorns, bushes when there was a road available.

Within six months he was badly sick, and Gautam Buddha himself went to see him. It was a rare occasion because it was not reported that Gautam Buddha had ever gone to see any other sick monk before or after. The news went like wildfire amongst all the monks that certainly Shron was a great ascetic, otherwise Buddha would not have gone to see him just because he was sick.

But Buddha had gone for some other purpose. He did not ask Shron about his sickness. He said to him, "I have heard that when you were a king you used to play the sitar and you were a master artist. There was not anyone else in the whole country comparable to you - is that right?" Shron said, "Yes. I love to play the sitar, and I had devoted my whole life to the sitar. I had come to such a mastery that there was no competitor to me." Buddha said, "I have come to ask a few questions. One: when the wires of the sitar are too tight, will it give birth to great music?" Shron said, "To great music? It will not give birth to any music. Too tight wires will simply break." Buddha said, "And if the wires are too loose, will it give great music?" Shron said, "You are asking strange questions. When the wires are too loose they don't have tension enough to create music."

Then Buddha said, "What is the position in which the wires should be so that great music can be produced?" And Shron said, "They have to be in exactly the middle position where you can say they are not loose and they are not tight. And it is one of the secrets of the art to adjust the wires to the exact middle." Buddha said, "I don't have anything more to ask you. I have just come to remind you that life is also like playing on the sitar: if you are too loose you are lost, if you are too tight you are lost. Each extreme is a death, and to find the exact middle is the whole art. You were too loose living in utter luxury. Now you are too tight living in an unnecessarily ascetic way. Come into the middle, listen to me, for the wise have always followed the middle path, they are never at the extremes. Only fools are at the extremes."

So whatever the situation, the enlightened person will always be found exactly balanced in the middle. That's why it is difficult even to recognize the enlightened man. You can see the extremist very easily: he is fasting, he is standing naked in the hot sun, in the cold... you can recognize him. He is standing on his head, or he is standing on his feet for years and he does not sit down, does not lie down. And naturally you will recognize him because he is doing something which is unnatural.

The enlightened person will be absolutely natural - but this is to be understood that he will be very much unrecognizable. You will need immense insight and understanding. You will need some taste of meditation to experience the enlightened man, otherwise you will not understand him.

For example, Hindus denied Gautam Buddha while he was alive... they did not recognize that he was enlightened because their incarnations of God - Rama, Parasurama, Krishna, Shiva - none of them had renounced the world, none of them had renounced anything. They lived in immense luxury. They lived in marble palaces, moved in golden chariots... That seemed to be fitting for a god. But Gautam Buddha with a begging bowl, barefooted, moving on the street, not even using a vehicle - Hindus could not conceive what kind of a god he was, what kind of enlightenment he had attained. Krishna never did this, Rama never did this. They had no comparison in their own history. Naturally, they denied him.

Jainas also denied that Gautam Buddha was enlightened for the simple reason that Jainas are on the other extreme. Mahavira lived naked. He was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha; he lived naked. He did not carry even a begging bowl - that is also a possession.

Gautam Buddha had three pieces of clothing and one begging bowl - at least four things. For Mahavira that was too much possessiveness - he had nothing. He would beg with his hands.

He would make his hands the begging bowl. And the Jainas had a long history of twenty-four tirthankaras... the same ascetic ways, the same way of fasting for months at a time. In twelve years, Mahavira ate for only one year - not solidly for one year, but two months he would fast, two or three days he would eat, a few months he would fast, a week he would eat... In twelve years he ate only on three hundred and sixty-five days. He was fasting for eleven years.

Now Jainas cannot accept Gautam Buddha as enlightened, because he was eating every day. One meal every day - it was too much luxury.

I want you to understand that to understand the enlightened man is one of the most difficult things in the world, for the simple reason that he is in the middle. He is absolutely normal. The extremist is recognizable. The person who has asked the question may have seen Hindu monks with big bellies...

I have seen monks like Nityananda. It is difficult to say that Nityananda had a belly, it is better to say that the belly had Nityananda. The belly was bigger than Nityananda. The belly was all. The head and legs were joined to it, but they seemed to be secondary, not important. When he lay down the belly looked like Gourishankar - even Edmund Hillary would find it difficult to climb!

But this happens to Hindu monks for the simple reason that for centuries it had been thought a great virtue to serve the monks, to feed the monks, to bring as much delicious food as possible. So people would bring food, fruits, sweets - all kinds of things - and the monk...

This is to be understood - it is one of the secrets of human life that if you are repressing sex you will start eating more. If you have completely denied yourself love, then food will become your only love affair. And the reason is that the child, when he is born, comes in contact with the mother's breast. Simultaneously he feels the love of the mother and the mother's milk - the food. Food and love become associated from the first day.

That's why every businessman knows to give a good dinner to the party when you are doing business. Then the business can be done easily; negotiations can be made easily and will be more favorable. First feed the person, then he is in a loving mood, unconsciously. This is the psychology: with food, love is joined.

Take love away from the man and you will immediately see that he starts eating more, because he substitutes food for love. It happens that unmarried girls are never so fat, but when they become married, settled in life, a husband... Now there is no question of any competition, particularly in this part of the world, and they start becoming fat. They quarrel with the husband, they fight with the husband, they nag the husband. And you will be surprised that they nag the husband exactly when he is eating - unconsciously.

That is the most vulnerable time because that is the time he wants love and that is the time he is given hate. You can't torture in a better way. And the same man every day, and the same quarrel, the same fight... slowly, slowly you forget what love is. Then people start eating more and more. Women are more fat than men in the East, because women cannot move freely in the society and have love affairs, but men can have love affairs outside marriage.

In the West it is equal, but in the East women are more fat than men.

It shows that the men have a freedom which the woman has not. But with food she is free and the whole day she is in the kitchen. I am reminded of an anecdote....

One man's wife was getting so fat that it was becoming embarrassing for the husband to take her anywhere. Wherever he would go with the wife, she would immediately become the target of everybody's comment: "What kind of woman is this?" And particularly in the West, slim is thought to be beautiful. A fat woman may do in the East, but in the West - impossible!

In the East monks are fasting; in the West women are fasting. Everybody is on a diet. Why? - because the thinner you are, the younger you look, the better you look. The man asked the psychologist, "What to do? The wife does not listen." The psychologist said, "You do one thing." He gave him a naked picture of a very beautiful woman with a very proportionate body and told him, "Hang it inside the refrigerator so whenever your wife opens it, suddenly she will recognize what she is doing to herself. She should be like this woman.

Perhaps it will help - continuous remembrance again and again. Anything that she goes to the refrigerator for, she will see the naked woman, so beautiful..." After six months the psychologist met the man. He could not recognize him. What had happened?

The man had become so fat. The psychologist asked, "What happened? You were talking about your wife that she is so fat - that something has to done. And within six months you have managed a feat which people could not manage in six years." The husband said, "It is all your doing, because of this beautiful picture." The psychologist said, "I don't understand." And the man said, "It is so simple to understand: it did not work on my wife, it worked on me. I started to go to the fridge to see the picture. And when one is so close to ice cream and this and that, one naturally takes something. My wife is the same, now I am her equal. But this is your doing - that stupid picture! I thought you were a psychologist."

An enlightened man is so full of love, is so full of compassion, that it is impossible for him to overeat. And he is not only compassionate to you, he is compassionate to his own body too. He cannot torture it by fasting, he cannot torture it by overeating. He will always remain in the middle. And in the middle is all the wisdom, all the truth, all the beauty of existence.



OSHO~The Sword and the Lotus-The golden mean