Osho - Be Natural, That’s The Best Way

Forcing yourself to behave unnaturally is a crime, says OSHO.

Seeker: I don’t feel like indulging in physical intimacy; I love meditation and dancing much more, although it is difficult to accept this. Is something wrong with me?

Osho: Nothing is wrong with you. Repression of sex is evil, but if sex is not a natural desire in you, to force it will be a repression. There are people who are forcing their natural desire for sex in trying to be celibate; they are going against their nature. And if you don’t have any inclination towards sex, forcing it will be going against your nature; it will be the same kind of crime.

A sanyasin needs to be natural. You have to listen to your own body, your own instincts, your own intuition, and follow it. You are not to do anything against your nature. If you like to be alone, and enjoy meditating...that’s what everybody else is trying, but first they are trying to get finished with sex so that they can enjoy being alone. You are in a better position; you don’t have to pass through hell. You have already passed through it somehow; perhaps in your past life. You are out of hell; now don’t try to get into the dark tunnel again.

Even the people to whom I say, “Don’t repress sex,” are not being told to remain always sexual. In fact, repression of sex keeps you always sexual. Once you have lived it totally, you are finished with it. And the sooner you are finished the better, because then you can sit silently without being bothered by the need of anybody else as a companion. You are enough unto yourself, and that is the most important thing for a meditator — the enoughness of aloneness.

But I can understand your problem. Here you must be seeing everybody bringing problems about sex, about their fights. Somebody is completely satisfied; that is his boredom. Somebody is not satisfied; he wants more satisfaction; that is his problem. Somebody is not feeling boredom; that is his problem. Listening to all these problems, naturally anybody will get worried: ‘What is my problem?’ If you don’t have any problem, it certainly means something is wrong with you.

Nothing is wrong with you. Just enjoy being yourself, your meditation, your silence, and let these people pass through their darkness. One day they will all come out of the tunnel; then you can greet them. But, just seeing that everybody is in the tunnel, fighting, shouting...and you are sitting outside the tunnel in the light, in silence; don’t be worried that something seems to be wrong with you too.

All meditators are in the tunnel. Nobody is meditating...but they have all come here to meditate; only I am meditating. Let them play whatever style they want; you simply don’t get distracted from your meditation. You are perfectly right. And all these people are trying to reach to your position. You don’t have to descend into their troubles, into their problems.

You are blessed. It rarely happens, what is happening to you. It happens only because of your past life; there is no other explanation. In your past life you must have been meditating; you must have been with a master; you must have come to a point where sex became meaningless, where the need of the other drops, when you became enough unto yourself and your loneliness changed into aloneness; hence in this life you are carrying all that you have achieved in your past life.

It is because of such experiences that all three eastern religions accepted the idea of reincarnation. Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism have a very logical scientific explanation: that you are carrying a quality that you achieved in your past life. Nothing is lost. Once you have achieved it, it goes on with your consciousness into new lives, into new bodies.

Freedom From The Past, courtesy: Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com

above the attachment to this body.

Anandmurti Gurumaa - Biology Of Physical Attraction

Be balanced and rise above attachment to the body, writes ANANDMURTI GURUMAA.

All our rishis and sages have sanctioned the natural attraction that a man feels for a woman and vice versa. And this is evident in the depiction of the intimate postures in temples like Khajuraho. Even the temples of Ajanta and Ellora depict Shiva and Parvati in sexual communion, but we don’t regard those as obscene or unbefitting.

Temples Of Khajuraho

The temples of Khajuraho are very ancient and were built by Chandela kings. But the caves of Ajanta and Ellora are said to have been built by Buddha’s disciples. How can a male and female disciple of Buddha be shown in intimate postures? The answer to this is that the male disciple was being regarded as Shiva and the female as Parvati and their communion was being depicted as a natural occurrence. This entire world is a product of the natural mating of a male and female. You were born as a result of your parents’ sexual interaction, so how can that be profane? It is certainly not unsanctified, but if sex becomes an obsession for a man or a woman, if the mind continually thinks about sex, then Shankracharya labels that as a grave disease….

What is this body? It is nothing but a bag of bones full of all kinds of repulsive stuff. And you leave remembrance of the Lord in lust for this body? The precious time wasted for getting a moment’s sexual gratification can be utilised in contemplation, meditation and remembrance of the Lord.

It is not that Shankracharya is asking men and women to hate each other or that they shouldn’t get attracted to each other, but what he is advocating is to have a balance and don’t be obsessed with sex. He doesn’t condemn physical attraction, rather he asks us to rise above the attachment to this body. Those couples who have sex in full awareness, they rise way above the binding of lust, like Shiva-Parvati. Just as fire flares up when fuel is poured into it, likewise, sexual gratification further strengthens the desire for sex. And when the body starts to age and cannot keep up with the mental desire for sex, it leads to frustration.

However, man suffers the most from the agony of sexual desires — wealth, fame, greed are dwarfed in comparison to the pain of sexual desires. Even someone like Vishwamitra, who had renounced everything — his family, his kingdom, and all the trappings of wealth — and had gone to the forest to perform austere spiritual practices, got enamoured by the beautiful nymph (apsara). When the beautiful damsel appeared before him whilst he was meditating, he forgot meditation, all the codes of conduct and got so charmed by her that he married her. However, the truth is that this is not only the story of Vishwamitra, rather this pertains to everyone.

 Natural Phenomenon

I reiterate that sexual urge is a natural phenomenon. But the point is that you don’t follow natural laws, do you? You eat when hungry — nothing wrong in that. But what if you constantly think about food, then it becomes a disease. Likewise, sexual interaction between a man and a woman is appropriate when it happens once in a while at the right time, but if one is perpetually thinking about sex, then that is a malaise.

Don’t be obsessed with sex. Be balanced and rise above the attachment to this body.

Osho - Be Ageless

If mirrors disappear, and nobody talks about how old you are, and there is no calendar and no way to measure time, you will remain young, says OSHO.

If you look within, can you feel the age? How old are you? If you close your eyes and look within, the emptiness within seems to be ageless, without age. Are you a child? Are you young? Are you old? The inner space seems to be nontemporal. It is. That’s why you become old through other’s eyes. You become old because of the mirror. If mirrors disappear and nobody talks about your age, and there is no calendar and no way to measure time, you will remain young longer. In the ancient times, people stayed younger for a longer period of time. It is said that they lived for hundreds of years; sometimes even three, four, five hundred years. Now these things look like stories, myths, and fictions. They are not fictions.

They must have lived, but they had nothing to measure time; no mirrors; nobody talked about age; nobody knew when he was born and nobody knew his birthday. They couldn’t count beyond the ten fingers. And nobody ever asked: How old are you? People simply lived not knowing how old they were. And they lived for long. It has happened many times. Just a few days ago, I was reading about a Dutch man. A few years back, he reached 165 years. And he was working at that age, doing everything normally. He lived in a distant village. Then some newspaper got the news; his name was published, his picture, and then people started coming to see him. Then doctors became concerned and they also came to study him. They killed him within two years, because with everybody coming and asking him how old he was, suddenly for the first time, that poor old man became aware that he was 165, which was unbelievable. He had never bothered. He had simply lived, not conscious of time. When you are conscious of time, you are in the grip of death. When you are not conscious of time, death simply cannot enter. It enters through time — death is time. And life is eternal, timeless. You are life, not death. What did the doctors do to that poor old man? They suggested to him: Now you don’t work, you rest, because if you rest, you can live even longer; you may live two centuries, and that will be a phenomenon for medical science! So they helped him to rest. They put him on a bed and they started giving him injections and vitamins. He was dead within two years — he had become so conscious and worried. If you are too concerned with the body, you become the body. If you go on looking in the mirror, you become the body. That’s why women age faster than men. And the miracle is, they live longer than men, but they age faster. On an average, all over the world, they live four years longer than men. However, they lose their beauty and their youth quickly.

The mirror kills them, continuously meditating on the body. Meditate on the inner being, not on the body. Find a mirror that reflects you, not the body. That mirror which reflects you is meditation. The more you meditate, the more ageless you become. Never in the history of man, has he been as helpless before death as he is now; that too with so much progress in medical science. Why such a helplessness? Because you are not in contact with the eternal; your roots are not in the eternal. You have lived a temporal life, and death is the end of time. Not you. If you have lived in time, with time, only with temporal goals, then death is a problem. But if you have lived deeper within yourself, in the remoter mountains where Kakua moved, inside where nobody can visit you, totally alone — then death is not a problem. Because, you know the deathless — it is hidden there. On the surface is time, at the centre is eternity. Remember, eternity is not a long, long time — no. Eternity is no time at all. Eternity means ‘no time’. In the past, only a few people had to wait for death, those who were sentenced to die. They had to wait in the prisons for a few days, just waiting — it was terrible agony. But now, everybody.... even those who are retired, are sentenced to death. They have nothing else to do, just wait. Any moment death will come. Medical science has only increased the agony by prolonging you. They go on giving you injections and vitamins. For what? To wait a little longer? They go on pushing you back in the queue, but you are in the queue. What difference does it make when one has lost everything? And just waiting to die. Never before! That’s why I say that man is so helpless before death. In the east, when death started approaching, people became very happy. Death was a door, it was not the end. Death was a meeting with the Unknown.

Returning to Source, Courtesy Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com

Osho - Celebrate Life Even sadness is beautiful

You can even celebrate misery; it is all in the attitude. For example: you are sad — don’t get identified with sadness. Become a witness and enjoy the moment of sadness, because sadness has its own beauties. You have never watched. You get so identified that you never penetrate the beauties of a sad moment. If you watch, you will be surprised at what treasures you have been missing. Look — when you are happy you are never so deep as when you are sad. Sadness has a depth to it; happiness has shallowness about it. Go and watch happy people. The so-called happy people, the playboys and playgirls — in clubs, hotels, and theatres— are always smiling and bubbling with happiness. You will always find them shallow, superficial. They don’t have any depth. Happiness is like waves just on the surface; you live a shallow life. But sadness has a depth to it. When you are sad it is not like waves on the surface, it is like the very depth of the Pacific Ocean: miles and miles to it. Move into the depth, watch it. Happiness is noisy; sadness has a silence to it.

Happiness may be like the day, sadness is like the night. Happiness may be like the light, sadness is like darkness. Light comes and goes; darkness remains — it is eternal. Light happens sometimes; darkness is always there. If you move into sadness all these things will be felt. Suddenly you will become aware that sadness is there like an object, you are watching and witnessing, and suddenly you start feeling happy. Such a beautiful sadness — a flower of darkness, a flower of eternal depth. Like an abyss without any bottom, so silent, so musical; there is no noise at all, no disturbance. One can go on falling and falling into it endlessly, and one can come out of it absolutely rejuvenated. It is a rest. It depends on the attitude. When you become sad, you think that something bad has happened to you. It is an interpretation, and then you start trying to escape from it. You want to go to somebody: to a party, to the club, or switch on the TV or the radio — something so that you can forget. This is a wrong attitude that sadness is wrong. Nothing is wrong with it. It is another polarity in life. Happiness is one pole, sadness is another. A life only of blissfulness will have extension, but will not have depth. A life of only sadness will have depth, but will not have extension.

A life of both sadness and blissfulness is multidimensional; it moves in all dimensions together. Watch Buddha’s statue — blissful, but still sad. The very word ‘sad’ gives you wrong connotations — that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good. And when you understand life in its totality, only then can you celebrate; otherwise not. Celebration means: whatsoever happens is irrelevant — I will celebrate. Celebration is unconditional; I celebrate life. It brings unhappiness — good, I celebrate it. It brings happiness — good, I celebrate it. Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what life brings.

The Alchemy of Yoga, Talk #10, courtesy: Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com

Anandmurti Gurumaa - Who or What is God

It is not about finding the “Answers” to your “Question”, it is about reaching to the state where one has no more “Question”.

This is an interesting question because more than half of the humanity is a believer in God, and every religion has its own definition which is quite different from the definition given by the other religion. This earth is having more than 350 religions, so we can say there are more than 350 kinds of God. And in this whole jamboree of so many plural Gods, one is seemingly so different from the one. It really confuses the mind. Then sometimes one tends to say that there isn’t any God and it’s just the fabrication of the human mind. Some sociologists come out with their own definitions that God is an idea which has been concocted by the priests and by the politicians for selfish interests. For some ulterior motive, God has been created, because God is never going to come up and say ‘I am God’. I’m saying this because God in most of the religions is seen as a person, as a gracious, superman, who sits on his golden thrown. And on whim creates the world and on whim destroys the world. Most of the religions tend to accept this notion of God. So they have their own one kind of idol or an image of God and then they have their own set of rituals, which they believe in with die-hard conviction.

The most important thing which is to be understood is that mind which is already over loaded with information about Gods. It seems so unreal to experience or to know really what God is. And truly speaking, most of the beautiful things in our life and in this world are beyond the category of defining in words like the scent of the best perfume - someone may ask you to describe. You may fill up volumes but in the end you would say please take a whiff from the bottle and that’s the only way to know the smell, the fragrance. 

These are very small things and yet the things which we have been experiencing since day one in this physical body, we find it difficult to describe because all words have limitations. So have the mind and the things which are beyond the mind that words cannot express.

The moment we say, who is God, & so many answers are given, readymade answers, by the scriptures, by the books, by the rabbis, by the priests. And yet the human mind is still hankering for what it really means. I would say this is something which cannot be explained by any enlightened master (living or not living). It is something which one has to delve within and know it what it is. For example, pain is something which you know. What if someone asks you to measure pain, in inches or centimeters? You can’t measure it in inches. We say I have a deep pain, but if someone asks how deep? 100 feet, 500 feet? You say you know what pain is when you experience it.

Similarly, one thing which I can definitely say is that God is not a person; God is not a supreme human being or like a human being sitting somewhere up there on his golden thrown. God is beyond the limitations of the body, of the mind. 

God is a reality; and reality is something which can be much closer to the phenomenon or the relativity of how we perceive things. What we are seeing in this world is so different from what it really is. Similarly, when I say God is reality, this reality is the essence. And the essence is of the truth and truth over here is not that truth which we use in our day-to-day life. When I say truth, it means existence.

So, if I have to put this in words, then I say God is the existential truth which can be known only by experience. And this experience will only happen to those who have a scientific aptitude and work like an explorer, who explores the depth and the breadth of the mind and explores these layers of mind. One ends up with that oceanic feeling of consciousness. 

Initially, it is sleeping and slowly it begins to rise and in those moments of gaps which come in between of the waves of the mind, these waves of the consciousness, something peeps up and that gives the first glimpse of what truth is or what God is but that definitely is not a form. It is not imaginative. It is as much real as you or I. We can deny the existence of everything but we can never deny the existence of our own self. So we need to know what this self is. We need to understand not just by mind, not just by words, not just by scriptures but with experience. And this experience comes from meditation.

Why are we in this world & with what purpose?

We are here because we are here! There can’t be any cause and there can’t be any purpose. Because all purposes are very calculative, selfish modes of the mind and when this selfishness creeps in, it is not higher thinking. Just look at the world around you, so beautiful, beauty in abundance; it is so luminous, so colorful, & full of rainbows. It is just like a dance of a dancer, not of that dancer who is a professional because a professional dancer wants fee. It is more like a dance of a child who is just jumping around and if you ask a child what’s the purpose of your jumping? What’s the purpose of your dancing? He’ll just give a very awkward look and would like to ask you, can’t you see that I’m dancing because I’m enjoying dancing.

So, this life is here and this world is here because it is the dance of the divine, without any purpose, without any ulterior motive. The scriptures provide us with many fascinating answers that God was alone and was lonely and he said okay let me do something. He got so bored of his loneliness, he created this world. So he created first Adam, and then out of Adam came Eve and so on.

Most of the religions say so and they always say there is a purpose of our coming here. For example, they’ll say the purpose is to know who our creator is. I find this strange. Imagine, first the creator creates us, & then he separates us from himself and now wants us to go back to him. I say, why start this in the first place? Rather I would say that there isn’t any purpose.

We can say life is because life should be like this. In these very moments of beauty, of grandeur, of purity we are able to experience all this, then we will never ask this question, why? We never ask any one why you are happy. If someone is happy, you just join him. But if someone is sad, then you ask him, why are you unhappy? I believe those who have experienced beauty and truth never ask the purpose of life. They are already enjoying it, celebrating life.

Those who are sad have loads of unfulfilled desires always ask why I am here. Have you ever met anyone who is happy & who would say why I am happy? People always say why they are sad but never why they are happy. This life, this world is a celebration, a celebration of happiness. It is a sheer irony that out of all the animals, only human beings are the most sorrowful. See the birds, they are always chirping and dancing and fluffing around. See the peacocks, the cows, see the whole animal world. 

They are all happy, they have there innocence and somewhere their ignorance is working in their favor. They are calmer, quieter and peaceful; a human being is not. Human beings are not happy because they ask too many questions. A day when all these questions simply drop and we drop all the facades, we drop all of these blindfolds, and then we’ll open up for the first time & see this world. Then we never ask this question.

Here I would quote Rabindranath Tagore who said: “Why shouldn’t I be here?”

Osho - Free Your Children Of Inhibitions

OSHO tells us how best to introduce children to the world of sex, so that they can rise above it & transform

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 & girls, to play in the nude, so that they become totally acquainted with each other’s bodies. Then, later, there will be no necessity for them to snuggle up to each other in the streets. There will be no need to print nude pictures in books. 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 & 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. But the disease is already there, and it is increasing. The existence of the disease can be observed in the bulk of obscene literature now being published.

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. If man understands sex properly, he can rise above it. He should rise above it; it is necessary that he rises 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, and 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 attain to 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, man is not able to detect that intercourse gives him a fleeting experience of samadhi, a peek into super consciousness. 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.

One friend wrote to say that he found my topic very embarrassing. Further, he advised me that such things should not be discussed in public.
 I replied, if a mother is sensible, she will relate her experiences of sex to her daughter in time, before she goes astray.... If a father is sensitive, 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.Osho - Free Your Children Of Inhibitions

Anandmurti Gurumaa - Unite Your Inner Energies

Complete celibacy happens when the inner Shiva & Shakti unite, writes ANANDMURTI GURUMAA.

Krishna says that one who is not dependent on anyone, whose mind is free from all cravings and aversions, when such a person interacts through his sense organs, and then despite enjoying the sensory objects, he attains inner bliss. This is completely different to the one who has forcibly suppressed his sense organs and whose mind is full of attachment, his intellect will be deluded and will remain so. Krishna says that the grace of Self-realization purifies the intellect and destroys all suffering and leads to inner bliss. This bliss is not dependent on the external world. See, if any man wants to get sexual pleasure from a woman, he will have to please her. But the one whose kundalini has been awakened and who has obtained inner bliss, why would he need anyone? The Chinese mention yin and yang energies which refer to the female and male energy present in the body. By performing practices to awaken the chakras and kundalini, union occurs between yin and yang and it is this union that leads to orgasmic experiences. Then there is no need for any other male or female body, the inner male and female energies unite. The female energy is Prakriti (nature) and the male energy is Shivatattva.

The union between Shiva and Shakti within our body leads to the arising of greatest possible bliss. The female energy is in the Mooladhara Chakra and the male energy is in the Sahasrara. Shiva will not come down to Shakti in the mooladhara chakra, rather the female energy has to rise up to the sahasrara. The one whose kundalini has been awakened and Shiva and Shakti have united, he becomes the supreme bliss. Now for such a yogi, will there be any attraction left for the lump of clay, which is the body? And it is from here that complete celibacy blossoms. Celibacy is not forcible repression of sense organs nor is it running away from the world to live in seclusion. Complete celibacy happens when the inner Shiva and Shakti unite.… A disciple told his master that he was getting sexual thoughts on seeing a woman who resided in the same ashram. He asked his master as to what should he do. The master replied that he should go to the woman and honestly tell her that he was getting those thoughts on seeing her. She should also know. The disciple protested, “Master! How is this possible? ”The master replied, “Just as you came and told me, go and tell her in the same way.” If you go and confess this to the other person, then will the stream of sexual thoughts still arise in your mind? See, it is nothing; all you need to do is be aware. For example, if someone is getting hiccups, you divert his attention suddenly, hiccups will stop.

Tulsidas’s wife had used the same ploy. Tulsidas had been so overcome by lust that in the middle of the night and heavy rain, he sat on a floating dead body, crossed the river and used a snake as a rope to climb up to his wife’s room. And his wife’s statement shamed him when she said, “If you had loved Lord Ram this much, you would have been liberated by now.” On listening to his wife’s words, Tulsidas’s sexual desire evaporated forever. Let me reiterate, there is nothing wrong or bad in this world. The sexual urge arising in your body and mind has also been given to you by nature, you have not created it. This too is an energy which should be utilized with proper understanding. One can become a great yogi, if one knows how to utilize this energy.