nothing has changed since our parents read this book to us, we read this book to our kids and they will be reading it to theirs... just some of us tend to forget the wisdom in this cute but very deep tale... or may be it was not a tale... ON RELATIONSHIP - LE PETIT PRINCE NEW by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It was then that the fox appeared. "Good morning," said the fox. "Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing. "I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree." "Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at." "I am a fox," said the fox. "Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy." "I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed." "Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince. But, after some thought, he added: "What does that mean-- 'tame'?" "You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?" "I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean-- 'tame'?" "Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?" "No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean-- 'tame'?" "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?" "Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..." "I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..." "It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things." "Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince. The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious. "On another planet?" "Yes." "Are there hunters on this planet?" "No." "Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?" "No." "Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox. But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life . I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not ea t bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..." The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please-- tame me!" he said. "I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand." "One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more . If you want a friend, tame me..." "What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince. "You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me-- like that-- in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But yo u will sit a little closer to me, every day..." The next day the little prince came back.
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..." "What is a rite?" asked the little prince. "Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all." So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-- "Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry." "It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..." "Yes, that is so," said the fox. "But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince. "Yes, that is so," said the fox. "Then it has done you no good at all!" "It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret." The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you-- the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose. And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said. "Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." "What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember. "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember. "Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..." "I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
RELATIONSHIP AND WHO WE ARE NEW The reality is not the relationship but the state YOU are in. We can not give something we are not. You can not give love if you are not Love. Not "in love", but just - "Love". You can not give love unless you understand that you have nothing else to give because you are love.It is a state of feeling, there is no particular person involved, nor there is a subject or address attached to love. It is simply there, inside of you. You do not have to give it, it throws you inside yourself. There is no effort of giving required. It is like breathing When you breath you are simply Love.
It is the deepest core of your beingness. You do not need anyone – you love being alone. By giving something you sharing and feeling lack of it – this is the common problem as you start expecting something in return. You can not give something that you can not own. You can not own Love. The moment you want to own it - it is not there anymore. Being it – there is nothing to give and nothing to take – it is simply there. It is an essence that is so delicate and fine that any transaction simply turns it either into physical and destroys the grace, the silence and the beauty of it…
When it grows in you it is unbearable and painful. If one person comes as a trigger of these feelings inside of you - be grateful to him/her as they helped you to unburden yourself and to see who you really are. They do not have to love you in return. Love is like a door – it is suffering behind you and on the other side it is a bliss.
We, poets, painters, dancers, musicians, writers, actors, we love without any focus on individuals. We simply have a sensitivity that we can feel beyond the body because we live on this different (not higher but different) plane.We do not think, we feel and we give. We live in the heart and by the heart that is why we feel each others hearts. We do not think – we just feel and we see each other and recognise this gift inside each other.
It is rare but this is love. Love that does not have subject or attachment. We fall in love daily with everything like flowers do, like wind does when it blows on everything without judgement; it comes from nowhere and it goes to nowhere. The wind can not be caught and caged, as you can not capture us. We are... Love.
Just my morning random thoughts…
this is what happened... on relationship... i am running out of ideas what to write about: so far we covered almost everything from love and creativity to jealousy and gifts giving etiquette... i am asking Alex to assist me with ideas / topics etc ... here is what i get for an answer: "write about how to get rid of annoying wife..." well, darling you are going to get it! ON HATE AND ANGER by Osho When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in questions, but remain centered.
If hate arises for someone or against someone, or love arises for someone, what do we do? We project it on the person. If you feel hate toward me, you forget yourself completely in your hate; only I become your object. If you feel love toward me, you forget yourself completely; only I become the object. You project your love or hate or whatsoever upon me. You forget completely the inner center of your being; the other becomes the center.
This sutra says when hate arises or love arises, or any mood for or against anyone, do not project it on the person in question. Remember, you are the source of it.
I love you — the ordinary feeling is that you are the source of my love. That is not really so. I am the source, you are just a screen on which I project my love.
You are just a screen; I project my love on you and I say that you are the source of my love. This is not fact, this is fiction. I draw my love energy and project it onto you. In that love energy projected onto you, you become loveable. You may ot be loveable to someone else, you may be absolutely repulsive to someone else. Why?
If you are the source of love then everyone will feel loving toward you, but you are not the source.
I project love, then you become loveable; someone projects hate, then you become repulsive. And someone else doesn’t project anything, he is indifferent; he may not even have looked at you.
What is happening? We are projecting our own moods upon others. That is why, if you are on your honeymoon, the moon looks beautiful, miraculous, wonderful. it seems that the whole world is different. And on the same night, just for your neighbor, this miraculous night may not be in existence at all. His child has died — then the same moon is just sad, intolerable. But for you it is enchanting, fascinating; it creates passion. Why? Is the moon the source or is the moon just a screen and you are projecting yourself?
This sutra says, when a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question — or on the object in question. Remain centered.
Remember that you are the source, so do not move to the other, move to the source. When you feel hate, do not go to the object. Go to the point from where the hate is coming. Go not to the person to whom it is going, but to the center from where it is coming.
Move to the center, go within. Use your hate or love or anger or anything as a journey toward your inner center, to the source. Move to the source and remain centered there. Try it! This is a very, very scientific, psychological technique.
Someone has insulted you — anger suddenly erupts, you are feverish. Anger is flowing toward the person who has insulted you. Now you will project this whole anger onto him. He has not done anything. If he has insulted you, what has he done? He has just pricked you, he has helped your anger to arise — but the anger is yours. If he goes to Buddha and insults him, he will not be able to create any anger in him. Or if he goes to Jesus, Jesus will give him the other cheek. Or if he goes to Bodhidharma, he will roar with laughter. So it depends.
The other is not the source, the source is always within you. The other is hitting the source, but if there is no anger within you it cannot come out. If you hit a buddha, only compassion will come out because only compassion is there. Anger will not come out because anger is not there.
If you throw a bucket into a dry well, nothing comes out. In a water-filled well, you throw a bucket and water comes out, but the water is from the well. The bucket only helps to bring it out. So one who is insulting you is just throwing a bucket in you, and then the bucket will come out filled with the anger, hate, or fire that was within you.
You are the source, remember.
For this technique, remember that you are the source of everything that you go on projecting onto others. And whenever there is a mood against or for, immediately move within and go to the source from where this hate is coming.
Remain centered there; do not move to the object. Someone has given you a chance to be aware of your own anger — thank him immediately and forget him. Close your eyes, move within, and now look at the source from where this love or anger is coming. From where?
Go within, move within. You will find the source there because the anger is coming from your source. Hate or love or anything is coming from your source. And it is easy to go to the source at the moment you are angry or in love or in hate, because then you are hot. It is easy to move in then. The wire is hot and you can take it in, you can move inward with that hotness. And when you reach a cool point within, you will suddenly realize a different dimension, a different world opening before you.
Use anger, use hate, use love to go within. We use it always to move to the other, and we feel very much frustrated if no one is there to project upon. Then we go on projecting even on inanimate objects. I have seen persons being angry at their shoes, throwing them in anger. What are they doing? I have seen angry persons pushing a door in anger, throwing their anger on the door, abusing the door, using dirty language against the door. What are they doing?
I will end with one Zen insight about this. One of the greatest of Zen masters, Lin Chi, used to say, “While I was young I was very fascinated by boating. I had one small boat, and I would go on the lake alone. For hours together I would remain there.” Once it happened that with closed eyes I was in my boat meditating on the beautiful night. One empty boat came floating downstream and struck my boat. My eyes were closed, so I thought, ‘Someone is here with his boat, and he has struck my boat.’ Anger arose. I opened my eyes and I was just going to say something to that man in anger, then I realized that the boat was empty. Then there was no way to move. To whom could I express the anger? The boat was empty. It was just floating downstream, and it had come and struck my boat. So there was nothing to do. There was no possibility to project the anger on an empty boat.”
So Lin Chi said, “I closed my eyes. The anger was there, but finding no way out, I closed my eyes and just floated backward with the anger. And that empty boat became my realization. I came to a point within myself in that silent night. That empty boat was my master. And now if someone comes and insults me, I laugh and I say, ‘This boat is also empty.’ I close my eyes and I go within.”
Use this technique. It may work miracles for you.
For an ignorant person love is always part of hate, it always goes with hate. For the ignorant mind hate and love are just two aspects of the same coin. For the ignorant mind love is never pure.
And that is the misery of love – because the hate becomes a poison. You love a person and you hate the same person also. But you may not be doing both simultaneously so you are not aware of it. When you love a person you forget about the hatred part, it goes below, it goes into the unconscious and it waits there. Then when your love is tired, it falls into the unconscious and the hate part comes up. Then you hate the same person.
And when you hate you are not aware that you also love – now the love has gone deep down into the unconscious. This goes on, just like night and day. It goes on moving in a circle. It becomes a misery.
But for a buddha, for one who is enlightened, the dichotomy, the dualism, disappears. Everywhere – not only as far as love is concerned – the whole life becomes a oneness. Then there is no dichotomy, the opposite doesn’t exist.
So really, to call Buddha’s love “love” is not good, but we have no other term. Buddha himself never used the word love. He used the word compassion. But that too is not very good. Because your compassion is always mixed with your cruelty, your non-violence is always mixed with your violence – whatsoever you do will have its opposite just nearby. You exist between contradictions; hence the tension, the anguish, the anxiety. You are not one; you are always two. You are a crowd, divided into many fragments, and those fragments are opposing each other. Your being is a tension; Buddha’s being is a deep relaxation. Remember, tension exists between two opposite poles, and relaxation is just in the middle, where two opposing poles are no longer opposing. They negate each other – and there is a transcendence. So Buddha’s love is basically different from what you know as love.
Your love is a dis-ease; Buddha’s love is total relaxation. There is no head part to it, so the quality of it changes completely. Many things will be in Buddha’s love which cannot be in ordinary love. First, it cannot be hot. The hotness comes from hate. It is not passion, rather it is compassion. It is not hot, it is cool. To us, a cool love means something which has gone wrong. Buddha’s love is cool, there is no heat to it. It is not like the sun, it is like the moon. It will not create passion in you, it will create a deep coolness.
Once it has touched the extreme the pendulum starts moving to the opposite polarity, it goes to the left. And it goes to the left to the same extent as it went to the right. While moving to the left, again you can be deceived. You will see it is moving to the left, but already deep within it is gathering energy to move to the right.
While you love you are gathering energy to hate; while you hate you are gathering energy to love. While you are alive you are gathering energy to die, and when you are dead you will gather energy to be reborn.
If you see only life then you will miss. See death hidden everywhere in life! And if you can see that death is hiding in life, then you can see the reverse also: that in death life is hidden. Then both the polarities disappear. When you see them in their togetherness, simultaneously, with that your mind also disappears. Why? – because mind can only be partial, it can never be whole.
What will you do if you see hate hidden in love? If you see love hidden in hate, what will you choose then? Choice will become impossible, because if you see, “I choose love,” you also see that you are choosing hate. And how can a lover choose hate?
You can choose because the hate is not apparent to you. You had chosen love, and then you think by some accident hate has happened. But the moment you choose love, you have chosen hate. The moment you cling to life, you are clinging to death. Nobody wants to die – then don’t cling to life, because life is leading towards death.
Life exists in polarities and mind exists in one part of the polarity; that’s why mind is false. And mind tries to make that one part the whole. Mind says, “l love this man or this woman and I simply love. How can I hate this woman? When I love, I love; hate is impossible.”
Mind appears logical but it is wrong. If you love, hate is possible; hate is possible only if you love. You cannot hate a person without loving him; you cannot make an enemy without making him first your friend. They go together, they are just like two aspects of a coin. You look at one aspect, the other is hidden behind – but the other is there, always waiting. And the more you move to the left, the more you are getting ready to move to the right.
What will happen if the mind can see both together? – mind is not possible, because then the whole thing becomes so absurd, illogical. Mind can live only in a logical frame, clear-cut, the opposite denied. You say, “This is my friend and that is my enemy.” You can never say, “This is my friend and my enemy.” If you say it things become illogical. And if you allow illogical things to enter they shatter mind completely – mind drops.
When you look at the absurdity of life, of the way life moves through contradictions, the way life lives through opposites, you have to drop the mind. The mind needs clear-cut demarcations and life has none. You cannot find anything more absurd than life, than existence. Absurd is the word for it, if you look at both the polarities together.
Love and hate are just two sides of the same coin. But with love something very drastic has happened. It is unimaginable how this drastic step was taken by people who had all the good intentions in the world. You may never have even suspected what has destroyed love. It is the continuous teaching of love that has destroyed it. Hate is still pure – love is not.
When you hate, your hate has an authenticity.
And when you love it is only hypocrisy.
This has to be understood. For thousands of years all the religions, politicians, pedagogues, have been teaching one thing, and that one thing is love: Love your enemy, love your neighbor, love your parents, love God.
Why in the beginning did they start this strange series of teachings about love? They were afraid of your authentic love, because authentic love is beyond their control. You are possessed by it. You are not the possessor, you are the possessed. And every society wants you to be in control.
The society is afraid of your wild nature, it is afraid of your naturalness, so from the very beginning it starts cutting your wings. And the most basic thing which is dangerous in you is the possibility of love, because if you are possessed by love you can go even against the whole world.
A small man possessed by love feels himself capable of doing the impossible. In all old love stories this fact has emerged in a very subtle way; and nobody has even bothered about it or even commented on why this factor comes automatically into old love stories.
For example, in the East we have the most famous love stories of Majnu and Laila. That is a Sufi story. It doesn’t matter whether it is historical or not, that is not our concern. Our concern is its structure, which is almost the same structure as all the love stories around the world. The second famous Eastern love story is about Siri and Farhad – but the structure is the same. The third famous story is about Soni and Mahival, but the structure remains the same.
The structure is that the lover is asked to do something impossible; if he can do that impossible thing then he can get the beloved. Of course the parents and the society are not ready to accept this love affair. No society is ready to accept any love affair, but to say no seems to be unmannerly.
When somebody comes with a proposal of love you can’t just say no. Even if you want to say no, and you will say no, a way has to be found – and this is the way. Ask the lover to perform something impossible, something which you know he cannot perform, which is an inhuman task. And if he cannot perform it then you are not responsible; he himself has fai
Every growth, growth as such, is dialectical. It needs thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; synthesis again in its turn becomes thesis, and creates antithesis and synthesis -- which again, in its turn, becomes thesis.
That's the way the whole existence works. That's why you find duality everywhere. The duality is thesis and antithesis. One can remain caught between the two, divided, split; there will be no growth. One can make a bridge between the two, and create a new phenomenon: that is synthesis. One can remain at the synthesis; then growth stops there, unless this synthesis again functions as a thesis to produce antithesis, and so on.
For example, you have love and hate. Love is the thesis, hate is the antithesis; and most people die caught in the struggle, conflict, between the two. They are never able to see that there is a subtle connection between love and hate; that they are not two energies but one energy having two polarities. They are just like the negative and positive in electricity -- but it is electricity all the same.
Hate is also a kind of love standing upside down. It happens that you can forget your friend, but you cannot forget your enemy. The enemy haunts you more than the friend. You think more of destroying the enemy than helping the friend. The reason is that love is a thesis -- simple. Hate is an antithesis -- it has become more complicated. It has become negation, and negativity has an attraction -- for many reasons.
One is afraid of negativity because you cannot hate someone without creating a wound within yourself. Nobody pretends hate. It is always authentic, because why should one pretend hate? -- It hurts.
People pretend love; they may not be really in love, but the very idea that they are in love is soothing. So love can remain superficial; but hate always goes deep -- it cannot remain superficial. That's why one becomes more concerned about the enemy than about friends.
The man who is working for enlightenment has to find a bridge between the dualities, because without finding the bridge he cannot transcend them, he cannot go above them. And the bridge is there -- it has only to be discovered. One has to see how love becomes hate, how hate becomes love -- that they are capable of transforming into each other. Naturally, they cannot be different energies; just different situations, states, of the same energy.
As you become aware that love and hate are the same energy, then you are not to be concerned with love and hate, because those are only two poles; you have to be more concerned with the energy of which they are the poles: what is that energy? Watching it, you start a new force within yourself which is synthesis.
You come to a point when you know love and hate are one.
This is a great synthesis -- the dualism is finished. But with the finishing of dualism your life comes to a static point. You have grown above love and hate, and there will be a kind of compassion -- that will be the synthesis. You don't hate, you don't love, but you have a certain compassion for both friends and enemies. But compassion again becomes a simple thing.
That's why the synthesis always turns into a thesis -- another beginning. And compassion must have some duality which you can become aware of only when you have achieved compassion.
What is the antithesis of compassion? It is indifference, upekchha. That's the word Buddha has used. It carries more meaning than "indifference." It is a kind of no interest, neither this way nor that way... as if the person does not exist at all for you. Compassion will bring you to indifference.
And all these stages you can find in the growth of different people at the point where they got stuck. For example, the Jaina monks are stuck with indifference. That becomes renunciation, not being bothered with the world.
The Hindu has also become stuck with that, thinking that the world is only a dream; it doesn't matter, you need not be concerned about it. They have grown a little; but at the point of indifference they will start shrinking, they are stuck again. They have to find something between compassion and indifference -- the bridge.
There is a bridge, there is always a bridge in every duality, unless you come to a point which has no duality.
That point is the point of enlightenment.
It has no antithesis, so you cannot even call it thesis; and it is not a synthesis. It has dropped all three -- the whole triangle. It is something beyond the triangle of evolution. And the beauty is, because it is not part of a triangle, you are not stuck. And from that point growth changes its nature completely: it is no longer dialectical.
Before enlightenment, growth is dialectical: always divided, always finding something which joins it and then again another division and another division. But a point comes -- for example between compassion and indifference, the synthesis is equilibrium. The Buddhist word for it is samata.
You are equally balanced, you are neither indifferent nor compassionate, neither leaning to this side nor to that side. Samata can become a point from where the change, the radical change happens in the process of evolution.
Below samata everything is dialectical. You cannot love without hating; they will both go together. One will be conscious, the other will be unconscious; but they are one thing. That's why you can turn them easily: a small incident, and love becomes hate.
The person you were going to die for, you can kill him! Lovers have killed the same person for whom they would have sacrificed themselves. It is the same energy, but it has turned completely upside down.
Samata, equilibrium, has been immensely praised by Gautam Buddha. It simply means absence of any preference -- neither this nor that. You are simply so much in the middle, so absolutely in the middle, that you are almost out of the duality -- samata -- because you have withdrawn your energy from both sides, you are not throwing your energy on any duality.
The whole energy becomes concentrated. In that concentration of your total energy is the possibility of explosion. The small point exactly in the middle cannot contain that much energy, which was spread all over a line divided into many sections, over the whole spectrum. It is almost like an atomic explosion. But it is the atomic explosion in consciousness.
The atom is not material, but a living entity. A living explosion of your energies becomes almost like a lotus flower. The shape of the explosion seen by the enlightened person is very similar to the shape of the lotus flower. It is because of this that the lotus flower has become symbolic of enlightenment.
From this point things are totally different. There is growth -- growth never stops -- but we cannot call it growth because that may create confusion. Before, it was dualistic; now it is non-dualistic. Before, there was constant conflict; now there is no conflict -- it simply goes on growing.
Hence there is absolute silence and great blissfulness, because for the first time you are free of the torture of being caught in two opposing polarities. There is no tension, everything is relaxed, everything is at ease. Rather than calling it growth, it is a let-go.
Now the flow of your life becomes a relaxed phenomenon.
There is no end to evolution. Enlightenment is the end of dualistic growth, but the beginning of a non-dual evolution... a peaceful, silent movement of energy which goes on becoming bigger and bigger and goes on losing its separateness from universal energy. It always remains individual, even though it is spread all over the universe.
That feeling cannot be expressed by "I" because "I" is just another way of saying "ego." Before enlightenment there was ego; ego can exist only in conflict. This state can be spoken of only as "am"-ness, without any "I." It is a very strange feeling: you are not, and yet you are. You are not your old self; you are no longer a self, but you have not lost the feeling of am-ness.
So the question of what happens to individuals when they dissolve into the universal.... They still remain individuals, but with no assertion of "I" in them...just a silent song of am-ness or isness.
It is as if we put hundreds of candles in this room; all their light will become one. You cannot differentiate in the light -- which part belongs to which candle -- it has become a universal phenomenon. But still, each candle has its own flame, it has a certain individuality. The individuality has not disappeared, but it is very quiet and very silent and very nonassertive. It is almost as if it is nothing, but it is still there.
And that is one of the greatest mysteries: to feel yourself at one with the whole existence and yet know your inner flame... part of the whole, and yet not just a part -- you are also a whole.
The Upanishads have a statement: "From the perfect comes the perfect. Yet the perfect left behind still remains as perfect as before" -- nothing is taken away from it. The perfect dissolves into the perfect, but it is not that two perfections become a bigger perfection; it is the same perfection. The emphasis is that it is not a question of quantity, it is a question only of quality.
For example, one hundred candles burning in this room will not make the light heavier; it will be lighter. The change will be qualitative but it will not be quantitative. Each candle will be spread all over the room, and there is going to be no conflict in one hundred candles spreading all over the same space because these are not material bodies.
Just as light...consciousness is even more a quality. Light perhaps has some quantity in it. I think the scientists say that when there is sunlight over five square miles, the light has a little weight, but very small. I don't know what will be the equivalent of five tolas...Sixty grams.Sixty grams. But on five square miles, if we can collect that light, concentrate that light, it moves the weighing scale to sixty grams. So although it seems just non-quantitative, it has a little quantity in it.
But consciousness has no quantity -- five miles or five thousand miles or five million miles, it makes no difference. Awareness has no weight. So infinite awarenesses can exist in the same space without coming into any conflict. And the universe is infinite, so the growth never stops.
But we should remember that it is not the old growth; it is absolutely a new phenomenon. It is as if the first growth was something similar to sexual reproduction: two energies, male and female, negative and positive, thesis and antitheses, creating the birth of a child -- the synthesis.
But the second part, after enlightenment, is nonsexual. Your consciousness just goes on expanding; it does not give birth to any child.
That's why I have always condemned Jesus' idea of the only begotten son of God. If God is the ultimate consciousness or equivalent to it, there is no possibility of any birth of a child. And if you accept the birth of a child then the Christian trinity is not right; there has to be a woman as an antithesis to the man.
They have avoided the woman just to discredit her, just not to put her on such a high pedestal as to be part of God; otherwise she becomes divine. But they have forgotten that the child is possible only through duality.
If God is alone, or the ultimate consciousness is alone -- which is a far better and more evolved terminology.... Jainism uses, for the ultimate state of consciousness, kaivalya. It means aloneness. The word "God" is very primitive and childish -- but pure aloneness...and it goes on growing. Its bliss, its joy, its ecstasy goes on growing, knows no limit.
But before it can happen you have to pass through a process of dialectics, because where we are, we are under the law of dialectics. To get free from dialectics is one of the major projects of spiritual evolution.
But it is very easily possible if one works through meditation, because that is the only way to find out the golden mean, the middle point which is transcendence. Buddha even called his whole way "the middle way," because it is always to find exactly the middle point.
The moment you have found the middle point between love and hate, you are beyond both: you have entered into a new area, unexplored. But don't stop until you find something which has no duality to it. Go on and on, searching after each duality for the one point which has no polarity to it; because that is the point between the two growths -- prior to enlightenment and after enlightenment.
So in one way enlightenment is an end, a goal.
In another way it is a beginning, a tremendous beginning.
OSHO, What is orgasm in reference to meditation and higher levels of consciousness? Isn't feeling orgasmic in a deep state of meditation totally nonsexual?
The experience of orgasm itself is always nonsexual. Even though you have achieved it through sex, it itself has no sexuality in it.
You can reach to orgasm through sex. It is a merger of the negative and the positive polarities -- such a deep merger that the man is no longer man, the woman is no longer woman. They are not two; there is only one energy surrounding them both. They have melted into that energy.
It may be for a moment -- that does not matter -- but the experience itself has nothing to do with sex.
The first orgasm is bound to be attained through sex. And my own understanding is that meditation has grown out of the experience of orgasm, because the original founders -- particularly Shiva who, in his Vigyan Bhairva Tantra, has written, just like a scientific formula, about one hundred and twelve meditations; each meditation just in one line or two lines.... The man is tremendously aphoristic. Those one hundred and twelve sutras are just like seeds. He has condensed everything about the method in them.
He is also known as a great lover. Perhaps he was the first man to discover meditation. And it can be very scientifically assumed that whoever experienced orgasm, if he had a little intelligence, would have seen that although it has come through sex, it itself is a nonsexual experience.
That gives the insight that there may be possibilities of reaching it through nonsexual means, because it is not sexual itself, so sexuality is not necessarily the only way.
It does not need much intelligence if you experience it and see clearly that it does not have any impact of sexuality. Perhaps sexuality created the background, the groundwork in which it happened. But the experience of orgasm itself does not remind you of sex; it is purely spiritual.
Whoever experienced this must have concluded then that there can be other ways to reach it -- because sex is not necessarily a part of it. There is no color, nor any impression of sex left in it. Then he must have watched how it happens. And then things are very clear: the moment the orgasm happens, time stops, you forget about time. Your mind stops, you do not think anymore. There is tremendous calmness, and a great awareness.
You are not asleep. You have not fallen into any hypnotic sleep. Everything is crystal-clear. The mind is no more functioning the way it functions continuously: the thought process has stopped. The sense of time is not there; it seems timeless. Afterwards you will think it lasted only a few seconds, but that is afterwards; in the experience itself, it seems it is eternity. And you are fully aware, as aware as you have ever been: wide-awake.
Any observer going through the experience will naturally think, "If these things can be managed without sex -- awareness, thoughtlessness, timelessness -- you will reach to the orgasmic state, bypassing sexuality."
And this is my understanding: this is how man must have first discovered meditation; otherwise meditation is not something biological or natural, so that in the course of time you have to discover it. But biology has given you an experience; if you try to understand it, you are bound to search for other methods to make it possible. You know it has happened -- that there was no thought, no time, and only pure awareness -- so it is possible.
You are not groping in the dark, you are not just guessing: you know it is possible. You have known it through the biological route. Then if these three things can be maintained without sex, the orgasm happens.
And the difference is that the sexual orgasm is very momentary. Although while it is there, it looks almost eternal, that feeling is just because of its depth. But through meditation you can have it as long as you want, because meditation is not dependent on anybody else -- the woman or the man or a certain state of two minds, a certain rhythm of two energies. The sexual orgasm depends on many things, and particularly on the other person being there.
Meditation is independent of any other person; only you are to create the situation.
And naturally the conclusion will be to start with awareness, because you don't know how else to stop thoughts. It is not in your hands to stop thoughts or to stop time. Only one thing remains, and that is awareness -- that you can be more aware or less aware.
You know it. If this house is suddenly on fire, you will be more aware. You know that your awareness goes up and down. At certain moments you are more aware; at certain moments, less aware. So it is possible to create the situation of being more aware.
That's why awareness became the basis of meditation. And with awareness came the surprise that as you become aware, thoughts disappear. When you are fully aware, there are no thoughts, and suddenly time has stopped. Time can be there inside only with the movement of thoughts.
In fact time can be measured only with some movement. For example, with a watch, how are you measuring time? By the movement of the hands; otherwise, there is no way.
If everything is unmoving, you will not be able to think that anything like time exists. But you know that a car has passed, then a train is passing -- there has been a gap. In the gap...it means time. Then you hear the sound of an airplane.... This is movement -- you are finding movement around you.
Inside there is only one movement, and that is of thoughts.
When thoughts stop, suddenly time disappears, because time can be measured only through some kind of movement. That's why, if in the night you had many dreams, in the morning you will find that it was a long, long night, because so much movement happened. But if you had no dream at all, you will feel as if you have just fallen asleep, and now you are awake. The night has passed so quickly.
When you are in anxiety, in misery, in pain, time passes slowly because of your pain. You would like the pain to pass quickly, but with your expectation that the pain is not going, time is passing very slowly.
But when you are meeting a friend after years, you find hours have passed, and it seems just minutes since you met. When you are joyful, when you are miserable, it makes a difference in the speed of time immediately. But when you are neither -- just silent -- time has no way to move.
So as one becomes aware, first one finds thoughts becoming less, and finally stopping.
Then he finds time is not there -- and he has found the key to the basic meditation. Then all other meditations are differentiations of the same method, different combinations of the same method. Different combinations, but essentially they are awareness or witnessing.
And it seems there is no other way to find it except through sexual orgasm, because that is the only experience in life given by nature that comes close to meditation. And the misery is that millions of people have no experience of orgasm, and all the religions have been preventing them from having that experience.
This is so ridiculous, because if they don't have any orgasmic experience, meditation remains just a fiction; or maybe some giants can do it. "But we are human beings -- it is not possible for us to be more aware. How can one be more aware? We are aware as much as we can be. How to stop thoughts?"
And the responsibility for keeping humanity away from meditation goes to all the religions because they are against sex. They have prevented people -- not from sex but from orgasm, because they have poisoned people's sex with guilt. They could not prevent sex, but they did not allow people to be playful about it, they did not allow people to be respectful about it, they did not allow people to go deeper into it.
On the contrary, because sex is sin, it makes people feel guilty. The man is in a hurry to finish as quickly as possible, because you should not continue any sin too long. Knowing that you are doing something wrong, you want to do it quickly and be finished with it.
And if the man is in a hurry he cannot attain to orgasm, only to ejaculation; which proves all the religious teachers right -- that you are wasting your energy. Because the man feels he gains nothing, it is a waste, he feels tired. The next day he may have a headache, feels dull, is not so sharp. Perhaps the religious people are right -- he is already punished.
So it is a very strange thing. They have created the idea of guilt, and the idea of guilt on its own has given proofs that you really are doing something wrong.
The woman has remained unmoving while making love, because she has been told that to enjoy herself while making love -- or to move, or to be playful -- is only for prostitutes, not for ladies. Ladies simply lie down almost dead, thinking, "Let him do what he wants to do and let him be finished soon" -- because they don't gain anything out of it.
The man at least finds a certain release of the energy with which he was becoming burdened, but the woman does not get even that release. So naturally women are more against sex than men. And every woman thinks in her mind that all men are nothing but animals: their only desire is sex.
This is the by-product of all the religious teachings. In this way... they have not been able to prevent sex; otherwise humanity would have disappeared. And orgasm is not necessary for reproduction, so biology has no problem: it can continue its work without orgasm.
Orgasm was not something necessary for reproduction.
It was something to open a window for the higher evolution of consciousness.
But the idiots who have been religious leaders and priests prevented that window. They have been teaching continuously: "Meditate!" And when people fail, when they cannot attain to meditation, then the priests say, "You are sinners -- how can you attain? First be celibate, fast, do penance."
And all these things will prevent people from having orgasm -- which is the only natural way to have a first glimpse of meditation.
So you can understand my difficulty. If I say to people, "You have been prevented by your religious people from becoming religious," they cannot understand what I am saying. But what I am saying is absolutely scientific.
There must be something in man's nature that opens a window towards higher evolution; otherwise how can you convince the man that there are things like higher experiences? And how did the first man come to know? Why did he meditate in the first place, and how did he find the way to meditate?
Somebody, somewhere in the past, must have found some similarity with his nature, and must have seen that, although he passes through sex, he reaches to a point where sex has nothing to do with it: sex simply opens a door into a new reality. And that door can be opened without sex far more easily, without dependence.
It is one of the great misfortunes that has befallen humanity, that sex became taboo, prohibited, rejected, condemned. They did not succeed in preventing it, but they certainly succeeded in poisoning man's spiritual growth.
So it is not only the orgasm that you experience in meditation which is nonsexual, even the orgasm that you experience through sex is nonsexual.
Orgasm itself is a nonsexual experience.
The natural way, the easier way, the primary way is through sex -- and it is perfectly good; it is in accordance with nature's intentions. And then you know that such an experience is possible for you. Then you can play with the experience, and you can find many ways to reach it.
All those ways have become meditations. And that does not prohibit you from using the sexual way, because it is sex that has given you the first experience of orgasm, has given you the first insight into meditation, has taken you far away from biology and nature.
So one should be grateful to one's sexuality.
There should be no question of guilt.
If religions had taught people to be grateful to sex, we would have produced a totally different kind of man -- not this miserable and suffering creature that you see all around the world.
We could have produced really joyful, blissful people; people who would have forgotten how to be miserable, how to suffer, who would have forgotten completely the anguish in which they are living now.
LEARN TO DANCE by Alex and Natasha
as one of my very wise friends said once:
relationship are like dancing.
with some people you ballet-ing, boogie-ing, hopping, tapping, jazzing, waltzing, rumba-ing, balling, disco-ing, salsa-ing or tango-ing, with some it's a constant and rough break that requires sharp position changes and razor blade balancing, with some you rock-n-roll pleasantly... you always learn to step properly, rearrange your body language, to turn the right way, to pay attention to the partner you dance with... with some people though you just stand and watch the others dancing around you waiting for him/her to make the first move and invite you while the music is still on... the dance might never happen but you never loose your patience... with some it is very easy as you hear the music in unison, you are alined and you are prepared to make some nice moves together... no matter who you dance with: women or men... every new dance you learn requires full attention and wise turns: you need to feel your partner as one wrong move and one unthinkable body reposition can leave you with a bruise, with a pain in your feet... or even worse: broken legs... one dancing partner requires to be leading in your dance, the other - to be led and my god help you if you do not understand this - you might never hear the music together again if you neglect the latter. and it is always about two of you in this knot. the music can end but the feeling remains... let's learn to be professional dancers...