Man’s Way, Woman’s Way

Osho never ceases to amaze you.

This morning I was going through The Book of Secrets, his discourses on the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. The discourses are very deep, thorough and detailed - the book itself is about ten pages long in translation and Osho’s discourses on it are about 1.200 pages long! And what amazing discourses! As amazing as the book itself!

I am posting it here something beautiful that I read in the book. While responding to a question about the need to hurry towards one’s spiritual goals and the need to play along unhurriedly, Osho talks about the feminine way and the masculine way and the difference between the two.

If you liked what is posted here, go to the original book.

Question

YESTERDAY YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD HURRY TOWARDS THE GOAL BECAUSE WHATEVER TIME WE HAVE IS VERY LITTLE. HOWEVER, SOME TIME AGO YOU ALSO SAID THAT THE WHOLE PROCESS OF ATTAINING THE GOAL SHOULD BE AN EFFORTLESS PLAY. HOW WOULD YOU RECONCILE THE TWO WORDS ‘HURRY’ AND ‘PLAY’? -- BECAUSE THE ONE WHO HURRIES NEVER GETS THE JOY OF PLAYING.

The first thing: don’t try to reconcile different techniques. When I say don’t be in a hurry, forget time completely, don’t be serious, don’t make any effort, surrender, be in a let-go, this is a different technique. This is suitable only for a part of humanity—all cannot do this technique—and the type of person who can do this cannot do the opposite one. This technique is for the feminine mind. All females are not necessarily feminine, and all males are not necessarily male, so when I say a feminine mind, I don’t mean females. A feminine mind means a mind who can surrender, who can be receptive like a womb, who can be open, passive. Half of the humanity can be of this type, but the other half is totally opposite. As man and woman are the two halves of humanity, in just the same way the feminine mind and the masculine mind are the two halves of the human mind. The feminine mind cannot make effort. If it makes effort it will never reach anywhere. The effort will be the undoing for it; it will only create anguish and tension and no achievement.

The very working of the feminine mind is to wait and allow things to happen. Just like a woman: even if she is in love, she will not take the initiative. And if a woman takes the initiative, you have every reason to be afraid and escape, because that attitude is the male attitude—in the feminine body there is a masculine mind, and you will be in difficulty. If you are really male, immediately the woman will lose attraction. If you are feminine—male in the body but feminine in the mind—only then can you allow the woman to take initiative and you will be happy. But then physically she is a woman and you are a man; mentally you are feminine and she is masculine, she is male. A woman will wait. She will never utter the words ‘I love you’ before you have uttered them and you have committed yourself. In the very waiting is the feminine power. The male mind is aggressive. It has to do something. It has to move and go and take initiative. The same happens on the spiritual path. If you have an aggressive mind, a male mind, effort is necessary. Then make hurry; then don’t lose time and opportunity. Then create an urgency and crisis so that you can put all your being into your effort. When your effort has become total you will achieve. If your mind is feminine, then there is no hurry at all. There is no time.

You may or may not have observed that women have no sense of time—they cannot have.

So the husband is standing outside the house and he is honking the horn and saying, ‘Come down!’ And the wife says, ‘I have told you a thousand times that I am coming in one minute. Continuously for two hours I have been telling you that I am coming in one minute. So don’t get mad. Why are you honking the horn?’ The feminine mind cannot have a sense of time. It is the male, aggressive mind who is time-worried, time-conscious. They are totally different. The feminine is not in any hurry—there is no hurry. Really, there is nowhere to reach. That’s why women cannot become great leaders, great scientists, great warriors—they cannot become. And if sometimes there are freak women, they have a male mind. For example, Joan of Arc, or Laxmi Bai: they are only feminine in body; the mind is not feminine at all. It is masculine.

For the feminine mind there is no goal, and our world is man-oriented. So women cannot be really great in a man-oriented world, because greatness is related to the goal. Some goal has to be achieved; then you become great—and the feminine mind is not after any goal. Here and now she is happy. Here and now she is unhappy. There is nowhere to move.

The feminine mind exists in the moment. That’s why the feminine curiosity is never for the far-away; it is always about the neighborhood. She is not interested in what is happening in Vietnam.

She is interested in what is happening in the other house—the intimate, the here. The man looks absurd: ‘Why are you worried about what Nixon is doing or what Mao is doing?’ The woman is interested in the love affairs that are going on in the neighborhood. She is curious about the near; the far is meaningless. Time doesn’t exist. Time exists for those who have a goal to reach. Remember, time can exist only when you have to reach somewhere. If you don’t have to reach anywhere, what is the meaning of time? Then there is no hurry.

Look at this situation from a different angle. The east is feminine and the west is masculine. The east has never been concerned much about time; the west is mad after time. The east has been very leisurely: moving slowly as if not moving at all; no change, no revolution. Such a silent evolution that it creates no noise anywhere. The west is just mad: every day revolution is needed, and everything has to become a revolution. Unless everything is changing, it seems we are not going anywhere; we have become static. If everything is changing and everything remains in an upheaval, then the west feels that something is happening. And the east thinks that if there are upheavals, it means we are diseased. Something is wrong; that’s why there is change. If everything is okay, there is no need for any revolution, for any change.

The eastern mind is feminine.

That’s why in the east, we have praised all the feminine qualities: compassion, love, sympathy, non-violence, acceptance, contentment—all feminine qualities. In the west, all the masculine qualities are praised: will, willpower, ego, self-esteem, independence, rebellion—these are the values praised there. In the east—obedience, surrender, acceptance. The basic attitude is feminine in the east and masculine in the west. These techniques are not to be compromised, are not to be in any way synthesized. The technique of surrender is for the feminine mind. The technique of effort, will, endeavor, is for the masculine mind. And they are bound to be polar opposites, so if you make any synthesis between the two you will create a hodge-podge—meaningless, absurd, and even dangerous. It will not be of use for anyone.

So remember this. These techniques many times will look contradictory, because they are meant to be for different types of mind, and there is no effort to make any synthesis. So if you feel something is contradictory, don’t get uneasy about it—it is. And only very small minds become afraid of contradiction—very small minds, petty minds. They become uneasy, they feel a discomfort. They think everything must be non-contradictory, everything must be consistent. This is nonsense, because life is inconsistent. Life is contradictory itself, so truth cannot be uncontradictory; only lies can be uncontradictory, only lies can be consistent.

Truth is bound to be inconsistent, because it has to cover everything that is in life. It has to be total. And life is contradictory. There is man and there is woman: what can I do and what can Shiva do? And man is totally the polar opposite to woman; that’s why they are attracted. Otherwise there would be no attraction. Really, the opposite type of being, the difference, creates the attraction. The polar opposite becomes a magnetic force. That’s why when man and woman meet there is happiness, because when two polar opposites meet they negate each other. They negate each other because they are opposites. They negate each other, and for a single moment when man and woman really meet—not just bodily, but totally; when their beings meet in love—for a single moment both disappear. Then there is neither man nor woman; pure existence exists—that’s the bliss of it. The same can happen within you also, because deep analysis shows that within you also there is a polarity. Now modern deep psychoanalytic approaches have revealed that the conscious mind and the unconscious mind are polar opposites within you also. If you are a man, your conscious mind is masculine, your unconscious mind is feminine. If you are a woman, your conscious mind is feminine, your unconscious mind is masculine. The unconscious is the opposite of the conscious. In deep meditation there comes a deep orgasm, an intercourse, a love, between your conscious and unconscious—they become one.

When they become one you attain to the highest bliss possible. So man and woman can meet in two ways. You can meet a woman outside you: then this meeting can be only momentary, very momentary. For a single second the peak comes, and then things start falling away. There is another meeting of man and woman that happens within you: your conscious and unconscious mind meet. When this happens, this meeting can be eternal. The sexual pleasure is also a glimpse of the spiritual—only momentary—but when the real meeting happens within, then it becomes samadhi, then it becomes a spiritual phenomenon.

But you have to start from your conscious mind, so if your conscious mind is feminine, surrender will be helpful. And remember, being a woman is not necessarily synonymous with having a feminine mind. That creates the difficulty. Otherwise everything would be very easy: then women would follow the path of surrender and men would follow the path of will. But it is not so easy. There are women who have masculine minds—their very approach towards life is aggressive. And they are growing every day. The women’s lib. movement will create more and more masculine women. They will be more and more aggressive, and the path of surrender will not be for them then. And because women are becoming competitive with man, man is regressing from aggression; he is becoming more and more feminine.

More and more the path of surrender will be useful for man in the future. So you have to decide about yourself. And don’t think in terms of valuation. Don’t think that you are a man, so how can you have a feminine mind? You can have, and nothing is wrong in it; it is beautiful. And don’t think that you are a woman, so how can you have a masculine mind? Nothing is wrong in it; it is beautiful. Be authentic towards your own mind. Try to understand what type of mind you have, then follow the path that is for you, and don’t try to create any synthesis.

Don’t ask me how I am going to reconcile these two. I am not going to. I am never for reconciliation, and I am not for non-contradictory statements. They are stupid and childish. Life is contradictory, and that’s why life is alive. Only death is consistent and non-contradictory. Life lives through opposition, through encountering the opposite pole, and this opposition, challenge, creates energy. It releases energy, and life moves through it. This is what Hegelians say: a dialectical movement—thesis, antithesis, and then the synthesis again becomes a thesis and creates its own antithesis, and this goes on. Life is not monotonous. It is not logical. It is dialectical.

You must understand the difference between logical and dialectical. The question is because you think life is logical, so you ask how you will reconcile, because logic always reconciles; logic cannot tolerate the contradictory.

Logic cannot tolerate the contradictory. Logic has to somehow explain that it is not contradictory, and if it is contradictory then both cannot be true; then one must be wrong. Both can be wrong, but both cannot be true. Logic tries to find non-contradiction everywhere.

Science is logical. That’s why science is not totally true to life, cannot be. Life is contradictory, illogical. It works through the opposite. It is not afraid of the opposite; it uses the opposite. The opposites are only apparently opposite; deep down they work together. It is dialectical, not logical. It is a dialogue between the opposites—a continuous dialogue.

Think for a single moment: if there is no contradiction, life will be dead, because from where will come the challenge? From where will come the attraction? From where will the energy be released? It will be monotonous, dead, Life is possible only because of dialectics, because of the opposite. Man and woman is the basic opposition, and then the challenge creates the phenomenon of love. And the whole life moves around love. If your lover and you become so totally one that there is no gap at all, you both will be dead. You will not be able to exist then. You both will disappear from this dialectical process. You can only exist in this life if oneness is never total, and you have to move away again and again to come near.

That’s why lovers fight. That fight creates dialectics. The whole day they will fight. They will go far away from each other, they will become enemies. This means that they have now come to be really polar opposites; they have moved as far away as possible. The lover starts thinking how to kill this woman, and the woman starts thinking how to get rid of this man. They have moved to the very farthest corner possible. And then again in the evening they are making love.

When they are far away, so far away, again the attraction comes. Again they look from such a faraway point that they feel attracted. Then they have become simply man and woman again, not lovers. Then they are man and woman, strangers. They will fall in love again. They will come near. A point will come when they will become one for a single moment, and that will be their happiness, their joy.

But the moment they have become one, the process to go away starts again. In the very moment when the wife and husband are one, if they can be a witness to it, they will see they have started being separate again. The very moment the peak comes, the process starts to be different, to be separate, to be opposite. This goes on moving—again and again you come near and go away.

This is what I mean—life creates energy through polarities. Without polarities life cannot exist. If two lovers really become one, they disappear from life. They are liberated really. They will have no rebirth again; there will be no life in future. If two lovers can become so totally one, their love has become the deepest meditation possible. They have achieved what Buddha achieved under the Bodhi tree. They have achieved what Jesus achieved on the cross. They have achieved non-duality. Now they cannot exist.

Existence as we know it is dual, dialectical, and these techniques are for you who exist in duality. So there will be many contradictions, because these techniques are not philosophy; these techniques are meant to be done and lived. They are not mathematical formulas; they are actual life processes. They are dialectical, they are contradictory. So don’t ask me to reconcile them. They are not the same, they are opposite. Try to find out what is your type. Can you relax? Can you let go? Can you be in a passive moment, not doing anything? -- then all the techniques which require will are not for you. If you cannot relax, and if I say to you to relax and you immediately ask me how to relax, that ‘how’ shows your mind. That ‘how’ shows that you cannot relax without making an effort. Even for relaxation you need some effort, so you ask ‘how;. Relaxation is relaxation; there is no ‘how’ to it. If you can relax, you know how to relax. You simply relax. There is no effort, no method.

Just as in the night, you go to sleep.

You never ask how to go to sleep. But there are persons who have insomnia. If you say to them, ‘I just put my head on the pillow, and it’s okay, I am asleep,’ they cannot believe you. And their suspicion is meaningful. They cannot believe you; you are deceiving— because they also put their head on the pillow. They go on putting their head the whole night—nothing happens.

They are going to ask how—how to put the head on the pillow? There must be a secret which you are not telling them. You are deceiving; the whole world is deceiving them. Everybody says, ‘We just go to sleep. There is no ‘how’ to it. There is no technology.’ They cannot believe you, and you cannot blame them. You say, ‘We simply put down our heads, close our eyes, put off the light, and we are asleep.’ They also do the same procedure, they do the same ritual, and they do it more correctly than you have ever done, but nothing happens. The light is off, they have closed eyes, lying on their bed—nothing is happening. Once you lose the capacity to relax, then technique is needed. Then they need technique; then without technique they will not be able to sleep.

So if you have a mind which can relax, then surrender is for you. And don’t create any problems—then simply surrender. At least half of you can do this. You may not be aware, but fifty percent is the possibility, because masculine and feminine minds exist in a proportion.

They are always fifty-fifty, almost fifty-fifty, in every realm, because a man cannot exist without a woman opposing him. There is a deep balance in nature. Do you know? -- one hundred and fifteen boys are born to one hundred girls, because boys are weaker than girls—so by the time they are sexually mature fifteen boys will have died. One hundred and fifteen boys are born for every one hundred girls. Girls are stronger: they have more stamina, more resistance. Boys are weak, they don’t have so much resistance, so one hundred and fifteen boys are born for one hundred girls. Then fifteen boys die. The moment they become sexually mature, by the age of fourteen, the number will be the same. For each man a woman exists, for each woman a man exists, because there is an inner tension. They cannot exist without it; that polar opposite is needed.

And similar is the case with the inner mind also. The existence, the nature, needs a balance, so half of you are feminine and can be deeply in surrender very easily. But you can create problems for yourself. You may feel that you can surrender, but you think, ‘How can I surrender?’ You feel that your ego may be hurt. You become afraid of surrendering, because it has been taught to you: ‘Be independent. Remain independent. Don’t lose yourself. Don’t give your control to someone else. Always be in control.’

This has been taught; these are taught difficulties.

So you can feel that you can surrender, but then other problems arise which have been given to you by society, culture and education. And they create problems. If you really feel that surrender is not for you, then forget it. It is not to be worried about. Then put all your energy in effort.

So these are the two extremes. One: if you are a really feminine mind, you have nowhere to go. There is no goal, no God to be achieved, no future heaven—nothing. Don’t be in any hurry now, remain true to the moment, and all that can be achieved by the male mind through hurry, effort, you will achieve here and now without any effort. Right now you are at the goal, if you can relax.

The male mind will have to run round about and round about until it is tired completely, and then it falls down; only then it can relax. Aggression, effort, endeavor, are necessary for the male mind to be exhausted. When that exhaustion happens, then it is possible for it to relax and to surrender. That surrender will come only in the end; for the feminine mind it is always in the beginning. You reach the same happening but the ways of reaching are different.

So when I said yesterday, ‘Don’t waste time,’ I said it to the male mind. If I said be in a hurry and create such an emergency that your total energy and being becomes pinpointed, concentrated, and only in that concentrated effort your life will become a flame, this is for the male mind, the masculine mind.

For the feminine mind, relax and you are already a flame. Because of this, you have Mahavir, you have Buddha, you have Jesus, Krishna, Ram, Zarathustra, Moses, but you don’t have a similar list of women. Not because women have not achieved such a state of mind. They have achieved, but their ways are different. And this whole history has been recorded by man, and man can understand only the masculine mind. Man cannot understand the feminine mind. That’s the problem. It is really very difficult.

A man cannot understand that a woman, just by being a simple housewife, can achieve something which a Buddha achieves with so much difficulty, so arduously. A man cannot conceive, it is impossible for him to conceive that a woman can achieve just by being a housewife: living moment to moment, enjoying moment to moment, just near and here and now, and not bothering about anything else—no goal, no spirituality; just loving the children, loving the husband, just being an ordinary woman, but blissful. No need to make such arduous effort as a Mahavir is making—twelve years of long arduous effort. But man will appreciate Mahavir, because he can appreciate effort.

If you achieve a goal without the effort, for man it is not worth it. He cannot appreciate it. He can appreciate someone, a Tensing, a Hillary, reaching the Everest—not because Everest is worth it, but because so much effort is needed and it is so dangerous. And if you say that you are already on the Everest he will laugh, because Everest is not meaningful—the effort to reach it is meaningful. The moment Everest becomes easy to reach, for the masculine mind all attraction is lost. There is nothing to be achieved on the Everest. When Hillary and Tensing reached there, nothing was there to be achieved, but the masculine mind feels such a glory.

When Hillary reached, I was in a university; all the professors were just thrilled. I asked one woman professor, ‘What do you say about Hillary and Tensing who have reached Everest?’

She said, ‘I cannot understand why there is so much fuss about it. What is the point? What have they gained by reaching there? Even reaching to the market, to a shop, would have been better.’

For the feminine mind it is useless. Going to the moon? -- why such danger? There is no necessity. But for the masculine mind, it is not the goal. Really, the effort is the thing, because then he proves that he is masculine. They very effort, the very aggression, and the very possibility of death, gives him the thrill.

Danger is very appealing to the masculine mind. For the feminine mind it has no appeal at all. Because of this, human history is really half-recorded. The other half has been totally unrecorded, left unrecorded. We don’t know how many woman became Buddhas; it is impossible to know, because our measurement, our criterion, cannot be applied to the feminine mind.

So first decide about your own mind. First meditate about your own mind—what type of mind you have got—then forget all those methods which don’t belong to you. And don’t try to reconcile them.

0o0

Osho on Love and Boredom

Nothing is boring, nothing is repetitive and monotonous—you are, and you bring your quality to everything that you do. No act is boring in itself, and no act can be nonboring in itself—it is you who make it boring or non-boring. And the same act can be boredom to you this moment and the next moment it may become a blissful thing.

Not that the act has changed; your mood, the quality you bring to the act, has changed. So remember, you are not bored because repetitive acts have to be done. Rather, on the contrary, you are bored—that’s why they appear repetitive.

For instance, children want to repeat things. They go on playing the same game again and again. You get bored. What are they doing? The same game again and again? They go on asking for the same story. They enjoy it again and again, and they say, ‘Tell me that story again.’

What is the matter? You cannot conceive it. It looks stupid. It is not. They are so alive that nothing is repetitive for them. You are dead and everything is repetitive for you. They go on repeating the same game. The whole day they can go on, and if you stop them they will scream and cry and they will resist you, saying, ‘Don’t destroy our game.’ And you cannot understand what they are doing the whole day.

They have a different quality of consciousness. Nothing is repetitive for them. They enjoy it so much that the very enjoyment changes the quality, and then they enjoy it again -- and they enjoy it more, because now they know the know-how. The third time they enjoy it even more, because now they are acquainted with everything. They go on enjoying; their enjoyment goes on increasing. Your enjoyment goes on decreasing. What is the matter? Is the act itself boring, or is something wrong with your mode of being, your mode of consciousness?

Look at it from another angle. Two lovers will go on repeating the same acts every day. They will kiss and they will hug—they are the same acts. And they would like to go on doing that ad infinitum. If you give them time, they will go on repeating to the very end of existence. Looking at two lovers, you will get bored. What are they doing? -- the same thing every day? And if you give them the whole day, they will go on hugging, loving, embracing, kissing. What are they doing?

Lovers have again become children. That’s why love is so innocent—it makes you a child again. Now they are enjoying the game.

They are again children. The whole nonsense of maturity they have thrown. They are playing with each other’s body, and to them nothing is repetitive. Each kiss is something absolutely new, unique. It was never so before, it will never be the same again. Each moment of love has its own individual existence, non-repetitive; that’s why they goon enjoying.

The economic law of diminishing returns doesn’t apply to it. For love, there is no law of diminishing returns; rather, increasing returns. That’s why economists cannot understand love, mathematicians cannot understand love. All those who are efficient in calculation cannot understand love, because this is absurd: it defies all laws, all mathematics—it goes on increasing.

Two lovers appear to us as if they are repeating. To them, they are not repeating. But to a prostitute the law of economics will apply, because for her, love is not love, it is a commodity—something to be sold, something which can be purchased. So if you go and kiss a prostitute, for her it is boredom, repetition, and some day she will say. ‘This is nonsense. I am bored of being kissed and kissing the whole day. It is intolerable.’ She will say that it is a repetitive act.

That’s what I want to show you—the distinction. For a lover it is not repetitive; for a prostitute it is repetitive. So, really, the act itself is not repetitive; it is your quality that you bring to it. Whatsoever you do, if you love it, it will never be repetitive. If you love your doings, your acts, there will be no boredom. But you don’t love. I go on talking to you every day. I can go on ad infinitum. I love it. It is not repetitive for me. From eternity to eternity I can go on talking with you. Communication, to communicate with your heart, is love to me. It is not a repetitive act, otherwise I would get bored.

If your act becomes creation, you will not be bored. And your act becomes creation if you love it. But the basic difficulty is that you cannot love whatsoever you do because you hate yourself—that’s the problem. So whatsoever you do, you hate it, because basically you hate yourself. You have not yet accepted yourself, you have not yet thanked existence for your existence.

You have not accepted yourself so how can you accept your acts? Love yourself. Accept yourself as you are. Because action is secondary—it flows from your being. If I love myself then whatsoever I do, I love it. And if I don’t love it, I stop it. What is the need to continue?

But you don’t love, and the source is unloved so the products of that source cannot be loved.

Whatsoever you do—you may be an engineer or you may be a doctor or a chemist or a scientist—whatsoever you do, you will bring hate to it. Your hate makes it repetitive. You hate it, and you go on finding excuses for why you are doing it. You say, ‘I am doing it for my wife, for my children.’ And your father was doing it for you, and his father was doing it for him, and your children will do it for their children, and no one will enjoy life.

These are tricks. You are simply a coward. You cannot escape from it, because it gives you security, safety, income, bank balance. Because you are a coward, you cannot stop doing it and you cannot start doing that which you love. Then you go on putting everything on your children, on your wife, and they are also doing the same.

No one is really existing for himself. No one loves himself enough to exist for himself. Then everything goes wrong. The source is poisoned, and then all that comes out of that source is poisoned. And don’t think that if you change your job, you will love it. No, you will bring your quality to the new job also. In the beginning it may be a sensation, something new, but sooner or later you will settle down and it will be the same.

Change yourself, love yourself, and love whatsoever you do; howsoever small it makes no difference.

Look at life—life enjoys repetition. The seasons move in a circle. The sun moves in a circle—every day, every morning, it arises. And the summer comes and the winter comes and the rains come and they go on moving. In a deep way the whole existence is repetitively moving. It seems creation is just like a child’s play. The trees are not bored, and the sky is not bored. The sky never says, ‘Now, again the clouds?’ For so many, many millennia the sky has been seeing the clouds—every rainy season the clouds come and they start moving. Look at life? It is repetitive.

The word is not good; the word ‘repetitive’ is not good. Rather it will be better to say it goes on playing the same game. It enjoys it so much that it wants to repeat it again. And it goes on increasing; it goes on moving towards a climax. Why does man get bored with repetition? Not because repetition is boring, but because you are so bored that everything will be boring.

So really it is not a question that this act makes you bored or that act makes you bored, or repetition or monotony or tedious jobs make you bored. The real thing is that you are bored whether you do something or not. If you are simply relaxing in a chair you will be bored. Not doing anything you will be bored. You will say, ‘There is nothing to do and I am bored. Nothing to do—I am bored.’

The whole week you are bored because of the tedious job, and on the week-end you are bored because there is nothing to do. The whole life you are bored because of doing a repetitive job in a factory, in an office, in a shop. Then when you retire you are bored, because now there is nothing to do. It is not a question of anything else. Something is not creating boredom in you; you are bored, and you go on bringing your boredom to everything that you touch.

You have heard of King Midas—whatsoever he touched became gold. You are also a King Midas—whatsoever you touch becomes boredom. You have an alchemical touch: you can change everything into boredom; everything, I say.

Don’t think of changing jobs, actions; think of changing the quality of your consciousness. Be more loving to yourself. The first thing to remember is to be more loving to yourself.

The moralists have poisoned the whole world. They say, ‘Don’t love yourself. This is selfishness.’ They say, ‘Love others, don’t love yourself. The love of the self is sin.’

And I say to you that this is absolute nonsense—and not only nonsense; it is dangerous nonsense. Unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody, it is impossible, because a man who is not in love with himself cannot be in love with anybody. If you are in love with yourself, only then can your overflowing love reach somebody. A man who has not loved himself will hate himself, and if you hate yourself, how can you love anybody? You will hate others also. You can only pretend. And when you cannot love yourself, how do you expect others to love you?

Everyone is condemned in his own eyes. The whole moralistic teaching gives you only one thing: techniques of self condemnation—how to condemn yourself, how you are bad, a criminal, guilty, a sinner.

If you cannot love yourself, you cannot love anybody. The love must happen at home first—you are the home—and only when it overflows can it reach to others. And when it overflows, it overflows into your acts, into whatsoever you do. Whether you paint or make a shoe or anything—just cleaning the street—whatsoever you do, if you are in deep love, if you are in deep love with yourself, it flows into everything you do. It flows even when you are not doing anything. It goes on flowing, it becomes your very existence, and then nothing is boring.

People come to me; sometimes very sympathetically some friends ask me, ‘The whole day you are sitting in one room, not even looking out of the window. Don’t you get bored?’ I am with myself. Why should I get bored? They say, ‘Just sitting alone, don’t you get bored?’

If I hate myself I will get bored, because you cannot live with a person you hate. You get bored with yourself. You cannot be alone. Even if you are alone for a few moments you get fidgety, you get uncomfortable, an uneasiness comes into your being. You long to meet someone, because you cannot remain with yourself. The company is so boring—your own company. You cannot look at your own face. You cannot touch your hand lovingly; no—impossible.

They ask me—and their asking is relevant to their own reference, because they will get bored if they are alone—they ask me, ‘Don’t you go out sometimes?’ There is no need. Sometimes they ask me, ‘People come to you with the same problem again and again. Don’t you get bored?’

Because everyone has the same problem. You are so unoriginal you cannot even create an original problem. Everyone has the same problem. Some are related with your love, with your sex, with your peace of mind, with your confusion, or something else—some psychology, some pathology, something. So friends ask me, ‘Don’t you get bored?’ I never get bored, because each individual is unique to me, and because of the individual, the problem he brings is not a repetition because the context is different, the individual is different. You come with your love problem, another comes with his love problem: both look similar but they are not, because two individuals are so different—their difference changes the quality of the problem.

Each individual is so unique that he cannot be put with anyone else. No category can be made. But then you have to have a very keen awareness to penetrate to the very root where the individual is unique. Otherwise, on the surface everyone is alike. Just on the surface everyone is alike, with the same problems, but if you penetrate deep, if you are alert and ready to move with the person to the deeper core of his being, the deeper you go, the more original, individual and unique a phenomenon comes into being. If you can see to the very center, this person before you is unrepeatable. He has never been before, he will never be again. He is just unique. And the mystery then overfills you -- the mystery of the unique person.

Nothing is a repetition if you know how to penetrate, how to be loving and alert. Otherwise everything is repetitive. You are bored because you have a consciousness which creates boredom. Change the consciousness, and there will be no boredom. But you go on changing objects—that will not make any difference.

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Excerpted from Osho’s The Book of Secrets, discourses on the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, the book of 112 meditation techniques

Work, Play and Meditation

Here is something beautiful from Osho’s discourses on Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, the book of 112 meditation techniques.

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GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY.

This technique is based on the dimension of play. That has to be understood. If you are inactive, it is good to fall into deep emptiness, into the inner abyss. But you cannot be empty the whole day and you cannot be passive the whole day. You will have to do something. Activity is a basic requirement, otherwise you cannot be alive. Life means activity. So you can be inactive for a few hours, but for twenty-four hours you will have to be active. And meditation should be something which becomes your style of life, it should not be a fragment. Otherwise you will gain it and lose it.

If you are inactive one hour then for twenty-three hours you will be active. The active forces will be more, and they will destroy whatsoever you attain in your inactivity. The active forces will destroy it.

And the next day you will again do the same: for twenty-three hours you will accumulate the doer and in one hour you will have to drop it. It will be difficult. So your mind must change its attitude about work and activity. Hence the technique.

Work should be considered as play, not as work. Work should be considered as play, just a game. You should not be serious about it; you should be just like children playing. It is meaningless, nothing is to be achieved; just the very activity is enjoyed. You can feel the distinction if you play sometimes.

When you work it is different: you are serious, burdened, responsible, worried, anxious, because the result, the end-result, is the motive. The work itself is not worth enjoying. The real thing is just in the future, in the result. In play there is no result, really. The very process is blissful. And you are not worried, it is not a serious thing. Even if you look serious, it is just pretending. In play you enjoy the very process; in work the process is not being enjoyed – the goal, the end, is important. The process has to be tolerated anyhow. It has to be done because the end has to be achieved. If you could achieve the end without this, you would drop activity and jump to the end.

But in play you would not do that. If you could achieve the end without playing, then the end would be futile. It has meaning only through the process. For example, two football teams are on the playing-ground. Just by throwing a coin they can decide who will win and who will be defeated. Why go through so much effort, unnecessarily exerting yourself? The thing can be decided very easily just by tossing a coin. The end will be there. One team can win, another can be defeated. Why work for it? But then there will be no meaning, no significance. The end is not meaningful, the very process is the meaning. Even if no one wins and no one is defeated the game was worth it. The activity in itself is enjoyed.

This dimension of play has to be applied to your whole life: whatsoever you are doing, be there in that activity so totally that the end is irrelevant. It may come, it has to come, but it is not on your mind. You are playing, you are enjoying.

That’s what Krishna means when he tells Arjuna to leave the future in the hands of the Divine. The result of your activity is in the hands of the Divine, you simply do. This simply doing becomes a play. That’s what Arjuna finds difficult to understand, because he says that if it is just play, then why kill, why fight? He understands what work is but he cannot understand what play is.

And Krishna’s whole life is just a play. You cannot find such a non-serious man anywhere. His whole life is just a play, a game, a drama. He is enjoying everything but he is not serious about it. He is enjoying it intensely but he is not worried about the result. What happens is irrelevant.

It is difficult for Arjuna to understand Krishna because he calculates, he thinks in terms of the end result.

He says in the beginning of the Gita,”This whole thing seems to be absurd. On both sides my friends and my relatives are standing to fight. Whosoever wins, it will be a loss, because my family, my relatives, my friends, will be destroyed. Even if I win, it will not be worth anything because to whom am I going to show my victory? Victories are meaningful because friends, relatives, family will enjoy them. But there will be no one, the victory will be just over dead bodies. Who will appreciate it? Who will say, ‘Arjuna, you have done a great deed’? So whether I am victorious or I am defeated, it seems absurd. The whole thing is nonsense.” He wants to renounce. He is deadly serious. And anyone who calculates will be that deadly serious.

The setting of the Gita is unique: war is the most serious affair. You cannot be playful about it, because lives are involved, millions of lives are involved – you cannot be playful. And Krishna insists that even there you have to be playful. You don’t think about what will happen in the end, you just be here and now. You just be a warrior playing. Don’t get worried about the result because the result is in the hands of the Divine. And it is not even the point if the result is in the hands of the Divine or not. The point is that it should not be in your hands. You should not carry it. If you carry it then your life cannot become meditative.

This technique says, GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. Let your whole life be just a play. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY.

Your mind goes on playing infinitely: the whole thing is just like a dream in an empty room. While meditating, one has to look at the mind just frolicking, just like children playing, jumping out of overflowing energy, that’s all. Thoughts jumping, frolicking, just a play – don’t be serious about them. Even if a bad thought is there, don’t feel guilty. Or, if there is a very great thought, a very good thought – that you want to serve humanity and transform the whole world; and you want to bring heaven onto earth – don’t get too much ego through it, don’t feel that you have become great. This is just a frolicking mind. Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it comes up – it is just overflowing energy, taking many shapes and forms. Mind is just an overflowing spring, nothing else.

Be playful, Shiva says, Gracious one, play. The attitude of the player means he is enjoying the activity, it is good in itself. No profit motive is involved; he is not calculative. Just look at a businessman. Whatsoever he is doing, he is calculating about the profit, what he is going to attain out of it. A customer comes. The customer is not a person, he is just a means. What can be profited out of him? How can he be exploited? Deep down he is calculating what is to be said, what is to be done. Everything is calculated just to manipulate, just to exploit. He is not concerned with this person, he is not concerned with the deal, he is not concerned with anything – he is concerned only with the future, the profit.

Look at the East: in the villages still, a businessman is not just a profit-maker, and the customer has not come just to purchase something. They enjoy it. I remember my old grandfather. He was a cloth merchant and I and my whole family was puzzled because he enjoyed it so much. For hours together it was a game with the customers. If something was worth ten rupees, he would ask fifty rupees for it, and he knew this was absurd. And his customers knew it too, they knew that it must be near about ten rupees, and they will start from two rupees. Then a long haggling would follow – hours together. My father and my uncles would get angry. ”What is going on? Why don’t you simply say what the price is?” But he had his own customers. When they came, they would ask, “Where is Dada, where is grandfather? Because with him it is a game, a play. Whether we lose one rupee or two, whether it is more or less, that is not the point!”

They enjoyed it. The very activity in itself was something worth pursuing. Two persons were communicating through it. Two persons were playing a game and both knew it was a game – because of course a fixed price was possible.

In the West now they have fixed prices because people are more calculating and more profit motivated.

They cannot conceive of wasting time. Why waste time? The thing can be settled within minutes. There is no need. You can just write the exact price. Why fight for hours together? But then the game is lost and the whole thing becomes a routine. Even machines can do it. The businessman is not needed; the customer is not needed.

I have heard about a psychoanalyst who was such a busy man and who had so many patients that it was difficult to have personal contact with everyone. So he would feed his tape-recorder for a particular patient and the tape-recorder would say whatsoever that psychoanalyst wanted to say to the patient.

Once it happened that it was the appointed time of a patient who was a very rich man. The psychoanalyst was entering a hotel. Suddenly he saw the patient sitting there. So he asked,”What are you doing here? It was your time with me.” The patient said,”I am so busy that I have fed my words to my own tape-recorder. Both the tape-recorders are talking to each other. Whatsoever you have to say to me, my tape-recorder has recorded, and whatsoever I have to say to you, your tape-recorder has recorded it from my tape-recorder. This same time, and we are both free.”

If you are too calculating then persons disappear, and more and more mechanization comes in.

Even now in villages in India the haggling goes on. It is a game and worth enjoying. You are playing.

It is a match between two intelligences, and two persons come in deep contact. But it is not timesaving.

Games can never be time-saving. And in games you don’t worry about the time. You are carefree, and whatsoever is going on, you enjoy it right in that moment. Being playful is one of the deepest bases of all meditative processes. But we are businesslike; we are trained for it. So even when we meditate, we are looking for the end, for the result. And whatsoever happens, you will be unsatisfied.

People come to me and they say,”Yes, meditation is growing, progressing. I’m feeling more happy, a little more silent, at east, but nothing else is happening.” What nothing else? I know that people like this are bound to come some day and say,”Yes, I am feeling nirvana, but nothing else is happening.

I am blissful, but nothing else is happening.” What nothing else? He is looking for some profit and unless some very visible profit comes into his hands, something which he can deposit in a bank, he cannot be satisfied. Silence and happiness are so vague, you cannot possess them, you cannot show them to anyone.

Every day it happens that people come to me and they say that they are sad. They are expecting something which should not be expected even in businesses – and they are expecting in their meditations. The business mind comes into meditation with the whole training of business – what profit can be made out of it?

The businessman is not playful. And if you are not playful, you cannot be meditative. Be more and more playful. Waste time in play. Just playing with children will do. Even if there is no one, you can jump and dance alone in the room and be playful. Enjoy. But your mind will go on insisting,”What are you doing, wasting time? You can earn something out of this time. You can do something, and you are just jumping, singing, and dancing. What are you doing? Have you gone mad?” Try it. Snatch whatsoever time you can get out of your business, and be playful. Whatsoever. You can paint, you can play on a sitar, anything you like – but be playful. Look for no profit out of it, see no future in it, just the present. And then, then you can be playful inside also. Then you can jump on your thoughts, play with them, throw them here and there, dance with them, but not be serious about them.

Many people are just unconscious as far as their mind is concerned. Whatsoever happens in their mind, they are unconscious about it; they are drifting in it without knowing where the mind leads them. If you can be aware of any track of the mind you will be puzzled at what is happening. Mind moves through associations. A dog barks on the street. The bark comes to your head – and now you have started. You may move to the very end of the world through this barking of the dog. You may remember some friend who had a dog. Then this dog is dropped and that friend has come into the mind and he had a young wife and the wife was beautiful... and now you are moving. You can go to the very end of this world and you will never remember that just a dog played a trick on you; it just barked, and put you on the track, and you started to move.

You will feel very awkward at what scientists say about this. They say that this track is fixed in your mind. If the same dog in the same situation barks again, you will follow this track again: the friend, the dog, the wife – the beautiful wife – you will go the same way again.

Now they have tried many experiments with electrodes in the human brain. They touch a particular spot in the brain and then a particular memory is released. Suddenly you see that you are five years old, playing in a garden, running after a butterfly. Then the whole sequence is there: you feel pleasant, everything is nice, the air, the garden, the smell, everything comes alive. It is not simply memory, you relive it. Then the electrode is pulled out and the memory stops. If the electrode again touches the same spot, again the same memory comes again. It is just as if you are remembering something mechanical. And it always starts from a certain beginning and ends at a particular end; and then starts from the beginning... just as you record something on a tape-recorder. Your brain has millions of memories, millions of cells recording, and it is all mechanical.

These experiments on the human brain are very strange and very revealing. Memories can be revived again and again, again and again. One experimenter tried three hundred times and the memory was the same – it was recorded. The person on whom the experiment was done became aware and he felt that it was very, very weird because he was not the master, he could not do anything. When the electrode touched the place, the memory started and he had to see it. During three hundred times he by and by became a witness. He started seeing the memory but then he became aware that he was different and this memory was different. This experiment can be helpful, very helpful, for meditators, because when you know your mind is nothing but a mechanical recording around you, you are separate.

This mind can be touched. Now scientists say that sooner or later we will cut all the centers which give you anguish, anxiety, because again and again the same thing is touched and the whole thing has to be relived.

I have been trying many experiments with many disciples. Do the same thing and they move in the same vicious circle, again and again, again and again – unless they become a witness that this is a mechanical thing. You are aware that if you say the same thing to your wife each week, the same thing, she will react. After seven days, when she has forgotten, say the same thing: she will react.

Then record – the reaction is going to be the same. You know, your wife knows, a pattern becomes fixed – and it goes on. Even a dog can start your pattern just by barking. Something is touched, an electrode has entered. You have started on a journey.

If you are playful in life then you can be playful inside with the mind also. Then be as if you are watching something on a TV screen: you are not involved, you are just a spectator, an onlooker.

Look, and enjoy it. Don’t say good, don’t say bad, don’t condemn, don’t appreciate, because these are serious things. If a naked woman comes onto your screen, don’t say that this is bad, that some devil is playing a trick on you. No devil is there to play a trick upon you. Look at it as if it is just on the screen, a film screen. And be playful about it: say to the lady,”Wait”. Don’t try to push her out because the more you push her out, the more she will come in – ladies are difficult. And don’t follow her. If you follow then you will be in trouble. Don’t follow, don’t fight – this is the rule. Just look and be playful. Just say “hello” or ”good morning”. Just look and don’t be disturbed at all. Let the lady wait. She will go by herself, as she came: she moves on her own. She is not related to you, she is just something in the memory. Struck by some situation she came there, just a picture. Be playful with it. If you can be playful with your mind it will drop very soon, because mind can be there only if you are serious. Seriousness is the link, the bridge.

GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY.

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Excerpted from The Book of Secrets, by Osho.