a sannyasin who is still pining over a relationship that ended two years ago, Osho speaks of the illusoriness of love affairs. The first love is always magical, he points out; then, when frustration inevitably sets in, we change partners in the hope that we can recapture that same magic. But even then the magic, if recaptured, will disappear until we come to the point where we realize that it is simply an illusion, a sweet dream:
This is the way of growth. A day comes—and that day is the most fortunate of days—when you can live without illusions, when you can live without magic, when you can live quietly, silently, with no hankering for any excitement. And then a totally different kind of life starts growing in you. That life has value and truth.
These affairs of love, relationships, are good, but they have to go. I am not against them—when I call them illusions I am not saying that I am against them. I am all for them, because you can grow only by going through those illusions. You can grow only through frustrations; there is no other way to growth. Each success and each failure contributes to growth. Failure contributes more than success, because success can go on nurturing the illusion; failure simply opens your eyes to the reality.
There is a magical dimension to life, Osho continues, but it lies elsewhere than in the biological, chemical, and hormonally induced magic we call love:
[Your love] is not very spiritual or very significant. Search: other magic is there. That’s what I am trying to make available to you here: other magic. And there is a magic that comes through truth. Only that is lasting, only that is eternal…. Now search for it. And I am not saying stop relating with people. Relate, but knowing well that that’s okay—a game is a game. Play it, beautifully and artistically and aesthetically. But it is time to become a little more mature. Search inward now. Let meditation become your love now.
On one occasion in darshan a visitor from America explains that she “gets high” from meditating, but that now and then she slips back into drug taking. Osho comments that although the experience brought about by drugs and that of meditation might appear to be similar, in fact they are completely different and opposite:
The drug experience is a forced, phony experience, but because we don’t know the real, the phony seems to be right…. If you compare your life with an ordinary man who has never taken anything like LSD, marijuana, then you feel very high—if you compare it with an ordinary man, because he has not known any moment, he has not even had a false glimpse; he lives such a mundane life. You have lived the same mundane life—then one day this drug creates a dream, gives you a euphoria, and you are tremendously happy. But once meditation can give you an experience, then you will see that this experience was just a dream experience….
If we go on meddling—sometimes with meditation, sometimes with drugs, Osho adds—drugs can slowly destroy our capacity to meditate.
But if you are really interested in meditation, then drugs are dangerous…. The so-called common people think drugs are dangerous. It is not dangerous for them at all because they have nothing to lose; they have nothing to be destroyed! But if you are really interested in the search and you want to grow, then drugs are dangerous.
Drugs are not dangerous for politicians—drugs are dangerous for the religious people because something delicate arises out of meditation. It is very delicate and it comes out of much effort. Just a small quantity of a drug and it is destroyed and you will have to start again from abc.
The drug experience is so cheap, and the meditation experience is so costly because you have to go through such effort. Then by and by the mind starts choosing the cheaper one. Mm? it is the path of least resistance, so the mind says, “Why bother?” The drug can give you something so easily, then why bother with Vipassana, sitting and meditating and struggling hard? Why not the easier way?
The mind is always for the shortcut, and the shortcut is always false. As far as spiritual growth is concerned, there is no shortcut. You cannot cheat—there is no back door. Each has to follow the arduous way. In fact the real beauty of the peak depends on how hard your struggle has been. When you struggle hard and you lose the track many times—many times even the peak disappears and you are again in the dark valley, again you struggle and again you fall and again you move—this whole effort creates that situation where, when the real experience happens, you are in a tremendous bliss. If you are suddenly dropped on that peak by some helicopter, there will be no joy; there will be no joy at all.
I never have any sense of our being judged by Osho; he does not imply that we are wrong or stupid. He simply, scientifically and lucidly, points out the consequences of what we are doing; it is left to us whether we want to pursue our own course or not. That is always the freedom and the responsibility, and I sense that Osho respects us each for deciding how to use that freedom and take on that responsibility.
*
Shyam, a sannyasin who has just returned from England, tells Osho that while away he could see that he has done a lot of unnecessary worrying when in reality he knows that everything is fine. Yet all the time while away he felt the need to try to do something, to interfere or try to direct the way his life is going.
“Drop that trying and doing,” Osho suggests. “Just be as you are with no judgment.”
“But I don’t know how I am,” Shyam replies.
“I’m not saying that you are x,y,z—whatsoever you are is good. How you are is not the point. That ‘how’ again brings in the same question of wanting to drop certain things. That ‘how’ brings in the question of whether you are right…. What I am saying is that whatsoever you are is right! There is no way to be wrong. How can you be wrong? ”
“I feel wrong,” says Shyam quietly.
“That is possible, but you cannot be wrong; that’s what I’m saying,” counters Osho …. “So the feeling has to be dropped and the fact has to be accepted: you are that which you can be—you will never be anybody else; there is no way. So it is up to you to create misery out of it or bliss out of it. Misery is judgment; bliss is a non-valuating consciousness, no judgment. And meanwhile you remain the same. ”
Then with his typical humor, Osho adds, “The mango remains the mango; it cannot become a banana. But it can become miserable. Looking at a banana, the mango can become miserable, can suffer hell: “Why am I not a banana? What has gone wrong? Why am I not like the banana? Why am I just a mango?” It remains a mango but it will suffer….
This looks very hard, mm? Because ordinarily, spiritual seekers are searching for some way to become something else. People come to me to become somebody else and I go on pulling them back to being themselves. And I am not saying that you will be happy if you become somebody—a great Buddha, a Christ. If you just remain yourself and let things be….
Yes, there will be moments when you will be able to relate and there will be moments when you will not be able to relate; there will be moments when you are open and there will be moments when you will not be open. When you are not open that’s exactly what is needed; when you are open, that is needed. In the night the petals will close and the flower will not be open; in the morning when the sun comes, the flower will open. Now, it makes no problem out of it. So don’t make a problem out of it.
No problem can be solved, but all problems can be dropped. They cannot be solved because they don’t exist really; they are make-believe, constructed. We construct them because we cannot live without problems—problems give us occupation, something to do, but all problems can be dropped. Now be a mango and be happy, or be a banana and be happy; there is nothing else to hanker for. Then suddenly there is joy! Shyam is Shyam, and Shyam is going to remain Shyam. So why waste time? Why go on pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings? All this jumping is foolish! Rest in yourself. For one month drop all judgments. And when I am saying, ‘Drop all judgments,’ this judgment is included in it. ”
With a rueful little laugh Shyam says, “Yes, my mind is already saying, ‘I’ll try’.”
“Yes, you follow me?” Osho responds. “This judgment is included in it. Tomorrow you may be