Relationship

If I’m allowed to give my advice to the world, my advice will be: Help people to experience as much love as possible. Let them go into the turmoil, into the cyclone, and let them find, in the cyclone, their rootedness. Don’t try to hide them in the house, don’t close the windows and the doors. Of course they will be more comfortable in the house, but dead. Then the best comfort is in the grave – no worry, no problem, nobody can harm you any more; even death is impotent now. What more security, what more comfort, what more luxury can you expect? A marble grave and your name written in golden letters on it. But you are dead.
No, this is not the way to live and to experience life and to experience what I call godliness.
And the same is true about meditation – even more true, because if they have destroyed your love, they have not destroyed your spirituality. They have only destroyed your biology, your lower being. But they have been trying to destroy your higher being too. By taking a child to the rabbi, to the pundit, to the imam, they are destroying your higher possibility too, for the same reason – the reason is the same, but now it is even more dangerous.
In the first, you may have been in trouble, but that trouble was not much of a trouble. People get into such trouble and get out of it, it is not much of a problem. But the spiritual part of your being is vast, enormous, infinite. If you are lost in it, then you may never be able to find the way back home. You may go on and on, farther and farther away from home.
And what is home? In their mind, a Jew thinks the Torah is the home, a Christian thinks The Bible is the home, a Hindu thinks the Gita is the home. And the people who become bridges to the Torah, to The Bible, to the Gita – they are the masters. They are not. They are only teachers. They teach you whatsoever they have been taught, they have not experienced anything.
Hence the difference and the unique relationship between me and my disciples.
I am not a teacher. I am not teaching you anything at all. I am not a bridge between you and The Bible, between you and the Gita, between you and the Koran. I am not even a bridge between you and God – no. I am not giving you a teaching, a dogma, a creed, a philosophy, a theology. So understand the difference between a teacher and a master.
In the old religions teachers are called masters. They are simply teachers, they know the teaching.
They have been handed down that teaching by other teachers; they will hand it over to you. They have not experienced anything, and through their teaching you are not going to experience anything either. Those are just beautiful words, and they can give you consolation – as if you know.
A master is not a teacher in the first place. A master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.
A master exposes himself to you, allows you closeness so that you can see your face in his mirror.
A master is exactly a mirror.
He never does anything to the disciple. Let me emphasize it. A master is not a doer... because if I start doing something to you I may spoil your being. I may give you a mask, a discipline, and I may change you into something else that you are not. The master cannot do that.
The teacher does that. He gives you a teaching; he teaches you discipline and then he enforces it through greed, persuasion, fear, in every possible way. He tries to fit you into a mold: how a Christian should be, how a Buddhist should be. There are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. I do not think that I can remember thirty-three thousand rules – what to say about following them, I cannot remember them! And anybody doing that will be in the same situation as it happened in one of Aesop’s fables.
A centipede is just going for a morning walk. Now, a centipede has one hundred legs. A frog looks at him, cannot believe his eyes, blinks his eyes, looks again... a hundred feet! How does he manage?
Which one to raise first, then the second, then the third, then the fourth...? One hundred legs! If you forget the number you will be caught in your own legs and fall down.
He rushes up to him, jumps, stops the centipede and asks him, ”Uncle, I should not stop you on your morning walk, but a very philosophical question has arisen in my mind, which I cannot solve – I am just a frog, you know. Only you can help.”
The centipede says, ”What is the problem?”
The frog explains to him, ”This is the problem. I saw your hundred legs, I counted them; and the problem is, how do you manage?”
The centipede said, ”I had never thought about it. I will try and see how I have been managing. I have never thought about it – I really have never looked down and counted the legs. You are great; you are a mathematician and a philosopher!”
The centipede tried, and you can visualize what must have happened. He fell immediately, all his hundred legs entangled in each other. He was very angry at the frog and said, ”Never again ask anybody such questions. Keep your philosophy to yourself! You idiot – I have been managing my whole life, and not only I, millions of centipedes are managing perfectly well. Nobody has fallen like me. But now I am afraid: you have created such a question in my mind that if I don’t get rid of this question I may not be able to walk at all. Now tell me how to get rid of this question.”
The frog said, ”I don’t know. I am myself puzzled. I asked you because you are an experienced person, an old centipede, and you go every day for a morning walk; if you cannot solve it, how can I? I am just a poor frog.” I don’t know what happened to that centipede afterwards, but I can imagine that his whole life must have become a mess. Again and again the question would have come to him, ”A hundred legs! Am I putting the right leg in the right place?”
Life has its own ways. The moment you start managing everything, you spoil it.
Allow life its freedom.
About love, allow freedom, and don’t be guided by fixed ideas.
Experience – don’t go with the idea that love is permanent or not permanent. Experience, and you will know it, what it is.
Don’t take the criterion from others about what is true and what is not true. These are the teachers who have been spoiling the whole of humanity. They tell you how to walk, which leg first and which leg second, and if you put them in some other order you are a sinner, you will fall into hell. Hell is far away; you will fall here! You may not be able even to reach hell, because one needs legs. It is a long journey. Only very expert teachers, professors, philosophers, have been able to reach there. It is no ordinary person’s business to reach hell. It is a long, long journey, and very complicated.
The master’s function is not to mold you into a certain idea, but to withdraw all the crutches, all the supports that the society has given to you. Of course in the beginning you will feel very much afraid – all supports gone, crutches gone, the very earth you were standing on is no longer there.
There will be great fear, but it has to be faced. Only by facing it, going through it, will you be able to overcome it.
Love will give you troubles, anxieties, anguishes, but it is lack of intelligence that is making the whole problem. Just be a little intelligent and see that love has done nothing. It has simply given you a few beautiful, tremendously ecstatic moments. And it has not asked anything in return. It was not a bargain, it was a sheer gift. And what kind of person are you – you don’t feel even grateful? You feel revengeful?
The person who made it possible for you to have those few moments, the woman, the man – be grateful, immensely grateful to the person. Yes, those moments are no more there. Nothing can be done about it. They cannot be pulled back, and even if there was some way to pull them back, they would not be the same. It would be a repetition. It wouldn’t bring you the same joy, the same ecstasy. It is good that they cannot be pulled back, otherwise even the memory of those cherished moments would be spoiled.
Respect the person, be grateful to the person that, for no reason at all – she is a stranger, you are a stranger – for no reason at all, for no bargain, there was no business... mysteriously the universe managed; something transpired between you. And it was nourishing to both of you. It has made you more mature.
Perhaps tomorrow again some spring breeze may move towards you. But never ask the return of the past. It is not possible, and it is not possible for your good. Keep the future open, available.
Don’t carry any grudges, because those will close the future. If you are angry at one woman, or one man, you are angry at all women and all men – because a woman is nothing but a representative of womanhood, a man is nothing but a representative of manhood. If you start feeling hatred, anger, you are closing the doors and the windows. Now no spring breeze will be able to enter your house.
For the higher level, I am not a teacher. I don’t want to make something of you resembling some of my ideas. I don’t have any idea about you. I don’t carry any image that everybody should fit into.
My whole approach is that each individual is unique, and nobody can predict what you are going to be. Even the master cannot predict what you are going to be, because predictions are possible only about things, not about consciousnesses. Consciousness is unpredictable. What is going to blossom in you can be known only when it blossoms.
So the master can do only one thing: he can remove everything that can stop your blossoming.
Hence the master will look very hard.
The teacher will look very compassionate, because he will be giving you every guideline, he will be taking all responsibility. He will be showing you the path; he will be leading you on the path, and you have just to follow.
The master is not interested in you following him. No, just the contrary; you should not follow him, otherwise you will miss becoming yourself. Then what does he do? In fact, all his functioning is negative. He destroys your crutches, your supports. He makes you vulnerable to all kinds of fears, anxieties, challenges. This is all negative. As far as positivity is concerned, he does nothing. He is just a mirror.
He allows you to come close and see your face in his mirror. He does not want you to imitate and become his face. He wants you to look into him. He has no ideas. That means all the dust from the mirror is gone. His mirror is clean. You can come close and look, and you will find your face. The mirror simply mirrors; it is not a doing, it is not an act.
Certainly my relationship with you is unique. In the first place it is not a relationship, because what relationship can you have with a mirror? You can see your face and be thankful, be grateful – but that is not a relationship. What relationship can the mirror have with you? There is no possibility.
The mirror is simply there. It does not relate in any possible way, it simply exists.
So the relationship is unique because if you go to other religions, the master – who is not really a master in the first place, but they call him the master – the master, the so-called master, will have a thousand and one demands to be fulfilled because he is going to do a great job for you. I’m not doing anything for you, so I cannot demand anything from you. The ’master’ will have conditions to be fulfilled. If you fail to fulfill the conditions, then the condemnation; if you fulfill the conditions, then the praise, the reward.
I cannot condemn you, I cannot reward you – because I don’t have any conditions that you have to fulfill. To be my disciple is your decision. It has nothing to do with me. To accept me as your master is your decision, it has nothing to do with me. I am not seeking converts; I am not a Christian missionary. I am not striving so that people should be converted to my way of thinking, my way of life. No, not at all. Otherwise in these thirty-five years I would have converted millions of people, with no trouble. They were ready to be converted; I was not ready to convert.
It is your decision. Always remember, whatsoever happens here is your decision.
If you are a sannyasin, it is your decision.
If you drop sannyas, it is your decision.
If you take it again, it is your decision.
I leave everything to you.
So it is a unique relationship: it is absolutely onesided; from my side there is no relationship. It has to be absolutely clear: from my side there is no relationship. From your side... and that is continually changing. When you first come, you come as a student. It is a different kind of relationship from your side. Then you just want to learn something. Being near me, slowly you understand that learning is not enough. Some experience is needed. You become a disciple, you become a sannyasin. That is your decision. You simply indicate that you want to come closer to me. What else is sannyas?
Just your declaration that you would love and like to be closer to me. From your side, the student is disappearing and the disciple is appearing. And then the last stage comes, when you feel even experiencing is not enough: being.
Now see the three points. Teaching is a very faraway thing, borrowed: experience – but it is outside you. You are the experiencer, and the experience is there: beautiful, ecstatic, blissful, but you know it is there, an object; inside, but still an object. No, you want to be at the center of your being. Then you come even closer: the disciple disappears into the devotee. Now, the devotee means from your side also the relationship has disappeared. Now you are absolutely happy just to be the way you are. You understand now why there was no relationship from my side. I am enjoying my aloneness, and you start enjoying your aloneness.
So the relationship is not static like father and son, brother and sister; it is not static. It is not like marriage. There is no law that prevents you from dropping sannyas or that forces you to be a sannyasin. Slowly you understand that your relationship also is disappearing. When you were a student there was a very strong relationship with the teacher, with the master. When you are a disciple the relationship is fragile, like a lover. When you are a devotee you have come... arrived.
Now you can blossom in your aloneness.
Gratitude is there; gratefulness is there, thankfulness is there, and infinite gratitude – but no relationship, no demand from your side or from my side. Then it is just as if two candles are burning side by side, so close that their flames become one.
Okay Sheela?

Osho

From Unconciousness to Consciousness,

Ch#18. MARRIAGE – THE COFFIN OF LOVE
pm in Lao Tzu Grove