Nobodiness

 

 

If you want to be happy there is no other way than enlightenment. If you want to be ordinary nobody has ever been ordinary without enlightenment. If you want to love and be loved it is impossible without enlightenment. So you will have to understand my concept of enlightenment. It is just to be ordinary, healthy, aware, whole, total.

 

Every mind is seeking some extraordinariness. That is what the ego is: always trying to be somebody in particular, always afraid of being nobody, always afraid of emptiness, always trying to fill the inner void by anything and everything. Every human being is seeking extraordinariness -- and that creates misery. It is not possible. Nobodiness is your very nature, nonbeing is the very stuff you are made of. Howsoever you try you will never succeed; even Alexanders fail. You cannot be somebody because that is not possible in the nature of things. You can only be nobody. But there is nothing wrong in being nobody; in fact, the moment you accept your nobodiness, immediately bliss starts flowing from you in all directions -- because misery disappears. Misery is the shadow of the ego, the shadow of the ambitious mind. Misery means you are doing something impossible and because you are failing in it you are miserable. You are doing something unnatural, trying to do it and failing, so you feel frustrated, miserable.

 

Hell is nothing but the end result of an impossible, unnatural effort. Heaven is nothing but to be natural.

 

You are nobody. You are born as a nobodiness with no name, no form. You will die as a nobody. Name and form are just on the surface; deep down you are just a vast space. And it is beautiful, because if you are somebody you will be limited. It is good that God doesn't allow anybody to be somebody; if you are somebody you will be finite, limited, you will be an imprisoned being. No, God doesn't allow that. He gives you the freedom of nobodiness -- infinite, nonending. But you are not ready. To me, enlightenment is all about this phenomenon: to recognize, to realize, to accept the fact that one is a nobody. Suddenly you stop trying the impossible. Suddenly you stop pulling yourself up by your shoelaces. You understand the absurdity of it -- and you stop. And laughter spreads over your being. Suddenly you are calm and collected. The very effort of wanting to be somebody is creating trouble.

 

And when you try to be somebody, you cannot love. An ambitious mind cannot love. It is impossible, because he has first to fulfill his ambition. He has to sacrifice everything for it. He will go on sacrificing his love. Look at ambitious people -- if they are after money they always postpone love. Tomorrow when they have accumulated a lot of money then they will be in love; right now it is impossible, it is not in any way practical; right now they cannot afford it. Love is a relaxation and they are running after something to achieve -- a goal. Maybe it is money, maybe it is power, prestige, politics. How can they love now? They cannot be here and now -- and love is a phenomenon of here and now. Love exists only in the present, ambition exists in the future: love and ambition never meet.

 

You cannot love. And if you cannot love, how can you be loved by anybody else? Love is a deep communion of two beings who are ready to be together -- this moment, not tomorrow; who are ready to be total in this moment and forget all past and future. Love is a forgetfulness of the past and the future and a remembrance of this moment, this throbbing moment, this alive moment. Love is the truth of the moment.

 

The ambitious mind is never here, he is always on the go. How can you love a running man? He is always in a race, in a competition; he has no time. Or he thinks that somewhere in the future, when the goal is achieved, when he has attained the power he seeks, the riches he desires, then he will relax and love. This is not going to happen, because the goal will never be achieved.

 

Ambition will never be fulfilled. It is not the nature of it to be fulfilled. You can fulfill one ambition; immediately a thousand other ambitions arise out of it. Ambition never stops. If you follow it, if you understand, it can stop right now. But if you give energy to it, how can you love? That's why people are so miserable trying to be somebody -- miserable because they are not getting love, miserable because they cannot love.

 

Love is an ecstasy: ecstasy of a no-mind, ecstasy of the present, ecstasy of a non-ambitious state, ecstasy of emptiness. Wherever lovers are, there is nobody: only love exists. When two lovers meet they are not two. They may appear two to you, from the outside. But the inside story is totally different: they are not two. The moment they meet the two-ness disappears, only love exists and flows. How is it possible unless you are an emptiness within, a nothingness, so that there is no barrier, nothing between you and your lover? If you are somebody and your lover or beloved is also somebody, then two persons are not meeting but four: two real nobodies who are standing in the background and two somebodies -- false egos shaking hands, caressing, making gestures of love. It is a drama to look at: ridiculous! Whenever lovers meet there is nobody, and two nobodies cannot be two. How can two nothingnesses be two? Nothingnesses have no demarcation line -- a nothingness is a vastness. Two nothingnesses become one. Two somebodies remain two.

 

That's why love becomes such an ugly affair -- the love which is called love by you, not by me. Your love is an ugly affair, the ugliest. It has to be so. It could have been the most beautiful phenomenon in the world but it has become the ugliest: lovers constantly fighting, quarreling, creating misery for each other. Sartre says, "The other is hell." He is saying something about your love. Whenever you are alone you feel relaxed, whenever you are with the lover a tension arises. You cannot live alone because the deepest nobodiness hankers... it has a thirst, a deep hunger. So you cannot remain alone. You have to move -- you seek togetherness, but the moment you are together it is a misery. All relationships create misery and nothing else. Unless you are enlightened, love becomes just a conflict, a quarrel. One by and by gets adjusted to it. That means one by and by gets dull, insensitive. That's why the whole world looks so dead, so stale. It stinks. All relationships have gone stale, they have become ugly.

 

So if you want really to love and be loved... that is not possible right now as you are; you have to disappear. You have to leave -- so that a clean nothingness is left, a fresh nothingness is left behind. Only then can the flower of love bloom. The seeds are there but the ego is like a rock, and the seeds cannot sprout on it.

 

And you say you want to be ordinary? -- and you want to love? -- and you want friends? -- and you want to enjoy? This is exactly what enlightenment is all about! But if you go to the priests and to the preachers and to the organized religions and the churches, their enlightenment is different. They are against love; they are against ordinariness; they are against friendship; they are against enjoyment; they are against everything that your nature naturally seeks. They are the great poisoners.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 1, #2, Q1"