Question 1:

Osho,

Everything appears to be very paradoxical: having to be total and yet having to remain a witness, a watcher; having to be drowned in love and yet to be alone. it sounds very mysterious, and i feel utterly lost and confused. am i getting conned?

 

 

Prem Urja, life is beautiful because it is paradoxical. It has salt because it is paradoxical - it is not just sweet, it has salt in it too. If it was just sweet, it would become too sugary, saccharin.

 

Life has tremendous mystery in it because it is based on paradox. You are feeling confused because you have a certain fixed idea about how life should be - you don't allow life to be as it is. You want to impose a certain concept on it, a certain logic on it.

 

The confusion is of your own creation.

 

Try to impose some logical pattern on life and you will become very much confused, because life has no obligation to fulfill your logic. Life is as it is. You have to listen to it.

 

It has all the colors, the whole spectrum - it is a rainbow. But you have a certain idea that it should be only blue or it should be only green or it should be only red - but it is all the seven colors. Then what are you going to do about the six other colors which are not part of your conception? Either you have to ignore them, block them, so that you don't become aware of them; repress them, simply deny them.... But whatsoever you do, life is not going to drop its colors; they will be there - denied, rejected, repressed, they will be there, waiting for the right moment to explode into your consciousness.

 

And whenever they explode you will be confused. The confusion is your responsibility.

 

Life is not confusing at all. Life is mysterious but never confusing. Because you don't want it to be mysterious, you want it to be mathematical, you want it very clear-cut so that you can calculate and measure - hence the difficulty. It is not created by life. Drop your conceptions and then look.... Then you will find the storm that comes brings a silence with it - which is illogical! The silence that is felt after the storm is the deepest, the profoundest. If there is no storm, the silence remains superficial, the silence remains dull, it has no depth. After the storm...the greater the storm, the deeper the silence.

 

Now, it is paradoxical.

 

It is paradoxical only because you want to impose a certain logic. The storm, and creating silence? It does not fit with your idea - that is true - then you become confused. But why should it fit with your idea? Life has to be perceived - not conceived. See what is the case, don't have ready-made answers. Don't go through life with prejudices, with a prejudiced mind, don't have any a priori conceptions. Go innocent, naked, go ignorant. Function from the state of not knowing. And then...then life is not confusing. It is a tremendous joy, it is ecstasy. Then what appears today as confusing, you will feel thankful for it, grateful for it, that it is so, that it is not logical.

 

Life would have been utterly boring if God had followed Aristotle. It is a great relief that he is not an Aristotelian; it is a great relief that God knows nothing of Aristotle, that he has not read his books, that he does not believe in logic, that he believes in dialectics.

 

Hence these paradoxes.

 

One can be in deep love and yet be alone. In fact, one can be alone only when one is in deep love. The depth of love creates an ocean around you, a deep ocean, and you become an island, utterly alone. Yes, the ocean goes on throwing its waves on your shore, but the more the ocean crashes with its waves on your shore, the more integrated you are, the more rooted, the more centered you are.

 

Love has value only because it gives you aloneness. It gives you space enough to be on your own.

 

But you have an idea of love; that idea is creating trouble - not love itself, but the idea.

 

The idea is that, in love, lovers disappear into each other, dissolve into each other. Yes, there are moments of dissolution - but this is the beauty of life and all that is existential:

 

that when lovers dissolve into each other, the same are the moments when they become very conscious, very alert. That dissolution is not a kind of drunkenness, that dissolution is not unconscious. It brings great consciousness, it releases great awareness.

 

On the one hand they are dissolved - on the other hand for the first time they see their utter beauty in being alone. The other defines them, their aloneness; they define the other. And they are grateful to each other. It is because of the other that they have been able to see their own selves; the other has become a mirror in which they are reflected.

 

Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.

 

Hence, it looks very contradictory, paradoxical, when stated in such a way: "Love brings aloneness." You were thinking all along that love brings togetherness. I am not saying that it does not bring togetherness, but unless you are alone you cannot be together. Who is going to be together? Two persons are needed to be together, two independent persons are needed to be together. A togetherness will be rich, infinitely rich, if both the persons are utterly independent. If they are dependent on each other, it is not a togetherness - it is a slavery, it is a bondage.

 

If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don't allow each other to be alone, if they don't allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings. What kind of love is this? It may be just fear of being alone; hence they are clinging to each other. But real love knows no fear. Real love is capable of being alone, utterly alone, and out of that aloneness grows a togetherness.

 

Kahlil Gibran says: Two lovers are like two pillars of a temple - they support the same roof, but they stand separate; together as far as supporting the same roof is concerned, but utterly separate as far as their own being is concerned. Be pillars of a temple, supporting the same temple of love, the same roof of love, yet rooted in your own being, not distracted from there. And then you will know both the beauty, the purity, the cleanliness, the health, the wholeness of aloneness, and you will also know the joy, the dance, the music of being together.

 

There is a beauty when somebody is playing a solo instrument - a solo flute player - there is tremendous beauty in that. And there is also beauty in an orchestra. And love knows both together: it knows how to be a solo flute player and it also knows how to be in rhythm, harmony with the other.

 

There is no contradiction in reality - the contradiction appears only because you have a certain idea. Drop the idea and then where is confusion? Confusion comes only out of conclusions. If you have a conclusion already and then life appears as something else, you are confused. Rather than trying to fix life, drop your conclusions.

 

Never function out of conclusions! - that's what I go on repeating every day to you:

 

don't function from the state of knowledge. Knowledge means conclusions, and all conclusions are borrowed. Life is so vast that it cannot be condensed into a conclusion.

 

All conclusions are partial. And whenever the part claims to be the whole, it creates a kind of fanaticism, orthodoxy; it creates a dull and stupid mind.

 

Urja, you say, "Having to be total and yet having to remain a witness, a watcher...seems to be very paradoxical."

 

It only seems, the paradox is only apparent; otherwise, to be total is to be a watcher.

 

Whenever you are totally into something, a great awareness is released in you - you become a witness. Suddenly! Not that you practice witnessing. If you are totally in it...one day, dance totally and see what I am saying.

 

These are not logical conclusions that I am giving to you: these are existential indications, hints. Dance totally! - and then you will be surprised. Something new will be felt. When the dance becomes total, and the dancer is almost completely dissolved in the dancing, there will be a new kind of awareness arising in you. You will be totally lost into the dance: the dancer gone, only dance remains. And yet you are not unconscious, not at all - just the opposite. You are very conscious, more conscious than you have ever been before.

 

But if you start thinking about it, then the paradox will come. Then you will not be able to manage, and you will become very confused.

 

Experience it. Whatsoever is being said here is to help you to experience. I am not handing over to you any knowledge, any information - just a few hints to taste the multidimensional qualities of life.

 

You say, "It seems paradoxical...having to be drowned in love and yet be alone." It is not - it only appears. But you seem to be too much attached to your conclusions; hence the idea arises: "Am I getting conned?"

 

In a way, yes, you are being conned out of all your prejudices, out of all your conclusions, out of all your knowledge. I am trying to take you into the world of innocence again. I am trying to give you a new birth, so that you can become a child again - full of awe and wonder.

 

The child never sees any paradox anywhere - and that is the beauty of the child. The child can be in tremendous love with you and can say, "I cannot live without you even for a single moment," and the next moment he is angry and says, "I will never see your face again." He is total in both his statements, and after a few moments he is again sitting in your lap with great joy - and that too is total.

 

The child is total each moment, and the child never sees any contradiction. When he is angry, he is really anger; and when he is loving, he is really love. He moves from one moment to another moment without creating any confusion for himself. He is never confused. He never brings this paradox, because he has not yet arrived at conclusions.

 

He does not know how one should be. He simply allows himself to be whatsoever is the case - he flows with life.

 

Urja, you have become stagnant somewhere. You have too much knowledge, and that is functioning as a barrier. It won't allow you to flow with me, and it won't allow you to flow with my people. It won't allow you to flow with life, it won't allow you to flow with God.

 

God is both day and night, summer and winter, birth and death...and you have to be capable of absorbing all these so-called paradoxes. If you can absorb all these so-called paradoxes, without becoming confused, enlightenment is not far away.

 

Enlightenment is the state when all paradoxes have disappeared. One simply takes note of life as it is. One has no conclusions to compare with, no ideas to judge with. Then how can you be confused? You cannot confuse me - it is impossible - because I have no conclusions. Without conclusions, without knowledge, just taste life as it is. It is a mystery, not a paradox.

 

- Osho, "Dhammapada Vol 2, #4"