Osho on Marilyn Monroe Life and reason for her Suicide

 

 

One of the most famous actresses, Marilyn Monroe, committed suicide, and psychoanalysts have been brooding on the reason why. She was one of the beautiful women ever, one of the most successful. Even the President of America Kennedy, was in love with here, and she had thousands of lovers. One cannot think of what more you can have. She had everything.

 

But she was public and she knew it. Even in her love chamber when President Kennedy would be there she used to address him as Mr. President -- as if one was making love not to man, but to an institution. She was an institution. By and by she came aware that she had nothing private. Once somebody asked here -- she had just posed for a nude calendar and somebody asked, "Did you have anything on while you posed for the nude calendar?"

 

She said, "Yes, I had something on. The radio."

 

Exposed, nude, no private self. My feeling is that she committed suicide because that was the only thing left she could have done privately. Everything was public, that was the only thing left she could do on her own, alone, something absolutely intimate and secret. Public figures are always tempted towards suicide because only through suicide can they have a glimpse of who they are.

 

All that is beautiful is inner, and the inner means privacy. Have you watched women making love? They always close their eyes.

 

They know something. A man goes on making love with open eyes, he remains a watcher also. He is not completely in the act, he is not totally in it. He remains a voyeur, as if somebody else is making love and he is watching, as if the love-making is going on a TV screen or in a movie. But a woman knows better because she is more delicately tuned to the inner. She always closes her eyes. Then love has a totally different fragrance.

 

Do one thing one day: run the bath and then switch on and off the light. When there is darkness you will hear the water falling more clearly, the sound will be sharp. When the light is on, the sound will be not so sharp. What happens in darkness? In darkness, everything else disappears because you cannot see. Only you and the sound are there. That's why, in all good restaurants, light is avoided; sharp light is avoided. They are candle-lit. Whenever a restaurant is candle-lit, taste is deeper: you eat well and you taste more. The fragrance surrounds you. If there is very bright light the taste is no longer there. The eyes make everything public.

 

-Osho, "Come Follow To You, Vol 1, #6, Q1"

 

 

 

 

Go in so that your coming out becomes richer and is not impoverished. And always remember that whenever you feel exhausted, the source of energy is within. Close your eyes and go in.

 

Make outer relationships; make inner relationships also. Of course there are bound to be outer relationships -- you move in the world, business relationships will be there -- but they should not be all. They have their part to play, but there must be something absolutely secret and private, something that you can call your own.

 

That is what Marilyn Monroe lacked. She was a public woman -- successful, yet completely a failure. While she was at the top of her success and fame, she committed suicide. Why she committed suicide has remained an enigma. She had everything to live for; you cannot conceive of more fame, more success, more charisma, more beauty, more health. Everything was there, nothing could be improved upon, and still something was lacking. The inside, the within, was empty. Then, suicide is the only way.

 

You may not be daring enough to commit suicide like Marilyn Monroe. You may be very cowardly and you may commit suicide very slowly -- you may take seventy years to commit it. But still it will be a suicide. Unless you have something inside you which is not dependent on anything outside, which is just your own -- a world, a space of your own where you can close your eyes and move, and you can forget that anything else exists -- you will be committing suicide.

 

-Osho, "Come Follow To You, Vol 1, #6, Q1"

 

 

 

 

It almost always happens that a very intellectual person will fall in love with a woman who is completely non-intellectual. Miller fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. Mm? she was just a cow. She suffered very much because she wanted to be an intellectual. This man, Miller, was a great intellectual and she felt inferior. That created conflict. She tried but she could not do anything because she was really a totally different type -- a body type who lives through instincts... and that was her beauty; that was her charm. That's why Miller had fallen in love with her.

 

Miller's intellect was a great attraction for her, because she always felt that she should have gone to the university, should have great degrees -- and she never even went to school, even to high school; she was not even a matriculate. So Miller was a pinnacle of intellect -- a great, intelligent person, very argumentative. She had fallen in love with that intellectual and miller had fallen in love with that instinctive, intuitive being.

 

But now there is a problem. They have fallen in love -- that's okay -- but they are so different that they never meet anywhere. She lives a very instinctive life, temperamental; in one moment she is angry, in another moment she is loving; in one moment she is ready to kill or to commit suicide. And this is very difficult for an intellectual, because he moves through reason, step by step. His working is that of syllogism and he cannot understand what type of things are happening. This looks nonsense, insane, but that's why he has fallen in love.

 

Now this woman cannot understand what this logic and this mathematics and cleverness is, why there are always calculations and why one should be rational. Why not irrational? What is wrong in being irrational?

 

Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. Before she committed suicide she wrote a letter to a friend and in that letter she writes, 'I could not make it with Miller, and I know that there was no possibility of finding a better man.' She left -- she divorced, she married thrice -- but every time it was a failure, because she would always be attracted to something which was against her temperament. The people who would be attracted to her were attracted to the opposite, and then there was conflict.

 

Now this is the problem: attraction and conflict come out of the same reason -- attraction out of the opposition and conflict out of the opposition. So lovers continue to fight... they remain intimate enemies. That enmity can only be dropped if you really become very understanding.

 

So my suggestion is that this is not your case in particular, this is the case in general. All love affairs, more or less, come to this point -- they have to come, because from the very beginning the affair is doomed. The attraction is towards the opposite -- how can you avoid the conflict? The conflict is implied in the attraction itself. This is the trouble, it is in-built.

 

So once two lovers have settled, the attraction disappears -- because now you have become familiar with each other; the attraction is bound to settle. Now there will not be honeymoon peaks -- you will live on a plain ground. Once the attraction settles there are only peaks of conflict. When the honeymoon is there and the peaks of honeymoon are there, the conflict is not apparent. Mm? it is deep in the valleys far away. You can forget about it, you may not even think about it, you may not even dream about it. All honeymoons are beautiful but one cannot live in the honeymoon forever. That will be like flying in the aeroplane, always and always and always.

 

You have to land and settle, because you cannot live on that honeymoon height. The altitude is too high and it is difficult to breathe on that altitude for long. One has to come down and settle -- and one has to settle on the earth.

 

Once you settle and the marriage has come to the normal, there will only be peaks of conflict; they are the compensatory peaks. With whomsoever you had the honeymoon you will have these peaks also. That's why in the east...

 

The east is very cunning and clever -- they dropped the whole phenomenon of love completely. Seeing this problem, and the problem is such that it cannot be avoided, the east completely dropped the love affair. Marriage has to be settled -- love is not to be allowed. Once love is not allowed there are no honeymoon peaks. If you can destroy the honeymoon peaks there are no conflict peaks. That's the whole logic of the east -- very cunning logic -- but then there is no romance left.

 

In fact, the woman and the man who are going to marry are not even to see each other; the parents will settle the whole thing. The whole thing is settled on the plain ground. Their finances have to be reckoned with, the family's status has to be reckoned with, the health, the health of the last two, three generations of the family -- whether somebody has been mad, had cancer, tb, this and that -- all these things have to be taken care of. Just one thing has to be left out: love, because that is dangerous.

 

So from the very beginning, in the east, the marriage starts on the plain ground; they don't allow any peaks. Then there is no conflict either... but that, too, doesn't seem to be good. It is as if just because of thorns you destroy the roses. Seeing that the thorns always come with the roses, the east has destroyed the roses completely so there are no thorns.

 

The western love affair is more hectic, more dangerous, more maddening, because the west has decided to keep the roses, but then those thorns are there, and sooner or later they hurt.

 

So what has to be done is to first think of it as a general case. I insist on that -- to think of it as a general case. Why do I insist? Because once you see something as general, you become more objective. Then it is not something in particular for you. It is not that something has gone wrong between [you both]; [you] are irrelevant. It is something that always goes wrong between every [couple].

 

Once you have seen that this is a general case -- degrees may differ but the basic thing does not differ -- you have a more objective observation and things can be easily solved. Then you are not personally involved. You have a little distance.

 

Whenever things go well, enjoy -- whenever they don't, don't pay too much attention to them. So whenever you can be in a good mood and together, be together, otherwise be separate... because we are not here to cripple each other. If we cannot make the other happy then it is better that we should not come into the picture at all.

 

So whenever you are both feeling good, happy, meet, commune, love each other, but when you feel that now your temperaments are asserting themselves, there is no point in living together; leave each other alone. That will help much, because when you are left alone there is no point in being angry and sad. And there is no necessity to go through all torture -- it is not worth it. What is the point of continuously torturing each other? Then you are some sort of a masochist or sadist; it is ill.

 

Once you understand and she understands that this is the thing -- if we can be happy, we have to be together, if we cannot be happy, then we separate.... Once that thing is decided, things will change, because I don't think that you want to be separate. Once that dagger is there, hanging over you, things will settle.

 

And don't try to change each other, because that never, never happens. People go on hoping and waste their whole life. You will try to change her and she will try to change you -- that is nonsense! Why bother? If you can love the person as he is, love. If you cannot love the person as he is, leave! If it is difficult to leave, make an arrangement, have an agreement, that whenever you both feel good, invite each other, be together, but the moment that you feel that something is going wrong just say good-bye, be separate.

 

So first start by a provisional arrangement -- be together only when you are happy. We should only be with somebody when we are happy, otherwise not. Why? It is better to be happy and separate than to be unhappy and together.

 

If you really love each other you will sacrifice your madness, your anger, for your love. Love needs sacrifice -- and we don't sacrifice anything! We are ready to sacrifice love for other things: for small things you become angry and you never think that you are sacrificing love for it! It is trivia. When you look at it you know that it is foolish. But small things put together, one day destroy the whole love. There are not big things.

 

If you ask a couple, 'For what things are you fighting?' they feel shy, awkward -- they can't say exactly what things. They say just 'such and such', but to exactly put those things on the list, they feel foolish, stupid, because these things are not worth anything.

 

So let it be very clear that either your love is sacrificed for your small foolishnesses, or your small foolishnesses have to be sacrificed for love. Now it is up to you! If you want to save the love, sacrifice your foolishnesses. Otherwise I don't see the point of why you should be together. Even if you love, that is not enough excuse to torture.

 

That continuous saying, 'I love, I love,' seems to be a trick of the mind, because if you love, really love the person, you would like him or her to be happy. Otherwise what is love for? It should be a blessing, but it doesn't seem to be a blessing. Out of one hundred, in ninety-nine cases it is a curse. The greatest curse that can happen to a man is love!

 

But the problem is that people cannot live alone. They are not capable of being alone, so they have to be with somebody. They have to settle and accept all sorts of nonsense that grows out of it. Because people cannot stand on their own and they are children and they need somebody to lean on, this whole nonsense continues.

 

But you are both growing, and you both have to take more courageous steps. If there really is love then love wants that everything else should be sacrificed. Make it a deliberate, conscious effort of sacrifice. If you cannot sacrifice those foolish things please don't say that you love, because then it is meaningless. Only your sacrifice will prove that you love.

 

And what am I asking that you sacrifice? Anger, hatred, jealousy, this and that -- all nonsense! If you cannot sacrifice even these things, then what else can you sacrifice? People say sometimes that they are ready to die for the other, but they cannot drop a little thing like anger... and they are ready to die! It doesn't seem possible. They are just fooling around with the idea, because who is going to ask you to die? So make it a point: sacrifice all nonsense.

 

-Osho, "What Is, Is, What Ain't, Ain't, #2"