Question 1

Beloved Osho,

The other day in discourse you mentioned that when a woman wears red lipstick it is ugly, because it is not natural. i am from new york where it is required that women shave their legs, underarms, dress stylishly, have their hair neatly combed, wear makeup, and act in a ladylike manner.

Yes, it is all very admirable how your sannyasins are so natural, but the girls at the ashram do not excite me. you see, natural is not always the best or the most beautiful.

My feeling is that you are so against makeup because you have never seen good makeup. i am a freelance makeup artist and would like to do a makeover on an ashramite so that you can see how makeup can be used to spiritually enhance a woman's natural beauty. anything to say?

 

 

Philip Sobel, there are many things to say. First, makeup is the invention of the ugly people. It is not that makeup is ugly, but makeup itself is the invention of the ugly. The ugly feels inferior compared to the naturally beautiful -- jealous, competitive. The ugly tries to compensate for it with artificial methods. The natural has no need to compensate. But naturally beautiful people are very few; hence makeup has become almost a routine thing.

 

For thousands of years, man has been trying to hide in every possible way all that is ugly in him -- in the body, in the mind, in the soul. Even people who were naturally beautiful started imitating the ugly and the artificial, for the simple reason that the artificial can deceive. For example, breasts naturally are not as good looking as they can be made to look. Even if a woman has naturally beautiful breasts, she will start feeling that the women who have no natural beauty in their breasts can at least pretend and show that they are far more beautiful. So the naturally beautiful also start imitating.

 

Makeup, and the whole idea of makeup, is basically hypocrisy. One should love and accept one's nature -- and not only on the physical level, because that is where the journey starts. If you are false there, then why not pretend the same falseness as far as mind is concerned? Then what is wrong in pretending to be a saint, a sage, when you are not? The logic will be the same. And sometimes it happens that the pretender can defeat the real, because the pretender can practice, can rehearse, can manage and manipulate in many ways.

 

It happened in the life of Charlie Chaplin....

 

On one of his birthdays his friends arranged a competition for who could act most like Charlie Chaplin. There were going to be three prizes, and from all over the world many people participated in the competition. And the final competition was going to be held in London. Charlie Chaplin, just to have fun, entered the competition from a faraway place. And because there were so many pretenders, nobody could even see that Charlie Chaplin was part of the competition. He was certainly hoping -- in fact, he was absolutely certain -- that he would win the first prize and that he would have the last laugh. But it turned out otherwise. He got the second prize. Somebody else was more authentically Charlie Chaplin than Charlie Chaplin himself.

 

It is possible that a woman with makeup can, as you say, Sobel, look very beautiful. But she has to be ugly in the first place; otherwise why should she bother? And it is not that I have not seen good makeup; I have seen it. For thousands of lives what have I been doing here? Although I have not seen YOU, I have seen so many people like you that I can say many things even about you.

 

The first thing is that you must be fat. If you are not you can stand up and everybody can judge. Only fat people become interested in makeup. Secondly, you must be a "homo," because only "homos" become interested in the artificial. And if so many beautiful women here are not turning you on, that simply means one thing: that a woman as such cannot turn you on; you need men to turn you on. In that way, homosexuality is a very great spiritual development, because heterosexuality is just natural, it is biological; homosexuality is an invention of man. The bisexual person, who is both, of course, is far more rich. He can be turned on by both men and women; he has a far richer sexuality.

 

And from your name it is clear that you are a Jew. Now, a Jew, "homo" and fat...what else is needed to become a freelance makeup artist? You have all the qualifications for it.

 

You say, "The other day in discourse you mentioned that when a woman wears red lipstick it is ugly because it is not natural." In the first place, that woman is ugly -- that's why she wears lipstick. If she had beautiful lips, who would bother to paint those beautiful lips with something tasteless, ugly? -- ugly in the sense that your lips are no longer part of your face. They stand out, they become separate; they are no longer an organic unity.

 

I would like women to have red lips, but those red lips should come through the inner health -- through blood circulating within your body, through exercise, through breathing; through long walks, through sunbaths, lips should become red. It is beautiful to have red lips, but to pretend...! And for whom are you trying to pretend? Everybody can see the lipstick is there. The lipstick does not hide your lips, it simply reveals that something ugly is hidden behind it. And I am not saying that all that is not natural is bad. Nature CAN be improved upon. That's what intelligence is for, but it should not be against nature. For example, the lips can be red through better food, through better exercise, through better medicine. That too is improving upon nature, but improving upon nature in a natural way.

 

Putting on lipstick is cheap; it is not really improving. It is good for the stage. Makeup artists are needed for the stage, not for real life. On the stage it is good, because the people who are looking at you are far away from you; they don't have to kiss you. They can throw kisses from far away; that's perfectly okay. But they don't have to taste your lipstick. Layers and layers of lipstick! It is so rotten and old, and continuously your saliva is giving it all kinds of germs. In each single kiss at least one hundred thousand germs pass between the lovers. And that is when the lips are without lipstick. With lipstick nobody has yet counted what is being transferred. And when the lipstick is there you never come in contact with the lips.

 

You must have misunderstood me. I am not saying that improving upon nature is bad. I am not saying that. Women can shave their legs and underarms. It is good, it is hygenic; nothing is wrong in it. Unless you take every care to clean your body....

 

Sobel, your New York women must not be taking baths every day it seems. If you take a bath every day and clean your body, then the hairs under your arms are not bad. There is nothing wrong about it. There is no need to remove them, they have their place. But if you are not taking a bath and if you are not being hygenic and clean, then certainly they will collect dust and they will collect perspiration and they will stink. Then it is good to remove them. I am not against removing them. It is beautiful to shave the hairs on your legs and give your legs a beautiful shape.

 

Improve upon nature, rather than impose. Make people more aware of their beauty and how to take care of it. Help them in natural ways. Man is the only animal who can go beyond nature, but he should go through nature, not cover nature. So I am not saying that that which is not natural is necessarily ugly.

 

But you must have misunderstood me. You must have heard with your freelance makeup artist's mind.

 

One Negro from South Africa was sent by his family to study at the university. So he went to the director to ask for admission.

 

"Which branch would you like to take?" asked the director.

 

"Can't I have a desk like everybody else?"

 

Now the poor fellow is coming from Africa. His mind can understand only in his own way...!

 

Sex was a big problem on the American nuclear submarine which was at sea for months at a stretch. The captain, however, had solved the problem by buying a lifesize rubber doll which he put to frequent use. In fact, he became so satisfied that his crew became suspicious of his good moods and soon discovered the reason.

 

When the captain was on the bridge, they began to sneak into his cabin to visit the doll.

 

A few months later, when the submarine returned to San Francisco, the captain went along to the shop where he had originally purchased the doll.

 

"Look," he said, "I want to congratulate you guys on the lifelike qualities of that doll I bought. You know, it is so good I even got syphilis."

 

Be natural. Try to improve upon it.

 

It is good in films, on the stage and in theater to have makeup, because people are simply looking at you -- and from a distance. You can deceive them. But when you are living with a person, in love, as a wife, as a husband, as a son, as a father, as a mother -- how can you go on deceiving? The truth will be known -- your false breasts will be discovered!

 

You can deceive others, but how can you deceive people who are close to you? And is it right to deceive them? And if they love you because of your breasts, the moment they discover that the breasts are false -- plastic or rubber -- will their love remain? It will disappear. The whole of humanity has become false. The idea seems to be to deceive, to pretend.

 

I am not against your art, Sobel, but it has its own place. Life is not its place; life should be lived naturally. Yes, if some woman is so ugly, or some man is so ugly that he is disgusting, help him. Then your art can be helpful, because to be disgusting is immoral. When a woman passes by and you feel like vomiting, then certainly Philip Sobel is needed, just to protect people from falling sick!

 

He has written a letter to me in which he says that he is not turned on by any sannyasin, although they are so beautiful. But he was turned on by an Indian woman in the Blue Diamond Hotel who was wearing lipstick and everything that he would like everyone else to wear.

 

My own understanding is that people become attracted only to persons who are unavailable. Now that Indian woman is almost an impossibility for Sobel. She will not be available -- that creates attraction. Whatsoever is impossible is attractive.

 

My sannyasins are very natural people; they are not pretenders. They are open, vulnerable, available. If love knocks on their doors, they will not reject it. But there are many people who are attracted only to the impossible, for the simple reason that they cannot get it. Getting it creates troubles, so it is better to be infatuated with something you can never get.

 

Indian women can be very attractive to Westerners, because they are closed, completely closed, and they are absolutely unavailable. And that very thing makes them so far away, like stars, that you can become interested. In fact it is one of the oldest strategies of women to make themselves as unavailable as possible. That creates infatuation in people, that creates sexuality in people. That keeps people tethered to the lowest kind of sexuality. Hence, people are interested in Indian women, they are interested in film actresses, because they will not be available to them. They will not be able to pay, they will not be able to afford them. They are always attracted to something which is beyond their reach. It gives them a challenge.

 

My effort here is to make this commune sexually free. And when I say sexually free, it has two meanings. In the beginning, people will be easily available to each other, and in the end the very availability will make their minds transcend sex. And that is happening every day.

 

Hundreds of sannyasins write to me, "What has happened? When we came, we were so full of sex, and now all that has disappeared. There seems to be no desire for it. Even if we are interested in somebody, it is more like friendship than any sexual relationship. We love to be together, but there is no need to jump into bed immediately."

 

In fact, there are many sannyasins writing to me that sex has so completely disappeared, that for months or for years they have been celibate. Go and ask a Catholic monk or a Hindu sannyasin: they are trying to be celibate, and their minds are full of sex. We are not trying to be celibate here, but celibacy is happening.

 

Whatsoever is easily available, automatically becomes uninteresting.

 

In the West many people are turning towards homosexuality, lesbianism, for the simple reason that a man seems for another man to be a faraway goal because he is so unnatural; a woman, for a woman, seems to be a faraway goal, it seems so unnatural. A man and woman relationship is natural. So people are turning into homosexuals, lesbians. The reason is that when you make anything difficult, condemn it, repress it, it will become more and more attractive.

 

In my commune nothing is repressed, hence everything, by and by, loses its attraction. One becomes more and more calm and quiet and settled.

 

You say, Sobel, that in New York the women act in a ladylike manner. They have been forced for centuries to act in a ladylike manner. They have been changed from women into ladies. To be a woman is beautiful; to be a lady is ugly -- ugly for the simple reason that acting like a lady is phony, it is snobbish. Acting like a woman is a natural phenomenon. And of course, when you want to act like a lady then you will have to have many kinds of makeups on many planes: physical, psychological, spiritual. You will go on hiding yourself behind curtains. You will never show your real face, your authenticity. You will become just a phony phenomenon.

 

The word "phony" is beautiful. It came into current use when telephones were invented, because when you speak on a telephone you do not sound real. It does not sound exactly like you; it becomes PHONEY. The word "phony" is beautiful -- you are not in direct contact.

 

When I am talking to you, it is a direct contact. When it is a long-distance call, you sound phony, I sound phony. But that's how people are living. They are not allowing closeness; they are creating all kinds of barriers to create distance. Lipstick is a distance, so that lips should not come in direct contact. It gives a phoniness. All makeup is phony.

 

But let me remind you, Sobel, I am not saying that anything that is natural is good. It is not inevitably good. It can be improved upon -- it has to be improved upon. But it should be improved according to nature, not against nature. Nature should be helped to go beyond itself, it should not be repressed.

 

If nature is repressed, you start becoming schizophrenic. You start having double individualities: one that you are; one that you show to others. And you can get very messed up within yourself. Who are you? -- this or that? It is not only a question of having two personalities, you will have to have many personalities. The mother will have one personality towards the child -- she has to pretend to be a mother -- and to the husband she has to pretend to be a wife. And to the lover she has to pretend to be a lover, and so on, so forth. So she will have many personalities around herself, and in the jungle of all these personalities her own individuality will be lost. She will find it very difficult to discover her original face.

 

You say to me, "Makeup can be used to spiritually enhance a woman's natural beauty...."

 

That is sheer nonsense. Spirituality cannot be enhanced by any makeup. Spiritual beauty has nothing to do with anything that can be done from the outside. Spirituality is your original face; it is the discovery of your intrinsic nature. It has not to be tampered with, it has not to be painted, it has not to be arranged. It has no hairs on the legs because there are no legs, no armpits, no lips.

 

Your innermost being is pure consciousness.

 

It needs no makeup.

 

But I understand Sobel's standpoint. People are even pretending there. That's what your so-called saints are doing. They are trying to cultivate spirituality. They are trying to condition themselves in a certain pattern of being holier-than-thou. But the really spiritual person is very simple, simple in the sense that he is in a natural flow; he is in a let-go with existence.

 

I will not allow you, Sobel, to work on any one of my sannyasins -- not at all. It is hard work for me somehow to remove their lipstick, and somehow to make them drop their phoniness, and somehow to help them to discover their original face. I don't want you to do some makeup, and I don't see that you can make any of my sannyasins more beautiful in any way by makeup. The makeup will simply make her somebody else; she will not be herself. She may look like an actress, she may look like a model, but she will not be herself.

 

My whole effort here is to help you to be yourself, to be totally free from personalities. Personality is the false thing that surrounds you, and individuality is the gift of God. It is already there inside you. If you drop your personalities, you will discover it. The moment personalities are removed, it wells up.

 

Rather than doing that, Philip Sobel, I can help you to be natural. If you are fat, your fatness can disappear. Become a little more loving, become a little more natural. Your fatness will disappear. Fat people are people who are in some way repressing their sexuality. Whenever you repress your sexuality, you will start eating more. That's a substitute. You will go on stuffing yourself. Hence, I suspect your Hindu monks -- because they are all so fat.

 

Have you seen Muktananda's guru's picture? If you have not seen it, it is worth seeing. It is a rare treat. I think he is unique -- Nityananda IS unique. You may have seen people with big bellies: Nityananda is a belly with a head! The belly is so big, you cannot say that he has a big belly. You can only say that the belly has a small man. And this is bound to happen to sexually repressed people.

 

But rationalizations.... Muktananda writes in his memoirs that when he was practicing his great SIDDHA YOGA, his KUNDALINI started rising. And what really happened he describes in detail. Not knowing anything about Freud, Jung, Adler, Wilhelm Reich...these Indian so-called gurus are absolutely uncontemporary. They don't know anything that has happened in these last one thousand years. They are at least one thousand years behind. So when he talks about kundalini, he says that his genital organs became so strong, so erect, that they started hurting; that his prick was so erect it started touching his belly button. Kundalini rising...!

 

These fools go on teaching the West that this is the kundalini rising. This is simply repressed sex and nothing else. It is such a simple fact.

 

When the kundalini rises, something just the opposite happens.

 

An African native was bathing in the river by his village when a group of tourists arrived on the scene. They stared in awe at the enormity of his prick.

 

The native looked back at them, embarrassed, and said, "Why is it so amusing? Don't yours shrink in cold water?"

 

When the kundalini rises it is taking a bath in cold water, in ice-cold water...!

 

But Nityananda's disciple cannot be anything else. Whenever you repress your sex, you will start eating more, you will become fat. You will become ugly, you will lose all proportion.

 

Philip Sobel, rather than trying makeup out on any of my sannyasins, allow some of my sannyasins to remove some fat from you. That will be far more enhancing for your spiritual beauty. And if you are not turned on by the beautiful sannyasins here, that simply shows that you have become fixed, fixated on homosexuality. Jews have suffered the longest from homosexuality -- from the days of the Old Testament. Three thousand years of homosexuality -- it has become almost natural to them by now.

 

Let my people help you to become a little bit natural. It is beautiful to be attracted to a woman. It is a little bit berserk to be attracted to a man; something is wrong. It never happens to the wild animals when they are in a natural state. It always happens when you put them in a zoo. In a zoo, animals start behaving homosexually.

 

The reason is that each animal needs a certain space and freedom. There is a categorical imperative: each animal needs a certain space for his territory. When that space is disturbed, he goes crazy. Then he cannot see any difference, who is who -- who is man, who is woman; who is male, who is female. He forgets all that, and he becomes so tense that he wants to release his sexual energy on anybody.

 

Mankind has become too overcrowded; that is creating homosexuality. The earth has become like a zoo. Nobody has space, which is an absolute necessity for growth, for natural growth. So everybody is becoming a little crazy. Homosexuality is not a good sign. It simply shows something has remained retarded in you.

 

When a child is born, he passes through many stages. The first stage is masturbatory, because he loves himself. So every child wants to play with his genital organ; that's a natural development. Then he moves to a second phase, and that is homosexuality. The boys become interested in boys, and the girls become interested in girls. That's how friendships arise, and that's how later on you will always feel that those friendships of your childhood were something superb. Nothing like that happens again. It cannot happen; it was confined to a particular phase of your life. And if things don't go wrong, then homosexuality turns into heterosexuality. This is natural growth.

 

The child first loves himself. He is the center of his world, he does not relate with anybody else. That is dangerous, because if he remains stuck there he will never be able to get on with people. He will remain very egoistic, selfish; he will never be able to share.

 

The second step is: he moves towards the boys if he is a boy, or towards girls if she is a girl, because moving from oneself to the same sex is easier. And then from that point he can move to the opposite sex. The boy starts becoming interested in girls, the girls become interested in the boys -- that's natural growth.

 

These are the three natural phenomena. And the fourth, celibacy, is going beyond nature. That is the most beautiful phenomenon.

 

So I am not saying all that is natural is beautiful, but that the transcendental should come through the natural. The natural should be transformed into the transcendental.

 

Celibacy comes at the fourth stage, when you have lived with the woman or with the man, and you have gone through all the pleasures and all the pains. You have suffered, you have enjoyed, and you have become ripe enough, mature enough, to see that that too is a game -- a beautiful game, very engaging, but a game is a game. Then you start moving beyond it. Then sexuality disappears; then silence descends in you. You relate with people without any sexual idea behind it. Your relating with people then has a pure fragrance of love, and it comes more and more close to prayer.

 

I am all for transcendence, Sobel, and transcendence is not natural. But I am not for artificiality. Your art can be used by my theater group, by my fashion people, by my other artists; you can be of immense help to them. But remember, it is only for the stage. It is showmanship; it has nothing to do with the real life.

 

The real life has to be natural, and the real life has to go one day beyond nature. But nature has to become its foundation -- not against nature, not hiding it, but discovering the innermost core of nature. Then is the transcendence, and that is the most beautiful experience. It beautifies you, your body, your mind, your soul. It not only beautifies you, it beautifies even people who come in contact with you. This beauty belongs to the beyond; it is called grace. Something descends from the above and floods you.

 

- Osho, "Come, Come, Yet Again Come, #6, Q1"