Question 1:

Osho,

Is the concept of soulmates more useful than marriage?

 

 

Prem Pragyan, one of the most significant things in man"s life has been the love affair. Birth is not in your hands, death is not in your hands; and these are the only three great things in life: birth, love, and death. Only love is in your hands, only love gives you the freedom and dignity of being a human being; otherwise, birth and death happen just like any other animal, or any tree. Love should be kept as pure and unpolluted as possible.

 

You are asking, "Is the concept of soulmates more useful than marriage?" Concepts don't matter.

 

What matters is your understanding. You can change the word "marriage" to the word "soulmates", but you are the same. You will make the same hell out of soulmates as you have been making out of marriage - nothing has changed, only the word, the label. Don't believe in labels too much.

 

Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the ABC of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell.

 

Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.

 

And this has been man"s stupidity - a very ancient one: whenever he gets into difficulty, he changes the word. Change the word "marriage" into "soulmates", but don't change yourself. And you are the problem, not the word; any word will do. A rose is a rose is a rose ... you can call it by any name.

 

You are asking to change the concept, you are not asking to change yourself.

 

Marriage has failed because you could not rise to the standard that you were expecting of marriage, of the concept of marriage. You were brutal, you were barbarous, you were full of jealousies, you were full of lust; you had never known really what love is. In the name of love, you tried everything which is just the opposite of love: possessiveness, domination, power.

 

Marriage has become a battlefield where two persons are fighting for supremacy. Of course, the man has his own way: rough and more primitive. The woman has her own way: feminine, softer, a little more civilized, more subdued. But the situation is the same. Now psychologists are talking about marriage as an intimate enmity. And that"s what it has proved to be. Two enemies are living together pretending to be in love, expecting the other to give love; and the same is being expected by the other. Nobody is ready to give - nobody has it. How can you give love if you don't have it?

 

And when you feel that love is not coming towards you ... and both feel the same: a great frustration and an idea, a suspicion that perhaps the other has deceived you. Before the marriage both were using beautiful words, sweet nothings; both were bringing their best to attract the other, to catch hold of the other. And once they are married, and the law has entered in, and society has granted you freedom to live together, soon the honeymoon is over. Even before coming back from the honeymoon it is over ... all is finished because you have come to know the other in their total wholeness, which is ugly.

 

The facade, the mask that they were wearing before the marriage has slipped. You cannot hold it for twenty-four hours. When you live with someone, you have to come down from your hypocrisies and be whatever you are - and you know that you are not the person you pretend to be. The same is true about the other. And then it becomes a struggle to possess the woman, to possess the man.

 

The only significant symptom of love is, it never possesses; on the contrary, it gives freedom. It is happy in the happiness of the other. It does not beg; it is not a beggar. It is an emperor. It gives, and it gives unconditionally.

 

But in actual life, what we have been doing for centuries is asking the other to give; and the other is also asking you to give. And both are beggars, their bowls are empty; they don't have anything to give. It becomes a struggle, a warfare.

 

You can change the concept from marriage to soulmates, but what about you? What about the people who will become soulmates? If they are the same people who were becoming a couple in a marriage, nothing will change.

 

My suggestion is, neither marriage is needed nor soulmates are needed - just friendliness is enough. You don't know anything about soul, how can you become a soulmate?

 

If you can become just friendly with each other, that is more than can be expected from the present man. If you can be understanding of each other"s frailties, weaknesses, that is more than can be expected.

 

If you can drop the old superstitions, that once a woman or a man loves you, they have to love you forever ... Love is very fragile. It is just like a flower: beautiful, but very delicate. In the morning it blossoms; by the evening it is gone, its petals are scattered. That was a beauty in the morning; by the evening it has become a grave. Life is a changing, continuously changing phenomenon.

 

When I say a great understanding is needed, the old idea of permanent relationship under any concept has to be dropped. You have to live moment to moment, you have to live each moment as if it is the last moment. So don't waste it in quarreling, in nagging or in fighting. Perhaps you will not find the next moment even for an apology.

 

One of the mystics, Sarmad, used to tell his disciples every night, "We are going to sleep for the last time. Please forgive me. As a master I may have been hard to you. I had to be because I loved you and I wanted a transformation to happen. And I don't know whether in the morning I will wake up again, so I"m asking for your forgiveness." Each night he would go to bed as if it was the last night - and one day it is going to be true, one night will be the last night and you will never wake up again.

 

And each morning he would wake up as if it was a new beginning; he had accepted death in the night before, now this was a rebirth. He looks tremendously grateful towards existence: one day more to live, one day more the sun, the wind, the trees, the birds, one day more of friends, one day more of love. But not more than that.

 

The very idea of having a permanent, lifelong relationship helps you to postpone that which is essential and go on doing things which are absolutely nonessential; not only nonessential but idiotic.

 

People are fighting about such small things that they themselves, in their saner moments, laugh about it. I have heard about a couple who were getting married in the government registrar"s office. The man signed - the woman had signed before him. As she saw the man"s signature, she immediately told the registrar, "I want a divorce." The registrar said, "What has happened? You are getting married, you have just signed the marriage papers."

 

She said, "Yes, I have signed but things have gone sour already. Just look at the paper. I have signed in small letters and he has signed in such big letters, to show me who he is. This is the beginning of trouble - I don't want to get into it." The bigger letters already declare the supremacy, superiority of the man.

 

You can change words - I would like to change your consciousness.

 

The idea of permanent relationship was wrong, but it has been imposed on you by poets, by priests, by everybody. And I am not saying that two persons cannot live in deep friendship for their whole life. They can, but it should not be a conditioning, but just a flowering of friendship, open. Any day one partner can say, "I am grateful for all the beautiful moments you have given to me, but now our paths separate. In sadness ... but I will remember you always. I don't want life with you to create a hell. Then all that was beautiful will be destroyed, even the memory of it will be destroyed. Just a friendliness is enough."

 

My vision of a new society is that of small communes, not of big cities. A commune consisting of not more than five thousand people, so that people can know each other very easily. And the commune should take the whole responsibility for the children, and nobody should be allowed to have children unless the commune needs them. That decision will be of the commune. And now all scientific techniques are available. The society can decide what it needs - engineers, doctors, scientists, poets, mystics. Now it is scientifically possible to choose what kind of a child you are going to give birth to, you just have to drop your old superstition that the child has to be yours.

 

Just as you have blood banks, you should have sperm banks in every hospital. And scientists are able now to figure out about every living sperm; they can read it, what it is going to be. Up to now we have lived a very accidental life, and perhaps the world is so full of stupid and retarded people because of that.

 

When two persons make love, the man releases in one lovemaking almost a million living sperm, and a great politics starts because they all run fast to reach the mother"s egg. Only one will be able to enter. The mother"s egg is made in such a way that it remains open until a living male sperm has entered it. The moment the sperm enters, it closes. It rarely happens that two cells reach simultaneously - that"s why twins are born - or sometimes three, or sometimes four; but these are exceptions.

 

That small passage is a long journey for the small sperm. According to its size it is almost two miles long, and a great struggle ... a million people trying to reach to become the president! My understanding is that the wiser ones will stand to the side and let the idiots go ahead.

 

Rabindranath was the thirteenth child of his parents. If there had been birth control, Rabindranath would not have ever been born. And even without birth control there are very few people who produce thirteen children. If the parents had stopped at one dozen, which would have been more logical and a more rounded figure, Rabindranath would have been out of the game, you would never have heard of that man and his greatness.

 

But science has become able, within these last ten years, to read the whole future of a single sperm: whether it is going to become a scientist, whether it is going to become a poet or a doctor or a philosopher or a mystic or a dancer or a musician. Its potential can be read. Its life pattern, in minute detail, can be read: whether it will be a healthy child or a sick child, whether it will die after six months or after a hundred years. To go on doing the old accidental thing and producing children, not knowing whom you are bringing into the world - whether you are giving birth to an Adolf Hitler or a Benito Mussolini or a Joseph Stalin or a Ronald Reagan ... you don't have any idea. It is a very blind game.

 

Love should be only of friendship. And if society has a need and the medical profession proves your wife to be the right vehicle for bringing a child into the world, then from their sperm bank they can find the right sperm and inject it. You can go on making love; that is a separate affair.

 

There has been the pill, but it was not a hundred percent foolproof. Sometimes you are not thinking that you are going to make love and you don't take the pill, and suddenly your lover turns up and you take the risk. They chance it - it is not always that one becomes pregnant. Now they have come up with two other pills. One is to be taken after you have made love - that is a hundred percent effective - and for the second one the woman is not needed, just the man can take a pill. They have come up with a pill for men, too. Then the woman need not take any pill. Your love becomes pure fun, pure joy, without any responsibility and burden.

 

And the woman should be educated, should be given all the opportunities to become an independent individual, financially and in every other respect, so that she is no longer dependent on you. An independent woman and an independent man, just out of friendship feel good to be with each other.

 

As long as they feel good they remain together. The moment they feel things are going wrong, there is no need to prolong the affair. They can say good bye with gratitude towards each other. No law is needed, no government permission, no social sanction is needed - because who are these people to interfere in your life?

 

Yes, society can only have a concern about the children because that is going to be the future society. Society cannot allow you to produce Adolf Hitlers. But society has not done anything to prevent it. And this can be prevented.

 

There is no need of calling it marriage or soulmates or any great words ... just hot air! Use simple words. You feel friendly towards someone and you feel joyous to be with the person. As long as you feel joyous it is valid. The moment trouble arises, you can separate. Marriage has created so much ugliness in the world, that you cannot conceive.

 

First, it has given accidental generations which are not produced out of understanding, out of a scientific approach, but just like animals, under the force, the blind force of biology; otherwise we can have so many beautiful people around. And the world does not consist only of a beautiful moon and beautiful stars, its greatest beauty is a beautiful person: physically, mentally, spiritually.

 

The by-products of marriage have been very strange. All religions are against prostitutes, but they are a by-product of marriage. In fact, prostitutes are a safety measure for marriage to remain, because by nature neither man is monogamous nor woman is monogamous. Monogamy is a kind of bondage, imprisonment. Why should you be so one-dimensional when life has given you all the opportunities of multidimensionality? No one can say whether tomorrow you may come across a woman and you may fall in love.

 

The society in a subtle way approves of prostitutes. It is an arrangement for men, when they get bored with their wives. And wives also have been accepting, down the ages, the existence of the prostitute because they know the prostitute is only a commodity, she is not a competitor. The husband may go there for one day, that"s all. She becomes more worried when the husband falls in love with some woman; then there is competition. With the prostitute there is no competition.

 

Prostitutes used to come to rich houses to dance and to give pleasure to the rich people, and it was accepted. The wife was not at all disturbed by it - because she is only a purchased woman, she will be gone tomorrow. It is not going to be a constant problem for her. But the woman was completely confined in monogamy. It is only just now, because of the women"s liberation movement in Europe and in America, that male prostitutes have become available. Now woman can also have the same opportunity that man has enjoyed for thousands of years. It is strange and ugly, but because we are going against nature we have to find some way to satisfy nature.

 

Polygamy is the nature of man and woman both, because polygamy is multidimensional, it is a freedom. If today I love someone and tomorrow I find someone who suits me more, then why should I be prevented? If tomorrow I find someone who is more harmonious with me, then why should I be prevented and kept in bondage? And of course, in this bondage I will be suffering and it will be a torture, and I will take revenge on the poor woman who has done nothing to me.

 

So one thing: the old superstition that love is monogamous has to be dropped - it is not. There is every evidence against it.

 

Secondly, the old superstition that love has to be permanent, only then is it true, is absolutely wrong.

 

If a roseflower is not permanent, do you think it is not real? And if you are so much interested in permanency, then you can have only plastic flowers, not real roses. Those plastic flowers don't die because they don't have any life, they are already dead. Love is a very living phenomenon. In fact, life comes to its highest peak in love.

 

Hence, there is every possibility that what has been today a great blessing, tomorrow may not be there. It is a breeze that comes and goes. We have to accept nature as it is. To create something unnatural is going to create perversions.

 

"I locked my husband out of the house last week for playing around with other women," confessed the attractive young housewife. "And now he wants me to take him back. What should I do, Father?"

 

"You must take him back, it is your Christian duty," replied the priest, patting her hand. "But," he added as his grip tightened, "how would you like to get even with the bastard?"

 

After all, your priest is also a human being. You have forced him into celibacy, so he has to find ways ... Fifty percent of the monks in a Christian monastery in Ethos have declared that they are homosexuals and they are going to remain homosexuals. You will be surprised to know that the archbishop of England has been considering a petition from many cardinals that homosexuality should be allowed, it is not against celibacy. A great idea!

 

The idea is that celibacy is only against heterosexual relationships. Homosexual relationship is not the question; it does not break the vow of celibacy. These poor priests, they are hung up in an unnatural situation. Naturally, they have to find some way through the back door. And they are enforcing unnaturalness on other people.

 

I have heard about a party of very super-rich people ... because the more rich you become, the more open you become with your perversions. You can afford it. The poor man will be condemned and crushed, will lose his job, but who can raise a finger against the super-rich? They have their private theaters in their own homes, where they can see blue movies. For them, special movies are created, absolutely ugly, of sex orgies.

 

There was a party of very super-rich people and they were playing a game, and the archbishop of the country was also invited. The game was so strange that the archbishop said, "I feel that I should retire. I cannot join in the game." He had come a little late so he had no idea that the game had already been going on. The game was that the lights would be turned off and all the men would stand naked and the women would find out, by touching their genitals, who the person was. If they can guess the right name, then they have the right to have the night with the person.

 

The archbishop said, "This goes against my religious ideology and I cannot participate." But the people laughed. They said, "Don't be a hypocrite, the game has been going on and your name has been proposed three times. All the women seem to know you perfectly well, so don't feel shy."

 

All these uglinesses are by-products.

 

Two little old ladies were chatting over the back yard fence. The first one boasted, "I went out with old man Cane last night and I had to slap him twice."

 

"To stop him?" asked the friend.

 

"No," she giggled, "to start him up."

 

He must be too old, maybe falling asleep. She had to slap him so he came to his senses ... what is he doing?

 

If you look at the back doors, it is a very hilarious situation. Marriage has proved ugly because it has perverted people into homosexuality, into sodomy, into all kinds of perversions, into pornography. It has given them the opportunity to make women slaves. Half of the population of the world has been deprived of all kinds of spiritual growth.

 

Women have asked again and again why there are not women as great as Gautam Buddha or Jesus or Zarathustra or Lao Tzu. Man has not allowed women even to be educated. He has not allowed women to have any financial independence. He has not allowed the woman free movement in society. At the most she can go to church. The only man available to her is the priest.

 

How can the woman become a Gautam Buddha? Gautam Buddhas don't grow on trees; neither they drop from the sky suddenly! They need roots in the earth and they need nourishment to grow.

 

The woman, in the past particularly, has been continually kept pregnant. She has been used like a factory for reproduction. And it was a biological necessity, because out of ten children, nine were dying and only one was surviving. So if you needed a few children, the wife had to be continually pregnant. There was no time for her to be a Gautam Buddha. She was not even accepted as equal to man.

 

Marriage has created the family: the unit of the society, the unit of the nation. Unless the family disappears, nations cannot disappear. And without the disappearance of nations, wars will continue, man will continue to butcher man. To me, marriage is one of the things that needs to be immediately abolished. With marriage abolished, prostitution will disappear. And everybody is miserable - husbands are miserable, wives are miserable.

 

I have been staying with thousands of families - everybody is miserable. And because I have been loved by so many people, the husband could open his heart to me, the wife could open her heart to me. Both are beautiful people, but together they are continuously at war. Every house has become a battlefield. And children are growing in this poisonous atmosphere. They will learn the same techniques and strategies and they will repeat them.

 

That"s how every generation goes on giving its diseases to the new generation. Generations change, diseases have become permanent. Now we have to drop the diseases, so that the future humanity can be free from all this ugliness.

 

Don't just give it a new name, change it from the very foundations.

 

Three young men arrived at the pearly gates together and St. Peter asked, "How did three healthy men like you die so soon?"

 

"Well," said the first, "it happened like this: I came home from work early one day and found my wife stark naked in bed, the bedcovers all a mess. I saw her glance at the open window, and so I looked out and saw a man running across the front yard. I raced into the kitchen, picked up the fridge, carried it back to the bedroom and hurled it out of the window at the running man. But unfortunately the effort was too much for me and I died."

 

"What about you?" St. Peter said to the second man.

 

"Well," he replied, "I don't know what the hell happened. I was late for an appointment so I ran out of my groundfloor apartment and some idiot dropped a fridge on my head and I died."

 

"And what about you?" said St. Peter to the third man.

 

"Well, Pete," said the man shyly, "it all started when I was in the fridge."

 

This is going on .... It is a hilarious situation.

 

Before she left her friend"s house one evening, aunt Emma was warned that a sex maniac was loose in the neighborhood. When she returned to her apartment, she cautiously looked under the bed, in her closet, and behind her curtains. Then Emma switched on the light.

 

"Well," she sighed, "he is not here, damn it!"

 

-Osho, "The New Dawn, #20, Q1"