Question 3 :

Beloved Osho,

In these days I feel a little plant growing inside of me, which is still very delicate and fragile. I feel like I have to take immense care of this little flower just starting to open, not to water it too much, nor too little. Nor to expose it too much to the wind. My Beloved Osho, please tell me how to take care of this little plant, since in this moment it would still be very easy for me to destroy it.

 

 

Deva Premal, it is good news that you are feeling a little plant growing inside you. Naturally it will be, in the beginning, very delicate and very fragile. And your feeling is right, that you “have to take immense care of this little flower just starting to open, not to water it too much, nor too little, nor to expose it too much to the wind.”

 

All that is needed are three things. When your consciousness starts growing, you need more meditation. And there is no limit to meditation, so you need not be worried that meditation can be too much and can kill the flower. Meditation is always too little, because there is always too much ahead of you, and meditation will make the fragile and delicate flower more and more strong. You need a silent being.

 

Caring too much can be dangerous, it can become an anxiety. Being worried too much that you should water less or you should water more, that you may expose it to the winds, to the sun, to the rain too much or too little… caring can become a tremendous turmoil in your being, and your very caring can destroy the flower. Instead of caring, you need a more silent, more conscious, more peaceful being, which will give a strength to something new that is growing in you.

 

Secondly, care is not enough; love is needed. Care is more a technical word; love is totally different. Care needs a certain education. Care is just like a nurse who knows what has to be done, what is right to be done — but there is no love in her heart, she functions technically. Love is more like a mother, who may not know the art of nursing, but she need not know. Love is enough unto itself. Love is a mysterious phenomenon; it knows what is needed. It simply knows without any education.

 

So what you need is meditation, love, and the third thing — which you may not have thought of at all — a joyous life, because all that is great in you only grows when joy is showering on it. It grows only when you are in a space of blissfulness, when there is laughter, there is song and there is dance.

 

And I know perfectly your fear. You say, “Please tell me how to take care of this little plant.” I will not say how to take care, because I don’t want you to become a nurse. I want you to become a mother. I want you to be love, not technical knowledge, because these flowers don’t need technical knowledge.

 

You are afraid, “since in this moment, it would still be very easy for me to destroy it.” That danger is very real. When something inside you grows it brings new responsibilities, because now you need more meditation, you need more love, you need more joy. This flower inside you can become a burden to you if you don’t understand the language of meditation, the language of love, the language of blissfulness. You can destroy the flower by your own hands, just to get rid of the responsibility. But this flower is not only responsibility: it is also your growth, your maturity. This flower is not something separate from you. It is your own being. To destroy it means to commit suicide.

 

But your question is more concerned about the technicalities of care, and I would like you to change the focus. Inner growth does not need any technical knowledge, any technical expertise. All that it needs is very simple and very joyful, and it is not a burden. Meditation will make you lighter, less loaded with all kinds of rubbish. Love will also give you new skies, new freedoms. Blissfulness will give you wings to move into those new skies and new spaces.

 

But the question carries the implication that for centuries in the West the mind has become technically oriented. It has created great technology, great science, but it has destroyed man completely. The house is full of all kinds of gadgets, just the master of the house has disappeared, is lost in the gadgets.

 

The East has never been technically oriented; it is more concerned with values than with techniques. For example, in the East if somebody is sick, then the wife will not be ready for her husband or her lover to be taken care of by a nurse. It simply will not come to her mind. This is the time when she is needed, and if love cannot heal, then no other technique is going to heal. It is not a question of expertise.

 

In the West the same situation will have a totally different response. The wife or the husband would like to call a nurse to take care. And he seems, or she seems, to be more logical because the nurse is trained in taking care; She knows the know-how.

 

But in the East it is almost inconceivable that love can be replaced by expertise of any kind. Expertise can be called in only when there is no love, when the wife feels it is a burden and it is a good chance to get rid of this fellow… call a nurse. And she has good reason; every logic is in her support. The doctor will support her, that this is a very loving decision. But the reality is just the opposite; it is not a loving decision.

 

So don’t ask me about how to take care. Ask me how to be more meditative, how to be more loving, how to be more joyful, because that which is growing within you needs nourishment — and your meditation will give it nourishment, your joy will give it warmth, your love will give it dignity.

 

A man, narrowly reared by a widowed mother, got married. He telephoned back to his mother from the honeymoon hotel to say that he knew there was something he had to do in bed, but he did not know what it was.

 

“Why,” said his mother, “you put your… eh, that is, you put the hardest part of yourself in the place where your wife wee-wees.”

 

At midnight the hotel rang the fire brigade for help. “We have got a young man with his head jammed in a chamber pot.”

 

Avoid technical knowledge!

 

- Osho, “The Golden Future, #1, Q3”