Question 3

Osho,

Do i rightly understand you that if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either? your seeming contradictions on love confuse me.

 

 

Nellie, confusion is my way of working on you. I confuse you so that clarity becomes possible. People are very much certain, they already think they know. And because of their certainty they are closed. If you already know, then there is no need to seek and search. For what? If you already know, then you can keep your doors and windows closed.

People are much too certain, and that is a great problem. They have to be made uncertain again, they have to be shaken in their certainties; their dogmas and creeds have to be taken away. Hence confusion arises. What is confusion? -- when you start losing grip on your old certainty. You were feeling that you know, and suddenly you start feeling that you don't know. You were thinking you have the answer, and suddenly you become aware that the question is there and the answer was just imposed.

It happens to every new disciple here -- and Nellie is a new sannyasin; just the other day she has become a sannyasin. For a few days you will become more and more confused. It is a good sign, it means you are listening to me.

There are a few people who go on listening to me and are never confused. That simply means they have not heard; their ears are full of wax, they are deaf. There are people who not only don't become confused, but listening to me they become even more certain. That means they have heard something else that was not said.

Two moving-men were struggling with a big crate in a doorway. They pushed and tugged until they were exhausted but it would not move.

Finally, the man on the outside said, "We had better give up, we will never get it in."

The fellow on the inside said "What do you mean, get it in? I thought you were trying to get it out!"

If you become confused by listening to me, that means you have heard me. The more intelligent you are, the more confused you will become. And I use contradiction as a technique, I go on contradicting myself.

Why do I contradict myself? I am not teaching a philosophy here. The philosopher has to be very consistent -- flawless, logical, rational, always ready to argue and prove his statements. I am not a philosopher. I am not here giving you a consistent dogma to which you can cling. My whole effort is to give you a no-mind.

Be perfectly clear about it. My effort is not to strengthen a certain mind, my effort is just the opposite of it: to give you a state of no-mind -- a state which has no knowledge, a state which functions from not knowing, a state of innocence.

I use contradiction as a device. I say one thing, out of your old habit you cling to it; the next day I have to contradict it. When I contradict it you have to drop it. But you may start clinging to the new thing that I have said; I will have to contradict it again.

This will go on, you will go on clinging to this, to that. One day suddenly you will become aware what is happening. I don't allow you any certainty, nothing to cling to. And if I contradict, what is the point of clinging at all? Then why not wait? I will contradict, and then you will have to leave it, and it is painful. Once you cling to a thing and then you have to leave it, it is painful, it creates anxiety.

So those who have listened to me for a long time, listen simply. They simply listen, they don't cling. They know perfectly well, now that they are aware of the game, that tomorrow I will contradict. So why carry it for twenty-four hours? The pain of carrying the weight, and then the pain of dropping it... slowly slowly it dawns in your awareness that there is no need to cling; this man contradicts. This man is consistently inconsistent.

Once you have understood that, you listen to me as one listens to music. You listen to me as one listens to the wind passing through the pine trees, you listen to me as one listens to the birds singing in the morning. You don't say to the cuckoo, "Yesterday your song was different," and you don't go to the roseflower and say, "Last season the flowers were bigger" -- or smaller -- "why are you contradicting yourself?"

You don't say to the poet, "In one of your poems you said this, and in another poem you have said something else." You don't expect a poet to be consistent, so you don't ask. Poetry is not a theory, it is not a syllogism, it is a song.

I am not a philosopher. Always remember that I am a poet, not a philosopher. Remember always that I am not a missionary, but a musician playing on the harp of your heart. Songs will go on changing... you need not cling to anything, then there will be no confusion at all.

The people who are always hankering for consistency can never enter into the mystery of life. Consistency is something manmade, it is arbitrary. Existence is not consistent. And now even physicists agree with the poets and the mystics.

You must be aware that modern physics believes in the theory of uncertainty; modern physics believes in the illogical behavior of atoms, of the unpredictability of the behavior of electrons. It was such a shock to the modern physicists, because they had always believed that matter behaves consistently. The whole foundation of science has been shaken; these twenty years, it has been such a shock. People have not yet become aware of it, because the theories are so complicated and so subtle that they will never become part of common knowledge. And they are so against common sense -- they look more like fairy tales, stories written for children.

The electrons jump from one spot to another, and between the two they don't exist. Now, can it be believed? An electron jumping from spot a to spot b, and between the two he is not? And I am using "he" knowingly, deliberately, because you cannot use "it" any more. A great mystery... they call it a quantum leap. A special word has been coined -- quantum, because in the middle it is not found.

It is as if from New York you come to Poona, but in the space between the two you are not. You simply disappear from New York and you appear in Poona. Now there is a possibility some day.... Right now it is science fiction, but the possibility is there that one day it may happen that there will be no need to take long journeys, wasting time. Time has limitations.

For example, if you want to go to the nearest star it will take four years -- the nearest star! And that too only if you go with the speed of light. And it is immense, the speed of light: one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. If you go at this speed, which seems almost impossible, then it will take four years to reach the closest star.

And then there are stars which are a hundred years, two hundred, one thousand, two thousand, one million, two million years away. There are stars so far away that we have not been able to detect them yet.

How can journeys be made to faraway stars? The only possibility is if one day we manage to do what the electron is already managing to do... a machine in which you enter here and you disappear, and another machine on the star, one million years away, and you appear there. Between the two, no traveling time is lost: you simply dematerialize here and you materialize somewhere else. It is a possibility. If the electron can do it, why not man? Man is nothing but millions and millions of electrons, so the possibility is there.

Even to think of it seems to be mind-blowing. But modem physics says electrons are behaving in a very mysterious way -- illogical, unpredictable, confusing.

I am not a philosopher who is trying to make a system of thought. I am a mystic who is trying to convey the mysteries that have become available to me. I will confuse you.

It is like a friend of mine who is a jigsaw puzzle fiend. One day his kids were playing with his puzzles and they put his Marilyn Monroe puzzle back in the same box with his Revolutionary War puzzle.

I asked him how he made out with things all mixed up.

"Oh," he said, "I did all right. But I never realized that George Washington had such sexy legs."

Life is a very mixed puzzle. Whatsoever you make out of it is going to be arbitrary, you cannot figure it out in reality. My suggestion to my sannyasins is to forget all about figuring out what it is. Rather, live it; rather, enjoy it! Don't analyze it, celebrate it.

So, Nellie, you will have to put up with me, you will have to tolerate my contradictions. They appear as contradictions only to you. From my side I am simply talking mysteries, and mysteries are bound to be illogical. But your question is relevant and significant.

You ask: "Do I rightly understand you that even if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either?"

Yes, it will not be satisfying either. In fact, it will create in you the greatest discontent that you have ever felt, because it will make you aware how much is possible. It will make you aware of the tremendous moment of that orgasmic unity, of that spiritual transmutation. But it will remain only momentary. With the outer, nothing can become permanent. And once the moment is gone, the higher was the peak, the lower will be the valley, and you will fall deep down in darkness.

But it will make you aware of one thing, that if male and female energy can have a meeting which is nontemporal, then there will be eternal contentment.

How to manage it? Out of this question the whole science of Tantra was born. How to do it? It can be done. It cannot be done with the beloved outside -- it cannot be done without the beloved outside, remember that too, because the first glimpse comes from the beloved outside. It is only a glimpse, but with it comes a new vision that, deep down inside yourself, there are both the energies present -- male and female.

Man is bisexual -- every man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then the female part is on top and the male part is hidden behind, and vice versa. Once you have become aware of this, then a new work starts: your inner woman and inner man can have a meeting and that meeting can remain absolute. There is no need to come back from the peak. But the first vision comes from the outer.

Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer man, as part of inner work. Once you have become aware that you have a woman inside you or a man inside you, then the work takes on a totally new quality, it starts moving in a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside; you have to allow your inner woman and man to meet.

In India we have had that concept for at least five thousand years. You may not have seen the statues of Shiva as ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture of everybody's being, inner being. You must have seen shivalinga: it symbolizes the male. But shivalinga is placed in the female sexual organ, it is not alone; they are together. That again represents the inner duality, the inner polarity, but the polarity can meet and merge.

With the outer, the merger will be only for the moment. Then great frustration and great misery... and the higher the moment, the deeper will be the darkness that follows it. But the meeting can happen inwardly.

First learn that the peak is possible, and then feel grateful to the woman who has given you the peak, feel grateful to the man. Tantra worships the woman as the goddess and the man as the god. Any woman who helps you to attain to this vision is a goddess, any man that helps you to attain to this vision is a god. Love becomes sacred because it gives you the first glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work starts. You have worked without, now you have to work within.

Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer, the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The beginning has to be always from the without; it is because we are there, so we have to start from the place we are and then move inwards. When the inner man and woman have met and melted, and when you are no more divided inside, you have become one -- integrated, crystallized, one -- you have attained. This is enlightenment.

But right now everything is upside down. You have completely forgotten the inner; the outer has become your whole life. This is as if somebody is standing on his head and has forgotten completely how to stand on his feet again. Now, standing on your head your life will be really difficult. If you want to go somewhere, if you want to do something, everything will become very very difficult, almost impossible.

And that is what is happening. People are upside down, because the without has become more important than the within. The without has become all-important, and the within is completely ignored, forgotten.

The real treasure is within. From the without, you can get only hints of the inner treasure; from the without, only arrows pointing to the innermost core of your being; from without, only milestones. But don't cling to a milestone, and don't think that this is the goal and you have arrived.

Remember that the ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than heart. Power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.

Larry went to an Italian restaurant, and just as the waiter was about to serve, he tripped and dumped a whole bowl of minestrone right in Larry's lap.

Was Larry angry? Was he even slightly ruffled?

He simply looked up with great dignity and disdain and said, "Waiter, I believe there is a soup in my fly."

Things are completely upside down. The fly is not in the soup, the soup is in the fly. And that's why there is so much misery. Everybody seems to be simply running after shadows, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to happen, that nothing is ever going to happen, but what else to do? Standing by the side of the road when everybody is rushing looks silly. It is better to go on rushing with the crowd.

Let this sink deep in your heart: that unless the within becomes more important than the without, you are living a very abnormal life. The normal person is one whose within is the source of everything that he is doing. The without is only a means, the within is the end.

The love affair that you have with a woman or a man is a means to the end. The end is having a love affair with your inner woman or inner man. The outer has to be used as a learning situation; it is a great opportunity.

I am not against the outer love affair, I am all for it, because without it you will never become aware of the inner. But remember, don't get stuck in the outer.

 

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, Chapter #26, Q3"