Question 1:

Osho,

I am becoming aware more and more how much i focus on the other, whether it is a friend, a lover, a mountain, or music. one thing remains always the same: the other is a longing within me because without the other, i can never feel complete, reconciled. beloved master, who is the other? is it imaginary?

 

Surabhi, the other is one of the most significant questions to be solved in life. Millions of people with great intelligence have escaped from life, renounced life, just because they could not solve the problem of the other - and these were the giants of humanity.

Even in the twentieth century, a man like Jean Paul Sartre could say, "The other is hell." This assertion is an acceptance of failure: you have not been able to solve the problem; now you are calling names - "the other is hell." But who are you? - because for others, you are the other.

First see the real situation, because any solution that is going to work out has to arise out of the real. The other has become a problem - particularly, the more intimate the relationship is, the more problematic it is. The husband and wife, the children and the parents, the students and the teachers... wherever there are two wings, rather than having a beautiful flight under the stars, your wings are fighting with each other.

A man is a failure if he has not come to dissolve the other completely into himself or, in other words, dissolve himself into the other completely. But it has to be complete, entire, total.... If this is not the situation, then people are going to suffer in a hundred and one ways, because they are connected with so many others. And each 'other' is a problem for the simple reason that everybody is trying to dominate everybody else.

We have been raised as politicians. We have been filled with ambitions, desires - to possess, to become powerful, to have as much money as you desire, as you dream of. These are the problems, not the other - the other only reflects your problems because he's so intimate and close by.

The husband, if he is a human being, should stop calling himself a "husband." A wife, if she understands, should stop calling herself a "wife." More than friendship, you are bound to fall into a ditch; more than friendship, it becomes a bondage. Then both are fighting tooth and nail, directly and indirectly, with a single aim: to dominate the other, to reduce the other to the status of second.

It is not possible. If it were possible, people would have solved the problem - although the solution would not have brought blessings. It would have stopped the continuous fight for monopoloy - although even if the fight stops, you will not be blissful. You will be almost dead, sad. At least before, there were excuses for your fight; now even those excuses are gone.

The very word 'husband' is ugly; it means a farmer. It was thought that the man is the farmer and the woman is the earth, so he sows his seeds in the woman and she goes on reproducing. He created the myth that he is the real producer, the farmer; and he pushed the woman - who is the real creative force - to a status that is almost to the point where it becomes inhuman and starts hurting.

In many countries, the woman has never been given voting rights. In many countries, the woman is not accepted as having a soul; she is just to serve nature. In almost all countries, the woman is not expected to enter certain temples, certain sacred holy places, because she is unholy.

For thousands of years continuously, the woman has been crippled, crushed, exploited - almost murdered. And yet, she is still the backbone of humanity. Without her, there is no humanity. Without man, there is a possibility for humanity to exist, because the function of man biologically is negligible.

It is the function of a doctor's syringe. And the syringe can do it more hygienically than you could ever do it.

This situation for thousands of years has gathered too much revolt in the unconscious of the woman.

That revolt comes out in small matters - in nagging, in fighting. The matters are almost immaterial, and people are continuously fighting for them. It seems the fighting is material. They need any excuse to fight, it doesn't matter what the excuse is.

It is a painful stage, because half of humanity is not even accepted as human.

The remaining half cannot be free, either.

One Sufi mystic, Junnaid, was going to the mosque with his disciples. On the road, they saw a man who was trying to move his cow. It was apparent, clear that the man was absolutely new at the job. He was doing hard work, pulling the cow with the rope, but the cow was stronger. She was backwards. He would manage somehow to pull her one foot, and she would back up two feet.

Junnaid and his disciples stood there... because that was the method of Junnaid, to use actual situations in life for teaching. He said, "This man has done no harm to the cow. He is taking her home, where food will be ready, shelter will be ready; a cozier, warmer place will be ready - but why is the cow reluctant? Why is she feeling annoyed, irritated, humiliated? Rather than going home with him, she's FIGHTING!"

Junnaid said this to his disciples and the servant who was taking the cow was also listening. Junnaid said, "There is an art that, even in the smallest job like this, is needed. This man has good intentions but has no understanding of how the mind of man or animals functions. He's creating a reaction.

He's making the cow an enemy."

He said to the man: "This is not the way. You are new; you just stand aside and I will show you what has to be done."

And he went into his house, brought out a bundle of green grass, and just walked ahead of the cow - not even a rope on the neck of the cow. He simply walked. Sometimes he went slowly, and when the cow would come too close he would go fast, almost running. The cow would start running.

When he came back, he said, "This is the situation of every human being. Society has created so many reactionary attitudes that he goes on doing things which are harmful to himself, and he goes on doing them the wrong way."

Each relationship first has to be based not on the choice of the parents, not by the situation of the stars when you were born, not by the lines of your hand... and there is no writing on your forehead!

You come into the world completely clean, unburdened, ready to learn. You come with a self-respect.

If your self-respect is crushed, your whole joy in learning and living and loving disappears.

Women have lost the joy of life, and man is responsible for it. And he has already suffered, because if the woman is miserable, in suffering, the man cannot be blissful - it is impossible.

The woman is spread all over the house; she is the home. Without her, you cannot call it home, it remains only a house. It is the woman, with her song and dance and love, who transforms the quality of the house. From a material thing, it becomes something romantic, something poetic, something spiritual. It becomes, if everything goes right, a Kaaba, a Mecca, a holy land.

But things start going wrong. Perhaps they are wrong from the very beginning. Already when you meet a woman, you are wrong; the woman is wrong - both have been taught all kinds of superstitions and stupidities. Both have lived in a family, in a society, in a crowd which is almost insane. So naturally, one starts accepting one's life and its hell. One becomes tolerant, patient. One drops all great hopes of living in a beautiful way. One forgets all utopias. One accepts the desert of a life with not a single flower in it, not a single bird in it, not a single green plant in it.

But man is capable of adjusting to any situation. That is one of the great qualities in man. There is only one competitor, and that is the cockroach. She has the same qualities of surviving in any situation, anywhere. You may understand or you may not understand, but you are cousins, because wherever man is found, the cockroach is found. And wherever you can find a cockroach, man is not far away. This partnership in life is millions of years old, and scientists say perhaps it will remain forever, because something in their nature is similar.

I don't know much about cockroaches, but I know much about man and I agree: there must be much which is similar. I am saying it from the side of man. Those who understand cockroaches can say it from the side of cockroaches.

A man grows with dreams. He has a vision of his future, his life, the way he wants to live. But once he has found a woman... the woman also has her own dreams, her own hopes. The first problem is, their dreams and their hopes clash; they are not the same. They cannot be the same, they are two different individuals.

Now, to keep peace, there are only two possibilities: either one becomes so dominant, so threatening, that the other simply becomes, out of fear, enslaved... that's what has happened with women. The other way is to see the situation and to change it completely.

Our life is valuable and it is not to be wasted. And if you try to understand your life and the problems that arise with the other, you will find it hilarious, because all your problems are so tiny that to fight for them is possible only if you have a retarded head.

If the man has the right to fulfill his dreams, the woman has also the same right to fulfill her dreams.

And when you have decided to be together, now it becomes something of a sacred duty to be careful that you don't trample on the dreams of the other.

Nothing hurts more than when a dream is crushed, when a hope dies, when the future becomes dark, when all the great ideas that you have been thinking your life to be made of seem to be impossible because this woman, or this man, is continuously destroying your mood, destroying your peace, destroying your silence. And when these things are destroyed, you cannot be creative. You can only be destructive, you can only be violent.

Life has immense treasures, which remain unknown to people because they don't have time. Their whole time is engaged in some kind of fight with someone - the other. The other contains the whole world. And the greatest calamity that happens is that when you are fighting with the other, you slowly slowly forget yourself. Your whole focus becomes the other, and when the focus becomes the other, you are lost. Then when are you going to remember yourself? When are you going to find your innermost source of life? When you are going to search for beauty and truth and poetry and art?

You will miss everything, just quarreling with a woman or with a man! Are you together to quarrel?

Perhaps... because to be alone and without anybody to fight is very difficult.

In madhouses, I have seen people fighting with themselves, boxing in the air! I have asked the superintendent, "What is happening?" And he said, "These people used to fight. They were brought into the madhouse thinking that when there was nobody to fight, they would stop fighting. But logic goes one way, life goes another. Instead of stopping fighting, they have started fighting with themselves. Now they don't need the other. They have divided themselves into two persons: they are themselves and the other."

In a way, in a very roundabout way, they have come very close to reality. Surabhi, your desire for the other, your longing that without the other you will never be complete, is absolutely true. And this is the insight of every human being; they are all right about this fact: that without the other you are not going to have a feeling of wholeness, of completion, of arriving home. This feeling is all over the world.

But why doesn't it happen? Because man needs a new psychology to understand himself. The old psychology does not give him much understanding.

The new psychology will be based on the experiences of a certain, most ancient school - tantra.

There are very few great discoveries in the world. Tantra can claim the greatest discovery. Even after nuclear weapons, tantra's discovery has been standing there for ten thousand years unused; an insight of such great value.

The insight is that man and woman are not just one - man just man, woman just woman - no. They are are both together: man is half man and half woman, and the same is true about women. And this seems to be very logical and very scientific, because every child is born of a father and a mother.

The father contributes something, the mother contributes something, and that's how the child is - a combination, a synthesis between man and woman. If the child is a boy, then the man is on the top and the woman is in the unconscious layers of the mind. If the child is a woman, then the woman is on the top and the man is hidden just underneath.

And this is the great contribution of tantra: that unless the man and woman inside you become one whole, you will remain discontented, with something always missing. And because you always look outside, you feel that feminine qualities are missing; you don't know that there is a world within you too. You know only one world, and that is outside you.

You start looking on the outside, finding a woman or a man who can make a certain organic whole, a unity in your life, so that this constant gap, this something missing, this heavy incompleteness in your being will be removed. You go on looking for women outside, for men outside. But nobody has ever found any woman outside, or any man outside, to fulfill the desire, the longing to become one complete whole.

But the basic understanding is right, that somehow man and woman have to merge their energies into one. Just one thing is missing: that miracle can only happen within you, it is not something outside. It is something that as you become silent and peaceful and joyous, as you enter deeper into meditative states, as your intelligence becomes more sharp, you will see: the other that you have been searching for is within you.

And there is no problem with the inner woman, with the inner man. Once you recognize them, they start melting into each other without any effort on your part. Just your recognition is enough to trigger the process of merger.

Surabhi, you are too young perhaps for this experiment. It needs a certain background of frustration with the other who is outside. When you are utterly frustrated, when you have lost all hope - only then you close your doors and you close your eyes and you go in. Frustration also plays a tremendously valuable part in man's spiritual growth.

But meanwhile, before you meet your inner woman or man, find a man or a woman. You will learn much. This is not going to be the end; all men are experimental for women and all women are experimental for men.

Experimenting with a few relationships, you will be mature enough to recognize your own woman or your own man.

And that day is the day of great celebration, because you are free from the other. You have found the other within yourself; now there is no need to be dependent on anyone. The man is free, the woman is free - and this does not mean that you cannot love, you cannot have friends on the outside.

In fact, now you can very easily have very smooth-going friendships, very beautiful love affairs, because it is no more a necessity for you. As far as you are concerned, you are fulfilled. Now it is not a need such that you have to be dependent.

And remember: anybody who is dependent on somebody hates that person. Nobody likes dependence. Even though it is hidden behind the beautiful garb of love, obedience, belief, respect for the ancient, respect for the old, but behind everything is slavery. Once you are free from the slavery of the other, once you can live alone and joyously, you have entered into the world for the first time. Before it, you were only dreaming; now you will be facing the reality.

And the reality is just ecstasy. Now you can love, but love will have a totally different quality. It will be simply sharing because you have too much, an abundance, overflowing, and you would like to share it. And sharing is always unconditional. You are not giving it as a deal, as a business. You are not giving it to get something in return - you are simply giving it because your hands are too full. If you don't give it, it will fall by itself.

The day you are capable of sharing love, and being alone and absolutely blissful, the slavery of women is finished. And the bigger slavery of man is finished too.

It is strange that women are fighting for liberation and man is just standing, looking awkward. Do something! You also have to become free. A men's liberation movement is as much a necessity as a women's liberation movement.

In fact, both movements should be two wings of one movement for freedom.

-Osho, "Sermons in Stones, #20, Q1"