Darshan 29 April 1976

[A couple ask Osho about their relationship. He wants more space amd freedom. She says her whole life revolves around him. At first she wanted to blame him or herself for the problem, but then she realised there was nothing wrong with them.]

There is nothing wrong. In fact there is never anything wrong with anybody. The problem arises because of a certain misunderstanding.

Nothing is wrong in his desire to be alone and nothing is wrong in your desire to be with him, but both desires cannot be fulfilled together, so the problem arises. My suggestion is to let him be alone. It will be hard in the beginning but by and by you will see the beauty of it. The more you force yourselves to be together, the more he will move away from you. He will even start hating you. Love can turn into hate very easily. Hate is just waiting by the corner.

If you insist too much and he feels imprisoned - because he wants his freedom and does not want to be responsible, answerable about where he has been, and with whom - the relationship will be destroyed completely. You do it unknowingly. It is natural to ask, 'Where have you been?' but he starts feeling guilty that he should not have been out for so long. The more you try to possess him, the more he will be escaping.

Have separate rooms and just be friends. Whenever he wants to see you, he can come to your room. Whenever you want to see him, you can invite him, and if he is willing he can come; or sometimes he can invite you. In fact lovers should be friends - and that's one of the most difficult things to learn in life. Lovers would like either to be lovers or to be enemies - but never friends.

Love turns into hatred more easily than into friendship, and it should be that it turns into friendship more easily.

Look at his problem and try to understand it. Nothing is wrong in wanting a small place for oneself in which to be alone. Space is needed - it is a very basic need. Because it is not understood, millions of people are separate. Nobody understands that space is needed. No husband and wife should live together in one room. Marriage will be smoother... life will be more joyful.

In fact nobody should take anybody for granted. If you want to make love to him, you have to start wooing and cooing as one does in the beginning. If you meet a stranger, you don't ask him immediately to come to bed with you. That will be too much. It will be offending, and it will be against all dignity, all grace. You make friends, you talk, you persuade, you seduce.

If somebody, a stranger, comes up to you on the road and suddenly says that he would like to sleep with you, you will hit him on the face! He can ask the same thing but some preliminaries have to be fulfilled; then nothing is wrong. The same thing should be the case between a husband and wife, between a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Never take the other for granted because that creates the trouble.

Rabindranath has written a novel - one of the most beautiful novels. A young man has just come from Oxford and falls in love with a woman. The woman is a poet, an artist, and a little eccentric.

She insists that she will be his wife but that they must never live in the same house - that is the condition. They must not live in the same room, not even the same neighbourhood.

They have a lake and there are two small villages - one on this side, another on that. She insists that she will live in one village and he in the other and sometimes they can meet casually on a full-moon night - he on his boat, she in hers. Or sometimes he may be on an early morning walk and he finds her sitting under a tree. Sometimes she will invite him to her place, sometimes he can invite her to his, but otherwise they should live in separate worlds.

The boy cannot understand - the whole thing seems to be nonsense. One marries to be with someone and this seems absurd! But I can feel that the girl is right. Just think of the beauty of it - that you continuously love the person as a stranger.

In fact that is the case - nobody knows anybody. You don't even know yourself, how can you think you know [your boyfriend], or how can [your boyfriend] think that he knows [you]? Nobody knows anybody.

Just being together, encroaching on each other's space, we start feeling bored. We start feeling unfree, imprisoned, and then the resistance starts. If resistance comes it kills love. That's what [your boyfriend is saying. He feels love for you. It is not that he does not love. If he does not love there is no problem - he is simply finished with you. He loves you - that's the problem - and he still wants to be alone. These two things seem contradictory ... they are not.

In fact for a person to be loving he needs his own space. Otherwise he will not be loving. He can pretend, he can be a hypocrite, a liar; he can show whatsoever you expect and give it to you, but the gift never comes from his heart. Give him space, leave him alone. And let this be the rule - that whenever he wants to be with you he has to ask. That too he has not to take for granted - you may refuse. That doesn't mean that you don't love. You may not be in the right mood for love; you may not be feeling like being with anyone.

Let things remain free. When you need to meet sometimes, love is a spontaneous happening: two strangers meeting, two strange energies. When you are alone, you create a certain appetite for each other.

[Osho said that a balance should always be maintained in being with someone and alone, just as one keeps a balance between eating and fasting. One becomes lopsided because of the fear of being alone, and in that fear, one clings and tries to prevent the other from leaving. The more you cling, the more the other starts escaping.]

This is my observation, that I rarely come across a couple, one of whom is not trying to escape. If the woman tries to escape, the man clings. If the man starts to escape, the woman clings. You are never in a state of equilibrium - both just being together.

So be separate, and don't take it as a sign that he does not love you. This is my understanding, that when a person loves you, only then can you overtake, trespass his space, otherwise not. If a stranger comes and sits by his side, [your boyfriend will not feel in any way trespassed upon because he is only physically dose and [your boyfriend is not in any way answerable to him, responsible. He may be even sitting too close, touching his body, but still there is no problem. People In trains sit so dose, stand so close together - in the marketplace, in the movie - with no problem.

The problem arises when somebody enters your inner space. If you are by his side he will not feel free. There is something inside being penetrated . . he feels hooked. So don't do this to anybody.

Simply be separate And this is not separation... this is just living separately.

This is not an end of your love-affair. In fact it may be the beginning. So don't take it in any negative way, ant don't feel sad, otherwise that may destroy things. Separation cannot destroy. It will make more thirst, more hunger for each other.

Now he is fed up - whenever he comes and opens his door, you are there. Soon he will become fed up because when he opens his door, nobody will be there - just the colt bet and the furniture, and nobody even to ask, 'Where have you been?' He will come in the middle of the night ant there is nobody to ask, Where have you been?'

So let him cry - he will cry! That's what is going to happen. Let him feel what loneliness is and then he will run to your room!

Love is greater than these ordinary things, mm? These are human limitations ant love is not destroyed by them. Accept that he needs loneliness and give him it, mm?

[A sannyasin who is leaving says went deep into negativity in the Aum group and is afraid she is stuck in it.]

No, no ... I will take you out of it. The journey has started, but nobody can go too far in negativity - even if you feel you have - because negativity is against life. Your deepest centre remains out of it.

Howsoever sad and unhappy and miserable you become, !t remains on the periphery, because the innermost nature is of bliss, of happiness, so there is no way really to be in hell. Hell remains just on the fringe, on the boundary, and once you understand it, things start changing.

[Osho went on to talk about relationships, as at her first darshan (see darshan, Friday April 9th) she had mentioned her husband, also a sannyasin, who had left her, and through whom she had heard of Osho.]

Move into a relationship, and don't be afraid. It is as if you were eating a certain fruit and it has gone out of season. You don't starve yourself, you change your fruit; you and something else which is available. The same should be the attitude about love.

One should always be loving. Lovers can change but one should never betray love itself. Don't cling to unhappiness; don't start pitying yourself - that's very dangerous. Once you start pitying yourself, once you start hankering for sympathy and start investing more and more in your sorrow, you will not be able to come out of it. Drop it! All this is nonsense!

God gave you one person - he has taken that person away. Find another person, and remain available, open. If you are too much in sorrow and sadness, you will become closed. Then it will be difficult for another person to enter into your being, to become deeply intimate with you. And another danger: if you are too sad you may attract somebody who loves sadness.

Be an emperor, an empress. Never be less than that. Be happy, flowing, dancing, so that you attract another soul. The soul will be attracted because of your dance, because of your singing, because of your happiness.

Be happy, so somebody very ordinary who loves happiness, who is selfish and is interested in his own happiness rather than trying to help somebody, is attracted to you. Go from here happy, dancing, and ready for a new love-affair.

... It is there... you just have to allow it. That's why you are feeling fragile. There is nothing wrong in it. Fragility is not weakness; it is being delicate. Misery makes people hard, happiness makes them fragile. Happiness makes them open and sensitive... vulnerable. They become like a lotus flower.

When you are unhappy you become like a rock.

You can kill somebody, but you cannot give life. And nobody can kill you... you become harder and harder and harder. Miserable people become so closed, so windowless, that they become hard.

Remember this mathematics - if you are miserable, you attract misery. So never for a moment settle in misery. Even if it comes, let it just be a momentary thing and get out of it as soon as you can.

Somebody is waiting, I know... somebody is always waiting. Come back soon. And whenever you need me, put this (a box) on your head and wait. Allow me to work inside you. And be loving, and open and fragile.

[A visitor said he was experiencing something like kundalini energy rising in his body, but his friends had thought him ill and had taken him to a doctor who gave him tranquillizers.

Osho checked his energy.]

Good... nothing is wrong, and there was no need for any medical treatment. The problem is not with you; it is with the people you are living with. Nothing is wrong.

The kundalini has started working. When these phenomena happen and you are in a certain sadhana, under someone's guidance, then you know it is alright because he goes on saying to you that everything is okay. But it happened when you were on your own. Something which remained incomplete from your past life has started working. You have not done anything particular in this life, but something from your past life was waiting for the fight moment. When the right moment was there, it started. I feel that the friends' presence may be a cause Of it, but it is good. It is perfectly good. One should be happy about it.

If you go to a doctor, he has a different philosophy about it. He does not believe in any kundalini. He simply looks into the physiology and he will see that something has gone wrong. You need a deep rest, tranquillizers, or something to make you completely unconscious so that a discontinuity can be created and you can forget all about these movements and things.

But that can be dangerous because that is creating a contradiction in your being. Your energy is rising and you are relaxing it. But don't be worried about it. I will give you something to do and soon the movement of the head will stop. It is moving because the energy comes up to a certain point and does not go beyond it so it starts revolving there. The energy needs to become a circle. Then everything calms down and there is no strange phenomenon. Nobody can see anything strange from the outside.

[Osho suggested he do the forthcoming meditation camp, in which time the energy could be allowed to do as it wanted.... ]

... otherwise it will take many years and will create trouble again and again. People will not listen to you, and even if you say that everything is alright, they will think that you are mad. They will force you to go to a doctor.

[Osho said the Nadabrahma meditation would be particularly helpful and that he should allow himself an hour each day in which time he should give his energy permission to work. If he did this, it would not disturb him for the remaining twenty-three hours.

The visitor said he was not ready for sannyas because there would be objections from his family about the wearing of orange clothes.]

Sannyas will be helpful - and these clothes are meant for a particular thing in the body. The shades of red have been chosen for a particular reason.

When kundalini is rising, the red rays should not enter into the body, and the on4 way to protect the body is to wear red clothes. The red cloth reflects back the red rays and absorbs others. Only the red has to be avoided. And this will help the kundalini to Integrate. If red rays enter the body, the energy starts floating towards anger, sex, violence, and things like that. If the red ray b not entering the body, the energy floats upwards easily, very easily. So at least at home, start using orange.

Then I will make you a sannyasin... you are going to become one.

And tell your friends to choose - either you will become mad or you will become a sannyasin! And just start doing things in front of them. Even if the energy is not coming, just do things (laughter).

And they will bring you here (more laughter). Be a little playful... be a real actor!

[An Indian sannyasin said he was feeling more and more like a woman... and though his wife was having an affair, he did not feel jealous... he no longer felt like being active in love-making and wondered if he should give up sex. Finally he said that he would like a meditation to do just before going to sleep.]

The first thing, don't force sex, because when your wife is not emotionally involved with you, it is a dull thing. For her also, it is just a duty to be fulfilled, and duty is a four-letter word, a dirty word. Your sexuality will disappear by and by.

I'm not saying to force celibacy - no. If it happens sometimes, it is okay, but there is no need to force it. And this understanding that the key is in sleep, is right, because samadhi is nothing but sleep with full awareness.

The fear is also very indicative, because sleep is also like death. When you put off the light and sleep, a little death happens every day. Because of that little death, every morning you are fresh and alive. You have been somewhere into the unknown. You have dropped into the abyss of your being and come back home again. So the fear is natural - nothing to worry about. When you put the light off, remember me - but don't make it an obsession.

Once it happened that a professor came to me who was frightened of putting off the light. I told him to remember me... and he started enjoying it. It almost became a meditation. His wife came to me and said, 'He is going mad. At least fifty times a night he puts the light off and then on again!'

When I asked him, he laughed and said he enjoys it because when he puts the light off he remembers me, and with the darkness falling all around him, suddenly I surround him. He puts it on again to enjoy that!

So do it once, mm? Not even twice - and then go to bed.