Unholy gossip - not holy gospels

Question 1:

Maneesha, the sense of humor comes into existence at the last stage of evolution. No animal other than man has a sense of humor. The sense of humor can be called the criterion whether evolution has become conscious or not. Up to man, evolution is an unconscious process. With man something absolutely new opens its wings: evolution is no longer dependent on the blind forces of nature, man has to take it into his own hands.

Your question is immensely significant, because man has not allowed woman the same status, the same position, the same freedom as he has allowed himself. The woman has lived down the ages as a prisoner. In the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of chastity - all great names but hiding a simple and ugly fact: slavery, spiritual slavery.

Education was not allowed, social movement was not allowed. In different countries, in different ways, the woman has been reduced to a subhuman status. Because she is not educated, she has to be dependent on man financially. She cannot compete with man in the marketplace or anywhere else. She is debarred from any possible evolution of consciousness in any dimension.

For example, there have not been any great painters or poets or musicians or sculptors from the world of women. Not that woman is incapable or intrinsically has no potential, but potential alone is not enough. It needs opportunity to become actual and man has removed all opportunities for woman"s growth. That"s why there is no sense of humor in women. They cannot in fact enjoy laughter. Their very situation is sad. They are living in chains, invisible, they are living in prisons.

But they have lived in those prisons for so long that everybody has forgotten that they are prisons.

They are in every way handicapped, prevented from everything creative - even prevented from being spiritual beings.

It is a very sad story that half of humanity has been prevented from every creative dimension. And this half of humanity has far bigger a heart than man, has more capacity for sensitivity than man, can create in many dimensions in a far superior way than any man, but she has just not been given any opportunity. On the contrary, all kinds of preventive measures have been taken so that she remains enslaved. It is so ugly, so condemnable that because of this very few women could become enlightened.

And they have more potential for it than man, for the simple reason that nature endows them in a few dimensions with greater energy and greater power - because they have to be mothers. Nature depends on them for reproduction, for life to continue. Man"s hand in life"s perpetuation is negligible.

On the contrary, man has been the cause of bringing destruction and death to millions of people around the globe. As far back as you can go, you will always find man fighting. His whole effort, his whole intelligence and genius has been devoted singularly in creating more powerful weapons to destroy.

Woman is the source of life; man seems to be in the service of death. And of course the source of life has more creative possibilities than man can ever have. It is not a coincidence that even those few men who have been great musicians or dancers or poets or painters, in some way became as graceful as women.

Friedrich Nietzsche had a great insight when he said, "I cannot accept Gautam Buddha because he has a feminine quality." Friedrich Nietzsche is deep down a male chauvinist. In Gautam Buddha"s whole life and whole philosophy, he finds only one thing that is significant to him, and that is the feminine grace of the man. And because of that he condemns Gautam Buddha.

His condemnation is not based on any argument against the philosophy of Gautam Buddha. His condemnation is that his philosophy must be wrong because it creates a feminine grace, it makes people incapable of violence. Gautam Buddha"s meditation techniques will destroy war, and without war there will be no great men. It is war that creates great leaders. A strange argument in favor of war. A very strange idea against peace, against silence, against grace, against enlightenment itself.

But as far as I am concerned, to me it shows that the woman has more potential to become enlightened. She is far closer to enlightenment because she already has the grace, she already has a loving heart. She has been corrupted badly, poisoned badly, but still, in spite of all that has been done to her, she is capable of coming out of the dark night.

The woman has had nothing to laugh about, she has had only things to weep and cry for. She knows perfectly well how to cry; she is expert in tears. Laughter has been a faraway goal. What has the woman to laugh about? Her whole life is so badly damaged: her potential has been so much crushed, her individuality has been kept in such a bondage, her wings have been cut, her roots destroyed. No other class has suffered so much through the hands of man as woman. And she has given birth to man, and she has raised man, and she has loved man, and she has been a companion to him in the darkest nights. She has been a solace in the most depressive moments, she has been an ointment for all his wounds. Still, man has paid her only with slavery and more slavery.

It seems there is some psychological fear. Man seems to have sensed it at the very beginning that woman has some more superior powers, some more vitality, and if she is allowed total freedom to grow she will go far ahead of man. It is better to keep her wings cut so that she cannot fly in the open sky; to keep her weak; to teach her, condition her that she has to depend on man.

The Hindu scriptures say, when you are a small girl you should depend on your father; when you are a young woman you should depend on your husband; and when you are an old woman you should depend on your children. But you should always depend, you should never be independent. The ugliest words of abuse have been used in all the so-called holy scriptures.

The ultimate result is that the woman has become very bitter. Her whole being has become a cry for revolt. She is not at peace to laugh at things; she is in utter misery and despair, and unless she becomes liberated she will not have a sense of humor. Once she becomes liberated, she will leave man far behind in all creative dimensions and she will be really joyous and playful. Naturally, she is not serious, she is not concerned with serious things. Man by nature seems to be serious. If you talk about nonserious things, he thinks you are being childish.

The woman never talks about God or about heaven or about hell. She is not interested in the holy gospels, she is interested in all the unholy gossips! She is interested in a very nearby life. She is pragmatic, practical, realistic; she is not a stargazer.

I am reminded about a great astrologer. The story is from ancient Greece, from the times of Socrates. The astrologer was looking at the stars in the night, and he was going to look at the stars at a place out of the city, in the open ... to see better - he had only primitive instruments.

And because he was looking towards the sky and not looking at the earth, he fell into a well, and he shouted. An old woman living by the side, on her farm, came to rescue him, and when he was out of the well he said to the old woman, "You may not know me, but I am the greatest astrologer in the whole land. I am the astrologer not only of the king of Greece but of the kings of many other countries. Even very rich people stand in line to see me, but for you I will do a favor - you have saved my life. You can come any day you want and I will read your birth chart, look into your future, into your past, and I will not charge you anything."

The old woman laughed and she said, "Forget all about it, I am not going to come, because if you cannot see that a well is ahead of you, what more future ...? First learn to see what is ahead of you, then start telling others what is in their unknown future. Don't befool me. You can befool the kings.

Even if you pay me, I am not going to come. I have seen your reality."

Man has always been interested in faraway things. The woman is never interested in faraway things, her interest is very real. And if she is allowed freedom - and she will have to be allowed because it is time .... This kind of slavery cannot be tolerated any more; neither by women, nor by any man who has any compassion, any intelligence, any love. This situation has to be totally changed.

Then she will sing songs that her past is absolutely missing. She will dance, and she will dance better than any Nijinsky; she will paint better than any Picasso. And her songs and her paintings and her music and her dances will be closer to life, more sane, more healthy. Once she is completely liberated she will be able to produce more Buddhas, more Bodhidharmas, more Jesuses than man has been able to. And one thing can be said with absolute certainty, that she will not crucify a Jesus, she will not poison a Socrates, she will not murder a Mansoor; that is simply inconceivable about woman.

Man is destructive, woman is creative. Her laughter will also be of a different quality, of a far superior quality ... more innocent and more childlike.

But Maneesha, it has not been up to now possible simply because the woman has not been accepted as a human being. And she has been forced to remain in the shadows, never coming out into the light. But I would like my people, whether they are men or women, to feel sad about the past and to do everything to break away from the past and its ugly inheritance. I teach complete discontinuity.

The woman should be given her rights to grow in her own uniqueness, and that will enhance the whole society. It will enhance man too because man begins his life in the woman"s womb. For nine months he is one, totally one with the woman. And scientists say that in nine months the child grows more than he will grow in the coming seventy years of his life. Those nine months are condensed growth, almost unimaginable - because the child has to pass through all the stages that man has passed through in the whole evolution. Almost millions of years have to be passed in nine months"

time: from the fish to the man.

The first stage of the child in the mother"s womb is that of a fish. And then he passes through all the stages of other animals. He has lived inside the woman, and you will be surprised ... Sigmund Freud and his school of psychologists have contributed many great insights. One of them is that man"s whole search for paradise, or a heaven, or the kingdom of God, or nirvana is nothing but the search for the mother"s womb.

Those beautiful nine months without any responsibility ... not even the responsibility to breathe - the mother was breathing for you - not even the responsibility to bother about your food. No question of past, no question of future, just the present moment and everything is available. Before the child asks, everything is available to the child. Sigmund Freud feels that those nine months have remained in the unconscious and they are creating the urge to find those golden moments again. Certainly you cannot enter the mother"s womb again. But he has a great idea and great insight.

You can enter into the womb of the whole existence. Nirvana and the kingdom of God are nothing other than entering into the womb of existence itself where no responsibility, no burden, no fear, no death ... but only a pure, eternal dance of blissfulness.

The moment the woman is totally free, not only will she make life more peaceful, more full of laughter, she will also make man calm down, be less tense. And you all know it - in ordinary experience it happens. If two persons are fighting and a woman comes in, they calm down, they become just gentlemen immediately because a lady has come in. They cannot use the dirty language that they were using before, they cannot behave barbarously the way they were behaving before.

Just now in America, in a few federal jails, they are experimenting by mixing women prisoners and men prisoners together; up to now the jails were separate. After just a few months" experience, strange conclusions have come to light. The most important is that the male prisoners have become less dangerous. A certain calmness and quietness ... just because of the presence of the women amongst them. And the jail psychologists are simply surprised. The very ferocious criminals, murderers, rapists, even they have started behaving in a better way. They have started shaving twice a day!

In their jails they are running out of Eau de Cologne because the men are asking continuously for Eau de Cologne; they don't want that the women should notice that they are smelling badly. They are asking for combs and mirrors - new demands that they had never bothered about before. They are taking regular baths and asking for fresh clothes every day. Their habits have changed; otherwise they were constantly fighting and quarreling amongst themselves. But the presence of women has changed the whole atmosphere.

Although they are not allowed to make love ... The prisoners are complaining only of one thing.

They have not raped any woman, which was expected: whether you allow it or not. They have been raping outside the jail - that"s why they have been put in jail! And you provide women; it is taking a risk. But no woman has been raped in the jail. On the contrary, their complaint is that, since women have come into the jail, they are being constantly watched, and that has become a tension in their minds.

The jail authorities are constantly watching from every window, from every door, from every keyhole.

They are watching that no harm is being done to the women, and the prisoners have complained, "This is insulting, this is humiliating us. Nobody is behaving badly with the women, but being constantly watched is against human dignity. We may be criminals but still we are human beings, and we don't want that the whole night somebody is watching. We cannot even sleep without being watched." Otherwise they are very happy and they have welcomed the women. And the women have also been in for a great surprise - nobody has harmed them and the atmosphere has suddenly lost its heat, anger, and a certain calmness has settled.

If all over the world the woman is allowed freedom to grow to her potential, there will be many, many women enlightened; many, many women mystics, poets, painters. And they will enhance not only the woman"s part of the world - because the world is one - they will enhance the whole world. They will give man also new dimensions because their ways of seeing things are different. Man looks at things in one way; the woman looks from a different perspective. Life will become richer.

It is for the betterment of both man and woman that the woman should be given every freedom and equal opportunity for her individuality. Then there will be a sense of humor. And the woman can laugh more gracefully than man, she has every potential for it - but it is repressed, condemned, criticized. She has lived a life of such misery that you cannot hope that she will show some sense of humor. But the day is not far away ... then the whole earth will be full of laughter. Instead of talks about war, instead of politicians giving speeches all around the world, instead of the sermons of stupid priests who know nothing, it will be far better that every man and every woman is able to see the hilarious side of life and to enjoy it.

Two jokes for you, Maneesha:

On his way home from work one day, the husband was suddenly filled with inspiration and bought his wife a bunch of flowers. Wanting to surprise her he knocked on the front door and waited around the corner. When his wife opened the door, he jumped out in front of her and with a big smile handed her the flowers. The smile froze on his face as she burst into angry tears. "My God, what is the matter, honey?" he asked.

"I have had a terrible day," she cried. "This morning I broke the teapot, the baby has been crying all day long and now, to top it all off, you come home drunk!"

Because this must have been the first time that he has brought flowers, out of great inspiration. The poor woman cannot laugh. On the contrary, the man"s smile becomes frozen. He cannot believe that this is the reception his great inspiration gets.

A man went to visit an old married couple he had not seen for some time. The old housewife greeted him at the door and the man asked, "Hello Mabel, and how is Jack?"

"Ah, did not you hear?" said Mabel. "He died a little while ago."

"I am very sorry to hear that, Mabel," said the man. "Tell me, how did it happen?"

"Well," said Mabel, "he had gone into the garden to pick some vegetables for our dinner when he just collapsed and died."

"Good Lord," said the man, "that"s simply terrible. What on earth did you do?"

"What could I do? I opened a tin of beef."

Question 2:

Anutosh Samat, no one can bring these two things together. You will have to choose one. My suggestion is, watch everything with equal distance, with equal aloofness. Sadness, anger, jealousy, happiness, joy, love - remain aloof from all and just be total in your watching.

Your watchfulness should be total. You be identified with your watching because that is your nature, that"s what you are. There is no question of disidentifying with it; even if you try you cannot succeed.

Your intrinsic nature is simply that of a witness. A single quality of awareness makes your whole being. So watch everything as if it is a cloud passing by.

I can see your difficulty: you would like to be identified with love, you would like to be identified with happiness and you would like not to be identified with sadness, you would not like to be identified with misery. But this kind of choice is not allowed by existence.

If you really want to get beyond the mind and all its experiences - sadness and joy, anger and peace, hate and love; if you want to get beyond all these dualities, you have to watch them equally, you cannot choose. If you choose, you will not be able to watch those which you don't want to choose. So the first thing is, just be a watcher.

It will be a little difficult in the beginning to watch those things which are so sweet, so beautiful because watching makes you distant from every experience that is passing by like a cloud. You cannot cling. Up to now that"s what you have been doing: clinging to that which you think is good and trying to get away from that which you think is ugly and miserable. But you have created only a mess of yourself. You have not been successful.

The best way is to be totally a watcher, but if you find it difficult there is an alternative. But that is harder than this, it is more difficult than this one - to get identified with every cloud that moves. If there is misery, then become absolutely miserable, then don't hold anything back, just go with it to the very end. If you are angry, then be angry and do whatever stupidity it suggests to you to do. If some crazy cloud passes by, be crazy. But then don't miss anything. Whatever comes to you, be totally with it in that moment, and when it is gone it is gone.

This also will liberate you, but it is a more difficult path. If you want something really dangerous to play with, you can get identified with everything. Then don't make any differentiation, that this is good to get identified with and this is bad to get identified with. Then there is no question; without any discrimination, get identified, and within a week you will be finished with it. Just one week will be enough, because so many things are passing by; you will be so tired, so exhausted. If you survive, we will meet again. If you don't survive, good bye.

But this is a dangerous path. I have never heard of anybody surviving. And you know perfectly well what kind of things come to your mind. Sometimes you feel like barking, then get into it, bark like a dog. And whatever the world thinks, let them think. You have chosen your path, you will get free ... perhaps totally free. Enlightenment and freedom from the body will come together! But it is a bit dangerous.

People may try to prevent you, because nobody knows what kind of things come to your mind. Your own people - your friends, your family, your wife, your husband - may try to prevent you. There are many people all over the world whose families have forced them into insane asylums, because that was the only way to protect them. And this happens everywhere.

Just now the world has come to know that England"s royal family has been keeping two persons, belonging to the royal family, locked in a basement for forty years in Buckingham Palace. And this was not released, this was not allowed to be known, because even to accept that royal people can go mad is humiliating. Royal blood?

For forty years they have been hiding the facts about where these people had disappeared to, and just now it has leaked out. Then they had to accept that they have been keeping them in a basement because they were behaving in an insane way, and they did not want the world to know that members of the royal family of England are behaving insanely.

But this goes on happening. In my village, the richest family had one person locked inside in their house his whole life. Everybody knew that something had happened to the person because he suddenly disappeared. But it was sixty years before, so by and by, people had forgotten. I came to know just by chance, because one of the sons of the man who was kept in chains was my student.

Because he was from my own village, he used to come to see me often, and one day I just asked him, "I have never seen your father."

He became very sad and he said, "I cannot lie to you, but what is happening to my father is such a heavy weight on my heart. Because my family is the richest family of the village, they don't want anybody to know what they are doing with my father. They beat him; he has been encaged almost like a wild animal. He cries, shouts, screams, but nobody listens, nobody goes near. Just from the top, food is dropped to him. Everything that he needs is dropped from the top. Nobody wants even to face him."

But I said, "What has he done?"

He said, "Nothing special, he was just crazy. He used to do things which are not normal." For example, he might go naked into the market. Now, there was no harm ... he had not done any harm to anybody, he had just been walking naked in the marketplace, but that was enough for the family to force him. And they made him more and more insane. This was not going to help, this was not a cure, not a treatment.

So if you get identified with all your ideas, then you should think before you start the practice: what people will think about it and how they will behave with you - although it is possible to get free of all those emotions if you get identified with all of them, without any choice.

Either be choicelessly identified or be choicelessly unidentified. The real thing is choicelessness.

But the first way, you will be on safer ground. Be a choiceless watcher. Don't choose something good and don't throw away something bad. Nothing is good, nothing is bad; only witnessing is good and non-witnessing is bad.

"Doctor," said the housewife, "I have come to see you about my husband. We have been married for over twenty-five years. He has been a good husband, happy, contented and very devoted to me, but since he came to see you about his headaches he has been a different man. Now he never comes home at night, he never takes me out anymore, he never buys me anything nor gives me any money.

Hell, he never even looks at me. Your treatment seems to have changed his entire personality."

"Treatment?" said the doctor. "All I did was give him a prescription for a pair of glasses."

Because he was not able to see exactly ... now for the first time he has seen the woman. So just a pair of glasses can make a dramatic change - the whole personality, his whole behavior. Otherwise he used to be a very loyal husband.

And this will not be such a small thing, just a pair of glasses. If you start getting identified with everything, you will be in difficulty from every corner. It is better to choose the safer way; all awakened people have chosen that way. It is without exception the sanest path towards enlightenment.

Question 3:

Latifa, it is part of our unconscious state. You were unhappy together with Om, now you are unhappy without him. You have to watch your mind. It will never leave you at peace; whatever you do it will create misery, because mind is a duality. You are able to see that you are happy, yet another part of your mind still longs to be with Om. And when you were with Om, the part that is happy now was very unhappy.

Mind will always be divided about everything in life. Half of the mind is for it and half of the mind is against it, so you are always in a tense state. You have to understand one thing: a few days being alone is not going to harm anybody. It will give you space to see things clearly; it will give space to Om to see things clearly.

And if you choose to be miserable, either Om may be available or there are even greater Oms. What do you think, only Om is a coconut? I have seen bigger coconuts around here. A coconut is not a rare thing, it is a very normal and a common variety. So whenever you are in difficulty ... but I would like you, for a few days, just to let the world be at peace. You be alone, let Om be alone. The world will remain always grateful, and perhaps you will start enjoying your aloneness. But give it a little chance. You have been with Om long enough and you have suffered every moment of it. Now again the desire for suffering ... one gets addicted. These are just drugs.

Now sitting alone in your room, with nobody to fight ... Otherwise I have heard that people are fighting the whole night, up to three o"clock in the morning. That makes life a thrill. At three o"clock they go to sleep, hoping that "Tomorrow we will see again. Just a little rest and then we will start again." Now you must be feeling alone. No need to be worried, you can talk alone. Just close your doors and talk with your pillow. Write on the pillow "Dhyan Om," make a little picture ... or you must have a photograph of Om, so put the photograph on that pillow and go on hammering whatever you want to say, or beat him, and he cannot do anything. Such a good situation!

And you are asking, "From here, where can I go?" There is nobody and nowhere, and there is no need to go. Some nut will come into your trap by itself. You just wait, keep your doors open ... some nut will enter. Most probably it will be Om himself, because he is feeling the same - missing Latifa.

And both were torturing each other; it was such a perfect couple that even I am feeling sorry that a perfect couple has been separated. You should think of me, too. It is so rare to find such a perfect couple. Nobody was tired of suffering, nobody was tired of misery, both were ready every day, and it was an ongoing story. Just a little interval is not bad.

For a few days enjoy aloneness, and if you really find it beautiful, joyous, then there is no need to get into any relationship, any trap. You can have friends - even Om is not a bad guy. Once in a while you can meet with Om also. And because it will be only once in a while, there will not be conflict, there will not be fight; it will be a sweet experience. But don't hang around with each other longer.

The moment you see that the climate is changing, find any excuse and get rid of Om.

And there are other people also. Why torture only Om? Give the same experience to a few other people, because everybody needs such experiences for their spiritual growth. You are just after Om; you want to make him enlightened anyway, whether he wants it or not. You can make, in the interval, a few other people enlightened. Om will be always there; he is also in the same situation. Let him torture a few other people, and then you can meet again with all your new experiences. Then you can torture with new methods, new techniques.

Right now, you have tortured each other with the same techniques, the same methods. First, learn a few more. Each person will give you some new technique, because everybody knows his own way, his own style of torturing others. It is a great opportunity - don't miss it - for you both.

You have created such a great trigger that many great couples are breaking away. Seeing that even Latifa and Om can separate - who were living in constant hell, but they were so much glued ... You have become an example. Your name will be remembered in history! There are many couples separating, here and there, just seeing that "Even Latifa and Om can separate, so what is the problem? We can also separate. Why go on suffering?" You have made the door open and created a great example, just don't destroy your prestige.

Beloved Latifa, you are not to go anywhere, just remain in your room alone. And let poor Om also have a little rest. When I see that it is too much for you to be happy, to be relaxed, to be restful, I can always send a message to Om, who is always ready to fall into the same ditch again. He will come with great joy to join you and create the same hell again. Then don't tell me, "From here, where can we go?" There is no need to go anywhere, just remain where you are.

But give a little time for you, for Om and for others who have followed your example. If you start being together again, all those who have followed your example will think, "My God, should we start joining together again?" They are for the first time feeling free and joyous. It is not only your question, now it is a question of many, many people. On your shoulders is a great responsibility. So be a little strong and allow a little rest to yourself; you have tortured yourself and Om enough.

I know, it is an ancient religious way of torturing to attain to the kingdom of God, but nobody has attained. By torture, you can only descend into hell. And you have tasted hell so long that just a small holiday won"t do any harm. Just now, for two days, I have started hearing your laughter again - for years I had forgotten how Latifa laughs. And many more are laughing and enjoying, so don't betray your followers.

"Why don't you settle the case out of court?" said the judge to the husband and wife.

"That"s what we were doing, your honor," said the wife, "until the police came."

You have done enough to each other.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.