Darshan 6 September 1978
Sagar means ocean, sundar means beauty - oceanic beauty. And remember that beauty is something of the wild beauty is never civilized. The moment you civilize it, it becomes ugly. There is no way to civilize beauty. Beauty has to be intrinsically wild, because beauty is part of nature. It is not nurture; it is nature. That's why trees are beautiful, animals are beautiful, birds are beautiful. It is impossible to find a bird which is ugly or a deer which is ugly. Nature is spontaneously beautiful.
Only man becomes ugly. And the dilemma is that it is only man who tries to be beautiful. In that very effort to become beautiful, ugliness enters. The very idea to be beautiful shows that you have accepted that you are ugly; the idea is oriented in your self-condemnation. One thing is certain:
the person who is trying to be beautiful has accepted his inferiority, his ugliness, his worthlessness.
Now he is trying to hide it, to cover it, to improve upon it. Man is the only animal who tries to be beautiful and man is the only animal who is ugly.
So the first thing to remember in life is that the more close to nature you are - to the wild aspect of it, the wild ocean or the wild mountains or the wild jungle - the more beautiful you are. In beauty there is joy. And out of beauty arises love, out of beauty arises expression, creativity.
Only a beautiful person can be creative, because he accepts himself. He is so glad to be himself, he is so grateful to be himself, that out of this gladness and gratitude and acceptance, naturally creativity arises. He wants to do something for God because God has done so much for him. He would like to paint a picture or to create music or to make this world a little better or to help human beings to grow. But he would like to do something because God has done so much for him. Just out of thankfulness creativity is born - that is the real source of creativity. But that is possible only when you accept yourself, when you are not trying to hide behind masks, when you are not trying to create a camouflage, when you are not creating a personality but are allowing your essence to have its say.
Animals don't have any personality. I am not talking about tamed animals; they start having a personality. A wild dog has no personality, just essence; but once the dog is tamed he starts becoming political, he starts becoming diplomatic. He starts being a person; he is no more an individual. He pretends: you hit him and still he goes on wagging his tail in your praise - this is personality. He would like to tear you into pieces but he knows that you are the boss and he knows his limitations. He knows that soon it is going to be suppertime and he will be in difficulty; he will be beaten, punished. He knows his helplessness so he creates a persona, a mask. He becomes false, he starts pretending, he becomes civilized, he becomes educated... and loses beauty.
Beauty is of the wild and beauty is of the vast. The ocean is wild and vast. You cannot see the other shore. You can never see the other shore of beauty. You can feel it but you cannot grasp it.
You cannot hold it in your hands. You can live it, you can enjoy it, you can dive deep into it, but you will never be able to fathom it; it is unfathomable, it is immeasurable. Beauty is oceanic, vast, tremendously vast. Beauty has depth, just like the ocean; and the deeper it is, the more divine.
Depth means divine. Depth is the dimension of the divine.
The civilized person lives on the surface: he is a swimmer, not a diver. He knows perfectly well how to manage himself on the circumference. He is very well acquainted with the circumference - its ways, manners, etiquette and all. Just below him there is immense depth but he remains oblivious of it.
Beauty is of the depth: the deeper you become, the more beautiful you are. And then the beauty is not of this world, because depth is the dimension of the divine. The deeper you go, the more something from your innermost core starts welling up. Beauty is not a make-up, it is a welling-up.
Make-up is on the surface.
Just the other day I was reading about a man who was saying to his friend, "I have found the best contraceptive in the world." The friend asked, "What is that? And the man said, "I simply tell my wife to remove her make-up. Once she removes her make-up I am no more interested in making love to her." So people are making love to the make-up? That is exactly what is happening: people are making love to the personality - which is make-up, which is just a garment around you; it is not you. Hence even love becomes ugly, superficial, mundane, has no more the quality of prayer, intimacy, has no more the quality of eternity.
So these three things I want to remind you of by giving you this name: beauty is wild like a wild ocean, beauty is vast like the vast ocean - you cannot see the other shore - and beauty is of the depth, never of the surface. If one attains to beauty, one has attained to beatitude, one has attained to benediction.
This is what is called "preparing oneself for God": become beautiful.
[A sannyasin had previously written about a conflict between his partner's desire to share totally, and to sometimes be alone. He also has a male lover. He will be channeling Osho in workshops in the west and wants Osho's blessings.]
It is happening, and now you have to be very very conscious of it, mm? I will not say what is happening, because giving it a name destroys. Labeling a thing creates a limitation, so I say, "It is happening." Now you have to be very very cautious because when one has something that is just growing, one has something to protect. There are millions of people who need not be cautious, need not be careful, because nothing is happening; they don't have anything to lose. They can live in a reckless way, they can live accidentally. Now you cannot live accidentally, and if you do you will destroy great possibilities which are just coming closer and closer every day. You will not be able to know what is going to happen unless it happens. But I can see that they are coming closer, and the first rays of the light have already dawned. So now be very careful - you have something to lose.
And that is a great fortune, to have something to lose.
One day it happens that you cannot lose it. Once it has settled and become crystallized and has become part of your being, then there is no need to be careful about it; then there is no way to lose it. But in the beginning it is just like a small sprout, just two leaves sticking out of the ground - tender, soft, can be crushed very easily. And the world is hard and the world is stony. It is a miracle if those two leaves can save themselves and can one day become a great tree. It is a miracle, because out of one thousand chances, nine hundred and ninety-nine point nine chances are that they will be crushed.
It is said that if one thousand people start searching, sooner or later nine hundred leave the search because they are very impatient. The hundred that continue start achieving something, but ninety out of the hundred are not careful enough, so whatsoever they achieve is crushed by the circumstances. They are far worse off than they were before because now they have tasted something. Now they cannot be happy in the ordinary life - they have seen something Of the extraordinary, so they will remain miserable, more miserable than the ordinary person who has never searched. And out of the remaining ten who go on working, go on growing, nine go astray, because there are a thousand and one labyrinths that can take you to dead ends. So if one thousand start moving towards God or truth or whatever you will, one arrives! It is a rare phenomenon. Once something has started happening, be very alert.
And remember another thing: the new energy that happens is always delicate compared with the old personality. The old personality is very strong because you have been feeding it for so long. So you have to consciously feed the new and you have to consciously stop feeding the old. And the best way will be: if you can disappear completely and allow me to work, you will not feel burdened; otherwise you will feel burdened. Just disappear... just say goodbye to yourself.
Now work for me, and don't bring yourself in. That will be the greatest protection for the energy that is growing. And when you start working for me, when you allow me to work through you, then don't be afraid of whatsoever happens, because with me risk is continuously there. But through that risk you will grow, you will mature. Risk is the fire that ripens the inner being. So no more hiding!
[He was not been wearing his mala in the West.]
Sometimes it looks very logical, convenient to hide, and the mind can say, "Osho is within and why bring Him out? I am working for Him, but silently I will work, indirectly I will work"... but then you will come in.
Now you have to work very directly - you have to function as a sannyasin, absolutely as a sannyasin, and whatsoever the cost it has to be paid. You will feel sometimes ridiculous, sometimes you will feel very odd. Sometimes circumstances will force you in every way to yield... circumstances in your mind too will conspire against you, but now you have to stick to the new that is happening. That is the meaning of risk: choosing the insecure against the secure, choosing the inconvenient against the convenient, choosing the unknown against the known. But it is only through risking that one learns living and loving.
Life has to be not a convenience but an adventure and a deepening adventure every day, an exploration - for no other reason than for exploration's sake. This is my basic meaning of sannyas:
to live a life of exploration, an open-ended life, not oriented out of the past, not oriented in the past but oriented in the future, not pushed by the past but pulled by the future.
One Indian mystic, Ramateerth, used to say that he was sitting somewhere and he saw a man pushing a door. The door was not opening and Ramateerth started laughing, so the man asked, "What is the matter?" He said, "Why don't you read what is written on the door? On the door it is written 'Pull' and you are pushing - it will never open!" Life's door is such that nothing is written on it, but only those who understand this secret, that there are two possibilities to live: one is being pulled by the past, pushed by the past, manipulated by the past; the other is being allured by the future, enchanted by the future....
So now you have to risk a little more than you have risked up to now. And you will enjoy it, because each risk brings so much joy, each risk brings so much integration. One starts feeling aflame, and now the right time has come to become aflame!
So this time go like a mad sannyasin - not hiding, not working indirectly but directly. Jesus says to his disciples: Go and climb onto the tops of the houses and shout from there - because people are deaf. Unless you shout they will not listen. Even if they listen when you shout, that too is a miracle.
And the last thing: if you start working directly, many things in you which need to be changed will change. More clarity will arise. And helping people to meditate, helping people to understand, helping people to become more vulnerable and open, will help you to become more vulnerable and open. It is a fundamental law of life: whatsoever we do to people returns to us one thousandfold.
Buddha is reported to have said, "If you really want to meditate help people to meditate, and you will find your meditation becoming deeper, easier, more spontaneous." And the best way of learning is always to teach. So you have to become a teacher on my behalf and let me function through you.
And more and more will be reaching to you....
[The partner of the above sannyasin says she wants to be with him more, and he wants more space.]
It has to be understood and it is not only with [your partner]: it happens to every couple. It is one of the most important things to be understood in a relationship; if you don't understand it then the relationship is on the rocks.
And this is very fundamental: people have a need to be together as much as they have a need to be separate and on their own. It is a rhythm. To be together too much is tiring. To be together too much is nauseating. And it doesn't mean that the other person does not love you; that is a misunderstanding. If [he] wants to be alone for a few hours, wants to be just left to himself, it does not mean that he is not in love with you. It simply means that he loves you; that's why he needs the space....
Whenever one partner wants to be left alone the other feels rejected. The other feels, "I am not needed. There are moments when he wants to be with himself more than with me." And lovers cannot understand that. "How can it be? - that he needs to be with himself more than he wants to be with me? If he loves me, then he would like to be with me." This is a very ancient misunderstanding created by the romantic poets, and those are the last people to understand anything about love. Never understand anything about love from the poets; they are the last people to have any insight into love. In fact, they write poetry about love because they have missed love in life; it is a substitute. They romanticize it.
The idea has penetrated deep into human consciousness that if you love a person then he will love you twenty-four hours a day. That is utter nonsense. If you really love a person then there will be moments when you would like to be absolutely alone. If you don't love, you can live together twenty- four hours a day - then there is no problem, because even with the person you are alone. There is no problem. One can live in the crowd twenty-four hours a day and there is not much of a problem, because one is alone in the crowd. Where else can one be more alone? Commuting in a train with thousands of people you are alone. In New York, in Bombay, in London, walking on the streets you are alone. The moment you are with a friend whom you love, you are not alone.
That is the meaning of love: you are together. When you are together then you would like to be alone sometimes, because each thing moves in a rhythm. It is just as you take food but you cannot take food twenty-four hours a day; you have to have a six, eight-hour gap. You have to fast for six, eight hours between two meals.
Love is food, it is nourishment. So when you are in love with a person a moment comes when you are saturated, satiated. Now that is the moment to get up from your dining table. In fact, before that - if lovers are conscious, as they should be, at least my sannyasins should be - before your stomach is absolutely full get up. Leave a little space in your stomach. And the same should be the rule with your lover: when you start feeling that now it is coming to a point of satiation, leave each other alone; otherwise beyond that point it becomes nauseating.
Nobody says so, because it looks so hard and ugly to say to the lover that being together becomes nauseating. But I have to tell you the truth. The truth is: there is a point when being together becomes nauseating and it only becomes nauseating when you are in love, otherwise not. Because in love you are eating each other, actually, literally: you are feeding on each other's energy. That's why love is so nourishing. But then a point comes beyond which, if you go on eating, you will have to vomit. That vomit is the fight, the clash.
And the problem is more so with men than with women; that too has to be understood. A man's love is only part of his life; he has many more things to do. A woman's love is her whole life. If she does something else that is only because she loves - she cooks, she prepares the home, she cleans; she does a thousand and one things. Maybe she composes music, poetry, paints, but deep down she is doing all this because she loves. These are just her expressions of love. If she loves the man then she will paint the walls and put paintings on the walls and she will make the house beautiful. But her whole concern is not the beauty of the house; her whole concern is the man she loves.
Love is a woman's whole life. For man, that is not so. For man love is one of many things. He would like to write poetry, not because he loves; he would like to paint, not because he loves - painting has its own value utterly separate from love. Tired from painting, from music, he would like to fall deep into love in a kind of oblivion; that is his rest. See the difference: man's love is his resting place.
When he is tired of the world, of a thousand and one things, he wants to fall into a woman's energy, into her warmth, and disappear.
But remember: he loves only so he is rested and can paint again and can write poetry and can play music or dance. Love is a basic need for him to do other things. For women it is just the opposite:
she will do other things because she loves. If she does not love she will stop doing everything.
With man, if it becomes a choice of love or poetry, he will choose poetry; he can renounce love but he cannot renounce poetry. It is not a coincidence that all the great scientists, all the great poets, all the great mystics, were unmarried people. Out of necessity they had to remain unmarried, because the demand of the woman is one of total love and they are already committed to something totally.
They can love the woman and they will enjoy the love but they cannot choose the woman against painting - that is impossible. They would rather choose painting and let their love suffer.
It happened to Soren Kierkegaard, one of the great Danish philosophers: he renounced his love. He was in great love with a woman and they were just on the verge of getting married. Suddenly, for no reason at all, he escaped. He remembered the woman his whole life, and he loved the woman his whole life, just in his mind. It has been a mystery: why did he escape? The woman was really one of the most beautiful women. And he never loved any other woman - his devotion to that woman was such that he could never love anybody else. The reason he writes is that he had to choose between philosophy and the woman. He knew that he was in love and that the woman was in tremendous love, and that sooner or later conflict would arise. The woman would become jealous of his philosophy, the woman would think of philosophy as another woman, and then he would not have time for it. So he said, "It is better to sacrifice my love and suffer, rather than sacrificing philosophy." He suffered... it was a great sacrifice.
Man and woman are made differently by nature, and we have to understand that difference. Nature has taken every care that the woman's whole life should be of love, because the woman has to be the mother. If her whole life is not of love she will be incapable of carrying the child in her womb for nine months. And it is not only a question of nine months; after nine months the real problem arises:
to take care of the child, to help him grow. If her whole life is not of love, she will not be able to help the child to grow.
If it is left to men, the population of the world will immediately start falling. They will kill their own children. They will murder their children, they will poison their children. They will not be able to tolerate the suffering that one has to go through when one brings up a child; that is impossible for them. The child does not become a grown-up within days; it takes years, almost twenty, twenty-five years, and then he will be able to stand on his own. The woman has to pour her love.
Man is just instrumental in creating the child. Nature has not bothered much about man. Woman is the favored sex; man is just peripheral. It happens in nature...
The woman's interest in the man is just to become pregnant. Her whole function is to be a mother.
There are many species of insects - spiders particularly - in which while the male is making love the female starts eating him! He is lost in lovemaking and he does not know that he is committing suicide. The moment the female feels that she is pregnant, she starts eating the male partner. She eats him! He is lost in orgasm... he is not aware of what is happening. He is finished! Now he is no more needed. And that's how it is in man: nature does not care a bit - once the woman is pregnant natures does not care a bit about the man. He can drop dead or can go to parliament... whatsoever he wants to do.
This difference has to be understood, and once this difference is understood things become very clear. I can understand your mind, your heart, your feeling: you would like to be more and more with him. And I can understand him too: he would like a few hours to be utterly his own so he can forget all about you and can do something else.
Once this understanding is there the problem disappears. Otherwise people go on fighting, clashing - consciously, unconsciously, directly, indirectly - and creating unnecessary trouble which can be immediately avoided.
Relationship needs great understanding, only then does beauty arise out of it, and bliss. You both are people of understanding... and I would like you to be together. All these things can disappear - just bring in a little more conscious effort to understand and see. Leave him alone when he wants to be alone, give him as much solitude as he needs, don't interfere 3 in his solitude. And never feel that it is a rejection; it is nothing to do with you. It is just his basic need. He is a talented person, and much creativity is possible through him. If you don't interfere and if you allow him a little space your love will help him to be creative; he can grow into a beautiful flower and he will feel grateful to you.
And I understand you - in those moments when he wants to be alone, you will feel sad. That has to be accepted.
... And again that is not a problem with you alone; that is also a problem of every couple. Again the same question: the woman is monogamous and man is not. And nothing can be done about it: this is how things are. You will not find any man who is monogamous, and if you find a monogamous man you will not be interested in him, because he will not be a man, not much of a man. He will be just a henpecked husband. He will follow you like a shadow, and who loves a man who follows you like a shadow?
These are the dilemmas of human life: a woman wants somebody who is really a man, but a real man is going to be polygamous. So the dilemma is that if you can find a real man he will be polygamous.
And if you want to find a monogamous man who will simply be obedient to you, and whatsoever you say he will do and will be always behind you like a shadow, then he will be an orderly, a servant; he will not be a husband. You will not be satisfied with him.
Now, this is a dilemma. You can find a person who will fit with your monogamous idea but then you will not be interested in him; and you will be interested in a person who cannot be monogamous.
Just see! It is happening all over the world and has always been happening: many women, many beautiful women, will flock to a film actor or to a singer, a musician... and those are the people who cannot be monogamous. They look very beautiful and they are heroes but once a woman can catch hold of the man, she will suffer, because that man cannot be monogamous. She was attracted only because so many women were attracted - it was a competition; to conquer that man was something worthwhile - but the moment she has conquered him misery starts. If you can find a talented man, in some way significant, creative, powerful, this problem is bound to be there. That too has to be understood.
What I am saying is simply that man and woman are poles apart; they are made in such a way that they are not similar. And the attraction between them is because they are not similar. But that is the problem: because they are not similar they become attracted to each other and when they are together, their dissimilarity becomes the constant clash.
Just accept him - if you love him, accept him, accept his whole life as it is Don't try to change it.
Changes will come, but don't try to change him at all. Why waste time in changing him? He loves you - that is enough. Let him love somebody else if he loves; that is his business.
Again, a great misunderstanding continues in the world, that love is of a limited quantity. People think, "If I love two persons then the love will be divided; if I love three then it will be still more divided. If I love five then each will be getting a very small portion." It is not so. Love is not a quantity. In fact the more a man loves, the more he has. Love does not come under the ordinary law of economics. Love is not part of the economic world; it is a very strange phenomenon. It is like knowledge.
For example, if I know something and I tell it to one person, do you think I will not be able to tell it to another person because now I have told it to one? Will it be less? In fact it will be more because I will become more articulate with the second person. I said it to the first person - that was the first attempt; I may not have been so articulate. With the second I will be more articulate, with the third even more, with the fourth even more. The more I become experienced in expressing it, the more the people who come later on will get. It is exactly like this: I love one person; I may not be so articulate. When I love another, I may become more articulate, because that experience helps.
I love the third person - it is not being divided; one can love the whole world! And I say it from my own experience: I love you all! And the more I love, the more I see that the love is coming, it goes on coming.
But these are our hangups from the past; these are materialist hangups. We think in terms of money:
I have five rupees with me. If I give all the five to [you], she will have five; if I give five to [your partner] then I will not have anything else. It is not money; love is not money, love is not property. Love is not quantity. Love is a totally different phenomenon. Once this is understood the misery disappears.
Let him love! It is good! So he has some other person also to practice on a little bit. He will be more loving to you. And I know, these are difficult ideas; what I am saying seems very hard, because the heart is made by the past. But we are to prepare for a new world, a totally new world, where things will be put in their right places.
[She asks: Am I to be a mother to him - love his lover, love everything?]
In fact there is only one kind of love - there are just different dimensions, and a real love has to be all the dimensions of it. You have to love him as a wife, you have to love him as a mother, you have to love him as a daughter, you have to love him as a friend... all the possibilities. Then love is rich.
Why get fixated? Love has to be all kinds of things, then it is rich. When you love your child, that is one aspect of love and it has its own beauty. Sometimes even your husband is in need of that kind of love. He is tired, exhausted, lost, feeling lost in the world; he would like to be a child.
And these needs differ. For example: he is ill - when he is ill he wants a mother, not a wife; when is tired he needs a mother, not a wife. When he is full of energy he does not need a mother, he needs a wife. And these needs change moment to moment. But remember, love has to be all kinds of love. We cannot divide love into categories - that this is the love for the child and this is the love for the husband and this is the love for the friend. Then love becomes very very tiny and then again problems arise.
For example: if you love him only as a husband then he will need somebody else who can love him as a friend, he will need somebody else who can love him as a mother, he will need somebody else who can love as a daughter, and then problems arise. Be all to him. And you contain all possibilities.
You are a mother, you are a sister, you are a daughter, you are a wife. Let all those possibilities flow, and whatsoever the need of the moment, become that.
(To the man) And whatsoever I am saying to her, I am saying to you too. I am not only saying it to her. You also have to be all kinds of love to her.
I see great possibilities between you, but just more and more understanding.... If you really want to go with me deep into reality, all these things have to be understood.