Life is an organic unity. If there is only giving and no receiving, to whom are you going to give?
If there are only receivers, and no givers, from whom are they going to receive? Life is a balance between giving and receiving. Roots receive from the earth, and fruits and flowers go on giving back to the earth. It is a circle.
Man, in his ignorance, has broken that circle in many places. That’s why there is a great ecological crisis. We go on taking from the earth, but we don’t return anything. The earth slowly, slowly becomes barren, dead. And if the earth is dying, something of us is dying also, because we are part of it.
You think that the trees depend on the earth because they have roots, and they suck the juice of the earth. You also depend on the earth, because those fruits, those flowers, ultimately come to you. And you must share – you are trees who can walk. There are trees in Africa which walk. For walking, solid earth is difficult – the roots are not in a position to move. But there are places in Africa where the earth is not so solid, and there, trees move. If the water is more towards the north, the trees start moving towards the north; and when the water is finished, then the trees start dispersing to other directions.
We are also trees, we are also connected with existence in many ways. Every second you are breathing in and out. Just try not breathing out – because that is sharing – and you will be dead. Sharing is life. These trees are also breathing. And life is such a beautiful unity that you breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and the trees breathe carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen: there is a kind of brotherhood. Without trees you cannot live; without you, trees cannot live.
There is a constant giving, receiving – the sun goes on giving you life, vitamins; the moon goes on giving you something that is very mysterious. Except Mahavira, all the mystics have become enlightened on the full-moon night. On the full-moon night more people go mad – the number is double – than any other day. More people commit suicide – again the number is double – than on any other day. More people commit murders – the number is double – than any other day. The full-moon night has something to do with it.
From enlightenment to murder… the full-moon night somehow stirs you. If you are going deeper into meditation, it takes you deeper into meditation. If you are hankering to kill somebody, and you are not able to gather courage, it gives you courage. So what was not possible before becomes possible on the full-moon night.
For centuries, more people have gone mad on full-moon nights – so much so that in every language, for madness or mad people, a word exists which connects madness with moon. In English it is ‘lunatic’. It comes from luna. Luna means ‘the moon’. In Hindi it is chandmara, ‘killed by the moon’.
George Gurdjieff had the great insight that it cannot be one-sided: just as with the trees we receive and give, we must be giving to the sun and receiving, giving to the moon and receiving. It has to be balanced. We have not yet been able to decipher exactly what we give to the sun, what we give to the moon – but we must be giving, because what we receive we know; sooner or later it will be discovered that just as we cannot live without the sun…. If one day the sun does not arise, you will not wake up, not even for your morning tea in bed; you are finished. Your life is coming from that far-away star, the sun.
But I always think – and I agree with Gurdjieff, although there is no evidence and no proof – that if every man on the earth, every animal, every tree dies… for which people like Ronald Reagan are making every effort… if everything alive on the earth dies, the sun will not rise the next day. It is impossible that we are just receivers, and not givers. If we are receiving life in some way from the sun, we must be giving life in some way to the sun.
We are all a connected whole, interrelated, one organism. Hence it can be said, as a conclusion: Become richer in every dimension. Be creative, be loving, be meditative, and share. And the more you share, the more existence will shower on you flowers of blissfulness and ecstasy.
The only good is to be in a position of oneness, so that you are not in a constant conflict within yourself – because that conflict destroys you, leaves no energy to be shared. When you are one, the energy becomes so much that you become almost like a rain cloud, so full of rain that it wants to shower somewhere or other.
Sharing is the most precious religious experience.
Osho, The Messiah Vol 2, Ch 10 (excerpt)
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