All lovers are in trouble

Beloved Osho,

I’m experiencing more and more a harmony, a quietness, an ease, an abundance in myself, moments in which I feel so vast and rich, like the universe, and so close to you. I dive into it and disappear, and see that this again was just an opening, a door to another dimension on this ongoing, never-ending journey you are taking me, my beloved Master.

And I can find no words to express how much I feel, that I can be with you.

Being together with a man I find these most beautiful and precious moments so rarely; it seems most of the time is wasted in loving and finding ourselves and each other. Why is it so difficult for me to be in this harmony together with a man, and even take him with me into this unknown?

Or is it something which can happen just between you and me?

There are a few very fundamental things to be understood.

First, a man and a woman are on the one hand halves of the other, and on the other hand, opposite polarities.

Their being opposites attracts them to each other. The farther away they are, the deeper will be the attraction; the more different from each other they are, the more will be the charm and beauty and attraction. But there lies the whole problem.

When they come close, they want to come closer, they want to merge into each other, they want to become one, a harmonious whole – but their whole attraction depends on opposition, and the harmony will depend on dissolving the opposition.

Unless a love affair is very conscious, it is going to create great anguish, great trouble.

All lovers are in trouble.

The trouble is not personal; it is in the very nature of things.

They would not have been attracted to each other… they call it falling in love. They cannot give any reason why they have such a tremendous pull towards each other. They are not even conscious of the underlying causes; hence a strange thing happens: the happiest lovers are those who never meet. Once they meet, the same opposition that created the attraction becomes a conflict. On each small point, their attitudes are different, their approaches are different. Although they speak the same language, they cannot understand each other.

One of my friends was talking to me about his wife and their continuous conflict. I said, “It seems you cannot understand each other.”

He said, “What to say about understanding her, I cannot even stand her!” And it was a love marriage. The parents of both were opposed to it; they belonged to two different religions, their societies were opposed. But they fought against everybody and got married – just to find that they had entered into a constant struggle.

The way a man looks at the world is different from a woman.

For example, a man is interested in faraway things – in the future of humanity, in the faraway stars, whether there are living beings on other planets or not.

A woman simply giggles at the whole nonsense. She is only interested in a very small, closed circle – in the neighbors, in the family, in who is cheating his wife, whose wife has fallen in love with the chauffeur. Her interest is very local and very human. She is not worried about reincarnation; neither is she concerned about life after death. Her concern is more pragmatic. She is concerned with the present, here and now.

Man is never here and now. He is always somewhere else. He has strange preoccupations – reincarnation, life after death.

If both partners are conscious of the fact that it is a meeting of opposites, that there is no need to make it a conflict, then it is a great opportunity to understand the totally opposite point of view and absorb it. Then the life of a man and woman together can become a beautiful harmony. Otherwise, it is continuous fight.

There are holidays. One cannot continue to fight twenty-four hours a day; one needs a little rest too – a rest to get ready for a new fight.

But it is one of the strangest phenomena that for thousands of years men and women have been living together, yet they are strangers. They go on giving birth to children, but still they remain strangers. The feminine approach and the masculine approach are so opposed to each other that unless a conscious effort is made, unless it becomes your meditation, there is no hope of having a peaceful life.

It is one of my deep concerns: how to make love and meditation so involved in each other that each love affair automatically becomes a partnership in meditation – and each meditation makes you so conscious that you need not fall in love, you can rise in love. You can find a friend consciously, deliberately.

You feel a deep harmony with me, moments of peace, love and silence, and naturally the question has arisen in you that if this is possible with me, why is it not possible with the man you love?

The difference has to be understood. You love me, but you don’t love me in the same way you love your husband, your wife. Your love towards me is not biological; with me your love is a totally different phenomenon – it is of the spirit, not of the body.

And secondly, you are connected with me because of your search for truth. My relationship with you is that of meditation.

Meditation is the only bridge between me and you.

Your love will deepen as your meditation deepens, and vice-versa: as your meditation blossoms, your love will also blossom. But it is on a totally different level.

With your husband, you are not connected in meditation. You never sit silently for one hour together just to feel each other’s consciousness. Either you are fighting or you are making love, but in both cases, you are related with the body, the physical part, the biology, the hormones. You are not related with the innermost core of the other. Your souls remain separate.

In the temples and in the churches and in the courts, only your bodies are married. Your souls are miles apart.

While you are making love to your man – even in those moments – neither are you there, nor is your man there. Perhaps he is thinking of Cleopatra, Noorjahan, Mumtaj Mahal. You are also thinking…. And perhaps that’s why every woman keeps her eyes closed – not to see her husband’s face, not to get disturbed. She is thinking of Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible. And looking at her husband, everything falls apart. He looks just like a mouse.

Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were quarreling one morning. She said, “Outside the house you walk as if you are a lion, and inside the house you look just like a mouse.”

Mulla Nasruddin said, “That is absolutely wrong. Put yourself right: I am not a mouse, I am a mousetrap. You are a mouse. Mousetraps don’t run after mice to catch hold of them. The mice themselves come and get caught, and that’s how it happened with us.”

Mulla Nasruddin was not courageous enough to approach this woman. He was afraid from the very beginning.

Every man is afraid because he has seen what has happened to his father, what has happened to his grandfather. He has seen what is happening to every neighbor. Every man is afraid.

Mulla was very much afraid; he never approached any woman. It was this woman who caught him. So he said, “Remember – I am a mousetrap, that is true, but I was just sitting in my place. You got into me, it is your responsibility.”

But it does not matter who catches who, who takes the initiative.

Even in those beautiful moments which should be sacred, meditative, of deep silence… even then you are not alone with your beloved. There is a crowd. Your mind is thinking of somebody else, your wife’s mind is thinking of somebody else. Then what you are doing is just robot-like, mechanical. Some biological force is enslaving you, and you call it love.

I have heard that early in the morning, a drunkard on the beach saw a man doing pushups. The drunkard walked around him, looked very closely from here and from there, and finally said, “I should not interfere in such an intimate affair, but I have to tell you that your girlfriend has gone. Now don’t exercise unnecessarily – first get up and find where she is!”

That seems to be the situation. When you are making love, is your woman really there? Is your man really there? Or are you just doing a ritual – something which has to be done, a duty to be fulfilled?

If you want a harmonious relationship with your man, you will have to learn to be more meditative. Love alone is not enough.

Love alone is blind; meditation gives it eyes. Meditation gives it understanding.

And once your love is both love and meditation, you become fellow travelers. Then it is no longer an ordinary relationship between husband and wife. Then it becomes a friendliness on the path towards discovering the mysteries of life.

Man alone, woman alone, will find the journey very tedious and very long… as they have found it in the past. Because seeing this continuous conflict, all the religions decided that those who wanted to seek should renounce the other – the monks should be celibate, the nuns should be celibate. But in five thousand years of history, how many monks and how many nuns have become realized souls? You cannot even give me names enough to count on ten fingers. And millions of monks and nuns of all religions – Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan…. What has happened?

The path is not so long. The goal is not that far away. But even if you want to go to your neighbor’s house, you will need both your legs. Just jumping on one leg, how far can you go?

I am introducing a totally new vision, that men and women together in deep friendship, in a loving, meditative relationship, as organic wholes, can reach the goal any moment they want. Because the goal is not outside you; it is the center of the cyclone, it is the innermost part of your being. But you can find it only when you are whole, and you cannot be whole without the other.

Man and woman are two parts of one whole.

So rather than wasting time in fighting, try to understand each other. Try to put yourself in the place of the other; try to see as a man sees, try to see as a woman sees. And four eyes are always better than two eyes – you have a full view; all four directions are available to you.

But one thing has to be remembered: that without meditation, love is destined to fail; there is no possibility of its being a success. You can pretend and you can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself. You know deep down that all the promises love had given to you have remained unfulfilled.

Only with meditation does love start taking on new colors, new music, new songs, new dances – because meditation gives you the insight to understand the polar opposite, and in that very understanding the conflict disappears.

All the conflict in the world is because of misunderstanding. You say something, your wife understands something else. Your wife says something, you understand something else.

I have seen couples who have lived together for thirty or forty years; still, they seem to be as immature as they were on their first day together. Still the same complaint: “She doesn’t understand what I am saying.” Forty years being together and you have not been able to figure out some way that your wife can understand exactly what you are saying, and you can understand exactly what she is saying.

But I think there is no possibility for it to happen except through meditation, because meditation gives you the qualities of silence, awareness, a patient listening, a capacity to put yourself in the other’s position.

It is possible with me: I am not concerned with the trivia of your life.

You are here basically to listen and understand.

You are here to grow spiritually.

Naturally there is no question of conflict, and the harmony arises without any effort.

You can love me with totality, because with me your relationship is of meditation. With any other man or with any other woman, if you want to live in harmony you will have to bring the same atmosphere and the same climate that you have brought here.

Things are not impossible, but we have not tried the right medicine.

I would like you to be reminded that the word ‘medicine’ comes from the same root as ‘meditation’. Medicine cures your body; meditation cures your soul. Medicine heals the material part of you; meditation heals the spiritual part of you.

People are living together and their spirits are full of wounds; hence, small things hurt them so much.

Mulla Nasruddin was asking me, “What to do? – whatever I say I am misunderstood, and immediately there is trouble.”

I said, “Try one thing: just sit silently, don’t say anything.”

The next day, I saw him in more despair than ever. I said, “What happened?”

He said, “I should not ask you for advice. Every day we used to fight and quarrel, but it was just verbal. Yesterday, because of your advice, I got beaten!”

I said, “What happened?”

He said, “I just sat there silent. She asked many questions, but I was determined to remain silent. She said, ‘So you are not going to speak?’ I remained silent. So she started hitting me with things! And she was very angry. She said, ‘Things have gone from bad to worse. At least we used to talk to each other; now even we are not on speaking terms!'”

I said, “This is really bad.”

He said, “You are saying bad? The whole neighborhood gathered, and they all started asking, ‘What happened? Why aren’t you speaking?’ And somebody suggested: ‘It seems he is possessed by some evil spirit.’

“I thought, my God, now they are going to take me to some idiot who will beat me and try to drive the evil spirit out. I said, ‘Wait! I’m not possessed by any evil spirit, I’m simply not speaking because to say anything triggers a fight: I say something, then she has to say something, and then I have to say something, and nobody knows where it is going to end.’ I was simply meditating silently, doing no harm to anybody – and suddenly the whole neighborhood was against me!”

People are living without any understanding.

Hence, whatsoever they do is going to end in disaster.

If you love a man, meditation will be the best present that you can give to him. If you love a woman, then the Kohinoor is nothing; meditation will be a far more precious gift – and it will make your life sheer joy.

We are potentially capable of sheer joy, but we don’t know how to manage it.

Alone, we are at the most sad.

Together, it becomes really hell.

Even a man like Jean-Paul Sartre, a man of great intelligence, has to say that the other is hell, that to be alone is better, you cannot make it with the other. He became so pessimistic that he said it is impossible to make it with the other, the other is hell. Ordinarily, he is right.

With meditation the other becomes your heaven.

But Jean-Paul Sartre had no idea of meditation.

That is the misery of Western man. Western man is missing the flowering of life because he knows nothing about meditation, and Eastern man is missing because he knows nothing of love.

And to me, just as man and woman are halves of one whole, so are love and meditation.

Meditation is man; love is woman.

In the meeting of meditation and love is the meeting of man and woman. And in that meeting, we create the transcendental human being – which is neither man nor woman.

Unless we create the transcendental man on the earth, there is not much hope.

But I feel my people are capable of doing the apparently impossible.

Osho, Beyond Enlightenment, Ch 16, Q 1