Ageing

Osho – From Medication to Meditation

Ageing - Già đi (Read in Vietnamese)

In Western society, at least, youth is considered to be everything — and to a certain extent it seems this is as it should be if we are to continue growing in every dimension of life. But the natural corollary of that is that as one moves away from youth, birthdays are no longer a cause for congratulations, but are an embarrassing and unavoidable fact of life. It becomes impolite to ask someone their age; grey hair is dyed, teeth capped or replaced entirely, demoralized breasts and faces have to be lifted, tummies made taut, and varicose veins supported — but under cover. You certainly don't take it as a compliment if someone tells you that you look your age. But my experience is that as I am becoming older, each year is only better and better; yet nobody told me this would be so, and one never hears people singing the praises of growing older. Would you speak of the joys of growing older?

The question you have asked implies many things. First, the Western mind is conditioned by the idea that you have only one life - seventy years — and youth will never come again. In the West, the spring comes only once; naturally, there is a deep desire to cling as long as possible, to pretend in every possible way that you are still young.

In the East the older person was always valued, respected. He was more experienced, he had seen many, many seasons coming and going; he had lived through all kinds of experiences, good and bad. He had become seasoned; he was no longer immature. He had a certain integrity that comes only with age. He was not childish, carrying his teddy bears; he was not young, still fooling around thinking that this was love.

He had passed through all these experiences, had seen that beauty fades; he had seen that everything comes to an end, that everything is moving towards the grave. From the very moment he left the cradle, there was only one way — and it was from cradle to the grave. You cannot go anywhere else; you cannot go astray even if you try. You will reach to the grave whatever you do.

The old man was respected, loved; he had attained a certain purity of the heart because he had lived through desires, and seen that every desire leads to frustration. Those desires are past memories. He had lived in all kinds of relationships, and had seen that every kind of relationship turns into hell. He had passed through all the dark nights of the soul. He had attained a certain aloofness — the purity of an observer. He was no longer interested in participating in any football game. Just living his life, he had come to a transcendence; hence, he was respected, his wisdom was respected.

But in the East, the idea has been that life is not just a small piece of seventy years in which youth comes only once. The idea has been that, just as in existence everything moves eternally — the summer comes, the rains come, the winter comes, and the summer again; everything moves like a wheel — life is not an exception. Death is the end of one wheel and the beginning of another. Again you will be a child, and again you will be young, and again you will be old. It has been so since the beginning, and it is going to be so to the very end — until you become so enlightened that you can jump out of the vicious circle and can enter into a totally different law. From individuality, you can jump into the universal. So there was no hurry, and there was no clinging.

The West is based on the Judaic tradition which believes in only one life. Christianity is only a branch of the Judaism. Jesus was a Jew, born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew; he never knew that he was a Christian. If you meet him somewhere and greet him with, "Hello, Jesus Christ," he will not recognize who you are addressing because he never knew that his name is Jesus and he never knew that he is Christ. His name was Joshua, a Hebrew name, and he was a messiah of God, not a Christ. Jesus Christ is a translation in Greek from Hebrew. Mohammedanism is also a by-product of the same tradition — the Jewish. These three religions believe in one life. To believe in one life is very dangerous because it does not give you chances to make mistakes, it does not give you chances to have enough experience of anything; you are always in a hurry.

The whole Western mind has become the mind of a tourist who is carrying two, three cameras, and rushing to photograph everything because he only has a threeweek visa. And in three weeks, he has to cover the whole country — all the great monuments. There is no time for him to see them directly; he will see them at home, at ease, in his album. Whenever I remember the tourists, I see the old women rushing from one place to another — from Ajanta to Ellora, from Taj Mahal to Kashmir - in a hurry, because life is short.

It is only the Western mind which has created the proverb that time is money. In the East things go slowly; there is no hurry — one has the whole of eternity. We have been here and we will be here again, so what is the hurry? Enjoy everything with intensity and totality. So, one thing: because of the idea of one single life, the West has become too concerned about being young, and then everything is done to remain young as long as possible, to prolong the process. That creates hypocrisy, and that destroys an authentic growth. It does not allow you to become really wise in your old age, because you hate old age; old age reminds you only of death, nothing else. Old age means the full stop is not far away; you have come to the terminus — just one whistle more, and the train will stop.

I had an agreement with my grandfather. He loved his feet to be massaged, and had told him, "Remember, when I say 'comma,' that means be alert; the semicolon is coming close. When I say 'semicolon,' get ready, because the full stop is coming close. And once I say 'full stop,' I mean it." So he was so much afraid of "comma," that when I would say, "Comma," he would say, "It is okay, but let the semi colon be a little longer. Don't make it short and quick!"

Old age simply reminds you, in the West, that a full stop is coming close —prolong the semicolon-colon. And who are you trying to deceive? If you have recognized that youth is no longer there, you can go on deceiving the whole world but you are not young, you are simply being ridiculous.... People are trying to remain young, but they don't know that the very fear of losing youth does not allow you to live it in its totality.

And secondly, the fear of losing youth does not allow you to accept old age with grace. You miss both youth — its joy, its intensity — and you also miss the grace, and the wisdom, and the peace that old age brings. But the whole thing is based on a false conception of life. Unless the West changes the idea that there is only one life, this hypocrisy, this clinging, and this fear cannot be changed.

In fact, one life is not all; you have lived many times, and you will live many times more. Hence, live each moment as totally as possible; there is no hurry to jump to another moment. Time is not money, time is inexhaustible; it is available to the poor as much as to the rich. The rich are not richer as far as time is concerned, and the poor are not poorer. Life is an eternal incarnation.

What appears on the surface is very deep-rooted in the religions of the West. They are very miserly in giving you only seventy years. If you try to work it out, almost one-third of your life will be lost in sleep, one-third of your life will have to be wasted in earning food, clothes, housing. Whatever little is left has to be given to education, football matches, movies, stupid quarrels, fights. If you can save, in seventy years' time, seven minutes for yourself, I will count you a wise man. But it is difficult to save even seven minutes in your whole life; so how can you find yourself? How can you know the mystery of your being, of your life? How can you understand that death is not an end? Because you have missed experiencing life itself, you are going to miss the great experience of death, too; otherwise, there is nothing to be afraid of in death. It is a beautiful sleep, a dreamless sleep, a sleep that is needed for you to move into another body, silently and peacefully.

It is a surgical phenomenon; it is almost like anaesthesia. Death is a friend, not a foe. Once you understand death as a friend, and start living life without any fear that it is only a very small timespan of seventy years — if your perspective opens to the eternity of your life — then everything will slow down; then there is no need to be speedy. In everything, people are simply rushing. I have seen people taking their office bag, pushing things into it, kissing their wife, not seeing whether she is their wife or somebody else, and saying good-bye to their children. This is not the way of living! And where are you reaching with this speed?

I have heard about a young couple who had purchased a new car, and they were going full speed. The wife was asking the husband again and again, "Where are we going?" — because women are still old-minded: "Where are we going?" The man said, "Stop bothering me, just enjoy the speed we are going at. The real question is not where we are going; the real question is at what great speed are we going?"

Speed has become more important than the destination, and speed has become more important because life is so short. You have to do so many things, that unless you do everything with speed, you cannot manage. You cannot sit silently even for a few minutes — it seems a wastage. In those few minutes you could have earned a few bucks.

Just wasting time closing your eyes, and what is there inside you? If you really want to know, you can go to any hospital and see a skeleton. That is what is inside you. Why are you unnecessarily getting into trouble by looking in? Looking in, you will find a skeleton. And once you have seen your skeleton, life will become more difficult; kissing your wife, you know perfectly well what is happening — two skeletons. Somebody just needs to invent Xray glasses, so people can put on X-ray glasses and see all around skeletons laughing. Most probably, he will not be alive to take his glasses off; so many skeletons laughing is enough to stop anybody's heartbeat. "My God, this is the reality! And this is what all these mystics have been telling people, 'Look inwards' — avoid them!"

The West has no tradition of mysticism. It is extrovert: Look outward, there is so much to see. But they are not aware that inside there is not only the skeleton, there is something more within the skeleton. That is your consciousness. By closing your eyes you will not come across the skeleton, you will come across your very life source. The West needs a deep acquaintance with its own life source, then there will be no hurry. One will enjoy when life brings youth, one will enjoy when life brings old age and one will enjoy when life brings death. You simply know one thing — how to enjoy everything that you come across, how to transform it into a celebration. I call the authentic religion the art of transforming everything into a celebration, into a song, into a dance.

An old man walked into a health clinic and told the doctor, "You have got to do something to lower my sex drive." The doctor took one look at the feeble old man and said, "Now, now sir, I have got the feeling that your sex drive is all in your head." "That's what I mean, sonny," the old man said. "I have got to lower it a little." Even the old man is wanting to be a playboy. It shows one thing with certainty —that he has not lived his youth with totality. He has missed his youth, and he is still thinking about it.

Now he cannot do anything about it, but his whole mind is continuously thinking about the days he had in youth which have not been lived; at that time he was in a hurry. If he had lived his youth he would be free in his old age of all repressions, sexuality; there would be no need for him to drop his sexual instinct. It disappears, it evaporates in living. One just has to live uninhibited, without any interference from your religions, from your priests, and it disappears; otherwise, when you are young you are in church, and when you are old, you are reading the Playboy by hiding it in your Holy Bible. Every Holy Bible is used only for one purpose, hiding magazines like Playboy, so you are not caught by children — it is embarrassing.

I have heard of three men, old men. One was seventy, the other was eighty and the third was ninety. They were all old friends, retired, who used to go for a walk and sit on a bench in the park, and have all kinds of gossips. One day the youngest of the three, the seventy-year-old man, looked a little sad. The second one, the eightyyear-old, asked, "What is the matter? You are looking very sad."

He said, "I am feeling very guilty. It will help me to unburden myself if I tell you. It is an incident: A beautiful lady was taking a bath — she was a guest in our house —and I was looking through the keyhole and my mother caught hold of me."

Both the old friends laughed; they said, "You are an idiot. Everybody does such things in childhood."

He said, "It is not a question of childhood, it happened today."

The second man said, "Then it is really serious. But I will tell you something which has been happening to me for three days, and I am keeping it like a stone, a rock on my heart. Continuously for three days my wife has refused to love me."

The first man said, "That is really very bad." But the third, the oldest laughed and he said, "First you ask him what he means by love." So he asked, and the second old man said, "Nothing much. Don't make me feel more embarrassed. It is a simple process. I hold my wife's hand and press it three times, then she goes to sleep and I go to sleep. But for three days, whenever I try to hold her hand, she says, 'Not today, not today! Feel ashamed; you are old enough —not today!' So for three days I have not loved."

The third old man said, "This is nothing. What has been happening to me I must confess, because you are young and it will help you in your future. Last night, as the night was passing and the morning was coming closer, I started to make preparations to make love to my wife and she said to me, 'What are you trying to do, you idiot?' I said, 'What am I trying to do? I am simply trying to make love to you,' and she said, 'This is the third time in the night; neither you sleep nor you allow me to sleep. Love, love, love!' So I think it seems I am losing my memory. Your problems are nothing; I have lost my memory."

If you listen to old people, you will be surprised; they are talking only of things which they should have lived, but the time has passed when it was possible to live them. At that time they were reading the Holy Bible and listening to the priest. Those priests and those holy scriptures have corrupted people, because they have given them ideas against nature and they cannot allow them to live naturally. If we need a new humanity, we will have to erase the whole past and start everything anew. And the first basic principle will be: allow everybody, help everybody, teach everybody to live according to his nature, not according to any ideals, and live totally and intensely without any fear. Then children will enjoy their childhood, the young people will enjoy their youth and the old people will have the grace that comes naturally, out of a whole life lived naturally.

Unless your old age is graceful and wise and full of light and joy, contentment, fulfillment, a blissfulness... in your very presence, unless flowers blossom and there is a fragrance of eternity, then it is certain that you have not lived. If it is not happening that way, that means somewhere you have gone astray, somewhere you have listened to the priests, who are the corrupters, the criminals, somewhere you have gone against nature — and nature takes revenge. And its revenge is to destroy your old age and make it ugly, ugly to others and ugly in your own eyes; otherwise old age has a beauty which even youth cannot have.

Youth has a maturity, but it is unwise. It has too much foolishness in it; it is amateurish. Old age has given the last touches to the paintings of one's own life. And when one has given the last touches, one is ready to die joyously, dancingly. One is ready to welcome death.

Pain

Osho – From Medication to Meditation

Pain - Đau đớn (Read in Vietnamese)

Can you please talk about pain and our identification with it?

Prhe witnessing self is never felt. We always feel some identity; we always feel some identification. And the witnessing consciousness is the reality. So why does this happen? And how does this happen?

You are in pain — what is really happening inside? Analyze the whole phenomenon: the pain is there, and there is this consciousness that pain is there. These are the two points: the pain is there, and there is this consciousness that the pain is there. But there is no gap, and somehow, "I am in pain" — this feeling happens — "I am in pain." And not only this — sooner or later, "I am the pain" begins, happens, starts to be the feeling.

"I am pain; I am in pain; I am aware of the pain" — these are three different, very different states. The rishi says, "I am aware of the pain." This much can be allowed, because then you transcend pain. The awareness transcends — you are different from the pain, and there is a deep separation. Really, there has never been any relation; the relation begins to appear only because of the nearness, because of the intimate nearness of your consciousness and all that happens around.

Consciousness is so near when you are in pain — it is just there by the side, very near. It has to be; otherwise, the pain cannot be cured. It has to be just near to feel it, to know it, to be aware about it. But because of this nearness, you become identified, and one. This is a safety measure again; this is a security measure, a natural security. When there is pain you must be near; when there is pain your consciousness must go in a rush towards the pain — to feel it, to do something about it.

You are on the street and suddenly you feel a snake there — then your whole consciousness just becomes a jump. No moment can be lost, not even in thinking what to do. There is no gap between being aware and the action. You must be very near; only then this can happen. When your body is suffering pain, disease, illness, you must be near; otherwise, life cannot survive. If you are far off and the pain is not felt, then you will die. The pain must be felt immediately — there should be no gap. The message must be received immediately, and your consciousness must go to the spot to do something. That's why nearness is a necessity. But because of this necessity, the other phenomenon happens: so near, you become one; so near, you begin to feel, "This is me — this pain, this pleasure." Because of nearness there is identification: you become anger, you become love, you become pain, you become happiness.

The rishi says that there are two ways to disassociate yourself from these false identities. You are not what you have been thinking, feeling, imagining, projecting; what you are is simply the fact of being aware. Whatsoever happens, you remain just the awareness. You are awareness — that identity cannot be broken, that identity cannot be negated. All else can be negated and thrown; awareness remains the ultimate substratum, the ultimate base. You cannot deny it, you cannot negate it, you cannot disassociate yourself from it.

So this is the process: That which cannot be thrown, that which cannot be made separate from you, is you; that which can be separated, you are not. The pain is there; a moment later it may not be there — but you will be. Happiness has come, and it will go; it has been, and it will not be — but you will be. The body is young, then the body becomes old. All else comes and goes — guests come and go — but the host remains the same. So the Zen mystics say: Do not be lost in the crowd of the guests. Remember your host-ness. That host-ness is awareness. That host-ness is the witnessing consciousness. What is the basic element that remains always the same in you? Only be that, and disidentify yourself from all that comes and goes. But we become identified with the guest. Really the host is so occupied with the guest, he forgets.

Mulla Nasruddin has given a party for some friends and some strangers. The party is very boring, and half the night is just lost and it goes on. So one stranger, not knowing that Mulla is the host, says to him, "I have never seen such a party, such nonsense. It seems never-ending, and I am so bored that I would like to leave."

Mulla says, "You have said what I was going to say to you. I myself have never seen such a boring and nonsense party before, but I was not so courageous as you are. I was also thinking to leave it and just run away." So they both run. Then, in the street Mulla remembers and says, "Something has gone wrong, because now I remember: I am the host! So please excuse me, I have to go back."

This is happening to us all. The host is lost, the host is forgotten every moment. The host is your witnessing self. Pain comes and pleasure follows; there is happiness, and there is misery. And each moment, whatsoever comes you are identified with it, you become the guest. Remember the host. When the guest is there, remember the host. And there are so many types of guests: pleasurable, painful; guests you would like, guests you would not like to be your guests; guests you would like to live with, guests you would like to avoid — but all guests. Remember the host. Constantly remember the host. Be centred in the host. Remain in your host-ness; then there is a separation. Then there is a gap, an interval — the bridge is broken. The moment this bridge is broken, the phenomenon of renunciation happens. Then you are in it, and not of it. Then you are there in the guest, and still a host. You need not escape from the guest — there is no need.

How can I deal with physical pain as well as the pain I feel in spiritual growth? Growth is painful because you have been avoiding a thousand and one pains in your life. By avoiding you cannot destroy them — they go on accumulating. You go on swallowing your pains; they remain in your system. That's why growth is painful — when you start growing, when you decide to grow, you have to face all the pains that you have repressed. You cannot just bypass them.

You have been brought up in a wrong way. Unfortunately, until now, not a single society has existed on the earth which has not been repressive of pain. All societies depend on repression. Two things they repress: one is pain, another is pleasure. And they repress pleasure also because of pain. Their reasoning is that if you are not too happy you will never become too unhappy; if joy is destroyed you will never be deep in pain. To avoid pain they avoid pleasure. To avoid death they avoid life.

And the logic has something in it. Both grow together — if you want to have a life of ecstasy you will have to accept many agonies. If you want the peaks of the Himalayas then you will also have the valleys. But nothing is wrong with the valleys; your approach just has to be different. You can enjoy both — the peak is beautiful, so is the valley. And there are moments when one should enjoy the peak and there are moments when one should relax in the valley.

The peak is sunlit, it is in a dialogue with the sky. The valley is dark, but whenever you want to relax you have to move into the darkness of the valley. If you want to have peaks you will need to grow roots into the valley — the deeper your roots go, the higher your tree will grow. The tree cannot grow without roots and the roots have to move deep into the soil.

Pain and pleasure are intrinsic parts of life. People are so much afraid of pain that they repress pain, they avoid any situation that brings pain, they go on dodging pain. And finally they stumble upon the fact that if you really want to avoid pain you will have to avoid pleasure. That's why your monks avoid pleasure — they are afraid of pleasure. In fact they are simply avoiding all possibilities of pain. They know that if you avoid pleasure then naturally great pain is not possible; it comes only as a shadow of pleasure. Then you walk on the plain ground — you never move on the peaks and you never fall into the valleys. But then you are living dead, then you are not alive.

Life exists between this polarity. This tension between pain and pleasure makes you capable of creating great music; music exists only in this tension. Destroy the polarity and you will be dull, you will be stale, you will be dusty — you won't have any meaning and you will never know what splendour is. You will have missed life.

The man who wants to know life and live life has to accept and embrace death. They come together, they are two aspects of a single phenomenon. That's why growth is painful. You have to go into all those pains that you have been avoiding. It hurts. You have to go through all those wounds that somehow you have managed not to look at. But the deeper you go into pain, the deeper is your capacity to go into pleasure. If you can go into pain to the uttermost limit, you will be able to touch heaven.

I have heard: A man came to a Zen master and asked, "How shall we avoid heat and cold?" Metaphorically, he is asking, "How should we avoid pleasure and pain?" That is the Zen way of talking about pleasure and pain: heat and cold. "How shall we avoid heat and cold?" The master answered, "Be hot, be cold."

To be free of pain the pain has to be accepted, inevitably and naturally. Pain is pain — a simple painful fact — but suffering is only and always the refusal of pain, the claim that life should not be painful. It is the rejection of a fact, the denial of life and of the nature of things. Death is the mind and mind's dying. Where there is no fear of death, who is there to die?

Man is unique among creatures in his knowledge of death and in his laughter. Wonderfully then, he can even make of death a new thing: he can die laughing. It is only man who knows laughter; no other animal laughs. It is only man who knows death; no other animal knows death — animals simply die, they are not conscious of the phenomenon of death.

Man is aware of two things which no animal is: one is laughter, another is death. Then a new synthesis is possible. It is only man who can die laughing — he can join the consciousness of death and the capacity to laugh. And if you can die laughing, only then will you give a valid proof that you must have lived laughing. Death is the final statement of your whole life — the conclusion, the concluding remark. How you have lived will be shown by your death, how you die. Can you die laughing? Then you were a grown-up person. If you die crying, weeping, clinging, then you were a child. You were not grown-up, you were immature. If you die crying, weeping, clinging to life, that simply shows you have been avoiding death and you have been avoiding all pains, all kinds of pains.

Growth is facing the reality, encountering the fact, whatsoever it is. And let me repeat: Pain is simply pain; there is no suffering in it. Suffering comes from your desire that the pain should not be there, that there is something wrong in pain. Watch, witness, and you will be surprised. You have a headache: the pain is there but suffering is not there. Suffering is a secondary phenomenon, pain is primary. The headache is there, the pain is there; it is simply a fact. There is no judgment about it. You don't call it good or bad, you don't give it any value; it is just a fact. The rose is a fact, so is the thorn. The day is a fact, so is the night. The head is a fact, so is the headache. You simply take note of it.

Buddha taught his disciples that when you have a headache simply say twice "Headache, headache." Take note. But don't evaluate, don't say "Why? Why has this headache happened to me? It should not happen to me." The moment you say, "It should not," you bring suffering in. Now suffering is created by you, not by the headache. Suffering is your antagonistic interpretation, suffering is your denial of the fact.

And the moment you say, "It should not be," you have started avoiding it, you have started turning yourself away from it. You would like to be occupied in something so that you can forget it. You turn the radio or the telly on or you go to the club or you start reading or you go and start working in the garden — you divert yourself, you distract yourself. Now that pain has not been witnessed; you have simply distracted yourself. That pain will be absorbed by the system.

Let this key be very deeply understood. If you can witness your headache without taking any antagonistic attitude, without avoiding it, without escaping from it; if you can just be there, meditatively there — "Headache, headache" — if you can just simply see it, the headache will go in its time. 1 am not saying that it will go miraculously, that just by your seeing it will go. It will go in its time. But it will not be absorbed by your system, it will not poison your system. It will be there, you will take note of it, and it will be gone. It will be released.

When you witness a certain thing in yourself it cannot enter into your system. It always enters when you avoid it, when you escape from it. When you become absent then it enters into your system. Only when you are absent can pain become part of your being — if you are present your very presence prevents it from becoming part of your being.

And if you can go on seeing your pains you will not be accumulating them. You have not been taught the right clue, so you go on avoiding. Then you accumulate so much pain, you are afraid to face it, you are afraid to accept it. Growth becomes painful — it is because of wrong conditioning. Otherwise growth is not painful, growth is utterly pleasant.

When the tree grows and becomes bigger do you think there is pain? There is no pain. Even when a child is born, if the mother accepts it there will be no pain. But the mother rejects it; the mother is afraid. She becomes tense, she tries to hold the child inside — which is not possible. The child is ready to go out into the world, the child is ready to leave the mother. He is ripe, the womb cannot contain him any more. if the womb contains him any more the mother will die and the child will die. But the mother is afraid.

She has heard that it is very painful to give birth to a child — birth pangs, birth pain. She is afraid, and out of fear she becomes tense and closed. Otherwise — in primitive societies those tribes still exist — childbirth is so simple, with no pain at all. On the contrary, you will be surprised, the greatest ecstasy happens to the woman in childbirth — not pain, not agony at all, but the greatest ecstasy. No sexual orgasm is so satisfying and, so tremendous as the orgasm that happens to the woman when she gives birth to the child naturally. The whole sexual mechanism of the woman pulsates as it cannot pulsate in any lovemaking. The child is coming from the deepest core of the woman. No man can ever penetrate a woman to that core. And the pulsation arises from the inside. The pulsation is a must — that pulsation will come like waves, great tidal waves of joy. Only that will help the child to come out, only that will help the passage to open for the child. So there will be great pulsation and the whole sexual being of the woman will have tremendous joy.

But what actually has happened to humanity is just the opposite: the woman comes to feel the greatest agony of her life. And this is a mind creation, this is wrong upbringing. The birth can be natural if you accept it. And so it is with your birth. Growth means you are being born every day. Birth does not end the day you were born — on that day it simply starts, it is only a beginning. The day you left the womb of your mother you were not born, you started being born; that was just the beginning. And a man goes on being born till he dies. It is not that you are born in a single moment. Your birth process continues for seventy, eighty, ninety years, however long you live.

It is a continuum. And every day you will feel joy — growing new leaves, new foliage, new flowers, new branches, rising higher and higher and touching new altitudes. You will be getting deeper, higher, you will be reaching to peaks. Growth will not be painful. But growth is painful — it is because of you, your wrong conditioning. You have been taught not to grow; you have been taught to remain static, you have been taught to cling to the familiar and the known. That's why each time the known disappears from your hands you start crying. A toy has been broken, a pacifier has been taken away...

Remember, only one thing is going to help you: awareness — nothing else. Growth will remain painful if you don't accept life in all its ups and downs. The summer has to be accepted and the winter too. This is what I call meditation. Meditation is when you are emptied of all that is old and told and done to death. Then you see. Or rather, then there is seeing: the birth of the new. I have had a hard, horrible illness from my early age and this mistake of nature makes me suffer constantly. Could you please talk about suffering?

he suffering is your interpretation. You have become too much identified with it. That is your decision. You can disidentify, and the suffering disappears. Your suffering is like a nightmare: in the dream you think a great rock has fallen on your chest, it is crushing you to death. Out of fear you awake... and all that you find is nothing — your own hands resting on your chest. But the weight of your hands triggered imagination in you: it became a rock, and you started feeling very, very frightened. And because of the fear, you are awakened... and now you laugh. Ask the buddhas, ask the awakened ones, and they say there is no suffering in the world —people are fast asleep and dreaming all kinds of sufferings.

And I know your difficulty: if you have a physical problem, if you are blind, how can you believe that this is only a dream? If you are crippled, how can you believe that this is only a dream? But have you not watched? — every night you dream, and every morning you know that it was a dream and all nonsense — and again you will dream, and in dream again you will believe that this is truth. How many dreams have you dreamed in your life? Millions of dreams! Each night you are dreaming almost without break; just for a few minutes the dreaming stops, and then again another cycle of dreaming starts.

Millions of dreams you have dreamed. And every morning you have laughed and you have said it was unreal, but you have not learnt much. Tonight again when you dream, the same fallacy will persist: you will know that this is truth — in dream you will know this is true. The day you can remember in your dream that this is a dream, immediately the dream disappears... because you have brought awareness into your life.

It looks very difficult to trust that all that you are suffering is just a dream created by yourself — but it is so, because all those who have become awakened say so. Not a single awakened person has said otherwise. And in lucid moments of awareness you will also feel the same. This is my suggestion for you: your problem cannot be solved only by an intellectual discussion — your problem can be only dissolved, not solved.

Your problem can only be dissolved by becoming more aware. One of my friends, an old friend, fell from a staircase and broke both his legs. I went to see him; he was in tremendous pain. And he was a very active person although he was very old, seventy-five — but very active, almost young, and running so much after this and that, and doing this and that, that it was impossible for him to rest on the bed. And the doctors had said that for three months at least he had to be only in bed. This was more of a calamity than the two broken legs.

When I saw him, he started crying. I had never seen that man cry — he is a strong man, a very strong man, almost a man of steel, and has seen all kinds of things in his life, is a very seasoned man. I asked him, "You, and crying — what is the matter with you?"

He said, "Just bless me so that I can die. I don't want to live anymore — three months just in bed! Can you imagine? This is torture. Just three days have passed and it feels almost as if for three years I have been in bed. You know me," he said, "I cannot rest. Just bless me so that I can die soon! I don't want to live anymore. These three months and then the doctors say I will remain crippled my whole life — so what is the point?"

I said to him, "You please do a meditation. I will sit by your side, you just do a simple meditation: that you are not the body."

He was dubious. He said, "What is that going to do to me? I have heard all that you say about meditation, but I cannot meditate because I cannot sit silently."

I said, "Now there is no question of sitting silently — you are already in the bed.

This is a blessing! Just close your eyes and I will teach you a meditation. And I bless you to die, because if you want to die then perfectly good. But my blessing may work, may not work, so meanwhile you meditate."

He understood the point: "There is nothing to do ...so why not meditate?" A simple meditation I told him: "You simply go in, look at the body from the inside, say 'It is not me — the body is far away, far away, going distant and more distant and more distant. I am a watcher on the hills, and the body is down there in the dark valley, and the distance is immense.'"

Half an hour passed. I had to leave, and he was in such a meditation that I didn't want to disturb him, but I didn't want to leave him either because I wanted to know what was happening, what he would say. So I had to shake him. He said, "Don't disturb me!"

I said, "But I have to leave."

He said, "You can leave, but don't disturb me — it is so beautiful. The body is really lying so far away, miles and miles away; I have left it in the valley and I am sitting on the top of the hill, a sunlit hill. It is so beautiful, and I don't feel any pain either." And those three months proved the most valuable time of his life. Those three months made him a totally different man. He is still crippled, cannot walk, has to remain mostly in the bed — but you cannot find a more blissful person. He radiates bliss. Now he says it was not a curse — it was a blessing.

Suffering can be transformed into a blessing. Who knows? — you are transforming your blessings into sufferings.

A look into the future

Osho – From Medication to Meditation

A look into the future - Nhìn vào tương lai (Read in Vietnamese)

Recently you spoke of science and how we could produce a new man — more intelligent, creative, healthier and freer. It sounds fascinating and at the same time it is scary because of the feeling of some sort of mass product. Can you say something about the fear I am feeling? It is absolutely fascinating, and there is no need to feel any fear about it. In fact, what we have been doing for millions of years is mass production — accidental mass production.

Do you know what kind of a child you are going to give birth to? Do you know if he will be blind, crippled, retarded, sick, weak, vulnerable to all kinds of diseases for his whole life? Does your lover know what he is doing? While you are making love you have no conception, not even a possibility of guessing. You are giving birth to children just like animals, and you don't feel scared about it, you don't feel any fear about it. And you see the whole world full of retarded people, crippled, blind, deaf, dumb. All this rubbish! Who is responsible for it? And is it not mass production?

My conception of giving scientific birth to a child is that, conscious, alert, knowingly, we are bringing a visitor to the earth. We know who he is, what he is and what he is to become finally; how long he will live, how much intelligence he will have. We are discarding all possibilities of blind children, deaf children, dumb children, retarded in any way — physically, psychologically — and you are feeling fear? Don't be stupid. The scientific birth of a child is not animalistic. You are transcending the animal by giving birth to a child scientifically. It is fascinating, the greatest, most fascinating thing around. We can manage it, it is already a scientific reality. We can manage healthier people, who will live as long as we want, and we can give them as much intelligence as is needed for their work.

A couple comes to a scientific lab and tells them that they want a child like Albert Einstein, but better than him, living two hundred years; and he should never suffer any disease, he should be strong. The scientific lab finds the right egg from the bank, the right semen from the bank, and the child is produced in a test-tube with all precautions.

You will have to adopt the child, you cannot produce the child. Production of children is animalistic. Adoption of children of your own imagination... Everybody wants a Shakespeare to be born, wants their child to be a great poet, a great musician, a great dancer. Every mother thinks that her child is going to be in some way a superhuman being, and every mother is frustrated — the child turns out to be just rotten. He just gets lost in this whole crowd on an overpopulated planet. This is mass production. But adopting a child, you can contemplate on all the qualities that you need. You can ask the advice of the experts as to what other qualities will be helpful in his life, how much he will be capable of love... You want a Romeo? — you can get a Romeo. It is only a question of chemistry. Romeo has more male hormones than anybody else, he is richer; that's why one woman is not enough for him.

You want a poet who will transcend all the poets of the past? A scientist in comparison to whom all the scientists of the past will look like pygmies? A musician who brings the unknown, the invisible, through sounds to you? A poet who sings songs of joy and celebration as nobody else has ever done? You can ask anything, and they have just to work out, calculate which female egg, which male semen will produce such a human being.

That semen is not yours, that egg is not your wife's; you adopt the child. In this way you can get what humanity has always dreamed about: the birth of the superman, a man who is made almost of steel. Your Muhammad Ali the Great will not be able to face him — just one punch on his nose and he will be finished.

What makes you afraid? Don't you want to get above animals? The desire that it will be your semen, that it will be your wife's egg, is simply ugly. Children belong to the universe. What speciality has it got that it is your semen? What is the point of creating a crippled person, just because it is your semen? Science can manage to raise you above animality — and it is not mass production, it will be just the opposite. There is not going to be an assembly line the way cars are produced. It is going to be very individual because every couple has the choice and the freedom to decide what kind of child they want.

How has the idea of mass production come into your mind? Do you think everybody would like the same kind of child? You are wrong. Do you think science labs will go on producing children according to their own desire, and you have to adopt them? Then it will be mass production. I am not for it. You are absolutely free to choose. Right now you are absolutely blind and doing whatsoever you are doing in utter darkness. You are simply a slave of blind biology.

Don't you want freedom from blind biology? Don't you want to go above this stupid attachment to the idea that the child is born out of your semen and your wife's egg? Those eggs don't know to whom they belong. And what is special about your semen? You don't know anything about it. You are completely unaware of what kind of people are struggling within you to be born. You have no choice, you are simply a slave.

What I am saying about scientific birth makes you go beyond slavery, blindness, darkness. It makes you in a certain way more spiritual, because you are no longer concerned that your semen, your wife's egg, are absolutely needed for your child.

You give your requirements; you adopt the child. And you can ask experts what will be the best for the child. Would you not like your child to be a unique genius? For futile attachments you are satisfied with a crippled child. And giving birth to a crippled child, a blind child, are you doing any favour to the child? He will never forgive you! You are responsible. And he will have to live a life which is not life at all.

My vision gives total freedom to you and, of course, great responsibility. Right now you are producing children without any responsibility. You have means available to determine what colour the child should be, what kind of face — Greek, Roman?... You can create children who will look like sculptures, utterly beautiful, with genius in some dimension of life, living a life of love, intelligent enough to discard all the priests and all the politicians. They will not become followers of a leader, they will be enough unto themselves.

Right now, what are you doing? First you create in blindness, darkness, a child, not knowing what he is going to turn out like. Then you force him to become a slave by making him a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, or politically giving him a certain ideology — socialism, fascism, communism. And he is not intelligent enough to rebel against all these slaveries.

The child of my vision will be absolute freedom. He will not belong to any political party, he will not belong to any organized religion. He will have his own religion, he will have his own political ideology. What is the need for him to hang around Karl Marx and be a communist? He can think better than Karl Marx — and Karl Marx is not a great thinker. He can live so long that he is not in a hurry about anything; patient, ready to wait — he has time enough. Just think of Albert Einstein living three hundred years. He would have given miracles to the world. But because he was living in an accidental body, he had to die.

We can discard disease, old age. We can program life in every way. We can even program the life of the child, so that when he wants to die only then will he die; otherwise he can go on living. If he feels that there are still juices that he has not tasted, if he feels there are still dimensions that he has not explored, if he feels that more time is needed, then he is the master to decide how long to live.

Up to now, you have lived seventy years on average — that includes people who live one hundred and fifty years in some places of the world. In Russia there are people who have passed one hundred and fifty years, and they are still young. There are people in a certain part of Kashmir, which Pakistan has invaded, who live very easily to one hundred and fifty, sixty, seventy. And it is a surprising fact — I have been to those people — a one-hundred-and-fiftyyear- old person is just working in the field the same way he was working when he was fifty, with the same strength, with the same gusto.

All that is needed is better planning, better crossbreeding. It is a known and applied fact about animals. Do you see the many kinds of beautiful dogs around the earth? — small, big, powerful, or just beautiful. Just to see them jump around you is such a joy. Do you think they came out of blind nature? No, for centuries we have been crossbreeding dogs.

You know it as a fact — the whole world accepts it — that a man should not get married to his own sister. Why? That should be the most simple thing, to get married to your own sister. You love her already, you have been together since birth, you know each other. But why have all cultures prohibited it? All cultures have said that marriage should be with distant people, people who don't come from the same family tree, because the bigger the distance, the better the product. If a white American marries a Negro, the child will be far better than a white American marrying another white American, or a Negro marrying another Negro, because the distance between those two is immense — different centuries. They have grown in different atmospheres, their programming is totally different from each other. So when these two totally different cultures, traditions, conventions, lifestyles meet, they give birth to a better man, who has a double heritage: the heritage of the Negroes and the heritage of the white Americans... In a scientific lab it will be possible to find eggs and semen cells as distant as possible. And we can create through that crossbreeding a totally new man.

There is nothing scary about it. It is not mass production. The couple has to say what kind of person they would like to have as their child. It avoids all accidents. And we will be creating the universal man — not the Chinese, not the Indian, not the English, but the universal man. So please, just feel fascinated, don't feel scared and afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of.

You have seen the way children have been produced in the past. For millions of years you have been doing the same thing — what is the outcome? The outcome decides the value of what you have been doing. Once in a while there is an Albert Einstein or a Bertrand Russell — once in a while! This is not right. It should be the ordinary phenomenon, usual. Once in a while perhaps there will be a person who is born out of some unawareness, unalertness on the part of the scientist; otherwise everybody should be a genius. Just think: the whole world full of people like Rabindranath, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger! And we can prevent people like Adolph Hitler, Mussolini, Joseph Stalin from being born, because they have been calamities here. We can close the door completely on all Genghis Khans, Tamerlanes, Nadir Shahs — all those ugly monsters whose whole life consisted of killing people, destroying people, burning people.

The way we have lived has not proved right. We have only a crowd of pygmies all around — this is what you should be scared of! But having a garden of geniuses, creative people, a garden from where we have removed all fanatics, idiots, politicians — in short, we have taken out all that was poisonous, all pollution... There is so much in the idea. Now, how many people are suffering because they have a snubbed nose? Their whole life they feel inferior. How many people are suffering because they have only a nose? If you look at them, everything else is so small and the nose is so big...

I have heard: one millionaire had a very big nose and very small eyes, but he was the richest man in the community. People used to laugh behind him, but nobody ever dared.... He was invited by a family for dinner. The family was concerned about only one thing: their child, who was a born philosopher, asked about everything.

From the morning they were teaching him, "You can ask anything, but when the rich man comes, you are not to ask about his nose." They told him so many times that he became immensely interested: "What is so great about his nose?" They had never prevented him from asking any question. Why was this nose so important? He was really excited, eagerly waiting for the millionaire to come. When he came in, the child laughed. He said to his parents, "He has only a nose, nothing else! And why were you preventing me...? He is a rare specimen!" He destroyed the whole effort.

But people... almost everyone is suffering from something or other. Somebody is suffering from his colour, somebody is suffering from his tallness; somebody is too tall, somebody is too small. What have you produced? This is mass production — accidental, produced in darkness. At least human beings — who are the crown in existence — should not suffer any more from an inferiority complex. The only way is scientific production of children. And there are immense possibilities in it.

For example, if the child is produced in a scientific lab they can produce a similar child simultaneously. The other child will be kept in the lab growing simultaneously; exactly as the one who has gone out to be adopted by a family, the other will be growing in the scientific lab. Just the existence of the other gives great opportunities. For example, you get a fractured leg. Now no need to bother to fix the fracture — the leg from the other fellow can be taken and given to you. Something goes wrong, berserk, in your head — now there is no need for all the psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists. Your head is just removed, you get a fresh head. The other person will remain in anaesthesia his whole life, in a deep freeze. He will not know anything of what is happening. He is just there in case something goes wrong with you — and many things go wrong in life, even with every precaution. Something can always go wrong; life is a long affair. You may have a car accident... now, that cannot be prevented by scientific reproduction of children.

But all depends on whether we have courage enough to rise over our fearful selves. We have to rise above the scary feeling. Be fascinated with the new man! The new man must have a new kind of birth. The new man must have a new kind of life, a new kind of love, a new kind of death. He will be new in every possible way. He will replace the old models who are overcrowding the earth — junkyards. They are not needed.

It is a simple process of programming the first cell. And only the first cell can be programmed, because then it goes on reproducing itself — that is an autonomous process. You can program it for everything. Right now it is difficult; it is programmed for all kinds of diseases, it is programmed for death, old age. You can't have any control over it. There is no way to change the program now, because all the cells have the same program. If they are programmed for a particular disease that you get by inheritance, you will suffer from that disease. It could have been changed, but only in the first meeting of the male and the female cells. Everything can be programmed, and an exact copy of you can be kept in the lab. If your heart is not functioning well, the new heart is available — which will fit you exactly, because it comes from your copy, your twin.

Any new thing scares, but it scares only cowards. Any new thing fascinates, but it fascinates only the brave ones. Be brave, because we need a new, brave world. "I am a research scientist. For eleven years I have been involved in a medical research programme to develop artificial organs, including hearts, skin, and blood. I enjoy my work, but I do not have a right sense about what I am doing, as natural organs are always better. I have a deep love and respect for nature, and there is much to do to keep the natural balance of which you speak; but I cannot find any institution or organization where research is done with respect or love. Please help me to find a way our or a better way in.

I can understand your difficulty. There is no organization or institute on the whole planet earth where research is being done with respect and love towards nature. Just the contrary is the case. The research is being done to conquer nature. A man has even written a book, Conquest of Nature. It is simply unbelievable that you are part of nature, a small part, a tiny part, trying to conquer the whole — as if one of my fingers is trying to take possession of my whole body. Man is nature too. So wherever you are, do not bother about the organization or the institution or their attitude; but you work with deep love, respect. You are not working against nature.

And remember one thing: why have you been given intelligence? It is the natural growth. Nature is trying to improve upon itself through your intelligence. Right now it may be that natural organs are superior to artificial organs. But remember, the artificial organs can be superior to the natural organs, for the simple reason that nature works blindly. Through man nature is trying to have eyes.

The natural heart can certainly be replaced by an artificial heart. The artificial heart will not have heart attacks. And the artificial heart will be easily removable, replaceable. Human blood is going to be a great need soon. You have to improve upon nature, because as the religious disease, AIDS, is spreading throughout the world, blood transfusion is becoming more and more dangerous. Through a blood transfusion you can become a victim of AIDS. Artificial blood will be purer because artificial blood is not going to be religious and homosexual, it is not going to be the source of your death. And what a death! — ugly; in your own eyes you fall down.

So don't feel that you are working against nature. Nobody can succeed against nature. All the successes of science are not conquests, the way they have been described. All that we have discovered is through the compassion of nature allowing us its secrets. We are part of nature, the best part of it. And nature wants through human consciousness to reach newer heights.

Science is not against nature, cannot be. It has to follow natural laws, it cannot go against the natural laws. So all discovery, all research is to find out how nature functions, what its laws are. And you have intelligence that is given by nature; nature is ready to reveal its secrets to that intelligence. Follow the laws of nature, and you will be able to improve upon nature itself. Intelligence is nature trying to improve upon itself; up to now it has worked blindly. In man's intelligence there is a hope. So don't be worried that you are doing something against nature. Do it with great love, respect, with great gratitude, meditativeness; and be certain that it is nature trying to improve upon itself through you. In the beginning, of course, your artificial organs will not be so good. But it is only the beginning: there is immense possibility of going on improving.

Blood will be needed soon, and artificial blood will be better. Perhaps if things like AIDS become a wildfire, then the only alternative we have is to reproduce children in the test-tubes, where they can be protected; otherwise they will bring AIDS from their very birth. Three children in Europe have been found with AIDS. What an ugly world we are creating for our children! — that AIDS has come through natural birth. 'Natural birth' does not mean that we cannot improve upon it...

Every woman and every man should be standing in a queue before hospitals to be tested. If he is declared a positive case of AIDS, then something has to be done for the poor man; something so that he does not need sex anymore, some biological change. Otherwise, he is going to live two years — what is he going to do with his biology, with his physiology, with his male sperm? Something has to be done, and that can be done only by scientific investigation into how to divert the old blind biological process of creating sperm in man.

If for two years we can stop the production of sperm in the man, he can live without repression — he can enjoy these two years more than anybody else. Everybody is going to die. He is a rare person because death is giving him notice.

You may die tomorrow. Everything remains incomplete. Everybody has been dying on the earth leaving things incomplete because nobody knows when death will come and knock on your door. But the man with AIDS — if science can help him not to produce sexual energy, or can channel it into different directions of creativity, because it is creative energy — perhaps for these two years he will be grateful. He will not feel bad about AIDS; he may even feel proud of it, because for these two years he will be able to paint, play music, write the novel he always wanted to but there were so many things to do...and now there is a clean two years of time. He can meditate. It is difficult in the ordinary world to find such a long stretch of time — two years — to sit silently, do nothing, and just be a witness. He can do that.

Then AIDS becomes a blessing in disguise. The men whose sperm is found not to be carrying any AIDS or other diseases can donate their sperm to the hospital. Just like blood banks, there should be sperm banks. If we want humanity to continue, and certainly we want to continue, then artificial insemination will be the only way to produce children — either in the test-tubes or, if the woman is happy and ready, then in her womb...

So you are in the great service of humanity and nature. Go deeper into the research. Don't just do it as a job, let it be your worship. These things are going to be needed. Nowadays if you have a fracture, then for six weeks you are carrying the cast — unnecessarily] If we can create artificial organs, limbs... if a leg has a fracture, it is better to replace it. Why bother with rotten old things? Just replace it with a new, brand-new leg, and that can be done very easily. And the artificial leg can be made as strong as we want; it can be absolute steel, with no fear of any fracture.

It is perfectly in tune with nature. Just remember one criterion: whatever you do should not be in the service of destruction, it should be in the service of creativity. Do you see experiments on human ye, such as artificial birth and the exchange of hearts and brains, as an advance, or as an action against nature?

I all depends who is going to do it. If the politicians are going to do it, or the so-called religions are going to do it, then it is against nature. They cannot do anything natural, they are against nature. But if it is being done by an international academy of scientists — I say international academy of scientists — it can be a tremendous, progressive step, and it will not be against nature. It will be nature's growth. But it all depends on who is doing it. The experiments themselves are neutral. No experiment has any vested interest, it is neutral. You can use poison to kill you; the same poison can be used by medical people to save you. It all depends who is doing it.

For example, the discovery of atomic energy was a step of tremendously great progress, a quantum leap. We had found a key to transform the earth into paradise — so much energy in such a small atom. And they are in everything... just in a dewdrop there are millions of atoms. Any atom, if it is exploded, releases so much energy that you can make the whole earth live in luxury. Or you can create Hiroshima and Nagasaki — thousands of people dead within seconds. But because atomic energy, after its invention, went into the hands of the politicians, it became a servant of death.

Now there are even more advanced nuclear weapons which can destroy the whole earth. The already existing weapons are enough to destroy this earth seven times. One simply wonders why nations are going to develop more and more nuclear power. Seven times destroying the earth is not enough? In fact, you can destroy the earth only once.

But scientific progress falls into the hands of the politicians because only they can provide enough finance to make these discoveries possible. The scientists of the whole world should think it over: their genius is being used by idiots! The scientists should disconnect themselves from any nation — whether it is the Soviet Union or America. They should create an international academy of sciences. And it is not difficult. If all the scientists of the world are together, finances can be made available, and these discoveries can help man tremendously...

Science should not be the monopoly of any nation, any country. The whole idea is stupid. How can science be monopolized? And every country is trying to monopolize the scientists, keep their inventions secret. This is against humanity, against nature, against existence. Whatever a genius discovers should be in the service of the whole.

You are asking whether discoveries like changing human hearts or human brains are progressive steps. They are of great importance to bring a new humanity on the earth. If Einstein's body is no longer capable of living, do you think it would not be good if his whole brain is transplanted into a young, healthy man? The new man will become an Einstein, because all the genius of Einstein is transplanted to a younger body.

This way bodies may go on changing, but we can keep the genius of Albert Einstein growing for centuries. And if a man in a seventy-year life can give so much, you can imagine if his brain continues for centuries how much benefit it will be for humanity, for the whole universe. This is really a wastage: the container gets rotten, and you throw the contents also. The body is only a container. If the container has become dirty, old, unusable, change the container, but don't throw away the contents. The genius mind can live for eternity in different bodies; that is nothing against nature. You heart, if it starts failing, and if you are of immense value to humanity... what is the fear of exchanging the heart? Somebody may be dying from cancer, but his heart is perfectly healthy; that heart can be planted in a man who is talented, a genius, and is healthy, but whose heart is not strong. This is simple; there is nothing in it against nature.

But with politicians and the power in their hands, of course every advance has gone against nature. Everything that human genius has discovered, invented, finally is in the service of death. So are the priests. Now science is no longer a child, that it has to depend on others.

Science is now grown-up enough, it is adult. Just a little courage...  I give the invitation to all the scientists of the world; we have the place, we have intelligent people here to help you in every possible way. It will be a great revolution in the history of man. The whole power will be in the hands of the scientists, who have never done any harm to anybody. And once all the power is in the hands of the scientists, politicians will fade away of their own accord. They have been exploiting scientists for their own purposes, and to be exploited by anybody is not an act of dignity.

The scientists should recognize their dignity, they should recognize their individuality. They should recognize that they have been exploited down the ages by the priests and the politicians. Now it is time to declare that science is going to stand on its own feet. This will be a great freedom. Then all these experiments, such as laboratory babies, will be of a different caliber, because you can arrange what kind of genius you want. Up to now it has been just accidental, and because it has been accidental, ninety-nine percent of the people have nothing to contribute. They contribute only problems to the world. Now, what has Ethiopia contributed to the world? What have the poor countries contributed to the world — or even the rich countries? Except problems, wars, there is no contribution on their part.

But if you can give birth to a child in a scientific lab... It is possible, there is no problem in Sex, for the first time, will be simply fun! Children will be produced in the lab. They will belong to all. And because you are not going to produce children in the old way — it should be illegal and criminal to do so, you will be behind bars if you do it — then many problems of your life will be simply dissolved.

Why is the man so insistent? Throughout the ages the insistence has remained there: he wants to be certain that the child born out of his wife's womb is his. Why? Who are you anyway? It is a question of property, because your child will become the inheritor of all that you have accumulated. You want to be certain that it is your child, not your neighbour's child. Women have been kept almost imprisoned for the simple fear that if they start mixing with people it will be difficult to decide whose child it is. Only the mother will know, or even she may not know.

Once production of life goes into the hands of science sex will be transformed. Then you are not jealous, then you are not a monopolist, then monogamy is absurd. Then sex is just fun, the way you enjoy tennis. And you don't bother that the partners should remain monogamous — two bodies enjoying each other... And there will be no fear that the wife may get pregnant and there will be problems, financial and other. Sex will no longer be a problem for the world population; it will no longer be a problem for the priest. In fact, if children are produced in the scientific lab many of the troubles of the world will dissolve.

And we can create the best people: beautiful, healthy, capable of living as long as we want. Old age is not necessary — a man can remain young, healthy, without sickness. All these hospitals and so many people, so much money involved. Do you know — America spends more money on laxatives than on education. Great idea! Who cares about education? The question is laxatives!

But the basic thing should be remembered: scientists have to be courageous enough and declare that they don't belong to any nation, to any religion, that whatsoever they will be doing will be for the whole of humanity. And I don't see that there is anything impossible in it. I am absolutely for those progressive inventions which can make man happier, live longer, be younger, healthier, and which make his life more of a play, fun, and less of a tortuous journey from the cradle to the grave."

AIDS

Osho – From Medication to Meditation

AIDS - Bệnh AIDS (Read in Vietnamese)

Would you please say something about AIDS?

I do not know anything about even the first AIDS, and you are asking me about the last AIDS! But it seems I will have to say something about it. And in a world where people who know nothing about themselves can talk about God, people who know nothing about the geography of the earth can talk about heaven and hell, it is not inconceivable for me to say something about AIDS, although I am not a physician. But neither is the disease now called AIDS just a disease. It is something more, something beyond the limitation of the medical profession.

As I see it, it is not a disease in the same category as other diseases; hence the danger of it. Perhaps it will kill at least two-thirds of humanity. It is, basically, the incapability to resist diseases. One slowly, slowly finds oneself vulnerable to all kinds of infections, and one has no inner resistance to fight those infections. To me it means humanity is losing the will to live. Whenever a person loses the will to live his resistance falls immediately, because the body follows the mind. The body is a very conservative servant of the mind; it serves the mind in a religious way.

If the mind loses the will to live it will be reflected in the body by the dropping of resistance against sickness, against death. Of course the physician will never bother about the will to live — that's why I thought it better that I say something. It is going to become such an enormous problem all over the world that any insight from any dimension can be of immense help. Just in America, this year, four hundred thousand people are affected by AIDS, and each year the number will double.

Next year it will be eight hundred thousand people, and then one million six hundred thousand people; that way it will go on doubling. Just this year America will need five hundred million dollars to help these people, and still there is not much hope of their surviving. Just in the beginning it was thought to be a homosexual disease. From all around the world researchers supported the idea that it was something homosexual — it was found that it happens more in men than in women. But just yesterday a report from South Africa changes the whole standpoint. South Africa is greatly involved in researching about the disease because South Africa is the most affected area. It seems blacks are almost twice as vulnerable to the disease as white people. South Africa is suffering from a great epidemic of AIDS; hence, they have been researching. It is a question of life and death.

Their report is very strange. It says that AIDS is not a homosexual disease at all, that it is a heterosexual disease, and it happens if people go on changing partners —mixing with many women, with many men, continually changing partners. This continuous changing is the cause of the disease. Homosexuality has nothing to do with it, according to their research. Now all the researchers in Europe and America are on one side, and the South African report is on the opposite side.

To me it is very significant. It has nothing to do with either heterosexuality or with homosexuality. It has certainly something to do with sex. And why has it something to do with sex? — because the will to live is rooted in sex. If the will to live disappears, then sex will be the most vulnerable area of life to invite death. Remember perfectly well that I am not a medical man, and whatever I am saying is from a totally different point of view. But there is much more possibility of what I am saying being true than what these so-called researchers are saying, because their research is superficial. They think only of cases; they collect data, facts.

That is not my way —1 am not a fact-collector. My work is not of research but of insight. 1 try to see into every problem as deeply as possible. I simply ignore the superficial, which is the area of the researchers. My work you can call insearch, but not research. I try to penetrate deeply, and I see clearly that sex is the phenomenon most related to the will to live. If the will to live declines, sex will be vulnerable; then it is not a question of heterosexuality or homosexuality.

In Europe and in America they started looking into it because it was just a coincidence that the first cases happened in homosexuals; perhaps homosexuals had lost the will to live more than heterosexuals. The whole research was confined to California, and most of the victims were Jews; obviously the researchers found that it is linked to homosexuality. If any heterosexual was also found to have the symptoms then it was naturally assumed that he had got it from some homosexual person.

California is such a stupid part of the world — and as far as sex is concerned, the most perverted part of the world. You can also say avant-garde, progressive, revolutionary, but these beautiful words won't hide the truth: California has become too perverted. Why does it happen, this perversion? And why has it happened in California particularly? — because California is one of the most cultured, civilized, affluent societies. Naturally, they have everything that you can hope for, everything that you can desire — and that's where the problem of the will to live arises.

When you are hungry you think of getting work, food; you don't have time to think about life and death. You don't have time to think about what the meaning of existence is. It is impossible: a hungry man cannot think of beauty, of art, music. Take the hungry man, starving, into a museum filled with beautiful pieces of art: Do you think he will be able to see any beauty there? His hunger will prevent him. These are luxuries. Only when all his basic needs are fulfilled does man come to face the real problems of life. Poor countries don't know the real problems.

Hence, when I say that the richest man is the poorest, you can understand what I mean by saying it. The richest man comes to know the unsolvable problems of life, and he is stuck; there is nowhere to go. The poor man has so much to do, so much to achieve, so much to become. Who cares about philosophy, theology, art? They are too big for him; he is interested in very mundane things, very small things. And it is impossible for him to turn his consciousness upon himself and start thinking and brooding about existence, being — just impossible.

California is, unfortunately, one of the most fortunate parts of the world, in every way: it has the most beautiful people, beautiful land, and it has come to the highest peak of luxury. And there, the question arises. You have done everything; now what else is there to do? That's the point where perversion begins.

You have known many women and you have come to understand that it is all the same. Once you put the light off, every woman is just the same. When the light is off, if the woman goes into the other room and your wife comes in — and you are not aware — you may even make love to your wife, giving her beautiful dialogues, not knowing that she is your wife.

What are you doing? If anyone comes to know about it, that you speak these beautiful dialogues — learned from Hollywood movies — to your own wife, they certainly will think that you have gone crazy. These are meant for other people's wives, not for your wife. But in darkness there is no difference. Once a man knows many women, a woman knows many men, one thing becomes certain — that it is the same, a repetition. The differences are superficial, and as far as the sexual contact is concerned, they make no difference: a little longer nose, or a little blonder hair, a whiter face or a little suntanned — what difference does it make when you come to make love to a woman? Yes, before making love to a woman all these things make a difference. And it continues to make a difference in countries where monogamy is still the rule.

For example, in a country like India, the disease AIDS is not going to happen while India remains monogamous, it is impossible — for the simple reason that people know only their wife, only their husband, their whole life. And they always remain curious about what the neighbour's wife would feel like. It always remains a tremendous curiosity, but there is no possibility for perversion.

Perversion requires the basic condition that you are fed up with changing women, you want something new. Then men start trying men — that seems to be different; women start trying women — that feels a little different. But for how long? Soon that too is the same. Again, the question arises. This is the point where you try all kinds of things, and slowly, slowly one thing becomes settled: that it is all useless. Curiosity disappears. Then, what is the point of living for tomorrow? It was curiosity: tomorrow something new may happen. Now you know that the new never happens. Everything is old under the sky. The new is just a hope, it never happens. You try all kinds of designs in furniture, houses, architecture, clothes — and everything fails finally.

When everything fails and there is no hope for tomorrow, then the will to live cannot go on with the same fervour, force, persistence. It starts dragging. Life seems to lose juice. You are alive because what else to do? You start thinking of committing suicide.

Sigmund Freud is reported to have said, "I have never come across a single man who has not thought, at least once in his life, of committing suicide." But Sigmund Freud is now too old, out of date. He was talking about psychologically sick people; those were the people with whom he was coming in contact.

My own experience is that the poor man never thinks of committing suicide. I have come across thousands of poor people; they never think of committing suicide. They want to live, because they have not lived yet; how can they think of suicide?

Life has so many things to give, and they see that everybody is enjoying all kinds of things and they have not lived yet. There is a great urge, force, to live. Much has to be done, much has to be achieved. There is the whole sky of ambition open, and they have not even begun to scratch the ground. No beggar ever thinks of committing suicide.

Logically it should be just the other way: every beggar should think of committing suicide, but no beggar ever thinks of it — even a beggar who has no eyes, is blind, is paralyzed, crippled In poor countries nobody thinks of suicide, in poor countries the question of meaning has not been raised. It is a Western question. What is the meaning of life? In the East nobody asks that. The West has come to a saturation point where everything you could live for you have already lived. Now what? If you are courageous enough, you commit suicide — or murder...

Once this disease, AIDS, spreads — and it is spreading, it is already epidemic, in America too. The politicians are keeping quiet, the priests are keeping quiet, because the problem is too big, and nobody seems to have any suggestion as to how to solve it, so it is better to keep silent. But how long can you keep silent?

The problem is spreading, and once it spreads and becomes wider, you will be surprised: the profession that will be the topmost in this business of AIDS will be the priests, the nuns, the monks. They will be on the topmost, the most affected by it, because they have been practicing perverted sex longer than anybody else. California is just new. Those monks and nuns have been living in 'California' for centuries.

As it appears to me, the disease is spiritual. Man has come to a point where he finds the way ends. Going back is meaningless because all that he has seen, lived, shows him there was nothing in it; it has all proved meaningless. Going back has no meaning; going ahead there is no road: facing him is the abyss. In this situation if he loses the desire, the will to live, it is not unexpected.

It has been experimentally proved that if a child is not brought up by loving people — the mother, the father, the other small children in the family — if the child is not brought up by loving people, you can give him every nourishment but somehow his body goes on shrinking. You are giving everything necessary — medical needs are fulfilled, much care is being taken — but the child goes on shrinking. Is it a disease? Yes, to the medical mind everything is a disease; something must be wrong. They will go on researching the facts, why it is happening. But it is not a disease.

The child's will to live has not even arisen. It needs loving warmth, joyful faces, dancing children, the warmth of the mother's body — a certain milieu which makes him feel that life has tremendous treasures to be explored, that there is so much joy, dance, play; that life is not just a desert, that there are immense possibilities. He should be able to see those possibilities in the eyes around him, in the bodies around him. Only then will the will to live spring up — it is almost like a spring. Otherwise, he will shrink and die — not with any physical disease, he will simply shrink and die.

I have been to orphanages; one of my friends, Rekhchand Parekh, in Chanda Maharashtra, used to run an orphanage — nearabout one hundred to one hundred and ten orphans were there. And orphans would come, two days old, three days old; people would just leave them in front of the orphanage. He wanted me to come to see the orphanage. I said, "Sometime later on I will see it, because I know whatever is there will make me unnecessarily sad." But he insisted, so one time I went, and what I saw.... They were taking every care, he was pouring his money on those children, but they were all ready to die just any moment. Doctors were there, nurses were there, medical facilities were there, food was there, everything was there. He had given his own beautiful bungalow — he had moved to a smaller bungalow — a beautiful garden and everything was there; but the will to live was not there.

I told him, "These children will go on dying slowly." He said, "You are telling me? I have been running this orphanage for twelve years; hundreds have died. We have tried every possible way to keep them alive, but nothing seems to work. They go on shrinking and one day simply they are no longer there." If there was a disease the doctor could help, but there was no disease; simply, the child had no desire to live. When I said this to him it became clear to him. He immediately, that very day, gave the orphanage to the government, and he said, "I have been trying to help these children for twelve years; now I know it is not possible. What they need I cannot give, so it is better that the government takes it over." He said to me, "I had come to this point many times, but I am not an articulate man so I could not figure out what it was. But in a vague way I was feeling that something was missing and that goes on killing them."

AIDS is the same phenomenon at the other end. The orphan child shrinks and dies because his will to live never sprouts, never springs up, never becomes a flowing current. AIDS is at the other end: You suddenly feel you are an existential orphan. This existential feeling of being an orphan causes your will to live to disappear. And when the will to live disappears, sex will be the first thing to be affected because your life starts with sex; it is a by-product of sex.

So while you are living, throbbing, hoping, ambitious, and the tomorrow remains the utopia — so that you can forget all the yesterdays which were meaningless, you can forget today which is also meaningless...but tomorrow when the sun rises and everything will be different... All the religions have been giving you that hope.

Those religions have failed. Although you go on keeping the label — Christian, Jew, Hindu — it is only a label. Inside, you have lost hope, the hope has disappeared. Religions could not help; they were pseudo. Politicians could not help. They were never intending to help; it was just a strategy to exploit you. But how long can this false utopia — political or religious — help you? Sooner or later, one day man will become mature; and that's what is happening.

Man is becoming mature, aware that he has been cheated by the priests, by the parents, by the politicians, by the pedagogues. He has been simply cheated by everybody, and they have been feeding him on false hopes. The day he matures and realizes this, the desire to live falls apart. And the first thing wounded by it will be your sexuality. To me that is AIDS.

When your sexuality starts shrinking you are really hoping that something will happen and you will go into eternal silence, into eternal disappearance. Your resistance is not there. AIDS has no other symptoms except that your resistance goes on dropping At the most you can live two years if you are fortunate and don't get accidentally infected. Each infection will be incurable, and each infection will be weakening you more and more. Two years is the longest the AIDS patient can live; and he may disappear sometime before that.

And no treatment is going to help, because no treatment can bring back your will to live. What I am doing here is multidimensional. You are not fully aware of what I am trying to do; perhaps you may become aware only when I am gone. I am trying to give you not a hope in the future — because that has failed — I am trying to give you a hope herenow. Why bother about tomorrow?... because tomorrow has not helped. For centuries the tomorrow has been keeping you somehow dragging, and it has failed you so many times that now you cannot go on clinging to it. That would be sheer stupidity. Those who are clinging to it still are only proving that they are retarded in their minds.

I am trying to make this very moment fulfillment, a contentment so deep that there is no need for the will to live. The will to live is needed because you are not alive. The will keeps picking you up: you go on slipping down, the will keeps picking you up. I am not trying to give you a new will to live, I am simply trying to teach you to live without any will, to live joyously. It is the tomorrow that goes on poisoning you. Forget yesterdays, forget tomorrows. This is our day — let us celebrate it and live it. And just by living it you will be strong enough so that without the will to live you will be able to resist all kinds of diseases, all suicidal attitudes. Just being fully alive is such a power that not only can you live, you can make others aflame, afire.

This has been a well-known fact. When there are great epidemics have you not wondered why the doctors and nurses and others don't get infected? They are human beings just like you, and they are overworked, more vulnerable to infection because they are continually tired. When there is an epidemic you cannot insist on a five-hour day or six-hour day, and a five-day week. An epidemic is an epidemic; it does not bother about your holidays and your overtime. You have to work — people work sixteen hours, eighteen hours, every day, for months. Still, the doctors, the nurses, the Red Cross people, they don't get infected.

What is the problem? Why are others getting infected? These are similar kinds of people. If just having a Red Cross on your shirt...then put the Red Cross on everybody's shirt; on every house the Red Cross. If the Red Cross is preventing infection it would be so easy — but that is not the thing.

No, these people are so much involved in helping others, they don't have any tomorrow. This moment is so involving, they don't have any yesterday. They don't have any time to think or even worry, "I may get infected." Their involvement... When millions of people are dying, can you think of yourself, and your life, and your death? Your whole energy is moving to help people, to do whatever you can do. You have forgotten yourself, and because you have forgotten yourself you cannot be infected. The person who could have been infected is absent: he is so involved in doing something, he is so lost in some work.

It does not matter whether you are painting or sculpting, or you are serving a dying human being — it does not matter what you are doing, what matters is: Are you totally involved in the herenow? If you are involved in the herenow you are completely out of the area where infection is possible. When you are so much involved, your life becomes such a torrential force. And you will see: even a lazy doctor, in a time of epidemic, when hundreds of people are dying, suddenly forgets his laziness. An old doctor suddenly forgets his age...

Only meditation can release your energy herenow. And then there is no need for any hope, for any utopia, for any paradise anywhere. Each moment is a paradise unto itself. But as far as my qualifications are concerned, I am not qualified to say anything about AIDS. I have never even taken the course on first-aid. So please forgive my entering into something which is not my business. But I go on doing that, and I am going to continue to do that."