DIRTY OLD MAN

Why is there such an expression as "the dirty old man"? I am Getting on and I suspect people are beginning to think about me in Exactly those words.

It is because of a long, long repressive society that the dirty old man exists. It is because of your saints, your priests, your puritans, that the old dirty man exists. If people are allowed to live their sexual life joyously, by the time they are nearing forty-two -- remember, I am saying forty-two, not eighty-four -- just when they are nearing forty-two, sex will start losing its grip on them. Just as sex arises and becomes very powerful by the time one is fourteen, in exactly the same way by the time one is forty-two it starts disappearing. It is a natural course.

And when sex disappears, the old man has a love, has compassion, of a totally different kind. There is no lust in his love, no desire, he wants to get nothing out of it. His love has a purity, an innocence; his love is a joy. Sex gives you pleasure. And sex gives you pleasure only when you have gone into sex; then pleasure is the end result. If sex has become irrelevant -- not repressed, but because you experienced it so deeply that it is no more of any value.... You have known it, and knowledge always brings freedom.

You have known it totally, and because you have known it, the mystery is finished, there is nothing more to explore. In that knowing, the whole energy, the sexual energy, is transmuted into love, compassion. One gives out of joy. Then the old man is the most beautiful man in the world, the cleanest man in the world. There is no expression in any language as the clean old man. I have never heard it. But this expression, the dirty old man, exists in almost all languages.

The reason is that the body becomes old, the body becomes tired, the body wants to get rid of all sexuality -- but the mind, because of repressed desires, still hankers. When the body is not capable, and the mind continuously haunts you for something which the body is incapable of doing, really the old man is in a mess. His eyes are sexual, lusty; his body dead and dull. And his mind goes on goading him. He starts having a dirty look, a dirty face; he starts having something ugly in him.

It reminds me of the story of the man who overheard his wife and her sister discussing his frequent out-of-town business trips. The sister kept suggesting that the wife should worry about her husband being unchaperoned at those posh resort convention hotels with so many attractive, unattached career women around. "Me worry?" said the wife. "Why, he'd never cheat on me. He's too loyal, too decent... too old."

The body sooner or later becomes old; it is bound to become old. But if you have not lived your desires they will clamor around you, they are bound to create something ugly in you. Either the old man becomes the most beautiful man in the world, because he attains to an innocence the same as the innocence of a child, or even far deeper than the innocence of a child -- he becomes a sage. But if desires are still there, running like an undercurrent, then he is caught in a turmoil.

A very old man was arrested while attempting to sexually molest a young woman. Seeing such an old man, eighty-four, in court, the magistrate reduced the charge from rape to assault with a dead weapon. If you are becoming old, remember that old age is the climax of life. Remember that old age can be the most beautiful experience -- because the child has hopes for the future, he lives in the future, he has great desires to do this, to do that.

Every child thinks that he is going to be somebody special -- Alexander the Great, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong -- he lives in desires and in the future. The young man is too much possessed by the instincts, all instincts, exploding in him. Sex is there. Modern research says that every man thinks once at least about sex every three seconds. Women are a little better, they think of sex every six seconds. It is a great difference, almost double; that may be the cause of many rifts between husbands and wives.

Once every three seconds sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry. The old man knows that those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of youth and turmoil are gone.

The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But people only grow in age, they don't grow up. Hence the problem. Grow up, become more mature, become more alert and aware. And old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative.

If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don't be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires. When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination -- just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That's what buddhahood is.

OSHO♥

ISN'T SEX ANIMALISTIC?

I Love my husband but I hate Sex, and that creates conflict. Isn't sex Animalistic?

It is. But man is an animal -- as much of an animal as any other animal. But when I say that man is an animal, I don't mean that man finishes with animality; he can be more than the animal, he can be less also. That is the glory of man, the freedom and the danger, the agony and the ecstasy. A man can be far lower than animals, and a man can be far higher than gods. Man has infinite potentiality.

A dog is a dog: he remains a dog. He is born a dog and he will die a dog. A man can become a Buddha, and a man can become an Adolf Hitler too. So man is very open-ended on both sides -- he can fall back. Can you find any animal more dangerous than man, more mad than man? Just think of a scene: fifty thousand monkeys sitting in a stadium killing small children -- throwing them into a fire. What will you think about them?

Thousands of children are being thrown into a fire... A great fire is burning just in the middle of the stadium, and fifty thousand monkeys enjoying with joy, dancing, and children are being thrown -- their own children. What will you think about these monkeys? Will you not think that the monkeys have gone mad? But this has happened in humanity. In Carthage it happened: fifty thousand men burning children. They burnt three hundred children at one time. as an offering to their god. Their own children!

But forget about Carthage, it is long past. What did Adolf Hitler do in this century'? Of course, this is a far-advanced century, so Adolf Hitler was capable of doing greater things than Carthage. He killed millions of Jews, thousands at a time would be forced into a chamber and gassed. And hundreds of people would be looking from the outside... watching through one-way mirrors. What you will think about these people? What type of men...? People being gassed, burnt, evaporated, and others are watching? Can you think about animals doing such a thing?

During three thousand years, man has been through five thousand wars -- killing and killing and killing. And you call sex animalistic? Animals have never done anything more 'animalistic' than man. And you think man is not an animal? Man IS an animal. And the idea that man is not an animal is one of the hindrances for your growth. So you take it for granted that you are not animals, and then you stop growing. The first recognition has to be this: 'I am an animal and I have to be alert and and go beyond it.'

It happened: A man wrote to a country hotel in Ireland to ask if his dog would be allowed to stay there. He received the following answer: Dear Sir, I have been in the hotel business for over thirty years. Never yet have I had to call in the police to eject a disorderly dog in the small hours of the morning. No dog has ever attempted to pass off a bad cheque on me. Never has a dog set the bed-clothes alight through smoking. I have never found a hotel towel in a dog's suitcase. Your dog is welcome.
P.S. If he can vouch for you, you can come too!

Animals are beautiful, whatsoever they are; they are just innocent. Man is very cunning, very calculating, very ugly. Man can fall lower than the animals, because man can rise higher than man higher than gods. Man has an infinite potentiality: he can be the lowest and he can be the highest. He has the whole ladder in his being, from the first rung to the last rung.

So the first thing I would like to say to you: don't call sex just animalistic, because sex can be just animalistic -- that is possible, but it need not be. It can rise higher, it can become love, it can become prayer. It depends on you. Sex in itself is nothing like a fixed entity; it is just a possibility. You can make it as you like it, as you want it. That is the whole message of Tantra: that sex can become Samadhi. That is the vision of Tantra: that sex can become Samadhi, that through sex the ultimate ecstasy can enter in you. Sex can become the bridge between you and the ultimate.

You say: I Love my husband but I hate Sex, and that creates conflict. How can you love your husband and yet hate sex'? You must be playing on words. How can you love your husband and hate sex? Just try to understand it. When you love a man, you would like to hold his hand too. When you love a man, you would like to hug him sometimes too. When you love a man, you would not only like to hear his sound, you would like to see his face too. When you only hear the sound of your beloved, the beloved is far away, the sound is not enough; when you see him too you are more satisfied.

When you touch him, certainly you are even more satisfied. When you taste him, certainly you are even more satisfied. What is sex? It is just a meeting of two deep energies. You must be carrying some taboos in your mind, inhibitions. What is sex'? Just two persons meeting at the maximum point -- not only holding hands, not only hugging each other's bodies, but penetrating into each other's energy realm. Why should you hate sex?

Your mind must have been conditioned by the Mahatmas, the so-called 'religious' people who have poisoned the whole of humanity, who have poisoned your very source of growth. Why should you hate? If you love your man, you would like to share your total being with him: there is no need to hate. And if you hate sex, what are you saying'? You are simply saying that you want the man to take care of you financially, to take care of the house, to bring you a car and a fur coat. You want to use the man... and you call it love'? And you don't want to share anything with him.

When you love, you share all. When you love, you don't have any secrets. When you love, you have your heart utterly open; you are available. When you love, you are ready to go with him even to hell if he is going to hell. But this happens. We are very expert with words: we don't want to say that we don't love, so we make it look as if we love and we hate sex. Sex is not all love -- that's true, love is more than sex -- that's true; but sex is the very foundation of it. Yes, one day sex disappears, but to hate it is not the way to make it disappear.

To hate it is the way to repress it. And whatsoever is repressed will come up one way or other. Please don't try to become a monk or a nun. Remember, sex is natural. One can go beyond it, but not though repression. And if you repress it, sooner or later you will find some other way to express it; some perversion is bound to enter -- you will have to find some substitute. And substitutes are of NO help at all; they DON'T help, they CAN'T help.

And once a natural problem has been turned in such a way that you have forgotten about it, and it has bubbled up somewhere else as a substitute, you can go on fighting with the substitute, but it is not going to help substitutes never help; they only create perversions. obsessions. Be natural if you want to go beyond nature some day. Be natural: that is the first requirement. I am not saying that there is nothing more than nature, there is a higher nature -- that is the whole message of Tantra. But be very earthly if you really want to rise high in the sky.

Can't you see these trees? They are rooted in the earth, and the better they are rooted the higher they go. The higher they want to go, the deeper they will have to go into the earth. If a tree wants to touch the stars, the tree will have to go and touch the very hell -- that's the only way. Be rooted in your body if you want to become a soul. Be rooted in your sex if you really want to become a lover. Yes, the more energy is converted into love, the less and less need of sex will be there, but you will not hate it.

Hate is not a right relationship with anything. Hate simply shows that you are afraid. Hate simply shows that there is great fear in you. Hate simply shows that deep down you are still attracted. If you hate sex, then your energy will start moving somewhere else. Energy has to move. If God gives you sexual energy, it becomes sacred. Anything from God is sacred and everything is from God. And by "God" I don't mean a certain person, I mean the whole existence.

When the cuckoo starts singing, have you ever thought for what the song is for? It is to attract a sexual partner. But nobody condemns the cuckoo as obscene. When the flowers open and send their fragrance, what do you think they are doing? They are advertising that "I have come to flower; now butterflies, bees are invited and welcome." But for what? -- because the flower has small seeds which will go with the butterflies, with the bees. Because the same division exists in the whole existence: there are plants which are male, and there are plants which are female. The male plant has to send its seeds to the female plant, its beloved.

Have you seen the dance of a peacock? Do you think he is dancing for you? And remember one thing: The beautiful tail of rainbow colors and the dancing peacock is male. He is attracting some female. It is only the insane humanity where the female has to attract the male. All over nature, it is the male who attracts the female. And for that reason, all over nature the male is more beautiful -- because the female need not have any beauty; just being female is enough. But strange -- man has been standing on his head, doing shirshasana continuously.


It is the male who should be more beautiful so that a female is attracted towards him. But religions have made a mess. To such an extent that if you see a rich man walking with his wife, he looks like a servant, and the wife looks nothing but an advertisement for his riches. All the diamonds, all the emeralds, all the rubies, all gold -- that is an advertisement for the man. He's just a businessman; having a beautiful wife is a business strategy so you can invite your customers to your house for dinner, and your wife will hypnotize them with her beauty so that you can cut their pockets!

But man has become just a servant, a businessman. His riches are known through the wife -- his riches, his beauty, his genius has to be kept hidden. Whenever you disturb nature and start manufacturing your own rules, remember it is a crime -- unforgivable. Man, unless he meditates, will go crazy -- crazy after women. And man finds meditation more difficult than the woman. Experienced mothers who have given two, three births can be asked before the birth and can say whether there is a girl or a boy in their womb, because a girl remains silent, and a boy starts playing football. He starts kicking here and there.

In meditation girls can enter deeper. On the one hand they can go deeper in meditation; on the other hand their sexuality is negative, it is not a compulsion on them. I was amazed in my experience moving amongst all kinds of monks and nuns, because no monk is really celibate, but nuns are celibate. They can manage to be celibate; they don't have an aggressive sex, and moreover nature has provided that every month their sex energy goes out of their body automatically, they are clean again for one month.

But man is in a difficulty. His sex energy can be subdued only by deeper meditation. Then he will not go crazy. Unless you meditate deeply, you will not be able to transcend your sexual craziness.

The student demonstration had turned into a riot. Suddenly a man staggered out of the crowd carrying a limp girl in his arms. "Here," shouted a cop running up to the man, "give her to me. I will get her out of this."
"The hell with you," replied the man, "go and find one of your own!"
Even in a riot, when people are being killed, shot, the man's mind remains continuously thinking of sex.

Sex is man's greatest bondage. You have to make every effort for meditativeness, so that all your sexual energy, instead of moving downwards, starts moving upwards. Instead of finding a beautiful woman, start creating a beautiful man within you. Rather than finding a graceful woman, your energy can make you graceful. But man is more stupid than woman. The whole of history has been made up by man, and you can see the madness: it is a history not of mankind, but of madness, wars, rape, burning living people, destruction.
And now they have come to the peak; perhaps Ronald Reagan will be the last chapter of history -- although there will be no one to read it, and perhaps no one will be able to write it even.

A married couple took their little boy to the circus. During the gorilla act the husband had to go to the bathroom, and while he was gone, the little boy nudged his mother and said, "What is that long thing hanging down between the gorilla's legs?"
His mother was very embarrassed and said quickly, "Oh, that's nothing, dear."
When the husband returned, the wife went off to buy some popcorn, and while she was gone, the little boy nudged his father and said, "Daddy, what is that big thing hanging down between the gorilla's legs?"
The father smiled and said, "That son, is his penis."
The little boy looked puzzled for a moment and then said, "Then why did mummy just say it was nothing?"
"Son," said his father proudly, "I have spoiled that woman."

OSHO♥

Sudhindra means god of remembrance, god of awareness, god of mindfulness. The most important thing in your life will be awareness. Pour your whole energy into that dimension: become more alert, more attentive, more mindful. Whatsoever you are doing, make it a point that you should do it with awareness… small things: washing your clothes, do it with full awareness. You can do it mechanically, you can think of a thousand other things and you can go on washing the clothes. That does not need awareness: you know how to do it, your body has learned the trick of it, it goes on doing it. You are not needed; you can think, you can fantasise, you can dream and the body will do the work. The body is functioning like a robot: it is programmed, so it will do its acts.

Bringing awareness in means dissolving the body robot, its mechanicalness, creating awareness deep in the body. And when awareness penetrates the body it becomes luminous. When awareness penetrates the body there is no separation between the soul and the body; they are one unity, functioning in unison. And that’s a great blessing. It is what blissfulness is all about: when the body and the soul are functioning as one, when they are coupled together in deep loving embrace, when all boundaries dissolve.

But from our very childhood we have been taught one thing, that we are separate from the body. Control the body; we are the master and the body is the slave – manipulate the body. Because of these teachings, every human being on the earth is a victim; no human being finds a harmony between his body and soul. With that harmony missing you can’t feel god; god can be felt only in a harmonious being.

Each child has been forced to become a kind of schizophrenic, a duality, a division: the mind and the body. And between the two a gap has been created; that gap is ugly, that gap is a calamity. Man has lost all joy because of that gap and man has lost contact with nature because of that gap. We are connected to nature through the body but we are disconnected from the body so we have become ghosts in a machine. the body is being used as a machine, as a robot.

Awareness means dissolving the robot, awareness means unlearning the nonsense that has been taught by the society, bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don’t have the division, you don’t possess the body; you are the body – there is no possessor, no possessed. That’s where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic.

So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don’t do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract.

OSHO♥

LIMITS OF BIOLOGY

Man and woman are intimate enemies – enemies and yet intimate. If your woman is with you then you start feeling: how to be alone? When you are alone, after a few days you start a great thirst and hunger for your woman – how to be with her? If you are alone, appetite arises for love; if you are with somebody, the appetite disappears and you start thinking,

’Why not go to the Himalayas and sit silently in a cave? Why go on bothering with this nonsense?’ Just a few days ago Ramananda wrote a letter to me. First he used to live alone, then he got tired of aloneness – naturally. Everybody gets tired of aloneness, gets fed up with oneself. Nothing else to do, nowhere to go, nobody to look at, nobody to be with, nobody to hug, nobody to care for you or to care about.

He got tired and started looking for a woman – and when you look for trouble it comes! So then came Vani from faraway Germany, and they were both happy – as stories go. They were both happy. Then things started getting entangled, and there was conflict and fight and nagging – all natural things. Then for two days Vani was ill and Ramananda was alone again.

He enjoyed those two days like anything! He wrote me a letter: ’Osho, to be alone is so incredible, so beautiful, I have never known that aloneness is so beautiful.’ I told him, ’Wait, Ramananda! Just a few more days and you will start hankering.’

And this goes on and on, again and again. One has to understand. One has to understand how one functions, man or woman, and how the other functions. And don’t be too personal about it. It has nothing to do with you. It is just the man’s mind and the woman’s mind, it has nothing to do with Ramananda and Vani. It is basically biological. You have to understand it very impersonally, only then can you go beyond it, only then can you transcend it.

Watch every move that you make and watch every move that the woman makes. Listen to the deepest instinct, to what is happening. Don’t throw the responsibility on the other and don’t start feeling guilty that you are doing something wrong. Nobody is doing wrong. It is simply natural. But one can go beyond nature because there is a super-nature too. I am not saying that you are condemned to be natural, that you will remain always natural, no.

With understanding one becomes wiser, wiser than nature. One becomes more meditative than nature allows. And through that understanding there comes a liberation. But that liberation is so alchemical that it transforms you totally, radically. Then you are no more a man and your woman is no more a woman. Then you both become more like two spirits – man, woman, seem irrelevant.

And when a man is no more a man and a woman is no more a woman that means they are no more confined to their biologies, no more confined to their bodies – because the difference is only in the body. Beyond the body there is no difference. Hidden behind, you are the same. It is just the body, the medium, that makes the difference.

Once you have started learning how to go beyond the medium, how to transcend biology, physiology, then you have become only two spirits. And only two spirits can live in communion forever. Then there arises a new kind of love which I call friendship. Friendship is higher than your so-called love. Your so-called love is full of hate; friendship is pure love. All hate has disappeared. All conflict, nagging, fighting has disappeared.

All desire to dominate, possess, be jealous, has disappeared. Friendship is pure love. All that was not needed is no more there. All that was non-essential has, been left behind. Only the essential fragrance. Friendship is the fragrance of love. And remember that unless you and your wife become friends, you will never be at peace.

OSHO♥