Can Money Buy Happiness? New twist

Can Money Buy Happiness? An OSHO Quote

Don’t be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness.

If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force.

I am not against money – remember. Don’t misinterpret me: I am not against money. I am not against anything. Money is a means. If you are happy and you have money, you will become more happy. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will become more unhappy because what will you do with your money? Your money will enhance your pattern, whatsoever it is. If you are miserable and you have power, what will you do with your power? You will poison yourself more with your power, you will become more miserable.

But people go on looking for money as if money is going to bring happiness. People go on looking for respectability as if respectability is going to give you happiness. People are ready, at any moment, to change their pattern, to change their ways, if more money is available somewhere else.

Once the money is there, then suddenly you are no longer yourself; you are ready to change.

This is the way of the worldly man. I don’t call those people worldly who have money, I call those people worldly who change their motives for money. I don’t call those people unworldly who have no money – they may be simply poor. I call those people unworldly who don’t change their motives for money. Just being poor is not equivalent to being spiritual; and just being rich is not equivalent to being a materialist. The materialistic pattern of life is one in which money predominates over everything.

The non-materialistic life is one in which money is just a means: happiness predominates, joy predominates, your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted.

Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it.

But somewhere along the way everybody has missed. You were brought up by people who have not arrived. You were brought up by people who were unhealthy themselves. Feel sorry for them. I am not saying be against them; I am not condemning them – remember. Just feel compassion for them. The parents, the schoolteachers, the university professors, the so-called leaders of society – they were unhappy people. They have created an unhappy pattern in you.

And you have not yet taken charge of your life. They were living under a misinterpretation – that was their misery. And you are also living under a misinterpretation.

WHAT DO I WANT?

WHAT DO I WANT?  

Krishna, nobody knows exactly because nobody is even aware of who he is. The question of wanting is secondary; the basic question is: Who are you? Out of that, things can be settled -- what your desires, your wants, your ambitions will be.

If you are an ego then of course you want money, power, prestige. Then your life will have a political structure. You will be in constant struggle with other people, you will be competitive -- ambition means competition. You will be continuously at others' throats and they will be continuously at your throat. Then life becomes what Charles Darwin says: the survival of the fittest. In fact, his use of the word "fittest" is not right. What he really means by the fittest is the most cunning, the most animal-like, the most stubborn, the most stupid, the most ugly. Charles Darwin will not say that Buddha is the fittest or Jesus is the fittest or Socrates is the fittest. These people were killed so easily, and the people who killed them survived. Jesus could not survive. Certainly, according to Darwin, Jesus is not the fittest person. Pontius Pilate is far more fit, more on the right track. Socrates is not the fittest, but the people who poisoned him, who condemned him to death are. His use of the word "fittest" is very unfortunate.

If you are living in the ego, Krishna, then your life will be a struggle; it will be violent, aggressive. You will create misery for others and misery for yourself too, because the life of conflict cannot be anything else. So it all depends on you, who you are. If you are the ego, still thinking of yourself in terms of the ego, then you will have a certain stinking quality. Or if you have come to understand that you are not the ego, then your life will have a fragrance. If you don't know yourself, you are living out of unconsciousness, and a life of unconsciousness can only be one of misunderstanding. You may listen to Buddha, you may listen to me, you may listen to Jesus, but you will interpret according to your own unconsciousness -- you will MISinterpret.

Christianity is the misinterpretation of Jesus; so is Buddhism the misinterpretation of Buddha, and so is Jainism the misinterpretation of Mahavira. All these religions are misinterpretations, distortions, because the people who follow Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, are ordinary people without any awareness. Whatsoever they do, they will save the letter and kill the spirit.

A philosopher was walking around a park and noticed a man who was sitting in the lotus posture, eyes open, looking at the ground. The philosopher saw that the man was totally absorbed in his gazing downwards. After watching him for a long time, the philosopher could no longer resist and went over to the strange fellow asking, "What are you looking for? What are you doing?"

The man answered without shifting his gaze, "I am following the Zen tradition of sitting silently doing nothing and then the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. I am watching the grass growing, and it is not growing at all!"

There is no need to watch the grass growing -- but that's what always happens. Jesus says one thing, people hear it, but they hear only the words and they give to those words THEIR meaning.

A mother took her small son to the psychiatrist and for at least three hours told the psychiatrist the whole story of her son. The psychiatrist was getting tired, fed up, but the woman was so absorbed in the telling that she was not even giving the psychiatrist an opportunity to prevent her. One sentence followed another with no gap.

Finally the psychiatrist had to say, "Please, now stop! Let me ask the son something!"

And he asked the son, "Your mother is complaining that you don't listen to whatsoever she says to you. Have you difficulty in hearing?"

The son said, "No, I have no difficulty hearing -- my ears are perfectly okay -- but as far as listening is concerned, now you can judge for yourself. Can you listen to my mother?

Hear I can; I have to. I have even been watching you -- you were fidgeting. One has to hear, but listening -- at least I am free to listen or not. Whether I listen or not, that is up to me. If she is shouting at me, hearing it is natural, but listening is a totally different matter."

You have heard, but you have not listened, and all kinds of distortions have gathered around. And people go on repeating those words without any idea of what they are repeating.

You ask me, Krishna, "What do I want?" I should ask you rather than you asking me, because it depends where you are. If you are identified with the body, then your wants will be different; then food and sex will be your only wants, your only desires. These two are animal desires, the lowest. I am not condemning them by calling them the lowest, I am not evaluating them. Remember, I am just stating a fact: the lowest rung of the ladder.

But if you are identified with the mind, your desires will be different: music, dance, poetry, and then there are thousands of things....

The body is very limited; it has a simple polarity: food and sex. It moves like a pendulum between these two, food and sex; it has nothing more to it. But if you are identified with the mind, then mind has many dimensions. You can be interested in philosophy, you can be interested in science, you can be interested in religion -- you can be interested in as many things as you can imagine.

If you are identified with the heart, then your desires will be of a still higher nature, higher than the mind. You will become more aesthetic, more sensitive, more alert, more loving.

The mind is aggressive, the heart is receptive.

The mind is male, the heart is female.

The mind is logic, the heart is love.

So it depends where you are stuck: at the body, at the mind, at the heart. These are the three most important places from which one can function. But there is also the fourth in you; in the East it is called TURIYA. Turiya simply means the fourth, the transcendental.

If you are aware of your transcendentalness, then all desires disappear. Then one simply IS with no desire at all, with nothing to be asked, to be fulfilled. There is no future and no past. Then one lives just in the moment, utterly contented, fulfilled. In the fourth, your one-thousand-petaled lotus opens up; you become divine.

You are asking me, Krishna, "What do I want?" That simply shows you don't even know where you are, where you are stuck. You will have to inquire within yourself -- and it is not very difficult. If it is food and sex that takes up the major part of you, then that is where you are identified; if it is something concerned with thinking, then it is the mind; if it is concerned with feeling, then it is the heart. And, of course, Krishna, it cannot be the fourth; otherwise the question would not have arisen at all!

So rather than answering you I would like to ask you where you are. Inquire!

Three pigs entered a bar. The first pig ordered a drink and then asked the way to the bathroom. The second pig ordered a drink and also asked the bartender the way to the bathroom. Then the third pig came up to the bar and ordered a drink.

"Don't YOU want to know where the bathroom is?" sneered the bartender.

"No!" replied the little pig. "I am the one that goes, `Wee, wee, wee...all the way home!'" I should ask you, "Where are you? What kind of identification? Where are you stuck?"

Only then can things be clear -- and it is not difficult. But it happens again and again that people ask beautiful questions, particularly Indians, Krishna. They may be stuck at their sex center, but they will ask about SAMADHI. They will ask, "What is NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI, where all thoughts disappear, that thoughtless consciousness? What is it?

What is NIRBEEJ SAMADHI, the seedless, where even the seeds for any future are completely burnt? What is that ultimate state when one need not return to the earth, to the womb, to life again?" These are just foolish questions they are asking; they are not their questions. They are not at all concerned with their real situation. They are asking beautiful questions, metaphysical, esoteric, to show that they are higher quality beings; that they are scholarly, that they know the scriptures, that they are seekers; that they are not ordinary people, they are extraordinary, religious. That is driving the Indians into more and more of a mess.

It is always good to ask something which is relevant to you rather than to ask something which is of no concern to you. People ask me whether God exists or not, and they don't even know whether they exist or not!

Just the other day, Divakar Bharti, another Indian, asked me, "Why am I here?"

Divakar, are you really here? Ask yourself, are you really here? I don't think that you are here. Physically of course you are here, but spiritually, REALLY, you are not here.

Unless you drop that idea of being Indian, of being a Hindu, you cannot be here, you cannot be part of MY commune. You have carried all kinds of nonsense inside you and you are still clinging to it.

Krishna, it is always good to ask realistic questions, because then it can be of some help to you. If you are suffering from the common cold and you go to the physician and you ask about cancer, because a man like you -- how can he suffer from such an ordinary thing as the common cold...? Every ordinary person suffers from the common cold, that's why it is called the common cold. But you are such an uncommon person -- you are not any Tom, Harry or Dick. You are so special, you have to suffer from something very special, so you ask a question about cancer. And if the physician helps you in curing the cancer you will get into more trouble -- that treatment is not going to fit you at all. It will create more complications in you because those medicines can kill you, because there is nothing for them to work upon; there is no cancer in you and they cannot be of any use for the common cold.

In fact, for the common cold there is no medicine. If you take medicine, the common cold goes within seven days; if you don't take any, it goes within one week! In fact, it is so common that medical science has not bothered about it at all. Who cares about such small things? People are concerned about going to the moon, and about such small matters as the common cold or a leaking fountain pen, who bothers? The fountain pen still leaks!

People have reached the moon and they have not yet been able to make a one-hundred- percent-guaranteed fountain pen which is not going to leak!

Just look inside yourself, Krishna. Where exactly is your problem?

A general visiting a field hospital asks one of the bed-ridden soldiers, "What is wrong with you?"

"Sir," replies the soldier, "I've got boils."

"What treatment do you get?"

"They swab me down with iodine tincture, sir."

"And that helps?" asks the general.

"Yes, sir!" replies the soldier.

Then the general goes to the soldier in the next bed and finds out that this guy has hemorrhoids. He too gets swabbed down with iodine; it helps, and he does not have any other wishes. The general then asks the third soldier, "What is wrong with you?"

"Sir, I've got swollen tonsils. I get swabbed down with iodine, and yes, it helps."

"Anything you would like?" asks the concerned general.

"Yes, sir!" replied the soldier. "I'd like to be the first to be swabbed down."

First you have to see your situation, where you are; only then can you say what you want.

If you are being swabbed down with iodine tincture after these two fellows -- one who has got boils and one who has got hemorrhoids -- and you are suffering only from swollen tonsils, then the problem is clear!

Inquire, look for the exact place where you are. As far as I am concerned, all desire is a sheer wastage, all wanting is wrong. But if you are identified with the body I cannot say that to you because that will be too far away from you. If you are identified with the body I will say: move a little towards higher desires, the desires of the mind, and then a little higher, the desires of the heart, and then ultimately to the state of desirelessness. No desire can ever be fulfilled. This is the difference between the scientific approach and the religious approach. Science tries to fulfill your desires and of course science has succeeded in doing many things, but man remains in the same misery. Religion tries to wake you up to that great understanding from where you can see that all desires are intrinsically unfulfillable.

One has to go beyond all desires; only then is there contentment. Contentment is not at the end of a desire, contentment is not by fulfilling the desire, because the desire cannot be fulfilled. By the time you come to the fulfillment of your desire, you will find a thousand and one other desires have arisen. Each desire branches out into many new desires. And again and again it will happen, and your whole life will be wasted.

Those who have known, those who have seen -- the buddhas, the awakened ones -- have all agreed on one point. It is not a philosophical thing, it is factual, the fact of the inner world: that contentment is when all desires have been dropped. It is with the absence of the desires that contentment arises within you -- in the absence. In fact, the very absence of desires IS contentment, IS fulfillment, fruition, flowering.

Krishna, move from lower desires to higher desires, from gross desires to more subtle desires, then to the subtlest, because from the subtlest the jump into no-desire, into desirelessness, is easy. Desirelessness is NIRVANA.

Nirvana has two meanings. It is one of the most beautiful words; any language can be proud of this word. It has two meanings, but those two meanings are like two sides of the same coin. One meaning is cessation of the ego, and the other meaning is cessation of all desires. It happens simultaneously. The ego and the desires are intrinsically together, they are inseparably together. The moment ego dies, desires disappear, or vice versa: the moment desires are transcended, ego is transcended. And to be desireless, to be egoless, is to know the ultimate bliss, is to know the eternal ecstasy.

Krishna, that's what sannyas is all about: the quest for the eternal ecstasy that begins but never ends.

I want to give up smoking. What do you say about it?

Question: Beloved Master, I want to give up smoking. What do you say about it?

Osho : Mahendra, why? Why in the first place do you want to give up smoking? What is wrong in smoking? Yes, it is a little stupid, silly -- just poisoning your breath, taking smoke in and out, wasting money, life. But it is not a sin, it is not a crime either. You should not feel guilty about it. Maybe you will live a little less, two or three years less than you would have lived. But what is the point of living three years more? What will you do by living three years more? You will create a little more trouble in the world -- so better you go a little earlier. And the world is too much populated.

Nobody had thought about birth control before. Now we are thinking constantly everywhere how to reduce the population, how to prevent new children from being born. Sooner or later we will have to think about the other end: how to help the old people to go faster, because that is absolutely logical, part of it. If we prevent children from coming in just to keep the world a little less populated -- it is already too much populated -- sooner or later we have to think about ways and means how to help old people to go quicker, faster. We will have to make it a birthright.

If somebody decides to die, it should not be a crime. In fact, he should be supported, respected, because he is creating space for new people to come. He is helping the world -- he is a great servant of humanity.

You say, Mahendra, "I want to give up smoking."
Why in the first place? -- because you have been reading that it is bad for your health? But what will you DO with your health? 

There is a beautiful story about Jesus, not related in the Christian gospels. My feeling has always been that it has been deleted somewhere down the centuries because it is a dangerous story. But Sufis have kept it intact, recorded. There are a few Jesus stories which Sufis have guarded, and they should be thanked for it because they are the most beautiful stories out of all the stories that the gospels contain. This one is a beauty.

Jesus came to a village. He saw a man lying in the gutter, shouting, talking incoherently, making noise. It was difficult to understand what he wanted to say; he was completely drunk. Jesus came close just to understand what he wanted to say -- maybe he needed some help. When he came close he recognized the face. He shook the man. The man opened his eyes, and Jesus said, "Don't you recognize me? I recognize you."

The man said, "I also recognize you, but please leave me alone."
Jesus said, "As far as I remember you were ill, very ill, almost on the verge of death, and I cured you. I have done a miracle -- and I don't see any gratitude in your eyes."

The man said, "Gratitude? I was going to die and that would have been a rest from this ugly life. You made me healthy again and now I am suffering again. Who is responsible? Why did you make me healthy again? Who gave you the right?"

Jesus was shocked -- he had never thought about it. Jesus said, "But you are healthy -- you can USE your health." And the man said, "That's what I am doing. When one is healthy one drinks, eats, enjoys the things of life. What else can I do with my health?"

It is really a very pertinent question: What will you do with your health? Eat, drink, be merry! And the man seems to be almost angry at Jesus. Jesus walked away very puzzled, and he saw another man who was running after a prostitute. He stopped the man and said, "Young man, I know you perfectly well. You were blind and I gave you eyes."

And the man said, "What else should I do with the eyes? The eyes are meant to look and search for beauty. And that woman -- have you not seen how beautiful she is? Leave me alone! I have no more time for you."

Jesus was very sad because he was thinking he had helped these people. He came out of the village and a man was preparing to kill himself. He asked the man, "Life is so valuable! Why are you killing yourself?" 

The man looked at Jesus and he said, "Don't you recognize me? I had died and you are the man who disturbed my death and you brought me back from my death. It is too much! I cannot bear this life any longer. Enough is enough! And please, you have come again... and I have made every preparation to kill myself. Don't do your miracle again -- I don't want any of your miracles!" 

This is a strange story, but of great significance. Man is such, so blind, that he will do something wrong if he is healthy, he will do something wrong if he is alive, he will do something wrong if he has eyes -- he will see something wrong. Unless you are conscious you are going to do wrong.

That's why in the East, Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu and people like them have never done any miracles -- or they have done only one miracle, and that miracle is the transformation of unconsciousness into consciousness -- because unless that happens everything is going to be wrong. It is giving a sword into a child's hand: either he will cut himself or somebody else. You don't give poison to a child to play with; it is dangerous. Man is unconscious, almost in a state of drunkenness.

So what will you gain out of it if you stop smoking? 

O'Leary walked into a bar and ordered a beer and a whisky. He drank the beer and poured the whisky into his vest pocket. O'Leary repeated this routine several times, and finally the puzzled bartender asked, "What is the idea?"

"None of your business!" said the Irishman. "And what is more, you are so nosy I have a good mind to punch you in the eye!"

Just then a mouse stuck his head out of O'Leary's vest pocket and said, "And that goes for your damned cat too!" 

Man is unconscious. He only APPEARS conscious, he is not conscious at all. So rather than asking me what I have to say about it, you should watch. The most important thing is not stopping smoking; the most important thing is to watch why you smoke in the first place. If you don't understand the cause of it and if the cause is not removed, you can stop smoking -- then you will start chewing gum, because the basic cause is there and you will have to do something. If you don't start chewing gum, then you may start talking too much. I don't smoke. If any day I have to stop talking I may have to start smoking! You will do something.... 

This amorous playboy cornered the girl in the back seat of his sedan and was eagerly trying his hand at her. She kept resisting and pushing him away, but he kept coming with more hands than an octopus. She finally slapped him away and hollered, "I don't know what has come over you. You have always been so restrained and gentlemanly."
He said, "Yes, I know, but I just can't help it. I am trying to give up smoking." 

Smoking is keeping many people from many things which will be far more dangerous. Your hand is engaged, your mouth is engaged, your mind is engaged. And you are not harming anybody in particular, only harming yourself. That is your birthright, that is your freedom. Otherwise you will do something else.

Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous, tense, you start smoking. It helps you to cool down, to relax a little bit; otherwise life will become too much. When you are not feeling nervous, when you are enjoying, when you are relaxed, you don't remember smoking. Hours may pass and you may not smoke for the simple reason that there is no cause. Otherwise you become afraid you may do something wrong. Better to keep yourself engaged.

Mahendra, my suggestion is: first go deep down into your smoking habit. Meditate over it, why in the first place you smoke. It may take a few months for you to go into it, and the deeper you go the more you will be freed of it. Don't stop smoking. If it disappears on your understanding, through your understanding, that is totally a different matter. If it disappears because you went to the root cause of it and you saw the point....

For example, it may be that your mother's breast was taken away from you earlier than you wanted and it is just a substitute.

To many people I have suggested -- and it has been of help to smokers -- I say, "If you really want to stop smoking, then start sucking your thumb." They say, "But that will look very stupid!" That is true... smoking looks as if you are doing something great! You are doing the same thing, in fact a little more harmful. Just sucking on your thumb is not harmful at all, but smoking IS harmful. But because everybody is smoking and it is an accepted thing and it seems to be a very grown-up thing....

Small children want to grow up, if not for anything else than just for being allowed to smoke. Seeing grown-up people smoking they feel very inferior -- they are not allowed. They are told, "You are too small -- wait a little. This is something which only grown-up people can do." It symbolizes a grown-up person. And if you are really smoking costly cigarettes, costly cigars, rare, exotic, then it shows your success, it shows that you have arrived. It gives you dignity.

Go deep into it. It may be that your mother's breast was taken away too early. Then my suggestion is: in the night before you go to bed, Mahendra, have a bottle with a rubber nipple fixed to it and suck it. Every night before you go to sleep become a child again. Go on sucking on it. Fill the bottle with warm milk. That's what the smoking is doing. The warm smoke going in and out symbolizes the milk of the mother. You will have to go deep into the causes.

One of the great things in life is that if you understand the root cause of something you can overcome it without any trouble, without any willpower. If you use willpower to stop it you will find some substitute -- you will have to find some substitute. Maybe you are not allowed to speak; in the office the boss won't allow you, in the home the wife won't allow you. She goes on talking, she gives you no time to talk.

And you are also afraid if you talk you get into trouble; whatsoever you say is wrong. And the wife jumps upon it, takes the cue from that and starts nagging you. So in the home you have to hide behind a newspaper. Whether you read the newspaper or not is not the point, but you have to hide behind the newspaper. You have to look engaged, occupied, so you need not talk and you need not hear what the wife goes on saying.

Women all over the world, except for a few countries in the West, don't smoke, for the simple reason that they talk too much. Their lips have so much exercise, there is no need! In a few countries in the West they have started smoking and the reason is the Women's Lib movement. They have to compete with men in everything; whether it is sense or nonsense that doesn't matter. I am very much afraid they may start pissing standing any day, because they are equal to men! Howsoever stupid it is, they will do it.

Go into the cause of it, Mahendra, and if you can find the cause it will simply melt away. But don't stop by force -- let it go on its own accord, through watchfulness, through awareness.

So I will not say to stop smoking or stop anything, but I will suggest always: watch, meditate, be aware, go into the roots. This is a fundamental law of life: if you can understand the root of something it disappears, it evaporates. Unless you understand the root it will continue in one form or another. 

Osho – That’s the situation that almost all human beings are in. We are taught a very repressive attitude, we are taught to repress the negative. It looks very logical not to be angry, not to be hateful, not to be jealous, not to be greedy, it looks perfectly good that you should not be these things, but when you repress the negative automatically the positive is repressed.

You can be loving only if you also allow your hate to surface. They are together: if you repress hate, love will be repressed; you cannot separate them. That is one of the most significant things to understand, and man has suffered much because of that misunderstanding. We have been told that love and hate can be separated.

They cannot be separated, they are two sides of the same coin. Hidden behind love is hate,hidden behind compassion is anger, and so on, so forth. The polar opposite always exists with it so when you repress one, both are repressed; if you express one, both will have to be expressed. And down the ages the society has decided to repress the negative, hence the positive has disappeared. When the positive disappears life is meaningless; then there is no significance.

It is for the first time in human history that man is becoming aware of this phenomenon: that the hate part also needs to be accepted, that it has also to be welcomed, that we are not to reject it in any way. We have to understand that once the negative is allowed the positive will surface.

(To the man) She has repressed the negative. And women are more repressive about the negative because they have been told to have a better demeanour, a better, more graceful personality. Men are allowed a little bit: if they are angry and they shout, it’s okay; but the woman should not shout, she should not be angry, she should not use swear-words, mm? – that is not womanly. At the most she can cry. She can be sad but not angry; man is not allowed to cry but he is allowed to be angry.

So it happens almost always that the women become less loving. In fact they have the capacity to love more than men, but because of that capacity they have all the more capacity to hate too. Once a woman loves you her love is too much; if she hates you, her hate is too much. You can neither bear her love nor her hate. Man is very lukewarm, his love is lukewarm, his hate is lukewarm, because he has many more dimensions, he has many more things in life.

Love is the whole life of the woman. Certainly because of that it has too much intensity. Humanity must have become aware of the phenomenon that if woman is allowed to hate, there will be danger, it will be fire: Repress it. Hate has been repressed; now love is being repressed.

Both have disappeared into the unconscious, so at the most woman can show gestures of love. But this will happen, there is nothing to be worried about. Go through a few more groups. I will give you deeper groups, then I will give you one group for you both to do together, but only later on; first you should do a few groups separately. After two, three groups I will give you one or two groups to do together; by that time you will both be ready. But this problem will be settled – there is nothing to be worried about!

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIKING AND LOVING, TO LIKE AND TO LOVE? AND

ALSO, WHAT IS THE BETWEEN ORDINARY LOVE AND SPIRITUAL LOVE?

THERE is a great difference between liking and loving. Liking has no commitment in it, loving is commitment. That’s why people don’t talk much about love. In fact people have started talking about love in such contexts where no commitment is needed. For example. somebody says ’I love ice cream.’ Now how can you love ice cream? You can like, you cannot love. And somebody says ’I love my dog, I love my car, I love this and that.’ In fact people are very very afraid of saying to a person ’I love you.’

I have heard: A man was dating with a girl, for months together. And the girl was of course waiting, waiting – they were even making love but the man had not said to her ’I love you.’ Just see the difference. In the ancient days, the ancients used to fall in love. Now people make love.

You see the difference? Falling in love is being overwhelmed by love; it is passive. Making love is almost making it profane, almost destroying its beauty. It is active, as if you are doing something; you are manipulating and controlling. Now people have changed the language – rather than using’falling in love’ they use ’making love’.

And the man was making love to the woman but he had not said a single time ’I love you.’ And the woman was waiting and waiting and waiting.

One day he phoned and he said ’I have been thinking and thinking to say it to you. It seems now the time for it has come. I have to say it; now I cannot contain it any more.’ And the woman was thrilled and she became all ears – for this she was waiting. And she said ’Say it! Say it!’ And the man said ’I have to say it, now I cannot contain it any more: I really like you so much.’People are saying to each other ’I like you.’ Why don’t they say ’I love you’? Because love is commitment, involvement, risk, responsibility. Liking is just momentary – I can like you, and I may not like you tomorrow; there is no risk in it. When you say to a woman ’I love you’ you take a risk.

You are saying ’I love you: I will remain loving you, I will love you tomorrow too. You can depend on me, this is a promise. ’Love is a promise, liking has nothing to do with any promise. When you say to a man ’I like you’ you say something about you, not about the man. You say ’This is how I am, I like you. I like ice cream too, and I like my car too. In the same way, I like you.’ You are saying something about you. When you say to a person ’I love you’ you are saying something about the person, not about you. You are saying ’You are lovely.’ The arrow is pointing to the other person, and then there is danger – you are giving a promise. Love has the quality of promise in it and commitment and involvement.

And love has something of eternity in it. Liking is momentary; liking is non-risky, non-responsible.You ask me: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIKING AND LOVING? AND ALSO, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORDINARY LOVE AND SPIRITUAL LOVE?

Liking and loving are different, but there is no difference between ordinary love and spiritual love.Love is spiritual. I have never come across ordinary love; the ordinary thing is liking. Love is never ordinary – it can’t be, it is intrinsically extraordinary. It is not of this world. When you say to a woman or a man ’I love you’ you are simply saying ’I cannot be deceived by your body, I have seen you. Your body may become old but I have seen you, the bodiless you. I have seen your innermost core, the core that is divine.’ Liking is superficial. Love penetrates and goes to the very core of the person, touches the very soul of the person. No love is ordinary. Love cannot be ordinary, otherwise it is not love. To call love ordinary is to misunderstand the whole phenomenon of love. Love is never ordinary; love is always extraordinary, always spiritual. That is the difference between liking and love: liking is material, love is spiritual.

What exactly is Intelligence.....



What exactly is Intelligence, and what is the relation of the intelligence of the heart to the intelligence of the mind?

Osho – Punita, intelligence is the inborn capacity to see, to perceive. Every child is born intelligent, then made stupid by the society. We educate him in stupidity. Sooner or later he graduates in stupidity. Intelligence is a natural phenomenon – just as breathing is, just as seeing is. Intelligence is the inner seeing; it is intuitive. It has nothing to do with intellect, remember. Never confuse intellect with intelligence, they are polar opposites. Intellect is of the head; it is taught by others, it is imposed on you. You have to cultivate it. It is borrowed, it is something foreign, it is not inborn.

But intelligence is inborn. It is your very being, your very nature. All animals are intelligent. They are not intellectuals, true, but they are all intelligent. Trees are intelligent, the whole existence is intelligent, and each child born is born intelligent. Have you ever come across a child who is stupid? It is impossible! But to come across a grown-up person who is intelligent is very rare; something goes wrong in between.

I would like you to listen to this beautiful story. It may help. The story is called ’The Animal School’. The animals got together in the forest one day and decided to start a school. There was a rabbit, a bird, a squirrel, a fish and an eel, and they formed a Board of Directors. The rabbit insisted that running be in the curriculum. The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming had to be in the curriculum, and the squirrel said that perpendicular tree-climbing was absolutely necessary to the curriculum. They put all of these things together and wrote a curriculum guide. Then they insisted that ALL of the animals take ALL of the subjects.

Although the rabbit was getting an A in running, perpendicular tree-climbing was a real problem for him. He kept falling over backwards. Pretty soon he got to be sort of brain-damaged and he could not run anymore. He found that instead of making an A in running he was making a C, and of course he always made an F in perpendicular climbing. The bird was really beautiful at flying, but when it came to burrowing in the ground he could not do so well. He kept breaking his beak and wings. Pretty soon he was making a C in flying as well as an F in burrowing, and he had a hell of a time with perpendicular tree-climbing.

The moral of the story is that the person who was valedictorian of the class was a mentally-retarded eel who did everything in a half-way fashion. But the educators were all happy because everybody was taking all of the subjects, and it was called a ’broad-based education’. We laugh at this, but that’s what it is. It is what you did. We really are trying to make everybody the same as everybody else, hence destroying everybody’s potential for being himself.

Intelligence dies in imitating others. If you want to remain intelligent you will have to drop imitating. Intelligence commits suicide in copying, in becoming a carbon copy. The moment you start thinking how to be like that person you are falling from your intelligence, you are becoming stupid. The moment you compare yourself with somebody else you are losing your natural potential. Now you will never be happy, and you will never be clean, clear, transparent. You will lose your clarity, you will lose your vision. You will have borrowed eyes; but how can you see through somebody else’s eyes?

You need your own eyes, you need your own legs to walk, your own heart to beat. People are living a borrowed life, hence their life is paralyzed. This paralysis makes them look very stupid. A totally new kind of education is needed in the world. The person who is born to be a poet is proving himself stupid in mathematics and the person who could have been a great mathematician is just cramming history and feeling lost. Everything is topsy-turvy because education is not according to your nature. It does not pay any respect to the individual, it forces everybody into a certain pattern.

Maybe by accident the pattern fits a few people but the majority is lost and the majority lives in misery. The greatest misery in life is to feel oneself stupid, unworthy, unintelligent. And nobody is born unintelligent; nobody can be born unintelligent because we come from God. God is pure intelligence. We bring some flavor, some fragrance from God when we come into the world. But immediately the society jumps upon you, starts manipulating, teaching, changing, cutting, adding, and soon you have lost all shape, all form. The society wants you to be obedient, conformist, orthodox. This is how your intelligence is destroyed.

My whole approach is to take you out of this imposed pattern. This is a prison cell in which you are living. You can drop it. It will be difficult to drop because you have become so accustomed to it. It will be difficult to drop because it is not just like clothing; it has become almost your skin, you have lived with it so long. It will be difficult to drop because this is your whole identity – but it has to be dropped if you really want to claim your real being.

If you really want to be intelligent you have to be a rebel. Only the rebellious person is intelligent. What do I mean by rebellion? – I mean dropping all that has been enforced on you against your will. Search again for who you are, start from ABC again. Think that your time, up to now, has been a wastage because you have been following.

No person is similar to anybody else, each is unique – that is the nature of intelligence – and each is incomparable. Don’t compare yourself to anybody. How can you compare? You are you and the other is other. You are not similar, so comparison is not possible. But we have been taught to compare and we are continuously comparing. Directly, indirectly, consciously, unconsciously, we live in comparison. And if you compare you will never respect yourself: somebody is more beautiful than you, somebody is taller than you, somebody is healthier than you, and somebody is something else; somebody has such a musical voice… and you will be burdened and burdened if you go on comparing. Millions of people are there; you will be crushed by your comparisons.

And you had a beautiful soul, a beautiful being which wanted to bloom, which wanted to become a Golden Flower, but you never allowed it. Be unburdened. Put all aside. Regain, reclaim your innocence, your childhood. Jesus is right when he says, ”Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into my kingdom of God.”

I say the same to you: Unless you are born AGAIN…. Let your sannyas be a new birth! Drop all the garbage that has been put on you! Be fresh! Start from the very beginning, and you will be surprised – how much intelligence is immediately released.

Punita, you ask, ”What exactly is intelligence?”

It is capacity to see, capacity to understand, capacity to live your own life according to your own nature. That is what intelligence is. And what is stupidity? Following others, imitating others, obeying others, looking through their eyes, trying to imbibe their knowledge as your knowledge: that is stupidity. That’s why pundits are almost always stupid people. They are parrots, they repeat. They are gramophone records. They can repeat skillfully, but let a new situation arise, that which is not written in their books, and they are at a loss. They don’t have any intelligence.

Intelligence is the capacity to respond moment-to-moment to life as it happens, not according to a program. Only unintelligent people have a program. They are afraid; they know that they don’t have enough intelligence to encounter life as it is. They have to be ready, they rehearse. They prepare the answer before the question has been raised, and that’s how they prove themselves stupid – because the question is never the same. The question is always new. Each day brings its own problems, its own challenges and each moment brings its own questions. And if you have ready-made answers in your head you will not be able even to listen to the question. You will be so full of your answer, you will be incapable of listening. You will not be available. And whatsoever you will do you will do according to your ready-made answer – which is irrelevant, which has no relationship with the reality as it is.

Intelligence is: to relate with reality, unprepared. And the beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous. Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow and freshness. Then life has so many surprises. And when life has so many surprises boredom never settles in you. The stupid person is always bored. He is bored because of the answers that he has gathered from others and goes on repeating. He is bored because his eyes are so full of knowledge, he cannot see what is happening. He knows too much without knowing at all. He is not wise, he is only knowledgeable. When he looks at a roseflower, he does not look at THIS roseflower. All the roseflowers that he has read about, all the roseflowers that the poets have talked about, all the roseflowers that painters have painted and philosophers have discussed, and all the roseflowers that he had heard about, they are standing in his eyes – a great queue of memories, information.

THIS roseflower that is there is lost in that queue, in that crowd. He cannot see it. He simply repeats; he says, ”This roseflower is beautiful.” Those words are also not his own, not authentic, not sincere, not true. Somebody else’s voice… he is just playing a tape.

Stupidity is repetition, repeating others. It is cheap, cheap because you need not learn. Learning is arduous. It needs guts to learn. Learning means one has to be humble. Learning means one has to be ready to drop the old, one has to be constantly ready to accept the new. Learning means a non-egoistic state.

And one never knows where learning will lead you. One cannot predict about the learner; his life will remain unpredictable. He himself cannot predict what is going to happen tomorrow, where he will be tomorrow. He moves in a state of no-knowledge. Only when you live in a state of no-knowledge, a CONSTANT state of no-knowledge, do you learn.

That’s why children learn beautifully. As they grow old they stop learning, because knowledge gathers and it is cheap to repeat it. Why bother? It is cheap, simple, to follow the pattern, to move in a circle. But then boredom settles. Stupidity and boredom go together. The intelligent person is as fresh as dewdrops in the morning sun, as fresh as the stars in the night. You can feel his newness, so new, like a breeze.

Intelligence is the capacity to be reborn again and again. To die to the past is intelligence, and to live in the present is intelligence. And, Punita, you also ask, ”What is the relationship of intelligence of the heart to the intelligence of the mind?”

They are diametrically opposite. The intelligence of the head is not intelligence at all; it is knowledgeability. The intelligence of the heart is the intelligence, the only intelligence there is. The head is simply an accumulator. It is always old, it is never new, it is never original. It is good for certain purposes: for filing it is perfectly good. And in life one needs this – many things have to be remembered. The mind, the head, is a biocomputer. You can go on accumulating knowledge in it and whenever you need you can take it out. It is good for mathematics, good for calculation, good for the day-to-day life, the marketplace; but if you think this is your whole life then you will remain stupid. You will never know the beauty of feeling and you will never know the blessing of the heart.

And you will never know the grace that descends only through the heart, the God that enters only through the heart. You will never know prayer, you will never know poetry, you will never know love. The intelligence of the heart creates poetry in your life, gives dance to your steps, makes your life a joy, a celebration, a festivity, a laughter. It gives you a sense of humor. It makes you capable of love, of sharing. That is true life. The life that is lived from the head is a mechanical life. You become a robot – maybe very efficient; robots are very efficient, machines are more efficient than man. You can earn much through the head, but you will not live much. You may have a better standard of living but you won’t have any life.

Life is of the heart. Life can only grow through the heart. It is the soil of the heart where love grows, life grows, God grows. All that is beautiful, all that is really valuable, all that is meaningful, significant, comes through the heart. The heart is your very center, the head is just your periphery. To live in the head is to live on the circumference without ever becoming aware of the beauties and the treasures of the center. To live on the periphery is stupidity. You ask, ”What is stupidity?”

To live in the head is stupidity. To live in the heart and USE the head whenever needed is intelligence. But the center, the Master, is at the very core of your being. The Master is the heart, and the head is just a servant: this is intelligence. When the head becomes the Master and forgets all about the heart, that is stupidity.

It is up to you to choose. Remember, the head as a slave is a beautiful slave, of much utility, but as a master is a dangerous master and will destroy your whole life, will poison your whole life. Look around! People’s lives are absolutely poisoned, poisoned by the head. They cannot feel, they are no more sensitive, nothing thrills them. The sun rises but nothing rises in them; they look at the sun empty-eyed. The sky becomes full of the stars – the marvel, the mystery! – but nothing stirs in their hearts, no song arises. Birds sing, man has forgotten to sing. Clouds come in the sky and the peacocks dance, and man does not know how to dance. He has become a cripple. Trees bloom…. Man thinks, never feels, and without feeling there is no flowering possible.

The Golden Flower that we have been talking about this whole month is there in you, waiting – waiting for centuries, for lives. When are you going to give attention to it so that it can bloom? And unless a man becomes a Golden Flower what the yogis have called the ’one-thousand-petalled lotus’, sahasrar – unless your life becomes an opening, one thousand petals open and the fragrance is released, you will have lived in vain, ”a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing”.

Watch, scrutinize, observe, have another look at your life. Nobody else is going to help you. You have depended on others so long; that’s why you have become stupid. Now, take care; it is your own responsibility. You OWE it to yourself to have a deep penetrating look at what you are doing with your life. Is there any poetry in your heart? If it is not there, then don’t waste time. Help your heart to weave and spin poetry. Is there any romance in your life or not? If there is not, then you are dead, then you are already in your grave.

Come OUT of it! Let life have something of the romantic in it, something like adventure. Explore! Millions of beauties and splendors are waiting for you. You go on moving around and around, never entering into the temple of life. The door is the heart. So I say: the real intelligence is of the heart. It is not intellectual, it is emotional. It is not like thinking, it is like feeling. It is not logic, it is love.

source – osho book “The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2″