A young man went to Osho – very sensible, very sensitive – and he asked me that “I have come to ask a very significant question – because my whole life depends on it. My parents are forcing me to get married, and I don’t see any meaning in it so I have come to ask you: Is marriage meaningful or not? Should I move into marriage or not?” I told him that “When you feel thirsty, do you ask whether drinking is meaningful or not? Should I drink water or not? The question of meaning doesn’t arise. It is a question of whether you are thirsty or not. Maybe there is no meaning in water and no meaning in drinking, but that is irrelevant. The relevant thing is whether you are thirsty or not. And I know that even if you drink again and again, you will become thirsty. So the mind can say: What is the meaning in it, what is the purpose of it – drinking again and again, and again becoming thirsty? – It seems to be just a rut. There seems to be no meaning in it.”
This is how the conscious mind has been trying to dominate your whole being, because meaning belongs to the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no meaning. It knows hunger, it knows thirst, it knows needs; it knows no meaning. In fact, life has no meaning. If you ask, you are asking for suicide. Life has no meaning; it simply exists, and exists so beautifully without meaning that there is no need. What is the meaning of a tree existing, or the sun rising every day in the morning, or the moon in the night? What is the meaning when a tree comes to bloom? And what is the meaning when the birds sing in the morning, and the stream goes on flowing, and the waves, tremendous waves of the ocean go on shattering on the rocks again and again and again? What is the meaning?
Meaning is not of the whole. The whole exists so beautifully without meaning. In fact, if there was any meaning the whole would not have been so beautiful. Because with meaning comes calculation, with meaning comes cunningness, with meaning comes reason, with meaning comes division: this is meaningful, that is meaningless, this is more meaningful, that is less meaningful. The whole exists without any distinctions. Everything is absolutely beautiful not because of any meaning, but just by being there. There is no purpose.
So I told the young man that “If you ask about meaning, you are asking a wrong question, and you will be led in a wrong way. That’s how priests became so powerful: you asked wrong questions, they supplied wrong answers.” I told him, “You just watch your own being. Do you need a woman to fulfill you? Does your whole being hanker for love? Because love is a hunger, a thirst. When you see a beautiful woman passing by, does something suddenly happen in you? – A wave, something invisible, a change? Or happens nothing? You go on moving the same way as you were moving as if the woman had not passed. If you move on a road and a beautiful woman passes, and you go on moving the same way as you were moving before she came, nothing has happened, no wave in your being, not even a ripple, then there is no need for marriage. But don’t ask about the meaning. If something happens, you start walking a little faster, or you start humming a tune, or you start looking at the beautiful woman, or you start avoiding her… if something happens this way or that – I am not concerned whether you start moving in the same direction the woman is going, or you start running into the opposite direction, it is not relevant – if something happens then you have a need, and that need is to be fulfilled. Because a need exists to be fulfilled. There may come some day when you will pass on the road and a woman makes no difference. That too is good, but this too is good. Everything is holy and sacred. There is a time to be in love and there is a time to move beyond it. There is a time to be related and enjoy the relationship, and there is a time to be alone and to enjoy the beauty of being alone. And everything is beautiful.”
But one should look to the need, not to the meaning. Meaning is of the conscious mind, need is of the unconscious, and that’s how the second type of dream comes into existence: you go on cutting your needs, then the mind fulfills them in dream. You may not get married because you have read great books and you are poisoned by thinkers, and they have molded your mind in certain patterns. And you are no more open to existence itself; philosophies have blinded you. Then you will start cutting your needs. Then those needs will bubble up, surface in the dream, because the unconscious knows no philosophies; the unconscious knows no meaning, no purpose. The unconscious knows only one thing: what is needed for your being to become fulfilled.
Then the unconscious forces its own dreaming. This is the second type of dream; very meaningful to understand it and meditate on it. Because the unconscious is trying to communicate to you that “Don’t be a fool! You will suffer for it. And don’t starve your being. Don’t be suicidal, and don’t go on committing a slow suicide by killing your needs.”
Remember: desires are of the conscious mind, need of the unconscious. And the distinction is very very meaningful, very significant to be understood.
Desires are of the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no desires, the unconscious is not worried about desires. What is a desire? A desire comes out of your thinking, training, conditioning. You would like to be the president of the country; the unconscious does not bother about it. The unconscious is not interested in being the president of the country, the unconscious is interested only in how to be a fulfilled organic unity. But the conscious mind says, “Become a president, and if in becoming the president you have to sacrifice your woman, then sacrifice. If you have to sacrifice your body – sacrifice. If you have to sacrifice rest – sacrifice. First become the president of the country.” Or gather too much wealth; that is of the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no wealth. The unconscious knows only the natural. It is untouched by society. It is like animals or the birds, or like the trees. The unconscious has not been conditioned by the society, by the politicians. It remains yet pure.
Listen to the second type of the dream and meditate on it, and it will communicate to you what is your need. Fulfill the needs and don’t bother about the desires. If you really want to be blissful, fulfill the needs and don’t bother about desires. If you want to be miserable, cut the needs and follow the desires.
That’s how you have become miserable. Simple is the phenomenon, whether you are miserable or blissful; very simple is the phenomenon. A man who listens to his needs and follows them, just like a river flows to the ocean… The river doesn’t say whether to flow to the east or to the west, it simply seeks the way. East or west makes no difference. The river flowing to the ocean knows no desires; it knows only its needs. That’s why animals look so happy – having nothing, and so happy? – And you have so many things and so miserable? Even animals surpass you in their beauty, in their bliss. What is happening? The animals don’t have a conscious mind to control and manipulate the unconscious; they remain undivided.
Second type of dream has much to reveal to you. With the second type you start changing your consciousness, you start changing your behavior, you start changing your life pattern. Listen to your needs, whatsoever unconscious is saying. Always remember: unconscious is right, because it has the wisdom of the ages. Millions of lives you have existed. The conscious; belongs to this life; it has been trained in the schools and the universities, and the family and this society in which you are born, coincidentally born. But the unconscious carries all the experiences of all your lives. It carries the experience when you were a rock, it carries the experience when you were a tree, it carries the experience when you were animals – it carries all, the whole past. Unconscious is tremendously wise and conscious is tremendously foolish – has to be so because conscious is just of this life, very small, with no experience; it is very childish. Unconscious is eternal wisdom. Listen to it.
Now the whole psychoanalysis in the West is doing only this and nothing else: listening to the second type of dreaming and changing your life pattern accordingly. And psychoanalysis has helped many people. It has its own limitations, but it has helped because at least this part, listening to the second type of dreaming, makes your life more relaxed, less tense.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 11 Everything Is Beautiful
