Faithful To Yourself

A sannyasin asked Osho: HOW MUCH OF WHAT OCCURS EXTERNALLY, SUCH AS DEATH, BETRAYAL, ET CETERA, IS MY MIND? HOW AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE THINGS?

Osho’s reply: You are not responsible for these things. If somebody dies you are not responsible for his death, but the way you interpret the death, for that you are responsible. When somebody betrays you, you are not responsible for his betrayal. How can you be? But you call it a betrayal; it may not be. It is your interpretation. and for the interpretation you are responsible.

You call it death: if your mother dies, you call it death and you suffer. You don’t suffer because the mother has died. You suffer because you think it is death. If you understand life you will know that there is no death. Then the mother will die – mothers will always die – but you will not be suffering. She has simply changed an old body. In fact it is a moment to rejoice. Hmm?… She was having cancer or tuberculosis, old age, and a thousand and one illnesses, and she was dragging. You call it death? I call it just dropping the old body to enter into a new. Why should I be suffering over it? I should be happy and rejoice in it. It depends on the interpretation, and the interpretation is your responsibility.

Somebody betrays you: but who is saying that it is a betrayal? For instance, your lover, your husband, your wife, moves away from you. You say it is a betrayal?

It is your interpretation. It may be that you were too possessive. He has not betrayed you; he is simply trying to save himself. You were too possessive. You were too clinging. You were suffocating his being. You were killing his freedom.

He has simply tried to save his life – not betrayed you. He may have moved to some other woman in search that, maybe, somewhere else the flower of love can bloom. But you forced him; and now you say it is a betrayal. You managed the whole thing so that it happens, and now you call it a betrayal?

Just watch, become alert, look at what has happened. If you were not so nagging he may not have gone. Your nagging was driving him mad. Or, your nagging was driving him insensitive.

There are only two ways to live with a nagging wife or a nagging husband. One, which almost all husbands do, is to become insensitive. You enter the house; you make your skin hard. She goes on nagging, you don’t bother. You go on reading your newspaper. You don’t listen to what she says. But then you are betraying your own self, because the more insensitive you become, the less loving you will be. The more insensitive you become, the less possibility for prayer, the less possibility of life happening to you. You are already a dead thing. You are betraying your own life. It is better to escape from the woman to save yourself and give her also an opportunity to understand – the other way is to escape.

If the husband goes on betraying his own life, then the wife says he is very faithful. He betrays his own life – and nobody is responsible for anybody else’s life. You are here for your own self; I am here for myself. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations. I have to live my life; you have to live your life. If it is good, that I grow with you; if it is good, if you grow with me – beautiful, we can be together. But if you start killing me and I start poisoning you, it is better we should separate, because separation will save two lives, and will make two prisoners free. It is not a betrayal.

There is only one betrayal: and that is to betray one’s own life. There is no other betrayal. If you continue to live with a nagging, possessive wife, a husband, without any love, you are destroying your own opportunity. In the Talmud, again, there is a saying that, “God will ask you. ‘I had given you so many opportunities to be happy. Why did you miss it?’” He will not ask, “What sins have you committed?” He will ask, “What opportunities for happiness have you missed? You will be responsible for those.” This is really tremendously beautiful: “You will be responsible only for those opportunities that were available to you and you missed.” Remain faithful to yourself – that is the only faith that is needed – and everything will be good.

If you are faithful to yourself you will always find a partner, a life-partner, with whom you grow. Otherwise change. There is nothing wrong in it. And it is good for the partner also, because if you are not growing you will take revenge. That’s what every husband and every wife is doing.

If you are not growing and you feel confined, imprisoned, then you start taking revenge on the other – because it is because of the other that the prison exists. It is because of the other that you are caught. Then you will be angry, continuously angry. Anger will become your whole life. And you cannot love in such a situation. How can one love one’s own imprisonment? Maybe that imprisonment is your wife, your husband, your father, mother, your guru – it makes no difference.

If you are here and you feel imprisoned, escape – as soon as you can – with all my blessings. Because that way it is dangerous to be here. You are not to be faithful towards me. The first faithfulness is towards yourself; everything comes next. If you feel confined, crippled – escape! Don’t wait a single moment, and never look back. Seek somewhere else. Life is infinite. You may have somebody else who suits you better and who doesn’t become an imprisonment to you, who becomes a freedom. Go there. Seek. Always be in search.

Otherwise, if you are here hanging around, thinking you are imprisoned, you will start taking revenge on me. You will become angry with me. You will pose as if you are a disciple, but you will become an enemy. And some day or other you are going to explode.

In all relationships it should be remembered that in this life you are to learn and grow, become more intelligent and aware. If something cripples, it is a sin to remain in that situation. Move away. You will create a more loving world that way. But just the opposite has been taught: even if you don’t love your wife, love her. And nobody asks, “How can one love somebody if one is not in love?”

Maybe the love was there in the beginning, then it disappeared. Then, you have been taught that love never disappears. That too is absolutely stupid. Everything that comes can disappear. Everything that is born can die. Everything that starts can stop. Remain true and alert.

If the love has disappeared then to live with that woman is sin. Then if you sleep with that woman you are a sinner. Then it is a sort of prostitution. The woman goes on living with you because she has nowhere to go. She goes on living with you now because financially she is dependent on you. But then what is prostitution? It is a financial arrangement. Now there is no more love. If you go to a prostitute and she falls in love with you and refuses to take money, she is no longer a prostitute. Prostitution comes only with the money. When instead of love money bridges two persons, it is prostitution.

If you live with a woman with no love and the woman lives with you with no love, only a financial arrangement – now it will be difficult, where to go, what to do, it seems too insecure so you have to cling and be angry and nag and continuously fight but be together, it is your duty to be together – you are very dangerous… and out of these prostitutions, what type of children will be born?

You are not only destroying yourself, you are destroying future generations.

Those children will be brought up by you – two persons continuously fighting, continuously in conflict. And those children which will be born to you will always be in conflict. A part of them will belong to the mother, a part to the father, and deep inside there will be a civil war, continuously. They will always be confused.

When you come to me and say, “I am confused”…. Just a few days before, one sannyasin came and he said, “I want to surrender, but I don’t want to surrender also.” Now what to do with this man? And he says, “Help me.” He wants to surrender. He does not want to surrender also. A part says, “Surrender”; a part says, “No.” This is schizophrenia, split personality, but this is how almost everybody is. From where does this split come? This split comes from a father and mother always in conflict.

The child sometimes feels for the mother because he feels for both. He has been brought into the world by both. Half of his body cells belong to the father; half of his body cells belong to the mother. Now they are in conflict. He will be constantly in civil war; he will never be at ease, relaxed. Whatsoever he will do, one part will go on saying, “Nonsense. Don’t do it.” If the mother part says, “Do,” the father part will say, “No.” May not say very loudly, fathers never say very loudly, but the father part will nod no. If the father part says, “Yes,” then the mother part goes on saying, of course very loudly, “No!”

Mulla Nasrudin’s son fell in love with a girl. He came home. He asked Nasrudin, to confide in him, what to do. The father whispered in his ear, “If you really want the girl, go and say to your mother that ‘Father prohibits,’ that ‘My father is against it.’ And before your mother I will say, ‘I will never allow you!’ Then it is certain your marriage will happen.”

Great politics goes on. And every sensitive child learns the tricks of the trade, and then he will relay them all his life. He will remain divided, and whenever he will bring a woman home, he will start playing the role of the father and the woman will start playing the role of her mother. And the whole story continues … and the world goes on moving deeper and deeper into madness.

This whole nonsense has happened because you have been wrongly taught. I teach you only one fidelity: that is fidelity to your own life. It will look very dangerous. It will look as if I am trying to create chaos, anarchy. I am not.

Anarchy you have already created – it cannot be improved upon. I am trying to create order, but order out of freedom; order as an inner discipline, not as a forced thing from the outside.

DO BABIES SEE AURAS?

Yes, but only up to the time when they start talking. When a baby starts talking everything disappears. By talking a child becomes part of the society. When the baby is silent, nontalking, then the baby sees the same things that a saint sees, that an enlightened man sees exactly the same thing. The baby is almost a saint.

But it remains only up to a point. If the baby is silent for six months, nine months, one year – then up to that time, the baby will see the auras, will feel deeply. Once the baby starts talking, the baby is no longer there. The baby has entered into the world, the world of language, reason, mind. Then, by and by, those qualities disappear.

In India we have a myth, and a very true thing is hidden in it. In India it is said that up to the sixth month the baby remembers his past life. It is true, because up to the sixth month the baby is so silent and the clarity is so penetrating. Then, every day, the more and more the world is there with him, the more and more we teach, condition, and the baby becomes more a part of the society and less a part of existence – the baby is lost. This is the fall of Adam: the tree of knowledge has been tasted. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is tasted when the baby starts talking.

Then again if you want to regain it, recover it, you will have to learn silence — that’s why so much insistence for silence, meditation. You will have to drop language again. All inner chatter has to stop; the inner talk has to be stopped.

You have to become innocent again, without language, no verbalization within, just a pure being: a baby again. Remember, Jesus goes on saying again and again, “Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God.”