OSHO: Jeevan, come here! How are you? JEEVAN (her name means love of life; usually bubbling and energyful, tonight looking down at the mouth)
I’ve got piles. I just want to die…. Sometimes I’m so high and singing, and all of a sudden, zoom! I would welcome death. It would be alright.
OSHO: It is alright, but you are not finished yet! Death is perfectly alright, there is nothing wrong in it, but right now you are not finished. So the very idea of death will make you unnecessarily gloomy. You are asking for a premature death.
So these things are not to be asked. They are to be left to existence. When they happen, they happen. That’s when you accept – whenever it happens, it is a great rest. And when your body is completely spent, death is the only thing needed. Then it happens; then you move into another body. You may become a tree or a bird or a tiger or something, and you go on moving. The existence gives you a new body when the old is spent.
Nothing is wrong in death. Death is beautiful, but never ask for it, because when you ask for it the quality of death changes towards suicide. Then it is no more a natural death. You may not commit suicide, but the very asking makes you suicidal. When alive, be alive; when dead, be dead. But don’t overlap things. There are people who are dying and who go on clinging with life. That too is wrong because when death has come, you have to go... and you have to go dancing. If you are asking for death, even thinking about it, then you are alive and clinging to the idea of death. It is the same in the reverse direction.
Somebody is dying and goes on clinging to life, does not want to die. Somebody is alive and wants to die. That is non-acceptance.
Accept whatsoever is there, and once you accept unconditionally, then everything is beautiful. Even pain has a purifying effect. Even piles are divine.
So whatsoever comes on your way, just be thankful. God knows better and if He gives piles, perfectly okay! One has to be thankful. One has to live through all sorts of experiences – pleasant and painful, sweet and bitter.
[Osho said that to be swinging from one pole to another – from highs to lows – simply indicated an aliveness, and that both experiences were ‘gifts from the same hand’. He said that if one held back from unpleasant or negative experiences, one could not be fully into the positive.]
But we have been taught to choose – to choose between the two – so our minds are completely poisoned. We go on choosing, while life is a choiceless thing. It does not depend on your choice – it simply goes on happening. Whether you choose or not, you create your choice by your own miseries – which are unnecessary.
One should simply be ready to accept whatsoever comes – sometimes the enemy, sometimes the friend. Both are your guests and both have to be respected. From this very moment start respecting your piles and they will disappear sooner or later. Respect and treat them as friends, as guests, not enemies. Just drop that concept of fighting with them. That antagonism has to be dropped.
Pain is there, I know. Suffering is there, I know. Suffer, and just accept. Don’t ask for death. When it comes, it comes. One should simply go on enjoying whatsoever comes on the way. Non-asking will give you a state of non-desire. Not complaining will make you more contented.
This moment is all. Never go beyond this moment, but whatsoever happens, be true to it. Be authentic to it.
With the body, with age, many illnesses enter. They are natural. They can be very great opportunities to grow – and they are meant for that. They are not purposeless... nothing is. The purpose is that you can accept the pain also. One who can accept pain becomes incapable of being unhappy. To be happy is not much. It is happening – sometimes you become happy; everybody sometimes feels happy. But to become incapable of unhappiness... that is the goal of all spiritual effort.
And this comes through understanding – that you accept pain also with no complaint. Just see the point: if there is no complaint, the pain is not like pain; almost ninety percent of it has disappeared. It was your interpretation. By and by a distance comes between you and the pain. It goes far away.
One Mohammedan mystic, Abraham, used to pray to God every day, saying, ‘I don’t ask for pleasures and I don’t ask for happiness, but always give me a little pain. Always continue to give me a few gifts of suffering.’
He was staying with another mystic, and the friend heard Abraham praying. He said ‘What nonsense are you asking? You know God is compassionate’ – Mohammedans call God, Rahim – and He is so compassionate, that if you ask He will give! What are you asking?’
Abraham said, ‘Because I came to God through my pain, through my suffering, and because when I am happy I tend to forget Him, I ask for a little pain. When I am in pain I remember God. When I am happy, I tend to forget.’ He was saying a great spiritual truth.
No need to even ask, I say to you. If Abraham had been here, I would have told him, no need to ask. Because whatsoever you ask – even if you ask for suffering – you are asking for something pleasurable. Maybe in suffering you remember God and that’s your pleasure. So man cannot ask for suffering. Whatsoever he asks, even if he asks for suffering, his innermost desire will be of pleasure.
Even if you ask for death, you are asking for a better life. You say this life is worthless, these piles and this age, and the body is becoming old so now take it away. You are simply saying that you would like those things not to be there or that you don’t want to be with these things. But either way you are showing a discontent. Just accept that whatsoever is, is, and by and by you will see things are changing. A very subtle change happens.
Once you have become capable of accepting pain as a guest, you become incapable of pain. Pain comes but it cannot be painful to you. It comes, but somehow it misses the mark. It does not hit you hard – it cannot – because by and by you become unavailable to it. You rise higher and higher. It moves around but cannot penetrate to the center and a distance arises.
So this is what I would like to say to you – just accept it and then see what happens.
JEEVAN: I’m not able to do the meditations…
OSHO: No need. This is your meditation!
Excerpted from: Beloved of My Heart [May 9, 1976 –my 49th birthday!]
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