There is a very significant old story. A psychotherapist met his politician friend who was suffering from ulcers. Generally, all over the world. the politicians live a life of hate and anger against their opponents. So it is natural that they suffer such diseases. The therapist told his politician friend that the root cause of his disease was his hatred towards Richard Nixon. He prescribed him a method of healing his ulcers. The method was to write in big letters the name of Richard Nixon on his pillow and beat the pillow for some days, express his violence on the pillow. He said it was a sure cure for the ulcers.

The politician said: No, this won’t do. I want to beat up the real Richard Nixon. I don’t care if the ulcers get healed or not. I hate Nixon.

The therapist told him to experiment with another powerful method of cutting woods in the jungle for some days. The politician did not agree to do this also.

It is a coincidence that after four months the politician had a chance to stay on a certain mountain with one of his friends to make future plans . It was winter time and though the house was very beautiful, there was one problem that there was no electricity. They could not warm up the house and get hot water for shower. So they had to walk down daily a few miles towards the valley to cut the trees and bring woods to the house for a whole month.

After a month the politician came back to the city where he lived and went for another health check-up. To his surprise, the doctors told him that he had no trace of ulcers. The doctors told him that the repressed energy had become toxic within his system and he had suffered ulcers. The same energy had been released. It was not a miracle but a pure science of release of toxic energy.

It happens all human beings, as most of us are ignorant about the way our energy works. The hate and the anger vitiate the energy—and the same energy creates smoke and unhealthy fumes within us and we become ugly. We can purify this energy with love and compassion, and then we become radiant. The energy affects our consciousness both in the negative and positive way. We need to be aware and observe it.

Besides the cathartic methods of expressions, Osho gives a powerful method of transformation through observation: If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body – a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily. Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don’t fight it, just look at what is happening. Just like you watch a storm in the sky – the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty – lie down and look at the sky and watch. Then do the same inside.

Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning – dark clouds of thoughts are there. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you – many dark clouds are there in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch. It is a beautiful scene – terrible also, because you don’t understand. So you are afraid of it. Awareness is an in-goingphenomenon, it always goes inwards: the less aware you are, the more out you are; unconscious – you are completely out of your house, wandering around.

Unconsciousness is a wandering outside; consciousness is a deepening of the inside. When anger is there, keep looking, watching, and soon you will see a change. The moment the watcher comes in, the anger has already started becoming cool, the heat is lost. Then you can understand that the heat is given by you; it is your identification that makes it hot, and the moment you feel it is not hot, the fear is gone, and you feel unidentified with it – a distance is created. It is there, lightning flashing around you, but you are not it. You become a watcher on a hill: down in the valley, there is much lightning… the distance keeps growing, and a moment comes when suddenly you are not joined to it at all. The identity is broken, and the moment the identity breaks, immediately the whole hot process becomes a cool process – anger becomes compassion.

Most of us, when we think about our lives, we think in parts and fragments. We start living our lives the way we think. This kind of thinking is dangerous as it creates split personality. A worldly man who goes through all sorts of struggle in the world thinks that later in his life he would renounce the world and become a sannyasi, and finally have peace one day. Some people who get fed up with the world very early in their lives become sannyasis prematurely, they also feel lack of worldly comforts. There is starvation of love and emotional nourishment in their lives. This is all because of fallacious thinking of dividing organic unity of life that love and meditation are opposite to each other; that being worldly is against God. This kind of divisive thinking, according to Osho, is very harmful and the root cause of misery — both in the life of a worldly person and a sannyasi. Love is not against meditation, and meditation is not opposed to love. Rather, they both enrich each other. The meditative people feel pure love in their hearts, and the loving people are essentially meditative.

Osho says: Love is a basic experience, which can help you become meditators. The old religions have been preventing it, and they have been preventing it for a certain reason. If people can transform their love into meditation, then the priests, churches and synagogues are no more needed; people are totally free. No spiritual leadership is needed. And there are millions of priests around the world, like parasites on humanity. And naturally they will give you wrong ideas, against love, and they will give you ideas for meditation, but because you don’t have the basic experience.

The enlightened master elaborates this with an example of a swimmer: Love is like entering a swimming pool. Step by step you are going towards deep water. Then the floor of the swimming pool is divided into two parts, one for those who cannot swim and the second part for those who can swim. But those who want to learn swimming have to learn in the first part, which is not for swimmers. They have to learn it there. Once they have learned, slowly they will gather courage and enter the deep side of the pool, because for a swimmer it does not matter how deep the water is; the swimmer is always on the surface. The water may be a hundred feet deep, five hundred feet deep, or five miles deep, it makes no difference to the swimmer. It makes a difference only to the non-swimmer.

Beyond five feet, everything is death. But the swimming pool is one — shallow, deep. And the boundary line is only a line until you learn how to swim. Love and meditation are just like a pool. Love is the shallow space in a swimming pool, for those who cannot meditate. But that is the place to learn meditation. And it is the same pool, it is the same water, it is the same kind of phenomenon. You are unable to go deeper because you are afraid even to enter it. The shallow part has been condemned, and you have been told to jump into the deep part without knowing how to swim.

A real meditator is also a real lover. A real lover is also a meditator. Lord Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Kabir, Guru Nanak, Meera, and many such mystics are real lovers of life, because they are the greatest meditators this world has known. After going very deep within themselves, they realised that humanity and the whole universe is one. They could feel themselves in various forms of beings on this planet. That’s why they taught us love, compassion and reverence. Not only for human beings, but for animals, birds, trees and the whole existence. To them, totality of life is divine. Godliness permeates the whole existence. This is the real advaita of life.

We deplete our vital energy when we live a fragmented life — when our body, mind and soul are not in agreement with each other. Existentially, our body belongs to nature, our soul belongs to God, and in between is our mind which goes through a long process of conditioning by our family and society. Our life exists in relationships and these relationships are very demanding, full of expectations. An individual may not be so strong to fulfil all the expectations. It is next to impossible. As a result, we start being ruled by the social conditioning, ignoring our individual needs. In psychological terms, we become fragmented. A fragmented person can never be a happy person, as there’s an inner war going on all the time within his being. In such a situation, there are two possibilities: an individual can either go against oneself or rebel against the society. Both the possibilities create misery for the individual, who keeps struggling his whole life for attaining peace and joy.

It is really challenging to find a way out. It requires a tremendous amount of intelligence to understand this conflict and bring harmony between the conflicting elements of body, mind and soul. Yoga and meditation show the way — the way within. It is very therapeutic. One can begin with the body first, as it is very natural. Energetically one can talk to the body, communicate with it. Osho gave a meditative method which is “Reminding yourself of the forgotten language of talking to your body and mind”. He says: “People need to be taught how to be friends with one’s body. The body has to be loved — you have to be a great friend. It is your home, you have to clean it of all junk, and you have to remember that it is in your service continuously, day in, day out. It is doing everything for your survival, for your life, although you are so ungrateful that you have never even thanked your body.”

Modern medical science is now beginning to recognise what the mystics have always known — that the body and mind are inter-connected and deeply related. The remedy is yoga and meditation. The mind can affect the condition of the body, just as the condition of the body can affect the mind. Again, the remedy is yoga and meditation. Yoga can fix the body and meditation can take care of the mind at a deeper level. According to Yoga Sutras of sage Patanjali, the seventh stage is dhyana, which is understood as meditation in the modern times. It is basically dealing with the distractions of the mind. This way, the real yoga includes meditation also. In Sanskrit, yoga means the union. It is the union of body, mind and spirit. And finally what matters is the spirit, which rules both — the body and the mind. It is the life force together with godliness, the all pervading consciousness.

The prana energy functions at the optimum with the help of yoga and meditation. So one should not stop at asanas only — one should keep going further, deeper and deeper, higher and higher. The deeper the roots, the higher one rises. The roots and flowers are deeply connected. Osho says: “Your biology is your roots and your consciousness is your flowering.” A tree cannot flower independent of its seed and roots. The growth is a continuum; you cannot skip the birth pains, the suffering, the effort, the pushing upwards, and begin with the flower, the bliss, the meditation. There is no choice to be made. If you accept the roots, explore them deeply and consciously. In other words, be where you are; that is the nourishment the roots need to blossom into flowers. And finally, life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

Jesus and many enlightened masters have proclaimed that God is love. And for thousands of years people have been searching God, without being in love, without paying attention to this profound teaching. The search for God did not make them a loving people; instead, they became against love, as if it was their love which was a hindrance to their search for God. For this, they rejected and renounced love. They became lonely in their life as it was bound to happen. Due to this fallacious thinking their life got dried out, they became lifeless. And they could not find God either. Love is the essence that nourishes life — makes life worth living, otherwise we don’t have any real purpose to be in this world. And if we wish to search God, love is actually the bridge. And a bridge has always to points which really make it a bridge. Love is essentially a bridge between the mundane and the sacred, the earth and the heaven, and a bridge between all forms of life to relate. Even if one has to go across anywhere or to transcend, one has to use a bridge. Destroying a bridge is really idiotic.

The real problem is not love but the way we look at it. We do not approach love with understanding and sensitivity. When we fall in love, it really becomes falling, not rising or growing. In our unawareness, love starts becoming impure. A point comes when it is nothing else but impurities. Attachments, possessiveness, bondage and jealousy are the main impurities which bring a real fall. One becomes confined to some suffocating relationship and feels imprisoned. This is not conducive to a human soul that needs an open sky to grow. Any type of restrictions and boundaries are against the nature of the soul, which is something godly, something divine, in the heart of all beings. We are all made of godliness, but when we cannot see and feel this within us, we become loveless. This is a real fall and this way we do fall in love.

Osho, shows us the way to rise in love. He says: “Love knows no boundaries. Love cannot be jealous, because love cannot possess. It is ugly, the very idea that you possess somebody because you love.” “You possess somebody — it means you have killed somebody and turned him into a commodity. Only things can be possessed. Love gives freedom. Love is freedom.” Osho is not against man-woman relationships, as some mahatmas have been preaching. He wants qualitative transformation of relationships to make them divine. Osho lays emphasis on loving. The man who is without love is narcissistic, he is closed. He knows  only himself. And how much can he know himself if he has not known the  other, because only the other can function as a mirror? You will never  know yourself without knowing the other. Love is very fundamental for  self-knowledge too. The person who has not known the other in deep love,  in intense passion, in utter ecstasy, will not be able to know who he is, because he will not have the mirror to see his own reflection.

Relationship is a mirror, and the purer the love is, the higher the  love is, the better the mirror, the cleaner the mirror. But the higher  love needs that you should be open. The higher love needs you to be  vulnerable. You have to drop your armour that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard. You have to drop the calculating mind. You  have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you’ that  is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you’ that is the  fear in being in love.” Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, “I have known her”, or, “I have known him”. At the most you can say, “I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery”. In fact, the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.

There is a beautiful story about a famous Zen master, Rinzai. Rainzai’s master died and before his death, he declared Rinzai his successor. There were other disciples also, who felt jealous of Rinzai, also hurt that their master had not given this recognition to them. They started finding fault with the way Rinzai lived his life. He seemed to be totally unlike his master. One day, all the disgruntled disciples gathered together and had a brainstorming meeting, in which they concluded that Rinzai was not the right choice of the master as he was not following the lifestyle of his own master. How can he be a successor? It was beyond their understanding that he was chosen to be a successor. Observing all this, Rinzai remained cool and responded to the other fellow disciples: Beloved friends, you are mistaken, you are missing the whole point.

My master did not imitate the lifestyle of his master, and so he never expected me to imitate his lifestyle. This is the uniqueness of each master. I will be going against the teaching of my master if I imitate him. This is exactly the reason that our master did not choose any of those who are functioning as a carbon copy of the master — he chose me. I follow my own heart and my own spirit. This is the real secret of being a disciple. This is the real grace. This is authentic Zen insight which is in harmony with the last message of Buddha: Be a light unto yourself. And Buddha coined a beautiful word for this insight: Sammasati. Everybody should live with right remembrance and realise enlightenment in his own way. To be just like another person requires a lot of effort, which is almost impossible. Deep down everyone continues to realise one’s own uniqueness.

This is the way life is. Each master who is really enlightened will not want anybody to be his imitation, as an imitation would be an insult to the master, and his teachings. So whenever some people are called the followers of any master, it is an insult to both the master and the disciples. In the Last Testament, Osho declared the same for his disciples: “I want my sanyasins to inherit my freedom, my awareness, my consciousness.” He did not declare any one of his disciples as his successor, rather he said: “Each sanyasin has to be my successor.” He did not create any authority that would dictate others, nobody was chosen to dominate others. He said about all his disciples: “They are on their own. If they want to be together they can be together — out of their own freedom. If they want to move freely they have all the rights to be free… I give you only awareness. If you are aware, you will find your discipline yourself. Who am I to give it you.” This is the ultimate respect and dignity given by any master to his disciples.