What is your view on loving someone significantly older?

Osho, I am in love with a woman who is eleven years older than I am. Your view?

Those who have fallen into pits and come here—I find them easier to treat. Those who haven’t—like these “Atmanand Brahmachari” types who have landed here—tight-lungot fellows—now their loincloths are tied so tight their lives must be in distress. They’ll attain Brahman only if they loosen the loincloth a bit—get some relief. In this heat, with the loincloth cinched tight! Who knows what their condition is! One day I saw Mulla Nasruddin walking along—dragging his feet and hurling a torrent of gorgeously flavored abuses. What varieties—only worth hearing from Mulla’s own mouth. There is an art to everything. His wife, plagued by those abuses, tried for years to reform him. One morning she too began to abuse, “Let’s see.” Mulla started, listened a bit, and said, “All right, your abuses are okay, but you lack the flavor! Learn the style, the tone, bring the relish. If everyone starts singing, does it…

Beloved Osho, after leaving rajneeshpuram in november last year, I experienced that it became nearly impossible for me to find out what I was going to do. In the beginning it was a bit frightening, but very soon I saw more and more that just waiting was enough, and many beautiful things started happening to me, without my going for it. Is this how being with you works?

It is not only the way things happen around me. It is the way of the whole existence. You just wait, and everything happens at its right moment. Wait and watch. Don't fall asleep -- because in waiting that is very natural, to fall asleep. Nothing to do, one falls asleep. Then things will be happening but you will not know. So wait and watch. Life has been disturbed by the so-called do-gooders, who are continuously preaching around the world, "Do this, do that, do service to the poor." Doing has been raised so high that we have completely forgotten the art of waiting. And, certainly, there are things which can happen only if you do them. For example, you cannot simply wait and grow rich. There are people who even teach that. One American thinker, Napoleon Hill, has written beautiful books, a master writer. I have always liked one…

Osho, when I listen to you, every word sinks to the depths of my heart and stirs me. But when I read you, it remains a mental game. Please tell me why this happens.

It’s plain. The arithmetic is simple. When you read, only you are there; I am not. What you read is nothing but you. It becomes a game of the mind. When you listen to me, then sometimes—knowingly or unknowingly—I also slip into you. You seldom give such a chance, but now and then a lapse happens on your side. Unaware, you leave the door a little open—and I come in. So when you are hearing me, it’s a different matter. That is why truth has always been spoken, not written. It cannot be written. Even speaking it is very difficult, yet it can still be said—at least a little can be said, a little news can be given. Because in speaking, many elements are involved that are lost in writing. When you read a book, the book is dead. A book cannot create an atmosphere around you. A book has…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, CAN I EVER BE HAPPY WITH MY WIFE? Love affairs have been failing, and parents feel very happy. People come to me and they say, "Look, in the West love affairs have been failing. Then why are you against marriage?" they ask me. Love affairs are failing because first the marriage was arranged by the astrologer, then it was arranged by the parents, and now it is being arranged by biology, by instinct. You suddenly feel that you like a woman, but you don't know how long this is going to last and you are not even aware why you like her. You are not even alert to what it is in you that likes her. Maybe it is just her hairstyle. Now, are you going to get married to a hairstyle?

Osho, I am in love with a young woman. You sing songs of love, and it comforts the mind. Though I know you are singing of quite another love. Still, I take it to be my kind of love and feel pleased. I am in love with you too. Now what should I do? Drop everything and plunge into sannyas? Or as you say! I am only twenty-six.

If I were to tell you now, Surendra, “Leave everything and come,” this is the obstacle that would arise: I sit to meditate on God—yet you come into my meditation, In the parijat courtyard. There is no hurry. The beloved is not the opposite of God. From the beloved’s door the path goes to God. Love much. Purify love—of hatred, anger, jealousy, enmity. Purify anger in every way, and it becomes compassion. Purify kama, sex-desire, through and through, and it becomes Rama—the divine. If you keep purifying the love you now call love, then one day the love I call love will happen. Do not leave, do not run. Use the opportunities God gives. I teach transformation, not escape. Spring has come, the days of scattering flowers have arrived. Pick up your instrument, the days of singing ghazals have arrived. The impudent season of the passionate gaze has come, The…