Life Energy

Osho, continuing in the same thread, a small question: In a state of violence and in a state of nonviolence, how does the condition of the life-energy, the life force, differ?

Water rushing down from the mountains runs toward the low; it looks for ruts, ravines, lakes—it descends, it hurries downward. Then the same water, heated, becomes vapor. It starts racing toward the sky. The very same water begins to seek heights, rides upon the bosoms of clouds, sets out on the sun’s journey. The water is the same, the energy is the same, but a transformation has taken place, a revolution has happened. A violent mind seeks pits and ravines; it flows downward. A nonviolent mind becomes vaporous; it starts seeking mountain peaks, the journey to the sky begins, the upward flight begins; it sets out on the sun’s path, oriented toward liberation and the divine. The violent mind always seeks the other; the other is the abyss. The nonviolent mind seeks itself. To seek oneself is the height. For whenever we seek the other, we have already started moving…

Should I take it, Osho, that an escapist cannot love and cannot be nonviolent?

Yes, an escapist can neither love nor be nonviolent. But an escapist may appear to love, and he can even put on the costume of nonviolence—and often he will do exactly that. The escapist cannot love because he has not yet been born; he is not yet there. Who will love? As I have said, it does not depend on the one who is loved; it depends on the one who loves. Only one whose individuality has dawned within, whose person has been born, can love. And the person is born out of struggle and challenge, by fighting every day—just as a sculptor chisels a stone. If the stone refuses to be cut and struck, no statue appears; it remains a rough rock. The struggles of life polish the statue within. If we refuse them, we remain stone. If individuality, soul, being, have not yet arisen within, who is there…

Osho, please explain how, in meditation practice, the dissolution and sublimation of violent tendencies—that is, dissolution and sublimation—take place?

Mahavira was standing near a village and some people came and beat him severely. Someone drove iron pegs into his ears. He stood watching. Later someone asked him, “You said nothing at all? You could at least have said, ‘Why are you beating me without cause?’” Mahavira said: “They were not beating me without cause. There must surely have been some cause in their minds to beat. Perhaps the cause was not related to me, but there was a cause within them. And I thought it would be better if they beat me; if they beat someone else, they would not return without receiving a return blow. Let their violence undergo nirjara. Better than me they would find it hard to find anyone.” Mahavira behaved like a pillow with those people. In meditation the nirjara of all suppressed surges takes place—whether of violence, of anger, of sex, or of greed—meditation…

I USED TO THINK A GREAT DEAL ABOUT NON-VIOLENCE, but everything I ever heard about it seemed so superficial. It touched my intellect but not my heart. And slowly I understood why. The non-violence everyone talked about was negative. The negative can never go deeper than the intellect; to touch life something positive is needed, If by non-violence one means nothing more than the renunciation of violence then it can never have any relation to real renunciation, something positive as well as something negative. It is the negative character of the term "non-violence" that has made it so deceptive. The word is negative, but the experience to which it refers is a positive one. Non-violence is an experience of pure love, of a love that is not attached to anything at all.