Longing

Beloved Osho, it is true that listening to you I often feel surrounded by softness, peacefulness, silence, but within all that is such a deep longing. It happens also sometimes when I am overwhelmed and delighted by a sunset, a full moon, a beautiful piece of music. There is always a longing, almost like a sweet pain. Osho, what is it that I long for?

Anything of beauty, anything reminding you of the beyond, will create a longing in you, a longing that you cannot figure out what it is for. You don't know the name of the object because in fact it is not for any object. Listening to beautiful music, looking at a sunset or just a bird on the wing or beautiful roses, or sitting here in silence, a sweet pain can be felt. The longing is how to become one with this state of feeling. It should not be a fleeting thing that comes and goes but something that remains with you, that becomes you, because the same music which was sweet today may not be sweet tomorrow, may be boring the day after tomorrow. So it is not the music. It is something else that is triggered in you: the longing to be peaceful, to be musical, to have all…

Beloved Osho, was rabindrinath's longing, his creative angst, the very thing that in the end became an obstacle to his enlightenment? Am I also destined to die with tears in my eyes, and a pocket full of songs?

Milarepa, a poet is not in search of truth. His search is for beauty, and through the search for beauty nobody has ever become enlightened. One can become a great poet, a great painter, a great singer, a great dancer; but on the path of beauty, enlightenment is not possible. The seeker of truth, and only the seeker of truth, attains to enlightenment. And this is the miracle of enlightenment, that once you have discovered truth, then beauty, the good, and all that is valuable simply become available to you. Beauty cannot lead to enlightenment, but enlightenment opens your eyes to all dimensions and all directions. Rabindranath was very close to enlightenment, but his search was not for enlightenment -- he was searching for the beautiful. And the search for the beautiful, deep down, is the search for expressing beauty -- in words, in music, in dance, in any kind…

Beloved Osho, oftentimes, when I close my eyes and look inside, I get in touch with a deep longing in my heart, for nothing in particular, just a longing. Beloved master, is this a hindrance on the path, or is this the fire that keeps me going?

All the great illumined people have been killed, destroyed, poisoned, for the simple reason that the crowd could not tolerate it, it was too much. They were flying so high that it was hurting millions of people: "They belonged to us, they have been amongst us, and it is humiliating that they have attained such height and such flight and we are still crawling on the earth. The only way to forget our humiliation is to destroy them." They don't think of the other possibility. A few think of it, and those few go through the transformation. Those few are very blessed. Those few start looking at those who have reached to the height as their pioneers, as glimpses of their own future and their potentiality. They start also moving in the same direction. But these people are very few. The majority take the easiest course, and that is to…

What is this longing in me that no relationship can satisfy, that no tears relieve, that is not changed by many and beautiful dreams and adventures?

That's why in the East, particularly in India.... It is a very ancient country, and ancient countries become cunning just as old people become cunning. Out of cunningness this country decided for child marriage, because once somebody is adolescent hope starts arising -- longing, romance, poetry; now it will be difficult. The best way that India found was child marriage, marriage of children. They don't know what marriage is, they don't know what relationship is, they don't know what love is -- they are not even hungry for it -- sex has not yet become a mature thing in them. Let them get married. Just think -- a three-year-old girl being married to a five-year-old boy. Now they will grow together, just as brothers and sisters grow together. Have you ever felt any desire to divorce your sister? I don't think anybody ever divorces one's own sister, there is no…