Repetition

Why does man go on living in the same repetitive circle, again and again and life after life?

It is simple. Because you don't really live. That's why you want to repeat. If you really live, there will be no need to repeat. If you have loved, and known what love is, there will be no need to repeat; you will be finished with it. Whenever something has been known totally, you are finished with it. When something remains unknown, you hanker. Natural it is, you go on desiring. You have not loved in this life, you will desire another life. You have not loved THIS woman, you will desire another woman. You have not loved THIS man, you will desire another man, in some other world, in some other planet. You have not been able to see and recognize and realize who you are in THIS life -- you will hanker for another. The incomplete hankers to be completed, that's why. And then you can understand my…

Question: Fourth question: Osho, why is there so much repetition in the Gita? Certainly there is a great deal of repetition. Krishna goes on repeating—the same thing again and again. If you read Buddha’s words, you will be even more astonished; in repeating he has outdone Krishna. He just goes on—the same thing, the same thing, the same thing. When people like Krishna and Buddha repeat, there must be a secret in it. There is. In the old days, alarm clocks rang in one continuous stretch. Now the new clocks ring with pauses. Psychologists have concluded that if you are asleep and a clock rings just once, even for a full minute or two, your sleep is less likely to break. But if, for those same two minutes, it stops and starts—again the same ring, and again the same ring—it strikes!

In this regard a friend has also asked: Osho, can we know our past lives?

Sri Aurobindo undertook another experiment. He did not appear to succeed, and did not succeed outwardly, but his direction was absolutely right. His experiment was this: Is it possible for a few souls to rise so high that their very presence begins to lift and call other souls upward? Is it possible that when one person’s soul rises, the overall level of the soul of humanity rises with it? This is not only possible; today it is the only possibility. Nothing else can work now. Man has fallen so low that if we plan to change people one by one, perhaps the change will never happen. In fact, the one who goes to change them is more likely to be changed by their company—to be corrupted along with them. You can see it: those “servants of the people” who go to serve the people—within a short time it is discovered…

A friend has asked: Krishna seems to repeat himself very often in the Gita. The same thing again and again—why is that? Did the person who wrote it down make a mistake? Or does Krishna repeat knowingly? Or is Arjuna so dull that he understands only when told again and again? Or does Krishna keep forgetting and start saying the same thing?

It is worth pondering. It is not only so with Krishna. Buddha repeats again and again. Christ repeats again and again. Mohammed repeats again and again. There is certainly something in this repetition. It is not mere repetition; it is a process. One must understand this process, otherwise, taking it as repetition, a person thinks: What is the need! The Gita could be trimmed and printed on a single page. The essential points would fit, because the same things keep being said again and again. Yes, the essential points would fit—but they would be dead, and bear no fruit. Several things must be understood. First: when Krishna repeats the same things, you do not see that the words may be the same, but the purpose is different. And the purpose is different because, after so much has been understood, Arjuna himself has changed. What Krishna said at the beginning—when he…