Theater

Beloved Osho, I have spent the last twenty years of my life impersonating human characters on stage as an actor. According to my experience, theater and literature live on polarization: beauty calls for ugliness, happiness calls for desperation. Will there be only dance in the future?

So in Alaska or Siberia he is perfectly happy, in tune with nature. Bring the walrus into a hot area and he will die, just as you will die in the eternal cold of the Himalayas or Siberia or Alaska. You will need tremendous arrangements for yourself to keep warm. But the walrus has no woolen clothes, no electric blankets, not even hair. He does not need them; his body is made so that even if it is ice-cold, he does not feel any difficulty with the atmosphere. Coldness and hotness are just degrees of the same phenomenon. You are asking, "Is there something beyond the polar opposites?" There is only one thing, and that's what I call enlightenment. Otherwise everything has its polar opposite. Enlightenment has no polar opposite. You may feel the question arising in you, "Then what about unenlightenment?" That is not a reality, it is only…

Osho, why have we not been able to create a society which combines both polarities -- philosophy and poetry, science and religion? Is there a possibility of the total meeting of these polarities? Which land is more fertile for this meeting -- east or west? Is this meeting possible only in an individual, or can it exist simultaneously in the society also? In which way can meditation be useful for this meeting? What are the factors which can help man to grow in both the dimensions -- science and religion?

But we are all identified. We go on saying, "I cannot believe, I cannot have faith, because I am a sceptic." Or someone says, "I cannot doubt because I am a religious man." This shows that your consciousness has become fixed, stone-like. It is not river-like, moving, flowing. Flow? Move! So the second point: the mind has to be trained not to be identified with instruments. Then you can use them. You can use a sword -- but if you so are identified that your hand has become the sword, then how can you have a rose-flower in your hand? Then you will say, "It is impossible! How can I have a rose-flower in my hand? My hand is a sword!" And there is no relationship between a sword and a flower. You can take the sword, you can take a flower. If your hand is free from identification, only…

Osho, with reference to the East—and especially India—a question has been pursuing me for a long time: those who once scaled the Gaurishankar of philosophy and reflection, of religion and meditation, how did they, in the course of time, become so broken, degenerate, and impoverished? Osho, please be gracious and shed some light on this question.

The question is meaningful. The East reached great heights—but crippled heights, like a bird that has flown very high with only one wing. How high can it truly go, and how far? Maybe it flutters a bit, rides the winds a little, drags itself some distance—but not for long. Seeing just one wing, you can already say: this bird will fall; its fall is inevitable. Flight happens with two wings. A lame man can walk, but how different that walk is from walking on two sound legs. The lame walk is painful, compelled. One with two healthy legs sometimes runs for no reason, even dances, strolls with nowhere to go. The joy in the meeting of those two legs is complete in itself. Therefore I do not tell my sannyasin to renounce the world. The world has been renounced and the result is clear—those who left it fell badly, flat…

Question: WHAT CAN I DO WITH A BEGGAR? WHETHER I GIVE HIM A RUPEE OR NOT, HE WILL REMAIN A BEGGAR ALL THE SAME. In the West they have found a new hypothesis: that it is because the rich have exploited -- so destroy the rich. Just look at it. Looking at a poor man, love starts rising in your heart. You immediately say this poor man is poor because of the rich. You have turned love into hate now hate arises towards the rich man. What game are you playing? Now you say. "Destroy the rich! Take everything back from them. They are the criminals." Now the beggar is forgotten; the heart is full of love no more. On the contrary, it is full of hate... and hate has created the society in which beggars exist. Now again hate is functioning in you.