Vanaprastha

Beloved Osho, it seems that bhaj govindam is written for the vanaprastha stage. But you are saying this for everyone.

Awaken all your energy and allow it to flow and you will find that vanaprastha has happened at that very moment, sannyas has happened at that very moment. But if you go on postponing it till tomorrow... today you want to see a movie so you will go to the temple tomorrow. If at all you have to postpone something then postpone the movie, see it in your old age, but you are postponing the divine till your old age! You give your youth to the world and old age to the divine. From this your values are quite clear: your youth is spent in useless things and your old age is meant for the divine. When you have energy you do wrong, and when you do not have any energy you want to do good. When you are incapable of doing anything, you intend to do good. You think…

Osho, it seems that Bhaj Govindam is meant for the stage of vanaprastha. But you are addressing it to everyone!

What does vanaprastha mean? It means: face turned toward the forest. It belongs to all. If not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then the day after—you have to find that ultimate solitude which is called God. Everyone is vanaprastha; sooner or later everyone has to enter that supreme aloneness, to discover that inner forest. Vanaprastha has nothing to do with physical age. Otherwise, what will you do with Shankaracharya? He passed away at thirty-three. So before thirty-three he had already become vanaprastha—and a sannyasin too. You are clever. Your cleverness is your misery. You are cunning. You say, “This is for the old.” For vanaprastha—meaning, when there will be nothing left worth doing in the world; when people themselves will forcibly retire you; you’ll be shouting, “Why are you sending me off already?”—and they will have started preparing your bier; then you think you will chant Bhaj Govindam? People…

Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?

There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…