Osho on why negativity and despair
BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN I TOOK SANNYAS TWO YEARS AGO, I FELT AN ECSTASY AND JOY THAT I HAD NEVER IMAGINED POSSIBLE FOR ME. BUT LATELY I FEEL MUCH NEGATIVITY, FEAR, RESISTANCE AND “NO” TO EVERYTHING, AND MY LIFE IS A CONSTANT CHAOS. I CANNOT GO BACK AND I CANNOT GO FORWARDS. DOES THAT MEAN THAT THE HONEYMOON IS OVER NOW?
Baby, the honeymoon has not even started!
First, the honeymoon… and then I will discuss your question. I have heard a story…. A young man got married. He was known in the university as “a mama’s boy,” and he was. So he inquired of his mother, “I am going on my honeymoon — any advice?”
The mother said, “Don’t miss a single moment, because the honeymoon comes only once in life.”
The boy and his wife went to a resort place, rented the best room in the best hotel. They both were tremendously excited. The girl immediately threw off her clothes and jumped into the bed, but the boy went to the window, sat on the windowsill and looked out.
Seconds passed, minutes passed, half the night passed, and the girl said, “What the hell are you doing there? It is supposed to be our honeymoon.”
He said, “Don’t disturb me. My mother has said, `Don’t miss a single moment of it, the honeymoon happens only once in a lifetime.’ You can go to sleep, I will enjoy my honeymoon.” The full moon was in the sky, and he enjoyed the honeymoon!
Our honeymoon was of the same type. Now what you are feeling is your reality. The day you took Sannyas, two-and-a-half years ago, it was just excitement; something new was going to happen. Your heart was throbbing with a hallucinatory idea of Sannyas. You had seen sannyasins dancing, enjoying, blissful, laughing, and you were also becoming part of their laughter, their joy; so you imagined. It was all illusory, it was not a honeymoon. After two-and-a-half years of hallucinating, waiting, naturally you have come to your reality. All hopes have disappeared. What was so positive has become negative. What was so beautiful is now just a negativity, a despair. You think the honeymoon is over? The true honeymoon is never over; it only begins and never ends. That which ends is simply hallucination. But still there is time.
The blissfulness is not going to descend upon you from somewhere: you have to go through a transformation. Just taking sannyas does not mean that you are a new being. It simply means a commitment to yourself, a decision that, “I am going to transform myself.” Your red robes, your mala, will remind you continuously of the commitment that you have made to existence, the declaration of transformation, the decision.
Rather than transforming yourself, you started hallucinating, which is very easy for women to do. Now get back to the ground and the reality.
You are a negative person, just as everybody is before transformation. You are full of despair, just as everybody else is full of despair before the inner revolution that takes you from darkness to light and from death to eternal life, which frees you from all bondage and gives you wings and the whole sky. But you have not done anything; you have simply waited, expecting that it is going to happen. You have to prepare the ground, the house, for the guest who is coming. In a negative mind it is impossible. And I am not saying that you have to become positive, I am saying simply drop negativity. There is no need to be positive; that will be repression. Can’t you remain without being negative and without being positive? Just clean, hanging with nothing? Just pure, with no decision, with no conclusion, with no judgment? It is possible, and that is the way to enlightenment. But ordinarily your life has been divided into these two polar opposites: either be negative or be positive. Either be theist or be an atheist — as if there is no third alternative. So neither the atheist finds the truth nor does the theist find it…
I would not like you to start with imagination. Howsoever sad, howsoever terrible the reality is, if you want to get to the real truth you have to start from real despair. So you are now at the point from where the journey can begin. These two-and-a-half years you simply wasted. You should have at least asked me in these two-and-a-half years, “Is this a real honeymoon, or am I imagining it?” But when one is enjoying a honeymoon, one does not ask questions — somebody may create a doubt, somebody may disturb your imagination, your projection. Now it is perfectly good to ask the question.
Despair is in the heart of every man. Despair simply means that one has not been able to achieve one’s potential. Despair means that the tree is there, but it is not flowering; there is no fragrance. The wind comes, but the tree cannot contribute to the beauty of the world, it cannot give color and fragrance. It is barren. That is despair. A man who has not attained to his real being is barren: a tree without leaves, without flowers, a tree on which even birds don’t make their nests, a tree where birds don’t sing their songs. And when the sun rises, it is not a beautiful experience for the tree. In fact, in the sunlight the despair becomes deeper. The tree wants to be lost in darkness where she can forget the leaves and the flowers and the fruits, and the birds and their songs, and the whole of life. Unless one becomes enlightened, somehow or other one is going to remain in despair.
It is good that you have realized just in the small time of two-and-a-half years. There are people who have not realized in thousands of lives. But your conclusion is wrong. You are still believing that what has happened — the ecstasy and the joy — was real. If it was real it would have stayed. Reality never dies, only dreams know death. Reality is eternal. So it is good, in a way, that you are finished with your imagination. Now, start from scratch. Why should you be negative? Look deep into it. Why are you negative? What is the negativity? What is the cause? Life has given you so much. It has given you life, which cannot be purchased, which is invaluable. It has given you the capacity to love. It has given you the capacity to grow in consciousness. It has made available the whole opportunity to become enlightened one day. And you are full of negativity! Against whom? For what? You should be full of gratefulness.
Have you ever thought, do you deserve life? What have you done to deserve it? Do you deserve love? What have you done to deserve it? Do you deserve enlightenment? You deserve nothing. It is all a gift from existence. Out of abundance existence goes on giving to you — and you are negative. Existence goes on giving things to you, but because of your negativity you don’t receive them. You are not available, you are closed.
Just try to look at your negativity. Try to understand, see the foolishness of it. Don’t force yourself to be positive, that is not the right way; the negativity will remain repressed. Go deep into your negativity and find that there is no reason to be negative. And the moment you have found there is no reason to be negative, negativity disappears; and what remains is positivity.
Positivity is not something to be imposed. Negativity has to be understood. In that understanding is its disappearance, its death. And when that corpse of negativity is no longer there occupying you, a silence, a deep yes — not for any belief, religion, but for the sheer joy existence makes available to you — arises. Not with any effort — you just see it arising in you.
That is one of the most beautiful moments in life — when you see the yes arising in you.
You cannot remain without dancing, without singing. You have to show your yes in some way. Language is too small. You have to say it with your whole being — that is the dance. You are saying yes with your whole being. Every pore of your being is involved in it. It is not a phony yes said by your mouth, which may not have any meaning at all. Go deep into your despair. What is making you so desperate? There are certain reasons for your despair. One is — the most basic — that you have not been true to your nature. You have listened to all kinds of nonsense from the priests, pedagogues, politicians, saints, and all kinds of people who are really parasites. They suck your blood. It does not matter whether the Catholic pope sucks your blood and you are a Catholic, or the Hindu shankaracharya sucks your blood and you are a Hindu. The real thing is: Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jew — whoever you are, somebody is sucking your blood. And the way to suck your blood is to deprive you of your nature, to make you perverted, to divert your potentiality into directions where you will never reach the goal. That brings despair…
Don’t do anything which is against your instincts. But all the religions condemned your instincts: they say the instinctive man is like an animal. But what is wrong in being an animal? Rather than being in despair, it is perfectly good to be a healthy animal. An animal simply means alive: anima means life. So there is nothing condemnatory in the word. Certainly, no animals become saints, but no animals suffer from despair either. So just watch where you are going against your nature. Change your course, be in tune with nature. Be truly animals. Man is the highest animal in existence. He has to be really a more authentic animal than anybody else.
In your being natural, despair is not found. And the moment despair disappears, negativity disappears,
that will be the moment when the honeymoon begins. It can begin — it is never too late.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: From Death to Deathlessness
Chapter #39
Chapter title: The journey from despair
13 September 1985 am in Rajneeshmandir
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘negativity, depression, despair, anguish’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- From Personality to Individuality
- From Unconsciousness to Consciousness
- From the False to the Truth
- The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus
- Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, 2
- From Death to Deathlessness
- The Transmission of the Lamp
- Come Follow To You, Vol 3
- Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2
- The Rebellious Spirit
- And The Flowers Showered
- The New Alchemy: To Turn You On
- The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
