If you watch yourself, you will see in twenty-four hours how many times you go on changing your personality. And it becomes such an automatic process that you need not even make an effort to change it; the change becomes automatic. You see your wife coming – it automatically changes. You see your boss coming – it automatically changes. It has been your routine for so long, that now….
You have to understand one thing about man: that mans mind has a robot part in it. When you learn something, you have to be alert. For example, if you are learning driving you have to be alert, watchful of so many things: the road, the people, the other vehicles passing. You have to be aware of your steering, you have to be aware of the brake, you have to be aware of the gears. And in the beginning when somebody learns, he finds it very difficult to take care of so many things simultaneously. Once you have learned it, what happens? Then you can sing and drive, talk and drive, listen to the radio and drive. Your mind has taken “driving” to another section, and that section is the robot section of the mind. Now the robot takes care of everything that you were required to take care of in the beginning.
The same happens with your personalities. So you are not even aware that you change so quickly – no sound is made, no visible change – but if you watch, you will see everything has changed.
I was traveling in a train from Delhi to Amritsar. In my compartment there was a woman, young, very beautiful. And at each station, the man who was traveling with her – he could not get a seat in the coupe, because in the coupe only two people can sit, so he had to travel in another compartment, but at each station he would come running, sometimes bringing sweets, sometimes bringing fruits, sometimes bringing this, sometimes bringing that.
I asked the man, “Are you married to this woman?”
He said, “Yes. We have been married seven years.”
I said, “Don’t tell a lie to me. You have not been married even for seven days.”
He looked shocked, but he said, “How did you find out?”
I said, “This is enough. No husband would come at every station with sweets, fruits, and inquiring, Do you need anything? and hugging and kissing. No husband… and married for seven years? Impossible! You are not married to her at all.”
He said, “It is true. She is somebody else wife. I am also married, and married for seven years, but that is to another woman. And with that woman – what you are saying, actually that’s what I do. Even if I can get a seat in the same compartment I don’t. I travel in another compartment, finding any excuse. And once I leave her in her compartment, then only at the station on which we are going to get down do I come again, not in the middle.” What he said was, “But how could you find out?”
I said, “There is nothing in it to find out, it is so simple. Even after seven days of marriage, this stupid behavior that you are persistently doing here at every station s, simply disappears, because this behavior is foreplay, not afterplay.”
He said, “What do you mean by foreplay and afterplay?”
I said, “Just exactly those words: foreplay…. Before you have got hold of the woman, this is foreplay; you are persuading her. And what you are doing with your wife is afterplay. Then you hope that somehow the compartment gets thrown into the river, falls off the rails: some miracle happens and you do not have to meet that woman again at the coming station where you are going to get down. You think a thousand and one things, that Miracles after all happen. She can get lost. Somebody may steal her, or somebody may kill her; anything is possible in this big world, so many things happen every day. But nothing happens. You find your wife there, you are standing there and you are again saying sweet nothings to her: How much I wished to be with you, how much I missed you, how much I remembered you continuously. Yes, you remembered, but for different reasons!”
Existence has no personality. No question of personalities, it simply is whatsoever it is.
To experience existence as it is, is to know the truth.
Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Ch 27, Q 1 (excerpt)
