Jealousy and meditation

Question – You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. yes, it is quite ugly, but any suggestions to us sufferers of the disease who aren’t enlightened on how to diminish it?

Osho – First, diminishing it is not going to help. You can diminish it to such proportions that it will almost become invisible, but that is not going to help. Diminishing simply means that you are throwing it into the unconscious and it goes into your basement of being more and more deeply. It becomes invisible. You may not be able to see it, but it will go on working from the back, it will go on pulling your strings from the back. It will become more subtle. Please don’t try to diminish it.

The first thing to remember: rather than diminish it, magnify it so you can see the whole of it. That is the whole process of all the groups going on around here — Gestalt, Encounter, Psychodrama. The whole process is that whatsoever the problem is, please don’t diminish it but magnify it. Bring it totally as it is — even exaggerate it so that you can see every detail of it.

Down the centuries in the past, jealousy, anger, sadness, this and that, all have been repressed. The effort was to diminish it. No, a seed is a diminished tree, but a seed is tremendously powerful. A seed can at any time again produce a tree. The right situation, the right season… and the tree will again sprout. You can diminish your jealousy, it can become just a seed, and you will not be able to see it the tree has disappeared, but it is there.

Diminishing is not the right process. That’s what you have been doing, that’s what you have done to your life: you have diminished everything. And one thing more. When you diminish jealousy, your love will be diminished alongside, because your love and jealousy are so much entangled with each other. If you diminish your sadness, your happiness will be diminished, because your happiness and sadness are so much together. If you diminish your hate, your love will disappear — that’s what has happened. You have been taught not to hate and the total result is that you have become incapable of love.

No, please don’t diminish anything. That is not the way. Rather, magnify, exaggerate, bring it to its total blossoming and then see it — every detail of it, every minute detail of it. In that very awareness, in that very seeing, you will become capable of transcending it and then there will be no need to do anything about it.

The second thing: you say ‘You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is ugly…’. No, you don’t know. You are simply repeating what I have been saying. If you know it is quite ugly, in that very knowing it will disappear. You don’t know. You have listened to me, you have listened to Jesus, you have listened to Buddha and you have gathered opinions. You don’t know. It is not your own feel that jealousy is ugly. If it is your own feel, why should you carry it? It is not an easy thing, it takes a lot of investment. To be jealous is a very difficult thing: it needs a lot of effort on your part, a lot of involvement. It is so destructive of your own self that if it is ugly and you have known the ugliness of it, you cannot carry it for a single moment. But listening to me you become knowledgeable.

I have heard… ‘You can’t come in here’ the worried mother warned ‘my son is sick.’
‘I want to catch your son’s measles’ the man said ‘because if I kissed the nurse she’d get it. She would kiss the doctor and he’d get it. The doctor would kiss my wife and she’d get it. My wife would kiss the landlord and that’s the guy I’m after.’

It is a great investment, a great effort and a very complex phenomenon. And finally, it may destroy. It may not destroy others — it certainly destroys you; it is suicidal. Not only that it is ugly, it is poisonous; it is suicidal, it is killing yourself every day, slowly, slowly.

See the fact of it. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.

Don’t repress it, express it. Sit in your room, close the doors, bring your jealousy into focus. Watch it, see it, let it take as strong a flame as possible. Let it become a strong flame, burn into it and see what it is. And don’t from the very beginning say that this is ugly, because that very idea that this is ugly will repress it, will not allow it total expression. No opinions! Just try to see the existential effect of what jealousy is, the existential fact.

No interpretations, no ideologies! Forget Buddhas and work, forget me. Just let the jealousy be there. Look into it, look deeply into it and so do with anger, so do with sadness, hatred, possessiveness. And by and by you will see that just by seeing through things you start getting a transcendental feeling that you are Just a witness; the identity is broken. The identity is broken only when you encounter something within you.

Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1″

Children & Parenthood

"If you are a parent you will need this much courage -- not to interfere. Open doors of unknown directions to the child so he can explore. He does not know what he has in him, nobody knows. He has to grope in the dark. Don't make him afraid of darkness, don't make him afraid of failure, don't make him afraid of the unknown. Give him support. When he is going on an unknown journey, send him with all your support, with all your love, with all your blessings. Don't let him be affected by your fears. You may have fears, but keep them to yourself. Don't unload those fears on the child because that will be interfering.
After seven years, the next circle of seven years, from seven to fourteen, is a new addition to life: the child's first stirring of sexual energies. But they are only a kind of rehearsal. To be a parent is a difficult job, so unless you are ready to take that difficult job, don't become a parent. People simply go on becoming fathers and mothers not knowing what they are doing. You are bringing a life into existence; all the care in the world will be needed. Now when the child starts playing his sexual rehearsals, that is the time when parents interfere the most, because they have been interfered with. All that they know is what has been done to them, so they simply go on doing that to their children.
Societies don't allow sexual rehearsal, at least have not allowed it up to this century -- only within the last two, three decades, and that too only in very advanced countries. Now children are having co-education. But in a country like India, even now co-education starts only at the university level. The seven-year-old boy and the seven-year-old girl cannot be in the same boarding school. And this is the time for them -- without any risk, without the girl getting pregnant, without any problems arising for their families -- this is the time when they should be allowed all playfulness. Yes, it will have a sexual color to it, but it is rehearsal; it is not the real drama. And if you don't allow them even the rehearsal and then suddenly one day the curtain opens, and the real drama starts .... And those people don't know what is going on; even a prompter is not there to tell them what to do. You have messed up their life completely.
Those seven years, the second circle in life, is significant as a rehearsal. They will meet, mix, play, become acquainted. And that will help humanity to drop almost ninety percent of perversions. If the children from seven to fourteen are allowed to be together; to swim together, to be naked before each other, ninety percent of perversions and ninety percent of pornography will simply disappear. Who will bother about it? When a boy has known so many girls naked, what interest can a magazine like PLAYBOY have for him? When a girl has seen so many boys naked, I don't see that there is any possibility of curiosity about the other; it will simply disappear. They will grow together naturally, not as two different species of animals.
Right now that's how they grow: two different species of animals. They don't belong to one mankind; they are kept separate. A thousand and one barriers are created between them so they cannot have any rehearsal of their sexual life which is going to come. Because this rehearsal is missing, that's why in people's actual sex life foreplay is missing; and foreplay is so important -- far more important than actual sexual contact, because actual sexual contact lasts only for seconds. It is not nourishment. It simply leaves you in a limbo. You were hoping for so much, and nothing comes out of it. In Hindi we have a proverb: kheela pahad nikli chuhia. `You dug out the whole mountain and you found one rat.' After all the effort -- going to the movies and going to the disco and going to the restaurant, and talking all kinds on nonsense which neither you want nor the other wants to do, but both are talking -- digging the mountain, and in the end, just a rat! Nothing is so frustrating as sex."

"Make love only when you are ready to be in a meditative space. And create a meditative atmosphere while you are making love. You should treat the place as sacred. Creating life... what can be more sacred? Do it as beautifully, as aesthetically, as joyously as possible. There should be no hurry. And if the two lovers meet in such an atmosphere outside, and such a silent space within, they will attract a soul, the highest available. You give birth to a child according to your state of love. If every parent is disappointed, he should think about it, that this is the child they deserved. They never created a possibility for a higher and more evolved soul to enter into the womb -- because the male sperm and the female egg only create an opportunity for a soul to enter. They create the opportunity for a body, so some soul can become embodied. But you will attract only that kind of person which your sexual activity makes possible.
If the world is full of idiots and mediocre people, you are responsible; I mean, parents are responsible. They never thought about it, their children are accidental. There cannot be a bigger crime than to create a life accidentally. Prepare for it. And the most essential thing is to understand the orgasmic moment: thoughtless, timeless, mindless, just a pure awareness. In that pure awareness you can attract a Gautam Buddha. The way you are making love, it is strange that more Adolf Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins, Nadirshahs, Tamerlanes, Genghis Khans, are not attracted. You attract only mediocre people. You don't attract the lowest either, because for the lowest your love has to be almost a rape. For the highest, your love has to be a meditation.
The child's life begins from the moment the soul enters into the womb. If it has come into a meditative space, it is possible to have a child without conditioning him. In fact, a child who is born out of meditation cannot be conditioned; he will rebel against it. Only mediocre people can be conditioned. And a couple who is capable of meditativeness while making love is no ordinary couple. They will be respectful to the child. The child is a guest from the unknown, and you have to be respectful to the guest. 
Parents who are not respectful to their children are bound to destroy their lives. Your respect, your love, your gratitude that, "You have chosen us as your parents," will be responded to with deeper respect, more gratitude, more love. And when you love a person, you cannot condition him. When you love a person, you give him freedom, you give him protection. When you love a person you would not like him to be just a carbon copy of yourself, you would like him to be a unique individual. And to make him unique you will arrange all the conditions, all the challenges which provoke his potential.
You will not burden him with knowledgeability, because you would like him to know the truth himself. Any borrowed truth is a lie. Unless it is experienced by you, it is never the truth. You will help the child to experience more and more things. You will not tell him lies, that there is a God. It is a lie, because you have not seen God. Your parents lied to you, and you are repeating it in your turn to your child. Your parents conditioned you, and what is your life? -- a long misery from cradle to grave. Do you want your child's life also to be just a misery, full of suffering, anxiety, despair?"

"If we were loving our children, there could not have been so many wars in the world. Who is the parent who will send his children to war? If we were loving our children the world could not have become so ugly. If we were loving our children, I go as far as to say, we would not have given birth to children... because which loving parent will be ready to give birth to their children in this ugly and dirty world? They will excuse themselves, saying, "How to bring our children into such a world? Tomorrow, when we face them, we will feel so ashamed in front of them that we gave birth to them in this world. How to send them out into this ugly world full of immorality and darkness?" Parents would have refused to give birth to children if they had love in their hearts."

All quotes from Osho,