Question – Beloved Osho, I am not always clear on the difference between leaking and overflowing. Could you give a few pointers please?
Osho – Mind is always trying to confuse you — because in your confusion is the power of the mind. The more confused you are, the more you have to listen to the mind. If you attain clarity, then the very function of the mind is finished. That’s why the mind never goes on holiday.
I know one man who is a big officer. I was going to the Himalayas once and I asked him to come with me. He said, “That’s impossible! I cannot go on a holiday.”
I said, “Why?” I had never seen him go on holiday. I said, “What is the matter?”
He said, “I am absolutely useless in the office and I don’t want anybody to know it. I have to be there continuously to create the impression that I am needed. Once I am on holiday, everybody will become aware that I am not needed at all. I cannot go on a holiday.”
That is the situation with the mind. The mind never leaves you even for a single moment. It goes on confusing you — because once you are confused, mind is at ease. You have to ask the mind what the way is. Then the mind becomes your guru. In fact, in simple matters when confusion seems to be impossible, there also it creates confusion. For example, this question:
“I am not always clear on the difference between leaking and overflowing.”
Now, the phenomena are so diametrically opposite that there cannot be any confusion. There is no possibility. But the mind can create it…. When you leak, you feel tired. When you are overflowing, you feel fulfilled. Overflowing is a delight — sheer delight, just delight and nothing else. Just as trees bloom in flowers, that is overflowing. When the tree has too much, only then does it flower; otherwise it cannot flower. When it has too much and cannot contain it, it has to share. It is an unburdening. Look at the tree when it is in bloom: the whole tree seems to be relaxed, unburdened, relieved, happy.
Whenever you overflow, whenever you share, you never feel tired afterwards. In fact you feel more energetic, more in tune, more at home. Everything settles, unburdened. You grow wings, you can fly in the sky. You are so weightless, gravitation disappears. The feeling is so totally different from the feeling when you leak, dissipate, and energy is lost. It is almost impossible to confuse them. How can you confuse them? They are so totally different. But the mind can create a confusion.
The whole function of the mind is to create confusion. It creates doubts — where no doubts can exist, it creates doubts. It creates ghosts, imaginary, and it creates a puzzle. Then, of course, you have to ask the mind itself: What is the way out?
From sexual orgasm you can take an example of the difference of the feeling. If you are making love to a woman or to a man mechanically, and there is no sharing and love — there is no love in it, just a mechanical habit, or just because physicians say it is hygienic, it is needed for the body, or some other nonsense — then you will dissipate, then the energy will simply leak out of you. And afterwards you will feel simply tired, not fulfilled, frustrated. It will leave you weaker, not stronger. That’s why so many people feel frustrated after making love, and so many people decide to get rid of making love — because it seems so useless.
But if you love the person and you are overflowing, and you want to share your energies with the other person…. It is not sexual at all in that moment, you don’t have any idea of sex; your mind is not there at all, it happens spontaneously. You don’t plan it in the head, you don’t go through a rehearsal; you don’t do it, in fact, it happens; you are not the doer, you become vehicles. You are possessed by something greater than you, higher than you, bigger than you. Then it is not a leakage. Then you are overflowing from all over. It is not local, it is not sexual, it is total. Then you attain to peace, serenity, calmness. Then you attain to fulfillment. That’s what orgasm is. Rarely do people attain to orgasm.
This will not leave you weaker, this will make you stronger. And you will not decide in the wake of your lovemaking that you are against sex, that the so-called saints are true and right and you should have listened to them before; that now you decide to take a vow of brahmacharya, or celibacy, and you decide to become a Catholic monk and move to a monastery — no. If there has been an orgasmic flow and your energy has been simply shared and has overflowed, you will feel grateful towards God. A prayer will arise in you. You will feel so fulfilled that you would like to give thanks. You will feel so glad, so blessed, that in that moment you can bless the whole world. Your face, your body, your mind, everything will be at a calm altitude — a new plenitude of being. A benediction will surround you.
Prayer arises in such moments of gratefulness, gratitude.
One becomes religious in such moments.
To me, religion has arisen out of deep love orgasm. Hence, to me, Tantra remains the ultimate in religion, the last word, because that is the highest peak man has attained of at-onement, the highest peak where ego disperses, disappears. One is, but one is not limited. Where one is not blocked, but one is a flow; where energy is flowing and moving, and one becomes just a center of so many crisscrossing ways, pathways of energy — the ego disappears. The ego is very solid, like a stone. In love one becomes liquid, flows, flows all over.
Leakage is frustrating — whatsoever type of leakage: sexual, non-sexual, but it is tiring. Sometimes somebody is with you and you feel tired — just being with the person, just the presence of the person. You don’t want the person, you are bored, and then you start leaking, then you start dissipating your energy. Then when the person is gone, you feel simply tired, shaken, as if he has taken too much out of you and he has not given anything in return. He simply leaves you weak. But if you love the person, if you are happy that the person has come to see you and meet you, you feel enhanced. Energy becomes more alive, you feel more vital. You feel rejuvenated.
There can be no misunderstanding between the two.
Avoid leakages, and remain available for overflows. And by and by you will become capable of only overflow — because leakage is an attitude of the mind. If a person is boring to you and he is saying things which you don’t want to listen to, you will feel dissipated, a leakage will happen. Just change your attitude.
Right in the middle of the conversation, you were just getting bored. Just change the attitude and start listening to the person. He is also a mysterious person — maybe a little boring, but he is also God. Maybe a little boring…. Listen to him with a new attitude. Shake yourself, give yourself a jerk; drop your old attitude and start listening to his story. Maybe there is something in it. And immediately you will see: energy is no more dissipating.
It is your attitude. Anything can be energy-giving and anything can be energy-destroying; it depends on the attitude. A religious person is one — that’s my definition of a religious person — who is always overflowing whatsoever the situation. Even if death comes to him, death will find him in a deep orgasm.
Ordinarily, even life does not find you in deep orgasm, even love has not found you in deep orgasm. But a man like Socrates, even death finds him in orgasm — ready, receptive, dancing, as if death is bringing so many mysteries. It is bringing! That, too, is a face of God — maybe dark, but darkness is also divine. You are going to disappear, but disappearance is as mysterious as appearance.
Birth and death are two aspects of the same coin.
Socrates is thrilled! You are not thrilled with life and he is thrilled with death. His disciples started crying and weeping, and he said, “Stop! You can do that when I am gone. Don’t waste these moments. These moments are momentous. Let us receive death — it only comes once in life. It is a rare guest. It is not every day that it comes. And I am fortunate that it is coming in a predictable way; otherwise it comes unpredicted and one cannot welcome it.”
He was going to be poisoned, he was sentenced to death by the Greeks. Six o’clock exactly and he will drink the poison — and he is waiting like a thrilled child. The disciples could not believe it! He took the poison and he started walking in the room, and somebody asked, “What are you doing?”
He said, “I am trying to be alert, to be awake, so death does not find me asleep.”
Then it became impossible to walk. The legs were giving way. So he laid himself down on the couch, and he started saying, “Now my feet are numb; it seems the feet are dead. But I am still as much as I was before. Nothing has been taken away from me — I remain whole!” And he was happy.
And then he said, “Both my legs are gone — but listen to me: I still remain the whole. That means only the body is being taken away. My consciousness remains untouched, unscratched. It seems death is not going to kill me.”
This is the attitude of a religious man… and it depends on your attitude. Your whole life can be an orgasmic flow. Not only love — each moment of your life can be an orgasmic flow. Then you are overflowing. And remember one basic, fundamental rule: the more you overflow, the more you are given. It is as if you go on taking water from a well: the more water you take out of it, the more fresh water is flowing in — constantly. If you stop taking out the water, the water will become stale, dead, and fresh sources will not be supplying more; there will be no need.
Share! Share as much as you can, and the more you will be given.
Jesus says: If you cling you will lose; if you share you will get. Don’t be a miser — share! And feel grateful: whosoever accepts your energy, feel grateful to him because he could have rejected you. Feel grateful, and go on sharing. And you will see: out of your inner springs, fresh water is continuously coming in. The more you share, the younger you remain. The more you share, the more virgin you remain. The more you share, the more fresh, the more pure.
And if you don’t share, then you start leaking. If you don’t share, if you are not happy in sharing, you become a miser. A miser leaks. Be a spendthrift as far as life energy is concerned. A miser starts leaking and feels frustrated and always miserable, because something has been taken away from him. And in this misery he shrinks; and because of his shrinking the inner sources, the inner springs cannot refill him.
It depends on you.
The distinction is absolutely clear. Let this be the criterion, after any energy contact — and the whole of life is energy contact. When you look at the tree there is an energy contact: your eyes meeting with the greenery of the tree, you have embraced the tree in a subtle way. You touch the rock and there is contact; energy has been shared. You look into the eyes of another human being, and there has been a communication. You say something, or you remain silent, but the communion continues continuously. It is each moment happening.
Now it depends on you whether you will make it a leakage. If it is a leakage, you will die a thousand deaths every day. It depends. If you make it an overflow, a hearty sharing, that you always wanted to give, an unburdening of your heart — as a flower gives its fragrance to the winds, and the lamp gives its light to the night, and the clouds give their rains to the earth — if you go on sharing, your whole life becomes an immensely beautiful dance of energy. And each day, you will have a thousand and one new births.
Enough for today.
Source – Osho Book “The Search”