Osho on Indian film Director Mahesh Bhatt’s Sannyas

Mahesh Bhatt

[Osho asks a sannyasin who is a well-known film star in India, how he is. He replies: I don’t know!]

Osho – That’s good! I know: things are going well. Things really always go well, nothing ever goes wrong. It is only a question of understanding. If one understands, everything always goes right. Nothing has ever gone wrong and it can never go wrong, so whatsoever happens is how it should happen. To accept this brings great relaxation.

The very idea that something can go wrong and we have to put it right, creates anxiety. It is impossible to change anything in existence. Everything is as perfect as it can be; no change is needed. To relax in this and to relax utterly into it, is real meditation. Meditation is not something to do, but the attitude that whatsoever is, is good and all is blessed. That attitude is meditation. It is coming slowly slowly. The hankering to change, the hankering to be this and that, is dropping.

That moment when there is no desire to be anything other than what one is, is a moment of great benediction. Then one comes to know that from the very beginning, nothing is missing. We were unnecessarily worried, unnecessarily puzzled, unnecessarily trying to find keys and clues.

And the door has always remained open – it was not closed at all. I am happy with you. Things are going very well.

[Osho then refers to the sannyasin’s colleague, a movie director.]
Osho – Just tell one thing to him: that if he has not been courageous enough to keep to the commitment of sannyas, he should be at least courteous enough to return it. And I knew that this was going to happen. I knew, because there were only two alternatives: either his girlfriend was going to become a sannyasin or he was going to become a non-sannyasin… and he was defeated by her. He will repent one day.

He will feel and he will come… but he betrayed. He has broken something very sacred. And one day when he realises the whole phenomenon he will be surprised. It is one of the basic tragedies of all love affairs: a woman becomes interested in any man who has some kind of illusive power; and that power was arising in him. It was not there before, it was arising.

The more meditative he was becoming, the more energy was arising in him. Something beautiful was on the way and I was really working hard on him – more than he ever deserved. Things were coming to a point, it was building up. In fact that energy became the attraction for her.

She is a beautiful woman – perceptive, courageous, adventurous, daring; not an ordinary indian woman – very modern, in search of some great thrill. She became interested in him not because of him – one day he will understand it – but because he was a sannyasin and something of meditation was arising in him. Even she may not be knowingly aware of it, because people are not knowingly aware of what is happening.

Sannyasins have always been attractive to beautiful women, because a sannyasin becomes a challenge. He is like an Everest which has to be conquered, has to be defeated, and she is an adventurous woman. She was not interested in him – she was interested in sannyas; whether knowingly, unknowingly, that is not the point. She was interested in a very feminine intuitive way in the energy that was arising in Mahesh and which was coming to a build-up and which was going to explode in a great flowering.

And once she became interested, the next step… that is the tragedy of all love. First, a woman is never interested in an ordinary man – no woman worth anything is ever interested in an ordinary man. A woman is always interested in something extraordinary, something majestic, something beyond the grasp. And that was there – something beyond the grasp. But once a woman catches hold of the man she was interested in, she starts destroying that very power, because then she becomes afraid: he will dominate, and nobody wants to be dominated.

Before he starts dominating, she has to destroy that very power. And I call it a tragedy, because once that power is destroyed she will no more be interested in the man. This is the dilemma: she is interested in power, then the power feels frightening. If the man remains so powerful then she will remain dependent; she will never be the whole – and soon she starts playing feminine tricks. And because he loves her, the man goes on yielding.

Once he starts yielding, the lion disappears and the mouse is born, and no woman is interested in a mouse, no woman at all. Once she has reduced the man to a mouse, she is finished, and as I can see, that is what has happened.

I was watching the whole phenomenon and that’s why I was again and again telling him ’Let her become a sannyasin. If she does not become a sannyasin, then the next challenge is to destroy your sannyas.’ I had not said so, but it was there. She had to destroy the relationship between me and him. She was jealous of it – there was something more powerful than her love affair.

And no woman wants anything more powerful than her love affair; that should be the suprememost. And soon, in fact already, her interest in him is flopping; she has started looking at other men. And she is not the kind of woman who can stick to one person. She could have remained with him if he had remained unyielding, if he had remained a real man. If he had remained an unconquered peak she would have remained interested, but now she will search for other peaks, somebody else. He is already a spare part, an extra.

So tell him: if he is not courageous enough to keep the commitment, he should be courteous enough to return it. And once his mala is back, I am going to burn it and destroy the whole work on him. Only that will bring him to his senses. So just tell this much to him.

Source: from Osho Book “The 99 Names of Nothingness”