Osho There Is No Tomorrow
Donat Ruel
There is not much time, you don't have much time. Don't postpone: this is the moment.Don't say, "Tomorrow" -- tomorrow is a mirage. Be alert now, be awake now, this moment, and there is serenity and there is calmness. And suddenly one is relaxed, and the source is contacted and one has arrived home.
Future is not the concern of meditation. Future is the concern of the mind; mind cannot live without future. If suddenly all future disappears, mind will be at a loss what to do. Future is the space in which mind goes on weaving imaginations, projects, ideas: what one is going to become, what one is going to achieve. All ambitions are laid out in the future. But if the future completely disappears -- suddenly you come to the point where you see that there is no future -- either your heart will stop or you will run away backwards, thinking that at least the past will be there. But the past is not there.
So when you meditate today, do it as if this is the last day. You may not have any chance to meditate again, so go all the way to the seashore. And once you have got the taste of your being -- the rejoicing, the dancing, the blessing, the ecstasy -- then there is no problem, you know the way. It is not far, it is just within you, just a few inches away from your mind. But once you have to know it. Just once you have to know it, then there is no problem. Then you cannot forget it, then you cannot go away against it; then it becomes your very life. And when meditation becomes one's very life, there is nothing more in this existence to make you richer, to make you more of a splendor. The secret is hidden within you.
There is no tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow, you cannot stop worrying about it. Tomorrow never comes, it is a process of worrying. Nor is there any yesterday. One is no more, one is not yet. All that is in our hands is the present moment, now, here. And this is a miraculous experience. If there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, and this very moment you are silent, all worrying disappears. All imagining, dreaming, projecting disappears.
In the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible, hereafter is the basic goal. But now man is no longer that childish. That sort of God and that sort of religion is dead. It was a religion of hope, it was a religion of future.
Now another sort of religion is asserting itself all over the world, and this religion is about herenow, the present. There is nowhere else to go and there is no other space and no other time to live, only this space and this time, here and now. Life has to become very intense in this moment. A man who lives in hope dissipates life. He spreads life; it becomes too thin. And when it becomes too thin, it is never happy. Happiness means intensity, tremendous depth. If you spread your hope into the future, life will become very thin. It will lose depth.
When I say drop all hope, I mean be so intense in the moment that there is no need for the future. Then there is a turning, a transformation. The very quality of time changes for you it becomes eternal. What can you do with hope?
No, hope is not the right thing. Live in the present so deeply, so completely, that nothing is left. Then there will be no projection. You will move very smoothly into the tomorrow without carrying any load from today. And when there is no yesterday haunting you, then there is no tomorrow. When the past is not hanging around you, there is no future.
Stop postponing. And who knows what the future is going to reveal to you? There is no way to know about it. It is an opening; all alternatives are open. What is really going to happen, nobody can predict. People have tried.
Question : Why is it so difficult for men and women to be Friends? It Seems so ordinary, and turns out to be almost Impossible. Either there is an ugly compromise -- like man and wife -- Or else Passion that eventually turns into Hate. Why is There always ugliness between men and women?
Osho : It is very simple to understand. Marriage is the ugliest institution invented by man. It is not natural; it has been invented so that you can monopolize a woman. You have been treating women as if they were a piece of land, or some currency notes. You have reduced the woman to a thing. Remember that if you reduce any human being to a thing -- unaware, unconscious -- you are also being reduced to the same status; otherwise, you will not be able to communicate. If you can talk with a chair, you must be a chair.
Marriage is against nature. You can be certain only of this moment that is in your hands. All promises for tomorrow are lies -- and marriage is a promise for your whole life, that you will remain together, that you will love each other, that you will respect each other till your last breath. And these priests, who are the inventors of many ugly things, say to you that marriages are made in heaven. Nothing is made in heaven; there is no heaven. If you listen to nature, your problems, your questions will simply evaporate.
The problem is: biologically man is attracted to woman, women are attracted to men, but that attraction cannot remain the same forever. You are attracted to something which is a challenge to get. You see a beautiful man, a beautiful woman; you are attracted. Nothing is wrong in it. You feel your heart beating faster. You would like to be with this woman or man, and the attraction is so tremendous that in that moment you think you would like to live with this woman forever.
Lovers don't deceive each other, they are saying the truth -- but that truth belongs to the moment. When lovers say to each other, "I cannot live without you," it is not that he is deceiving or she is deceiving, they mean it. But they don't know the nature of life. Tomorrow this same woman will not look so beautiful. As days pass, the man and the woman both will feel that they are imprisoned. They have know each other's geography completely. First it was an unknown territory to be discovered, now there is nothing to be discovered.
And to go on repeating the same words and the same acts looks mechanical, ugly. That's why passion turns into hate. The woman hates you, because you are going to do the same thing again. To prevent you, the moment the husband enters the house she goes to bed, she has a headache. She wants somehow not to get into the same rut. And the man is flirting with his secretary in the office; now she is an unknown territory. To me, it is all nature. What is unnatural is binding people in the name of religion, in the name of God, for their whole life.
In a better, more intelligent world, people will love, but will not make any contracts. It is not a business! They will understand each other, and they will understand the changing flux of life. They will be true to each other. The moment the man feels that now his beloved holds no joy for him, he will say that the time has come to part. There is no need for marriage, there is no need for divorce. Then friendship will be possible. You ask me why friendship is not possible between men and women.... Friendship is not possible between the jailer and the imprisoned.
Friendship is possible between equal human beings, totally free from all bondage of society, culture, civilization, only living true to their authentic nature. It is not an insult to the woman to say, "Honey, the honeymoon is over." It is not an insult to the man if the woman says, "Now things cannot be beautiful. The wind that has blown is no longer there. The season has changed, it is no longer spring between us; no flowers blossom, no fragrance arises. It is time to part." And because there is no legal bondage of marriage, there is no question of any divorce.
It is ugly that the court and the law and the state interfere in your private life -- you have to ask their permission. Who are they? It is a question between two individuals, their private affair. There will be only friends -- no husbands, no wives. Of course, if there is only friendship, passion will never turn into hate. The moment you feel passion disappearing, you will say good-bye, and it will be understood. Even if it hurts, nothing can be done about it -- it is the way of life.
But man has created societies, cultures, civilizations, rules, regulations, and made the whole humanity unnatural. That's why men and women cannot be friends. And men and women either become husbands and wives -- which is something absolutely ugly; they start owning each other.... People are not things, you cannot have ownership. If I feel your wife is beautiful, and approach her, you are angry, you are ready to fight because I am approaching your property. No wife is anybody's property, no husband is anybody's property.
What kind of world have you created? People are reduced to properties; then there is jealousy, hatred. You yourself know that you are attracted to the neighbor's wife; naturally, you can guess about your wife too. Your wife knows perfectly well she is attracted to somebody else, but she cannot approach that person because of the husband: he is standing there with a gun! Love is bound to turn into hate, and for the whole life the hate goes on accumulating. And out of this hatred do you think beautiful children are going to be born?
They are not born out of love, but out of duty. It is the wife's duty to allow you to use her. To tell the truth, there is no difference between wives and prostitutes. The difference is just like the difference between having your own car or going in a taxi. A prostitute is purchased only for a few hours; wives are a long-term affair, it is economical. Royal families are not allowed to marry outside royal blood: status, money, power.... Nobody can love anybody in such circumstances, where the relationship is financial.
The woman is dependent on you because you earn. And for centuries men have not allowed women to be educated, to be in business, to have jobs, for the simple reason that if the woman has her own financial status, her own bank account, you cannot reduce her to a thing. She has to be dependent on you. And do you think anybody who has to be dependent on you will love you? Every woman wants to kill the husband. It is another matter that she does not kill him -- because if she kills him, what will she do?
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