From Darkness to Light Chapter 9 contd....

Just now I was reading that the most prestigious directory of the royal family’s noble blood has
dropped many names out of it in the new edition because they were all AIDS victims. Now, you can
see even noble people have ways which are not noble at all: noble people with ignoble lifestyles.
But that is all underground. On the surface everything seems to be the way it should be. More or
less it is the same all over the world; nobody wants really to drop their suffering.
You have to ask this question very sincerely:
Are you ready to be lonely?
At least your suffering, your pain, your misery, makes you somebody special. It gives you a certain
character, it gives you a certain identity. Moreover it is your misery, nobody else’s. It is your
possession, your prestige. If it is just taken away from you, you will be a beggar.
You ask me, why is misery so difficult to get rid of?
It is difficult because you don’t want to get rid of it.
It is also difficult because you have many misunderstandings.
You say, ”pain, misery, suffering or anguish.” That shows you don’t understand. You can get rid of
pain, misery, suffering, which are your own creations; you can withdraw. They cannot stand without
your support, they need constant nourishment from you. They suck you, they are parasites – but
you can throw them away.
Anguish you cannot get rid of.
So don’t say ”suffering or anguish.”
Anguish is a totally different plane.
Anguish is something spiritual.
Anguish you are not to get rid of; anguish you have to become more acquainted with.
If you are standing with your back towards anguish, it appears like suffering.
If you turn your face towards anguish, it becomes blissfulness.
You are not to get rid of it. And it is nothing to do with you, so you cannot get rid of it. Even if you
want to get rid of this blessing, then too it is not in your power. It is something intrinsic to your nature.
If you are not facing yourself, you will feel anguish; if you turn towards yourself, the same anguish
becomes the greatest blessing in the world.
So don’t say suffering or anguish. That shows your utter ignorance of your own inner world.
Suffering, misery, pain, are all outside.
Anguish is within.
Anguish you are born with.
Suffering, misery, pain, are your creations.
That is also one of the causes why you cannot get rid of them. You have created them, they are your
children.
You just look at people when they are talking about their suffering; watch their faces, watch their
eyes – and you will be surprised. Are they talking about their suffering or are they bragging about it?
– because their face seems to be radiant when they talk about their suffering. And remember, you
know! – because you are doing the same. You always exaggerate your pain, your suffering, your
misery; you make it as big as possible. Why? If it is something to get rid of, why are you magnifying
it? You are enjoying it.
One of my friends is a Catholic priest. I asked him once, ”You hear people’s confessions. Have you
ever wondered whether they may be exaggerating?”
He said, ”What! Exaggerating? They are confessing their sins, why should they exaggerate?”
I said, ”People exaggerate everything. If sinners are standing in a queue, you would like to stand
first, you would like to be the greatest sinner. You would not like to be just third-class, standing at the
end of the queue. And if somebody asks what kind of sin you committed – you have stolen a hen!
When there are Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and Nadirshah, and Alexander the Great, and Ivan
the Terrible – your whole life you only stole a hen? You must be an idiot! Such a long life – seventy
years – you could not do anything else? And you have some nerve to stand in the line with such
great people: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin. Get lost! Don’t count yourself a
sinner!
No, you will have to magnify it as much as possible.
A small boy came running into his home and, huffing and perspiring, told his mother, ”A lion has
been following me! But I was not afraid.”
The mother said, ”Lion? In the middle of the city? I have told you a thousand times: Don’t
exaggerate. Where is the lion?”
He said, ”He is standing outside the door.”
The mother went to the door; a small dog was standing there.
The boy said, ”Yes, this is the lion.”
The mother said, ”You know perfectly this is a dog.”

From Darkness to Light Chapter 9 contd....

And they both were angry at my suggestion. They said, ”This is not nice of you to suggest that we
separate.”
I said, ”Yes, I suggest it. Get a divorce.” And they were both ready to fight with me.
I said, ”You need not fight with me because I don’t hate you, I don’t love you, darling; I am simply
not part of it. Exclude me out, I am going back. I just dropped in the suggestion – you can think
about it. Only three months have passed. After thirty years you will be still in the same situation, but
then it will be too late, even divorce will not be of any help. You will have become addicted to the
quarreling, to the fighting, to everything that you hate. You will become addicted to it, you will miss
it.”
They were very angry; they closed the door in my face. I said, ”Thank you.”
After two months the wife went to see her mother for a week – her mother was sick – and in just one
week Professor Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya started coming to me and continuously saying, ”I miss
my wife so much. I cannot sleep – the bed seems so empty.”
I said, ”And the room also seems so empty, things are not all over the place. Why don’t you throw
things yourself? Shout a little, scream a little – and she is not here so you can say anything you
want. Throw things, beat on the clothes, and then come to the climax: I love you, darling. And you
will have a good sleep.”
He said, ”You must be joking.”
I said, ”Why should I be joking? You try it – what is the harm?”
And you will not believe it: not that day, but after two days, he tried it – because I heard it. He
was doing really a great job, greater than he had done ever before, a greater performance. And he
climaxed it: ”I love you, darling.” And soon I heard him snoring.
In the morning I went to see his room; things were all over the place. The servant opened the
bedroom; the professor was still asleep. I woke him up; I said, ”You did such a good performance.”
He said, ”Really, it works. I was just trying, knowing perfectly well that it was not going to work. How
could it work? – she is not here. But it worked; slowly slowly I got hotter and hotter. She was almost
here: when I was beating the pillows I was beating her. And I have never given her such a good
beating – it was such a deep contentment to the heart. I have never slept so deeply. You were right.”
But this is the situation of almost everybody. You become addicted to your pain, to your misery, to
your suffering. You really don’t want to get rid of it.
You go on asking how to get rid of it, but that is also a strategy of the mind; to go on inquiring how to
get rid of it.
Have you ever asked sincerely, do you want to get rid of it? Are you ready to live without all the
miseries and the pains and the sufferings that you have been carrying all along? Will you be ready to be left alone without all these longstanding companions who have been with you in thick and thin,
who have never left you?
When everybody was leaving you, they were still with you. They have followed you like a shadow;
they have been in a certain way a consolation. This will be very shocking to you when I say they
have been in a certain way a consolation to you. When I say that, I have many things implied in it.
Your suffering makes you somebody special. Without all your suffering, you are nobody. Who are
you? You will not even have something to talk about with anybody. You will be at a loss – what are
you going to talk about?
In England, people talk about the weather just to avoid real conversation. It is a very sophisticated
way, to talk about weather. But it looks a little idiotic because you are seeing the weather, I am
seeing the weather, it makes no sense to say, ”What a beautiful day, how sunny!” you are seeing it,
you are also in the same day. You are not tomorrow, you are not yesterday, you are here with me.
And you say, ”Yes, so beautiful!”
This is because of the English character; it is one of the most phony characters in the world. It
does not want to raise any controversial conversation. Politics is dangerous, there is controversy;
religion is dangerous, there is controversy; literature is dangerous, there is controversy. Except the
weather there seems to be nothing non-controversial – something on which both can agree without
any problem.
It is said that two Englishmen were traveling in a compartment for almost three hours. Then the
ticket checker came in, looked at them ... they were looking very sad and depressed. He asked ....
One said, ”Three hours sitting, not even somebody to talk to.”
He said, ”Just in front of you another Englishman is sitting – you could have talked.”
The man said, ”But how? – because nobody introduced us. Without an introduction it is a kind of
trespass.”
I have heard another story too, that a man went to meet his wife – a four or five-hour journey. The
wife had come to the station to receive him, and he was looking very tired, utterly tired. She asked,
”What is the matter? Why are you looking so tired?”
He said, ”It always happens when I have to sit in a position where my back is against the direction of
the train. If I am sitting against the direction of the train – the train is going this way, and I am sitting
facing that way – then my whole body gets very tired.”
The wife said, ”But there was no problem. You could have asked the gentleman in the front seat,
‘This is my trouble; would you be kind enough to change?’”
He said, ”I wanted to but there was no gentleman, the seat was empty. Whom to ask?”
These are very sophisticated people.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 9

Your suffering makes you special

Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO GET RID OF PAIN, MISERY, SUFFERING OR ANGUISH, WHILE
KNOWING PERFECTLY WELL THAT ONE HAS JUST TO UNDERSTAND AND DROP THEM?
It is difficult to get rid of pain, misery, and suffering for the simple reason that they have been your
companions for your whole life. Except them, you don’t have any friends in the world.
It is easier to be in pain, misery, suffering, than to be utterly lonely, because there are ways you can
have pain-killers, you can have drugs, as an escape from misery. You can get engaged in all kinds
of stupidities to forget your suffering. But there is no way – no painkiller is going to help you out of
your loneliness, no drug, no stupidity.
Loneliness is so deep that all these superficial methods cannot reach to it, cannot touch it. That’s
why it is so difficult to get rid of these few friends that you have got. This is your world, your family.
In my professorial days in the university, I had lived for a few months in the university campus. My
neighbor was a newly-married man, a professor of physics, Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya – a very
sharp, intelligent teacher, with a great future ahead, because he had such a grip on physics that
even older professors of physics used to come and ask him things about new physics.
He had been married not more than two or three months, but the marriage was finished. They
were constantly fighting, quarreling. The wife was also educated, a postgraduate, and in a beautiful subject, in music. The walls that separated me from this couple were not very thick – so thin that it
was impossible not to hear what was going on.
It was almost thirty years ago. I was only their neighbor for a few months; since then I have not seen
them, but they have given me one thing to which I have become addicted: earplugs. Even today
when I don’t have any neighbors for miles ... and even those who live miles away don’t consider
me their neighbor. In the whole of America I don’t have a neighbor. And anyway, tourists are not
supposed to have neighbors.
But I cannot get rid of those earplugs. I cannot go to sleep without earplugs. I have tried. The
moment I think of dropping them I start thinking of Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya. From morning till
midnight they were quarreling, on every point, on every single thing. There was no agreement on
anything. And almost every night it ended with them throwing things – a pillow fight. I even heard
them slapping each other.
Once or twice I interfered. I just knocked on their door in the middle of the night, and they opened the
door. I looked at the scene – things all over the floor – and I said, ”Don’t be embarrassed, because
I have been hearing the whole thing since the morning. I know every detail of it, so you do not have
to be hypocrites before me.
”This is perfectly good – it is supposed to happen between every husband and wife sooner or later.
You are intelligent people: it is happening sooner. But one thing I cannot understand: once in a while
you both say to each other, ‘I love you, darling, I love you.’ That, I cannot understand. Everything
else is understandable to me.
”I had to interfere in the middle of the night because just now, after a big pillow fight, you said, ‘I love
you, I love you, my darling.’ It simply disturbs my whole sleep. Everything else I accept, but how, out
of this pillow fight, and throwing things and shouting and screaming, does the conclusion come, ‘I
love you, darling’?”
They looked at each other. They had no answer because .... Then the professor said, ”I have never
thought about it but certainly you are right. After all this, this should not be the conclusion. I can
understand – you are a man of logic. I cannot understand too much logic but physics is also based
on logic; I can see the contradiction.”
The wife said, ”I have never thought about it, but it is true that .... Can you help us to understand
why?”
I said, ”That’s why I have come. This happens with husband and wife: they hate each other, and
then they hate themselves for hating each other. And then to cover up the whole thing – that ‘I hate
you,’ that, ‘I hate myself for hating you’ – this is the cover: ‘I love you, darling.’
”This manages both things. You are no longer hating yourself, because you love your wife. But this
is only a cover, a very thin cover which cannot stand the strong winds of life. Tomorrow morning
again you have forgotten. The same story begins, comes to the same conclusion. Why don’t you
just separate?”

From Darkness to Light Chapter 8 contd....

The Master is simply a proof that you don’t need to be afraid. If this man can find his center, passing
through all the agony, there is no reason why you cannot do it too. And once you know the taste of
ecstasy, your whole life, for the first time, has something that can be called godliness. A new quality
arises in you, a new flare, a new flame. But that is our nature, everybody’s nature.
I have never tried in my life to become anybody. I have simply allowed life to take me wherever it
wanted. One thing I can say to you, I have not been a loser; it was a great joy to be taken over by
nature. I have not at all interfered. I have not even been swimming, because in swimming you are at
least throwing your hands about. I have been just going with the stream, floating with wherever the
stream is going.
Fortunately all streams reach finally to the ocean. The small, the big, somehow or other they all find
their way to the oceanic. And the oceanic feeling I call the religious feeling.
When your small drop drops into the ocean ....
In one sense you are no more.
In one sense you are for the first time.
On one hand there is death, and on the other hand there is rebirth.