THE OTHER DAY, SOON AFTER I ARRIVED, THE BATTLE BEGAN BETWEEN SEX AND SILENCE, RELATIONSHIP AND ALONENESS. I FELT AT THE TIME THAT A SYNTHESIS WAS IMPOSSIBLE. IT WAS AS IF I HAD TO CHOOSE ONE OR THE OTHER AND THAT EITHER WAY I WOULD MISS OUT. IT SEEMED AT THE TIME POSSIBLE TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE SKY WITHOUT GOING THROUGH THE EARTH.

Prem Harish,

THIS HAS BEEN ONE OF THE GREATEST PROBLEMS down the ages: meditation and love, aloneness and relationship, sex and silence. Only the names are different: the problem is one. And down the ages man has suffered much because the problem has not been understood rightly -- people have chosen.
Those who have chosen relationship are called the worldly, and those who have chosen aloneness are called the monks, the other-worldly. But both suffer, because they remain half and to be half is to be miserable. To be whole is to be healthy, happy; to be whole is to be perfect. To remain half is miserable because the other half goes on sabotaging, the other half goes on preparing to take revenge. The other half can never be destroyed because it is YOUR other half. It is an essential part of you; it is not something accidental that you can discard. It is like a mountain deciding that "I will not have any valleys around me." Now, without the valleys, the mountain cannot be. The valleys are part of the mountain's being; the mountain cannot exist without the valleys. They are complementary to each other. If the mountain chooses to be without valleys, there will be no mountain any more. If the valley chooses to be without the mountain, there will be no valley either -- or, you will become a pretender. The mountain will pretend that there is no valley, but the valley IS there -- you can hide the valley, you can drown it deep into your unconscious, but it remains, it persists, it is existential, there is no way to destroy it. In fact, mountain/valley are one thing, so are love and meditation, so are relationship and aloneness. The mountain of aloneness rises only in the valleys of relationship. In fact, you can enjoy aloneness only if you can enjoy relationship. It is relationship that creates the need for aloneness, it is a rhythm.
When you have moved in deep relationship with somebody, a great need arises to be alone. You start feeling spent, exhausted, tired -- joyously tired, happily tired, but each excitement is exhausting. It was tremendously beautiful to relate, but now you would like to move into aloneness, so that you can again gather yourself together, so that again you can become overflowing, so that again you become rooted in your own being.
In love you moved into the other's being, you lost contact with yourself. You became drowned, drunk. Now you will need to find yourself again. But when you are alone, you are again creating a need for love. Soon you will be so full that you would like to share, you will be so overflowing that you would like somebody to pour yourself into, to whom to give of yourself. Love arises out of aloneness.
Aloneness makes you overfull. Love receives your gifts. Love empties you so that you can become full again. Whenever you are emptied by love, aloneness is there to nourish you, to integrate you. And this is a rhythm.
To think of these two things as separate has been the stupidity, the most dangerous stupidity, that man has suffered from. A few people become worldly -- they are spent, they are just exhausted, empty. They don't have any space of their own. They don't know who they are; they never come across themselves. They live with others, they live for others. They are part of a crowd; they are not individuals. And remember: their life of love will not be of fulfilment -- it will be half. And no half can ever be a fulfillment. Only the whole is fulfilled.
And then there are the monks who have chosen the other half. They live in the monasteries. The word 'monk' means one who lives alone; the word 'monk' comes from the same root as 'monogamy', 'monotony', 'monastery', 'monopoly'. It means one, alone.
The monk is one who has chosen to be alone, but soon he is overfull, ripe, and knows nowhere to pour himself. WHERE to pour himself? He cannot allow love, he cannot allow relationship; he cannot go and meet and mix with people. Now his energies start getting sour. Any energy that stops flowing becomes bitter. Even nectar, stagnant, becomes poison, and vice versa -- even poison, flowing, becomes nectar. To flow is to know what nectar is. And to become stagnant is to know what poison is.
Poison and nectar are not two things but two states of the same energy. Flowing it is nectar: frozen it is poison. Whenever some energy is there and there is no outlet for it, it goes sour, it becomes bitter, it becomes sad, it becomes ugly. Rather than giving you a wholeness and health it makes you ill.
ALL monks are ill. All monks are BOUND to be pathological.
The worldly people are empty, bored, exhausted, dragging themselves somehow, in the name of duty, in the name of the family, in the name of the nation -- all sacred cows -- somehow dragging to death, just waiting for death to come and deliver them. They will know their rest only in their graves. They will not know any rest in life. And a life that knows no rest is not a life really.
It is like music which has no silence in it -- then it is just noise, nauseating; it will make you sick. Great music is a synthesis between sound and silence. And the greater the synthesis, the deeper the music goes. The sound creates silence, and the silence creates receptivity to receive sound. And so on and so forth: sound creates more love for music, more capacity to become silent.
Listening to great music you will always feel prayerful, something whole -- something integrates in you. You become centered, rooted. The earth and the sky meet, they are no more separate. The body and the soul meet and merge, they lose their definitions.
And that is the great moment: the moment of the mystic union.

Harish, you say: THE OTHER DAY, SOON AFTER I ARRIVED, THE BATTLE BEGAN BETWEEN SEX AND SILENCE.

This is an ancient battle, and foolish, utterly foolish. Please beware: don't create any battle between sex and silence. If you create a battle, your sex will be ugly, sick, your silence will be dull and dead. Let sex and silence meet and merge.
In fact the greatest moments of silence are those which are followed by love, great love, peaks of love. And the peaks of love are always followed by great moments of silence and aloneness. Meditation leads into love: love leads into meditation. They are partners. It is impossible to divide them.
So it is not a question of creating a synthesis -- it is impossible to divide them -- it is a question of understanding, seeing that they are indivisible.

You say:... THE BATTLE IMMEDIATELY BEGAN BETWEEN SEX AND SILENCE, RELATIONSHIP AND ALONENESS. I FELT AT THE TIME THAT A SYNTHESIS WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

Synthesis is impossible, because they are one. You need not synthesize them. Your synthesis will be just hocus-pocus; your synthesis will be basically wrong, because where no synthesis is needed you will be imposing a false synthesis.
The synthesis is ALREADY there, it is already the case. They are one! two aspects of the same coin. You need not synthesize them -- they never have existed separately. And man has tried, and tried hard, but has always failed.
Religion has not yet become the noe-sphere of the earth; religion has not yet become a very vital, tidal force in the world. And what is the reason? This division. Either you have to be worldly or you have to be other-worldly -- choose! And the moment you choose, you miss something. Whichever you choose, you are going to be a loser.
I say: Don't choose. I say: Live both in their togetherness. Of course, it needs art to live both. It is simple to choose and be attached to one. Any idiot can do it -- in fact, only idiots do it. A few idiots have chosen to be worldly and a few other idiots have chosen to be other-worldly. The man of intelligence would like both.
And that's what my sannyas is all about. You can have the cake and eat it too -- that is intelligence. Be alert, aware, intelligent. See the rhythm, and move with the rhythm without any choice. Remain choicelessly aware. See both the extremes. On the surface they look opposite, contradictory, but they are not. Deep down there is a complementariness. It is the same pendulum that goes to the left and to the right. Don't try to fix it at the left or at the right; if you fix it you have destroyed the whole clock. And that's what has been done up to now.
Accept life in ALL its dimensions.

I UNDERSTAND YOUR PROBLEM; the problem is simple, well-known. The problem is: when you start relating, you don't know how to be alone. That simply shows unintelligence. It is not that relationship is wrong -- it simply shows that you are still not intelligent enough. So-relationship becomes too much and you don't find any space to be alone, and you feel exhausted and tired. Then one day you decide relationship is bad, it is meaningless: "I want to become a monk. I will go to a Himalayan cave and live there alone." And you will see great dreams of being alone. How beautiful it will be -- nobody encroaching on your freedom, nobody trying to manipulate you; you don't have to think of the other at all.
Jean-Paul Sartre says: "The other is hell." That simply shows that he has not been able to understand the complementariness of love and meditation -- the other is hell. Yes, the other becomes hell if you don't know how to be alone sometimes, amidst all kinds of relationships. The other becomes hell. It is tedious, tiring, exhausting, boring. The other loses all beauty, because the other has become known. You are well-acquainted; now there is no surprise any more. You have known the territory perfectly well; you have travelled in the territory so long that there is no surprise any more. You are simply fed up with the whole thing.
But you have become attached, and the other has become attached to you. The other is also in misery, because you are her or his hell, just as he or she is your hell. Both are creating hell for each other, and both are clinging to each other, afraid to lose because... anything is better than nothing. At least something is there to hold onto, and one can still hope that tomorrow things will be better. Today they are not better, but tomorrow things are going to be better. One can still hope and one goes on hoping. One lives in despair and goes on hoping.
Then sooner or later one starts feeling it would be better to be alone. But if you go into aloneness, for a few days it will be tremendously beautiful, as it is beautiful with the other -- for a few days. Just as there is a honeymoon in relationship, there is a honeymoon in meditation too. For a few days you will feel so free, just to be yourself, nobody there to demand, nobody there to expect anything from you. If you want to get up early in the morning, you can get up; if you don't want to get up early in the morning, you can go on sleeping. If you want to do something, okay; if you don't want to do anything, there is nobody....
For a few days you will feel so tremendously happy -- but only for a few days. Soon you will become tired of it. You will be overflowing, and nobody to receive your love. You will be ripe, and the energy needs to be shared. You will become heavy, you will become burdened with your own energy. You would like somebody to welcome your energy, to receive your energy. You would like to be unburdened.
Now, aloneness will look not like aloneness but loneliness. Now there will be a change -- the honeymoon is finished. Aloneness will start turning into loneliness. You will have a great desire to find the other. In your dreams the other will start appearing.
Go and ask the monks what they dream: they dream only about women; they cannot dream about anything else. They dream of somebody who can unburden them. Ask the nuns: they dream only about men. And the thing can become pathological. You must be aware of the Christian history.
Nuns and monks start dreaming even with open eyes. The dream becomes such a substantial reality that you need not wait for the night. Even in the day, the nun is sitting there and she sees the Devil coming, and the Devil is trying to make love to her.
You will be surprised: many times it happened in the Middle Ages that many nuns were burnt because they confessed that they had made love to the Devil. They themselves confessed, and it was not only that they had made love to the Devil: they even became pregnant by the Devil -- a false pregnancy, just hot air in the belly, but their bellies started becoming bigger and bigger. A psychological pregnancy. And they described the Devil in such detail -- that Devil was their own creation. And the Devil followed them day and night....
And so was the case with the monks.
This is a pathology. Man has suffered long because of it. And other pathologies that your so-called religious people go on condemning were created by the monasteries. Those same saints are responsible for them! The first cases of homosexuality happened in the monasteries; they could not have happened anywhere else -- because men were living in one monastery, women were living in another monastery, and there was no way to meet, and the energy was boiling.
Whenever there are too many men living together, and no women, it is natural that heterosexuality will take a turn, will become homosexuality, that nuns will become lesbians.
This choice of being alone has created a very sick humanity. And the people who live in the world, they are not happy, and the monks are not happy -- nobody seems to be happy. The whole world is a CONSTANT misery. And you can choose from one misery to another: you can choose this-worldly misery or that-worldly misery -- but it is misery all the same. For a few days you will feel good.
I am bringing you a new message. The message is no more to choose -- remain choicelessly alert in your life, and become intelligent rather than changing circumstances. Change your psychology, become more intelligent. More intelligence is needed to be blissful! And then you can have aloneness together with relationship.
Make your woman or your man also alert to the rhythm. People should be taught that nobody can love twenty-four hours a day; rest periods are needed. And nobody can love on order. Love is a spontaneous phenomenon: whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn't happen it doesn't happen . Nothing can be done about it. If you DO anything, you will create a pseudo phenomenon, an acting.
Real lovers, intelligent lovers, will make each other alert to the phenomenon: "When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you. In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone." And if your woman wants to be left alone for one night, for a few days, you will not feel hurt. You will not say that you have been rejected, that your love has not been received and welcomed. You will respect her decision to be alone for a few days. In fact, you will be happy! Your love was so much that she is feeling empty; now she needs rest to become full again.
This is intelligence.
Ordinarily, you think you are rejected. You go to your woman, and if she is not willing to be with you, or not very loving to you, you feel great rejection. Your ego is hurt. This ego is not a very intelligent thing. All egos are idiotic. Intelligence knows no ego; intelligence simply sees the phenomenon, tries to understand why the woman does not want to be with you. Not that she is rejecting you -- you know she has loved you so much, she loves you so much -- but this is a moment she wants to be alone. And if you love her, you will leave her alone; you will not torture her, you will not force her to make love to you.
And if the man wants to be alone, the woman will not think, "He is no more interested in me -- maybe he has become interested in some other woman." An intelligent woman will leave the man alone, so he can again gather together his being, so that again he has energy to share. And this rhythm is like day and night, summer and winter; it goes on changing.
And if two persons are really respectful -- and love is always respectful, it reveres the other; it is a very worshipful, prayerful state -- then slowly slowly you will understand each other more and more. And you will become aware of the other's rhythm and your rhythm. And soon you will find that out of love, out of respect, your rhythm is coming closer and closer: when you feel loving, she feels loving. This settles. This settles on its own. k is a synchronicity.
Have you watched ever? If you come across two real lovers, you will see many things similar in them. Real lovers become as if they are brothers and sisters. You will be surprised -- even brothers and sisters are not so alike. Their expression, their way of walking, their way of talking, their gestures -- two lovers become alike, and yet so different. This naturally starts happening. Just being together, slowly slowly, they become attuned to each other. Real lovers need not say anything to the other -- the other immediately understands, intuitively understands.
If the woman is sad, she may not say it is so, but the man understands and leaves her alone. If the man is sad, the woman understands and leaves him alone -- finds some excuse to leave him alone. Stupid people do just the opposite: they never leave each other alone -- they are constantly with each other, tiring and boring each other; never leaving any space for the other to be.
Love gives freedom and love helps the other to be himself or herself. Love is a very paradoxical phenomenon. In one way it makes you one soul in two bodies; in another way it gives you individuality, uniqueness. It helps you to drop your small selves, but it also helps you to attain to the supreme self. Then there is no problem: love and meditation are two wings, and they balance each other. And between the two you grow, between the two you reach to God.

Osho.
Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1
Chapter #5
Chapter title: Beep Beep!
25 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall