The second question:

Question 2

I WANT TO TAKE SANNYAS BUT MY WIFE IS OPPOSED TO IT. SHE THINKS THAT AFTER TAKING SANNYAS I WILL NOT BE INTERESTED IN HER. I CANNOT DENY HER DOUBTS AS I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE OF SANNYAS. CAN YOU PLEASE HELP US OSHO?

The question is from Pradip J Shah.

IT has to be understood very deeply, because many are the reasons for it. The wife is afraid because our so-called relationship is a relationship of possessiveness. It happens every day -- the wife wants to take sannyas, the husband is opposed; the husband wants to take sannyas, the wife is opposed. It is very rarely that a couple jumps together. And whenever a couple jumps together, that shows that they are really in love.

Something is missing, hence the fear. The wife is afraid because sannyas will be a new interest in your life. Who knows? You may not remain interested in her. At least you will not be interested as much, because there will be a conflict between two interests. But the wife is suspicious because deep down she is jealous, she is afraid. Her love is not a certainty, her love is not sure, it is shaky.

If she really loves you she will give you freedom. Love always gives freedom -- freedom to be yourself, whatsoever you decide. You decide to be a poet, you decide to be a painter, you decide to be a vagabond, you decide to be a sannyasin -- whatsoever. Love gives freedom, love trusts. Your wife's trust is missing in you, she is afraid. Fear arises only when love is not total. When love is total the fear is impossible. And seeing here... your wife must have eyes, she can see that my people are the most loving people you can find anywhere. You can see my sannyasins -- they are not anti-love, anti-life. I am all for love.

Your wife's fear would have been right if you were becoming an old traditional kind of sannyasin -- if you were going to become a Buddhist monk or a Catholic monk or a Hindu sannyasin or a Jaina mini, if you were going to become like that, your wife's fear would be right. But with me, with my sannyasins, the fear is at surf.

But my feeling is she is really afraid of you becoming more loving. Maybe you will start feeling love for other people -- because I give freedom to you. She wants to keep you in her hands; she is afraid of so much love energy here. It is not really the fear of sannyas, it is the fear of the love energy that is released here, it is the fear of the love climate that you find here. It is freedom that is making her afraid.

But rather than preventing you from sannyas she should try to understand more about love. That will be enriching for her. This fear should make her meditate on ally she is afraid, why she can't trust. Love always trusts. It is only unloving domination, possessiveness. that is doubtful.

From my side I can say that you will become more loving than you have ever been. Maybe that too is a fear. People can take only so much love and so much joy; they are afraid to go the whole way. People are so afraid to live, they live crippled lives. And of course, you are an Indian. India has forgotten how to live; for centuries India has not known how to live. It has forgotten the ways of love -- it knows only marriage, it does not know anything about love.

Marriage is a device to prevent love happening. Marriage is a trick, a legal trick, so that love never happens. You live together, you live in comfort and convenience, but the danger is avoided. Love is dangerous -- one never knows where it will land you. And love is very fleeting. It is like a rose flower -- in the morning it was there, by the evening it may be gone. It may not be gone, but nobody can be certain beforehand. Marriage is a plastic flower. You can depend on it, it is reliable, it will be there. Of course it has no fragrance in it, no life in it -- but people are more interested in permanence than in life. And remember, only death is permanent. Life is fleeting. Life is always a wave -- one moment it is there, another moment it is gone. So is love. Marriage is man-made, it is synthetic.

Now, Pradip, you are an Indian. You may be living in the West -- that doesn't change much, it only changes you on the surface. That change is skin-deep, or not even that -- maybe that change is only as deep as the cosmetics go; it is superficial. Deep down you are an Indian -- deep down you are as afraid as any Indian is afraid of love, deep down you are as condemnatory of love as any Indian is. Deep down you know sex is sin, your wife knows sex is sin. Deep down, love is a bondage -- that's what you are conditioned to believe.

And now trying to become a sannyasin is taking a risk. In fact this is your love affair -- hence the wife i. afraid. You are falling in love with me: now she will feel jealous. And in a way she is right -- because once you are in love with me then nothing will be more important. Yes, not even your wife. Then the only way for the wife to remain in your heart will be to become a sannyasin -- otherwise you will start drifting from her. So intuitively she is right. And I always suggest to couples to take the jump together. If it is possible, take the jump together, become meditators together, so you grow together.

Otherwise the gap is bound to arise. One becomes a meditator, another remains a non-meditator: the non meditator soon will find that the meditator has become a different person -- it is hound to be so. And the meditator will soon find that he is not interested in the non-meditating person -- because meditative energies meet easily; a non-meditative person and a meditative person are bound to fall apart.

If you become a sannyasin and the wife remains a non-sannyasin then there IS danger, and the wife is intuitively right. But to prevent you from taking sannyas will also be dangerous -- the very prevention will become a rift. You will start feeling angry, you will start feeling that your freedom has been paralyzed, crippled, that you have been interfered with. You will never be able to forgive your wife, you will never be able to forget the wound; you will take all kinds of revenge on her.

So I cannot say don't take sannyas, because that will destroy your marriage more certainly than sannyas. All that I can say is: Let your wife also become a sannyasin. Grow together, grow hand in hand.

And one thing is certain -- because I am not anti-life, anti-love -- if you love each other it will grow. It will take new depth, it will take new plenitude, it will have new qualities arising in it. And it is always good to take jumps, because you become new and everything becomes new with it. Otherwise, by and by, one gets bored. The routine is always boring, you cannot avoid it -- the same wife, the same house, the same job, the same you, the same children -- there is a limit to tolerating it, then it becomes intolerable. It is like going to see the same movie again and again and again -- you will go mad. Or you will have to devise ways so that you can sit in the movie house without seeing it -- that will be your only protection.

That's what happens in marriage, the husband stops seeing the wife -- not that he does not look at her; he looks but he doesn't see. The wife stops seeing the husband. Do you remember for how long you have not seen your wife? And you live with her, day in, day out -- but can you remember how long it is since you have really looked at her? Husbands and wives go on avoiding each other's eyes -- they look and yet they don't look; their look is just a pretension. Even when they look at each other they are thinking of a thousand and one things. That is the only way to avoid getting too bored: become closed, don't see what is happening. Don't taste what you are eating, then you can go on eating the same thing again and again.

But if you taste it then sooner or later you will start feeling that this is too much. Even if you like a certain thing, if you eat it every day, soon the time will come when you will say 'Now I am fed-up with it.' You like the woman, you like the man, you love -- but sooner or later the moment comes...

There are two ways Roy avoid that moment. One is, become dull. That's what people have chosen -- because to become dull is easy, it needs no intelligence. To become dull is easy because it is a kind of fall; it is down-going. The other is, become so sensitive that you can find something new in your wife every day, and he come so alert that your very alertness keeps everything new, goes on making everything fresh. And go on moving. There is no need to remain the same person for ever -- go on moving.

Now if the desire for sannyas has arisen in you, take the jump, take the risk. That will help you It will he a kind of renewal, a resurrection -- the old will he gone and the new will be born. And if your wife loves you she will come, she will understand. If she is not coming right now, don't be worried. Just for that, don't stop yourself taking sannyas -- because then your marriage will be on the rocks, more certainly on the rocks. By becoming a sannyasin there will be a little trouble hut that trouble will soon settle -- because I am not anti-life. Your wife will understand that her fear was not true.

Through your meditations you will become a better person -- more loving, more affectionate, more caring. She will not lose anything. And sooner or later the understanding will help her to also take the jump. If she is sensitive and loving she will take the jump with you.

Remember, love knows how to go into the unknown. Love knows how to throw all securities, Love knows how to move into the unfamiliar and the uncharted. Love is courage. Trust love.

And you ask me, CAN YOU PLEASE HELP US? I CANNOT DENY HER DOUBTS AS I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE OF SANNYAS.

There are two ways to know about sannyas. One is -- the best -- by becoming one. The next best is by seeing my sannyasins, by watching my sannyasins. That is next best, because that is from the outside; you will not have the inside experience. Watch my sannyasins: they are laughing, they are loving, they are dancing, they are celebrating. What more do you desire? They have thrown all kinds of burdens Ann all kinds of inhibitions and all kinds of taboos. They have fallen utterly in love with life, they have taken away all barriers.

Live with my sannyasins, watch them, experience them, feel them. Empathize with them, so you call have a certain feeling of what it is. It is difficult to define because it is a subjective change. The change on the outside is just a gesture -- the change is inner. It is being in personal contact with me, it is being linked with my consciousness, it is being committed. It is getting involved in some journey which leads you from one unknown to another unknown.

It is very difficult to define sannyas. One cannot paint light or love or life -- only the things upon which it lights. The ten thousand lighted things, they can be painted. You cannot paint light directly -- you can paint a green leaf upon which the light is falling and have a dance, you can paint a rock upon which the light is falling, or you can paint an eye which has got the light in it -- but you cannot paint light directly; there is no way. You can only paint lighted things.

If you want to know what sannyas is, there is no way to know directly. You can just see the people to whom sannyas has happened -- you will have to see the lighted things. One cannot speak of Tao or Go ;l but only of the things that reveal it. Look at me. Look into my eyes. And if the depth calls you forth from your caves then plunge in! By becoming a sannyasin, by and bye you will come to feel what it is. Even then you will not be able to define it, but you will be able to know it. Sannyas is an experience -- just like love.