Osho: in love and life, be a participant, not a spectator!
“The whole of humanity has been reduced to being spectators. It is as if somebody else is making love and you are watching – and that is happening. The whole of humanity has become peeping toms. Somebody else is doing the things and you are a watcher. Of course you are out of it, so there is no involvement, no commitment, no danger. But how can you understand love by watching somebody else make love?
My feeling is that people have become spectators so deeply that when they make love they are watchers. In the East, people have been making love in the dark, but in the West they have started making love in the light – all lights on, mirrors all around, so you can watch yourself making love. There are people who have fixed cameras in their bedrooms so that pictures can be taken automatically, so later on they can see themselves making love.
Pornography has become so significant, almost the bible of the day. What is the appeal of it? You can watch. A man making love to his woman is not thinking of this woman at all; he is thinking of some playboy girl. The real woman is almost nothing.
When you participate, something irrational starts working. Make love and just be like wild animals. If you listen to music, dance… because unless the music becomes a dance in you, the head will go on functioning. Once the music has become a dance, reason is put aside. Reason can only be a spectator – it can never be a participant. It is always on the safe side, watching from somewhere where there is no danger.
The mind is the eyes, and the totality is neglected; only the eyes have become important. Your eyes are almost ninety-eight percent of you. Touch is no longer meaningful, smell and taste are no longer meaningful; they are just neglected parts. Sometimes the mind allows you to enjoy them, but the control remains with the mind.
So when you ask me, I will not say how. I am simply saying be aware that the mind cannot be the last fulfillment. It cannot be, because it is only a part. The whole cannot be fulfilled by the part. You are more than your mind, infinitely more, so don’t go on locked in the mind, imprisoned in the mind. Laugh, weep, dance, cry, sing, run, jog, jump, do whatsoever – but don’t think about it.
Every day find something you can do for a few hours without thinking about it. Dig a hole in the earth, that will do. Perspire in the hot sun, and dig… just be the digger. In fact not the digger but the digging. Forget yourself completely in it. Become a participant and suddenly you will see a new energy arising.
You have claimed your whole being; now the head is not the only thing. Suddenly your dead parts are becoming alive, and you will feel, you will actually feel hands, legs, the whole body coming alive as if a paralysis has disappeared. Mind is a paralysis, and hung up in the mind one is living a bogus life of words, concepts.
The whole effort here is to change your spectator-obsessed state into a flowing participant state.”
Osho, Above all don’t wobble, Ch. 12
