Friendliness is enough

The New Dawn, Chapter #20

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,
IS THE CONCEPT OF SOULMATES MORE USEFUL THAN MARRIAGE?

Prem Pragyan, one of the most significant things in man’s life has been the love affair. Birth is not in your hands, death is not in your hands; and these are the only three great things in life: birth, love, and death. Only love is in your hands, only love gives you the freedom and dignity of being a human being; otherwise, birth and death happen just like any other animal, or any tree. Love should be kept as pure and unpolluted as possible.
You are asking, „Is the concept of soulmates more useful than marriage?“ Concepts don’t matter. What matters is your understanding. You can change the word `marriage‘ to the word `soulmates‘, but you are the same. You will make the same hell out of soulmates as you have been making out of marriage — nothing has changed, only the word, the label. Don’t believe in labels too much.
Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the ABC of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.
And this has been man’s stupidity — a very ancient one: whenever he gets into difficulty, he changes the word. Change the word `marriage‘ into `soulmates‘, but don’t change yourself. And you are the problem, not the word; any word will do. A rose is a rose is a rose … you can call it by any name. You are asking to change the concept, you are not asking to change yourself.
Marriage has failed because you could not rise to the standard that you were expecting of marriage, of the concept of marriage. You were brutal, you were barbarous, you were full of jealousies, you were full of lust; you had never known really what love is. In the name of love, you tried everything which is just the opposite of love: possessiveness, domination, power.
Marriage has become a battlefield where two persons are fighting for supremacy. Of course, the man has his own way: rough and more primitive. The woman has her own way: feminine, softer, a little more civilized, more subdued. But the situation is the same. Now psychologists are talking about marriage as an intimate enmity. And that’s what it has proved to be. Two enemies are living together pretending to be in love, expecting the other to give love; and the same is being expected by the other. Nobody is ready to give — nobody has it. How can you give love if you don’t have it?
And when you feel that love is not coming towards you … and both feel the same: a great frustration and an idea, a suspicion that perhaps the other has deceived you. Before the marriage both were using beautiful words, sweet nothings; both were bringing their best to attract the other, to catch hold of the other. And once they are married, and the law has entered in, and society has granted you freedom to live together, soon the honeymoon is over. Even before coming back from the honeymoon it is over … all is finished because you have come to know the other in their total wholeness, which is ugly.
The facade, the mask that they were wearing before the marriage has slipped. You cannot hold it for twenty-four hours. When you live with someone, you have to come down from your hypocrisies and be whatever you are — and you know that you are not the person you pretend to be. The same is true about the other. And then it becomes a struggle to possess the woman, to possess the man.
The only significant symptom of love is, it never possesses; on the contrary, it gives freedom. It is happy in the happiness of the other. It does not beg; it is not a beggar. It is an emperor. It gives, and it gives unconditionally.
But in actual life, what we have been doing for centuries is asking the other to give; and the other is also asking you to give. And both are beggars, their bowls are empty; they don’t have anything to give. It becomes a struggle, a warfare.
You can change the concept from marriage to soulmates, but what about you? What about the people who will become soulmates? If they are the same people who were becoming a couple in a marriage, nothing will change.
My suggestion is, neither marriage is needed nor soulmates are needed — just friendliness is enough. You don’t know anything about soul, how can you become a soulmate?
If you can become just friendly with each other, that is more than can be expected from the present man. If you can be understanding of each other’s frailties, weaknesses, that is more than can be expected.
If you can drop the old superstitions, that once a woman or a man loves you, they have to love you forever … Love is very fragile. It is just like a flower: beautiful, but very delicate. In the morning it blossoms; by the evening it is gone, its petals are scattered. That was a beauty in the morning; by the evening it has become a grave. Life is a changing, continuously changing phenomenon.
When I say a great understanding is needed, the old idea of permanent relationship under any concept has to be dropped. You have to live moment to moment, you have to live each moment as if it is the last moment. So don’t waste it in quarreling, in nagging or in fighting. Perhaps you will not find the next moment even for an apology.
One of the mystics, Sarmad, used to tell his disciples every night, „We are going to sleep for the last time. Please forgive me. As a master I may have been hard to you. I had to be because I loved you and I wanted a transformation to happen. And I don’t know whether in the morning I will wake up again, so I’m asking for your forgiveness.“ Each night he would go to bed as if it was the last night — and one day it is going to be true, one night will be the last night and you will never wake up again.
And each morning he would wake up as if it was a new beginning; he had accepted death in the night before, now this was a rebirth. He looks tremendously grateful towards existence: one day more to live, one day more the sun, the wind, the trees, the birds, one day more of friends, one day more of love. But not more than that.
The very idea of having a permanent, lifelong relationship helps you to postpone that which is essential and go on doing things which are absolutely nonessential; not only nonessential but idiotic.
People are fighting about such small things that they themselves, in their saner moments, laugh about it. I have heard about a couple who were getting married in the government registrar’s office. The man signed — the woman had signed before him. As she saw the man’s signature, she immediately told the registrar, „I want a divorce.“ The registrar said, „What has happened? You are getting married, you have just signed the marriage papers.“
She said, „Yes, I have signed but things have gone sour already. Just look at the paper. I have signed in small letters and he has signed in such big letters, to show me who he is. This is the beginning of trouble — I don’t want to get into it.“ The bigger letters already declare the supremacy, superiority of the man.
You can change words — I would like to change your consciousness.
The idea of permanent relationship was wrong, but it has been imposed on you by poets, by priests, by everybody. And I am not saying that two persons cannot live in deep friendship for their whole life. They can, but it should not be a conditioning, but just a flowering of friendship, open. Any day one partner can say, „I am grateful for all the beautiful moments you have given to me, but now our paths separate. In sadness … but I will remember you always. I don’t want life with you to create a hell. Then all that was beautiful will be destroyed, even the memory of it will be destroyed. Just a friendliness is enough.“
My vision of a new society is that of small communes, not of big cities. A commune consisting of not more than five thousand people, so that people can know each other very easily. And the commune should take the whole responsibility for the children, and nobody should be allowed to have children unless the commune needs them. That decision will be of the commune. And now all scientific techniques are available. The society can decide what it needs — engineers, doctors, scientists, poets, mystics. Now it is scientifically possible to choose what kind of a child you are going to give birth to, you just have to drop your old superstition that the child has to be yours.
Just as you have blood banks, you should have sperm banks in every hospital. And scientists are able now to figure out about every living sperm; they can read it, what it is going to be. Up to now we have lived a very accidental life, and perhaps the world is so full of stupid and retarded people because of that.
When two persons make love, the man releases in one lovemaking almost a million living sperm, and a great politics starts because they all run fast to reach the mother’s egg. Only one will be able to enter. The mother’s egg is made in such a way that it remains open until a living male sperm has entered it. The moment the sperm enters, it closes. It rarely happens that two cells reach simultaneously — that’s why twins are born — or sometimes three, or sometimes four; but these are exceptions.
That small passage is a long journey for the small sperm. According to its size it is almost two miles long, and a great struggle … a million people trying to reach to become the president! My understanding is that the wiser ones will stand to the side and let the idiots go ahead.
Rabindranath was the thirteenth child of his parents. If there had been birth control, Rabindranath would not have ever been born. And even without birth control there are very few people who produce thirteen children. If the parents had stopped at one dozen, which would have been more logical and a more rounded figure, Rabindranath would have been out of the game, you would never have heard of that man and his greatness.
But science has become able, within these last ten years, to read the whole future of a single sperm: whether it is going to become a scientist, whether it is going to become a poet or a doctor or a philosopher or a mystic or a dancer or a musician. Its potential can be read. Its life pattern, in minute detail, can be read: whether it will be a healthy child or a sick child, whether it will die after six months or after a hundred years. To go on doing the old accidental thing and producing children, not knowing whom you are bringing into the world — whether you are giving birth to an Adolf Hitler or a Benito Mussolini or a Joseph Stalin or a Ronald Reagan … you don’t have any idea. It is a very blind game.
Love should be only of friendship. And if society has a need and the medical profession proves your wife to be the right vehicle for bringing a child into the world, then from their sperm bank they can find the right sperm and inject it. You can go on making love; that is a separate affair.
There has been the pill, but it was not a hundred percent foolproof. Sometimes you are not thinking that you are going to make love and you don’t take the pill, and suddenly your lover turns up and you take the risk. They chance it — it is not always that one becomes pregnant. Now they have come up with two other pills. One is to be taken after you have made love — that is a hundred percent effective — and for the second one the woman is not needed, just the man can take a pill. They have come up with a pill for men, too. Then the woman need not take any pill. Your love becomes pure fun, pure joy, without any responsibility and burden.
And the woman should be educated, should be given all the opportunities to become an independent individual, financially and in every other respect, so that she is no longer dependent on you. An independent woman and an independent man, just out of friendship feel good to be with each other. As long as they feel good they remain together. The moment they feel things are going wrong, there is no need to prolong the affair. They can say good bye with gratitude towards each other. No law is needed, no government permission, no social sanction is needed — because who are these people to interfere in your life?
Yes, society can only have a concern about the children because that is going to be the future society. Society cannot allow you to produce Adolf Hitlers. But society has not done anything to prevent it. And this can be prevented.
There is no need of calling it marriage or soulmates or any great words … just hot air! Use simple words. You feel friendly towards someone and you feel joyous to be with the person. As long as you feel joyous it is valid. The moment trouble arises, you can separate. Marriage has created so much ugliness in the world, that you cannot conceive.
First, it has given accidental generations which are not produced out of understanding, out of a scientific approach, but just like animals, under the force, the blind force of biology; otherwise we can have so many beautiful people around. And the world does not consist only of a beautiful moon and beautiful stars, its greatest beauty is a beautiful person: physically, mentally, spiritually.