A visitor says she doesn't want to take sannyas because to wear orange and mala will be difficult at home. Then asks about her boyfriend, who is more spiritual and ascetic than her, which causes difficulties.

A relationship can never be without difficulties and if there is love, then there are more difficulties. This may look strange but it is one of the most fundamental facts of life to be understood: if there is no love, a relationship can move very smoothly Hence many societies in the past have decided for marriage without love. When there is a marriage without love there is no expectation, you don't have great dreams about it. It is very mundane, it is down to earth. There is no romance involved in it, no poetry involved in it, no great hopes, no great dreams. It is simple -- an arrangement. One feels to live alone is difficult, hence the arrangement. It is social, it is political, it is financial, it is sexual... but it is just an arrangement. Then there are no difficulties because you are not involved in each other. The relationship is formal, so everything goes smoothly.

But when there is love the relationship is not formal, it is informal. And when there is love, all that it means is that you penetrate the boundaries of the other and he penetrates your boundaries. You start overlapping -- that overlapping creates trouble. You want your own way, you would like him to follow you, and he wants his life his way and he wants you to follow him. Then the conflict starts, and the trip to dominate, to possess, to be the boss -- consciously or unconsciously. So because there is trouble, I infer there must be a little bit of love... but it is only a little bit and it is without any understanding.

Bring more understanding to it. You will not be able to separate easily because love is involved. Without love marriage is easy, divorce is easy. It does not matter either way; it is a simple, utilitarian arrangement. If things-are going well, good; otherwise, say 'goodbye'. But when you are involved in each other it is not easy, it is difficult. A part of your being has become incorporated in his being, a part of his being has become incorporated in your being. You really don't exist as two individuals any more -- you exist as a couple. A couple does not mean two persons living together. A couple means: two persons plugged into each other -- no more really two... trying to be separate and yet trying to be together. That is the difficulty: one wants to remain dependent and one wants to remain independent. One is asking for two polar opposites.

If you understand it, things start becoming clear. Then if he is on his trip you have to allow him. You are nobody to interfere in it. If he wants to become an ascetic, that's his decision; you have to respect it. If you love him, you will love him with all that he is and with all that he wants to be. If he loves you, he will give you freedom and will allow you to be yourself. If some problems arise, they can be solved -- there is no need to fight about them. Only more understanding is needed.

Make things more clear. It almost always happens that couples don't make things clear to each other. You hope that the other will understand and so is the case with the other: he thinks you will understand. Nobody understands! There is no communication problems have never been put forward clearly. If he is trying to be ascetic, the problem will be sexual -- you will suffer sexually. You have to put it clearly to him: 'I am not interfering with your asceticism, you can be an ascetic -- I love you and I will go on loving you -- but what about my sexuality?' Then some way can be found. You can remain together and still you can have boyfriends. If he really loves you he will see the problem. Or if he cannot do that hc will relax his asceticism a little bit.

But what really happens is that we never make things clear to each other. We go on hoping that the other will know telepathically; nobody knows telepathically. The other is not a clairvoyant. You have to put it exactly: two plus two is four -- like that. But what happens is that you will try to condemn his asceticism; you will not say that your sex is suffering. On the contrary you will condemn his asceticism. He will think that you are trying to possess him, dominate him, dictate to him. He will resist, he will fight. And the real problem is not talked about.

It is nothing to you whether he wants to be an ascetic or not. That is his business, it is his life to decide what he wants to be, how he can bloom and flower. Don't condemn his ascetic ideas. Maybe that is natural to him. There are born ascetics in the world. For those people, hardship is luxury and luxury is very hard. They cannot remain in comfort. If things are uncomfortable they are very happy. They fit with some uncomfortable thing. It gives them sharpness, challenge. It makes them more aware, gives them more meditativeness. If it is all comfortable and loose and convenient, they fall asleep, mm?

That's how asceticism was born: it is a few people's need. If everything is good, they will simply fall asleep -- there is no point in remaining awake. They have to go on creating problems around themselves so that they can keep awake. If the house is on fire you cannot fall asleep. If something is hurting you cannot fall asleep. Asceticism is really, basically, an effort in mindfulness, awareness, consciousness. The right source is there. There are false ascetics also who are not really thinking in terms of awareness but who are only masochists, enjoying torturing themselves. They are ill and pathological, they need treatment.

So if you feel that your boyfriend is a masochist.... And the criterion to know is if by torturing himself he feels very happy; the more he tortures himself, the more happy he feels... not aware, but happy. Awareness is a totally different quality. Awareness is neither happiness nor unhappiness -- it is a very silent witnessing. If you see that your boyfriend is becoming more and more aware, then that is natural to him. If you feel that he is becoming more and more pathologically happy -- playing with his wounds and enjoying it -- that is morbid. Then he needs some psychological treatment; help him to get treatment. If you love him, you have to look after him.

But make your problem clear to him -- that either he satisfies you sexually or gives you freedom to move with other people. This will bring things to a clear conclusion. Either something will happen and you can be together or it becomes so impossible to be together that you separate. But one should not go on lingering in such affairs. Something conclusive is always needed. If you linger too long in a kind of misery, you become addicted to it.

And about sannyas.... Unless you are ready to wear orange and a mala, there is no need to become a sannyasin. It is a commitment. It will be difficult -- that I know -- but that is the whole point of it. I make it difficult. If one is ready to sacrifice that much for me, only then can one be related to me. Then one deserves to be related to me. If one is not even ready to suffer such small things -- that people will laugh at you, they will think you have gone crazy or something -- if you are not even ready to do that much for me, that simply means that you don't want to relate with me, that you are not in the kind of space where I am more valuable than these small discomforts. Then wait. When you are ready to be committed, take sannyas.

But come to a clear conclusion about your friend. Clarity is needed.

A sannyasin, leaving, says that she alternates between bliss and celebration, and physical exhaustion.

Osho checks her energy.

Very good! I can see why you are feeling a little exhausted. When celebration starts happening it can sometimes take too much energy. In the beginning it always does, because you have never celebrated before. So it is a new phenomenon and it is so beautiful that you are pouring too much energy into it. One has only a certain quota of energy available, so you are feeling exhausted. But it will be so for only a few months.

Soon new energy will become available. There are layers of energy. The first layer is a very tiny layer. It is only for day-to-day use -- getting up in the morning, taking your breakfast, taking a bath, going to the office. earning your bread, coming back; that kind of work. That is a very small layer.

When you start meditating, energy is being taken from the first layer, and that is a new work. The old work continues and new energy is not yet available. If you go on celebrating there will come a point when you will feel really utterly exhausted. Only then, in that utter exhaustion, will there be a breakthrough and from the second layer energy will start flowing in you. Then you will never be tired. On the contrary, you will feel you have more energy than you can use; you have stumbled upon a deeper source of energy. That is the second source -- it is enormous.

It happens in situations, in ordinary situations too: you are tired -- you have come from the office, utterly tired -- you want to go to sleep. Suddenly your house is on fire and all tiredness disappears. The second layer is the emergency layer. When there is really a situation where it is a question of life and death, then it becomes available. You are full of energy -- no sleep, nothing, no tiredness. You will come to that layer slowly, slowly.

Then there is a third layer which is not human at all. The first is individual, the second is collective, the third is cosmic. Very few people reach to the third. To reach to the third is to become enlightened; then you are God. To reach to the second is to become one with nature. To remain with the first is to remain confined in the ego -- a tiny place to live in, very confined, like a prison cell.

But things are going perfectly well -- don't be worried. Just go and continue: celebrate, dance, sing... Let joy flow, overflow! And don't be too worried about the tiredness -- that will disappear one day suddenly. And the day it disappears you will see your new face arising. A new person is born. It is a new birth, the second birth; and the third birth is a resurrection. Then one never dies....

A sannyasin says that when Osho had told him earlier to work, he had opened his own restaurant. Now he says that he wanted to be in control, and realises it would be better to work in the ashram.

That is the right thing. I was waiting for this. But you wanted to do something separate, so I said yes. I just said yes because you wanted to do it and I don't want to interfere unnecessarily.

To be here and to do something separate from the ashram is just meaningless. Then you are being here yet not being here. The whole joy of being here is to become part of the commune, to dissolve into it, to lose your identity in it. That's the very joy of being here. But a few people do that in the beginning: they try to remain independent and do something on their own, so they can be here and yet independent. But they are in a double-bind and sooner or later they will feel frustrated.

I was waiting for this moment. I wait for the right moment to say a certain thing. I said yes to you unwillingly, reluctantly, because I knew that within two, three months you would get tired and it would look futile, meaningless; because it would take your whole energy and you would not feel that you are here with me at all, mm ? (he nods) Your restaurant would become more engrossing and would come between me and you.

So that's the right thing: be finished with it and become part. Good!

A sannyasin, who is an ashram resident, says that she has not really been in contact with Osho for a year, and wants help.

So that's good. When one sees, things start happening...

Help is always available. It was available even for this whole year, but you wouldn't take it -- you were on your own trip....

Yes, that too is right, mm? Only then this understanding can come, otherwise not. Everything that happens is good. it was needed somehow in some way -- it had to play its part....

Osho blesses her.

Everything is good now, mm? Relax and forget that once year -- it was a nightmare. You needed it so.... And now it is enough.

A sannyasin says he has been doing a relaxation exercise just before falling to sleep each night. But is very afraid to leave his body.

The experiment is going well -- you continue. Fear will be there and more fear will come, but it is an indication that the experiment is going perfectly well.

To leave the body is frightening; that's why people are so afraid of death. Continue it. Fear will go but it will not go by dropping the experiment; fear will go by going deeper into the experiment. Whenever one is afraid of something, one has to go into it; that is the only way to get rid of the fear. If you are afraid of the dark, go into the dark. In spite of the fear go into the dark -- go as deep as possible. Only that experience of darkness will make your fear invalid. It will show you that it was stupid to be afraid -- it is so beautiful. This darkness is so velvety, so silent, such a splendour, and you were always afraid of it! Then the fear has no more grounds to exist in you.

If one is afraid of death then the only way is to go deep into death meditations. Die every day, every night before you go to sleep -- feel you are dying, dying, dying, dying. You will be frightened, you will be afraid, you will try to come out of it, but in spite of the fear you have to go.

Once it has happened totally, once you have really come to the point where you are out of the body and the body is there Lying dead on the bed and you are hovering and you can see it -- the joy of it, the freedom of it, the exhilaration of it, the ecstasy of it -- then all fear disappears.

Fear is growing because your experiment is going rightly. Continue... and I will take care!