The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 8. THE FOURTH STATE
Mulla Nasruddin beat his son. ”This is all for your own good,” he told him. ”A child like you has to be
beaten at least twice a day to keep him straight. Now look at me. My father never beat me when I
was a child!”
”Your father must have been a good man!” said the Mulla’s son.
You beat the child and think you are doing him a favor. The child thinks differently, for his attention
is focused on your anger and not on your beating. No amount of rationalization can prove that you
are right.
Only yesterday a man came to me with his wife. The wife does not allow him to meditate; she does
not think that this is the right way to meditate. She is very traditional, but this is only superficial.
Deep down in the unconscious the reason is very, very different. No wife wants her husband to
meditate, no husband likes his wife to meditate; as soon as a person begins to meditate all the old
relationships are in danger. As soon as a person begins to meditate his sex desire begins to get
less and less. This is the unconscious reason; all other reasons are excuses. A wife would rather
her husband went to a brothel than meditate, for when he goes to a brothel he is still not entirely
anti-wife; he is still interested in women. But meditation means that his interest in women will soon
be lost.
So if a woman has to choose between his going to a brothel and his taking sannyas she will choose a
brothel for her husband. She also worries that if her husband loses himself in meditation something
will happen to the family. The fact is: meditation disrupts neither family nor business. In fact, a
man who meditates carries out his work more efficiently than before, for meditation breaks your
connection with the world that you carry within yourself, not with the world outside. The outside play
remains the same. A new light is lit. Now you know that it is a play. A new light is born within, while
life outside goes on as usual.
There is definitely trouble between husband and wife, thought; however much they may claim and
even believe the reason to be different, the basic cause is the sex relationship. Sex relations begin
to cool when one enters meditation, and as meditation progresses, sex gradually fades.
Everyday I have husbands complaining, ”My wife was never interested in sex, but since the day
I began to meditate she has become aggressive sexually!” Normally wives are not eager for sex,
for they are confident of their husbands. In fact, they pretend to be doing their husbands a favor.
They make a show of their virtue and piety, but once the husband becomes interested in meditation
they are furious. Now it is necessary to draw the husband back into his body. It is the same with
husbands when their wives become interested in meditation.
One such lady began to meditate. She is genuinely interested, and there could have been profound
results if she went deeper into it, but her husband burns my books and throws them out of the house.
He says that she has no need for advice from any outside person as long as he is there! He says
he can provide any answers she needs, and the wife knows very well what his answers will be! The
husband’s ego is hurt. The husband cannot bear to think that another man is occupying first place
in his wife’s heart. This is a blow that he cannot bear, but he does not speak openly of this.
Whatever you do, whatever you say, is not totally authentic; the reason is different, deep down inside.
The meditator has to ferret out the reasons deep within himself. He has to catch hold of the root
The Great Path 151 Osho