Your time starts NOW!

Amrit Sadhana

You must have heard this sentence frequently on TV quiz programs. Whenever the participants have to answer a difficult question the time appears to stand still, the timer starts ticking: "tick-tock, tick-tock." Their attention is totally focused, their intelligence sharpened like a razor and every moment becomes an eternity. The viewers hold their breaths, too.

This kind of intensity gives a heady feeling as all the senses are awakened. One feels so alive! It's a pity this time-consciousness doesn't spread over the life. Actually every moment in life is as important as the moments in the quiz show. For the whole of life is an immense quiz show, and unlike the one on the TV it doesn't have any answers, it only has questions. People try to find answer in many ways: in the scriptures, from astrology or gems, some guru, but everything essentially is a guess work. Instead of wasting time in roaming around the best this would be to live every moment totally.

Enlightened men like Osho always talk about living in the moment because for them the time always starts "now." There is no other moment except this moment.

But the question for an average person is, how to catch this "now"? Where to find it? It is so subtle, so slippery, it cannot be gripped. By the time they become aware it has slipped out and become the next moment.

Only a meditator can find the "now", because he lives in the depth. Those who live a superficial life cannot dive in the depth of each moment. They are thinking of the past or planning for the future. They are never present here and now. And because they are not present, there is a feeling of constantly missing the bus. They feel defeated by time. And they know that eventually the time is going to grab them in the form of death. In Sanskrit there is one word for both time and death, it is Kala.

However, there is no need to feel sad, because at a deeper level the time does not exist.

Osho says it clearly, "Ordinarily we think that time is divided into three categories: past, present and future. That is absolutely wrong. Time is divided only into two categories: past and future. The present is not part of time. Just watch, the moment you recognize that this is the present, it is already past."

So live more and more in the present, in the moment. Meditate regularly, go on deepening it, slowly you will see that you are far away from the formidable thing called time. As you are distanced from your body, and also from the mind you arrive at an inner space which is timeless "now."

Let the woman be human too

Amrit Sadhana

A woman is the way man has made her. And the way man has made her has turned out be very miserable. Man has double standards : worshipping the goddess who is an imaginery woman, and treating the real woman as a sex object. What could be the reason?

Osho has made some insightful observations on man's psyche. He says that the basic truth is that man is jealous of women. Don't be shocked, because we are made to believe just the opposite. That women are weaklings, the fairer sex, beauties without brains, so that they should be controlled by men. But it is just a belief popularised by men..

The reason of male jealousy is very interesting: the capacity of the woman to give birth to a new life. Imagine the cave man who knew nothing about the laws of nature. When he saw a tiny human form coming out of his mate's body he was in awe. It was magic and this frail female was the one who could perform it, while the strong muscular male could not. This was the beginning of oppressing women. Men felt inferior in front of their better halves. And it is a psychological fact that one who feels inferior tries to show his superiority.

The jealousy doesn'r stop at reproductive capacity, it expands in other areas, too. Man, down the ages has been destroying the woman's genius, talents, skills, so that he can prove himself superior - to himself and to the world. He could do so because he had muscular power. Physically he was stronger than the woman and the life was hard, it required physically strength to do the chores. The term "man power" has originated from this situation. There is no term like "woman power." Because women were not considered powerful at all.

Another aspect where man feels inferior is regarding his sexual structure. His sex totally depends on the erection; if no erection, no fulfilment. This is such a helpless condition that he feels he is a toy in the hands of nature. He may want to make love mentally but if the body doesn't cooperate he cannot do it. His sex only remains cerebral.

So the inferiority complex combined with genital structure makes the man violent, more violent than the animal. If we really want women to be protected, man has to be taught some cathartic meditations which will clean his unconscious, will teach him how to love. This will make him more relaxed about his sexuality. And the result will be instantaneous. It will make women fearless because now they will be interacting with a human being, not with a beast.