Perfection and Polarities!

Q – Beloved Osho

I gave just recently been helped to discover that nobody is perfect and to let go of my fantasy of a perfect person. Now I am left with my feelings of loving and hating the same person and I find it difficult to live with such intense, seemingly polar opposites in myself. Anything I can do?

A – Prabhu Maya, the first thing to remember is that the idea of “perfection” is the root cause of all neurosis. Humanity has not been healthy, because of the idea of “perfection”. Man has suffered immensely, and unnecessarily. Erase this word “perfection” from your vocabulary.

“Perfection” means you are creating a tension in your life between that which is and that which should be – and that tension is what creates schizophrenia. You become split, you are no more one, you are two. And you will never again be one, because there is no end to your imagination.

You can always imagine a better state of affairs. Wherever you are, you can always have your goal somewhere there on horizon, and the horizon is never achieved.

You remain unfulfilled, not because life makes it difficult for you to be fulfilled: life is all for your fulfilment, you remain unfulfilled because of your imagination.

Life is ready to deliver all that you need, this very moment, but your idea of perfection becomes a barrier. Then you cannot love, then you cannot live, then you cannot sing, then you cannot dance. All celebration will disappear from your life; you will be pathological.

And that’s what has been taught by so-called moralists and the so-called religious down the age. For thousands of years man has been conditioned to be neurotic.

Joy is when you accept yourself as you are. Joy is a function of immense acceptance.

Perfection means you reject yourself. And remember; when you reject yourself you naturally reject others too.

A perfectionist is hard upon himself and is hard upon others too. He cannot relax and he cannot allow anybody to relax. Let-go is impossible for him, and he will condemn anybody who is living a relaxed life.

These neurotics have created hell as a punishment for all those who are not perfectionists.
Naturally, they suffer here, they suffer deeply.

They only suffer, their life is a suffering. They have crucified themselves; now they cannot allow you to go on enjoying life.

They say, “Okay, you can enjoy for a moment. But remember, finally you will be thrown into eternal hell.” That is their joy, that you will have to suffer eternally.

They are suffering only for the moment – sooner or later they will free from this life and they will be in paradise, and they will enjoy all kinds of joys that they never allowed themselves here.

And you will be suffering in hell – and eternally, forever. That is a pathological mind. It is not capable of enjoying and it is not capable of forgiving others for enjoying.

Drop the word “perfection”, it is a dirty word, and it is one of the root causes of your misery. You can never be blissful with this attitude towards life. Then you are always bettering, then you are always improving. Your whole energy is lost in improving yourself, and the day never comes when you enjoy.

When can it come? How can it come? You can always imagine a better state of affairs. The horizon goes on receding. You go on approaching it, but you never arrive.

You cannot arrive; it is imaginary phenomenon, it is illusory. This is the first thing I would like you to understand.

The second thing: Imperfection is a fundamental law of life. Man is the only animal who is imperfect.

Dogs are not imperfect; each and every dog is a perfect dog. Cats are not imperfect, rocks are not imperfect, trees are not imperfect.

In this whole vast existence man is the only animal who is imperfect. And that is where his glory is – because in imperfection there is growth, in imperfection there is opening, there is evolution.

When you are perfect there is no where to go. Perfection will be suicide for humanity.

Just think, what will you do when you are perfect? In the first place it cannot happen; in second place, if it happens, what will you do then?

The perfectionist will be at a loss, utterly at a loss, because he knows only one way of life, and that is to go on improving.

Now there is no more to improve he will commit suicide.

Man’s glory is that he is the only animal who grows.

Out of his imperfection man has become a tremendous power.

The child of man is the most helpless child, and out of that helplessness great things have happened.

Man is born with very weak instincts. That’s why he becomes intelligent – he has to be intelligent, he has to substitute his weaker instincts with strong intelligence.

A dog need not do anything, a dog is perfect; he lives through his instincts, he never allows his intelligence to grow. What is the point? The instincts are doing far better, more perfectly, than intelligence will ever be able to do.

Intelligence is there because you are weak in your instincts.

Man has developed all kinds of technologies, science, because man is very weak.

Just watch: he cannot run like a wolf or a dog, he is not strong like a lion or a tiger, he is not swift like a deer.

Out of these imperfections he has done great things.

He has developed weapons because he is weak physically; he could not have survived without weapons. He is delicate, he is not strong.

Because he is not speedy he has developed speedy vehicles.

Because he is prone to illness and disease he has developed medicine.

Out of imperfection man blooms.

Because he does not know, he has developed philosophies and religions.

No dog has developed a philosophy or a religion. There is no need; the dog knows already, knows instinctively. The dog is not ignorant, so there is no need to know.

Man is ignorant, it hurts. He tries to know, he becomes curious, he explores, he becomes adventurous.

All animals are satisfied; only man in continuously in discontent. That’s his beauty.

Out of his discontent he grows, he finds new ways of growth.

Only man is anxious, anxiety ridden; hence he develops meditation techniques.

Just watch: whatsoever you have – in culture, in art, in philosophy – is out of your imperfections.

Don’t be bothered about perfection. Replace the word “perfection” by “totality”.

Don’t think in terms of having to be perfect, think in terms of having to be total.

Totality will give you a different dimension.

That’s my teaching: Be total, forget about being perfect.

Whatsoever you are doing, do it totally – not perfectly, but totally.

And what is the difference?

When you are angry a perfectionist would say, “This is not good; don’t be angry; a perfect man is never angry.”

This is just nonsense – because we know Jesus was angry. He was really angry against the traditional religion, against the priests, against the rabbis.

He was so angry that single-handedly he drove all the moneychangers from the temple, a whip in his hand. And he was shouting at the top of his voice, and they became frightened – his anger was so intense, passionate.

It is not just an accident that the people he was born into had to kill him.

He was really angry, he was in rebellion.

Remember, the perfectionist will say, “Don’t be angry.”

Then what will you do? You will repress your anger, you will swallow it, it will become a kind of slow poisoning in your being.

You may be able to repress it, but then you will become an angry person, and that is bad.

Anger as a flare-up once in a while has its own function, has its own beauty, has its own humanity.

A man who cannot be angry will not be able to love either – because both need passion, and it is same passion.

A man who cannot hate will not be able to love, they go together.

His love will be cold.

And remember, a warm hate is far better than a cold love.

At least it is human – it has intensity, it has life, it breathes.

And a man who has lost all passion will be dull, stale, dead and his whole life will be angry.

He will not express it, he will go on repressing.

Layer upon layer, anger will accumulate, he will be simply angry.

You can go and see your so-called mahatmas and saints: they are angry people.

They think they controlled their anger, but what can you do with a controlled anger?

You can only swallow it.

Where will it go?

It belongs to you, it is part of you, it will remain there unexpressed.

Whenever anger is expressed, you are released from it.

And after the anger you can again feel compassion; after the anger you can again feel compassion; after the anger and the storm are gone you can again feel the silence of love.

There is rhythm between hate and love, anger and compassion.

If you drop one thing, the other will disappear.

And the irony is that whatsoever you have dropped, you have only swallowed it.

It will become part of your system.

You will be simply angry for no reason at all; your anger will be irrational.

It will show in your eyes, in your sadness, in your sombreness, in your seriousness.

You will become incapable of celebration.

When I say replace perfection with totality, I mean when you are angry be totally angry.

Then just be anger, pure anger.

It has beauty.

And the world will be far better when we accept anger as part of humanity, as part of the play of polarities.

You cannot have East without having West and you cannot have night without having day and you cannot have summer without having winter.

We have to accept life in its totality.

There is certain rhythm, there is a polarity.

It is the stretched soul that makes music.

And souls are stretched by pull of opposites, opposites wants, tastes, yearnings, loyalties.

Where there is no polarity, where energies flow smoothly in one direction, there will be much doing but no music, much noise but no music.

The music is created by meeting of silence and sound, the music is created by the polar opposites.

Just look at life, if there are only men on earth there will be no more music, if there are only women on the earth there will be no music.

The music is between the polarities: man and woman, yin and yang, Shiva and Shakti.

Only the stretched souls can create music – stretched between polarities.

A man can be angry and totally angry will be able to be in love and totally in love.

And this too has to be understood, that it is a fact that you love a man and you hate the same man.

You love and hate the same man – who else?

When you have invested your love in somebody, naturally you have invested your hate too, because hate and love are two aspects of the same coin.

Lovers fight, they are intimate enemies.

And whenever the fight disappears between two lovers, love also disappears; it cannot exist without the fight.

There is an inner mechanism.

When you love a person you want to come close to him, you want a deep intimate relationship.

But after a deep experience of intimacy you want to separate too, you want to go far away.

You have feasted, now you would like to fast, otherwise there will be nausea.

You can love and you can be intimate only for a certain amount of time.

You cannot eat for twenty-four hours – you cannot love either.

If a person eats for twenty-four hours – you cannot love either.

If a person eats for twenty-four hours he is mad.

And he will not enjoy food – in fact he will enjoy vomiting more than food; out of necessity he will have to vomit.

It is said about Nero that he was so obsessed with food that he had four doctors following him wherever he would go.

And those four doctors’ duty was to make him vomit.

He would eat too much and doctors would make him vomit, and then he would eat too much again immediately.

To make it possible for him, so he could eat many times a day, the only way was to help him vomit.

Now, this is madness.

And how can you enjoy food when you are continuously vomiting?

It is nauseating, the very idea is nauseating.

And when you digest it will throw your whole system into a chaos.

It is the mind being destructive to the body.

When you eat, enjoy it totally.

But then there is a need for six to eight hours’ fast, only then does the hunger arise again.

The same is true for love.

When you love a person you come closer: you eat of him, he eats of you, you participate in each other’s being.

You come closer and closer and closer, to the point where no more closeness is possible.

Then reverse process sets in: you have to go away to come back again – you have to fast to feast again.

That is the inner mechanism of why lovers fight.

The fight is a way to go away from each other so that they can start feeling hungry for each other again; then they come back again.

Now drop the fighting, then you will be stuck.

Then you will never be able to come together again.

That’s what happens with husbands and wives: a moment comes, they become fed-up with fighting and they stop fighting, they become polite to each other.

They become very, very careful; they call it care, but it is not care, it is just an avoidance of ugly scenes.

But then they remain separate forever, then they keep a certain distance.

Then they never come close, because they have understood by experience that if you come close you will have to go away.

And the only way to go away is by fighting – otherwise how can you go away?

Loving is coming closer, fighting is going away.

It is hard to go away; you have to hate the person so that you can be away from the person, you can forget all about him and you can be alone.

Togetherness and aloneness, this is the polarity.

From the book Osho talks on Kabir – The Revolution