There are three hundred religions and they have all created fragments in the human mind; they have not been an integrating force, they have not healed the wounds of the human soul. Because of them humanity is ill, because of them humanity is insane — and the insanity comes out of one thing. That has to be understood as deeply as possible because you can also go in the wrong direction.
The wrong direction has a tremendous appeal, otherwise so many people would not have gone in it. The appeal must be great. The magnetic force of the wrong direction has to be understood, only then can you avoid it. You can try practising anything you like and you can remain opposite to it.
You can try practising anything you like and you can remain opposite to it. You can enforce a sort of stillness upon yourself: you can sit silently, you can learn a yoga posture, you can make the body still, as if it is without movement, you can make the body like a statue. And by repeating a mantra or by repressing the mind continuously for a long time, you can enforce a certain stillness upon your being — but it will be the silence of the cemetery, it will not be throbbing, alive, kicking. It will be a frozen thing.
You can deceive others but you cannot deceive yourself and you cannot deceive God. You have got it without any understanding; you forced it upon yourself; it is a practised silence.
The real silence arises out of the understanding: 'Why am I not silent? Why do I go on creating tensions for myself? Why do I go on getting into miserable patterns? Why do I support my hell?' One starts understanding the 'why' of one's hell — and by that very understanding, by and by, without any practising on your part, you start dropping those wrong attitudes that create misery. Not that you drop them, they simply start disappearing.
When understanding is there, things start changing around you. You will love but you will no longer be possessive. It is not love that creates trouble. If you ask your so-called saints, they say it is love that creates trouble. That is an absolutely false statement. It is based on a deep misunderstanding of the human love-life. It is not love that creates misery — love is one of the greatest blessings, a benediction.
It is possession that creates misery. Possess your beloved, your friend, your child, and you will be in misery. And when you are in misery those religious people are there waiting by the corner. They jump upon you. They say, 'We told you before. Never love, otherwise you will be in trouble. Drop out of all love situations, escape from the world.'
And of course it appeals because you are already seeing it happening to you. It is now your own experience that they are right — and yet they are not right and it is not your experience. You never analysed the phenomenon that has happened, you never analysed that it is not love that has tricked you into misery, it is possessiveness. Drop possessiveness, not love.
If you drop love, of course the misery will disappear, because by dropping love you will be dropping possessiveness also — that will be automatically dropped. The misery will disappear but you will never be happy. Go and see your saints. They will be a proof of what I am saying. They will never be happy.
They are not unhappy, that is true, but they are not happy either. So what is the point? If happiness does not arise by dropping unhappiness then some mistake has been committed. Otherwise it should be natural. You say, 'I have lighted the candle and the darkness is still there.' Either you are befooling yourself or you are dreaming, hallucinating, about the candle. Otherwise it is not possible — the candle is burning bright and the darkness is still there? No, the darkness is certain, absolute proof that the light has not entered yet.
When unhappiness drops, suddenly there is happiness. What is happiness? Absence of unhappiness is happiness. What is health? Absence of disease is health. When you are not unhappy then how can you avoid happiness? When you are not unhappy how can you manage not to be happy? It is impossible. It is not in the nature of things. It is against the arithmetic of life.
When a person is not unhappy suddenly all his sources are alive; a dance arises in his being; a joy rises in his being. A laughter bursts forth. He explodes. He becomes a Hasid, a Sufi. He becomes a presence of divine ecstasy. By seeing him you will see God — a glimpse, a ray of light. By visiting him you will be visiting a shrine, a sacred place, a TEERTHA. Just by being in his presence you will be suffused with a new light, a new being; a new wave will arise around you and you can ride on that tidal wave and go to that other shore.
Whenever there is really a dropping of unhappiness, happiness is left — nothing else is possible. One is simply happy without any reason, without any why.
But your saints are not happy, your saints are very sad; your saints are not living, your saints are dead. What has happened? What calamity? What curse? A mis-step. They thought that love had to be dropped and then there would be no misery. They dropped love — but the misery was not happening because of love, the misery was happening because of possessiveness.
Drop possessiveness! In fact, convert the energy which is involved in possessiveness into love-energy. But that cannot be done by enforcing anything — a clear vision is needed, a clarity.
So the first thing I would like to say to you is: spirituality is not the practising of any virtue, spirituality is the gaining of a new vision. Virtue follows that vision; it comes on its own accord. It is a natural by-product. When you start seeing, things start changing.
OSHO