I’ll have what she is having

This is something very significant to understand, that man has no being like other animals. The dog has a certain being, the wolf has a certain being; a settled centre is there. The dog is born as a dog and will die as a dog. He will neither fall below it nor will he rise above it. His life is a certainty.

Man has no certain being, he has only a potential; hence both alternatives are open: he can fall below the animals, he can rise above the gods. He can become an Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Tamerlaine; he can become a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Lao Tzu.

Man is a ladder -- there are many possibilities in him; hence it is both a danger and a dignity, a glory and an agony. It is easier to fall; falling is always easier, no effort is needed for it. To rise needs effort. The higher you want to rise, the more effort is needed. If you want to reach the peaks of consciousness you will have to risk all.

One should not take one's being for granted because man has no being at all -- just a spectrum of possibilities, the whole spectrum. That is the beauty of man, and his misery too. He is the only anxious animal in existence, the only animal who feels anguish. This is the root cause of his anguish: he is always at a crossroads; he has to choose every moment to be or not to be, to be this or to be that. He is torn apart.

Sannyas is a decision, a commitment towards rising to the ultimate peaks.

Osho, The Golden Wind, A Darshan Dairy, Ch# 12

Some of you may remember Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ while eating in a restaurant and a middle-aged woman turns to the waiter and says, ‘I’ll have what she is having!’ Isn’t our spiritual community exactly like that? We listen to the supposedly enlightened gurus’ samadhi story, of how great it is to live in eternal peace, bliss and serenity, of how we should stop thinking, stop aspiring, and should be good and loving as well. Well, ‘I am having what she is having’ doesn’t cut it. Have a look at the menu and have that meal that satisfies your own tastebuds.


Some of us are honest enough to admit that we are miserable so we effectively asking, ‘Can I please have what she is having’ as we are hoping that they are showing us the Way. Some others of us are even worse off, in my humble opinion. They aren’t even willing to admit that they are conflicted and unhappy. By pretending to be serene, loving and peaceful—if it wasn’t for the hostile outside world that is—they suppress what the truly admire and rape their true nature in the process.

We all have a nature that we need to accept and embrace. This is our only chance to reach the heights that our spiritual giants tell us about. We want to be the lion lying next to the lamb, and if we can’t settle for the Lion we at least want to settle for the lamb. But who is willing to admit that deep down inside we are a wolf! Well, never mind what your perceived nature might be, let God show you how to use your nature in a spiritually purposeful way. All you have to do is to peek into the perceived dark corner of your soul. A gem is waiting for you, but you need to look in order to claim it.


‘Man is a ladder’, Osho says, and he is certainly right. We have a right to the ultimate experience, to climb right into God’s Kingdom. In order to do this though, we have to remove two masks, not just the ego mask that our spiritual community loves demolishing. We also have to dismantle our spiritual super-ego! Our spiritual literature is full of advice of how the ‘I’ is in the way of enjoying God’s Kingdom, but no one dares to point out the sad fact that we spiritual folks may also be full of it and perceive ourselves ‘holier than Thou’. It is way cooler to attack the horrible world outside world with all their greed, lust and scheming that just doesn’t get us.


So what shall we do to break free? It is quite simple in fact, follow the advice of the Bhagavad Gita and accept your nature as is. I have a rajastic nature. I love spicy food, I enjoy sex and I am a doer and thinker. The Bhagavad Gita puts us behind the serene folks, but we supposedly still rank above the lazy and illusional folks in the spiritual ranking. So what if the Bhagavad Gita makes a little fun of me, as it turns out, when I truly embrace my nature as a wolf, God shows me a way to take care of the pack so to speak, an attribute we wolves do really well. When we marry passion with purpose, our nature melts in the magnificence of the Now.


As it turns out, you don’t need to ask for what she is having. Look at the menu that is out there, great your tastebuds and have it your Way.