Osho on Ekido (Zen Master) – Only a Zen master beats his disciples

That’s how it is happening to everybody. When for the first time you fall in love, the girl is not of this world; she comes from somewhere else — she is an apsara, a nymph from heaven. But by and by, the more you become acquainted, the girl becomes more and more earthly, ordinary, homely. Suddenly you find there is nothing — this is just an ordinary girl — and then you think you have been deceived, that this girl has deceived you.

Nobody has deceived you. Your mind projected; your mind projected so that desire could move. Beauty doesn’t exist in things; beauty is a projection. Beauty is not objective; it is subjective. So one day somebody looks beautiful, another day the same person becomes ugly. It is you who projects, it is you who withdraws, the other works just as a screen.

Once you come to know that the mind projects beauty and ugliness, that the mind projects good and bad, you stop projecting. Then for the first time you come to know what objective reality is. It is neither good nor bad, it is neither beautiful nor ugly; it simply is. All your interpretations drop with the projections.

So this disciple at the moment of death was going to be alert and aware, and the mind did the last thing, its final resort — a beautiful girl appeared. The mind created beauty around her and awareness was lost. The mind became dim and desire arose; the soul was there no more. The disciple became the body.

That’s why all religions insist so much on transcending sex. Unless you transcend sex the mind will play the last trick, and it will be the winner, not you. But repression is not transcendence, It is escape. Move into desire with full awareness; try to be in the sex act but alert. By and by, you will see the emphasis changing: the energy will be moving more into alertness and less into the sex act. Now the thing has happened, the basic thing has happened. Sooner or later the whole sex energy becomes meditative energy, then you have transcended. Then, whether you stand in the market or sit in a forest, apsaras cannot come to you. They may be passing on the street but they will be there no more for you. If your mind is there absent apsaras become present; if your mind is not there present apsaras disappear.