Polarities of Life: The Power of Two

The Times of India (What's Hot) - 22 ^th August, 2008

Osho retells a Sumatran legend: “God created man and woman together, with joined bodies, so that each was a couple. But it became burdensome. If the husband wanted to go north, the wife was unwilling, so the bodies would have to be dragged together. Or vice versa! It was such a problem that God decided to divide them. But then they got lost in the wide world.” Sumatrans still believe that everyone has a partner somewhere, and that people are forever seeking him or her...

Osho narrates a Christian story: “Adam was very alone and very depressed. He asked God for a companion, so God created a woman. God asked Adam, ‘What will you call her?’ Adam was ecstatic to have someone to talk to, to love, to relate with! He said he’d call her ‘Eve’, ‘Eva’, ‘Havva’… ‘Why?’ asked God. Adam said, ‘Because that means life. She is my life. Without her, I was nearly dead.’”

When deeply in love, a woman becomes God for the man, and vice versa, though ultimately they are just two manifestations of one soul. They are soul mates. The flipside: Often, men and women meet and get go fascinated with each other that they think they have found their soul mates. Then they start living together and find that they are living with the wrong person! Such is the power of imagination that takes love to such peaks, only to throw it into abysmal valleys later!

There’s a polarity of peaks and valleys in relationships. We believe anything when we are in love and the absolute opposite when love disappears. Life manifests these two aspects of illusion and disillusionment.

In Secret of Secrets, Osho elaborates: “In ordinary life, you stay dual. And in the space of 24 hours, you change often from one pole to the other. Watch. You may be a man but, at times, you’re feminine, very vulnerable. You may be a woman but, at times, you’re masculine. When a woman is masculine, she’s very aggressive, more aggressive than any man, because her aggressiveness has been lying unused. Similarly, if a man is tender, he is much more so than a woman...”

Osho adds: “This inner polarity keeps you in a kind of conflict, without which you can’t exist. The One stays invisible, like God. To be visible, the One must split into two. To exist, one needs contrast. That’s why you can’t see stars in the day but you can in the night, when darkness provides a backdrop. The stars are there in the day too but there’s no contrast, no Other.”

- Swami Chaitanya Keerti