:: LAUGHTER ::

LOVE AND LAUGHTER: The exhilarating experience

Laughter has a tremendously spiritual value which has not been recognised down the ages. It is the natural built-in mechanism for relaxation. It relaxes you, and it relaxes you on all the levels of your being: body, mind, soul. When you are really laughing, the ego disappears, time stops, you are transported into another world; you are again a child, innocent.

Love, to be really liberating, has to have the quality of laughter in it. Once love becomes serious, it is a disease. Once love is no more fun, it is dangerous. Then it is like an octopus; it starts destroying the person you love. And when you destroy the person you love, naturally, out of sheer defence, the other starts destroying you. Lovers destroy each other, because they become too seriously involved in love, attached to it. They become possessive, they become jealous; then love is no more love. Love is love only when there is an undercurrent of laughter in it, when it is just a playfulness, when one is not serious about it.

If the quality of love and the quality of laughter join together, you have one of the most exhilarating experiences of life, the most relaxing experience of life. One relaxes into one's own being in those moments of love and laughter; one suddenly finds oneself centred, settled. That is enough if one can do it; then no other meditation is needed. In fact all other meditations only help you to attain love and laughter. If any meditation helps you to become unloving, beware of it. If any meditation helps you to become un-laughing, beware of it; it is something else, not meditation. It is some kind of pathology, it is some kind of neurosis.

So this is also a criterion to judge what meditation is worth going into. In fact, this should be the criterion of everything that you do: if it helps you grow into love and laughter it is good, it is virtuous; if it helps you to become more serious, less loving, then it is suicidal.

Wont you join the dance

# 13

Laughter Time with Osho.

1.

A WOMAN CALLED UP her husband at the office. "Charles," she said sternly, "when you came in last night you told me that you had been to the club with Mr. Brown, but I just met Mr. Brown and he said you had been at the Trocadero Tropical Paradise. Why did you lie, Charles!"

"I didn't lie, dear," explained the husband. "I was in no condition last night to pronounce Trocadero Tropical Paradise!"

2.

The Garda watched Mulligan desperately trying to open his front door as he swayed from side to side. "Here, Mulligan," he said, "can I help you with that key?"

"Nosh at all, guard, I can manage the key if you -- hic -- could hold the house steady!"

3.

The venerable old man was celebrating his one-hundredth birthday and was asked by a reporter, "To what do you attribute your advanced age and remarkable physical condition?"

"I will tell you," replied the centenarian. "When my wife and I were first married, the rabbi who performed the ceremony suggested that whenever I saw an argument coming I should take a walk around the block. I took the rabbi's advice and I want you to know that for seventy years the constant exercise did wonders for my health."

4.

"Just look at me!" declares old man Rubenstein. "I don't smoke, drink or chase women, and tomorrow I will celebrate my eightieth birthday."

"You will?" asked his son curiously. "How? You neither smoke, nor drink, nor chase women. How are you going to celebrate?"

5.

Mulla Nasrudin's wife was telling her kids, of which there were fifteen, "From this month, every month I am going to give an award to the most obedient child."

They all said, "This is unjust."

She said, "Why?"

They all said, "Papa will win the award."

6. Mulla Nasrudin lay on his deathbed for months, while flocks of relatives gathered like vultures waiting for the kill. At last the dear old man went to his peaceful reward and the lawyers announced the date of the reading of his will.

All the relatives assembled on the appointed day. The lawyer tore open the envelope, drew out a piece of paper and read:

"Being of sound mind, I spent every dime before I died."

7.

'I am leaving home!' shouted Mahamud to his father, Mulla Nasrudin. 'I want wine, women, adventures!' His old man got up out of his chair.

'Don't try to stop me!' shouted Mahamud at him.

'Who is trying to stop you?' exclaimed old Mulla. 'I am coming with you.'

8.

It was in the early barnstorming days of aviation, and the old fellow had finally worked up enough nerve to take a flight on a plane. When the rickety plane landed, the old fellow crawled out and said 'Sir, I want to thank you for both of those rides.'

'What are you talking about?' asked the pilot. 'You had only one ride.'

'No,' replied the passenger, 'I had two rides -- my first and my last.'

9.

Identical twins, dressed exactly the same, stopped in a bar for a drink. Mulla Nasrudin staggered past them, stopped to look at them in puzzlement, then ordered another drink.

Finally one of the twins laughed and said, "Don't let it upset you, old man; you are really not in such a bad shape. We are twins."

Nasrudin took another look and said, "ALL FOUR OF YOU?"

10.

When old Mulla Nasrudin was asked why he talked to himself, he replied: "IT IS BECAUSE IN THE FIRST PLACE, I LIKE TO TALK TO A SMART MAN, AND IN THE SECOND PLACE, BECAUSE I LIKE TO HEAR A SMART MAN TALK."