Acknowledgement: Following is an excerpt from the discourse given by Osho on 23 January 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay.
Existence cannot be forced to go according to you; it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole cosmos around you will turn negative. It is just like a person who is trying to float upstream: then the stream is negative.
If you are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will feel that the river is fighting you, that the river is pushing you downwards. The river is trying to move you downstream, not upstream, so it will seem as if the river is fighting you. The river is completely unaware of you, blissfully unaware. And it is good; otherwise the river will have to go into a madhouse. The river is not fighting with you; you are fighting with the river. You are trying to float upstream.
I will tell you one anecdote... A great crowd gathered around Mulla Nasrudin’s house, and they said, “What are you doing? Your wife has fallen into the stream and the river is in a flood. Go immediately; otherwise the stream will take your wife to the sea.” The sea was just near. So Mulla came running to the bank, jumped into the stream, and started swimming upstream to find where his wife was. The crowd screamed, “What are you doing, Nasrudin? Your wife couldn’t have gone upstream. She has gone downstream.” Mulla said, “Do not disturb me. I know my wife very well. If anyone else had fallen into the stream, he would have gone downstream. Not my wife, however. She must have gone upstream. I know my wife well; I have lived with her for forty years.”
The mind is always trying to go upstream, to move upstream. Fighting with everything, you create a negative world around you. Obviously, this has to happen. The world is not against you, but because you are not with the world, you feel it is against you. Float downstream, and then the river will help you to float. Then your energy will not be needed. The river will become a boat, it will take you. You will not lose any energy by floating downstream, because once you float downstream you have accepted the river, the current, the flow, the direction – everything. Then you have become positive to it. When you are positive, the river is positive to you.
- Osho
