Being and Becoming

GROWTH NEEDS BOTH THE WINGS OF BEING AND BECOMING.

There are people who become too satisfied with their being. They lose growth. They become complacent... they lose tone. They simply become placid... no movement, no dynamism. They don't know what 'divine discontent' is. So remember this.

Then there are people who are too much engaged in becoming. They lose all consciousness of being. They become ambitious. They are always discontent. They don't know what divine content is.

Real growth is possible when you are divinely contented and divinely discontented together. You are happy, whatsoever you have got, you are grateful, whatsoever you have got, but you know much more is possible, and you go on praying for it. You are happy... you go on being thankful for it. Whatsoever has happened, has happened without your earning it. It is a gift, a grace, so one is never complaining. One is not saying, 'I don't have what I need.' And more is always available. One feels thankful. With the past one is completely satisfied. With the present one feels absolutely thankful and grateful... but one is not dead.

In this contentment and thankfulness, there is a prayer that much more is possible. Tomorrow is coming... the future is coming. One remains excited. This contentment does not make one dull, rather it makes one more alive, because one becomes more aware of many more possibilities. One remains throbbing. The centre remains contented, and the circumference remains throbbing and waiting for the guest to knock at the door, because more is possible.

This I call the meeting of being and becoming. At the same time, in the same moment, one is tremendously contented, and one is also tremendously discontented. This is the dynamism of life, the dialectics.

In the East, people became too much concerned with being. They lost becoming. The East became almost a dead world... nowhere to go, nothing to do, as if the past became all, future disappeared. 

The West has become too concerned with becoming. The past is meaningless... even the present is meaningless. Present is also just a passage for the future. Herenow doesn't exist. It has to be used as a means for some other end in the future. And when you reach the future, that will also become the present. Then again you hurry up.

Everybody is going. Nobody knows where they are going, for what they are going. Everybody has to become somebody. So the East became dead, and the West is becoming mad. Being alone makes one dead... becoming alone makes one mad. And there is a subtle balance between the two.

When you are neither dead nor mad, you are alive, tremendously happy, tremendously contented, and yet waiting for the unknown... always waiting, hopeful. Much is going to happen -- so much has already happened. And every time something has happened, it has opened another door. These two things have to be remembered.

And this I call the meeting of East and West -- the meeting of being and becoming.

OSHO.

Be Realistic: Curiously prepare for a Miracle