Beloved of My Heart

Talks given from 3/5/76 to 28/5/76

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

The Other is never Responsible

3 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin mother says she is having problems in her relationship: I find myself being very bitchy and nagging sometimes. I feel I’m just asking for a fight all the time.]

Mm mm, love always brings trouble – and it has to be faced. Love cannot be always smooth, and it is good that it is not always smooth, otherwise you would not grow.

Whenever there is a change, any sort of change, things will come into focus more clearly. When change disturbs you, all your inner disturbances are stirred. You are both feeling disturbed and both trying to throw the responsibility on the other. Just try to see it inside yourself. The other is never responsible. Remember that as a mantra: The other is never responsible....

Just watch it ... just watch it. If you become wise in the moment, there will be no problem. This is wisdom that you get later on. Everybody becomes wise when the moment is gone. Retrospective wisdom is worthless. When you are picking on something, at that very moment become aware, and let awareness function. Immediately you will drop it.

But when you have done everything and fought and nagged and bitched and then you become wise and see that there was no point in it, it is too late. It is meaningless – you have done the harm. This wisdom is just pseudo-wisdom. It gives you a feeling as if you have understood. That is a trick of the ego. This wisdom is not going to help. When you were doing the thing, at that very moment, simultaneously, the awareness should arise, and you should see that it is useless.

If you can see it when it is there, then you cannot do it. One can never go against one’s awareness, and if one goes against it, that awareness is not awareness. Something else is being mistaken for it.

So remember, the other is never responsible for anything. It is something boiling within you. And of course the one you love is closest to you. You cannot throw it on some stranger passing on the road, so the closest person becomes the place where you go on throwing and pouring your nonsense.

But that has to be avoided, because love is very fragile. If you do it too much, if you overdo it, love can disappear.

The other is never responsible. Try to make this such a permanent state of awareness in you that whenever you start finding something wrong with the other, remember it. Catch yourself redhanded, and drop it then and there. And ask to be forgiven.

And the second thing. Don’t think that love is eternal. It is very fragile. It is as fragile as a rose flower. In the morning it is there – by the evening it is gone. Any small thing can destroy it. In fact the higher a thing, the more fragile it is. It has to be protected. A rock will remain there but the flower will be gone. If you throw a rock against the flower, the rock is not going to be hurt, but the flower will be destroyed.

Love is very fragile and very delicate. One has to be very very careful and cautious about it. You can do such harm that the other becomes closed, becomes defensive. That’s how one becomes closed.

If you are fighting too much he will start escaping you; he will start becoming more and more cold, more and more closed, so he is no more vulnerable to your attack. Then you will attack him more because you will resist that coldness. This can become a vicious circle. And that’s how lovers fall apart by and by. They drift away from each other, and they think that the other was responsible, that the other betrayed them.

In fact as I see it, no lover has ever betrayed anybody. It is only ignorance that kills love – nobody betrays it. Both wanted to be together, but somehow both were ignorant. Their ignorance played tricks upon them and became multiplied. By and by they drifted. Then they think that love is dangerous.

Love is not dangerous. Only unawareness is dangerous.

There are many people who avoid love just to be on safe ground. There are people who don’t want to get committed in any relationship because they know that once you are committed and you come close, fighting starts, resistance starts, and ugly things bubble up, so what is the point? At the most they are interested in sexual relationships, but not in intimacy. And unless a relationship is intimate and deep, you will never know what relationship is. Just a sexual relationship is a peripheral thing, and you will never be contented by it.

These things are natural. One has to accept them and by and by transcend them. If you feel too much anger, move into your room, beat the pillow, cry, weep, scream, but do it alone. Why show your ugly face to the other? What is the point? Just cathart.

A wise person moves through his unhappiness alone, and whenever he is happy, comes and shares it with people. A fool shares his unhappiness with people, and when he is happy he sits alone.

[Another sannyasin said she too was having difficulties in her relationship. Her boyfriend felt less and less like making love and this made her upset and frustrated, and she then became aggressive towards him. She said they were also at variance over how they used their money, as she wanted to be thrifty so they could stay in Poona longer, while he spent money easily and seemingly with no thought for the future.]

First thing: a moment always comes in life when one of the partners will not feel like having sex.

It happens to every couple more or less. When the other person does not want to have sex, the other clings to it more than ever. The other starts feeling that if there is no sex, the relationship will disappear.

The more you ask for it, the more afraid he will feel. The relationship will disappear – not because sex has disappeared, but because you go on demanding and he feels nagged continuously and he does not feel like making love. He can either force himself and then he will feel bad, or if he goes his own way, he feels bad that he is making you unhappy; he feels guilty.

One thing has to be understood – that sex has nothing to do with love. At the most it is a beginning.

Love is greater than sex, higher than sex. Love can flower without sex.

[She answers: But he’ll never say he loves me.]

No, you are making him afraid, because if he says that he loves you, you are ready there asking for sex. In your mind, love is almost synonymous with sex, that I can see. That’s why he has become even afraid to touch and hug you. If he hugs you, touches you, you are ready.

You are making him afraid and you are not seeing the point. You are pushing him away unknowingly.

He will become afraid to even talk to you because he talks and again the situation comes up and argument and this and that. You cannot argue about love. You cannot convince anybody about love.

If he doesn’t feel it, he doesn’t.

He loves you, otherwise he would leave you. And you love him but you have a wrong understanding about sex. My understanding is this, that love starts growing for the first time when the hectic feverish sex has gone, has by and by slowed down. Then love becomes more and more settled, finer, superior. Something delicate starts happening. But you are not allowing it to happen. He is ready to love you but you are clinging to sex. You go on pulling him down. That pulling him down may destroy the whole relationship.

I can understand, because the feminine mind always clings to sex only when the man is not interested. If the man is interested, the woman is completely uninterested. I see this every day. If the man is after you, you play the game that you are uninterested. When the man is not interested, you become afraid, and then the whole role changes. Then you start playing the game that you need it, that without it you will go crazy; that you cannot live without it. All that is just nonsense! Nobody has ever gone mad without it!

If you love the person, your energy will be transformed. If you don’t love the person, then drop out. If you love the person, the energy has a chance now to transform to a higher reality. Use that opportunity. And nagging is not going to help. It will make everything more ugly and it will do just the opposite of what you want. Money is not important... and it may be just a trick to control.

[Osho said that they could either be here for longer, both in conflict, unhappy, or stay a shorter time more happily.]

Just see the point. It is a question of quality, not of quantity. How many days you are here is irrelevant. You may be here for only one day, but if you are really with me and happy and celebrating, that’s enough. That will change your whole life.

And this is how things go. If you are too miserly, he will spend too much because that will become just an act of being free. He will show you that you cannot control him. If you don’t control him, he himself may understand that he is unnecessarily wasting money. But let him see!

Women are very money-minded; more interested in the material part of life, and they miss many things. That’s why you don’t see great women poets, great women painters, great women saints.

They are more interested in ordinary things. Anything that has a qualitative dimension seems meaningless to them. Money will be more meaningful than music. They miss much. They think that they are very practical; they are not. This is the most absurd practicality there is – to lose quality for quantity.

Tell him that whatsoever he feels like, to do, and that you can be here for as many days as possible, but let these days be beautiful. Sometimes even a single moment can be such a transformation.

There are many people who choose quantity, who would like to live a hundred years, never thinking whether their life has anything to live for, whether anything is coming out of their life, flowering. Just living for a hundred years is meaningless....

[Osho recounted an incident in Emerson’s life when, at the age of sixty, he was asked his age by one of his peers.

Emerson replied that he was three hundred and sixty; The man repeated his question, thinking Emerson must have misheard him. Emerson said that, like the questioner, he was sixty, but he had lived three hundred and sixty years in those sixty years. He was saying that he had lived a qualitative life.]

It is possible to live three hundred years in three seconds, because when you move in the qualitative dimension, the dimension of quality, intensity is the only value.

Be here for one month – but be fully here. And always remember, I am not talking philosophy. I am very pragmatic.

Whatsoever I am saying are very practical things. Mm? Just try to see it. Good !

[Another sannyasin says: Very often when I am going to sleep, just before I become unconscious, my body jerks and my heart seems to beat very fast, and there is a feeling of fear.]

Is there any disturbance in sleep? You feel perfectly well when you get up?

[The sannyasin answers: Yes, sleep is good.]

Then don’t be worried. It has something to do with your meditations. Allow it and don’t hold it. If a jerk comes, allow it.

It is just a change of gear inside the energy. It happens to everybody when you move from wakefulness into sleep, but you have become aware of it, that’s all. It is a good sign, a good sign of awareness of something very subtle. It is just like changing gears in a car.

Whenever you go from wakefulness to sleep, or from sleep to wakefulness, that change happens.

Whenever you go from dreaming to a non-dreaming sleep, again the gear changes. By and by, if you become really perceptive and aware, you will feel that whenever a mood changes, a subtle gear inside you changes. There is a small click – it can almost be heard.

You are angry and then anger goes. Your whole mechanism has to change because for anger the whole mechanism goes into a different type of working. It gets ready for being angry. The mechanism prepares either for fight or fight. When the anger goes, again the mechanism relaxes to the normal state of affairs and the gear changes. It changes with every emotion. From waking to sleep, one becomes aware more easily. Then you become aware of the second – moving from sleep into waking.

It is more difficult than the first because you are asleep. You cannot feel the jerk so easily unless you become a little aware in your sleep. Then you will feel the third gear that changes in moving between dreams and no-dreams, and then the fourth which changes when moving from no-dream to dream. And so on and so forth.

You will become aware that anger, love, hatred, jealousy, all have a small mechanism inside you, and that whenever one of them functions, the body manages in a different way. An angry person is a totally different person.

It is as if the country is at war. The whole shape of the country changes. The army becomes more important. Democratic freedom becomes meaningless and the country goes dictatorial. Luxuries are no more important. Life is geared for war.

When the war goes, the military subsides into the background. Things bubble up and come to the surface – life again starts singing and enjoying. Now life is geared to peace.

The same happens in the body continuously. And that’s why people who move from one emotion to another too much, have too much wear and tear. Their inner mechanism is almost always in bad shape. A person who remains silently in one climate has a different harmony.

But it is good that you have become aware.

[Another sannyasin says: I feel like I’ve been ripped open with a knife. I have a sensitivity for everything around me and my world just seems blown apart.]

Mm mm... the more one makes a world, the more one creates problems around it. Then there is always the fear of its getting blown. So don’t make a world. One should start living without a world.

One moment is enough. Live it, and then the next moment comes. But we dream, project, and create an illusory world, then again and again it comes up against reality. Reality is not going to be shattered by your dreams. The dreams will shatter.

So learn a lesson – don’t project worlds. They create frustrations and misery and anguish. Just live this moment, that’s all. Then wait, and when the next moment comes we will see. One has to learn how to live in danger and insecurity – then it never comes, because there is no world to be blown.

Otherwise the balloon is going to burst. The mind has a tendency to go on giving more and more air to the balloon so it goes on getting bigger and bigger and bigger; until one day it bursts.

One has to come to understand that life is insecure and there is no way to make it .secure, no way at all. If you ask for the impossible, you ask for trouble. Some people get into love and then they start thinking of marriage and children, and they create the whole problem. If I say to them not to get married, not to have children, they think ’Why are you saying this? We want to!’ You want to –

and then you get into trouble.

[Osho went on to say that the relationship between this sannyasin and her husband had not been going well for some time but they had avoided facing up to that. He suggested they sit down together and sort things out; should find out whether they still loved each other or not. If love was not there then nothing could be solved. Once love was there everything could be solved. Otherwise, [your husband] could solve one problem and she would create another and the basic problem would remain untouched.]

And don’t be worried – I am here. If you don’t bring problems, what am I going to do? When you bring problems you make me very happy (laughter).

[A sannyasin who is a theoretical physicist, says: My mind feels very slow and dull, and my thoughts feel as if they ’re moving through treacle. It feels rather strange.]

It is strange but it is very good. Everything has to slow down, and there comes a moment when everything stops, even time stops. Suddenly you are in an eternal now... nothing moves.

It is very strange. Even a slowing down of the process is very strange. One becomes afraid because one has always lived in such a hurry; so many thoughts and desires and ambitions, running and chasing this and that. It is as if somebody is mad and suddenly becomes sane. Everything will slow down because a madman is moving fast. His mind goes on at jet speed. He is almost a whirl-wind.

But this is good. That is the whole taoist attitude about life – to slow down, to become a dullard.

[The sannyasin adds: At night I’ve been dreaming a lot, and in my dreams I’m very fast.]

Let it be so. That may just be a catharsis. You have slowed down a little in the day, so somewhere the mind has to take revenge. Somewhere it will; it is good. Dreams will also disappear. And it may not be exactly as you are reporting. It may just be that you have become a little alert in your sleep so you remember more about dreams.

Everybody dreams. There are almost eight cycles of dreaming in one night. One goes on revolving in a wheel. There is almost twenty minutes of dreaming, then a twenty-minute or forty-minute gap, and then again twenty minutes of dreaming. Many people will say in the morning that they have not dreamt at all. They all dream. The only thing is that they are not at all alert, not even slightly alert, and they cannot remember.

When they do remember, they remember the last dream that they had just before waking – and that too, they never remember rightly. You remember only the tail part because that is what is there when you wake. The whole elephant is gone, and only the tail remains. You have to go backwards if you want to find the elephant.

Even then many things are missed and the mind starts adding things, and interpreting whatsoever was in your dreams. You add many things because the mind is such that it cannot allow any gaps.

[Osho concluded by talking about how the different interpretations of dreams change according to the influences in one’s life. For example, freudian patients, people undergoing freudian analysis, will have freudian dreams, while jungian patients will have jungian dreams.

Because the mind is coloured by the different schools of thought, it interprets the dreams accordingly.

Hence, if one dreams of a large, rounded, pillar-shaped object, a freudian will interpret it as a phallus, while the jung-oriented mind will interpret it as a shivalinga and give it religious connotations.

CHAPTER 2

Let Love be your Life-style

4 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is returning to the West says: I’m really scared about going back. I wanted to ask you if you’d help me when I’m back there.]

The fear comes to many people because you go back into a world to which you have always belonged and now you don’t belong to it anymore. So you are going to a foreign country, as a stranger, to people who think that they know you. Now you know that they don’t, but they will take it for granted that they know you. They will go on making contacts with your past, not with you. They will expect you to behave the way they think you should have behave, and you cannot behave that way. This whole situation creates a fear.

Fear is always felt at the stomach or at the throat. If it is felt at the stomach it has a certain quality.

If it is felt at the throat, it has a totally different quality. The fear that is felt at the throat is the fear of communication. It will be difficult for you now to communicate with people. When the fear is felt at the stomach it is fear of death.

If you go deep in meditation, the fear of death arises and that is felt just below the navel centre, at the hara, the death centre. If you are going to communicate, the fear will be felt at the throat because the throat is the centre of expression, communication, relating. When fear arises in relationship to love, it is at the throat, because the child receives love for the first time from the mother through the throat centre. That is his first contact with the world. Mother’s breast is his first contact, first relationship, and that is through the throat centre. That’s why Freudians call small children ’oral’. That is the oral state of their mind. Whenever you are getting something or giving something, it passes through the throat centre.

So I can understand... the fear is natural. Don’t try to avoid it and don’t try to suppress it. Don’t try to forget it, otherwise it will be difficult to get over it. Accept it – it is natural. It is absolutely natural going back to old friends and not being the old person at all. Your friends will be very much in confusion about how to relate to you, because we get accustomed to a certain pattern.

Whenever a person starts meditating, his world of relationships has to be changed. One person changes, then all his relationships – with the wife, children, friends, even enemies – have to change.

He comes to a shattering. He enters into the world again with a new identity.

When you are here as a sannyasin it is one thing. You can relate with people. You live in a commune of souls who are following the same path, moving in the same direction, living in the same vibe. But when you go back, the fear will come. It is good in a way.

Once you are back, the fear will be there for not more than a week. So don’t hide. In that one week meet all the friends and persons to whom you have related in the past, and don’t try to pretend to be the old self. Within a week it will disappear because you will be able to relate better than ever.

You can become a coward and try to hide. For example, you can go there and change your dress, and when you go to see a person you don’t wear orange or you hide your mala. Then you will try to pretend you are the old person and that there is no need for anyone to relate to you in a new way.

Don’t do that.

Never allow fear to dictate your life-style – never. Howsoever difficult it may be, never allow it to dictate your life-style. Only love should be allowed to dictate your life-style, nothing else. Everything else is irrelevant.

Just go. For seven days you will be in a trouble; but move as a sannyasin, phone people, contact them, and tell them that the old person is dead and you are completely new, reborn. Tell them that now it may be a problem to relate to you because you are absolutely new.

If you can stick to that for only seven days, people start relating to you. In fact they will be happy: a new friend, a new relationship arises. Something fresh enters into their life also, through you. A new window opens, a new breeze enters into the room.

I am going to be with you... don’t be worried. Whenever you feel any fear arising in the throat, take the locket in your hand and remember me.

Start working there as a vehicle for me. It will be very very much easier for you to work and your work will become very skillful. It will have a great depth to it. Allow me. Just be empty – as if you don’t know who you are and you don’t know what you are going to do, how you are going to reply; how you are going to respond in a situation. Simply wait for the situation to arise and let me respond through you. If you allow me, within three weeks you will be able to feel an absolute contact. Then you become a link. If you fail, I fail. If you succeed, I succeed. It is nothing to do with you. You can laugh about it. Whether you succeed or fail, it has nothing to do with you; then your whole functioning will be different.

Just today I was reading about a zen master, Tozan – a very famous zen master. The story says that the gods wanted to see him, but they couldn’t because he was just an emptiness. They would enter into him from this side and that, they would pass through him, but he was nowhere to be found. He was a nowhere-ness, a nothingness... so empty of himself that they could not see him. They were very curious to see a man who had become empty, so they played a trick.

They went to the kitchen as Tozan was coming from his morning walk and took a few handfuls of rice and wheat and threw it on his path. In a zen monastery that is almost a sin because it is very disrespectful to rice and wheat. Everything should be respected because everything is divine. It has nothing to do with ordinary economics, nothing to do with a gandhian ideology – because that type of ideology is nothing but rationalised miserliness. This had nothing to do with that. It is a respect for everything. Everything that exists and has existed, is divine and should be respected.

So in a zen monastery nothing is wasted; one should be careful, and alert. They played this trick and threw on his path a few hand-fuls of rice and wheat. When Tozan came he could not believe it

– that any disciple could do that. Who could do it? Who could be so careless and disrespectful?

This idea arose in him, and suddenly a self was there and the gods could see him. The emptiness was no more empty. Suddenly an idea had crystallised; an attitude, a mind had come. For a moment a cloud appeared in the blue sky and the gods could see this man, Tozan. Then the cloud disappeared because the idea disappeared. I like the story very much.

Whenever there is an idea, you are, and then a cloud arises. And there is not only one cloud. There are so many ideas in you, millions of clouds which continuously haunt you, covering you in layers and layers of cloud. Your inner sky is completely hidden. You can’t even have a glimpse of it.

Even a small idea like ’Who has been so careless?’ – it was nothing special, nothing much to worry about. It was just a curious ’Who has been so careless?’ but it was enough! If you see the morning sun and you say ’How beautiful’ – enough! It is just a small fragment but it creates an inner pressure in you, and that’s why you immediately want to say to somebody ’Look, how beautiful the morning is!’

That is a release. The pressure has been inside and when you talk it is catharted; you release it.

You feel good, you have said it. If you cannot find anybody, it will haunt you more. If you can write a letter, then you are finished with it. Our mind is continuously overflooded with ideas, emotions, sentiments.

By and by relax, be empty. Just go as an emptiness. Don’t try to protect yourself in any way because that will make you closed. Fear is there – accept it. Relax and let it be there. Remain with it. Don’t try to do anything against it because whatsoever you do out of fear will create more fear. Just accept it. What can you do?

[Just as Osho uttered the last words, a cuckoo, quietly calling out to a friend, suddenly broke into loud song, filling the stillness of the evening.]

The cuckoo is going crazy – what can you do? Just like that!

If the throat is feeling fear, okay; accept and relax. And I am coming with you.

[Osho tells a newly arrived sannyasin to take part in the forthcoming meditation camp, adding... ]

Even if you feel a little tired, don’t be worried. This is just to see which meditation can go to the deepest layers of your being. Once it is known, everything can be very easily disciplined.

Once a meditation that penetrates you very deeply is known, other meditations can be found which can be a help to it. Otherwise sometimes it is possible that you can choose two things which are antagonistic to each other. You may feel good with both because the mind is very dualistic, very divided. But if you do two contradictory things together, it can never reach to the core of your being.

You will always be in a certain conflict and your energy will be moving against itself. The whole energy has to become one flow.

I would suggest that you continue Yoga. If you feel it is tiring to do it every day, then let it be every alternate day or twice a week, but let it be fixed. If you just do it when you feel like it, it will be just an exercise to relax the body, but it will not go very deep. If it is possible, let it be alternate days. But fix a time, and on those days, whether you feel like it or not, it has to be done so that it becomes an inbuilt programme in the body.

There is no need to do many yoga asanas; just two, three or four. Whatsoever makes you feel good, you can choose.

[Another sannyasin says: I’m going back to the West and I’m afraid of not accepting you there. Even here I don’t understand fully... I want to keep flowering when I leave here.]

Your problem is deeper. It is not only of fear. It is more of doubt, more of non-trust.

Fear arises when you have trust – then you are afraid of the situation back home and how you are going to face it. You are not afraid of the situation back home – you are afraid of your own doubting mind. [The previous sannyasin’s] problem is totally different. She has total trust. Her problem is not of doubt or anything. She is afraid of how to face the world and the old situation there.

You are not afraid of that. You are afraid of yourself.

This has to be understood: you cannot trust me if you don’t trust yourself. The doubt is not against me. The doubt is against yourself. You don’t love yourself... you don’t trust yourself. Whatsoever you do, a basic mistrust continues to be there. Because you cannot trust yourself, how can you trust your trust? Impossible. If you don’t love yourself, how can you love somebody? The basic thing is lacking somewhere.

But if you are aware, much can be done. Doubt enters in the mind only when you are in a sort of a slumber, sleep. Doubt enters only when there is a darkness inside. They have an affinity – darkness and doubt. If there is a little light inside, doubt is not, and cannot enter there.

So it is good that you are feeling a little alertness that you may betray yourself. So do one thing

– decide something. Decision helps, because once you have decided something and the doubt comes, you have somewhere to stand upon. If you don’t have any decision and doubt comes, it takes you over; you don’t have any shelter. It is just like it is raining and you have a small hut. You can go inside. Let it rain – you remain untouched.

So make a decision that for six months, whatsoever happens, you will continue at least one meditation, you will wear orange. Whatsoever happens, whatsoever doubts come, for six months you are not going to listen to the doubts. Let them come – you will stick to your decision. If you can do that you will come out of these six months in a totally different way. Your quality will be more stabilised, crystallised.

Sometimes very small decisions help, very small decisions. The whole thing is just to carry them, because they give you an integration. If you don’t carry them, they are very dangerous because they will create more unconfidence.

That’s why I insist for a certain dress, a mala. It has nothing to do with spirituality. It has something to do with you as you are. It is just something for you so you can remain in a continuity. Moving in ochre in the West will create trouble. People will look at you. You will look strange, odd, and that will make you alert and aware. You can use that situation.

You will not be lost in the mob, and when people become alert about you, you also become alert.

Immediately something inside you clicks. People are looking at you – you walk differently, you sit differently. You become more attentive because people are watching you.

So these six months will be hard, but once you can pass through them you will become completely transformed. ,If you cannot make a decision, then it is better that you leave sannyas. Make that decision. You understand me? Because if you go back and then you leave sannyas, that will be very shattering to your centring – very much shattering.

If you go back and your doubt possesses you and you leave sannyas, you don’t meditate, and you don’t use orange, that will be more shattering, more destructive, because then you will lose all confidence that you may have in yourself. It is better that you go as a non-sannyasin so that you don’t carry anything fragile which can be broken. If you are carrying it and it is fragile, and you are going into a very contrary world, then be alert. If you can carry it for only six months, you will come out of it very new, with clarity and trust.

[Another sannyasin says: I feel very shaky in the knees and the tummy and the throat and my hands.

I fall asleep during the lectures, and I feel tired – like I’m being shattered.]

So get shattered! Why are you resisting? Why are you creating any trouble? Just get shattered and be finished with it. Once you are shattered there is no problem – no tightness, no shakiness. If you resist, it continues. There is no need to resist. Just allow it and let it be settled. You just have a good laugh, that’s all.

The problem arises because we go on doing contrary things.

My whole effort is to shatter you. And your whole effort is to protect yourself. Then shakiness arises and you feel a trembling inside and everything feels disturbed. You want one thing and I am trying to do something else. I am trying to destructure you so your old armour is no more there. I am trying to break the shell so you can come out of your egg – and you are trying to protect it. So of course you feel shaky and troubled and tired and tight.

Either tell me that I should stop... then I will not try any shattering; I will leave you untouched and then you will be okay ... or listen to me and get shattered. Cooperate with me and be finished with it. Mm? What shall I do, tell me.

[She answers: keep going!]

Good, good... And in the lecture you can fall asleep. Enjoy it; there is nothing wrong in sleep.

And don’t say that in lecture time you fall asleep. Rather say that you listen to my lectures while asleep! (a chuckle) That is better and more positive. There is nothing wrong in it. Sleep is good.

There also you must be resisting – trying not to fall asleep. Many people fall asleep... Don’t create a problem about it; enjoy it.

Whatsoever is important will be heard by you even in your sleep. You may not remember it but it will become part of your being and when the time arises, it will be there, available. So from tomorrow, you simply relax. Don’t fight the tendency to go to sleep.

And I see everything is going well – that’s why you are feeling shaky!

[Osho gives a name for a new centre.]

Pallas.

It is an indian flower, a very beautiful flower, a red flower. It grows in the forest, a wild flower. It grows as a big forest... the whole forest of pallas, and when it flowers, you cannot see anything – just red flowers all over the forest... almost as if the forest is on fire because all leaves disappear and there are only flowers and flowers. And that’s what I am creating – an orange flame....

CHAPTER 3

Life is in Movement

5 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Dervish means a sufi mystic, a sufi seeker, and anand means bliss – a blissful seeker.

Sufism is a mohammedan path...

It is just like Zen. Zen is the essence of Buddhism and Sufism is the essence of Mohammedanism, Islam, just as Yoga is the very essence of Hinduism. Only the names are different, but if you try to understand them, they are all one: Sufism, Yoga, Zen. The essential thing is one but their terminology is different.

Sufism has a mohammedan terminology, a very beautiful terminology.

[A sannyasin says: I ’m still getting migraine and I feel it must be something very deep. I don’t go into it as much – I keep on working and it often dissolves. But often I long for night-time to just go into oblivion.]

No, it is nothing deep. Even the head is not very deep, so how can a headache be? You have just got into the habit of it. It is really no more a disease but just a learned habit.

It can happen that a real disease may disappear and it will leave just a trace. The mind takes the cue from that trace and starts imagining it again and again and again. But as far as you and your misery is concerned, it is the same; whether it is real or unreal makes no difference. Just by saying it is unreal or mental does not help at all because you suffer almost in the same way. I see it is just a learned pattern.

So you have to unlearn it. Migraine is more or less always a habit. You have much energy. That’s why when you are using it, the headache disappears. When you are not using it the energy accumulates and moves into the channel and again the headache is there. So if you are really into the work deeply, the headache may dissolve into it because it will not be getting energy.

Forget all about it. Paying attention to it is bad; even thinking about it is bad. If it happens, it is okay.

Just say, ’Hello, how are you?’ and forget all about it. Put your energy more and more into work. You have a tremendous amount of energy, an extraordinary amount of energy. You are not a low energy person; you are a high energy person.

All the energy has to be used creatively, otherwise it will give you trouble. Even energy, something so valuable as energy, can become a curse if you don’t use it. So simply use it. Move into work more and more and let work be your meditation. Don’t pay much attention to the migraine, and suddenly one day you will recognise that for many days it has not happened. But then don’t worry about that!

It may be concerned with your sex because it is concerned with energy. Anything concerned with energy is also concerned with sex. Migraine has its origin somewhere in sex energy. The energy arises too much at the sex centre and you don’t know what to do with it, so it takes its roots wheresoever it can. Now, up to your third eye centre the energy is moving in a haphazard way; that’s why you get the migraine. If the same energy moves in a right channel, you will start having many yogic experiences, because it is the same energy and at the same place where migraine starts. It is the same place where people start having tremendously beautiful experiences of light, colours, smells. But your energy is moving in a zig-zag way.

Once your migraine has disappeared for a few days I will give you a method to move that energy into a right channel. Right now if you try to move it, it will move into the old channel again, because the old channel has become very very deep. Whenever you try to move the energy, it will move in the old channel and will give you a headache. For a few days those channels have to be stopped completely.

So just be indifferent. Put your energy somewhere else so that the energy moves into the work and the level of energy falls below so it doesn’t reach the head. Because this energy is moving so fast and reaches your head so easily, it may prove a blessing later on. When the right channel has been broken, you may be very easily able to bring the energy up. So don’t be worried about it.

[The encounter group is attending darshan. One participant says: I got angry and hit the wall. When I found energy did move, it really amazed me. I mean, how can all energy be stopped by fear?]

Fear can stop energy because basically fear is nothing but a shrinking. When you are happy you expand, when you are unafraid you expand. When you are afraid you shrink, you hide in your shell, because if you go out there may be some danger. You shrink in every way – in love, in relationships, in meditation, in every way. You are afraid to go out. You become a turtle and you shrink inside.

Because of that shrinking, fear stops all movement of energy, and if you remain in fear continuously, as many people live, constantly in fear, by and by the elasticity of energy is lost. Then you become a stagnant pool. You are no more flowing, no more a river. Then one feels more and more dead, more and more dead every day.

Life is in contact. Life is in flow... Life is in movement. To be stagnant is to commit suicide. It is just as if you bring your hand near a flame. The moment you feel it is hot, your hand shrinks back. But this is good... this is a natural protection.

One should use fear when needed. When the house is on fire you have to escape. You don’t try being unafraid there or you will be a fool. Fear has a natural use. One should remain capable of shrinking also because there are moments when one needs to stop the flow. But those moments should not become one’s habitual pattern. One should not start living in that way continuously. One should be able to go out, to come in, to go out, to come in. This is the flexibility: expansion, shrinking, expansion, shrinking. It is just like breathing. You breathe out, the chest falls down, the lungs shrink.

You breathe in, the lungs expand.

People who are very much afraid don’t breathe deeply, because even that expansion gives fear.

They start breathing very shallowly. Their chest will shrink; they will have a sunken chest.

So that’s right. Try to find out ways to make your energy move. Even sometimes anger is good. At least it makes your energy move. If you have to choose between fear and anger, choose anger. At least it will make you more dynamic, more alive. At least you will have some sort of contact with somebody. You may have a good fight with somebody but at least it is some sort of contact. You will not be frozen, you will have some warmth.

So always remember that... but don’t go to the other extreme. Expansion is good but you should not become addicted to it. It should not become again a sort of incapacity so that you cannot shrink.

The real thing to remember is flexibility: the capacity to move from one end to another, from one extreme to another. A man is young in proportion to his flexibility. Watch a small child. He’s so soft, tender and flexible. As you grow old everything becomes tight, hard, inflexible. That is the old age.

Remember, a man can remain absolutely young to the very moment of death if he remains flexible.

That will give you a depth of life, a qualitative life.

[Another participant says: This was the first time I’ve ever done any sort of group with anybody anywhere and it really frightened me. I get so tight that I can’t let go. I become tight here (indicating her belly) and when I’m really under pressure I feel sick.]

Your training in Yoga is the cause of it. That’s what I mean when I say that Yoga is not enough. It makes you very controlled, and every sort of control is a sort of repression. So you repress and then you forget all about the repression. It moves into the stomach, and near the diaphragm all those repressed things collect. The stomach is the only space where you can go on throwing things; nowhere else is there any space. The english expression is good when people say ’I cannot stomach it’. That is exactly the right expression.

You need many more groups to help you explode. The day your control explodes, you will feel so free, so alive. You will feel reborn, because it will connect your divided body. The diaphragm is the place where the body is divided; the upper and lower. In all the old religious teachings, the lower is condemned and the upper seems to be really something high, something superior, something holier. It is nothing. The body is one and this bifurcation is dangerous; it makes you split. By and by you deny many things in life. Whatsoever you exclude from your life will take its revenge some day.

It will come as a disease.

Now medical researchers say that cancer is nothing but too much stress inside. If you continue holding this, it can give you a certain type of deep stress there. It can become dangerous.

Cancer exists only in very very repressed societies, otherwise not. The more civilised a society, the more cancer is possible. The more people are cultivated, cultured, the more cancer is possible. It cannot exist in a primitive society, because in a primitive society the whole body is accepted. There is no condemnation. Nothing is lower and nothing is higher. Everything simply is.

It will be a little difficult for you because it will go against your whole training up to now, but once it is released you will become for the first time a real yogi. Then you can discipline yourself without repressing. If you can discipline yourself without repression, you will have a totally different type of being .. . a grace, an inner freedom. It will not be in any way an effort to continuously keep something down. There will be no effort involved. The whole stress will disappear and you will be flowing and flowering.

[Another group-member says: I found that I enjoy fighting very much.

The group-leader feels as though she plays a role rather than being the way she is.]

Play, but play knowingly....

Play your games, whatsoever they are; don’t repress. If the idea comes, play the game. Play it as perfectly as possible, but fully alert. You are a dramatic personality so enjoy it, and others will also enjoy it.

If you feel like being a child, then be a child and do things a child is expected to do. But be alert that this is a game you are playing and don’t bring in any top-dog to stop it. Don’t say, ’lt is bad and I should not be playing.’ Don’t bring any should into it. Just enjoy it as a pure game. It will help much release.

Even if a person plays a role there is some reason in it. That role has some significance to the person. If the game is played perfectly, something from the unconscious will disappear, evaporate, and you will be freed from a burden.

For example if you want to play like a child, that means that in your childhood something has remained incomplete. You could not be a child as you wanted to be; somebody stopped you.

People made you more serious, forced you beyond your age, made you to appear more adult and mature than you were. Something has remained incomplete there. That incompletion demands to be completed and it will continue to haunt you. So finish it. Nothing is wrong in it. You could not be a child that time, back in the past; now you can be.

Once you can be totally in it, you will see that it has disappeared and then it will never come again.

CHAPTER 4

Become Part of my Family

6 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I’ve really enjoyed being here. I haven’t really bothered to become integrated with the ashram but I enjoy your lectures very much.]

Next time, try to get in tune with the ashram also. You can enjoy my lectures, you can meditate, but if you are not in tune with all that is going on here and if you don’t mix in totally, you will miss many things. You will miss many things that were easily available. The quality of your understanding of my lectures will deepen if you get in tune with the activity that goes on here. Then you are not an outsider. You become part of the family, and that helps. Resistance is dropped.

That’s the whole whole meaning of sannyas – to become part of my family, so you don’t think in terms of your own ego or in terms of your individuality. Rather you start thinking in terms of me and sannyas and-the work that is going on.

By and by you put yourself aside, and the work becomes more important, more valuable. That will deepen your understanding and will help many blocks inside your being to drop. Otherwise one goes on defending in subtle ways. These are all defence measures. One is afraid of being lost so one goes on holding, controlling, not mixing, but these are all ego-strengthening ideas – and the ego has to be dropped.

So it is good that you understand me, but if understanding me does not help you to drop your defences and resistances, then it is not going as deep as it should go. Listening to me can be enjoyed, but then it will remain just an enjoyment. Just as you enjoy a movie or TV of music, you can enjoy listening to me. But that will come like a wave and then go and you will remain unchanged.

Good... enjoy it, but let it not be just an enjoyment. Let it become a growth, because the more you grow, the more you will be able to enjoy it. It depends upon your sensitivity.

It is like classical music – the more you understand, the more you enjoy; the more you enjoy, the more you understand. A moment comes when you are completely lost. Only the music remains, throbbing, vibrating, pulsating all around you, and you are nowhere to be found. Remember that.

One day let it happen that you disappear and only I am vibrating around you – throbbing, pulsating, echoing and re-echoing. And you are at a loss... you cannot see where you are. You cannot pinpoint where your being is. You are completely lost as if a drop disappears into the ocean.

But that will happen only when you become part of my work. So next time when you come, drop all resistance.

[A sannyasin said he was feeling frustrated and imbalanced in his relationships with people. Osho asked him if he were currently in a relationship, to which he replied that he was not. Osho suggested it would be helpful for him to move into love.... ]

You need some relationship... it will settle you.

Love is a very basic need... as basic as food. Without food and without love, you will start shrinking.

Without food, the body will start dying. Without love, your innermost being starts dying.

You need some very very warm love relationship. You need a woman who can love you like a mother, and immediately your energies will settle. Otherwise there can be very great trouble... you can split into two personalities. Love brings you together. Without love, everybody has two minds – the right and left hemispheres, which are separate. Just a very small bridge exists between the two.

When you love a person deeply that bridge becomes more and more strong... becomes wider, bigger. In a really deep, intimate relationship, a moment comes when right and left hemispheres are no more two separate things. They become one whole. That’s why love looks so irrational. Love looks so absurd and blind to people who are too much hung up in their heads. It is irrational because both the polarities meet and mingle and become one.

It is a tremendous chaos but very beautiful. And all that is beautiful comes out of chaos. All the stars are born out of chaos. These groups are really to create a chaos in you... to bring to your focus whatsoever is the real situation. They don’t lie – they make you aware of the truth. These groups are really like a diagnosis – and that is half the therapy, more than half.

So passing through these group experiences, you have come to feel your inner conflict, the division.

Sometimes you are one person and sometimes you are another. Whenever energy moves into one direction, you are one. When energy moves into another direction, you are another. Now a synthesis is needed, a unification, a yoga. Union is needed... and the inner union becomes easily possible if you are moving in some outer union also. Then the outer union become just a milieu in which the inner milieu can happen. The inner can also happen without the outer, but it is going to be a very hard way – and there is no need. That is the way of the monk, who tries to create an inner synthesis without creating any outer harmony around him.

He lives in a desert as far as the outside is concerned, and inside he creates an oasis. But it is difficult to protect an oasis in a desert. It is easier to protect an oasis in green and wild scenery, because the whole scene will help you. That is the path of the devotee. These are the two basic paths: the path of the monk and the path of the devotee, the bhakta. The bhakta never goes anywhere. He uses his love situation for an inner transformation.

So move in a love relationship, but remember, don’t be lost in it. As there is a problem that without love it is very difficult to come to an inner synthesis, with love there is also a problem. You may get involved so much in it that you can be completely lost. You can lose your moorings and your roots in it. Then outside there will be a very green land and inside there will be a desert. You understand me? These are the three possibilities.

The best is that inside also you have a flowering world, and outside a corresponding synchronisity with it, a deep harmony... a love world. That’s my whole effort – to bring love and meditation together to you. The meditation will give you an inner beauty, grace, and love will help that inner beauty and grace from the outside. It will become a protection and a help.

Move into a relationship with the idea that out of love you have to attain to meditation. And love can help tremendously if you are rightly aware. Otherwise love is very destructive. It destroys many people. It simply gives trouble, anxiety, anguish, sadness, depression, frustration. But nothing is wrong in love. Something is wrong within, the person, in his attitude. He couldn’t use love.

You can use fire to warm your house, to heat your house. You can also burn the house. But nothing is wrong in fire. It can be your friend; it can be your enemy – it depends on you. So don’t be lost in love.

And always remember that the inner synthesis is needed. The outer is just a means to the inner but the inner is the goal.

[Primal Therapy group is present. Osho describes Primal Therapy thus:]

Once something is exposed, it evaporates. Hide a thing and it remains with you. It is just like taking the roots out of the earth. Once you have exposed the roots to the air and to the sun, the tree is dead. If the roots remain deep down in the earth, you can go on cutting the tree again and again, but again it will sprout.

Never fight with branches. The whole effort in these groups is to make you alert not to fight with branches and leaves. It is futile. Bring the roots up and see exactly where the problem is.

[A visitor says: I have been practising the art of living in the ways of cooking and eating and trying to do well what I was doing. I felt myself growing this way.

I have heard many people talking about groups here, but I don’t feel I need them.]

But you have not done anything like a group, so how can you feel that they are not for you?

No, that cannot be. But if you don’t want to, there is no need to do groups. But if you listen to my suggestion, I will say that you do one so that you can really feel whether it is for you or not. That will be an experience. It is never good to decide beforehand, because it may be just a fear deep down.

What you are calling your feeling that it is not for you, may be fear. I rarely come across a person for whom groups are not helpful – and never a person who comes from the West.

Centuries of repression are there. You may not be aware but it is in the unconscious. And that creates a fear, a fear of explosion. You are afraid of becoming aware of certain things which you have taken for granted are not in you. You can live blissfully oblivious of them but one day or other you will have to face them, and the sooner you face them, the better. There are a few things which can only be solved at a particular age. When the age has gone, those problems cannot be solved.

For example if somebody becomes aware of a deep sexuality at a much later age, it becomes very problematic. It is better if he had become aware when he was young.

Just the other day I was reading about a christian missionary who went to a dark corner of Africa.

He was hard at work trying to convert a native chief. Now the chief was very old and the missionary was very ’old testament’. His version of Christianity leaned heavily on ’thou-shalt-nots’. The savage listened patiently....

’I do not understand,’ he said at last. ’You tell me that I must not take my neighbour’s wife.’

’That’s right,’ said the missionary.

’Nor his ivory or his oxen.’

’Quite right.’

’And I must not dance a war dance and then ambush him on the trail and then kill him.’

’Absolutely right!’

’But I cannot do any of these things,’ said the savage regretfully. ’I am too old. So to be old and to be a Christian, they are the same thing!’

Always remember that there are problems that belong to a particular age. Solve them then and there, and it is good. But otherwise, this is my experience, that there are many people, millions of people, who have not solved their childhood problems. They need Primal Therapy.

Primal Therapy simply means bringing their childhood back to them. They will relive it in imagination and whatsoever has remained incomplete will have to be completed in imagination. Then those problems will disappear. It is sometimes very hard to go back to the old wounds and to let them again overpower you; to again suffer those things which you have been thinking had completely disappeared. For example someone has insulted you when you were a small child. That wound is there. You have forgotten it but it continues to function inside your unconscious, and it has to be healed.

A child is born; it is a very critical moment, very traumatic, and he suffers much because his whole world in the womb is destroyed. That was the only world he knew... that was his whole life. Then he passed through the birth canal, which is a painful process, almost suffocating. Then he is outside in the world on his own, absolutely helpless... many painful experiences, and there is no way, ordinarily, to erase them.

A Primal Therapy group will take you back on an inner journey. It will help your unconscious pains to bubble up, to surface. Of course it is going to be painful, but once you are relieved of that pain you will feel a certain cleaning; you will become bathed and cleaned. Your energy will be flowing more easily. Those wounds have disappeared, those blocks have been dropped. You will find fresh life coming to you. You can never know unless you go through it.

And all these groups are for particular problems. This is my feeling – that you are afraid of things which may surface: anger, sex, greed, or whatsoever. You have maintained yourself somehow and you have maintained well; you have made a beautiful house on a volcano. Now you are afraid to think that there is even a volcano. You are living so comfortably and conveniently so why bother?

Why dig a hole and see whether there is a volcano or not? Even if it is there, better not to think about it. But this is a very ostrich-like attitude, and I don’t think it is going to help.

I will suggest you do only one group – and do it really so you can come to feel. Maybe you are right, maybe there is no need, but don’t decide that beforehand. This is the way we lose many opportunities of growth, many opportunities in which some unfamiliar thing might have happened.

But we say we don’t need them. How can you decide?

Always decide something by experimentation. Never decide anything a priori. Do the experiment and if it is not useful, you are finished forever with it. But still, think about it. I think Encounter will be very good. It is a very soft group... it will not disturb you too much. Then if you feel certain that you don’t need groups, very good. Then there is no question, no problem.

[The visitor replies: Well, I think that in day-to-day living I can express my feelings very much. I wonder if I can experience emotions stronger in the group than I do in daily life.]

I also wonder, but we have to see that through experimentation; there is no other way. Maybe you are right – and it will be good if you are right. If I am wrong it will be good! But there is no way to decide it beforehand. First do the camp. The camp may bring a feeling to you to do something.

My suggestion always is never to lose an opportunity which can give you something unfamiliar.

Never cling to the past and always remain open and experimentative... always ready to walk on a path which you have never walked before. Who knows? – even if it proves useless, it will be an experience.

Edison was working on a certain experiment for almost three years continuously and he failed seven hundred times. All his colleagues, his students, became completely frustrated. He would come every morning happy and bubbling with joy, and ready to start again. It was too much: seven hundred times and three years wasted! Everybody was almost certain that nothing was going to come out of it. The whole thing seemed to be useless... just a whim.

They all gathered together and said, ’We will become mad! This man goes on being happy and every day he comes and starts again as if he has completely forgotten that three years have been completely wasted.’

They talked to Edison and told him, ’We have failed seven hundred times. Now it is a complete failure. We have not achieved anything. We have to stop.’

Edison laughed uproariously. He said, ’What are you talking about? Failed? We have succeeded in knowing that seven hundred methods won’t be of any help. If there are one thousand possibilities, we have closed seven hundred. Now there are only three hundred there. We are coming closer and closer to truth every day! Who has told you that we have failed? We have knocked on seven hundred doors and they were not the right doors, but we have learned one thing. There was no other way to learn that they were not the right doors. If we had not knocked, we had no way of knowing. We may have been standing on the first door continuously thinking that this is the right door, but now we are certain that seven hundred doors are false. This is a great achievement!’

This is the basic scientific attitude: if you can decide that something is false, you are coming closer to the truth. Truth is not available in the market so that you can go directly and order it. It is not ready-made, available. You have to experiment.

So what I suggest is, always remain experimentative. And never become smug. Never think that whatsoever you are doing is perfect. It is never perfect. It is always possible to improve upon it; it is always possible to make it more perfect.

[A sannyasin said that she seemed always to fall in love with people who were not available, and that she would like to fall in love with someone and have them fall in love with her, but that she seemed to always be attracted to people she couldn’t have.

Osho said that unconsciously she did not really want to fall in love, so she chose people with whom her love could never be fulfilled. He said she chose people not for themselves but for their inaccessibility, and that if they became available she would drop the idea of pursuing them.

She said she felt she either tried to keep people away or would simply go and grab at them – and that didn’t work either.... ]

Go and do that! Do something. And I’m not joking when I say to go and do it. Do it! I mean business!

You will be very happy once you get out of this circle you have created for yourself, this very self-destructive structure which is almost suicidal. If you don’t love you go on destroying your life. Love is life, and through love all other doors of prayer and God and everything, open. If the door of love is closed, you are left alone like a desert island and then there is no way to go anywhere. Then you get more and more fed up with yourself.

People take pride in being suicidal – drop that pride. Just look at the fact. And every human being is beautiful. Don’t ask the impossible – just find someone who is available.

There are women, I know, who will become interested only in a married person, because then they can create trouble. If the person is not married they are not interested. This is their mathematics: if he were worth something, some other woman would have got hold of him before. Nobody has bothered about him – he is still a bachelor – so it certainly proves that he is not worth worrying about. At least he is not of the standard they would like.

Once the man has a woman then other women start becoming interested. He must have something!

They are more interested in creating jealousy in the other woman than love in the man.

They are more interested in defeating the other woman. Their whole seduction, their whole coquetry, will be concerned with the woman: how they can defeat the woman; how they can prove themselves to be better looking, more loving, more beautiful, more charming, and that the other woman is nothing. Once the woman has broken away from the man they will not be interested in the man at all. The whole purpose is finished.

So never do that... that is ugly. And it is not going to help you, because you are moving in a wrong direction. Find someone, or allow someone to find you. It is good to play the game of hide and seek, but don’t hide so much that the other gets fed up with the game and goes home! Then there will be no point.

Children play hide and seek but they always hide in such a way that the other can find them. It is never made almost impossible. It is a challenge and they go on making noises so the other knows where they are. The other goes on playing the game of seeking them, knowing where they are. But if you hide so much that it becomes impossible to seek you, then the whole game is finished.

Nothing is wrong with you – it is just an old habit. It will melt with a little more understanding. Do something against it... that is the only way to break a habit.

[A sannyasin participant of the Tathata group says: I lost my frightened streak – it was really unbelievable. But also I found that I am dead. I don’t feel anything towards people... ]

That will come. There is nothing to worry about.

You have put your life in certain fears too much. Because those fears are gone you will feel as if you are dead for a few days, because the old channels for the life to flow are no more there. Many people love only because they are afraid. They think that they are loving but deep down there is fear

– fear of being left alone, fear of isolation.

But if fear disappears, suddenly they will see that their love has also disappeared because basically, deep down it was fear, not love. Many people pray because they are afraid. They go to the church and temple and pray. If their fear really disappears they will stop going to the church because the fear was the base of their prayer; their god was nothing but fear personified. Now the fear is no more there, they will become godless.

This happens to many people because we don’t know exactly what we are doing with our life. We call it love... maybe it is something else. We call it prayer; maybe it is something else. We call it meditation; maybe it is something else. The mind is such a confusion that it is very difficult to know exactly where the problem is. Once you start changing one thing, you will become aware that the mind goes on deceiving you in many ways.

The dropping of fear is not enough. It is a negative thing. It is good to drop it but not enough. Now you will have to bring love to your heart... and it can come only when fear is dropped.

CHAPTER 5

Man has to Live in Yes

7 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I feel very good since the Primal group. I feel aware of my feminine part somehow.]

That’s very good. Ordinarily we go on repressing one part of the being because we are taught to be males or to be females. No society allows that man is bi-sexual, that he is both; that man is not a fixed identity, not somehow static, but a dynamic process. So sometimes you are more a female, less a male. Sometimes you are more a male, less a female.

Male and female are just emphases. They are not fixed things. While you are loving, feeling soft, sensitive, and surrendering to some experience, you are more of a female. When you are frightened, angry, aggressive, not letting go, you are more a male. And the same is true for women.

So always remember to never get fixed. Allow... whatsoever happens is good. And always remember that you are continuously changing, river-like, flowing. In the morning you may be a male. By the evening you may become a female. But ordinarily the society does not allow this, so when your energy is becoming female then too, you go on insisting that you are male. That creates a contradiction. The energy is becoming soft and you go on pretending that you are a male. That creates a bifurcation in your energies. Then you are not moving with the thing that is happening; you are holding yourself back. By and by you become more and more confused. You don’t know who you are because you don’t listen to the process of life. You have some fixed ideas and you impose them on life.

Always listen to life itself – and life is continuously changing. It is good that everything goes on changing, otherwise you will be dead.

It is a very good indication that you are feeling the female arising. Allow it. Your mind will tend to repress it again. But just by and by forget that you are a man or a woman. Remember that there are a few moments when you are more of a woman. These are both your polarities and you swing from one to another. Enjoy this swing, mm? That will keep you more flexible and more alive, more perceptive, sensitive.

[A sannyasin, an air-hostess, said that she had recently moved from her large penthouse to a small room, which felt much more comfortable and peaceful.]

That’s very good. It seems that many times we go on carrying many things which are useless, and we never think why we are carrying them. They can become almost a crushing weight.

Needs are very few and a man who understands what is needful will always be happy and blissful.

Desires are many, needs are few. Needs can be fulfilled; desires, never. A desire is a need gone crazy. It is impossible to fulfill it. The more you try to fulfill it, the more it goes on asking, asking, asking.

There is a sufi story that when Alexander died and he reached heaven, he was carrying all his weight

– his whole kingdom, gold, diamonds – of course not in reality, but in an idea. Ideas have as much weight; in fact an idea is the real weight. He was burdened too much by being Alexander.

The gatekeeper started laughing and he said ’Why are you carrying so much of a burden?’

Alexander said ’What burden?’ because really he was carrying nothing. Everything was in the head, but the head was very heavy.

The gatekeeper gave him a scale and put an eye on one side of the scale. He told Alexander to put all his weight, all his greatness, treasures, kingdom, on the other side of the scale. Alexander put all his kingdom, all his wealth, his victories, and everything there. That one eye still remained heavier than all his kingdom, so finding no other way, he himself jumped onto the scales, but still the one eye remained heavier.

He said to the gatekeeper, ’I cannot understand how such a small eye can be so weighty. What is it? Are you playing some trick, some magic with me?’

The gatekeeper said, ’This is a human eye. It represents human desire... the outgoing desire.’

’It cannot be fulfilled, howsoever great the kingdom and howsoever great your efforts. Even a single human eye full of desires cannot be fulfilled.’

Then Alexander said ’Then what is the way to fulfill it?’

The gatekeeper threw a little dust into the eye. The eye immediately blinked and lost all its weight.

It was immediately weightless.

The story is beautiful. A little dust of understanding has to be thrown into the eye of desire. The desire disappears and only needs remain, and they are not weighty. Needs are very few... needs are beautiful. Desires are ugly and they make monsters of men. They create mad people.

This has been a good insight for you. Remember it always, and always choose that which is more peaceful.

Once you start learning how to choose the peaceful, a small room is enough; a small quantity of food is enough; a few clothes are enough; one lover, a very ordinary man, can be enough of a lover.

But if you go on asking for more and more, then thousands of men are not enough. Even the most beautiful man is finished sooner or later. Your desire goes on and on. It knows no end... it stops nowhere.

[A sannyas couple were have problems in their relationship but decided they should remain together.

Osho said that they should be aware that love was not, and could not be, all roses, and that the decision to be together should be through pain as well as happiness.... ]

The decision to be together should be unconditional. It should not be only if you love me, if you are sweet to me, if you are this and that to me – no. It is to be together whatsoever – sometimes sweet and sometimes very salty; sometimes very beautiful and sometimes a monster.

Once you understand that, you have come to a mature love, otherwise love is only baby love. Small school children fall in love. They think in poetry and romance, and write poems and beautiful letters, but that’s all childish.

They don’t know what life is going to be. It is a hard struggle.

Because love is one of the most precious jewels, the struggle is very very hard. Only very few people achieve it.

Because of the decision to be together, don’t avoid fights, otherwise you will start creating trouble for each other. Because of the decision, don’t avoid fights. Fights are there – be true. Sometimes bursting in anger is very very beautiful. It cleanses many days’ dirt and disperses many clouds.

Don’t think that because we have decided to be together now, no more anger, no more conflict, no more fight. If you try that, your love relationship will be dead. You will be together but there will be no love. Then you will start feeling afraid of each other and you will avoid any situation. The commitment will not be very deep then.

Because you have decided to be together, fear is no more there. Now you can be true and authentic to each other, mm? Good!

[The Aum marathon is a five-day group based on the techniques used in the West in therapeutic communities for former drug-takers. Formerly it comprised forty-eight hours of working on negativity but recently has been restructured so that it is a negativity marathon followed by a positivity workshop.]

The Aum marathon is an energy experiment to bring up your negative and positive, to help all sorts of energies to surface. For the first time you can face yourself as an energy system.

The first thing is to face all your problems, naked, and the Aum will help you to do this. It is almost hell because the whole basement has to be opened and all the nightmares brought to your consciousness, but it is a great discipline. After five days you will feel so relieved because once you have understood where your problem is, you have almost solved it in a way.

[The leader of the group said the first part of the negativity days were not working. We had done all we could and so the next day we simply sat – and it happened. It happened. And it was very beautiful.]

Good. Always remember that when you are trying too hard for something to happen, it may not happen. In fact your very effort creates a tension around you, around others. Your very effort to penetrate their barrier creates a defense in them and they resist.

But go on. You have to make all efforts, because if you don’t, then the point will never come. That comes without effort, but only comes after you have made all effort. Suddenly a moment comes beyond which you cannot do anything; nothing is possible. All hope is lost (Vedant nods his head knowingly). Immediately in that moment, you relax. And when you relax, everybody else relaxes, because relaxation is contagious.

When there is no effort on your part, suddenly the other cannot resist any more; for what? with whom? The defense is left in mid-air; it has nothing to hold it there. It relapses... it falls and shatters

– and then it happens. You have used exactly the right word. It is not something that you do, not something that is done by the group. It is something that suddenly happens in the group. It is something that is not personal; it is impersonal. It is an energy that possesses you. But it can possess you only when you are completely exhausted, when you are completely frustrated.

That is the meaning when Fritz Perls says that skilful frustration in the hands of the therapist is one of the greatest tools. By and by one becomes skilful in how to create that moment of absolute frustration; when one comes to a cul-de-sac, and there is no going beyond it, and suddenly all human effort has become impotent. You cannot do anything. In that very moment something starts happening for which you were hoping and trying.

This is what in Zen they call a mini satori. You were working for only three, four, five days and you felt such frustration that you thought ’Drop it. Let these people go. Nothing is happening and the method is not going to work. These people are wrong... this method is wrong. It is just futile.’

Just think of a zen monk alone in his cell for fifteen or eighteen or even twenty years working, and continuously frustrated... frustrated, frustrated; nothing but frustration. Then comes the moment after eighteen years of wasted effort... almost looks like eighteen lives. It almost looks timeless, as if he has been strug-gling for ever and for ever. And the wall remains there and nothing has happened. The whole life has gone into dust... gone to the dogs. He starts thinking to leave –

enough is enough! And exact-ly in that moment the first satori happens.

Suddenly he is so full of light. Something penetrates his very core of being. He becomes illuminated.

The old is gone. The person who is struggling is no more. Then something new, absolutely discontinuous with the past, has happened. This they call the first satori.

In groups also, mini satoris happen. They are mini because the effort has not been very long. By and by, as people will be getting more and more into it. I will be creating bigger groups continuing for three months or six months or one year; just a group of twenty people working continuously for one year. They will come out completely changed. You will not be able to recognise their faces as being those of the same people who had gone into the group.

So, good. This has been a very beautiful experience of a mini satori. Whenever you feel that it has happened and you don’t take any credit for it, it is something spiritual. If you take credit for it, again the ego has been strengthened through it.

Go on working and more and more will become possible. But do all you can do. Never relax before that point because then it will not happen. If you think that it happens when you don’t do anything so one should just sit and not do anything, it won’t happen. Make all efforts, and more intense so that it happens after the second day. If you put all your energy into the group and it puts all its energy into the effort, even one hour’s effort can be so in-tense that it can happen. It depends on intensity.

But good... very good.

[The assistant leader says: One thing that kept coming up for me was the difficulty in pushing people.

I felt that that is my role – that I have to yell at people, I have to force them – and I often have the feeling that I ’m torturing people.]

Torture! Yell at them (laughter). That is your work – otherwise they may not be able to come to the exploding point.

You have to work like heat so that they come to a point where they evaporate; otherwise they will not.

Five days is a small time. They have to be cornered and forced and jumped at from every corner so their defences break down – and in a moment of sheer terror they drop their armours.

That is the whole life-long pattern. It is not easy to bring them out of their pattern because they have completely forgotten that they are separate from their pattern. They think they are their pattern so you have to hammer them. That is part of the process. It is therapeutic.

It is just like surgery. If a surgeon thinks. ’How can I cut this man’s body? Am I a butcher?’ then he will not be able to do the surgery. He has to be a butcher in deep compassion. He is not against the man; he is helping the man. He is trying to take out some illness, some disease, some tumour, cancer, which is going to kill the man, so he has to be hard. Even if he has to fight against the patient, he will fight and take the tumour out.

So don’t think that you are being bad or being violent to them. You are simply a surgeon and you have to help them. Aum particularly, is a surgical group.

[The assistant group leader asks: I was just wondering whether it was right for me temperamentally, because now I can just scream at people but I don’t feel good about it.]

No, you have some ideas that it is bad. Nothing is bad about it! It is just as if you have some idea that it is bad to cut anybody’s body, and then you become a surgeon and your hand shakes and you cannot hold the knife. You feel guilty about whether to do it or not. It happens in India many times.

Many families in India are believers of non-violence, particularly one group, the Jains. They don’t do any violence, any sort of violence. When they go to study medicine it becomes a trouble. You have to dissect a frog. It is impossible for a Jain to even think of it! So for many days there were no jain doctors... impossible. Only lately, recently, a few doctors have come from that community, but they also feel guilty. Many jain doctors have talked to me and they feel very guilty that they are creating a hell for themselves. It is just an attitude – that this is violence, a sin. They have not killed even ants, so how can they cut a human body? But this is just an attitude.

If you are really in deep compassion, then it is a question of saving the man. If you don’t cut the tumour the man will die. If you cut the tumour the man will be saved. You cut the tumour out of compassion.

This whole work is out of compassion. You are not against these people. You are not inimical to them, so your yelling and your forcing is therapeutic. You need not get identified with it – do it as a game. It is a game for you because they have not done anything against you. By and by you have to learn how to yell without yelling and how to force them without forcing. It is just a game. On the surface you are forcing them and yelling, and inside you are completely cool and collected. You have to learn that, otherwise you will be in bad shape. I was watching the whole time, and except for Veeresh, all the people who were participating were in bad shape (a chuckle) because it is too heavy.

Laxmi (the secretary) reports to me again and again that when these people come out of the group they seem to have been on a trip to hell (much laughter). It is ghost-like, completely disintegrating.

Their senses are no more working.... But you have to learn.

I was waiting for the day that you would ask and then I would tell you that you have to learn. Next group yell, and at the same time remain quiet within. Then it will be a great meditation for you. Be angry, show anger, and at the same time remain cool inside. Then you will see the difference. You have learned something and you will come out of it more cool, more healthy, more collected.

[A group participant says: I enjoyed the negative part, but I held back my negativity sometimes because I felt something wrong in it.

I feel that all the time a lot of my energy goes into fighting people, competing with people.

I won’t feel that I need love. I think that for me to love is weak. If people need my love, I refuse to give it. I continuously felt a resistance in my body.]

No, nothing is wrong in negativity, but if you are only negative then something is wrong. One should be balancing. Negativity is good but if you become completely negative, you will never enjoy life.

Then you can be angry but never loving. You can hate but never love. Your whole life will become negative-oriented. You will be depressed, fighting, complaining. Nothing is wrong in that – if it fulfills some positive role.

If anger can be used to serve love, it is beautiful. Nobody can live in negativity. You cannot make an abode out of the negative; nobody can live in a no. Man has to live in yes. No has to be used only to find yes.

For example somebody comes to you and would like to be your lover. If you go on saying no to everybody, whosoever comes, irrelevant of the fact of who has come and knocked at your door; if no has become your fixed answer and you have a plate saying ’no’ on the door, then you will live in an empty negativity, suffering. It will be a hell.

’No’ will have to be used but in the service of yes. You will have to say no to nine people so that you can remain available for the tenth. Those nine nos are serving the tenth yes. Then it is beautiful.

One cannot say yes to everybody, otherwise you will be lost; you will become fragmentary. One cannot say yes to every passerby; one has to choose.

One has to say yes to somebody with whom one feels a deep harmony, a synchronous relationship, a deep intimacy; with whom something starts flowing within you, with whom something resounds, vibrates in you... whose being strikes some note within your heart and becomes a song. For that you have to say no to many people because everybody is not a suitable partner.

You have to say no to stones because they are not food for you, but you are saying no only till the right food comes your way. Then you can say yes, and you can say it with a full heart. But remember man cannot live in the no. No is a means of attaining to a higher yes.

So negativity is good, but if you become simply negative, you are committing suicide. Then what is the point of living? Say a simple no to the whole life and jump into the river! What is the point of saying no, no, no, the whole life? Just say a big no and jump off the hill and be lost.

If you are living for some yes, then it is good. Then many times you will have to say no, but then your no is no more negative; it is serving some positivity. Even destruction can become part of the creative process... has to become a part. If you are making a new house, you have to demolish the old.

One has continuously to demolish many things to create new things. Even while you are eating, you have to demolish the food. That’s what you do when you are chewing; you destroy the food.

You destroy the whole structure of the food and then it becomes possible for your body to absorb it.

Then it becomes a creative vitality in your being.

Use destruction, negation, no, in the service of yes, creation. You felt good with the negative part because you have trained yourself for the negative, but you have to come to the positive part also.

[A visitor says: I am very interested in learning indian music. It is something that frightens me, but I feel that maybe I can battle with it.

When I’m really into it, it’s beautiful, but the thought of making the music frightens me.

I’ve been playing the sitar for some months now and I began to feel that I’d rather have something smaller, and that my music would be better if people didn’t see it.

Through this group I feel that maybe I have to bring it out more.]

Your feeling is exactly right... one has to come out and one has to learn how to share. There are a few things which grow only in sharing.

Music grows in sharing. If somebody is there, a sympathetic listener, then even just his presence helps you to go deep into your effort. If you are alone, it is almost like masturbation. If you are playing on the sitar alone, it is masturbatory. It cannot have that beauty and wholeness as when you are making love to someone. Of course the physical release will be there, but it will only be a release, not a fulfillment. The polar opposite is not there.

This is happening every moment. If you are playing the sitar with some people who are listening en rapport, it is almost like a male-female relationship; two lovers meeting. The player becomes the male and the listener becomes the female because the listener is receptivity and the player is the active part. Then a subtle love affair happens. The energy of the player and the energy of the listener meet and create a circle, and that circle is fulfilling.

You can learn music alone, but it has to be learned only to be played with people in relationship.

Don’t try to shrink in a corner and hide. There is no need. Life is in relationship and with people.

There is no need to be lost in a mob, but there is no need to escape either. Remain available to people and available to your aloneness also. Let there be a rhythm: sometimes alone, sometimes with people.

Music is an activity of relationship. The energy goes to a very high peak. Your insight has been good... this group has done something deep in you. And start learning music.

It is scarey in a way, because music is such a great commitment that one life is not enough for it.

Indian music particularly, is a great commitment. It knows only the beginning – it doesn’t know the end. Nobody has ever come to the end of it. People have simply started and gone on and on....

So it is scarey, death-like, and one becomes lost in it more and more. It is not an ego trip. That is the difference between indian music and the modern music. Modern music is very much of the ego.

The musician, the player, is just enjoying his ego.

Indian music is totally different. One has to annihilate oneself completely so that one becomes just an instrument in the hands of God and He plays. You become just a passage, a vehicle, a hollow bamboo flute.

[About the music group Osho has said that the music group provides, like the growth groups and the milieu of the ashram, an opportunity for the individual ego to drop and merge with a group consciousness... ]

Once you know how to dissolve yourself, once you are not there, you will simply be surprised, mystified, amazed, that somehow the whole group is moving spontaneously.

Then you will feel an expansion of consciousness because you are not there as an individual.

You have joined together with a collectivity. No more islands... everybody has melted. And then the whole thing becomes intuitive. You are joined by a telepathic chord which surrounds you like a climate, touches you all, plays on your hearts, together. That climate takes over and you are possessed.

CHAPTER 6

Self-Improvement is a Way to Hell

8 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said that she did not have much time left over in her daily life for enjoyment...

Osho suggested that she make it a point each morning to do a forty minute meditation which involves simply sitting and looking.... ]

You can sit anywhere, but whatsoever you are looking at should not be too exciting. For example things should not be moving too much. They become a distraction. You can watch the trees – that is not a problem because they are not moving and the scene remains constant. You can watch the sky or just sit in the corner watching the wall.

The second thing is, don’t look at anything in particular... just emptiness because the eyes are there and one has to look at something, but you are not looking at anything in particular. Don’t focus or concentrate on anything... just a diffuse image. That relaxes very much.

And the third thing, relax your breathing. Don’t do it, let it happen. Let it be natural and that will relax even more.

The fourth thing is, let your body remain as immobile as possible. First find a good posture – you can sit on a pillow or mattress or whatsoever you feel, but once you settle, remain immobile, because if the body does not move, the mind automatically falls silent. In a moving body, the mind also continues to move, because body-mind are not two things. They are one... it is one energy.

In the beginning it will seem a little difficult but after a few days you will enjoy it tremendously. You will see, by and by, layer upon layer of the mind starting to drop. A moment comes when you are simply there and no mind.

Much is going to happen.

[A sannyasin, present tonight with her six-year-old sannyasin son, said that she was aware that she was continually creating problems but that she did not know how to let go of it.

Osho said she seemed to be worrying about worrying and that let-go didn’t mean no problems, but going with the problems if they arose. He said God must have some purpose in having her create problems, and that each problem helps growth and imparts something to one’s being. He said all shoulds should be dropped, and that she should accept that she was creating problems without needing to be concerned with why.... ]

There is no need to improve yourself. All self-improvement is a way to hell. All efforts to make something, somebody out of yourself, something of an ideal, are going to create more and more madness. Ideals are the base of all madness, and the whole humanity is neurotic because of too many ideals.

Animals are not neurotic because they don’t have any ideals. Trees are not neurotic because they don’t have any ideals. They are not trying to become somebody else. They are simply enjoying whatsoever they are.

So you are you. But somewhere deep down you want to become a Buddha or a Jesus, and then you go round in a circle which will be non-ending. Just see the point of it – you are you. And the whole, or God, wants you to be you. That’s why He has created you, otherwise He would have created you a better model. He wanted you to be here at this moment. He did not want Jesus to be here in place of you. And He knows better. The whole always knows better than the part.

So just accept yourself. If you can accept yourself, you have learned the greatest secret of life, and then everything comes on its own. Just be yourself. There is no need to pull yourself up. There is no need to be a different height other than you are already.

There is no need to have another face. Simply be as you are, and in deep acceptance of it, flowering happens and you go on becoming more and more yourself.

This is what I call let-go. Let-go is not an effort that you can do. It is an understanding that I am I and others are others, and that it is pointless to try to become somebody else other than who I am. That creates a tension in the mind; that creates worry. Once you drop the idea of becoming somebody, there is no tension. Suddenly all tension disappears. You are here, luminous, in this moment. And there is nothing else to do than to celebrate and enjoy.

So all people who are in some way trying to improve themselves and are reading foolish people like Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, are basically neurotic. A healthy person simply accepts. He’s more like an animal, like a tree, like a mountain, than the so-called human being. He simply says,

’Here I am... this is the way I am.’ He does not hide – there is nothing to hide. He does not try to pull himself in some other direction. He simply floats.

That is what let-go is. It is an understanding, not an effort. If problems are coming, they must be needed. Let them come!

[The Hypnotherapy group is present at darshan. Osho recently talked about how hypnotherapy works, saying: Hypnotherapy touches the fourth body, the body of consciousness. It simply puts a suggestion into your mind. Call it animal magnetism, mesmerism, or whatsoever you like, but it works through the power of thought, not the power of matter. If your consciousness accepts a certain idea, it starts functioning.

Hypnotherapy has a great future. It is going to become the future medicine because if just by changing your thought pattern your mind can be changed, through your mind the vital body, and through the vital body your gross body, then why bother with poisons, gross medicine? Why not work it through thought-power?

A group participant says: I ran into a tension that I didn ’t even know I had, and it really helped me.

Thank you.

Osho recommends he does the Aum group.]

... then do Aum. It is just the opposite.

It is good to swing from one polarity to the other so that you can feel how liquid you can be. In the Aum marathon the emphasis is to be on allowing it, rather than doing it. To the western mind doing comes very easy. Allowing comes with difficulty because we have been trained to do things. Even things which cannot be done, we have been taught to do. Love your mother – as if love is something that one can do. Respect the priest – as if respect is something that can be done.

Children learn by and by how to pretend. They cannot respect because respect is something which happens, if it happens. If in the close vicinity of some person it arises, it arises. If love happens, it happens; there is no way to bring it in. But if the child is forced continuously to do, then he starts pretending. He pretends that he is respecting, and then his whole being goes pseudo. There are people who go on pretending for their whole life and they have completely forgotten that they are pretending. It has been so long that they have become completely oblivious.

The whole emphasis is of allowing things to happen to you. So the basic effort is not positive but negative. The basic effort is not to debar them, not to prevent them by any effort. Just remain receptive and open. Wherever the energy is moving, you go with it, unafraid, fearless.

The greater is the venture, the greater is the pay-off. The more you go with the energy wherever it leads, the more you become capable of coming back home, thrilled with new energy, because for the first time the constant pressure of doing, dissolves. And you start floating – not even swimming.

You start floating in the stream and the stream takes you over, and takes you to the farthest sea.

You simply go with it. No effort is needed of your own.

[A sannyasin says she is very confused. She has been trying to let-go and accepting her problems but: then I did the Encounter group and everything got muddled up.]

I cannot see how things can get muddled up. You must be having some idea of how things should be, so you always judge according to that idea.

For example if I have a certain idea that this chair (Osho indicates the armchair he always sits on) has to be here and then don’t find it here but in that corner, everything is muddled up. If I have a certain idea of how things should be and they are not that way, then things are muddled up. In fact your idea is the problem. If you have fixed ideas, life is going to create much confusion for you because life never believes in your ideas. It goes on muddling things. It goes on meddling with people. It goes on playing tricks. It is not like a drawingroom in which you fix your furniture and it remains the same.

Life is not a drawingroom. It is a very wild phenomenon.

So if you have a certain idea that this should be like this, then you are asking for trouble. Your should is creating the trouble. Never say that life is creating trouble or that anybody else is creating trouble.

It is your should. Drop the should and then there is no problem.

Once you don’t ask how life should be, whatsoever it is is perfectly beautiful because you don’t have any criterion to judge it against. Encounter muddled you because you have certain ideas about what should happen... expectations. And if life is not moving that way, something is wrong. Nothing is going wrong! Life is going on its own, on,!y you have some fixed ideas. So drop those fixed ideas.

Life is never going to follow you... you have to follow life. So if it is muddled, be muddled. What can you do?

And God is very chaotic. He is not an engineer or an architect, a scientist or a mathematician. He is a dreamer, and in a world of dreams, everything is muddled up.

Your boyfriend suddenly becomes a horse.... In a dream you never argue and never say ’What has happened? Just a moment before you were my boyfriend and now you have become a horse!’ You never say anything. In a dream, you accept. Not even a suspicion about what is happening arises because in a dream you don’t carry your idea. Even that is perfect – a boyfriend turning into a horse.

Perfectly good! Accept it.

But while you are awake it will be impossible for you to see that your boyfriend is turning into a horse. And boyfriends many times turn into horses (laughter). The face may remain the same but the energy becomes different. Then you feel confused.

I have never really come across any person who is confused. Rather I come across people who have fixed ideas. The more fixed the idea, the more confusion there will be.

If you want to be non-confused, drop the idea; not that confusion will change, but it will not look like confusion at all. It is your interpretation. It is just life, alive.

This is the trick of the mind – that it will say, ’Drop all this confusion! Settle down to some unconfused state. What has happened?’ I am saying just the opposite. If there is confusion, find out what is giving you the idea of confusion, and drop it.

Confusion is perfectly okay. Nothing is wrong in it. Life is not like a railroad – just trains moving on the same track, shunting here and there, but always on the same track. Life is not like that. Logic is like that, like a railroad, trains always moving on the same track. Life is more riverlike. It moves and creates its own path and then it changes also. It moves through whims. Life is whimsical, romantic, not mathematical – and that’s why it is beautiful.

Just think – if there is nothing like confusion and everything is mathematically exact, and life is like a railway timetable, you will simply be bored to death. What will you do? Just look in the time-table and everything is known!

Allow the wildness of life to be there, and if by and by you have to drop something, drop your fixed ideas. Then you will be able to enjoy confusion more. And it will not be confusing... it will be creative chaos. A man needs a creative chaos in the heart to give birth to dancing stars. There is no other way. So just reconsider it, mm?

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes I realise that I think my relationship with you is not... that it is just imagination.]

But have you known any relationship which was not imagination?

[The sannyasin answers: I guess not.]

That’s a very good realisation.

All relationship is imagination because whenever you are going out of yourself, you go only through the door of imagination. There is no other door. The friend, the enemy, both are your imagination.

When you stop imagination completely, you are alone, absolutely alone.

That’s my whole effort here – to make you so alone and so contented with yourself that there is no need to relate, and if you want to relate you enjoy it just like a game. It is a game of imagination –

nothing is wrong in it. There is no need to be afraid of it. You can enjoy it. You can be very creative about it.

Once you understand that life and all of its relationships are imagination you don’t go against life, but your understanding helps you to make your life relationship more rich. Now you know that relationships are imagination, why not put more imagination into them? Why not enjoy them as deeply as possible? When the flower is nothing but your imagination, why not create a beautiful flower? Why settle for an ordinary flower? Let the flower be of emeralds and diamonds.

Whatsoever you imagine, let it be that. Imagination is not a sin, it is a capacity. It is a bridge. Just as you cross a river and you make a bridge between this shore and that, so imagination functions between two persons.

Two beings project a bridge – call it love, call it trust – but it is imagination. Imagination is the only creative faculty in man, so whatsoever is creative is going to be imagination. Enjoy it and make it more and more beautiful. By and by you will come to a point where you don’t depend on relationships. You share. If you ha e something, you share with people, but you are contended as you are.

All love is imagination, But remember when I use the word imagination, I don’t use it in the condemnatory sense that it is ordinarily used. Imagination is the divine faculty of man. In fact in India, we say that the world is God’s imagination. Right! God is dreaming you sitting there. God is dreaming me talking to you. We are part in the divine mind of the whole. He is imagining.

Hindus say that God has a twenty-four hour day, like us, but his hours are very very long... millions of years. He is awake for twelve hours and then the world disappears. The day of God is the end of the world. For twelve hours He sleeps and then the world appears because He starts dreaming, and dreaming fantastic dreams of stars and sun and moon and people and heaven and hell.

When He is asleep He projects His dreams – and this is the creation. When in the morning He awakes, the dream disappears. This is de-creation. In English there is no word for it. When He wakes up, we disappear. Hindus call it pralaya. Everything disappears and He goes to sleep again and starts dreaming and the whole world appears.

So imagination is the divine faculty – enjoy it. You have come to a good insight.

[The sannyasin adds: I find that most of my problems and most of my complaints about life, come because I had to leave the quiet warm place I used to have inside myself where I could go and could understand myself.]

Everybody has to leave that place because that is the only way to reclaim it. If you had lived in the same place you would not have known it. To know something, one has to lose it.

Everybody goes astray from his inner world, the inner space, and then by and by one feels starved, hungry for it. An appetite arises, a thirst is felt. The call comes from the innermost self to come back home and one starts travelling. That’s what sannyas is.

It is going to the warm inner space that you left some day. You will not be gaining something new.

You will be gaining something that was always there, but still it will be a gain because now for the first time, you will see what it is.

The last time you were in that space, you were oblivious of it. One cannot be aware of something if one has not left it. So that was good... everything is good. Going astray is also good.

To sin is also good because that is the only way to become a saint.

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes I’m so confused. I ask myself if I need sannyas or perhaps a friend or a girlfriend or such things.]

But sannyasin is not against girlfriends. You can have girlfriends and sannyas too! My sannyas is bigger than girlfriends. It is not worried about them at all. You can have girlfriends – one, two, or as many as you feel...(laughter) and still you remain a sannyasin. My sannyas is very bold... it is not cowardly.

[The sannyasin adds: Sometimes I don’t like the orange clothes and the mala... ]

Then you have a cowardly concept of sannyas. What can I do? You have a wrong notion about sannyas. You think sannyas is something life-negating, that sannyas is something against love. You don’t understand my concept of sannyas.

It is a very revolutionary concept. It is life-accepting. It is not a renunciation... it is a celebration.

But if you feel difficulty, and if you think that it is impossible for you to be both a sannyasin and a lover, I will take sannyas back because I will not put my sannyas against anybody’s love – never.

Drop sannyas and be a lover. But it is you who is doing it; I am not insisting for it. I am saying that my sannyas is inclusive, very inclusive; it includes everything.

But if you feel some guilt, that is your problem. Sannyas is not the problem, but guilt. If you have some guilty feelings, if you think that love is something dirty, how can you love while you are in an ochre robe? While you are a sannyasin? How can you love? Such a dirty thing! – then you have very wrong notions about love. You will never be able to love because how can one move deeply in a dirty thing? You are going to be doomed.

Love is one of the most pure things in the world... the holiest of holies.

I don’t see that there is any problem... no problem at all. Find a girlfriend, and if you cannot, seek my help!

[Another group participant says: I am dreaming most of the time. But I don’t know if that dreaming is connected with reality, or if perhaps it too is just part of imagination and dreaming.]

Dream is as real as any other reality. Dream is part of reality. We always create a dichotomy in our minds of good and bad, the real and unreal, of God and devil. We continuously create a dichotomy, and then of course we are caught in it, and it becomes a dilemma.

Dream is part of reality as much as reality is part of dream. They are not two separate things. So don’t create unnecessary problems... accept. It is good. Dream good dreams, and dream with more alertness, more awareness. Have a little more watchfulness and then you will be able to enjoy both.

You can enjoy the whole movie of the mind. So many beautiful pictures move on the screen and you can just watch. No movie can be so dramatic or so intriguing – but you have to become a spectator also.

And this is a great art because in the dream you are everything: the actor, the story writer, the playback singer, the projector, the hall, the audience, the screen, the projected film. You are everything and you are doing all sorts of things alone.

So just one thing has to be remembered – to be a witness to all that is happening to you and enjoy it. A great drama is being enacted within you. Don’t try to fight or to be against it; don’t condemn it as being a dream.

If you don’t condemn, by and by the dream will start disappearing. One day comes when the witness is left alone, all dreaming gone, all actors disappear, the projector and the film and the screen, and the theatre; everything gone. One is simply sitting alone in tremendous silence, in a great nowhereness, in nothingness....

Don’t long for it, otherwise it will not come! Just try to understand the dreams. Watch them, witness; don’t fight – and then that day will come on its own. If you hope for it, you have already lost your witnessing....

Then just enjoy whatsoever is happening right now. The group has been good!

CHAPTER 7

The First Door is Acceptance

9 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I’ve got piles. I want to die sometimes... Sometimes I’m so high and singing, and all of a sudden, zoom! I would welcome death.]

It is alright, but you are not finished yet! Death is perfectly alright, there is nothing wrong in it, but right now you are not finished. So the very idea of death will make you unnecessarily gloomy. You are asking for a premature death.

So these things are not to be asked. They are to be left to existence. When they happen, they happen. That’s when you accept – whenever it happens, it is a great rest. And when your body is completely spent, death is the only thing needed. Then it happens; then you move into another body. You may become a tree or a bird or a tiger or something, and you go on moving. The existence gives you a new body when the old is spent.

Nothing is wrong in death. Death is beautiful, but never ask for it, because when you ask for it the quality of death changes towards suicide. Then it is no more a natural death. You may not commit suicide, but the very asking makes you suicidal. When alive, be alive; when dead, be dead. But don’t overlap things. There are people who are dying and who go on clinging with life. That too is wrong because when death has come, you have to go... and you have to go dancing. If you are asking for death, even thinking about it, then you are alive and clinging to the idea of death. It is the same in the reverse direction.

Somebody is dying and goes on clinging to life, does not want to die. Somebody is alive and wants to die. That is non-acceptance.

Accept whatsoever is there, and once you accept unconditionally, then everything is beautiful. Even pain has a purifying effect. Even piles are divine.

So whatsoever comes on your way, just be thankful. God knows better and if He gives piles, perfectly okay! One has to be thankful. One has to live through all sorts of experiences – pleasant and painful, sweet and bitter.

[Osho said that to be swinging from one pole to another – from highs to lows – simply indicated an aliveness, and that both experiences were ’gifts from the same hand’. He said that if one held back from unpleasant or negative experiences, one could not be fully into the positive.]

But we have been taught to choose – to choose between the two – so our minds are completely poisoned. We go on choosing, while life is a choiceless thing. It does not depend on your choice

– it simply goes on happening. Whether you choose or not, you create your choice by your own miseries – which are unnecessary.

One should simply be ready to accept whatsoever comes – sometimes the enemy, sometimes the friend. Both are your guests and both have to be respected. From this very moment start respecting your piles and they will disappear sooner or later. Respect and treat them as friends, as guests, not enemies. Just drop that concept of fighting with them. That antagonism has to be dropped.

Pain is there, I know. Suffering is there, I know. Suffer, and just accept. Don’t ask for death. When it comes, it comes. One should simply go on enjoying whatsoever comes on the way. Non-asking will give you a state of non-desire. Not complaining will make you more contented.

This moment is all. Never go beyond this moment, but whatsoever happens, be true to it. Be authentic to it.

With the body, with age, many illnesses enter. They are natural. They can be very great opportunities to grow – and they are meant for that. They are not purposeless... nothing is. The purpose is that you can accept the pain also. One who can accept pain becomes incapable of being unhappy. To be happy is not much. It is happening – sometimes you become happy; everybody sometimes feels happy. But to become incapable of unhappiness... that is the goal of all spiritual effort.

And this comes through understanding – that you accept pain also with no complaint. Just see the point: if there is no complaint, the pain is not like pain; almost ninety percent of it has disappeared.

It was your interpretation. By and by a distance comes between you and the pain. It goes far away.

One mohammedan mystic, Abraham, used to pray to God every day, saying, ’I don’t ask for pleasures and I don’t ask for happiness, but always give me a little pain. Always continue to give me a few gifts of suffering.’

He was staying with another mystic, and the friend heard Abraham praying. He said ’What nonsense are you asking? You know God is compassionate’ – Mohammedans call God, Rahim – and He is so compassionate, that if you ask He will give! What are you asking?’

Abraham said, ’Because I came to God through my pain, through my suffering, and because when I am happy I tend to forget Him, I ask for a little pain. When I am in pain I remember God. When I am happy, I tend to forget.’ He was saying a great spiritual truth.

No need to even ask, I say to you. If Abraham had been here, I would have told him, no need to ask. Because whatsoever you ask – even if you ask for suffering – you are asking for something pleasurable. Maybe in suffering you remember God and that’s your pleasure. So man cannot ask for suffering. Whatsoever he asks, even if he asks for suffering, his innermost desire will be of pleasure.

So even if you ask for death, you are asking for a better life. You say this life is worthless, these piles and this age, and the body is becoming old so now take it away. You are simply saying that you would like those things not to be there or that you don’t want to be with these things. But either way you are showing a discontent. Just accept that whatsoever is, is, and by and by you will see things are changing. A very subtle change happens.

Once you have become capable of accepting pain as a guest, you become incapable of pain. Pain comes but it cannot be painful to you. It comes, but somehow it misses the mark. It does not hit you hard – it cannot – because by and by you become unavailable to it. You rise higher and higher. It moves around but cannot penetrate to the centre and a distance arises.

So this is what I would like to say to you – just accept it and then see what happens.

[Tathata is a twenty-two hour group. The idea behind it is that unless we can accept ourselves unconditionally, we cannot flow – with ourselves and with others.]

’Tathata’ means suchness. It means to be with the fact, without any evaluation for or against. If you are angry, then be angry and don’t judge that it is good or bad. If you can allow anger without any judgement on your part, you will feel a deep freedom coming out of it. It will be released and a great tension will go with it. It is the same with all emotions.

Repression has not to be allowed. Expression has not to be forced. This is what the word suchness,

’tathata’, means.

[The group leader says it was: A tremendous experience for me. We worked very heavily with body-work into fears.]

Very good. The basic work is the body-work – that has to be remembered. People have to be brought back to their bodies. They have moved too far into their heads. They have lost all grounding in their body. They are just hovering like ghosts around their bodies; they are no more in them.

Christianity and other religions also, more or less, have done something very dangerous. They have created a rift between the body and consciousness. They have created almost an enmity, an antagonism – as if the body has to be crushed and destroyed, as if the body is the foe, as if the body is the bondage or the cause of bondage. By and by, through thousands of years of conditioning, people have become completely uprooted from their bodies. They are just like ghosts in the machines.

The very basic work in these growth groups is to bring them back to their bodies, to bring them back to their senses. They have to be pulled down from their heads and spread all over the body. Once they are in the body, everything becomes possible because they become alive and sensitive. Once they start feeling their energy, their body energy, they are no more Christian, Hindu, Mohammedans.

They are simply human beings. They become part of the animal world to which they belong... to the trees, to the animals, to the birds. They become vital, alive, and then everything becomes possible.

Work hard and break through all their barriers. They will resist, they will resist hard, because you are bringing them back to something which they have been avoiding their whole lives. For their whole life they have been thinking in terms of their being superior, higher, holier than the body. For their whole life they have been shrinking away from the body. They have forgotten the way to come back.

The roots have become shrunken, many blocks have developed. Passages are blocked and much has become frozen.

When you work on people’s bodies, you are moving in a dangerous territory because you can touch points where they are hiding many poisons. If a certain man has been repressing his anger, then in certain parts of his body that anger is there, layer upon layer like a coiled poisonous snake. When you touch that part the anger will recoil and the man can become ferocious. He can almost become murderous. But this has to be done; only then can he be in a state of unwinding. By and by he will relax.

One thing more you have to remember in the body-work is that you come easily into your own body if you relate with other bodies. That’s why in all societies, touching, hugging, kissing, is prohibited; it is not generally allowed. You don’t see people on the street hugging each other, kissing each other, holding hands; only in their privacy, and that too, with a few particular persons – a spouse, a husband, a wife, a friend. People have completely forgotten that you cannot be in your body if you don’t allow the warm atmosphere of other bodies to enter you.

When you hold somebody’s hand lovingly, suddenly your hand becomes alive because you have to move your energy into your hand to touch the other person. So touching, hugging, kissing, embracing each other, has to be encouraged. Then people come back easily to their bodies. The warmth spreads and the lava of their life starts flowing .

Much body touch is going to be of great help, otherwise people are just holding their bodies away.

Even if they are touching each other, they don’t touch from the inside. They may be rubbing bodies against each other, but that is not touch. It is touch only when warmth starts flowing, when the touch is no more just a physical touch but takes on the quality of love. So body-work and body relating –

relating not from the mind, mm? Otherwise people relate only in one way – talking.

Very good... I feel it has been good.

[A sannyasin asks: I see when I smile sometimes that it is a contradiction to what I am feeling and I continue to smile but I feel bad.

On the other hand, when I’m happy and I don’t smile, I feel my happiness only comes from here (indicating throat).]

Mm mm, it is possible. It is so with many people, because the society has created a division in you – in everybody. The society expects you to be smiling even in a situation where a smile is not possible. It becomes a social mannerism. A few people learn smiling so much that they forget whether anything is coming from their being or not. They simply go on smiling like a formality and the inner synchronisity is broken. Sometimes you are feeling unhappy but the smile keeps on coming.

It is a misalignment, as if you are functioning like two persons.

So for one month, do one thing: become more aware. Only smile when you feel like smiling, otherwise don’t. Even if you feel that it is going against your character, against your routine, for one month, just whenever you catch yourself smiling and there is no inner need to smile, drop it in the middle. Even if it looks a little awkward and the other person thinks that you are a little odd, don’t be worried.

After one month, tell me how you feel. It will be difficult because smiling has such a good pay-off.

When you smile at people, even if you don’t mean it, people feel good, and when they feel good they make you feel good. When you smile at somebody he feels that you are so happy to see him – and you are simply smiling a bogus smile. It has nothing to do with him! But he feels good and when he feels good, he smiles. He says beautiful things to you, that you are a beautiful person and you feel good, and so it goes on.

If you stop smiling your false smiles, you will feel that strange things are happening. People are not so friendly towards you. You become a misfit in groups; people want to avoid you. Accept that too. For one month, whatsoever the cost, smile only when you feel like smiling. This will bring an alignment. And after one month I will see, mm? Good!

[The group co-leader said that he found it strange to be pushing people into areas where he felt he needed to go, or seeing blocks in them which were also in him.

Osho said that one could learn best through teaching, and that he should regard the role of groupleader as just being a role, and that of participant just another; that they were both just part of the game – the game of therapy. The thing is to play your part as perfectly as you can.

Osho said that there are two types of knowledge – scientific and religious. In the scientific, one remains outside the experiment, otherwise one becomes prejudiced.... ]

This is one way – easier. The other way is of religion.

Exactly the opposite is the rule: you have to become a participant, involved, completely drowned in it. So when it is your problem it is a religious situation. When it is somebody else’s problem it is a scientific situation. It is very easy to be scientific. It is very difficult to be religious. because you have to be both the experimented and the experimenter, both the experiment and the scientist. There is no separation inside. You are playing a mono-drama. In an ordinary drama there are many actors and roles are divided. In a mono-drama you are alone. All the roles have to be played by you.

A zen monk used to call out loudly every morning, ’Bokuju, where are you?’ That was his own name (laughter). And he would answer, ’Yes sir? I am here.’

Then he would say, ’Bokuju, remember, another day is given. Be aware and alert and don’t be foolish!’ He would then say, ’Yes sir, I will try my best.’ And there was nobody else there!

His disciples started thinking he had gone mad or something. But he was playing a mono-drama.

And that’s how the inner situation is. You are the talker, you are the listener, you are the commander and you are the commanded. It is difficult because roles tend to get mixed, to overlap. It is very easy when somebody else is the led and you are the leader. If the roles are divided, things are clear-cut.

Nothing is overlapping; you have to finish your role, he has to finish his. It is easy; the situation is arbitrary.

When you are both, the situation is natural, not arbitrary, and of course it is more complicated. But you will learn by and by.

This has been a very good insight. And always remember that a growth group is not an analysis.

It is not to be an analysis – it has to be an insight. It is not that you think about and you analyse and categorise, that you conceptualise and theorise – no. You just live in the whole situation and an insight arises in you. This is an in-sight to see that you are telling a person to do something which you need yourself.

This will make you humble and you will not get into any ego-trip of being a leader. Otherwise you may be helpful to others, but you will create a great disease for yourself. So the leader is in danger.

He is playing with fire. He may get into the ego-trip too much of ’I am the leader and I am helping so many people. Look how many people are flowering. This is my work’. Then you miss the insight.

You may have helped others but you are drowned.

Then you remain ill. Your medicine may be working for others but it doesn’t work for you. This is an insight – ’I am in the same boat; my problem is the same.’ It makes you more human, more understanding, more tender, soft ... great compassion arises in you. Then you are not condemnatory if the led is not following you. You know how difficult it is. You cannot follow yourself.

Good, mm? It has been good.

[Another group participant says: I ’m starting to accept myself. My heart is pumping. In the group also, it was pumping. I start to like it (laughter).]

(chuckling) Good. If you can start to like yourself and to accept yourself, much becomes available.

Many doors open – but the first door is always of acceptance. If you condemn yourself, everything remains closed because you have not even opened the first door.

Every child is brought up in condemnation. Every child is told that he is not accepted as he is. If you do certain things that your elders want you to do, you are good. If you go against them, you are bad. So your actions decide whether you will be loved or not, not your being.

A child by and by starts learning that ’I am not valuable in myself. I have no intrinsic value. If I do certain things that elders think are good, then I am accepted. I am a good boy or a good girl. If I don’t do that and I follow my own instincts and it goes against the elders, I am bad, and I will not receive any love from them.’ And in a very dangerous world, a small child is so helpless, so tremendously helpless, that he has to compromise. He feels hurt that he is not accepted for himself as he is.

He feels ’Great demands are being made upon me which are foolish and the elders go on saying very strange things. They say ”It is because we love you, that’s why we want to do this. Because we love you, that’s why we want to beat you. Because we love you, that’s why we try to discipline you.

It is all for your own sake. It is all for your own good.”’

And the child cannot say anything. He cannot rebel and he cannot revolt because he is helpless.

His whole survival is at stake. For his survival he accepts compromises, becomes diplomatic, tries to do things others are saying to do; at least, pretends to. He tries not to do things which he wants to do, or at least tries to hide that he has been doing them.

A great dichotomy arises. Then you are always condemning; something or other is always wrong.

This is your parental voice, society, educationists. Their voice is working inside you and they’ are continuously condemning you, making you feel guilty. They have crippled all humanity.

If you start accepting yourself you have taken the first step against this insane society. You have taken the first step towards being a new human being. You have laid the first brick for a different type of humanity, which will be accepting, loving. Everybody should be valued for his own sake. The value should be intrinsic, not for what he does. His very existence is valuable.

Accept yourself and drop those parental voices by and by. The more you get rid of them, the more free and alive you will feel... more spontaneous.

[Another group participant says: Everybody says I have blocks and I can’t recognise them so I can’t bring them up. I don’t feel any blocks but the groupleader thinks I have. I think he’s crazy.

Osho checks his energy.]

He is not wrong – blocks are there. He may be crazy but he is right... and sometimes crazy people are right (laughter).

Blocks are there, but they are very dead so you cannot feel them. Blocks have many qualities. If the block is not absolutely settled, then you can feel it. It is loose and something is still flowing around, so you can feel it. But if the block is completely dead and it has become settled for many years, you cannot feel it. You have accepted it as part of your body, just as you accept your bones so you don’t feel them. They are there.

Good (laughter). Then you will start feeling the block also. Just wait... and don’t be worried about it because it has nothing to do with your worrying. You cannot bring it in this way.

[The sannyasin adds: About a week or so ago, I had a satori experience and I climbed on the bull’s back for a short time.

He has a slippery back. How can I stay on the back of the bull? – it was at a party.

Good. It will come again.

And don’t be worried, one slips many times. The bull is difficult and slippery also. You will slip many times, but by and by one becomes more skilful.

Many times the glances of satori come but you cannot hold them. But nothing is wrong in it and don’t be worried that you could not hold it for longer. Forget all about it. Just remember the situation in which it happened and try to move in that situation again and again.

The experience is not important. How you were feeling just a moment before, that is important. If you can create that situation again, the experience will happen again. Experience is not important.

The situation is important; how you were feeling – flowing. Loving... what the situation was. Music may have been on, people were dancing, eating... the flavour of food, or some beautiful woman just by your side, a friend talking to you – and suddenly....

Just remember the aroma in which it happened, the field. Try to create that field. When the field is right and you are in tune again, the bull will enter and you can ride on him...

One day one has to. Just sit silently and try to create that situation again, because it is a field that you can create. Sometimes it happens accidently.

The whole science of Yoga developed out of accidents. For the first time people were not looking for satori, because how could they know it then? For the first time it happened in a certain situation and they became aware. They started seeking it, searching for methods to reach it. Naturally they became aware that if the situation can be created again, maybe the experience will follow. This is how, by trial and error, the whole science of Yoga, Tantra, and Zen, developed. It took centuries to develop it.

For example many people became aware that if you sit silently and the body is not moving at all, the bull enters very easily. So people have been sitting silently, unmoving. People became aware that when the breathing is so silent that it is almost stopped, suddenly it happens. They became aware that if you sit with eyes fully open, it is difficult. If you sit with eyes fully closed, it is difficult, because when you sit with eyes fully closed, the moment you become silent you become sleepy. The bull may come but you will be asleep so you will miss the opportunity. If you have open eyes the world comes inside too much so you are distracted too much. People started looking just at the tip of the nose, with eyes neither open or closed, just half-way. Just looking at the tip of the nose, you cannot fall asleep and the world cannot enter in so much, and then it can happen more easily.

People became aware that if you stand you get tired soon. You cannot remain in that state for long; your body starts swaying. It is difficult to remain immobile while standing because the standing posture is for walking. If you lie down you fall asleep, because the lying posture is for sleep. So they started sitting erect.

This is the padmasan, the lotus posture, in which you are sitting. In this posture you can stay longer than you can standing and you can remain awake more easily than when you are lying down. This is a very symetrical posture. The body is just in the middle, the backbone is erect and the whole body is loosely hanging on it. Both the hands, the palms, are touching each other. Feet upon feet.

They make a circle, and the body electricity moves in a circle. That creates a harmony and in that harmony, satori happens easily.

These are just situations. They are not necessary situations. It is not that if you can sit it has to happen. No, this is simply creating a more flexible state in which it can happen, but there is no necessity. A person can sit for his whole life and it may not happen.

Everybody has to find in what situation his satori starts bubbling, his own samadhi starts happening.

Everybody has to feel his own way. If you are a little alert, after a few experiences you will become able to create the situation, mm?

CHAPTER 8

If You Love Me, You are Caught!

10 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

If you understand me rightly, never ask my advice for details, because that can become a problem for you. You follow me? Just remain alive and spontaneous and full of feeling. Wherever your sunflower says the sun is, allow the feeling that way. And never listen to any other consideration.

This is courage... and this is authenticity. Authenticity is one of the greatest values in life. Nothing can be compared to it.

In the old terminology, authenticity is also called truth. The new terminology calls it authenticity

– which is better than truth, because when we talk about truth, it seems as if truth is something, a thing-like phenomenon somewhere and you have to find it. Truth looks more like a noun. Authenticity is a verb. It is not something waiting for you. You have to be authentic, only then is it there. You cannot discover it. You have to create it continuously by being true. It is a dynamic process.

Let this sink into you as deeply as possible, that all that is beautiful in life is a verb; it is not a noun.

Truth, to be true about it, is a verb; it is not a noun. Language is fallacious. Love is not a noun; it is a verb. Love is in loving. It is a process.

When you love, only then love is there. When you don’t love, it has disappeared. It exists precisely when it is dynamic. Trust is a verb, not a noun. When you trust, it is there. Trust means trusting and love means loving. Truth means being truthful.

And the criterion is within you – not in bibles, not in the koran, not in the gita. The criterion is in your feeling, your existential feeling. So whatsoever the feeling says, you move with it. Sometimes it gives you great insecurity. Say okay to that. Sometimes it leads you into deep pain; say okay to that. Trust that wherever it is leading must be meaningful and significant to your growth.

Thought is very cunning, crude, clever, calculating. Of course it gives more comfortable ideas, more convenient. It always considers everything else except the feeling. But it is dead.

So go there, and just be without any ideas. If you feel like staying there and helping them, help them. If you feel like going north, go north. Or there may be some third alternative – who knows?

All that we can see is very small compared to that which really happens. Nobody knows. Life is unpredictable.

Remain available to the moment. Never decide beforehand, so that you will never feel guilty. Never decide beforehand; you will never feel confused. Never decide beforehand and you will never feel any conflict within you. So whatsoever you do, you do it totally; your act becomes total. And when an act is total, it is beautiful. When an act is total, it gives you peace, silence, harmony.

So just go completely free of any plan and see what happens.

[A sannyasin said that she felt she loved Osho very much, but that she was also very much afraid of him.]

(gently) That always happens with love, mm? If you love a person, you are afraid also. But that fear is good – it is part of love. When fear is there and there is no love, it is a negative thing. When there is love and fear, that creates one of the greatest values in life. That’s what we call respect.

When love is together with fear, in the alchemy of the mind, a new chemical arises. That is respect.

Love alone will not give you respect. You love a person – your lover, your friend – but there is no fear; then there is no respect. You fear your enemy. but there is no love so there is no respect.

When you love a person and fear also arises, a totally new quality comes in – that’s what respect is.

[Osho went on to say that God is both a mystery and a terror; that you can love God but you have to fear Him also. God creates both values in you – fear and love. This two-faceted aspect of God has created a conflict for many people because they think that God is to be either feared or loved, but that one cannot do both. Osho said that both attitudes miss.... ]

The very idea of God creates in you a new value not ordinarily known in life. You love Him, that’s why you fear Him.

Why does fear arise when you love a person? – because you may not prove worthy. When you love God, a fear arises that you may not prove worthy of him. You start trembling. You love Him, you would like to prove worthy, but who knows? – you may not. You would like His love to shower on you, but who knows whether you have earned it yet or not? Fear arises.

Love arises because of God – fear arises because of you. It is very natural – and good. Fear alone is a disvalue. With love, the quality changes completely.

[A sannyasin says she feels sick and she did not know if it was physical or psychological. Osho said that it was not a physical illness, but that she felt sick whenever she had to work, He said that she was lazy – and there was nothing wrong in that, but that she should be upfront about not wanting to work, rather than trying to work but saying she was sick all the time... ]

You people go on thinking in wrong terms. Work is not work. And without work you will become more rotten, because what will you do? Your whole energy will become just a whirlpool inside and will create a thousand and one problems. Work is needed... it is a relaxation. You create energy by food, by sleep. Where to put that energy?

You have to be creative about it. And work is a very ugly word, and particularly in the West, it is very ugly. That has created a certain subconscious attitude. In primitive societies, work is taken to be almost a play, a game. Everything is thought to be a game.

In a primitive village, even now in India in remote parts, the villagers will get up at four or three o’clock in the morning and the whole village will start singing. They are getting ready for their day’s work. From every hut song will arise, drums will beat and somebody will start playing on the flute.

Then everybody will come out and move towards their fields to work, singing together in choruses.

And it continues the whole day. The work seems to be joined with play. By the end of the day they come back, tired. It has been hard work under the hot sun. They will return to their villages and start dancing again into the night. They will go on dancing late, and then fall asleep under the trees.

Again in the morning they are there singing. It is very difficult to decide what separates their work from their play; they overlap.

Once a man came to see me. He was a busdriver. Of course to drive a bus in a city like Bombay or Delhi where the whole traffic is neurotic, brings one to be continuously on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He was very nervous, shaking.

He told me, ’I want to get rid of this work. It is too much! I cannot sleep – it gives me nightmares.

And the whole day on the wheel in such neurotic traffic I cannot relax for a single moment.’

I told him, ’Try a meditation that I will give you, for seven days. Take this as a challenge – that these people are running into the middle of the road and doing everything in disorder. Take it that they are just creating a situation for you in which to test your skill. Take it as a play. Take it as a situation in which your energy is put to test, and your whole skill is to be judged.’

This idea appealed to him and after seven days he came and said, ’It has worked... tremendous!

Now I am not worrying about the road; I am enjoying it! The more disorderly it is, the more I enjoy it.

It is really beautiful how I can avoid all the problems of the traffic. When I come back home, I come almost as a victorious player; like somebody who has won a gold medal in the Olympics!’

Take work as a game and enjoy it. Everything is a challenge. Just don’t go on doing it, dragging yourself because it has to be done. Then you will become ill. If you have to work for four, five hours a day and those hours are a continuous sub-current of avoiding it, then you are dividing your being.

It is not a question of work. It is a question of your whole inner well-being. You will become divided doing something for four or five hours which you cannot like or don’t like.

So there are only two possibilities: either find work you like or become capable of liking the work, whatsoever it is. The second is the best alternative because it is very difficult to find work that you like. Sooner or later you will dislike it. In the beginning, maybe you like it. Everybody in the ashram comes and in the beginning they are so full of energy. You also were full of energy.

Once I allow them in the ashram and they become inmates, their energy is gone. They start creating problems and avoiding work and this and that. If nothing works, they are ill. I don’t say that they are consciously ill. I’m not saying that they are pretending illnesses – no. They may be getting ill, but that getting ill is also their work, their karma. They have done it.

First people come and they say that whatsoever is the work, they will do it and that just to be in the ashram is enough of a reward. Once the work is given and they are insiders, once they have settled and they know now nobody is going to disturb their settled-ness, then they start creating problems.

So the first alternative is to find work you like. But that is not going to help for long because every kind of work, by and by becomes boring. You have to repeat everything. The other alternative is best. Bring a capability to like anything that you do; whatsoever the work you can like it.

Try it. Find out ways how to like it. People want to find out ways how to dislike it, so of course they find ways. For three weeks, try doing the work and liking it. Enjoy it, and singingly. Let it be just a dance. If you are cleaning, it can be a dance, a singing, an enjoyment, a delight and you will be tremendously benefited by it. And all this illness will disappear.

[A sannyasin says: I m very tired of my mind. I mean, I’m really getting frustrated. When I’m working, I’m just thinking and thinking and pushing the thoughts away and finding them coming and coming.

They’re so boring and always frustrating.

Osho suggested that she stop fighting with her mind. He said the boredom came through identifying with it. Just as birds go on singing each day the same song and the traffic noise continues without boring you because you don’t identify with it, so the noise of the mind continues.

Osho pointed out that the mind is a very beautiful and intricate mechanism.... ]

There are millions of small nerves continuously working, clicking, giving messages, receiving messages, transforming messages, collecting data for some future use. It is a great office buzzing with much activity. That’s what you hear, and you think something is wrong. It is just as if you are driving the car and it goes on humming and you say this is a boring noise. But how is the car going to function? It is not boring. It is just the noise that is created by the mechanism.

The mind is a very complex mechanism. You don’t know the tremendous miracles it is doing. It carries in the substratum all the knowledge that the whole of humanity has ever gained. It carries the whole human mind in the collective unconscious. On the deepest layer, all that has happened to the human mind is also collected by your mind. It is not only that which has happened to you, but to your father, your mother, your father’s father and mother’s mother, and centuries and centuries back – from Adam to Kamal. All that has happened is stored and continuous activity is needed for it, otherwise it will become stale and dead.

Then there is a second layer, your subconscious. All your life instincts are there, continuously working. So much work is going on. If you feel hunger and the mind is not functioning, how are you going to know? Immediately, much work goes on. Once the mind becomes aware that something is needed – drink, food... that you are feeling thirsty – immediately much communication goes on. It immediately gives you the hint that now you are feeling hungry or thirsty, that the throat is dry.

Just the other day I was reading about a child who died in New York because suddenly he started eating too much salt. Naturally the parents would not allow him to. He would not eat anything else, just salt. They threatened, they punished him, they did everything to prevent him, but the child was almost mad. When he died, the postmortem report said that he had a certain disease in which much salt was needed. If he were allowed to eat salt he would have survived – there was no other way to prevent it. Much salt was needed.

Just think of the brain of the child and what the brain was doing. The very subtle message from the deepest core of the body was coming that salt was needed. So when you are hungry the mind receives the message. When you are thirsty the mind receives the message. When your bowels are full and they want to move, the mind receives the message. And it is not simple things. The ears go on receiving the sounds. The eyes go on receiving the form, the light, the rays. The nose goes on receiving the smell. The whole body goes on receiving much information. The mind has to collect and file everything. The work continues and it is a twenty-four hour work.

Even while you are asleep, the mind continues. If the alarm goes, the mind has to wake you. If a mosquito comes and starts disturbing you, the mind will protect you. It will not let your sleep be disturbed. It will order the hand to remove the mosquito, or to kill it. In your sleep you will do that.

Something starts crawling on your feet and the feet immediately throw it off. The mind is continuously guarding, working, and it is collecting everything for future use.

Tomorrow you will need it. Today you think it is not needed, but it has to collect for tomorrow. Right now when you are listening to me, the mind is collecting because it is useful. Tomorrow you will need it. Some day you will ask what I have said and the mind may simply shrug its shoulders and say, ’I don’t know because I was completely silent. I have not heard or collected anything.’

When you are working, the mind goes on rehearsing many things. It is nothing to be worried about.

One has simply to accept it. The antagonism is the problem. Just accept it... it is okay. You don’t say that the breathing goes on monotonously, boringly – in, out, in, out, in, out – how many thousands of times a day? You are not bored. The blood goes on circulating all over the body and the heart goes on pumping – how many times a day? You are not bored by anything – just the mind, because you get identified too much with it. You think, ’I am the mind, and because the mind is working, how can I rest?’

You are not the mind! Let the mind work and you rest. Just start creating a distance. It’s okay. Mind works – let it work. It does not need your help at all so don’t be worried. In fact you are a constant interference.

There is no need to interfere. Let the mind work and you will see – by and by the distance becomes bigger and bigger. The mind is far away working somewhere on another planet and you are perfectly restful.

For three weeks try this. Just accept it and see what happens. But accept totally – no fight. It is okay. . .it is there, and it cannot be avoided.

[The Tao group was present at darshan. The groupleader says: I don’t know whether it s good to plan. I often have unstructured kind of plans and it makes for a kind of challenge. But there’s a part of me that resists this kind of thing.]

No, no need to resist. Nothing is wrong in planning. If you are not burdened with it, it is perfectly good. The problem arises when it becomes a tension in you. If you are playing it as a game, it is perfectly good. If it is a leela, it is perfectly good. If plans are fulfilled, good. If they are not fulfilled, don’t feel frustrated, that’s all. While planning, don’t become tense about it. Remain relaxed.

The problem arises when you plan and the planning becomes so important that you are lost in it and you cannot keep your coolness. You become so hot and excited that you are almost feverish, ill. Then it is a problem. Otherwise, if you can remain cool, and plan, it is perfectly good.

Just try to remain cool and centred, and if you find it difficult, just leave everything to me. Go on moving and let things happen. They will fall in line.

I have never planned. In fact I don’t know how people plan. But everything falls in line. Somehow the whole manifests and things go on happening. The beauty of it is that because you don’t have any plan, you cannot be frustrated. You can never be a failure.

In Persia they have a proverb: If you sleep on the floor, you will never fall from the bed. Perfectly good! If you don’t plan, there are no problems. All problems disappear. And whatsoever is good, happens, because there is no way to compare It with anything.

Wherever you reach is the goal because you had no goal to reach in the first place.

But that’s up to you. There are people who cannot remain without planning. Planning comes naturally to them. If it comes naturally and you can remain cool, perfectly good. I am not against it.

If it comes naturally to you, then not to plan will be against nature. That’s how I am contradictory.

The problem is, if I look at you and see that planning comes naturally to you, the real thing is not how to drop planning. The real thing is to make you more cool, that’s all, and planning can continue.

One has to feel one’s type, and I can see that you are a planning type, so plan, but remain cool.

CHAPTER 9

I Give You a Capacity to Know

11 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin says: I am confused – about everything. I cannot ask questions; there are so many.]

As I see it, you have so many answers. You think that already you know much. Your confusion is not created by so many questions, but by so many answers.

A question is innocent if it comes out of ignorance. It is pure... it is tremendously beautiful. When a question comes out of an already concluded answer, it is ugly and it creates confusion. A question in itself never creates a confusion because there is nothing to be confused about. If you have an answer already, and the question arises out of the answer that you have settled upon, then disturbance, confusion. What to do? There is doubt.

You are loaded too much with knowledge and the whole of that knowledge is simply rubbish. You will have to look into it. Questioning is very good, but out of knowledge it is useless. I only answer people who don’t have any answers. Then it is simple to communicate; it is direct. They can see me and feel me and understand me. But if you have an answer already, then you are continuously comparing what I am saying with your answer; whether it fits with you or not. If it fits, okay. If it doesn’t fit, confusion.

And it is not going to fit with your answers – hence confusion – because I am saying something which is my existential experience and you are carrying conclusions which are just intellectual. It is not going to fit. Existence never fits with any concept, in any theory.

If a Christian comes to me there are problems, confusion, because he has Christianity there. He is listening to me continuously through that screen and continuously screening what fits and what does not fit. He already thinks that he has arrived. Now he is evaluating whether I am right or not.

Confusion arises.

If you have not arrived, if your knowledge is just borrowed and you understand the fact that it is not really knowledge but information that you have collected and deep down you are ignorant, then push that information aside. I am not giving you certain knowledge. I am giving you a certain capacity to know.

My whole effort is to make you capable of knowing. I am not concerned with knowledge.

Today’s knowledge will be useless tomorrow. All knowledge is already out of date by the time you have acquired it. So my effort is not to transfer knowledge to you, but to create a receptivity, a vulnerability, an openness, a capacity to learn... a readiness to respond to life, so that each moment you don’t act out of your knowledge but simply out of your understanding. And that’s totally different.

An understanding is a quality of consciousness. It has nothing to do with the mind. Knowledge is just a mind thing, memory, accumulation, conditioning.

The problem as I see it in you is that you are deceived by your knowledge. You have many things you think you know – and you don’t know at all. If you become a little alert you will be able to see that which in fact you do know.

Let this question become your meditation: What really do you know? The first step towards knowledge is to know what you know and what you don’t know. Make a clear-cut distinction and don’t try to deceive yourself. Just see whether you know it. Do you know anything about God? Do you know anything about consciousness? Do you know anything about love? Do you know anything about yourself? Who are you? From where do you come? Where are you going? Be very very sincere and go into these questions.

If you come to feel that you don’t know, then drop all that you have been believing you know; put it aside. It is to be thrown into a rubbish heap. If you know, then there is no problem and I cannot confuse you. Nobody can confuse you.

Once you know, then whatsoever happens and whatsoever others say, nobody can confuse you because you know it. You are rooted in your knowing. But if you are not rooted in your knowing, it is just an assembled facade of knowledge and anybody can confuse you. You believe that God is good and somebody says something else; you think that God is like this and somebody says something else. Again and again you will be confused. You will remain in confusion for the whole of your life, but you will be the cause. Nobody confuses you.

Just meditate over it. In the time you are here, meditate over what you know, and if you come to see that you don’t know this, discard it. Go on discarding. Hindus call it the process of neti-neti: I don’t know this, I don’t know that. Go on discarding and unless something is left that you know, even if it is nothing, don’t be worried. Out of that nothing, out of that pure innocent ignorance, you will be able to commune with me, and there will be no more confusion; never again any confusion. Who can confuse you if you don’t know anything?

You were thinking that the sun rises from the west and suddenly I say that it rises from the east –

confusion. What to do with your belief? For whole of your past you have believed that way and now suddenly I say the sun rises from the east. A thousand and one questions arise.

But if you don’t know, you will listen and this listening will be innocent. You simply listen and think,

’This man says the sun rises from the east, so let us go and see whether it does or not.’ There is no question of confusion, rather a curiosity, an enquiry; a call, an invocation, an adventure arises.

If the sun rises from the east there will be no confusion. If it does not rise from the east, then too, there is no confusion. You will have come to know the truth – that it does or does not rise. You follow me? In this way, one comes to live an unfocused life.

Just meditate over it, mm?

[Osho talks to a sannyasin, who is going to start a centre, about helping others, saying that it is a help for one’s own growth.

Osho said that when someone comes to you with a problem, you are sufficiently detached from it to be able to be of help, but when that problem is your own, the issue is too clouded with anxiety which prevents you having such a clear perspective.... ]

And meditation always grows in deep accompaniment with compassion. It never grows alone.

It is as if you are trying to help a tree to grow without watering it. Compassion functions like watering.

Of course just watering is not going to help. A seed is needed, a sprout is needed. A sprout is needed to have its own life and potentiality and destiny – the flower. Then the watering can be helpful.

There are a few religions, in the East particularly, which have the seed. Sometimes the sprout comes up above the earth but they don’t water it with compassion. Sooner or later it dries and dies.

They have become too self-centred. Christianity is doing just the opposite. There is too much of compassion and service, but the meditation has gone. There is no seed there, no plant – they simply go on watering. They create nothing but a muddy place.

Meditation plus compassion... then you have both the wings to fly into the sky of God.

So while you are there, forget your problems for the time being and help others to meditate, to grow.

Then the centre will start functioning on its own. It takes its own life.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group are at darshan. Osho commented on the method:]

It is a zen method and tremendously helpful. It is more concerned with going within than going without. You have to seek a virgin point within your being which has never been travelled to before.

Nobody can enter there except you. And you too can only enter up to a certain extent. Your whole identity is lost. Your whole address is no more there. You don’t know who you are. You enter only when you don’t know who you are. And then suddenly you are inside the shrine and you know who you are. But this has nothing to do with your previous identity.

[The groupleader said: It was a heavy group. There were ten men and two women. I don ’t know if that had anything to do with it.

I had the feeling that they were all working hard and still somehow, it was very heavy for them.

When I was doing these groups in the West, very often people would have really beautiful break-throughs. Somehow people here either can’t discover something simple because they don’t believe that its possible... ]

There are many things implied. One thing – each group has its own individuality, so no other group will be the same.

[Osho went on to say that each group will be a completely new experience, so one should not have any expectations.]

The second thing. In the West it is very easy to experience simple experiences. Here it will be difficult because here expectations are very great. Listening to me, just being close to me, people start having a very deep desire for the ultimate. Simple experiences happen to them, but they won’t take any notice of it. When you are not expecting the ultimate, simple things are also good.

It is just as if you were expecting one million dollars and suddenly you come across a ten dollar note.

You fall flat. But if you were not expecting anything and suddenly by the side of the road there is a ten dollar note, you are so happy. It is the same ten dollar note, but if the expectation was of one million dollars, it is nothing. Who bothers about ten dollar notes? If the expectation was none, then even a ten dollar note is almost like ten million dollars.

In the West when you worked with people in growth groups, they didn’t expect anything like enlightenment, so even small experiences look like enlightenment; every small experience – a ten dollar note. Nothing is wrong in them; they are very beautiful. Even a small flower, a grass flower is beautiful. To be happy, there is no need for a lotus. One can become happy with a small grass flower. But when you are expecting and searching for the lotus flower, these small flowers will come on your way but you will not take any note of them.

So this will happen more here. And there is nothing wrong in it – it is natural. Their expectations are very high.

The third thing is that whenever a group is working hard and is not able to reach a soft space, force it to work harder. It simply shows that this type of group can achieve greater experiences. The experience happens only when you come to a peak in your energy.

For example, somebody boils at thirty degrees; he has very low energy. At a thirty-degree effort he boils and evaporates – and then the experience. Another has greater energy and boils at seventy degrees. Don’t wait for thirty degrees. He has to be pushed to the seventy-degree point. Another is going to boil at one hundred; push him still harder. He will pass the thirty-degree point without any experiences – and also seventy degrees. Don’t feel hopeless. Don’t start thinking that this is a failure. No. This simply shows that the man has a higher energy possibility and that his experience is going to be a very great experience. But it will take a little longer and harder effort.

The thirty-degree experience is going to be a thirty-degree experience. It will be achieved sooner but cannot be high. It is going to be like seasonal flowers. Within six weeks they are there, and within six weeks they are gone also. A person who achieves his satori or a part of a satori at the hundred-degree point, will achieve more and the experience is going to become a permanent thing in him.

So there are benefits with low-energy people and benefits with high-energy people. And both are good.

One of the causes may have been because there were too many men. The group will be hard.

Women bring softness to the group; the group becomes more balanced. When there are only men, they work hard but simple experiences will not be so easily possible. When the group is mixed – half men, half women – more possibility of simple experiences are there.

Sometimes it will be so but don’t make it an insistence that it should always be half and half; there is no need. Sometimes let it be hard. It is good sometimes to travel on a hard, rough terrain. The hilly path is also beautiful.

With women the group will be softer but the experiences will be closer to the sex centre. That’s why they will be simple. If there are twelve men working, the energy will rise higher. It will be difficult, but the experience will be closer to the sahasrar. If twelve women are working, then again the difficulty will arise because they soften each other. But they soften each other because of the sexual energy.

If twelve men are sitting together and a woman enters the room, immediately a change of climate happens. Those same twelve men relax; they are not so hard. They start laughing a little; they are not so tense. A woman had entered – now they are not fighting with each other. They are all focused on the woman. Otherwise they were fighting with each other; there was an inner conflict between male egos. Now the woman has come and the energy changes. If there are too many women and a man enters, there is a different change; a single man will make a difference.

So it is good if it happens sometimes half and half, but don’t insist for it. In the West it is easier.

People are not really seeking samadhi there – they are seeking sensation. In fact they are more interested in discovering their sensuality, their sexuality, than in discovering their samadhi. If the group has a balance of men and women it is easier. If they can be allowed sexual freedom also, it is easier.

That’s what’s happening in Esalen-type institutes. People work, but the whole of the work verges somewhere on sex. They have worked hard, and then the whole group goes and sits in a hot bath.

The men and women are touching each other and just playing. The hot water all around creates a womb situation and the vapours rising ....

You feel you are achieving something but it is very dream-like. That achievement is not going to last.

The moment you have come back from the hills to the town, it is gone. It is not going to become an integrated part of you.

When you feel that things are going hard you have to put in more energy. People are almost to be pushed towards that extreme. Ordinarily they don’t go to the extreme. When people say that they are making an effort, a total effort, even then they are not making a total effort.

This is my observation: when people make an ordinary effort, it is about fifteen percent of their energy. When they say they are making a total effort, that is about thirty percent of their effort, but it looks total because it is double. Ordinarily they are working with fifteen percent of their energy and now with thirty percent, so what more can you expect! But that is not total. Go on forcing them... go on forcing them. If they can come to about fifty per-cent – which will be about half their total – things will start happening.

[A group participant said that though he worked hard, nothing happened. Osho said that he needed to work perhaps just a little harder... ]

For the first time, the break-through has nothing to do with you – you simply go on groping in the dark. When it happens, it happens, but it is almost a happening. You simply grope. You don’t sit still, because if you sit, it will not happen.

The door is there, it is a dark night, and you start groping. Maybe you had just reached to the side of the door and you stopped, thinking it was hopeless. ’I have been groping so long and the door has not been touched. Maybe it is not there, or maybe I am not worthy of it.’ You stop.

One has to go on groping; don’t stop. One day or other you will just stumble upon it. Once you have stumbled, things become easier. The first stumbling is the greatest thing; then things become easier because you know. Even if sometimes you cannot find it, you know the door is there and you know you can find it. Maybe today you missed, but tomorrow.... You never feel hopeless again.

You should have forced yourself a little more, because things happen only when you have come to a peak in your energy. You cannot do anything more, and suddenly something clicks – a door opens.

The key has found the lock. It is just like the click of the key opening the lock... you can almost hear it.

[A group participant said he was resentful that the Soma group had been extended and the price doubled. He said the anger was completely irrational and the change would only mean a bit of inconvenience for him if he went ahead and booked for the group, but still, the anger was there.

Osho advised him to get the anger out on a pillow as it was not good to carry it around. He said that in fact the anger had nothing to do with the soma group... ]

It may have something to do with the group that you have just done. It always happens that if you have a certain understanding of alertness, immediately the mind will start creating many things to make you fall again into the old trap so the understanding is clouded and lost.

This always happens; so next time be alert. You can find any excuse. If the Soma had not been the excuse you would have found something else. Life is so big – you can always find something.

Once you have some energy there hankering to be angry, you will find any excuse. Sometimes it can happen that you can become angry because you cannot find any excuse to be angry. But it has nothing to do with anything outside.

Always remember that whatsoever is happening to you, is happening within you, and whatsoever you are doing, you are doing with yourself. Even when you are angry and hitting somebody else, you are doing something with yourself. The other is just a screen on which you project.

After small gaps of alertness, the mind tries to pull you back down to the old pattern. The mind feels apprehensive about what has happened. With the slight understanding of what alertness is, the whole mind is afraid. You are going out of your mind. The mind will bring all that it can: anger, greed, sex, food – anything... anything to dope you, to make you heavy again, to cloud you, so that smoke arises around you and the flame is lost.

[Another group participant asked if he might continue the question of ’Who am l?’ as he felt he hadn’t nearly reached his own limit.]

Leave it right now... it won’t be of much help. Do the camp first and then sometime I will tell you to repeat the group again. Continuing just now will not be helpful.

Sometimes the mind gets into a rut. You go on doing and it will go on moving in the same rut.

It is very helpful sometimes to drop the whole effort. It is just as if you are trying to remember somebody’s name and you know you know it, but it is not coming up, not surfacing. You make much effort, and the more effort you make, the more you feel that somehow you go on missing. You go on narrowing your consciousness; you become very tense. You know it is just on the tip of the tongue but it is not coming and you get frustrated.

You drop the whole effort and go into the garden and start digging or you go for a morning walk or take a shower. Suddenly it is there... it bubbles up.

Forget all about this group and just do the camp. Some day during the camp, suddenly you may have the glimpse that you were feeling was coming during the group and that somehow you missed.

If any time you feel like that, tell me after the camp, the exact day and time when it happened.

You have done whatsoever you could so don’t feel worried. You got into a rut, mm? Like a whirlpool, and went round and round and round. Just relax now for a few days and then we will see.

[The assistant group leader said that because she had not been talking during the group she had built up a tremendous amount of energy. Osho gave her a box to hold on her head while he checked her energy. Then handed her the box to keep, and described how she could transfer energy to another person:]

Put this box on his head, on the seventh centre, hold it there and tell him that if something happens he has to allow it. Just pour your energy into him. Stand in front of him if it is a man; behind if it is a woman.

Start feeling the energy and the movement and the vibration and let him also move if he feels like moving. When energy is dynamic, it is easily transferred. When it is static, it is very difficult to transfer.

This can be a very beautiful experience for you and for the group; a great help. Once you know how to pour energy, you will be able to collect more and then you can pour it. You can become almost a transmission.

I need many people like you soon because many people will need energy.

[Another participant said she felt some very high moments – especially after the Dynamic meditation.

I feel very centred and very silent... But I felt more and more frustrated with the question.

Osho said it is good to just pay attention to the positive moments. Negative moments do come and one should just take note of them but give them no more attention.... ]

Focus your energy on the positive moments, because wherever you focus your energy, you feed.

Focusing energy is a tremendous nourishment to the object you focus upon. That’s why we hanker for attention so much.

If nobody pays attention to you, suddenly you start feeling starved. People do a thousand and one things just to get attention. There are even people who are ready to become buffoons just to get attention. If somebody laughs and looks at them and pays attention to them, they feel good. All fools are not really fools. Ninety percent of them are very wise people. Through their foolishness they are attracting attention.

When politicians are in power, they always remain healthy. They should be the most unhealthy persons in the world but they are not. They remain very healthy. Even if a world war is going on, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt all remain healthy and happy. From where do they get this nourishment? It is through the attention that is being paid to them.

Once a politician is out of office, he starts starving. Sooner or later he is gone. He becomes crippled, paralysed, ill. Nobody pays any attention to him. This happens to people after retirement. Somebody was a tax collector, a commissioner or a governor, and everybody was paying him attention. Then one day, out of the blue, he retires. Now he passes through the same streets but nobody even says hello; nobody bothers to look at him. He is no more thought to be important. When others are not thinking that he is important, how can he believe that he is important? He feels almost thrown out of life, discarded. He starts dying.

Psychologists say that almost ten years is cut off one’s life after retirement. If a person was going to live eighty years, he will live seventy years – and that too only if his children and grand-children take care of him and give him attention. In the West even that has become impossible. He is thrown to a dung heap, to some home for elderly people where everybody is starved and hankering for attention and nobody is ready to give it. He dies even sooner. People simply shrink, cave in and die.

It happens to small children. If the mother is not there they simply cave in. You can give them food, you can give them vitamins, you can give them all that is needed, but something basic – attention –

is not given. They remain ill, retarded. Even if they survive, they survive very half-heartedly and for the whole of their life they are in a sad mood; they are never happy.

Attention is food. When people pay attention to you they nourish you. And the same happens inside. If you pay too much attention to your illness, you nourish it. That’s what the hypochondriacs do; they continuously nourish their illness. A slight headache and their whole energy moves there; their whole mind becomes focused on the headache. Now nothing is important in the world – only their headache. Even if a world war is going on they are not concerned; nothing distracts them. Only their headache becomes their god, so they nourish it. It becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and spreads.

Never pay attention to thorns. They are there, but pay attention to flowers, because whatsoever you pay attention to increases. Even if you can sing only one song in twenty-four hours, bring your total energy, love and attention to it. By and by you will see that that song has become your reality. The thorns that were on the path and that you never paid much attention to, that you neglected, by and by have died, have caved in and died by themselves.

Just look for the stars. Don’t be bothered about the darkness that is in between, and your life will be full of stars and flowers. Soon darkness disappears. Then even darkness starts shining. Even darkness becomes luminous.

[A sannyasin asks about learning mime]

Mime is one of the most beautiful arts and can become a very significant base for spiritual growth.

You have to become a witness; then only can you become a great artist in mime. You have to be very alert and aware. You have to remove yourself from your body so much, so far away, that you can do whatsoever you want with your body. You have to attain to a certain mastery.

I am going to start a school soon. Learn and you may be one of the teachers!

[A sannyasin says: My desire for love and attention is so big that it rules my whole life.

No, no, nothing is wrong. It is natural... a natural desire to be loved. And of course when somebody wants to be loved, one wants to be loved as nobody else in existence. That too is natural. There is nothing crazy in it. If it is crazy then the whole earth is crazy...

No, no, don’t be worried. They are all doing the same – they are all trying also!

Go on searching for a person; you may find one. It is not such a crazy idea; it can become an actuality. First you try and then we will see. But this is my feeling, that everybody finds someone eventually.

Drop the idea that this is crazy. These concepts create trouble and you create a dichotomy between you and the idea. You say that this is crazy. Who are you to say that? You create a separation. This is you. If it is crazy, you are crazy. What can be done? You are crazy and there is nobody separate from that craziness. Once you understand that this is you, you have to accept it.

In that very effort many things will happen to you. You will become more alert, aware, and that same energy that is moving into craziness starts moving into alertness. One day suddenly you find that the craziness is gone.

And this is how life surprises. Once the craziness is gone, the same day you will find the person.

[Osho went on to say that in going after a man, one needs to be a little artful, otherwise the man will be frightened off. ’Men are to be caught, not to be haunted.’]

Become a little more aware. Nothing is wrong – this is natural. I am not saying that it is not crazy.

To be human is to be crazy. But there is a point where humanness disappears and craziness also.

Yes, that has to be attained, but it cannot be attained by fighting the craziness. That can be attained only through understanding. It will happen.

[Another group participant said that he felt something had happened, a change had come about, but his mind still continued.]

Mind will continue going on. It is an old companion and it goes very slowly. But something has happened.

It is just like a drop in the ocean of the mind, but that drop is very strong and once it starts growing it becomes the ocean.

It is just a small seed, a mustard seed, but once it falls into the right soil, it starts growing.

[A sannyasin says: I always feel that I’m creating doubts in my mind of looking at things logically.... ]

There is nothing to be worried about. intellect is also good... it is part of you. I talk against intellect not because I am against it. I have to talk against it so that you don’t become just the intellect; so that intellect does not start dominating your whole being. It has to play its role; it has to have its own corner. It is not to be destroyed. It is a very useful instrument, very complex and valuable. Only man has it. It has to be used in the right way; it is not to be misused. It has not to be allowed to become master of your being. It has to serve you.

When you listen to me, you try to understand something. Of course the first ripple will be in the intellect. That’s as it should be because intellect is on the gate; it is your guard. Only when the intellect is satisfied does it allow something to enter. And that’s okay; there is nothing wrong in it.

The first ripples will arise in the intellect. If you move with them and absorb them, ripples will arise in your feeling. If you move with them and allow them to take possession of you, ripples in your being will also arise. These are the three layers: thinking feeling, being.

Being is the very centre of your being, hidden behind feeling, because it is so valuable, so precious.

It cannot be put on the gate. Intellect is the guard. Feeling is just in between. Feeling is more precious – that’s why it is not on the gate. The lowest servant is on the gate. But because intellect is on the gate, it can play games with you and the guard can become the master. Everybody has to come through the guard so everybody has to bribe him, to convince him. Everybody has to be friendly, to butter up the guard. The guard becomes bigger and bigger. And of course if the guard is not convinced, he will not allow anybody in. This is why the intellect has become very powerful.

The basic reason that it is at the gate is because it is the least important part of your being. The more important people are hidden behind. Feeling is more important, softer. It needs protection, otherwise the world will be too much. It can be easily hurt, easily destroyed; it is fragile. And behind feeling, being is hiding.

It is your secret-most part, the most private, where only you can enter. Up to your intellect, the whole world can come and make contact. Up to your feeling, only love and friendship can come and make contact. Up to your being, only you; not even your lover can come.

So there is nothing to worry about. Just create a harmony. if your intellect functions and you are logical, nothing is wrong. Use it more creatively.

And I am coming with you. Don’t be worried about this intellect – I have entered behind it. I have bribed the gate guard and I am already in.

CHAPTER 10

Don’t be Limited by Religion

12 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin says: I’ve been a university student in theoretical physics. I love it very much.

Sometimes you speak against science and sometimes you praise it. What should I do?]

If you want to go inwards you have to leave the scientific attitude completely. If you want to move outwards, the scientific attitude is the only way. That’s why sometimes I praise it and sometimes I’m against it. It depends.

If you are going outwards, if your discovery is objective, if you want to know matter, then of course religion is not going to help. That is not the religious way. You will have to follow science. Then I’m all for science. But you have to decide where you are going, what you want to reach, what your goal is.

If your goal is inner peace, silence, love, bliss, self-knowledge, then the scientific approach is meaningless, irrelevant. If you are in the scientific attitude too much, focused, frozen, then it will be very difficult for you to move inwards because the very approach will become a barrier. Religion and science are two diametrically opposite directions. So one has to decide. Even if you want to be a scientist, you can be, but when you want to meditate you have to put away your scientific attitude.

You have to learn how to put away your attitude – just as when you are making love, you put your clothes away. You don’t make love with your boots and tie on.

There are a few people maybe making love with their boots and tie on, but they don’t seem to be respectful towards love. They cannot go deep in it because they remain concerned too much with the personality.

So nothing is wrong in being a scientist. If you love it, be a scientist, but then become capable by and by of using that scientific attitude as an instrument. You use it when you are in the lab, but when you go into your prayer room, you put it outside. In the prayer room you go as a layman, not as a scientist. You go as an ordinary human being, not as a technician. Then there is no problem. But it is very difficult to put aside a certain attitude once you have invested your life in it.

So you have to decide... nothing is wrong. If you want to become a physicist, become one, but always remember that you will not come to know yourself through that. If that is your goal, you are moving in a totally opposite direction. You are taking a long route unnecessarily. If you want to come home there are other methods. Logic and reason and a laboratory won’t help.

It is simple. When you want to see something you use your eyes. If you want to listen to somebody you use your ears, not your eyes, because both move in a different way, both have different capacities. It is exactly like that. If you are going to listen to a song there is no need to even open your eyes. In fact a real listener will close his eyes when he is listening to a song because the eye will be a disturbance. There is no need to see. One has to be totally in the ear.

When you are in the garden and watching a rose flower, if you are really alert you will come totally to the eyes. Your whole body will become eyes and eyes and eyes. You will see the flower from every way, from every pore of your being. Then all other senses are dropped. In a certain moment when you meet the rose, you are no more any ear, taste, noise; everything is gone. You simply see the form.

This goes on continuously. The more flexible you are, the more alive you are. The capacity to move from the eyes to the ears, from the ears to the nose, from the nose to the tongue, from the tongue to the whole skin; the capacity to be available, the capacity to move wherever you like, where you choose to be, not fixated – is flexibility. Your eyes don’t resist when you want to close them. You are the master and you can do whatsoever you like.

You can be argumentative; you can discuss deeply. There is nothing wrong in it. The problem arises when you cannot do anything else but argue. Then you are missing something. For argumentation you are missing something which is greater, something which always comes to a non-argumentative mind.

Be rational, but always be capable of putting it away, because there are things in life which cannot be approached through reason. Don’t be limited by your approach – whatsoever it is.

The same is also true about religion; don’t be limited by that. Don’t be unable to live in the world because you are religious and so you have to live in a monastery; you have to escape to the Himalayas, you have to completely die to the world. You cannot relate to a woman because you are religious. You cannot have children because you are religious. You cannot have a beautiful house because you are religious. That too is nonsense. Again you are getting fixed in a certain role and you are missing your flexibility, that fluidity which gives you the enrichment of many dimensions together.

Consciousness is multi-dimensional.

Whenever you become fixed in one dimension you are

impoverished; your richness is lost.

I would like you to also become a musician. I would like you also to become a meditator. I would like you also to be a scientist. Bigger and greater possibilities are there and you should be able to flow from one to another easily, very easily, with no hangover about anything.

When you go to the lab you become a scientist. You forget all about God. Matter becomes your god.

When you come home and you meditate, God becomes your matter. When you love a woman, love becomes your meditation. When you meditate, meditation becomes your love.

If one can be available this way, it is the best way to be. So think about it!

Anand Abhinatha. Abhinatha literally means the original god, the god of the beginning.

I am talking right now on Mahavira, a jaina teerthankara, a jaina prophet. The jaina tradition has twenty-four prophets and Abhinatha is the first prophet. So sometimes you can find something and read about Abhinatha. He is one of the most beautiful men ever born on the earth.

[The new sannyasin asks if it was necessary for him to go through sex... I want to go but I haven’t anybody to go with. I want to know if you feel it is really necessary.]

It is very necessary because if you don’t go through it, something will always remain hanging around you. It is better to be finished with it. One has to go beyond it; it is something to be passed beyond.

There is no need to make your abode there; it is just a bridge. But if you don’t go through it – and there are other ways; you can go via a boat, you can swim; there are a thousand and one ways to avoid the bridge – then continuously in your mind something will go on thinking about the bridge.

Who knows? Perhaps the bridge was beautiful.

Many never go beyond that bridge, and you will always be aware that many are not only passing on the bridge – they have made their houses there on the bridge and they live there. It is simply human to be curious about what is happening there. Why are so many people interested? Not so many people are interested in God.

If people have to choose between sex and God they will choose sex. They have already chosen it.

There are not so many people who are meditative, so there must be something. The curiosity will continue. Just to avoid that curiosity, I say it is a must. Go through it so you are finished with it. Only experience liberates. When you pass through a thing and you know what it is you are finished with it. So I say go through it but never remain in it. You understand me?

There are many people who say it is not only a must, it is what the whole life is all about. And there are people who say it is not only to be avoided, it is to be completely and absolutely avoided; you should not even think about it. Both are wrong because those who think that sex is all and there is nothing more than it, are missing much. And those that say that sex has to be absolutely avoided become depressive, ill, morbid.

I would like you to become a very very healthy person; so healthy that there is no hangover from the past of any desire seeking to be, haunting you, to be fulfilled. Ghosts are very very dangerous, and whatsoever arises in your mind and you don’t fulfill, becomes a ghost. Then it haunts you.

If you enter into monks’ heads, they think continuously of sex. They go on repeating Ave Maria, but that doesn’t make much sense. Deep down sex continues. In fact they go on repeating mantras, chanting, just to avoid that constant current of sex. They become more and more afraid to move in life, because wherever they go there is provocation – and it becomes more provocative to them.

If you live an ordinary life, a woman is just a woman. If you are a monk, a woman is something tremendously powerful. Ordinarily people don’t know what power a woman has; only monks know.

It is just as if you have not eaten food for many days and you have been starved. Then you know what food is. You think only about food. Nothing else comes into your fantasy, your dreams, your imagination; only food floats all around. You imagine the flavour and the aroma and everything hints to you of food, whatsoever you see. Even if a camel passes, you think about food; it has nothing to do with a camel. An elephant passes and you will think about food. You will become food-obsessed

– but it is natural because you have been starved.

So never starve. Understand. There are ways to go beyond, and it is better to learn everything that life makes available. Sex is one of the most secret forces of life. We come through sex, we are made of sex. Each cell of the body is a sex cell. The whole of life has a great collaboration with sexual energy. Life exists through sex, in sex.

Of course life is bigger than sex but it is rooted in it, just as a lotus flower is rooted in mud. It comes out of the mud, but it is not mud. It is absolutely different from mud. How can vou say that the lotus is mud? Just by looking at it you will see that the lotus is something of the other world. It is not earthly at all – but it comes out of mud.

Life arises out of sex, but it should not be confined to sex. It should flower and become a lotus. But the lotus cannot avoid the mud. It remains rooted in the mud. It goes on being nourished by the mud; so mud is not an enemy.

Sex is not an enemy. Be friendly. And meditate. Remain available and don’t close your doors.

Somebody will come and knock. Don’t be shy – open the door. If you feel attracted towards somebody, don’t remain closed. Take the initiative.

Initiative is one of the most important values in life. People who cannot take initiative miss many things in life; they always go on missing. Whenever the moment arises, they cannot take the initiative; they wait.

Have you read Samuel Beckett’s play ’Waiting for Godot’? Read it. People go on waiting for Godot.

They don’t take any initiative. They don’t do anything. They simply wait... inert. They don’t even know what they are waiting for, because unless you create it, it is hot going to happen. So wait not for Godot. Do something so it happens! Otherwise there are millions of people who don’t know exactly what they are waiting for. That is the meaning of Godot.

Somebody asked Samuel Beckett, ’What do you mean by Godot?’ He said, ’If I had known I would have said so. I don’t know myself.’ ’Waiting for Godot’... it simply gives an idea of God. Mm? Just the sound.

But God has to be created, otherwise He becomes a Godot. If you don’t create your God you will not find Him.

Now this looks paradoxical when I say create your God and only then vou find Him. Don’t wait for Him. Create your love – only then will you find; don’t wait for it. People who are creative find millions of ways of love, prayer, gratitude.

Experience is always around you, always ready to sprout flowers, but you have to be creative, receptive, open – and remember initiative. Otherwise the world will pass you by. If you remain closed, hiding yourself somewhere and just waiting for Godot, nobody will come because they are also shy. Somebody has to break the ice.

So meditate, do a few groups and remain available. And there is nothing wrong in chasing. One has to find a lover, and when it is time it is good to chase. Otherwise people start chasing in old age and then it is foolish. Right now when you are ready to chase, don’t waste time!

[A group leader says: I want to say a couple of things about myself. Two things are happening. One is that what I used to call love is very emotional, and what I’m getting to feel now is very cool and distant. So I feel as if I’m not feeling.

But the other thing that is happening is that I can see clearly that I am not my feelings, and yet the body responds in a certain way – and it s not me. I don’t want something and yet the emotions and the body will react as if they want something. It is not suppression....

Is there anything I can do besides watch?]

It always happens that when you begin to understand love, it starts becoming cool. That disturbs because it seems as if now there is no more love, as if love is disappearing, because we have always associated it with a certain heat, a certain fever, passion.

It has been so much associated with passion, that when it arises above passion, it feels as if it is disappearing. In a way the old love is dying. A new love is going to be born and the new love is going to be cool. It will be more like compassion than love. It will be more like a state than like a relationship. It will not be that you will be in love with somebody in particular. You will simply be in love. It will be just as if you are healthy. You are not healthy towards somebody. It becomes just a healthy thing inside you.

Love becomes your quality. Then it is very cool. It is not an excitement. On the contrary, it is a tranquillity, an equilibrium, a balance. Of course the excitement part will be missing. In the beginning you will think that life is becoming dull, insensitive, unemotional. That’s natural because of the old associations.

So simply watch it and allow it. Feel happy about it. It is something tremendously valuable. When love becomes cool the whole life energy changes. The whole work of meditation culminates in that transformation – when love becomes cool – because once love becomes cool, everything becomes cool. It is not only love becoming cool. Your whole being will become cool, because love is the disturbance, the fever.

If you are in love there is fever; a feverish activity, an indulgence. You are disturbed, unbalanced.

You are continuously seeking something – waiting, waivering, trembling.

Passion is an anguish, but people go on being in it because they don’t know anything else. If passion disappears they think that now life is gone; what do they exist for now? Even if passion gives misery, people cling to it. At least there is something; something is happening, even if it is misery. One doesn’t feel empty.

This I continuously watch in so many people – they go on clinging to their misery. Even if you try to detach them from their misery, impossible. The more you try, the more they will cling. They will think that something valuable is being lost or taken away, or that they are being robbed. And they are simply suffering! The beauty is this – that they are simply suffering. You will feel empty now.

And I was watching you. For three, four months, there was a very very exaggerated phase of passion as if it was the last bout. Before the flame dies it jumps and becomes a big flame. Just as when the night is going to end and it becomes very dark, the last flame of passion was there, very feverish. I was waiting for this day when you would come and say that now love is becoming cool.

Allow it and help it to become cool. You are not losing anything. You are just on the door of gaining many more things – more than you have ever dreamed of. But this passage, this interim period has to be passed, from passion to no-passion, from hot love to cold love. It is going to be hard because in the middle you will almost feel that you have become insensitive, unemotional; in a way, dead.

But a new life will arise out of this death.

So accept it, and accept it with great gratitude because it is something very valuable, very precious.

Protect it, and don’t move into the old pattern again. Go on becoming aware, and with this awareness and love becoming cool, you will start feeling separate from your body. When love is a passion you feel too much in the body. That’s why you hanker for some other body. It is the hankering of the body for some other body; the passion, the lust of the body. If you are too much in the body you seek other bodies to be loved, to love; it is a bodily affair.

Once love becomes cool a gap will arise between you and your body. That gap will also create a few problems in the interim period. Suddenly you will see many things arising in the body which don’t belong to you. They were arising before also, but you were identified so much with the body that you always believed they were yours. Now a gap exists. You can see a certain tension arising in the stomach and it has nothing to do with you. You are completely aloof and it is still arising. You will also feel a little helpless because now it will be very difficult to control it.

[Osho said that because it was possible before to be possessed by things that were happening to the body, it was equally possible to repress things, because one was closely identified with the body.

Now, neither would be possible – to indulge or to repress.

Osho said that all one could do at this stage was to allow these things to happen and to simply watch them. He said that the body would start releasing certain energies which up to now had been accumulating. Mind and body move together in deep synchronicity and as the mind becomes cooler, so will the body also. All the hot sensations of the body will be released and as a result one might experience sensations in the stomach, the heart, the throat, and many other parts of the body.]

For example if you were deep in excitement and love with someone and you used to massage his body, then your hands will release something because in massage they had been releasing something. If you were in love with someone and you used to kiss him too much, your lips will have to release some heat that was there, which was released in your kissing. Now everything is cooling down. Suddenly you will see your lips flickering, there will be a certain tremor. Kissing is nothing but releasing some energy through the lips.

So all over the body, wherever your indulgence was centring, a relaxation will happen. This relaxation is going to be weird because you will see it happening and you will feel helpless. Don’t feel helpless. Simply watch; remain an observer and let the body have its way. Within two to three months your body will relax and come to the same cool point as your mind. Then there will be a new meeting of the body and the mind on a new level, with a new quality.

[The Soma group are at darshan. One participant says: I feel very destructive.... I’d like to destroy other peoples egos and to be very dissecting and cold.]

You have somebody in particular in mind? (laughter) No, use that energy to destroy your own ego.

Nobody can ever destroy anybody else’s ego, never. There is no way. You can kill the person but you cannot destroy his ego. That is absolutely private. You can throw a person in a prison, you can beat him, crucify him, but you cannot touch his ego because the ego is just his dreams, a private dream. There is no public way to enter it.

You cannot possess anybody’s dreams. You cannot say, ’You have to dream this and are not to dream that.’ You cannot watch someone’s dreams. It is absolutely private.

There was a mad king in Egypt who declared to his country that nobody should ever enter into his dreams, otherwise he would be very hard. The whole country was afraid because nobody can come into another’s dreams when he wants to! The king killed a few people – of course his own court people whom he dreamed about.

There are three layers of life. One is dream, which is private. Another is love, which is overlapping between two persons; it is a relationship. Then there is the world, the world of things, which is absolutely public.

That’s why two lovers don’t want to love where the public is watching. If they do, something is morbid, perverted. Otherwise people want to be private; only two persons’ privacies meeting into each other.

Even a third person watching will be a disturbance because he will make them defensive and they will not be open. So there is a private world, then a personal relation world, and then an impersonal marketplace. These are the three ordinary layers.

Then there is one more which we call the ultimate – the world of meditation where even you are not.

In your dreams, you are. In your love, you are and somebody else is. A dream is an ’I, I, I,’ world.

Love is an ’I-thou, thou-I’ world and the world is an ’I-it’ world. Meditation is just empty... not even an ’I’. A no-I world, anatta, no-self.

You are feeling that an energy is arising which wants to kill others’ egos. There are two possibilities.

Either you can kill your own ego and you enter the world of meditation, or you try to kill the other’s ego – which is impossible. You can overpower the other so much that he starts pretending that now there is no ego. Then you have turned the person into an it; he is no more a person.

If you love a person but you possess and nag him too much, he can simply pretend that he is no more, and only you are. He is just your shadow. Then you have turned the person into a dead thing, a piece of furniture or something like that. If you use this energy to kill the ego of another you will destroy the person and there will only be a thing left. A husband is a thing, a lover is a person. A wife is a thing, a beloved is a person. You can use the energy to destroy your own ego and then suddenly your person disappears.

And when your person disappears, the impersonal, God, arises in you.

When the energy can be used to destroy your persona and you can become a god, why waste it is trying to destroy somebody who cannot really be destroyed and who will be forced to pretend and will become a thing? How can one be happy with a thing?

You will create patterns of unhappiness. If he is not destroyed, you will feel unhappy that he is still carrying his ego. If he is destroyed or pretends that he is destroyed, you will feel unhappy because now he is just a thing and nothing else is left. You will no more be interested. You find somebody else in whom the ego is still there and which is a challenge so that you can destroy it.

The energy is good; it is not bad energy. You can use it in a bad way but that will be your choice.

Use it to destroy your own ego, mm? Try.

[Another group participant says: I enjoyed the group very much. I experienced some really high energy and I love silence. I felt more aware, but when the group was over and I saw myself coming down a little, I felt a sort of blank inside... I started over-eating a lot and I don’t want to do that.

Osho has spoken before about the significance of wanting to over-eat when a sensation of emptiness arises.

He said to the sannyasin that when one has made an intensive effort to be aware, an emptiness is created and that can be mistaken for an emptiness in the stomach, and hence one begins to eat more than is needed. If one does over-eat, awareness is lost, because food gives a certain drunkenness. Osho suggested her to eat in fantasy whatsoever she liked, and as much of it as she wanted – but to chew it well.

He went on to elaborate on the connection between eating and dullness, and fasting and awareness.... ]

That’s why all religions praise fasting so much. Before a person goes into meditation, he fasts, and after he comes out of meditation he fasts. If he is not fasting there is a danger he may start over-stuffing himself, and whatsoever he has gained through meditation will be lost. Food gives a certain type of sleepiness. It is anti-awareness. That’s why when you have eaten too much you feel sleepy.

If you have not eaten well, in the night it is difficult to sleep; sleep is shallow.

But this has been good. Just remain alert and this space will CHAPTER 11

Innocence is the Base of Spirituality

13 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor said that he felt himself to be like a child inside.]

If one is like a child, many things happen, because one is open, vulnerable, soft, sensitive, and one is innocent.

Innocence is the base of all spirituality. The moment you think you know, you are no more a child.

You are closed. Knowledge kills and poisons. Innocence opens you and makes you alive. That’s why Jesus goes on saying ’If you are like children, only then – and only then – will you be able to enter into the kingdom of God’.

A child has nothing to do with age. Childhood is a state. You can be old and yet a child. You can be a child and yet old. Childhood is a certain attitude deep inside you, of your being ready to learn; that from wherever and whatsoever source life comes, you will be ready to receive; that in your heart there is a deep welcome; that you are not afraid; that you are not yet crippled by knowledge, information; that you are still in a flow and not frozen.

So if one is like a child – and I can see that you are – then many things become possible. God is closest when you are in a state of childhood. Then by and by we lose Him. So when one comes to know God it is a rediscovery, not a discovery. You had known Him in your childhood and again you recognise Him. When you become a child again you recognise Him. That’s the rebirth. You are reborn; again you start from ABC.

To remain a child means to be in meditation continuously. Otherwise the mind tends to become old.

It accumulates, it hoards, it is a miser. The mind suffers from constipation, so whatsoever comes on its way it hoards it immediately. It does not allow it to go. This moment something happens, and you collect it in your mind. The next moment something else happens and you collect that too. In this way a collection goes on being piled up and you start becoming old.

The art of remaining a child forever is to never collect. When the moment is gone, leave it. Don’t collect the past and then you are never old. You are born every second again and again and again.

It is a constant rebirth... a riverlike flow of rebirth. You are renewed, resurrected. Die to the past every moment so it is no more a hangup and is not a burden on your head and on your heart, so that it does not hang like a rock around your neck. Go on dying to the past so you become more and more available to the present. Childhood is a state of consciousness, of purity, of uncorruption, of uncontamination.

[A visitor says: I knew I had to come here, but I didn’t know why. Now part of me wants to run away.]

You got the message rightly... and there is no way to escape!...

That’s why the mind continuously thinks, because the mind is always afraid of commitment. The mind is a vagabond. It is like a prostitute – afraid of commitment, of love, and always ready to escape wherever there is a possibility of being trapped into a commitment. But then the mind always remains shallow because only through deep love and commitment does one enter into the depth.

The mind is like swimming just on the surface of the river. Commitment is like diving deep. And when you dive deep the mind becomes afraid. The darkness, the depth, the silence, the aloneness

– everything feels like death. Now it is a question of whether you or your mind wins. It is not a question between you and me; it is a question between you and your mind. If you allow the mind to take possession of you it can take you away. And the mind is a good servant but a very bad master.

So try to take the reins in your hands. Train the mind, the horse, to carry you to your destination.

Don’t allow the horse to take you anywhere he wants. Train it, tame it, discipline it, so that it takes you where you want to go.

Your destiny is not your mind’s goal. Your destiny is something bigger than your mind. Your destiny is something higher than the mind can reach. It is beyond the mind’s reach. The mind is very small; destiny, vast.

Everybody is destined to become a god, not less than that.

The mind is just a mechanism. It is useful if you are the master, dangerous if it becomes the master.

It is almost like when you are driving a car. If you remain in control, a car is a beautiful mechanism.

But if the car takes control and starts slipping and the brakes don’t work and you want to move it to this side and it goes to that, then you are in danger. But this is what continuously happens in the mind. You want to go to the left – it goes to the right. By and by you start following it. Then all that is beautiful and all that is divine and all that is blissful is lost contact with. You lose connections.

You’ve heard the message rightly. And much is possible... but you are just on the threshold. Enter into the temple. I know it is very difficult right now for you to know for what you are preparing. It is impossible because it is as yet unknown. It is as if a seed has received the message that something is going to happen, but what? How can the seed know? Unless it happens there is no way to know it.

There is only one way to know it – let it happen. If the seed says that ’First I would like to know for certain what it is that is going to happen, and if I don’t know how can I proceed?’ then the seed will remain a seed. It will never sprout because there is no way to know that which has not happened yet and is yet lurking in the future just like a possibility, a potentiality.

You have just heard a rumour in your dreams... just a slight flickering of the future, a shadow being cast by the future on your present. But that’s all; more is not possible. Even that is something tremendously valuable, something that rarely happens. People continuously live in the shadow of their past. Very fortunate are those who receive a shadow from the future. That means they are called forth. They are invited to something bigger than themselves.

[The visitor answers: I feel that, but I don’t want to miss it.]

There is no fear of missing it. The only fear is that if you listen to the mind, you can escape. The mind is very very clever, cunning, rationalising; it can rationalise its escape. It can almost convince you that whatsoever it is doing is right.

That’s how the future is, in a way, very fragile. The past is very solid and the mind is nothing but the past – hence the conflict. The mind is that which has already happened, and you are that which is going to happen. This is the conflict.

The mind is a dead thing. It knows only the known. It knows only the experienced. It knows only that which has already happened, which cannot be changed. It is solid like rock; absolutely solid

– and more solid than rocks, because rocks can be changed but the past cannot. There is no way to undo it. The mind stands on the rocks of the past. It is very strong. And you? You are just a fragile potentiality. Your consciousness is just a shadow. That too, in the future, somewhere near the stars... lurking somewhere in your dreams.

Sometimes in very romantic moods you become alert about it; otherwise you lose contact. It is a window which rarely. opens. It is just like lightning – suddenly you see it and it is gone. By the time you become aware that you have seen something, it is no more there. It is a poetic vision.

So the question is: past versus future, mind versus consciousness, the dead versus the alive. Life is always a potentiality. It is always going to happen. That which has happened is dead. That which is going to happen and is always going to happen, is life throbbing, getting ready to take the jump.

Listen to it. Get more and more in tune with it. And whenever there is a conflict between the mind and the unknown, go on the unknown path.

On each step of life, two paths diverge. One goes to the known. It is simply a repetition of the past in a modified way; a little bit polished, painted, changed, renovated, but still the past. It is a second-hand car. You can paint it and manage it and it looks like new, but it is never new. Another path diverges which is the unknown.

People who go on following the known move in a circle. Their life is not an evolution. People who go on choosing the unknown, the unfamiliar, the strange, are on the path of life. It is dangerous.

Insecurity is there and one never knows what is going to happen; one is continuously apprehensive

– but it is the path of life. It is linear, not circular. Every day you go on choosing the new again and again and again. By and by you become attuned to the unknown. Then each moment you go on dropping the past and diving into the unknown.

This is what religion is. This is what God is all about. To live with God is to live with the unknown. To live in the world is to live with the past and the known.

So take the jump and become a sannyasin! Move into commitment.

[Osho gives him sannyas.]

This will be your name, so forget the past and the old name: Swami Vigyanand Deva.

Vigyanand means consciousness and deva means god; god of consciousness. Always remember that your fight is going to be between consciousness and the mind.

So whenever you see,

immediately choose the unknown, the future, the possible. Even if it looks impossible, choose it.

And you will grow... you will grow tremendously.

Live dangerously!

CHAPTER 12

Love out of Freedom

14 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Shanti Deva. It means goddess of peace. Let it be a remembrance – feel as peaceful as possible.

And it is only a question of feeling. If you feel peaceful, you become peaceful. Nobody is barring you; there is no hindrance. The idea becomes the actuality. A continuous thought can be transformed into a thing. It becomes as material as anything else. Let it vibrate inside continuously.

Whenever you forget, again remember, relax and bring peace. Move peacefully, sit peacefully, stand peacefully. Carry a grace, an elegance, and feel that you are surrounded by a small aura of peace.

Within a few days there will be no need to remember it. It will be there whether you remember it or not, but in the beginning remembrance helps to materialise it.

[A sannyasin said that her lover was unhappy at her moving with another man recently, but that she herself had felt that it was right and good, and since then had felt she was able to give to her lover out of a freedom.

Osho said that she should move as she wanted and should not repress herself. To her lover, Osho said that he should not make her feel guilty but should give her freedom to go through these kind of experiences. Osho said that his sadness and possessiveness were his problems and he should not use these feelings to influence what she did.]

If you can give your love out of your freedom, good. If not, then it is not worth anything.

A gift of love out of freedom is beautiful. When you possess a person and the person is forced to give her love, it is almost ugly, almost dead, full of hatred. If you feel unhappy, tell her not to worry and that it has nothing to do with her. Never make love a politics, a power struggle.

When love gives freedom it becomes tremendously powerful repression. People don’t understand, and that’s why they have chosen repression. Freedom means that both are free. But people have decided to repress it because they know that if the woman moves, the man is allowed to; if the man moves, the woman is allowed to. Rather than being free they have decided to be slaves. People have decided to be slaves in order to make others slaves.

So just think about it. Meet out of your freedom, stay together out of your freedom, and when you are feeling good, be together. Both drop all repressions and let’s see what happens, and that power is not ordinary power. It is very very graceful and has a totally different quality to it – magnetic, but almost divine.

[Osho said that just as she had felt a desire to be with someone else, so her lover might wish to move with another woman, and he should be given that freedom.]

If we understand our own mind it gives us a vision of the other’s mind also. If you understand yourself, you will feel compassionate towards everybody else. That’s why, if some saint is not compassionate towards people and is condemnatory, he is not yet a saint. He has not understood the human helplessness.

Your meeting or your living together is out of freedom from both sides. It is not a commitment. Or it is a commitment for each moment, every day; not a commitment for the future, not fol tomorrow. It is enough if it is for today, or just for this moment, herenow.

Freedom is not an ordinary responsibility. It is greater than repression. People don’t understand, and that’s why they have chosen repression. Freedom means that both are free. But people have decided to repress it because they know that if the woman moves, the man is allowed to; if the man moves, the woman is allowed to. Rather than being free they have decided to be slaves. People have decided to be slaves in order to make others slaves.

So just think about it. Meet out of your freedom, stay together out of your freedom, and when you are feeling good, be together. Both drop all repressions and let’s see what happens, and that power is not ordinary power. It is very very graceful and has a totally different quality to it – magnetic, but almost divine.

Prem Devi. It means goddess of love. To me everybody is a god or goddess. Nobody is less than that.

Treat the whole existence as divine. Even a rock is a goddess, a river is a goddess. Even animals are nothing but divine forms. So remember that you are a goddess and that everybody else is also a god or a goddess.

This is what I call the religious mind. To live in the divine one has to create the feeling that everything is divine, mm?

[A sannyasin says: There is a little confusion about returning to the life of the university again. My subject is mysticism, and now I’ve been here, I’ve much less to say about it.... ]

Now your subject has also become your life. It is no more something outside you. You have become an insider; you are no more an outsider to mysticism. You have entered the door.

Of course you will have much more to say now and something with more validity, more experience.

You will feel a certain deep reality when you say it, so don’t be afraid.

Mysticism is not really a philosophy. It is something existential. One lives it; that’s the only way to know it. One becomes a mystic, only then one knows what mysticism is. And I have initiated you into it and you are moving well. Soon you will be in the depths, so gather courage.

It is always difficult when you start experiencing something. To say something about it is more difficult than when you don’t know anything about it and you have simply read and accumulated information, because then it is only a question of memory. But when you experience something, experience is paradoxical, something beyond the intellect. To bring it into the world of words and theories and systems seems almost impossible. When somehow you try to express it, much is missing. Out of one hundred percent, ninety percent is missing. A fragment comes and the fragment is almost dead because the experience can be alive only in its totality. When you take a fragment out of it, it is a broken limb, a branch cut; something taken from its totality, its organic unity, so it will be difficult.

But by and by you will become more articulate. And one becomes articulate only by trying to express the inexpressible. In the beginning one stutters, stumbles; goes astray many times; many times feels that what one is saying is not convincing enough because it is your experience and not that of the person who is hearing you. So something goes on above the head of the listener. But don’t be worried about it. Try to find out something better, more coherent, more organic, poetic.

Go on trying and by and by one becomes more skillful. Just time is needed. And fear is natural, but don’t be overpowered by it. It’s natural, so accept it. Much will start surfacing in . Everybody carries so much potentiality that they don’t even dream about. Their dreams are as their reality –

just superficial. You don’t know what you are carrying within you. If a little effort is made, more and more of your inner being will be made available to you.

Fear is natural because one is moving in darkness. The inner journey is very dark. Light comes but that is only at the end. First one has to pass through the tunnel, hence trust is needed. The world of light, of course artificial light, is no more there and the world of real light has not yet happened. Just in between the two there is a tunnel of darkness. The mind says ’Go back! At least there was some light. Maybe the light was outside you, but still it was. Maybe it was artificial, but at least it was. Go back! Cling to theories and words and philosophies.’

It is just like when you dive deep into water and an urge arises to go back to the surface. This is a greater depth than that. No ocean is so deep as the inner reality. So one trembles, feels afraid, lost, uprooted. One feels unskillful because the new is so new and you have never practised it. But by and by if you go on with courage and you take the challenge of the unknown, that very challenge will create the capacity to encounter it.

Once you accept a challenge, you start becoming capable of encountering it.

Nothing else is needed because the capacity is lying there within you fast asleep because you have never used it.

So whenever there is a challenge, never reject it – welcome it. Challenge is life and life-giving.

So whenever there is a challenge, immediately take the opportunity and thank God that again the unknown is before you. Again you are afraid, good. Again the security is no more there, good. Again you move in the insecure. Again the adventure starts and you don’t know where you are going you don’t know where you will reach, or whether you will ever reach.

You don’t even know who you are because a man knows himself only by something that he is capable of doing. Somebody says, ’I am a doctor.’ He knows himself because he can do certain things. somebody says, ’I am an advocate,’ because he knows that he can do something. Somebody says, ’I am a carpenter.’ We know ourselves by our doing.

When you move into the unknown, you cannot do anything. You don’t know where you are going, what is going to happen. Every moment is going to be a surprise, something just out of the blue.

Sooner or later you start feeling that you are losing your identity. So the greatest fear is of losing one’s identity, the image, the ego, the nameplate. You cannot carry it into the unknown.

Fear is there but don’t pay much attention to it. It is there because of the challenge. Pay attention to the challenge. When you look at the challenge you will not feel bad about the fear; you will say that this is natural.

When one has to climb an Everest fear is natural. I don’t see anything abnormal in it. In fact if a man is going to climb Everest and he doesn’t feel any fear, he is abnormal; something is perverted about him. Maybe he is insensitive, an idiot, stupid, unaware. When a man starts moving, climbing the Himalayas, it is natural that fear will be felt.

But if when you move on the street of your town you are afraid, then it is abnormal. If in the known you fear, it is abnormal. If you feel fear with the unknown, it is indicative, symptomatic, that there is something that you don’t know, with which you are unfamiliar, a strange country you are entering, the language of which is not known to you, and you have no map. There is every possibility that you may be lost forever and may not be able to come back. Fear is natural.

But take the challenge, focus on the challenge; then fear is just the shadow of the challenge. Never pay much attention to shadows because if you do, shadows tend to become realities. Always pay attention to the reality. When you are focused on reality you can see what is a shadow and what is real. The unreal has no more influence on you.

If you are really interested in mysticism, become a mystic. You have taken the first step, hence the fear. Accept the challenge, mm?

CHAPTER 13

The Religious Attitude is Alchemical

15 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin returning to the West, expressed sadness at the thought of leaving Osho.]

Sadness is also good. One has to learn that everything is good.

Goodness is not a quality of anything, it is just your approach, and how you look at it. Sadness is also good because it gives you a depth which no happiness can ever give. Happiness remains shallow, superficial. Sadness goes to the very depths of your being, reaches to the very centre, penetrates you to the very heart.

God comes to you in everything, in different forms and different ways. Sometimes He comes as sadness to give you depth. Sometimes He comes as happiness to create ripples of laughter on your surface. Sometimes He comes as life, sometimes as death, but only He is coming through different forms.

Multi are His forms, many are His ways, and millions are His faces. One has to learn to recognise Him in whatsoever form He comes. He will try to deceive you but you are not to be deceived. When He comes as sadness, remember that is also His image. Maybe this is needed right now.

There was one sufi mystic, Bayazid, who used to pray to God every day, expressing thanks and gratitude. Sometimes there was nothing to be thankful for.

One time he and his disciples were hungry for three days. They were being hunted from one town to another because the Mohammedans were against them. But again, that evening, Bayazid thanked God.

One disciple said, ’This is too much. We cannot tolerate it! For what are you thanking God?’ Bayazid had been saying, ’You are so good, my Lord. Whatsoever we need, you always give us.’ The disciple said ’Now it is going too far. For three days we have been hungry and have been thrown out of every village, and people have been out to kill us. And You are saying ”Whatsoever is needed, you always give us”! Now what has He given us for these three days?’

Bayazid laughed and said, ’He has given us three days’ poverty, and hunger and people who are after our lives. Whatsoever is needed, He always gives. This is needed. This must be needed because He knows better than we.’

This is the religious attitude. The religious attitude is very alchemical – it transforms everything. The baser metal is immediately transformed into gold once you have the religious outlook. The religious outlook is the philosopher’s stone. You touch anything and immediately it becomes gold.

So touch your sadness with a religious, grateful heart, and suddenly you will see that even sadness has a beauty to it. A silence will immediately settle around you and you will feel thankful that He has given sadness to you. He always gives in the right moment whatsoever was needed. You may not understand. Sometimes you may even misunderstand, but that doesn’t make any difference.

For these few months that you will be away, try to recognise Him in every form... and don’t let Him deceive you!

[A sannyasin says: I always feel when I am in front of you that I have a lot of things I can’t say, and other things I am longing to say.

I would like to say that I am experiencing at times a lot of softness... it’s a feeling I can’t express. I feel somehow flowing. It was not something I was aware of doing – it just happened.]

Good. Continue to flow back home; don’t stop.

The mind is very against the flow. It is a frozen thing, rocklike, and it enjoys destroying the flow of your being very much. There is only one possibility for the mind to dominate you, and that is if you are not flowing. If you are flowing, your energy is such a flood that all the rocks of the mind and thoughts are thrown away, taken to the ocean. They cannot stay in the way. The mind is always trying to create in every way, a dead structure around you – dead thoughts, concepts, ideologies, religions, philosophies – but everything dead. Mind is very anti-life.

Life is a flow. So even sometimes when you have an experience of flowing, the mind will try in every way to subvert it, sabotage it, to destroy it. And whenever the flow comes, you start feeling soft and sensitive; that’s a natural consequence of the flow. It makes you fragile, flexible like a small child, soft, young.

There is a story about a great indian mystic, Shankara, the founder of Advaita Vedanta. He was one of the greatest enlightened people ever. He was talking to his disciples and to illustrate some point, on the wall he drew a picture of a sage, a very young figure, almost boyish. Surrounding the figure were many disciples, very very old and ancient.

One disciple asked, ’What are you doing sir? It seems you have forgotten and put things wrongly.

You have put just a boy as the master and these old, ancient people you have put as disciples.’

Shankara said, ’No, I have done that with deep consideration.

The mind is very old and

consciousness is always young and fresh. The master is young because he has come to know eternal youth. He is soft, boyish. Disciples are very old because they carry minds, layers upon layers of mind from very ancient times, from many lives. They carry all conditionings, all karmas and imprints; they are their past. They are very old.

’The master is young because he is his present. He has no past and future. He is just born, has just come into existence this moment. He will be there again next moment but he will not carry this moment with him.’

So the more you become sensitive, open, flowing, the more you will see a very deep softness inside you, as if something, rocks, are melting. There is something butter-like, very soft. Out of that softness, love and compassion arise. So keep that flow – don’t forget about it and back home continuously remember it.

CHAPTER 14

The Courage of a Madman is Needed

16 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said that he would like to return to the West for a short period as his father had died two days ago and he felt he would be needed at home.]

Help them, because they will need you.

Death is a great experience. If you don’t know how to use it you can be destroyed by it. If you know how to use it, it can transform your whole being. It can become a mutation because it is tremendously important.

There is nothing more important than death in life, except love.

When death happens and some beloved one is gone, a great emptiness is left behind in the hearts of those who loved him. That space can be used... it can become a new direction of life. Or if you don’t use it you will fill it with rubbish again.

It is very difficult to find a gap in your continuity. When death comes the gap is available. When somebody dies, it is not only he that is dying; if you loved him, something in you also dies simultaneously. When he disappears, suddenly you feel an emptiness inside. That emptiness can become a very sad thing if not used creatively. One can feel that the whole life has lost meaning, purpose, direction. One can start living in a dead way, drifting and just waiting for death. Life can become a very very heavy affair.

But that space can be used. It can become meditative... it can become an inward journey. You can find something opening within yourself. When death happens outside, you can close your eyes and meditation will be very easy in those moments because thinking stops. Death is such that you cannot think about it. There is nothing to think about. It is shock, and such a great shock that all the old patterns of thinking simply disperse.

For a few moments, for a few days – it depends on how much you loved the person – the shock continues to function within you. It shatters thinking. Those are the moments that you can go beyond thinking very easily. You can ride on the wave of no-thought that death has created within you.

Ordinarily, in the West particularly, people try to distract you. If somebody is dead, friends and family and relatives will try to distract you. They will invite you to a movie, to a circus, to a party, a picnic, where the purpose is to distract you. Or they will come and console you in the name of religion. The two things that society provides for you are consolation and distraction – but not understanding.

And a person who is at a loss does not know what to do, so others give him a pattern to follow.

Of course one feels very much pain and misery and one wants to get rid of the emptiness that has arisen, so anything will do. People will try to escape from the emptiness that has arisen, and that’s wrong because you are again missing a beautiful experience that could have been a great transformatory force.

So go – and go with this idea that your family needs not only you but something that you have learned here about meditation. They will be ready to listen because these moments are fragile. Tell them to weep and cry; not to prevent it. Tell them to be as sad as they can be and not to escape from it but to face it. Death is a reality – it has to be faced.

No need to console them; let them pass through it. It is arduous, painful, very painful, but all growth is painful. Sit with them, do a few meditations together. If they are not in that state then just sit together silently in a room. Put off the light and hold hands, and you meditate. Your meditation will be transformed. Something of the quality will reach to them. It will be very very tranquillising, transforming. It will give them not consolation but real solace. It will give them insight.

Be with them as long as they need you and don’t be in a hurry to come back. It is good to be with them right now. Take back a few tapes (taped lectures), a few books.

This gap can be filled with something which will help. Otherwise they will fill it with something or other, because nobody can live with emptiness for long. One has to fill it... one has to live in the world. Throw something into their being because now the door is open and that thinking is no more functioning. Their logical thinking, the aristotelean mind, is almost defunct.

In these moments they are vulnerable, open. Just approach them with deep love, prayer and meditation. And I am coming with you.

[A sannyasin says: I received sannyas two years ago in Scotland and at that time, many things opened up for me. I thought perhaps I didn’t need to come to India and that I would be able to carry those things along with me.

The time came when I had an urge to come here because I felt there were things that could only open here.

So I’ve come for your help.]

You are right – they will open. You are ready for many things, and much is going to happen.

Remember three things. One is to be courageous, because everything that is going to happen will need courage – almost the courage of a madman; nothing less than that. All that is worthwhile happens beyond reason, beyond intellect, because you are beyond your reason and beyond your intellect. And all that is going to happen, is going to happen there, in the innermost intimacy of your being where nobody can penetrate, not even you.

Remember it, not even you – because the very effort to penetrate creates a dichotomy, a duality. The penetrator is not the penetrated, so the innermost intimacy of pure being is always virgin. Nobody has ever entered there and nobody can enter; not even you.

If you want to enter there you will have to leave yourself outside. That’s the greatest courage – to leave the mind that has experienced many things, to leave the mind that has become very skillful in many things, to leave the mind that has always been a help; to leave the mind that up to now has been the only security, the only certainty. But that will be needed. That is the only sacrifice that God demands: that whatsoever you have learned, you leave outside the temple. That is you – you as you are known to yourself, not as I can see you, not as you really are. That is something far away from all that you know about yourself.

These are the two possibilities. One is courage and another is of imagination. Experience happens in two ways. If you are courageous, real experiences happen. If you are not courageous, the mind imagines, fakes experiences. It is a great faker; it is very clever in faking everything. It goes on minting counterfeit coins.

Many people go on just imagining. Those are just dreams, nothing else. They are beautiful dreams, but still dreams. One should never rely on dreams because they come and go and can never become a permanent treasure in you. So even beautiful spiritual experiences are nothing but pictures, visions, projected by your mind out of a certain greed, out of a certain desire to be gratified.

The real spiritual seeker has to be aware not to fall a victim of imagination. Otherwise there are millions of experiences. They appear so luminous, and the mind fakes them so perfectly that one can become a victim.

So remember, the real experience is not like an experience at all, because there is no experiencer.

There is nothing to be experienced.

It is a purity of consciousness. There is no object to it, no light, no lotuses flowering, no kundalini rising – nothing. The real, the deepest experience, is not an experience at all, because to experience you have to be there and something else also has to be there; the experiencer and the experienced, the subject and the object.

But in that innermost core there is no duality. One simply is. There is no object, just a tremendous vastness... an infinite sky with no boundaries. And you are lost in it, spread all over the infinity. So there is no point of reference, no centre really from where you can see, on which you can stand.

This has to be understood: whatsoever can be seen is not your nature. The seen is always something outside you. You are the seer and the seer can never be seen because the subject can never be reduced to the object. You are irreducibly the seer, the subject. The seer goes on eluding you; howsoever you chase it, it will never be grasped. Not that it is out of reach, but grasping is not the way to reach it.

I cannot grasp my hand with the same hand. Not that it is out of reach, but that is not the way. I can hold your hand in my hand. I can hold one of my hands in the other. I can see you with my eyes, but I cannot see my eyes with my own eyes. I can look into a mirror, but then those eyes are not really my eyes, but just reflections, mirror images. That’s how we go on collecting data about ourselves –

through mirror images.

Somebody looks at you lovingly, and you have an image that you are a lovely person. That person was looking so lovingly at you; now he has given you a hint. He has functioned as a mirror and you think, ’I must be lovely, beautiful.’ Somebody says you are so wise, so intelligent, so brilliant, so clever; you have collected data about yourself. But this is a mirror image, not really you. It may say something about the person, but it shows nothing about you. It shows something about the mirror, that it is of this quality or that, but it doesn’t show anything about you.

And the innermost, the ultimate experience, which is not an experience at all, happens only when all mirrors are broken. You don’t trust any mirror; you go on dropping them all. You go on moving inwards, inwards, inwards, and a moment comes when only you are and nothing else. You cannot even assert ’I’, because even that assertion needs ’thou’. Great courage is needed.

I see you are ready for many things, so the first thing to be remembered continuously is courage.

The second thing: make all the effort that is possible. People simply flicker; somehow they live, dragging. They don’t do anything totally, so there is not much flame, but much smoke arising. Bring in your total effort.

In a single moment of intensity, when the whole being is at stake, it can happen. It may not happen for years or lives together if you go on just lukewarm. So don’t be lukewarm. If you want evaporation, a hundred-degree effort is needed. That’s the second thing.

The third thing, which is more difficult than these two, is to always remember that whatsoever happens, it never happens because of you.

It is always a happening, not a doing. This is very difficult because in the second point I told you to put in all your effort. So make all effort but still go on remembering that it is a gift of God. One cannot earn it; one cannot cause it to happen. You can only prepare yourself. You can open the door and invite, that’s all. When it comes, it comes. It cannot be forced to come because if you can force it to come it will not be greater than you. So you can say ’I will be ready and waiting for you, whenever you will – ”Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Or whenever you think the moment has come, you come. You will not find my doors closed. My doors will be open and I will he waiting, whether it is day or night, happiness or unhappiness, misery or bliss. Regardless of all conditions my door will be open and I will be ready to receive you.’

This is very difficult because the ego wants a subtle gratification that you are doing the effort, that you are a great searcher, a great seeker and this and that. That becomes the last barrier.

It is a gift, a grace. It always happens whenever you are ready, but it is not caused by you. It is what Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronisity; that is exactly the right word. When you are ready, parallel to that, God is ready. It is not that you cause Him, but He comes with your readiness. In fact He was already ready, just waiting for your readiness. He was standing on your door just waiting for you to open it. He is just like the sun in the morning waiting on your door. The rays don’t knock; they are not violent. They just wait and they go on waiting patiently. Whenever you open the door the sun enters.

Remember these three things, mm? And take the plunge!

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been doing the camp and have become much more aware about my mind.

I saw what seemed to be the silent point, but then the mind would come back, and I would feel that I had just dreamt it.

I don’t even feel as if I’m meditating a lot of the time because the mind is always there.]

Things are going well. The mind is a very very old investment. It is your tradition. We have been clinging to the mind for so long that even if for a single moment it goes, it is a tremendously valuable moment.

So don’t feel frustrated – feel happy that even for a single moment it was not there. By and by that moment will become bigger and bigger and bigger. But frustration will be very destructive. Always remember on the path, whatsoever happens, always feel, find ways to feel grateful, blessed.

For example, this is happening: for a moment you feel that the mind is not there and then it is there.

If you look at the second thing you will feel frustrated. That is your choice. If you look at the first thing, you will feel very very grateful, very thankful, that even for a moment the clouds were not there and you had a glimpse of the sky.

You cannot remember what the glimpse was because it was so small. The gap was so fleeting that by the time you became aware that the mind was not there, the mind had returned. But still, the gap was there. Even for a small fragment, a split second, the clouds were not there and you saw the sky. You cannot remember, but something has happened. Now don’t pay much attention to the mind coming back. Pay more attention to the moment when the mind went away and was not there, and then you will feel blissful.

Don’t count the thorns in a rose bush. They may be thousands and the flower may only be one.

Look at the flower and forget the thorns. Even if they come on your way, just see that they must somehow be protecting the flower; they are part of the same process.

The coming back of the mind may just be a safety measure because if the gap opens suddenly and the mind doesn’t come back you will not be able to bear it. It will be too much – too much like death. Sometimes it has happened that a few people have gone mad because the gap opened too suddenly and they were not ready for it. It is a tremendous insight into the unknown. It will shatter all that you know. It will shatter all the society that you belong to. It will shatter all your relationships.

It will uproot you completely. It is a cyclone.

So it is better to take it in doses, and homeopathic doses are best, mm?

[The sannyasin answers: I don’t feel I am coming in contact with any pain – I don’t know if I’m blocking it.]

No, I can also see that you don’t have any pain. You don’t have any pain – you don’t have any pleasure. You have a certain numbness. Pain is not your problem; numbness is your problem....

When the doctor operates, he gives you an injection to numb your body, so that when he cuts, you cannot feel the pain. If you cannot feel the pain, the pain is not there, because pain is in the feeling.

When the doctor cuts your body you may be thinking that you have pain but that you are not feeling it because of the injection. Wrong! – because pain is in the feeling. If you are not feeling pain, then pain is not there. It cannot exist without your feeling; there is no way for it to exist. The doctor has made your body numb. The nervous system has gone insensitive so it can be cut. It is just as when a person is paralysed and a mosquito goes on biting his foot. He will not feel it because he is paralysed. That part of the body is no more alive. Whether a mosquito or a scorpion or a beautiful flower is there, it will make no difference to him.

Numbness means that you have somehow learned not to feel pain and not to feel pleasure. Many people learn it because it is very protective.

Pleasure is also a danger. It overtakes you, possesses you. It may lead vou astray. It is the same with pain, and it creates much anguish. Many people have by and by become insensitive; they stop feeling. Nothing can bother them – they are neither worried about pleasure or pain. They may even look a little more independent than other people because they are completely cut from the flow of life.

That’s what I can see. You have learned a certain numbness and that has to be melted down....

You have to break it down completely so you start feeling pain and pleasure again. Life is pain and pleasure. Of course there is something beyond too, but not below.

[Osho said that many people have tried in the East, in the name of Yoga, to numb their bodies by sitting for a long time in the hot or cold. By and by their bodies become insensitive and they think that this indicates that they have transcended pleasure and pain, but in fact they haven’t; they have fallen below both.]

When you go beyond it is not that you become numb. You go beyond because you are so alert and sensitive. Because you are alert you are not caught in the trap of pain and pleasure; you go beyond.

You become a witness. Now bliss arises in your being. But you are very sensitive; more sensitive than other people.

That’s why I am in favour of all sensitivity groups. No yoga ashram will allow them because a yoga ashram exists just on the opposite polarity! They are trying somehow to numb your being, to dull your sensitivity; to make you dullards....

All Yoga ordinarily prevalent makes you a dullard. One does become strong in a way but the strength is just like the strength of an idiot.

My whole effort is just in the opposite direction. So you will have to be destroyed – at least this structure will have to be. This strategy that you have used up to now has to be broken and then you will become more sensitive. Pain will come. It will come with a revenge because for many days you have been preventing it. Allow it – it is beautiful. To feel pain is beautiful because then you feel alive.

A corpse cannot feel pain, only an alive body. So become alive again; don’t carry the corpse.

And when you feel pain, you can feel pleasure. When you can feel both, you can feel the beyond that is beyond both. Unless your sadhana produces a luminous brilliance, it is not sadhana but suicide.

But as I see, things are going well. One thing has to be taken away at a time. By the time you are ready to stand without the edifice, without the character you have created around you, when you can stand without it, I will shatter it completely.

But the work has started... you are already on the operating table!

CHAPTER 15

Life Should be a Passion

17 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Sahaj Bharti. Sahaj means spontaneous. That is going to be your work. Be spontaneous. Never act out of the past; always act out of the present moment. This moment is all there is. If you respond from this moment, you respond from your reality.

You are responsible if you respond from your reality in this moment, herenow. If you act out of the past and because some woman is your wife you show love to her; if in the moment there is nothing but you are just carrying the marriage certificate, by and by you become false. Then you go on acting out of duty and all love disappears. By and by you completely forget that you have become a false entity. Life becomes dull, stale, stinking.

That’s what hell is.

So remember, from this moment become more and more alert and be spontaneous. Flow with the moment Stream with the moment, and allow the moment to take possession of you, whatsoever the cost. And you will never be a loser because more and more life will become possible to you. More and more your dead body, your dead consciousness, will become alive; blood will flow again. The feeling will start becoming aroused again and you will become a child again.

That’s what being spontaneous means – to be a child again. And much is going to happen...

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I don’t feel happy or not happy about going.]

I know it is sad going, but your feelings are completely right. It is always a mixture of happiness and unhappiness. Each moment brings both. We chose whatsoever aspect we want to chose, otherwise each moment brings the ambiguity; it brings both. If you watch you will become aware of both.

So go laughing and crying, mm? It is a little bizarre, but if you can laugh and weep together it will be a tremendous help. Ordinarily either we laugh or we weep. We never do both things together. If you do both things together, suddenly you will become a watcher. You cannot be identified with two contradictory things; that’s why we do them separately.

We maintain a certain economy inside. When we laugh, we laugh; we don’t cry. When we cry, we cry; we don’t laugh. We have made a division, an aristotolean division. When we say yes, we don’t say no. Maybe the no is there but we don’t say it. Maybe it is being said inside, but we don’t utter it outside. When we say no, the yes is also there.

If you watch deeply, each yes carries a hidden part of no in it and each no carries yes in it. But if somebody asks something and you say both yes and no always, then it will be maddening. It is utilitarian that we choose one, but for inner work you can do both together; that will be very helpful.

Children or madmen or sages laugh and weep together. That’s why sages look close to madmen and madmen look close to sages. A few things are similar.

A madman can laugh and weep because he does not bother about logic. There is no need for him to think whether it is okay to laugh and weep together. He does not bother about categories, divisions, false boundaries and definitions; he goes on overlapping all divisions.

But if you can do it meditatively you will attain to a very deep witnessing. So you can make it a point every night to close your room and laugh and weep together. And watch – you will see such a beautiful energy flowing, and watching becomes easier because identification is impossible. How can you identify with two opposite things simultaneously? With one it is okay; you are weeping and you can identify yourself with the weeper, or you are laughing and you can identify yourself with the laughter. But both? Impossible. When you do both together, you become the third.

Try it. You have stumbled upon something so use it and it can become a deep meditation.

[A sannyasin, who is a psychiatric nurse, says: Wilhelm Reich says ”All patients are genitally disturbed.

They must become genitally healthy.

That means we must find and destroy all

pathological attitudes which prevent the establishment of orgasmic potency. ”

As a therapist and one receiving therapy, is that statement factual and a good foundation on which to build?]

Exactly, precisely. The healthy organism is always capable of achieving peaks of orgasm. It is orgasmic. It is streaming, flowing.

When a happy man laughs, he laughs as if his whole body laughs. It is not just the lips, it is not just the face. From the feet to the head he laughs as a total organism. Ripples of laughter flow through his being. His whole bio-energy is rippled through with laughter. It is in a dance. When a healthy man is sad,. he’s really sad, totally. When a healthy man is angry, he is really angry, totally. When he makes love, he is love; nothing else. When he makes love, he only makes love.

In fact to say that he makes love is not right. The expression in English is vulgar because love cannot be made. It is not that he makes love – he is love. He is nothing but love energy. And that’s the way he is in all that he does. If he is walking, he is just a walking energy. There is no walker in it. If he is digging a hole, he is just the digging.

A healthy man is not an entity; he is a process, a dynamic process. Or we can say that a healthy man is not a noun but a verb... not a river but a rivering. He is continuously flowing in all dimensions, overflowing. And any society that prevents this, is pathological. Any person who is inhibited in any way, is pathological, lopsided. Only a part, not the whole, is functioning.

Many women don’t know what orgasm is. Many men don’t know what a total orgasm is. Many achieve only a local orgasm, a genital orgasm; it is confined to the genitals. Just a small ripple in the genitals – and finished. It is not like possession when the whole body moves into a whirlpool and you are lost in an abyss. For a few moments time stops and the mind does not function. For a few moments you do not know who you are. Then it is a total orgasm.

Man is unhealthy and pathological because society has crippled him in many ways. You are not allowed to love totally, you are not allowed to be angry; you are not allowed to be yourself. A thousand and one limitations are enforced.

If you really want to be healthy, you have to uninhibit yourself. You have to undo all that the society has done to you. The society is very criminal, but that is the only society we have, so nothing can be done right now. Each one has to work his own way out of this pathological society, and the best way is to start becoming orgasmic in as many ways as possible.

If you go swimming, then swim, but swim as a total being so you become swimming, a verb; the noun is dissolved. If you run, then run; then becoming running, not a runner. In your Olympics you have runners, egos, competitors... ambitious. If you can simply run without the runner being there, that running becomes zen; it becomes meditative. Dance, but don’t become a dancer, because the dancer starts manipulating and then he is not total. Just dance and let the dance take you wherever it wants to.

Allow life, trust life, and by and by life will destroy all your inhibitions, and energy will start streaming in all those parts where it has been prevented.

So whatsoever you do, do with this hidden idea that you have to become more flowing. If you hold somebody’s hand, really hold it. You are holding it anyway, so why waste this moment? Really hold it! Don’t just be two dead hands holding each other, each wondering when the other is going to leave. If you talk, then let the talk be passionate, otherwise you will bore others and yourself.

Life should be a passion, a vibrating passion, a pulsating passion, a tremendous energy.

Whatsoever you do it should not be dull, otherwise don’t do it. There is no duty to do anything, but whatsoever you feel like doing, really do it.

All inhibitions will disappear by and by, and your whole life will be reclaimed. Your body will be reclaimed; your mind will be reclaimed. The society has crippled the body, the mind – everything.

They have given you certain choices; very narrow slits are open and you can only see from those slits. You are not allowed to see the total.

This is what I call a religious mind, a healthy mind. A religious mind is orgasmic, ecstatic. So’ don’t be frozen, mm? Flow....

CHAPTER 16

A Sannyasin has no Future

18 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I heard... you said that a sannyasin is one who has no past and no future, and that that could be frightening.]

The future is a great problem and one has to come to grips with it. Firstly the future is nothing but your unlived past, projected. Whatsoever has remained incomplete in the past, tends to complete itself in the future. So the future is a reflection of the past. When one lives moment to moment, completely, totally, wholly, by and by the future disappears by itself. That’s why I say that a sannyasin has no future, because the future is a pathology of the mind.

By a sannyasin I mean one who is healthy or who at least is trying to be healthy; who has no wounds.

If you don’t have any wounds you need not have any future, because there is nothing to heal. When you don’t have any wounds, you enjoy the moment that has become available to you. You don’t think about the future. People who think about the future are people who are not capable of living in the present. Somehow they feel that they are inadequate, incapable of living in the present. That impotence creates future. They hope that they will live tomorrow.

If I say that there is no tomorrow, the fear arises. When will you live? Today is going and there is no tomorrow. Today you have not been able to live. You don’t know how to live this moment so you hope to live the next moment, but if you don’t know how to live this moment, how are you going to live the next? The next moment is going to be just the same as this moment.

If you want to live, you have start herenow. And anybody who wants to live has to live this moment because there is no other moment. All other moments will be just like this moment. The distinction that you make is because of your hopes and frustrations; otherwise there is no distinction.

Time is not divided into past, future and present. It is eternal present, the eternal now.

There are only two basic questions. One is concerned with now, and another is concerned with how.

Now and how are the two bases. How to live now is the only question. That’s what meditation is all about. The future has to be dropped, because if you don’t drop it your energy will be continuously dissipated into future hopes.

For example if suddenly you are told today that tomorrow morning you are going to be shot, what will you do? You will invite your friends and will have a beautiful feast. You will dance the whole night and enjoy yourself. What else can you do? Tomorrow morning you will die so the future is no more there. You are thrown with the whole of your energy back into the present.

That’s what I mean when I say that a sannyasin has no future. I completely cut your projections into the future. I want to destroy your future. You cannot go back. The past is gone and there is no way to go into it. I want to cut the future so you cannot go ahead and into it. But the whole effort is to throw you into this moment so totally that there is no going back, no going ahead.

With nowhere to go one starts living in this moment. And when you live totally in this moment with intensity, passion, fervour, vitality, the next moment arises out of this lived moment. Then it is beautiful. Then it is not out of hopes but out of existence. It comes out of your being, not out of your mind. And of course the next moment is going to be better because you will be more experienced.

You will know more about yourself and about life.

So if one wants to miss one’s life, the only valid method is to hope. And if one wants to live one’s life, the only valid method is to become hopeless. Drop all hoping.

But it creates fear, that’s true. Up to now you have lived only in that way. You have not lived – you have simply hoped to live. And I am pulling hope away, so fear arises. Let the fear be there. Take courage. Say to the fear, ’Okay, you are there. I accept you but now I am not going to hope any more. Whatsoever happens I will respond to it, but I will not prepare myself for it. I will be ready in a very deep way to respond, but not ready in detail.’ Do you see the distinction?

One gets ready in detail like a rehearsal. You are playing in a drama and you rehearse and rehearse every small detail: how you will stand, what you will say, what gestures you will make and where you will be looking. You repeat everything because you are not confident about your response. But life is not a drama.

People are behaving in life as if they are working in a drama.

The husband coming home prepares what he is going to say to the wife and how he is going to say it; what excuses he is going to make as to why he has been late today. He is rehearsing inside his mind, and the wife is also rehearsing. The husband is coming with his stories and she is preparing her answers. She is searching for ways to destroy his excuses and make him feel ashamed. Now both are getting ready. Even the children are rehearsing because the father is coming home and the mother is getting ready for him; there is going to be drama.

Then drama happens but it is bogus; it is not real, not authentic. It is prepared. This is no way to live, this is no way to love. This is no way to be real and authentic. Why be afraid?

When you are back home and the wife faces you and puts the question to you, you have to respond with your totality. There is no need to prepare it. You are not a child preparing for an examination.

Become an adult and become responsible.

When I say responsible, I don’t mean dutiful. I mean become capable of response. One never knows what is going to happen. The wife may not ask the question at all or she may ask something else that you have not prepared for. Then your prepared speech will become a hindrance.

I was an examiner in a university for many years. I was surprised on looking at question papers, to see that people go on answering questions that have not been asked. I used to call the students and ask them how they answered this because this is not what had been asked. When I told them to read the question again, they would say, ’Yes, this is different, but we were prepared for the other question so we read it into this one.’ Then your response is corrupted.

Life is not a drama; it is not an examination. Nothing is settled here – that’s the beauty of it.

Everything is moving; nothing is fixed. It is a tremendous whirlwind of energies, unpredictable.

One has to remain alert. That is the only preparation that is needed. So whatsoever comes, let it come. Be alert and respond with your totality. And if you don’t have any answers ready-made, your response will be purer, mirror-like.

If a mirror has some idea already about who is going to come and whom he is going to reflect, the reflection is going to be wrong. A mirror simply waits. The mirror knows how to mirror.

There is a zen story about a samurai, a great warrior. One night he comes back to his home and finds a very big rat sitting on his pillow. Of course he goes mad. This is too much! An ordinary rat and so daring? He takes his sword – because that is the only thing he knows – and hits the rat. but the rat somehow escapes and sits in another place, looking at the samurai and blinking his eyes.

Now the samurai becomes furious. This is the first time in his life that he has missed any target and this rat is trying to befool him.

In his madness he hits here and there, and because of his madness he goes on missing. Suddenly he feels a cold shivering and begins to perspire. The idea arises that this rat is no ordinary rat; something mysterious about him. Maybe he is a ghost? The samurai escapes and tells his family.

They tell him not to be afraid and not to get so worked up. They bring their cat to the room.

The cat is brought but the samurai is shivering and trembling. The cat looks at the samurai and tries to get out. There must be something very fearful there, otherwise why is the samurai – such a great man and a great warrior – so afraid? The cat enters the room and the rat jumps on her. The cat escapes, shivering and perspiring.

The story goes on. The whole town’s cats are tried but it seems simply impossible to catch the rat.

Then they go to the palace and the king’s cat is brought in. She is taken to the samurai’s room. She simply goes in, takes the rat in her mouth and comes out. All the cats gathered and they said ’What is the trick?’ She said, ’There is no trick. I am a cat and he is a rat – finished. There is no trick.’

’There is nothing to be praised. I am a cat; that’s enough for me to catch the rat. He is a rat. As it is natural for me to catch him, it is natural for him to be caught.’

This is the whole point to be understood in life.

You are a man, you are a mind, you are

consciousness; you are a cat! So why be afraid of rats? Problems will come; they are just like rats. Situations will arise; they are just like rats. You are a conscious being. Why be afraid of foolish things? When the problem arises be conscious, and that will be enough. There is no need to be prepared. Your very preparation will kill you.

The warrior missed because of his being prepared too much – the sword, the warrior, the ego. The other cats missed because they were trying from the very beginning to try to catch this rat. But the king’s cat could do it. It is a zen story and one of the most beautiful; a very significant story.

It is the nature of consciousness to solve problems, mirror-like. There is nothing special in it. You bring a problem to me. I am not ready for it. I just look into your problem. It is the nature of consciousness to solve it. If I am ready, that will be the barrier.

That’s the difference between a wise man and a learned man. A learned man is ready. Before you have asked his answer is there, ready-made. A wise man has no answer in particular. He simply the answering capacity; the responsibility, the sensitivity to feel the problem, that’s all. Enough!

So go. back without any preparation, simply relaxed. Let things happen, and watch. You will be surprised by your own capacities. When a problem arises and you are not prepared, you will be surprised how beautifully you tackle it. There is no fear, no trembling, because there is no ready-made answer. You are not disturbed. You simply see the problem from all sides.

So go as a cat, mm? and you will catch many rats!

[A sannyasin said that he had the idea to do a long Vipassana course alone, of perhaps twenty eight days.]

Vipassana will make you integrated again. It will give you a coordination. Life itself is nothing but the principle of coordination. It is just the principle of harmony within you.

You are many people, many minds, many selves. When there is a coordination in this crowd that you are, then you are. When there is no coordination, you are just a crowd. A collection of one thousand people is a crowd, but when these one thousand people work together in coordination towards a certain object, they are no more a crowd. They have become a group. Their energies are no more in any conflict, there is no disharmony, no discord. They are no more a noise. They become more and more harmonious; an accord starts happening.

The same happens in a person. Ordinarily a person is a crowd. All meditations are to help you to seek a coordination in this crowd. That principle of coordination is your real self; self with a capital

’S’. All other selves are selves with a lower case ’s’. But that capital ’S’ is not something. No. It is just a rhythm; a certain harmony in all your vibrations; a certain glance, equilibrium, grace .

Whenever you feel – and you will feel many times working with people that again and again you lose contact... because it is very subtle and fragile; it’s like a flower. It comes with difficulty and withers easily.... Whenever you feel that working with people – and people means people who are insane, neurotic; people who are just crowds, people who are just like marketplaces, and everything is in discord. disharmony, conflict, war....

When you work with people, they pull you down to their level; that is natural. If you want to pull them up you will have to go down with them. It is a compromise. To pull them up a little you have to allow them to pull you down to their level. If you remain high and don’t. come down you cannot help.

So if again and again working with people you feel the tension arising; a weariness, a tiredness, an impurity, a heaviness; gravita-tion becoming heavier and heavier, for two days keep silent, take fruits, juices; rest and do Vipassana. Within two days you will again be flowing – and you will be flowing on a higher level. Each going down can be used as a going high.

So work for five days and meditate for two days; five days for others, two days for you.

[The sannyasin adds: Since I’ve been here I’ve become involved in indian music, sitar. I want to do a semester in music at a school in San Francisco.]

You can do it. Anything that is in tune with meditation can be done. Whenever you want to do something, and even if I am not there and you cannot ask me, just remember this: that anything that falls in tune with meditation is perfectly good and helpful. Anything that goes against it, don’t do. If you want to do modern music, jazz or something like that, then don’t do it because that will create a disharmony in you.

Indian music is perfectly good... and the sitar is a great instrument for meditation. So do it; music is always welcome. If it is indian, good. If it is indian and classical, even better, because the further back you go, the more pure becomes the music.

The first glimpse of music happened through meditation. The first music was heard in the hearts of the heart – what the yogis call ’anahat’, the sound of one hand clapping; the soundless sound,

’omkar’. That was first heard in deep samadhi.

People who had heard it tried in every way to communicate it to people who had no notion about it and who could not hope to attain samadhi and to hear that music. They tried on many instruments, in many many ways to bring something of that inner music. That something has penetrated into indian music.

So indian music is more concerned with sahasrar, the seventh chakra. Western music is more concerned with the sexual centre, the muladhar. If western music overpowers you, you will feel sexually aroused. If indian music overpowers you, you will feel spiritually aroused. Their qualities are very very different, on very different levels.

[The sannyasin adds: that he would like to go on exploring and risk-taking; expanding himself.]

Go and take as many risks as you can. You can never surprise me by your risks and your gambling!

Everything can become a growth,

Even if one goes astray, one comes back richer; one never loses. Life is always an enrichment; always – unconditionally, categorically. So whatsoever you do, if you feel like doing it, do it, and you will come out of it richer. But if you don’t feel like doing it, don’t, because that will become impoverishing.

Never go against yourself; that is the only principle I would like to insist on.

CHAPTER 17

Put Yourself Aside

19 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Dharma Veera.

Veera means courage and dharma means religion, the ultimate truth.

And that is the only courage – to know the ultimate, because in the very process of knowing it, you will dissolve. The ultimate courage is to be ready to dissolve, to disappear, so God can appear and manifest.

Dharma Veera means one who is brave in religion.

[The seventy-two year old father of a sannyasin takes sannyas.]

This will be your name: Swami Prabhu Sudhas.

Prabhu means god and sudas a good servant – a good servant of God.

And that’s all there is the need to do – to become a good servant of God; just to surrender to Him so that He can start living in you. It is only a simple question of surrender. If you surrender, immediately everything starts changing. He is ready to take possession of you, any moment, every moment. You just have to allow Him.

The whole of religion consists of only one thing – allowing. So just give way. Put yourself aside and let Him come in. Don’t stand in the way.

People are standing in their own way. Nothing else is barring their path. So just put yourself aside and invite Him to come in and everything will start changing. You have been waiting your whole life for this change. Now the moment has come!

[A sannyasin, who plans to convert the Yoga centre he runs into a Rajneesh Meditation Centre, said that he was confused about hindu and buddhist Tantra, both of which he tried to practise. He said that sometimes there was much tension in the sex centre and he didn’t know what to do about this.]

The buddhist and the hindu Tantra are totally different things. Just the name is the same. If you are confused about them, that can create a very deep conflict in your body. Forget both, mm? because it will be difficult for you to come to a harmony between these two. I will give you a simple method.

Don’t be bothered about hindu and buddhist Tantra.

While making love, three things have to be remembered. One is: before you make love, meditate.

Never make love without meditating, otherwise the love will remain sexual. Before you meet the woman you should rise higher in your consciousness because then the meeting will happen on a higher plane. For at least forty minutes sit looking at the wall with just a very dim light on so that it gives a mysteriousness.

Sit silently and don’t move the body; remain like a statue. Then when you make love, the body will move, so give it another extreme of first being unmoving so the body gathers momentum to move deeply. Then the urge becomes so vibrating that the whole body, every fibre is ready to have a movement. Then only tantric orgasm is possible. You can have some music on... classical music will do; something that gives a very subtle rhythm to the body.

Make the breathing as slow as possible because when you make love the breathing will go deep and fast. So just go on slowing down, but don’t force it, otherwise it will go fast. Simply suggest that it slows down.

Both meditate together and when you are both feeling meditative, that is the moment to love. Then you will never feel tension and energy will be flowing. If you are not feeling meditative, don’t make love. If meditation is not happening that day, forget all about love.

People do simply the opposite. Almost always couples fight before they make love. They become angry, nag each other and bring all sorts of conflict – and then they make love. They fall very low in their consciousnesses, so of course love cannot be very satisfying. It will be frustrating and you will feel a tension.

The second thing is: when you are making love, before you start, worship the partner and let the partner worship you. So after meditation, worship. Face each other totally naked and worship each other, because Tantra cannot be between man and woman. It can only be between a god and a goddess. It is a gesture, but very significant. The whole attitude has to become sublime so that you disappear. Touch each other’s feet, put garlands of flowers there.

The man becomes transformed into Shiva and the woman is transformed into Shakti. Now your humanity is irrelevant, your form is irrelevant, your name is irrelevant; you are just pure energy.

Worship brings that energy into focus. And don’t pretend. The worship has to be true. It cannot be just a ritual, otherwise you will miss. Tantra is not a ritual. There is much ritual in it, but Tantra is not ritual.

You can repeat the ritual. You can bow down to her feet and touch them; that won’t help. Let it be a deeply meaningful gesture. Really look at her. She is no more your wife, no more your girlfriend, no more woman, no more body, but a configuration of energy. Let her first become divine, then make love to her. Then love will change its quality. It will become divine. That’s the whole methodology of Tantra.

Then in the third step you make love. But let your making love be more like a happening than like a making. The english expression ’making love’ is ugly. How can you make love? It is not something like doing; it is not an action. It is a state. You can be in it but you cannot make it. You can move in it but you cannot do it. You can be loving but you cannot manipulate it. The whole western mind tries to manipulate everything.

Even if the western mind comes to find God someday, God will be in trouble. They will harness Him in some way or other, manipulate Him. They will put Him to some use, some utilitarian purpose.

Even love has become a sort of doing. No.

When you make love, be possessed. Move slowly, touch each other’s bodies; play with each other’s bodies. The body is like a musical instrument. Don’t be in a hurry. Let things grow. If you move slowly, suddenly both your energies will rise together, as if something has possessed you. It will happen instantly and simultaneously together. Then only Tantra is possible. Move now into love ....

Just feel energy descending on you and let that energy have its movement. Sometimes you will start shrieking, shriek. Sometimes you will start saying things, say. Sometimes only moans will be coming out, or some mudras, gestures; allow them. It is going to be a maddening thing, but one has to allow it. And don’t be afraid, because it is through your allowing that it is happening. The moment you want to stop it, it stops, so you are never beyond control.

And when gods make love it is almost wild. There are no rules, no regulations. One moves just on the spur of the moment. Nothing is taboo... nothing is inhibited. Whatsoever happens in that moment is beautiful and holy; whatsoever, I say, unconditionally. If you bring your mind into it you will destroy it completely. If you suddenly feel like sucking her finger and you say ’What nonsense!’

then you have brought in the mind. You may feel like sucking her breast; nothing wrong in it.

Nobody knows what is going to happen. You are simply left in the divine vortex. It will take you, and it will take you wherever it wants. You are simply available, ready to move with it. You don’t direct it... yoU have simply become vehicles. Let energies meet in their own ways. The man should be dropped out of it – just pure energy. You will not be making love only through the genital organs; you will be making love through your whole body.

That’s the meaning of shivalingam: no face, no hands, no feet – just the phallic symbol. When Shiva made love he became just the phallus – the whole of his body. It is very beautiful... no face, nothing.

Everything has disappeared.

It is not that you are using your sexual organs only; the sex has spread all over. You head is as much a part of it as your feet. You have become a phallus. You are no more man; you are just energy. She is also no more a woman; just energy, a vulva. It is a very wild thing.

If you meditate before and then worship each other, there is no danger; everything will move rightly.

You will attain to a peak of orgasm that you have never known. Sometimes you will achieve it: a very great orgasm in which the whole body throbs and pulsates. By and by you reach a climax; again you come down. It will cleanse your whole being, the whole system. Sometimes there will be no ejaculation but orgasm will be there.

There are two types of orgasm: the peak orgasm and the valley orgasm. In the peak orgasm you will have an ejaculation and she will have also an ejaculation of some subtle energies. In the valley orgasm you will not have any ejaculation. It will be a passive orgasm... very silent, very subtle. The throb will be there but almost imperceptible. In the peak orgasm you will feel very very blissful. In the valley orgasm you will feel very very peaceful. And both are needed; both are two aspects of Tantra. Every peak has its valley, and every valley has its peak. A peak cannot exist without the valley nor vice versa.

[Osho said not to be too concerned about having an ejaculation. The western mind tends to be too concerned about it happening and feels that something is wrong when it doesn’t happen. The whole thing is to be totally in it and to leave things in the hands of God; it is His business. Your business is just to enjoy, delight, celebrate.]

And when it has happened and you have both achieved to a deep orgasm, don’t pull yourself out of her. After the orgasm, remain inside her and rest for a few moments. That rest is very very deep.

After an orgasm a rest is like a valley. You have reached to the very peak and now you have come back to the valley. It is very cool and shady and you rest.

And really much happens after the orgasm... the merging, the melting. Bodies are tired, exhausted, spent. The mind is shocked. It has almost been like an electric shock.

When you come out of your love state, again pray together; end with a prayer. The difference is that when you meditate, you meditate separately and she meditates separately, because meditation cannot be done together. Meditation is a lonely effort. It is not a relationship. So you may be meditating together but still you meditate alone; you are alone and she is alone.

Then you worship each other. That’s again different. The other becomes the object of worship.

then you make love and you are completely lost. You are not yourself, she is not herself. Nobody knows who is who. All is lost in a whirlpool of energy. The polarity of man and woman is no more a polarity; boundaries merge, mingle. Sometimes you will feel like a woman and she will feel like a man. Sometimes she comes on top of you. Sometimes you become passive and she becomes active and the role changes. It is a great drama of energies. All is lost, abandoned. Then you come out of that innermost experience; pray together. That’s the fourth thing.

Just thank God. And never complain. Whatsoever happens is right. Don’t say ’This has not happened. This should have happened.’ Who are we? He knows better. So just thank Him, whatsoever happens; thank Him with deep gratefulness. Bow down and put your head on the earth and remain there for a few moments in deep gratefulness.

Meditation is alone. In worship, the other is important, and in prayer you both pray to God. So these three things have to be involved. They will create the ecology in which Tantra happens. And once a week will do.

If you are moving in Tantra then no other love should be allowed otherwise it dissipates energy. But whenever you want to make love, make sure you have enough time. It should not be done in a hurry. It should not be like work. It is a game, play, and these energies are so subtle that if you are in a hurry, nothing happens. Tantra is not a fragment. You cannot practise it unless you create the situation. It is like a flower.

You have to sow the seed and take care of the plant and water it every day. You look to whether the sun is reaching it or not. You cannot bring the flower, but you can create the situation in which one day the flower comes and the bud opens.

So these three things are sowing the seed, caring for the plant, watering it and being continuously concerned about it; being careful, protecting it. Then one day suddenly – the flower of Tantra. It will happen.

And now I am going to be involved with you, so there is no problem. I am coming with you.

[The above sannyasin’s wife says: I feel that after death there is no problem.]

Right! I am the death, and if you are ready to die in me, I’m ready to give you a resurrection. A master is a death.

In indian scriptures they call the master death, because the disciple has to come to him and die in him. Only then the new arises. It is never out of the old; it is out of the death of the old. The new is not a continuity with the old; it is discontinuous.

I am sending you back completely new. I am sending you to a strange world. People will see that you have become an outsider there. You will see that you no longer belong to them; your home is nowhere.

Much more is going to happen. Death is only the beginning!

[A sannyasin who had earlier been involved in an ’exorcism’ of someone’s ’negative’ energy, is leaving for the West and says: I realise that in everything that is going on here, is the love... and I can’t stay away from that.]

Mm mm... much has to be done there (in the West).

Remember one thing: you are not the doer. Don’t become a doer. Just allow me to do many things; become instrumental. That’s what I’m working for: to create mediums who can function for me; who can become broadcasting stations for me so that I need not go anywhere.

And remember – all is always available. You just have to become a medium for it, a right medium for it. God is showering on everybody each moment, but many miss because what they do with that showering is wrong.

The sun goes on showering its light and falls on a black surface. The same light can fall on a white surface and the light is the same, but one thing appears black, another appears white. What has happened? The black thing is nothing but a hoarding. It absorbs the light and does not give it back.

That is the physics of light, and the metaphysics too.

Whatsoever physics understands about light is the same understanding of metaphysics about God.

In fact the word divine comes from a sanskrit root which means light, ’div’. And the devil also comes from the same root. Divine and devil are both offshoots of the same sanskrit root, div. Div means light. And both are light, but somehow the devil is working on a black surface; goes on hoarding.

The white goes on renouncing.

When the light falls on the white surface, all the rays are returned, nothing is taken in; that’s why it is white. That’s why it looks like white because all the returning rays fall on your eyes, and they are white. When the same light falls on some other thing – black – it simply means the black has taken in all the rays. Nothing is coming out, hence it looks black. Black is a hoarding – the devil is a hoarder. It is God imprisoned, light imprisoned.

The devil is one who has not learned yet how to share, how to give. The devil means a metaphysical constipation. It takes in but it never gives out. It goes on hoarding and hoarding; it becomes like a tumour. That’s why all over the world, in all the mythologies, the devil is painted black. It is meaningful.

It will be good to understand it. The devil is the first attitude towards light, of hoarding, clinging, possessing. Almost ninety-nine percent of people live like devils. God gives to them but they don’t share. That which is given to them they never give to others. That which has been a gift to them they completely forget and claim it as their own. They have turned a tremendous energy into bitter poison. That which could have been very nourishing becomes suicidal. The ambrosia is reduced to being poisonous.

This is the first standpoint of ordinary humanity. Christianity calls it the devil. In India we have a mythology about Ravana, the king of demons. That mythology is very beautiful. Ravana lived in a capital of gold. He was a hoarder, a miser, and never satisfied with what he had; he was always robbing from others. He never used that which was given to him, but was always jealous of others.

The same is known in Zarathustra’s system as Ahriman, the dark soul. In Mohammedanism it is Satan.

The second standpoint is of the white surface. White has always been a symbol of renunciation.

Renounce, give, share – don’t hoard. The first standpoint is of the immoral man. The second standpoint is of the moral man. The first is Ravana, the second is Rama – the moral man, the good man, the ideal.

Christianity, Judaism, Jainism and Buddhism are all one dimensional. In this first dimension of the good man the good is their God. They never go beyond that – that’s why they are poor religions.

They are poor in the sense of religion. They may be rich materially but poor in the sense of religion because they are satisfied with the first religious dimension. The good man seems to be the end, the last. The moral man seems to be the ultimate. That is not so – there are other dimensions also.

Zarathustra calls this dimension Ahura-mazda.

The moral man is just the opposite of the immoral man. Whatsoever the immoral man was doing, the devil was doing, the moral man is doing just the contrary. He is renouncing everything, but when you renounce everything you remain empty in a certain way. The hoarder’s belly goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. He becomes burdened, heavy, tense; a hell arises in him because he is cutting the circuit of life.

The good man, the moral man, goes on giving. He never absorbs anything, and unless you absorb, how can you digest? He goes on giving but without transforming anything. He returns God’s gift from the porch, from the door; he never takes it in. So the moral man is good compared to the immoral man, but he is not the only way to be religious. Hinduism is the richest religion of all, because it is multi-dimensional.

Your so-called religious people are almost always confined to the moral man.

Then there is a third point which I call the religious man. He functions like pure glass. The rays of light enter the glass but they are not hoarded there. The glass does not renounce; it takes in and gives out. From one door it takes in, from another door it gives out. It is pure glass, transparent. It is different; it is not like a white surface. It is beyond the immoral and the moral.

This is the man of Tao: Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. They are simple, almost simpletons; transparent.

This is the ’idiot’ of Dostoevsky, but in a very respectful sense. He is so simple that he is almost like an idiot. It is very difficult to recognise this third man if you come across him, because he will be so transparent that you may not be able to see him. If the glass is very pure you cannot see it; it is transparent. The second man you can find easily. He is the great leader, the active revolutionary.

He sacrifices himself in the service of good.

Jesus is the second man, Mohammed also. In the modern world, Gandhi remains confined to the second man. He was very influenced by Jesus. He thought of becoming a Christian many times.

He was also influenced very much by Rama, the second type of man. When Gandhi was shot dead, Rama was the last word he uttered. That was his heart’s voice. He was also very much influenced by Mahavir. But all his ideals are confined to the second dimension.

If you come across Lao Tzu, it will be very difficult to catch hold of him. He is very elusive and you may not recognise him. That’s why no religion has arisen out of Lao Tzu, or from a modern parallel, Raman Maharshi. Organisation is difficult for that type. One can learn from such a person, but he does not teach. He is not a teacher. His influence is subtle and is almost like a catalytic agent. His presence works. He is passive, feminine. He is not a doer. He functions through his being. His silence is his speech.

One very great thinker, Lanza Del Vasto, came to the East in search of a master. He went to Raman first. He felt a silence.... the tremendous beauty – but it was so passive that it didn’t appeal to him.

He wanted somebody active, strong, revolutionary, who was trying to change the whole world. Vasto writes in his diary, ’I loved the man. It was beautiful but I was not attracted. He was not my master.’

Then he went to Gandhi, the active revolutionary, and he felt he was his master. But everybody gets whatsoever he needs in a certain moment in time.

This third man believes in inaction because he has no resistance. The light passes through him and he becomes just a vehicle. He creates no revolution but much happens through him. He never does anything. His dictum is Wu Wei – action without action. This is the religious man. He is not a revolutionary. He is revolution. Zen came out of the meeting of the second and the third. Therefore it is richer than both. Zen is a synthesis, an organic synthesis between Buddha and Lao Tzu.

Then there is a fourth man whom I call the spiritual man. He functions like a mirror. Light comes on top of the mirror and is refracted; not renounced, refracted. If you come near a mirror, you will be reflected in it. This fourth type of man is a spiritual man – Patanjali, Gurdjieff. They are great masters. Many people come around them and see their own faces in them. They are mirrors, the spiritual men. J. Krishnamurti is a contemporary parallel.

The moral transcends the immoral, the religious transcends the moral, the spiritual transcends the religious.

But there is a fifth man and the fifth man functions as a prism. The light not only passes through it, but is transformed. A rainbow is created out of it. Before light passes through a prism it is a simple light; very simple, one note, monotonous. But when it comes out of it, it is a rainbow, seven colours

– dazzling, splendid, glorious. That is Krishna, dancing with a flute... robed in beautiful silk, crowned with peacock feathers... dancing like a whirlwind. Wild, natural, spontaneous.

This dimension I call the divine. It transcends the spiritual. Whosoever comes around him is pulled in. This is God in its totality. Hence Hindus call Krishna, Purnavatara – the perfect incarnation of God.

These are the five possibilities between devil and divinity. And always remember that if one is on the first, one has to go to the second. If one is on the second, one has to go to the third. If one is on the third, one has to go to the fourth. If one is on the fourth, one has to go to the fifth. In the moral, the immoral is denied, bur in the religious both are accepted and transcended; nothing is denied. In the spiritual all three are accepted and transcended. In the divine, a Krishna-like prism, everything is accepted and transformed. But the whole thing is that it is just the same light, and what happens to your life depends on how you respond to this light.

I give you the devil to continuously remind you that millions of people, ninety-nine percent, waste their lives at the first. It is a very poor life; miserable, hell. Everybody has the destiny to reach to the fifth. Krishna has to start dancing in you, your whole life has to become a celebration. And it is not only that you give back, because when a god gives a gift to you, if doesn’t look good to give the same gift back. It has to be transformed. If it comes as one light, it has to go as seven. If it comes as one single note, you have to return a whole orchestra.

So give way, mm? Become a medium; that’s my whole effort.

Everyone has to come to a point where he can play on the flute, sing and dance, and where his dance can become an invitation for the world to dance. . .where stars and trees and animals, men and women and gods dance with him.

So remember the whole spectrum. It depends on how much you become a vehicle. the best vehicle is the prism because it not only allows the light to pass through it, it transmutes it.

Much is going to happen, mm? Just go and remember me, and start working.

CHAPTER 18

Love Yourself

20 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says that he had a problem about sannyas. Osho asked him why the question of sannyas arose... ]

... because if you don’t feel like taking it, there is no problem. And if you feel like taking it, there is no problem. The question arises only if you are feeling a conflict within your heart. The problem arises because you want to take it and something in your mind is preventing you. A question is always indicative of a conflict.

The problem is not sannyas; the problem is an inner conflict, a division. And as I see it, it is not only sannyas; this will be your whole life’s problem. Whenever you have to decide something, you will always feel a conflict, a wavering. It has nothing to do with sannyas as such. It has something to do with you.

And it has to be so because the problem arises because of a certain pattern of the mind. There are people who simply want to take sannyas; there is no problem with them. They feel they would like to move with me as deeply as possible. They feel they would like to surrender their egos to me. They have lived with their egos and suffered long. They have decided in a sudden insight of love that now no more! They are finished with the ego and they want to surrender it.

Sannyas is a surrender. It is a gesture – that now I put my ego at your feet, so whatsoever you say I will do. It is simply a let-go. It is saying I will not resist you, I will not fight you. It is a faith, a trust.

When somebody trusts, he surrenders. Problems never arise to him. Then there are others who are sceptical; who are not yet finished with their egos; who still hope that something is going to happen through their egos; who still hope that their mind is going to deliver some paradise, some happiness, some bliss to them; who still think that through logic, reason, they will arrive at knowing what truth is. Then there is no problem for them; the idea of sannyas simply does not arise. Both these people

– people who have trust and people who don’t have trust – are clear in a way.

Your problem is that you are neither totally irrational nor totally rational. Half of your mind is argumentative and half of your mind is ready to trust. What I am indicating is that the question is not sannyas; the question is always you. You are divided; a split is there, half-half. Nothing bad in it. If you understand it you can become a very very rich personality; richer than one-sided people.

One who simply has faith is simple – like one-note music. An orchestra cannot be created out of it.

One who is simply sceptical is again simple. He may be argumentative but he has no complexity about it; he is clear-cut. You are ambiguous, vague. If you don’t understand this you will become more and more confused. If you understand it, you can become a mystic...

So this is the dilemma, the dichotomy in you. You have to understand it otherwise you will fall into a chaos because these two polarities will pull you apart, will tear you apart. If this type of mind goes on and on and on without any meditative understanding, the ultimate result is going to be schizophrenia. Then a person becomes two persons.

Right now those two divisions are not separate; they are together. Somehow you are managing, but any day you can be in a great crisis. The left side can go to this side and the right side to another side; then you become two persons. And that is the whole problem of the modern mind: schizophrenia. Everybody is split.

You love the same person whom you hate. Now there is no possibility of coming to a blissful state of affairs. If you satisfy your love, your hate remains unsatisfied. If you satisfy your hate, your love suffers. So whatsoever you do, you remain miserable. With one hand you put a brick down to make a building, and with another hand you pull it away – so the house is never built. You are working hard for your whole life and nothing comes out of it.

The danger is that if you don’t go deep in meditation and understanding, you will be accumulating a sort of neurosis. If you go deep in understanding, meditation, then this conflict of polarities can become a very enriching experience. You can become simple with a great richness, because when polarities are together, meeting in a synthesis – what Hegel calls the dialectics of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis....

Right now you have thesis, you have anti-thesis, but you are missing any synthesis. So these are the two possibilities. If you don’t create a synthesis out of this polarity you will fall apart. A man who becomes mad was potentially destined to become a mystic. A man who becomes a mystic was always in danger of becoming a madman; that’s the risk. So mystics always have a certain similarity with mad people and mad people have a certain similarity with mystics.

In the western world, many people, at least mystical people, are living in the madhouses, being treated by electric shock and insulin shock. A thousand and one things are being done to them unnecessarily. They can grow beautifully. They can become beautiful flowers... flowers of humanity.

But they are being wasted because the whole attitude is that they are mad.

In the East just the opposite has happened. Sometimes it has happened that a man was mad but people worshipped him as a mystic, because in the East the interpretation is that madness is accepted. In the West mysticism is not accepted; that too is a sort of madness. So this is the problem.

Sannyas is not the problem. Sannyas may be the solution.

If you can decide anything, any decision will bring the two parts in you together. Any commitment will bring you together; whatsoever the commitment. But it has to be so deep that your innermost core is involved in it. Then a synthesis will come out of it. Sannyas is exactly for people like you. It is a jump into the unknown.

I am not going to explain to you what it is. I am simply explaining to you what you are. Sannyas can become an opportunity to jump out of this duality, to attain to a higher synthesis.

And to me, madness is not a bad thing. If it can be used it is a great opportunity, a blessing. All those who are great have something of madness in them. Poets, painters, musicians, artists, all have something of the madman because they all have that richness, that affinity. They are not simple beings – they are very complex – but they are not in conflict. They are complex and yet are in a synthetic whole, integrated.

Sannyas is just a jump into the unknown.

If you can take that jump into the unknown, you will attain to a certain integration. Your two personalities will come closer and overlap each other. There will be a meeting inside you.

So don’t ask what sannyas is, because if I convince you and then you take it, the reason part will be convinced. If I don’t say anything to you and keep quiet, that too will not be good. So I have to say something, and I am saying something to you. But I am speaking in such a way that no part is in any way convinced.

You just have to look at me. You just have to feel me. If that feeling gives you an urge, a desire, a passionate desire to be with me in some inner relationship, then it’s okay. Take the jump. There is no need to think around and around it; no need to think about it. The door is open. You can enter the shrine and see what it is. Why ask from the outside?

Why be a beggar when I invite you to be a guest?

Anand means bliss and vidaya means bodiless, unembodied – bliss unembodied. In fact bliss has no body because it has no definition. It has no body because it has no limitation. It is as infinite as existence. It is as beginningless and as endless as existence.

In the East we have called God satchitanand – one who is true, one who is conscious, and one who is bliss. Bliss is the inner-most core of being.

[A therapist visitor says: It is very difficult for me to listen to myself. I can see problems for other people but I cannot for me.]

That happens always to people who are helping others – groupleaders, psychoanalysts, therapists.

It happens to all such people because by and by they become too much other-focused. They listen to their problems and they try to solve them, but this whole effort may be just an escape from their own problems. This is my understanding because so many psychoanalysts, therapists and groupleaders have come to me.

This is the problem for almost every therapist. You may have chosen the therapy as a deep occupation, a preoccupation; as an escape from your own problems. It is very easy to get involved in others’problems; very easy to become a messiah, very easy. And when others are in misery, in trouble, in anxiety and anguish, you become so concerned that you forget for a few moments that you have your own misery still unsolved. This can become such a focusing that when you want to turn your light inwards, it does not turn. Or even if it turns inwards, you will think about yourself as if you are somebody else.

So you will need certain eastern techniques; western methods won’t do. The whole western methodology is concerned with the other. The whole thing seems to be as if you have to help the other and others have to help you. So one psychoanalyst goes to another psychoanalyst for his own psychoanalysis. And this goes on! It is a game, a beautiful game! Everybody is benefited out of it; nobody is at a loss. And nothing happens – a merry-go-round.

The eastern methodology is totally different. It insists that nobody can help you; that you are the patient and you are also going to be the therapist. Nobody can help you.

In zen monasteries in Japan they have a treatment for all sorts of problematic people. They simply put them in the furthest, most distant corner of the monastery. They supply their needs but nobody talks to them. They are allowed to do whatsoever they like; their time is theirs. If they want to talk to themselves, they can. If they want to dance, they can dance. If they want to sit, they can sit; whatsoever they want. Their physical needs are cared for and nobody bothers about their spiritual or mental needs.

Left alone to themselves, they start growing in a very subtle way. In a three-week separation, left to yourself in isolation, what will you do? By and by you will start searching inwards and all preoccupations will drop. All the problems that you have been escaping from will bubble up, will surface. You will go into an almost critical state; it will be a crisis. You will almost become mad. But that has to be passed through; it is very therapeutic.

You are hiding a certain madness in you and you are escaping from it – and the best way to escape is to become a therapist. When people come to you and they are more mad, you feel a certain happiness; unconsciously one feels that one is not alone. Everybody is mad – and worse than you are – so there is nothing to be worried about.

That’s why people enjoy others’ miseries very much. When they come to know others’ miseries.

their miseries look smaller – comparatively, relatively, they feel good.

[Osho suggested it would be good for her to go into isolation for one month, in which time she could allow whatsoever was there to come up.]

You are not allowing it – and you know it. You are suppressing it in a subtle way; sitting on it. It has to be provoked, and once it comes up you will lose all performance. For a few days you will become almost helpless.

In helping others, leading groups, you have learned a certain performance. Technically you have become skilful, but that is not going to help. That will be almost a suicide to your innermost potentiality.

[Osho said that when a doctor is focused on the illnesses of his patients, he himself is never ill. Once there is a shortage of patients then a doctor can become ill.

When politicians are in power, campaigning, warring, they are perfectly healthy, but once out of office, illness strikes.... ]

Richard Nixon’s illness is very much psychological. He was healthy; there was no problem. But once the power started slipping out of his hands, he became ill and crippled. He was thinking many times in those days to commit suicide. Not only that – once the thought even passed through his mind that he could push the button for atom bombs to be dropped on Russia. Why die alone? Let the whole world die with him.

Mad people. But when they are in power, everything is good; they are all smiles. So continue your work but watch it, mm? Because the first duty is towards oneself. And remember this too as a basic dictum: you cannot help anybody else if you are not really healthy. It is impossible. You can play the role and people can be helped a little bit, but that help is not going to do anything permanent for them. How is it possible?

That’s the difference between the western psychotherapist and the eastern master. The eastern master has to be himself, totally whole, holy; totally rooted and centred. Only then is he allowed to help anybody, otherwise not. But in the West now...

[The ashram hypnotherapist says: When I was in the West I was able to do my work realising that I was feeding my ego a lot, but it didn’t feel as if it was any real problem. Here its hard for me to see the borderline between my ego – things I do to strengthen my ego – and things I’m doing because of my responsibilities, or what I feel is love for others... But I must say, I think you’ve answered that already.]

No, I have not answered you. That answer won’t help you. So always remember that when I am answering somebody else, you should not take that answer as being always for you; it may not be.

The question may be the same, but if it is asked by different individuals, it is a different question.

And I am not answering in a vacuum. I am answering persons. Your question is different and my answer is going to be different.

Don’t create this split between ego and love of others. Reduced to the basic elements, it is love; love of oneself and love of others. Once you call it ego, you create trouble; you misname it.

Love of yourself is not against others. In fact love of yourself is the very base. If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love others. So don’t use the word ego; That word is dangerous and irrelevant in your reference. That’s why you were not aware of it in the West. But here you will become more and more aware of a subtle ego, of the very subtle nuances of the ego. But always remember that the ego is dangerous if it is against the love of others. If it is helping you to love others, it is no more dangerous. And poison can be used as medicine; the ego can also be used. There is nothing in the world which cannot be used creatively.

So call it love of yourself; that’s what it is. If it goes mad it becomes the ego. If the ego becomes sane, it is nothing but love of oneself. You love yourself; that’s your first responsibility. If you don’t love yourself, how can you love me?

Only when you flower in your own love can the fragrance reach me. It can reach to others... it can go to the farthest end of the world, but it should come from your centre first.

So call it love of yourself. Sometimes a false word can lead you to such problems that it becomes almost impossible to solve them.

But I don’t see that you are an egoistic person. An egoistic person is one who hates others, and his ego is destructive to others. A non-egoistic person is one who loves others and his ego is not against others. Then his ego is nothing but his self-love. And the self-love is the basic background out of which love for others arises. And you have to love yourself and love others.

Jesus says, ’Love your neighbours as yourself.’ But loving yourself is the basic necessity.

And remember, when a problem is arising, always ask yourself if it is really a problem or just a mind game. Is it really something that has to be solved, or can you neglect it? Sometimes by neglecting a few problems, they die automatically. Sometimes ignoring them is the only way to kill them. Sometimes paying them attention feeds them.

But don’t be worried. My whole teaching is to be selfish. Love yourself so tremendously that you become flooded with love and it overflows from you and reaches to others.

CHAPTER 19

Learn to Become a Void

21 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is a healer says: I want to become a better healer, so I can be of better service in helping people.]

Healing is one of the most delicate dimensions. And the delicacy consists in the healer not doing anything in it. The healer is not really a healer because he is not a doer. Healing happens through him. He has just to annihilate himself. To be a healer really means not to be. The less vou are, the better healing will happen. The more you are, the more the passage is blocked. God or the totality or whatsoever name you prefer, is the healer. The whole is the healer.

The word ’healing’ comes from the same root as from where the word ’whole’ comes. Whole, health, healing, holy, all come from the same root. To be healed means to be joined with the whole. To he ill means to be disconnected with the whole. An ill person is one who has simply developed blocks between him and the whole, so something is disconnected. The function of the healer is to reconnect it. But when I say the function of the healer is to reconnect it, I don’t mean that the healer has to do something. The healer is just a function. The doer is God, the whole.

So if you really want to become a healer you will have to completely commit suicide. You have to accept your emptiness. And that is going to become your work: to become more and more empty of yourself. So go on emptying yourself. As nature abhors vacuum, God also abhors vacuum. When you empty yourself, from one side you go out and from another side, God comes in. He has to occupy the same space that you are occupying. The same space that the ego is occupying, is to be occupied by Him; so the ego and God cannot exist together in a person.

And that’s the whole problem of healing and the whole art – how to nullify yourself, how to become a void. But it will happen.... Everybody can become a healer. Healing is something like breathing; it is natural. Somebody is ill; it means he has lost his capacity to heal himself. He is no more aware of his own healing source. The healer is to help him to be rejoined. That source is the same from which the healer draws, but the ill man has forgotten how to under-stand the language of it. The healer is in relationship with the whole, so he can become a via-media. The healer touches the body of the ill person and becomes a link between him and the source. The patient is no longer connected directly with the source so he becomes indirectly connected. Once the energy starts flowing, he is healed.

And if the healer is really a man of understanding.... Because it is possible that you can become a healer and you may not be a man of understanding. There are many healers who go on doing it but they don’t know how it happens; they don’t know the mechanism of it. If you understand also, you can help the patient to be healed and you can help him to be aware of the source from where the healing is happening. So not only is he healed of his present illnesses, he is prevented from future illnesses. Then the healing is perfect. It is not only curative, it is also preventative.

Healing almost becomes an experience of prayer, an experience of God, of love, of the whole.

So just be here and for a few days don’t do any healing. Meditate for a few days and just get in tune with the family that is growing here around me. And when I say get in tune, I mean don’t try logically, intellectually to dissect things. Whatsoever is going on here, accept it in deep trust. Simply fall in line with it. You are not to think about it because thinking is one of the barriers for a healer. So start by dropping thinking.

Simply be empty here. Be like a small child who cannot argue, who cannot reason; who simply accepts. Trust comes naturally to a child. Simply trust me and trust the people here, even if sometimes it is difficult for the reason to accept.

But acceptance is so valuable that the reason can be starved to death. Whenever there is a choice between acceptance and reasoning, always choose acceptance. By and by you will see that your reason also starts helping you to accept it. Because when the reasoning comes to see that you accept anything, that a yes or no makes no difference, then reason also becomes sympathetic to your trust. And when inside you, reason and trust meet, your own conflict is transcended.

This will be the first step for your discipline to become a healer.

Between reason and trust, or between heart and mind, a bridge is needed, and such a bridge that the mind becomes secondary, just instrumental to the heart. Ordinarily the mind is the master and the heart has to follow. Then you can become a doctor but not a healer. You can become a therapist but not a healer. Therapy is part of science; healing is part of religion.

So you can become a man of medicine by reason, by the head, but not a man of healing energy, because that comes from a different source, and the whole thing just goes topsy-turvy. The heart becomes the master and the reason becomes just a shadow and ally. Remember this word.

I am not saying be against reason, because if you are against reason, the rift will continue and there will be a continuous conflict within you. So don’t be against reason, just be for the heart. If the reason says something, listen to it. If it goes against the heart, neglect it. There is no need to fight it; just ignore it and follow the heart.

By and by you will see that the mind is coming closer and closer to the heart because now the mind will feel unnourished unfed, starved. Once the mind understands – and it understands very well that the situation has changed, the heart has become the centre so it has to become an ally – then it cooperates. And when the mind cooperates with the heart and reason cooperates with your trust, your rift is bridged.

When you are not divided you have become a vehicle. In your undividedness you have taken the first step towards being a healer. This is going to be your deepest meditation: listen to the heart.

Feel more, think less. If any conflict arises, you have to be with the heart. You have to listen to the feeling – howsoever irrational, absurd, even mad. And I will make you a great healer; don’t be worried!

And do a few groups here. Enlightenment Intensive will be good.

[The sannyasin says: I did that once in England and it wasn’t my cup of tea.]

Mm mm... don’t think of it as not your cup of tea. Always think that you are not yet worthy of this cup of tea. Do it again and this time do it as totally as possible. It is a zen method and tremendously helpful.

I know for many people it looks like a barrier. And for people who have been in the new therapy groups – Encounter, Gestalt, Psychodrama, or groups like that – it is very difficult and it makes for a barrier. All those groups are very new and they fit with the western mind because they are groups of relating, of expression, movement, bodywork, catharsis. That fits perfectly with the western mind.

But a group like the Intensive is an eastern method.

It is more concerned with going within than going without. The journey is totally different. It is more concerned with your original face, with who you are, than the reflection that you create in others’

minds. It is more concerned with your innermost core of being as it is in deep isolation, not in relationship. So it is not cathartic. It has nothing to do with relating. It is not expressive. You have to go within.

You have to be alone and alone and alone. You have to seek a point, a virgin point within your being which has never been travelled before. Nobody can enter there, except you. And you too can only enter up to a certain extent. A point comes when you are also left outside. Something enters – but not you. The I is left out at the door. You enter as energy, nameless, formless, but not as you have known yourself. Your whole identity is lost. Your whole address is no more there. You don’t know who you are. You enter only when you don’t know who you are. Then suddenly you are inside the shrine and you know who you are. But this has nothing to do with your previous identity.

So it is a different method, but I would like you to do it – and work as hard as you can.

[To a visitor who said he had up to now always worked on himself by himself, Osho spoke of the dynamics of how a group functions in helping one to grow and achieve insights.

Osho said that we are not islands but all part of the continent. He said that in a group much energy was amassed and one could rise high on that crest, and that in groups one could glimpse insights that inspired and reassured one that there was something there to be attained (see ’Above All, Don’t Wobble’ January 25th, where Osho expands on this).

Osho said the benefit of working in groups has been recognised for many many years and hence, even in ancient times, schools, academies and ashrams were established to allow people to work and grow together. He said people have attained by working on their own, but that is rare (see’Hammer On The Rock’, December 19th, where Osho talks about working alone and with a master).]

Gurdjieff used to say that the situation is such that it is as if a hundred persons are asleep. Now nobody can wake himself up on his own accord, but if somebody is awake his very presence can be used in many ways to help others to awake. Only one who is awake can help the one who is fast asleep to be wakeful. And if a person who is fully awake is not available... because it is rare to find a fully awakened man, a fully enlightened man; if one can find, one is tremendously fortunate, but it is not easy... then a group of people can make a contact between themselves.

Whenever one person in the group is a little close to being awake, he can help others. At least he can create some noise; he can shriek and scream, and that will become an alarm.

If a group is working together, by and by the personality, the persona, drops. You start functioning as one of the group. You start functioning as part of the collectivity; you become members of each other. You each penetrate the other and people start over-lapping. Many possibilities open.

Ordinarily you are simply confined to yourself, and people who remain confined to themselves remain poor, spiritually poor. When many persons criss-cross you, it is just like cross-breeding

– you are enriched; new elements enter you, new challenges. And those new challenges create situations in which you will have to awake.

And if even for a single moment you are awake and the dreams have disappeared, the sleep disturbed, you will never be the same again.

Now you will always carry this beautiful memory. The memory will haunt you and will again remind you to come back, to be awake again. Your whole life will start changing because now things which were valuable before will be valuable no more. Things which were not valuable before will become valuable because a new value has arisen in you. Now your whole pattern, your whole gestalt of life will change.

It will be good if you can come for a little longer period, at least for four or six weeks, and that will do much.

[An englishman, who is a buddhist monk since three years, says of his meditation: I feel I’ve lost the motivation or the enthusiasm that I felt originally. I need some encouragement now, some incentive.]

Mm, I can see it. It always happens when one becomes part of a traditional religion, because whenever a religion becomes established, it dies. Then everything becomes just a dead routine, a repetition. In the beginning you will feel very much enthusiasm because you don’t know in what you are moving. In ignorance there is always enthusiasm. By and by, when you become alert about what you have done and what is happening, enthusiasm is gone. But then you are caught and you don’t know what to do because going back is not going to be of any meaning. Going back to your old life is as meaningless as this, so what is the point of going back? One continues; one simply carries it.

A religion is alive only for a very few moments. When the original person is alive – when a Buddha is alive – then the religion is alive. When Buddha is gone the religion is gone.

It is exactly like a lamp. When the oil is gone, sooner or later the flame is also gone and then there is darkness. Then people simply go on repeating something which was there and is no more there.

They go on repeating for centuries. They go on elaborating, decorating, interpreting, commenting, and the bulk grows. But now it is based on a corpse. And this has to be so. When a Jesus is alive it is something else. It is not Christianity.

To live with a person like Jesus is to live face to face with a god.

To live with a Buddha is one thing; to be a Buddhist is something else. So if you are really interested, then find someone who is alive and who responds to your innermost core, and risk everything with him. That’s worth risking. Otherwise from a Christian you can become a Buddhist; from a Buddhist you can become a Hindu; from a Hindu you can become a Mohammedan, and one can go on. It is just like changing your psychoanalyst, but the psychoanalysis always remains the same. Again another couch and again another couch; a little difference here and there.

If you have many corpses, they are all a little different from each other. One corpse may look very very beautiful, very attractive; another corpse may look very ugly and horrible. One corpse may look very very silent; another may look very angry. But one thing is similar – that they are all dead; and that’s the real thing to find out. Christianity is dead. Buddhism is dead. Jainism is dead.

And it is natural, because a religion is born as people are born. Then a religion becomes grown up as people become grown up. Then a religion becomes old as people become old. Then as people die, religion dies. But with people we are more scientific – we bury them or burn them. With religions we are very unscientific; we carry the corpse for centuries – and the older the corpse the more valuable. Every religion tries to prove that theirs is the oldest, the most ancient.

If you really want to have a mutation, if you want to be transfigured, then you will have to hitch your balloon with an alive person. It is not going to happen with any church. They have much appeal.

When Buddha himself was alive he was not so appealing because there was no tradition behind him, no past, no respectability. The society was against him because the old churches were there; their business was at stake.

So it was very difficult and only courageous people would go to Buddha to be initiated; very courageous, rare souls, gamblers. Calculating, cunning, clever people would not go to him because what had he to give? On the contrary, he will take everything. He will uproot you. Your prestige, your power, will be gone; He will make you a beggar on the street. But later on Buddhism became established, as every religion becomes established.

Religion sooner or later becomes a church. The unorganised anarchy and beauty of it has gone.

Then there is an organised corpse with priests, orders, scripture, rules, regulations in thousands.

Buddhists have written rules in the thousands. To read them is difficult and to remember them is even more difficult. A bhikkhu has to follow almost three thousand rules!

Then everything is dead. The real is missing. It is simply a facade, but very decorated, golden.

And as time passes, more and more decoration goes on being done. It becomes more and more beautiful; more and more dead people are attracted.

You can get respectability from it, but you will not get life and you will not get light.

So the question is not how to give you encouragement. That is not going to help. The question is how to give you the insight. Encouragement is not going to help because it can boost you a little so that for a few days you again paddle a little faster, but again you will drop dead because you are carrying a corpse. And when I say this, I am not saying anything against Buddha. I am saying something against the buddhist church. Buddha is perfectly beautiful.

So find a Buddha. Don’t become part of a church.

Commit yourself to someone who is alive yet and can give you something, who can transfer something which cannot be transferred . . .who can communicate to you immediate, direct, heart to heart. Otherwise you will waste your life.

You don’t need encouragement. You need a little more frustration so that you can get out of the church. Then you can become a real Buddhist. A real Buddhist is a real Christian; a real Christian is a real Mohammedan; a real Mohammedan is a real Hindu – because reality is one.

Formulations are many, but reality is not many. It is one.

You need insight, and if you can understand what I am saying, get out of it. You are not yet too old to get out and the more you are in it, the more entangled you will be. And by and by as you start getting older you will lose more courage. You will say now where to go? What to do? and everything is settled here; you have a mission and work, this and that, and people respect you. They touch your feet and they call you baba. So it will become very difficult.

Before energy leaves you, before life starts declining, escape; get out of it ! And that is the only way to become a Buddhist. Never belong to a church. Belong to an alive person. And the earth is always full of them; it is never that buddhas are lacking. Of course they don’t come again in the same shape and in the same package; that’s right. The container is always different but if you look deep down vou can always find a buddha.

And that should be the search – the search for a master.

You are a disciple but you have no master; that’s your problem. How can you become a disciple without there being a master? I know all the Buddhists in India. Not a single one is a master. They are very learned people, but a learned person is a learned person – nothing to do with being a master. They can quote scriptures but even the devil can do that.

So just be alert. It is your life and you have to take a decision. First find a master – then the disciplehood is possible and then learning starts. And don’t be clinging to a dogma, a scripture, tradition. I can see you have the heart of a seeker but you have got lost in a desert. So gather courage.

And before one becomes a missionary, one should attain something. Unless you have it how can you share it with others? Otherwise the mission becomes almost like a business. You have to do it because they feed you. You have to do it because they take care of you. You have to do it because the old age is coming and who will take care of you? Where is your security? So a religious business is also a business; it makes no difference.

But I can see that you are still fresh. You have not yet been crippled. Your limbs are alive... you can run away. Mm? Get out of it!

[A visitor says: I’ve come from Mr Bennett’s school (a Gurdjieffian school) in England – Sherborne House. Mrs Bennett sent me to ask you a question...

Before Mr Bennett died, he entrusted to me all the medications, all the teachings and movements and morning exercises; in fact all the spiritual disciplines of the academy.

Up to last year everything was alright and then my father died and I started drinking a lot, really a lot. I even started taking classes drunk.

Now I feel as if I know all the techniques backwards and side-wards, but it is as if the work has gone from me. I mean I’m just a man of techniques, and I feel I’ve destroyed everything.

Mrs Bennett said I should go to a master, so she sent me to you.]

You have come to the right person.

And she is perceptive; she understands....

There is nothing to be worried about. It is a good indication that you are feeling a little concerned; feeling responsible seeing that unless you know it as an experience, just knowing the techniques is not going to help. You will be false and you cannot help people, because the help never comes from techniques. It comes from the awakened state of the person who is helping. You need a certain state, an integration; what Gurdjieff used to call a crystallisation.

Unless that crystallisation is there, you will not be of any help. On the other hand you can be harmful.

At least you must be a little higher than the people you are going to help. You may not be perfect –

because perfection is a very difficult thing – but you need to be of a little higher integration; somewhat ahead of them. That much you can help. But it always happens that when a master like Gurdjieff is dead, techniques are left, and the whole gurdjieff movement is suffering from techniques.

[The visitor adds: We don’t only use gurdjieff techniques. We use a lot of sufi techniques also.]

Yes, they are also gurdjieff techniques because Gurdjieff was a Sufi. Gurdjieff techniques were something that were added by Ouspensky – or were found by people who were searching at the original sources from where Gurdjieff had got them. But still they are techniques.

And techniques can help a little – it is not that they are absolutely useless – but they are very superficial. The same technique in the hands of a master becomes a tremendous force. The technique in the hands of a technician is very ordinary. Those techniques one can read from a book.

But the real thing that is important is the presence of the master.

That presence is like a catalytic agent. What he says and what he tells you to do is not very important. Those are just ways of keeping you engaged. What is really transpiring is something totally different.

For example, if I say to somebody to go and dig a hole in the garden and not to stop until he falls asleep, on the surface it is just a technique; it can be used by anybody. But the real thing is not that.

When a person listens to me and trusts me, even though it is absurd, he will dig the hole for twenty hours without eating, without sleeping. The whole energy will be exhausted and he is not allowed to fall asleep. If he falls, that’s okay, but he is not to initiate it; he is not to rest. By and by the digging becomes almost dream-like. He cannot believe whether he is really digging or whether he is seeing a dream. The boundary between waking and dreaming merge, and he goes on....

[Osho described the three layers of energy in man: the first for day-to-day work, the second layer for emergencies, and the third which Osho described as ’the eternal source, which is your real being’.

(See ’Above All, Don’t Wobble’, Sunday, February 1st, where Osho talks about energy in more detail, to another seeker from Sherborne.)]

If he continues as the master has said, then whenever he is passing from one energy level to another, there will be a contact with the master just between the two. When the day-to-day level is finished and he is just on the verge of moving out of it and into the second layer, at that neutral point, in that neutral gear, the master can do much because in that moment there is no ego and no resistance. You are just an opening. So if the master is alive he can simply flow in you. He may be thousands of miles away; that makes no difference. He can simply flow in you, and he can do many things that would have taken years, even lives, for you to attain.

When you are passing from the second, emergency layer to the original, to the source, then again he can do many things – many more than he can do at the first because the first was a little further away from the centre. The second is very close to the centre.

Now these things are secrets, and even if they are made open, one who is not himself awakened can read them, listen to them, but they will be of no use. The method can be retained, and then anybody can give it like a technician to anybody else. For example he can say to dig a hole, but nothing will happen; the man will simply be tired. He will have a good sleep, that’s all. The next morning he will feel very good and he may think that something has happened but he will remain the same. That goodness is just a deep rest after a great tiredness. Nothing has happened.

A master is a must. Without him techniques are just impotent.

Be here and start meditating. Don’t bring in your knowledge; keep it aside so I can work. And do a few groups here to just clean and purify you a little. I will be working.

You can be ready; nothing is wrong. You can have something valuable which is not a technique.

Have you done any growth groups in England?

[Never. Mr Bennett was always very against Encounter so we never did it.]

You will be helped very much by it, very much. The modern mind needs them.

Bennett was right in a way because his masters were against it, and those masters were also right because their masters were against it. But the modern mind has changed so much that old techniques that were developed one thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago, are perfectly good, but the mind is no more the same. They don’t fit; they criss-cross.

I am very much in favour of all the growth groups because they give you a cleansing. They give you a cathartic purity. They bring out everything that is hidden in you. If you work on your techniques after that cleansing, more results will be there and faster – and more permanent.

It is almost as if a person is ill and you give him medicine. Now if before being given the medicine he is put on a fast for two or three days, the medicine will function very very deeply and immediately.

The smallest dose will be enough because his system will be pure. If his system is full of toxins and you give him medicine, very big doses will be needed, and even that will not be effective because those toxins will contradict it. You go on giving bigger doses because of those toxins, and once you have overpowered them, the dose of poison that you have given yourself will create new trouble. So all old medicine says, first fast and then take medicine. Then it works immediately because the body is pure, ready.

Encounter, Gestalt, Psychodrama, Bio-energetics, are just a fasting, a fasting of the mind.

Everything is thrown out and your whole system, your intestines are clean. Then any technique goes deeper and easier. So I will suggest that you do a few groups here.

[One of the ashram masseuses says: Since I’ve been in the ashram, I’ve been really happy but I’ve got a fear and a real lack of confidence in my work.

I still feel my hands are good but I feel I’ve lost my intuition. I want so much for the love to flow but lately when I did massage it just felt like a technique and as if it wasn’t coming from my heart.

Osho talked to Her about not comparing oneself with others and reassured her that her work was going well.... ]

And the second thing will happen many times so it is not a problem. You just have to become acquainted with it.

There is always a rhythm in energy. Sometimes love will be overflowing and sometimes not. It has to be that way – day and night, work and rest. Love also needs rest. It is an energy and every energy needs rest. You cannot go on every day doing massage with love. Some day you will find love is not flowing; there is no need to be worried. That’s how it should be. Just continue to massage.

Massage in itself has something very meaningful. If it is joined with love then something more happens, but if love is not there then massage is still happening.

If a doctor gives you medicine it will work. If he gives it to you with deep love and prayer it will work more, but medicine will itself work. Even if there is no doctor but just a computer that diagnoses your disease and gives you a prescription, that will also work But if a doctor is there and the human touch is there, many more things will happen.

So when you are massaging, massage is enough. Love is just your gift. It is not demanded; it is not a requirement. It is just your pure gift; you are giving it for nothing. But sometimes it will be flowing, sometimes not. One has to accept that rhythm. So don’t be worried. Everything is going so well...

[Two sannyasins are practising massage in the ashram. Osho said of massage in an earlier darshan to Her:]

Massage is something that you can start learning but you never finish: It goes on and on and the experience becomes continuously deeper and deeper. Learn the technique and then forget it. Just feel and move by feeling. When you learn deeply, ninety percent of the work is done by love, ten percent by the technique. The whole body becomes the keys of an organ and you can feel that a harmony is created inside the body. Not only will the person be helped, but you also.

[On the subject of Rolfing Osho describes it as being a way to restructure the body... ]

If somebody has been worrying continuously, the body takes a certain musculature which is adjusted to worrying. Then worries disappear but the musculature remains and it will feel heavy, painful. Its function is no more there and the body does not know how to dissolve it. If you don’t do anything about it, it will dissolve by and by but it will take a long time.

In Rolfing it dissolves by pressure.

CHAPTER 20

Pain is a Great Awakener

22 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says she that she is feeling very closed and cut off from everything and everybody around her – including the man she is living with.]

That moment comes to every relationship. It is part of life. Sooner or later the romance starts disappearing, and romance is such a thing that it cannot be very lasting. It is very exciting when it is there, but when it goes one feels completely closed. Because the opening was not yours – it was because of the romantic kick, the thrill that always comes when a relationship starts. Whenever you begin a relationship you are full of hope. All those hopes are false, but that doesn’t matter at that time. All those dreams are going to be shattered, but who bothers? Those dreams are beautiful and golden.

And when one is in a dream, one does not want to be awakened, because one thinks that one is being taken out of one’s beautiful world. But sooner or later the dream has to end; it cannot continue forever. No dream ever continues – that’s why it is called a dream.

In India we define truth as that which continues forever and forever and forever. The eternity of it is its essence. That which begins and ends is ’maya’, a dream, an illusion.

So when every relationship starts it is beautiful, poetic. Then by and by the poetry is lost because you become acquainted with the other person and he becomes acquainted with you, so the novelty is gone; the sensation is no more there. There is nothing to explore; the exploration is over. Then you start travelling on the same track again and again and again, and that creates boredom. It becomes a sort of transcendental meditation. You repeat the same mantra again and again and again.

Nothing holds you awake so one starts falling asleep, closing. There is nothing to see so why open your eyes? There is nothing to experience any more, so why be open? The thrill is gone... the honeymoon is over. But only then something of meaning is possible.

So two possibilities open when a relationship dies, cools down. One possibility is that you change the partner. Then again you can live in the dream for a few days. But the problem will arise again, so that possibility is just postponing the problem, forcing it a little further ahead. It is not going to be solved that way. And that’s what’s going on in the West.

Choose the thrill part, the first beginning, only the honeymoon. But this becomes like a drifting. Many people will come into your life and you will drift and dream, and by and by you will see that those dreams have taken up your whole life and nothing has happened. One day one feels tremendously frustrated.... But that is the easiest approach.

In the East we think in another way. We think that when a relationship cools down, that is the moment for a real relationship to start. But then the relationship will be of prose, not of poetry. It will be of the earth, and not abstract and of the sky.

One needs to have courage to go through this process. As the first phase has gone, the second will also go, remember. Because whatsoever happens here is just a passing phase. If I had told you in the beginning that this dream will end, you would not have listened to me. You would say ’How?’ No lover listens. And the person who says that, looks like an enemy. But now I tell you it has gone. The second stage will also go if you persist in the relationship.

If two lovers are not allowed to meet, the first phase will never end. So the most fortunate lovers are those who are not allowed in some way or other to meet. Their first phase continues because there is nothing to shatter their dream-life so they can go on fantasising. Once you meet with the person, you have to walk on the earth.

One day or other you will have to come back to earth. Dreams cannot be your nourishment; real nourishment is needed. The second phase also passes but it is very difficult to pass through it. It is very easy to pass through the first because nothing is a demand; it is not a challenge. In fact you would like to cling to it. Now the second will give you a great challenge. It will repel you. It will force you in every way to drop out of the relationship, to change the partner and to again fall into a dream.

That’s the whole trick of the mind. But I would like you to stick to the relationship.

Always remember that pain is a great awakener and pleasure is a tranquilliser. Suffering helps more than all the happiness put together.

A single moment of suffering is more valuable than the whole of a life of smug pleasure and comfort and convenience. Why? Because you want to cling to pleasure. With suffering you are thrown off.

You would like to run away from the whole thing, to escape somewhere. But if you stick, a certain integration will happen to you.

In that very sticking to it, standing there and not escaping or running away, but facing it, you will become strong. For the first time the soul will arise in you. You will feel that something has settled.

You are no more just parts. All the parts have fallen into place and they make a pattern.

Gurdjieff used to call this the real birth of the ego. Before it you have many egos, many ’I’s’, but not a single ’I’. Whenever a person is ready to face a suffering which always comes after a dream is shattered, then that suffering is tremendously valuable. But you cannot see it right now.

If you pass through it you accept it as a part. You lived in the dream, now who is going to live when the dream is broken? You have to live that too. You lived in the palace, now live in the ruins –

because every palace sooner or later is going to become a ruin. And the sooner it does, the better, because then the challenge arises. So this is a great challenge for you.

Pass through it. Accept this too. Sometimes the terrain is very rough, and sometimes climbing a mountain is very dangerous, sometimes there are sad moments and unhappinesses, and sheer boredom, but all that is life. And one has to live it through all those dimensions.

So the easier way is to get out of the relationship. Soon you will start dreaming about somebody else....

[Osho went on to say that when she had been away for a few weeks recently, her boyfriend had been the happiest that Osho had seen him, but when he pointed that out to him, he tried to rationalise it.

He said that neither of them would accept that the first phase was over; that it was very difficult for lovers to do that. Either they continued the relationship or they became enemies, but still a relationship continued. It is very rare for lovers to be simply friends.]

When people’s love affairs are going well, they’re very open to me also. But they are not open to me

– they are simply open to love and the dream. In that dream they dream they are open to me. When their love affair is finished, they also feel closed to me, because they were never open.

But meditate over it. If you think that there is no problem between you and [your boyfriend] and if you feel closed to me, then it is not very difficult; something can be done. But first you have to decide whether it is between you and me... because I don’t see it that way.

You are projecting it as being between you and me so that you can save [your boyfriend] and your relationship. You are trying to divert your mind. So rather than becoming angry at your dreams, you may become angry with the meditations. But you are throwing the whole burden on them, which is not true; it is just an excuse.

And this goes on the whole life. We never exactly pinpoint the cause. That’s how misery goes on growing. Once rightly diagnosed, ninety-nine percent of the problem disappears immediately. In the very finding of the right diagnosis, the problem disappears.

[Osho told her to think about it for seven days. He said that he felt that neither of them wanted to be the one to say that the romance had ended and that women particularly will never take the initiative. They wait for the man to start a relationship and to end it so that then they can throw the responsibility on him.

The sannyasin, close to tears, said that she felt their relationship had begun to deteriorate when they had had to live in the same room with another couple for several weeks. They had had little privacy, and though she knew it must be a situation they had been given to work through, she still felt resentful about it.]

Again you are finding an excuse. What kind of love relationship is this if you cannot tolerate living in a room with two other persons for one month! Then it is all hocus-pocus. If nothing else, you can find the room to blame, but it is always something else that is causing trouble for your relationship. If it was a real love relationship, if it had really been there, it would have grown even more and would have gone deeper because hunger always creates appetite.

Think about it for seven days and then tell me. But if you think that this ashram and living here is causing some problem for your love relationship, then I am always for love. Forget this ashram completely and be anywhere you like. Mm? Think about it again.

[Osho had suggested that one of the ashram editors talk with the publishers of some indian magazines with a view to having them review some books. Tonight he encouraged her to go, saying that the only problem was that she was a performer and wanted to impress people, and there was no need to. If they were interested, good. If not, that was their loss.]

Always remember, all human beings are the same. Somebody is an editor, somebody is a politician, somebody is a rich man. What is the difference? A rich man is a man who has money. You will not be afraid of a pile of rupees; you will not be afraid of them. You will not be afraid of the man if he is a beggar. Now the beggar plus money and you are afraid! What are you doing? You are not afraid of the money and you are not afraid of the beggar, but once you come to know that the beggar has money, you become afraid. You are not afraid of the beggar but if he stands in an election and becomes a prime minister, you are afraid because now he has plus votes...

You want to impress him. That creates the whole trouble.

Somebody asked Churchill, ’You deliver such beautiful speeches. How did you come to know the art?’

He said, ’There is no art in it. At first I used to be very much afraid... and then I asked an old colleague and he said ”Don’t be afraid. Before you start, when you are standing in front of the audience, simply look around and say to yourself that so many fools have come today (laughter) –

and then you start”.’ Who wants to impress fools?

Don’t rehearse... simply go. And whenever you feel like screaming, just hold my locket so I will see to it that it doesn’t come out in wrong places (chuckling). But one has to go through the fear otherwise you will become more and more afraid, and that becomes a cancer. If I say don’t go, you will feel guilty that there was certain work to do and you were not capable of doing it. So simply go and pass through it.

You can repeat this churchill formula – that you are talking to a great fool – and then start talking!

Then you will start enjoying it and laughing too. Or you can write on a slip of paper ’This man is a fool’, so whenever you feel that you are getting nervous, take it out, read it, and put it back (laughter).

That will help.

[The sannyasin has also written to Osho that she felt a little lonely and wondered whether she should move into a love relationship.

Osho said that this was the nature of the mind – to never be happy with what is. When one is alone, one thinks how good it would be to be with someone, and when one is in a relationship, one pines to be alone. The mind is never satisfied.... ]

This is my effort here – to make you aware. That’s why I give you so many situations. Sometimes I force you to be alone and sometimes I force you to be together with someone. Sometimes if you are not moving in a love affair, I will almost push you into one. Sometimes I will pull you out. It is just to give you many situations in which you can see how the mind functions, how the mechanism functions.

The mind is discontent with everything that is. If you become aware of that, you will start working in a different direction. Whatsoever is, be content with it, and then the mind disappears.

Contentment is a great meditation to help the mind disappear. Whatsoever is, be content with it.

Sometimes when you are alone, be content with that and enjoy that moment, because you will hanker for it when there is a relationship. Feel blessed that this moment is there, because sooner or later somebody is going to disturb it. There are fools and fools – somebody will come and start an affair.

Before he comes, enjoy this peace, this silence, this freedom of being yourself. There is no need to compromise. There is nobody to hamper your space; enjoy it. And when somebody happens and you feel an appetite to be in a relationship, be in a relationship. But then enjoy the passion and the fever, the excitement. Enjoy the situation that love brings; the pain, the pleasure. Because sooner or later it will disappear and you will be alone again. Before it disappears, have the taste of it totally.

Love and aloneness go on happening like day and night. You have to enjoy every situation. And don’t be too much in the mind, otherwise it will poison you. Just keep a little aloof. Forget what has gone; it has gone! It is no more. And don’t be too concerned with what is going to happen; remain with what is happening, and enjoy this moment before it flies, because it is already on the wing. It will not be there if you miss it and it cannot be repeated again.

[She asked Osho how one should go about making a lover out of a friend. Osho said that the particular person she had in mind was still suffering from a former relationship so he was very wary of getting involved again. He said that she should settle for just being friends and to hope for the best.]

It may grow into love, it may not, but friendship is good in itself. And one never knows, when he becomes a lover you may miss his friendship and you will think ’Why did I destroy the friendship?’

Friendship has its own beauty, and if you can enjoy it, it is better than a love affair. A love affair is always jumpy. There are moments of happiness but they are few and far between. There are also many miserable moments. A friendship is a more solid thing; moves on. plainer ground. Friendship has a deeper equilibrium than love.

In the Vedas there is a sutra: Madbyam Abhyam – ’The one who is in the middle need not be afraid of anything.’ The middle is beyond fear. The middle means the balanced and love is not balanced.

Friendship is balanced... love is an extreme. Friendship is a very very delicate middle, a very peaceful affair. So don’t be in a hurry. Just cherish each moment as it comes.

[A sannyasin said she was frustrated at seeing her continual deceptions, her lying, and that she just didn’t seem to have any clarity about herself.

Osho said that once one was aware that one was being deceptive, it was not possible to continue for much longer. He said he felt there were two problems that affected her – that were, in fact, not just her problems, but universal problems.... ]

One is that you are missing meaning. You can’t see what to live for. You somehow just drag. You get up in the morning, go to work, but there seems to be no meaning in it. This is a basic human problem.

People who are a little intelligent are bound to become aware that there is no meaning in life, but one has to live, so one has to befool oneself. One pretends that there is meaning – this meaning, that meaning – and one goes on doing this and that to help oneself believe that there is some meaning.

But you know there is none.

You have to come to the understanding that there is no meaning as such in life and cannot be. Life is a meaningless energy and there is no need to find any meaning because all meanings are false, projected, man-made, do they are all lies.

This is very difficult to accept because it is very shattering. But once you understand it, many problems will disappear and you will be clear about your life.

Life is purposeless, meaningless. It is not going anywhere. There is nothing to be achieved. One has to live moment to moment but of sheer delight.

There is no need to connect one moment to another moment by a certain imposed meaning, because there is none. Meaning is a lie. Somebody is living to impress people, somebody is living for political power. Somebody is living for money, somebody is trying to achieve God. And somebody is going to work out his liberation.

But a really liberated person is one who has understood that there is no meaning, so he is not seeking, searching, for anything. He lives the moment. It is there – he enjoys it. If he is eating, he eats well; he enjoys. God has come in the form of food. The whole has extended its hand in the form of food. If he is talking, he talks because God wants to say something and another form of God wants to listen to it, so let there be communication. If one sings, one sings totally. If one dances, one dances. Each moment in itself is complete. One does not carry the past and one is not worried about the future. One lives herenow.

So this is one of the things that I see is your problem. So drop seeking meaning and start living. The second thing – and that too is nothing to do with you, that too, is human – is that you don’t accept yourself. Deep down you feel a certain rejection of yourself. You would like to be in some other way, so whatever is there you try to overlook somehow. Then it becomes a lie. But this is my experience and observation, that nobody I come across loves himself and accepts himself. People always find excuses.

You may find that you are too fat, so that is enough of a reason to hate yourself. There are people who are too thin and people who are neither too thin nor too fat, but they find something else.

Somebody’s nose is a little long or somebody’s nose is not as it should be. Somebody’s eyes are small and somebody’s lips are unacceptable. But I never come across a person who accepts himself as he is. So it is not a question of what you are.

Deep down the human mind is a rejector; it goes on rejecting. You have to drop that. This is the way God wanted to be in you – fat, and beautifully fat! This is the form that God wanted to take in you and He is enjoying, so why be worried? Just accept.

And when I say accept, I don’t mean accept in a frustrated state of mind. No. accept with a deep welcome. If you can tackle these two things, your problems will disappear.

I accept you, so why can’t you accept yourself?

Accept yourself. Delight in your being! And there is no need to hanker for any meaning. Moment to moment is full of meaning. And whenever you lose trust, come back to Poona so that I can hit it back into your head again, mm? You don’t have a thick head, so don’t be worried! (a chuckle) And sometimes stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself with very loving eyes. Sometimes touch your own face with a loving hand. One should learn how to love oneself. Lie down on the bed and feel yourself.

And remember that life is already there, manifested. There is nothing hidden in it. In Zen they say that nothing is hidden from the very beginning, but people are trying to find it – and it is just in front of the eyes.

The meaning is here in these trees, in the life of these insects, in this railway engine, in you and me.

The meaning is here.

[In speaking of T’ai Chi, Osho said... ]

The idea is to concentrate on the chi energy in the hara. The effort is to conserve energy that is not available to anyone else, inside a citadel in your being. It is available when you need it and it makes you tremendously powerful.

[Osho went on to say that once one had accumulated energy, it then has to be shared.]

Have energy but only so you can lose it, because if you don’t have it, you can’t lose it beautifully. A man who has no concentrated energy finds it very difficult to surrender. He has no centre.

Once you have the energy then let it flower. let it move to the winds, released, shared.

[Osho says that both love and awareness – which could be called the two orientations of western and eastern methods – are necessary, but alone are incomplete, unbalanced. Unless one has attained to a sense of self, one has nothing with which to relate to other; and if, conversely, one has only touched one’s own depths, one will not be able to touch another deeply, or to attain an outer harmony parallel to the inner synthesis.]

The whole emphasis is that there are no opposites, only complementaries. so meditation and love are not opposites; they are complementaries.

All religion should be life-affirming, and life should be meditative.

We are trying to create a synthesis – and it is not only an ideology, because that is not difficult. This synthesis is really in the being of people who come here. A new synthesis is being tried and on it much depends.

CHAPTER 21

Here and Now is not a Goal

23 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the West says: I’m feeling very happy. I learnt here to believe.]

That’s very good. That’s the most important thing in life – to have trust, the capacity to believe. Even if your belief doesn’t come true sometimes, then too go on believing. The result is not important.

The very fact that you can believe is a great and valuable treasure.

Never allow anybody to sabotage your trust. You believe in a person and he deceives you. He takes your money or in some other way deceives you. He could deceive you only because of your belief. When one is deceived, one starts feeling that belief is not right, that trust is not good; that it is because of trust that you have been deceived. People think then that if they had doubted from the very beginning, nobody would have been able to deceive them. Then they stop trusting, but they are losing something very valuable.

You can be deceived; that’s nothing important. Somebody takes your money; money comes and goes. Somebody never fulfills his promise. That too has to be forgiven because man is helpless.

Because of these things don’t drop your trust.

Whatsoever happens in life, go on trusting. Even when every situation is against it, go on trusting.

Your trust will give you an integration. You will become more solid.

[The Tathata group were present tonight.

The stand-in groupleader says: The first eight hours, at least as far as I could see, were terrible, but somehow the group happened and towards the end everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves.]

Mm mm, it was a real Tathata – because Tathata need not have any structure. The very idea of Tathata is to live with the moment, and to live in the moment without any planning, without any discipline, and to allow the moment to have its say. Whatsoever the moment says, do it.

The word ’tathata’ means suchness; to be in a state of suchness. Whatsoever happens, you simply move with it.

And energy is always moving that way. First it will be terrible, tug of anguish, pain, but if you can allow it, it will take a turn and that turn is automatic. Nothing is to be done really. Simply allow and move with it. It is just how a wheel moves. The spoke comes up and comes up and then starts going around, and then just the opposite spoke comes up.

If the group is continued for many days, you will see this happen many times. The mind functions like a wheel and the moods are like spokes. First the negative, the terrible will come, because the society never allows it; it has been repressed. So whenever you say ’allow’, it comes immediately because it has been starved. The society teaches you to be polite, smiling. It gives you a certain social face and a certain gesture. It does not allow the terrible things. They are anti-social – so they go on piling up.

That part of the wheel is continuously suffering, being starved. When you say to somebody to move and be spontaneous and to let things happen, the immediate thing is not only that he will become happy, first he will become unhappy because the load is there. But once the load is relaxed and the catharsis has happened, then he will start becoming happy, and this happiness will be real, authentic. It will not be forced. It will just he a natural happiness that always comes after the negative has been exhausted. When the storm goes, the silence follows.

But if you continue long enough it will happen again. Next time an even deeper and more terrible state of mind will start being expressed. Then again that will change, it is just like the year moving.

One season comes, then another they follow each other. So it is good. Nothing to be worried about.

It was new and I was thinking that it would come to a very good end, because when you don’t know what you are doing, things move more naturally. When you don’t have any idea, any structure, any prefabricated pattern, then you have to move with the moment, not knowing where you are going.

One remains more open in such a situation. But it is difficult.

Next time you do the group it will not be so because you will find a structure. And that’s why many things, tremendously beautiful things, come into the hands, and by and by they become structures.

But nothing can be done; that’s how the human mind functions.

When for the first time you fall in love with a man, it is unstructured. You never knew about it. It came just out of the blue and it was beautiful. Next time when you fall in love with a man it cannot be so beautiful. That’s why the first love is never repeated. It carries a certain romance that no other love can carry again. Because next time you are acquainted, familiar; you know what is going to happen. The third time you know almost as much as to be able to predict it. By the fourth or fifth time everything is so familiar that you are almost repeating cliches. But this is how the human mind tries to mechanise everything.

This was accidentally fortunate for this group – that the leaders were not there and the group had to innovate something.

[A group participant says: We did an exercise where two people were making noises, gibberisb, in the ears of someone else and when we did it I felt like this was the world – always people saying gibberisb to me and I listen. This time I stayed with the noise and said ’aum’ and all the noises stopped.]

Very very good. So you can do that. Chanting aum will be very helpful to you. Whenever you feel that there is too much disturbance around you, or your mind is distracted too much, just chant aum.

You can become a natural chanter.

Make it a point for at least twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the night to sit silently in this posture (indicating the posture in which she was sitting, legs folded back on either side of her).

Half open the eyes and just be looking down. Breathing should be slow, body unmoving, and start chanting aum inside. There is no need to bring it out. It will be more penetrating with lips closed; even the tongue should not move. Chant aum fast – aum aum aum aum; fast and loud but inside you. Just feel that it is vibrating all over the body from the feet to the head, from the head to the feet.

Each aum falls into your consciousness like a rock thrown into a pool and ripples arise and spread to the very end. The ripples go on expanding and touch the whole body.

Doing this there will be moments – and they will be the most beautiful moments – when you will not be repeating and everything has stopped. Suddenly you will become aware that you are not chanting and everything has stopped. Enjoy it. If thoughts start coming, again start chanting.

And when you do it at night, do it at least two hours before you go to sleep, otherwise if you do it just before you go to bed, you will not be able to go to sleep because it will make you so fresh that you will not feel like it. You will feel like it is morning and you have rested well, so what is the point.

And do it fast... but you can find your own pace. After two or three days you will find what suits you.

To a few people it suits very fast – aum aum aum – almost overlapping. To others it suits very slow, so it depends on you.

But whatsoever feels good, you continue, mm?

[A sannyasin, who is a student of political science says: I find it difficult to be in the here and now. I am always in dreams and thoughts, and particularly after meditating I am in the clouds.]

Don’t be worried right now... just enjoy whatsoever is happening. If you are in the clouds, enjoy it.

Why miss that moment? Enjoy it, get lost in it. And don’t create this problem of how to be here and now, because by creating it you are missing it. If clouds are there, then that is your here and now. If thoughts are there, that is your here and now. Enjoy it.

Here and now is not a goa, to be achieved. If it is a goal you will never achieve it, because it is here and now and the goal is always somewhere else.

So wherever you are, and whatsoever is going on, be in that process. If you are thinking, then think.

If you are dreaming, then dream. Don’t create a bifurcation. Don’t separate yourself from the dream and say, ’What am I doing? I am dreaming and I should be here and now.’ But the dreaming is your here and now! You cannot be in my here and now. You can only be in your here and now. Do you understand me?

Dreaming is your reality and if you try to do anything you will be getting out of the here and now.

So dreaming, dream, eating, eat, walking, walk – and whatsoever happens is okay; accept it. That rejection is the trouble. Everybody goes on saying, ’This is not good. I should improve upon it.’ That

’should’ brings in the future.

The whole emphasis of being here and now means only a very simple thing. It means don’t try to improve yourself; don’t try to make yourself better than you are. The trees are here and now because they don’t bother a bit. They don’t bother about whether they are ugly or beautiful. They don’t bother whether they are higher or lower than others; or who is first and who is second and who is third. They are simply here, enjoying. They are not jealous... they have no ego-trip.

That’s what I mean when I say be here and now. There is no need to try any improvement. No polishing is needed. You are already that. Everything is already realised – just your celebrating, enjoying it.

If thoughts are there they must be fulfilling some deep need in you. Just as a stomach releases juices to help digestion, so the mind releases thoughts to digest many experiences. The stomach goes on working in its own way; the liver goes on working, blood goes on circulating. Millions of things are continually active in you, so why be worried about the mind? That too goes on doing its thing. When it is not needed, it will disappear. But you cannot force it to disappear, because who is forcing it? It is again a thought. One thought is trying to disperse all thoughts; impossible. How can one thought fight against many thoughts? This is just a thought that you should be here and now. And one thought is going to be defeated against the majority. So don’t create that conflict.

If thoughts are there say ’Okay, so let me think. This is my herenow’. And enjoy those thoughts.

Nothing is wrong in them....

[The sannyasin answers: they are always the same.]

Let them be the same; they must be needed. The blood circulating is the same. The breathing coming in and out is the same. The eyes blinking are the same. Every morning you get up and every night you go to sleep; it is the same. Every day you become hungry and you eat; it is the same. Everything is the same, so why be against the mind? Poor mind! Let it be so.

What I am saying is to accept it. That acceptance will bring you to the here and now. Accepting, by and by everything disperses. Rejecting, you create a fight. In fighting, resistance arises, and then you are in more of a mess. Just float and take everything that is happening as having to happen.

You can only enjoy it.

You are free to take an attitude, but you are not free to change the reality.

Let me explain this to you. This tree is there. You can take an attitude about it: you like it, you dislike it; you don’t want it to be there, you want it to be there. A mood comes; you feel sad. You can take an attitude about whether you like sadness or not, but you cannot change the reality. The reality is not changed by your attitude. If you don’t like the sadness, you can become more miserable, so you create another sadness which is deeper than the first. The sadness is there; what can you do? So when it is there it is better to enjoy it. Find a way to enjoy it.

Don’t find faults with yourself. This fault-finding is one of the greatest problems. Try to use... and I know that every situation can be used, can be used in a creative way. Try it, mm?

[A group member said that he felt he couldn’t go very deeply into things, and that he was aware that sometimes when things were becoming very intense, he would withdraw.]

Osho said to be more total; but that it took time to become total, so he should do it just step by step.]

There was a hindu monk, Swami Ramteerth, who became very famous in America.

He was a great mathematician, and before he became a sannyasin, he was a professor of mathematics.

In his memoirs he writes that when he was taking the examination for his master’s degree and was studying for it, the night before, he came across a problem that he could not solve. He tried and tried and wasted the whole night. It was almost three o’clock in the morning and the problem was not solved.

His room partner said, ’Are you mad? For one question you are wasting the whole night. There are other questions, and who knows, this question may not be asked. And even if it comes, what is the problem? You can leave it.’ In examination papers they give ten questions and ask that one solve any five. Ramteerth used to always solve all ten and then write on top of the paper ’Examine any five’. He had done that all his life, because the answers were always correct. Otherwise who would take the risk to say ’examine any five’?

Ramteerth said, ’I have never left any question and I am not interested in anything else unless I solve this one.’ Then an idea struck him. He took out a knife, put it on the table, and fixed the alarm for four o’clock. He said loudly, ’If by four o’clock it is not solved, I will commit suicide.’

The partner said, ’You have gone crazy! What are you doing? For an ordinary question you are committing suicide!’

Ramteerth said, ’That is not the point – what type of question it is. I have to put the whole of my energy at stake.’

The partner watched what was going to happen. Within three minutes Ramteerth had solved the question! It was a cold night but he started perspiring because it was a question of life and death.

He became tremendously transparent and immediately the problem was solved. Then he felt so tired that he fell from his chair, almost as if in a fit.

The partner said, ’This is a beautiful trick! If sometimes I have to solve a problem, I will also try it.’ He tried next time but nothing happened, because he was thinking ’Who is going to kill himself?

This is just a trick – putting the knife on the table. If it is not solved, it is not! Who bothers?’ But then it will not work.

So whenever you are doing anything, make it a question of life and death, and then you will see more energy arising. All the layers of your energy will become involved. We never do things totally because we don’t think that they are important, that they have any significance. If they are done, okay. If they are not done, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? That attitude somewhere in the unconscious does not allow you to put in your total energy.

So in the Intensive group, try. Just remember this night... and don’t leave a single stone unturned!

[A sannyasin says: I just had the realisation that when I’m committed to something I have a lot of energy.]

That’s how energy comes. Commitment brings energy. If one wants to live an intense life, full of energy and power, one needs deep commitment. If you are not committed, the energy is not challenged. Everything is just okay, so-so; one continues in a lukewarm way, and one lives just on the periphery. So make this insight a tacit understanding in you.

Life is a commitment, because only those who commit themselves, live. Others simply drag. They are born and die but they never live. Only people of commitment rise to high peaks of energy, rise to their climaxes. So remember that if you are not committed, you will become a driftwood, accidental.

Each moment has to be a commitment. Then the energy will flare up and will become a bigger and bigger flame every day. The more you bring it out, the more it will become available to you, and deeper and higher will be the sources that are available to you.

Man can have as much energy as he needs. But if you don’t need it, there is no point in having it.

If you have decided to crawl on the earth, it is up to you. If you want to fly in the sky, that too is for you to decide. Your energy is already ready to do what you want to do, but the first thing is that you have to want to do it.

[Another member of the group, said that he didn’t really feel that he ever got into the group, and that today, the day after the group ended, he found that he felt very negative and anti-social.

Osho said this closedness could happen in one’s first group but that He should always first look within himself to see if he really wanted to do whatever he set out to do, otherwise he should not attempt it.]

Never be in between, otherwise you will be in a limbo. If you don’t want to do anything, don’t. If you want to do it, then really do it, because doing it and yet still not doing it, is a wastage of energy, time, and then you will feel sad because the opportunity is missed. You will see that others are doing well and flowing and experiencing something and you are just sitting on the bank and nothing is happening. Nobody can make it happen unless you move into it with deep sympathy, participation.

Only if you put your heart into it is something going to happen. It is not that it can be given to you as a gift. You have to earn it.

But your old habits go on and they catch you. In the next group, leave the habits outside, and go into it as deeply as possible just as an experiment. Let it be an experiment to decide whether to do another group or not. If you fail in this, there is no need, but give it a total opportunity, otherwise your judgement will not be right.

Whenever you want to experience something, do something, go the whole way. Either it is useless and you understand it, or it is useful; then too you have an understanding of it. Either way you are profited, benefited. Make this a rule for everything; let it be a golden rule, If you love a woman, then love. Go all the way, all the way, so that you can come to an understanding of whether love is worth-while or just foolishness. And whatsoever the conclusion, it will be good for you. If you come to realise that it is foolishness, you are finished with it and it will have no further attraction for you.

If you come to realise that it is a very significant experience then you can open many doors. There is no other way than experience.

[A melodramatic sannyasin says: My mind says to get into a relationship, but I see it is just a distraction. There is no woman. There’s only you... but There’s no form of you.... ]

Everything is going as it should (chuckling). But if there is some woman, or if you come across a woman, a relationship at this moment will be helpful. It will not be a distraction at all.

This thirst will be settled and you will feel more calm and quiet. It will not be a sexual relationship. It will be a love relationship. If you have somebody in mind, it will be good. You will feel much energy is flowing.

This is the moment when love is needed. In these moments, a woman who has a love for you can be tremendously helpful. She is helpful when the energy moves down and is very helpful when the energy starts moving up. A woman can help you to release the energy from the sex centre. She can also help you to release the energy from the sahasrar. Just the presence of a loving woman, a loving atmosphere....

[The sannyasin adds: I don’t feel interested in a woman... I feel indifferent.]

Indifference is a greater negativity than negativity, because if you look negatively at a woman, then too you are interested; interested against. But that is nothing but the same energy standing upside down. That’s what jaina monks and catholic priests are doing – looking at women negatively.

But they are deeply interested. They are making their interest negative, and they are creating a negativity around them because they are afraid that if the negativity is not there continuously, they are in danger. They can enter into a relationship or a woman can become attractive to them and can distract them from their path. So they continuously repeat negative things, negative ideas – that a woman is nothing but bones and this and that; that this is just futile, maya, illusion, dirt, dust. They think that the woman is the enemy, the helper of the devil, a participant with the evilest energies in the world. In this way they create an armour around themselves.

The real negativity is indifference – neither positive nor negative... a very subtle wall. But I would like you to look with positivity. At this moment it is going to be very helpful. The right woman will come, and if she does not come I will manage it that she reaches you.

Remain available and open. If sex happens, nothing wrong in it, but let it happen as part of love; don’t make it a mind thing. Don’t plan for it, don’t fantasise about it. Simply remain in a deep loving situation, and if sex happens, it is good. If sex happens as a small circle in a bigger circle of love, it is perfectly good.

Ordinarily love is the small circle and sex is the bigger circle. When love happens as part of sex, even love is not of much value. When sex happens as part of love, even sex is of tremendous value.

That’s the whole meaning of Tantra.

Love is the real thing.

Sex happens just as a shadow – if it happens at all. There is no necessity; it may not happen at all, it may happen. Both doors are open. But love is not a means to it – love is the end. And then sex is nothing but a sharing of energies. It is just a play of loving energies. It has nothing sexual in it.

And when sex happens without any sexuality in it, it is divine. That’s what Tantra is.

So just remain available and open, mm? And don’t be afraid.

CHAPTER 22

The Ultimate Criterion is Your Heart

24 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

I[A sannyasin says: I find that when you tell me to do something... I guess it’s a cop-out because I won’t do what you say because I feel I should do the opposite of what you say because that seems to be more to the heart of my problem. It seems to work sometimes.]

Sometimes it can be like that. If you feel good doing the opposite, do the opposite. The whole point is to remember what brings the feeling of blessedness to you. One should continuously go on checking inside to see whether it is bringing a well-being, whether you are feeling healthier, whether it is bringing a harmony. If it is, it is good. Then don’t worry – just follow it.

The problem arises only when you start feeling a discord; when you feel that some tension is being created; because tension is just an indicator that some anxiety is being created. Tension never comes to the mind if everything is going well. So tension is not your being. It is just an indicator; a very beautiful mechanism inside you which immediately gives you the hint to stop. It tells you that you are moving in a wrong direction, that you are going against your nature.

So if you really want to listen to me, listen to your heart and just follow it.

I am not here to impose any discipline on you. I am here to make you free of all discipline so that your natural being starts flowering.

One should not have any structure, any character.

One should be simple, characterless,

structureless. And listen to the heart – that is what real obedience is. The word obedience comes from a root which means the art of listening, but the word has gone very far away from the root. The basic art of listening is to listen to the heart because that is where fulfillment is going to happen. So remain alert; very delicate alertness is needed.

Eat that which suits the body and the body immediately feels a well-being. Eat that which doesn’t suit the body and the body immediately feels ill. The body is simply saying that you have taken something wrong; vomit it, get rid of it. You have put something poisonous into the system, something which is not in tune with the body. The mind feels tense when you have taken in some idea which does not fit into the harmony. Your heart feels tense when you go against your nature.

So, listen to your body when you are doing something with your body. In that mood, never bother about the mind because the mind has nothing to say about the body. The body is autonomous. It knows itself what is good and what is wrong. So when it is a question concerning the body, listen to the body. When it is a question concerning thinking, planning, ideas, dreaming, logic, reason, listen to the mind. When it is a question of your totality, listen to the heart.

And learn how to listen. It is not very difficult because indications are coming continuously, although if you don’t listen to them by and by they become feeble. Continuously neglected, by and by their functioning is no more as it should be. If you don’t listen to them again and again, that mechanism starts getting rusty. Then you are very far away from your own roots.

So just listen. That is what obedience is. And don’t be bothered about what I say literally, because sometimes I say the opposite. That opposite creates a situation. If I would like you to go to the right, sometimes I say go to the left. If I feel that just by telling you to go to the left, your mind will create an idea to go to the right, then I always say go to the left. It depends on the person to whom I am talking. So never take it literally.

Nothing is literal with me. All is poetic.

So the ultimate criterion is your own heart. Whatsoever I say, listen to it, absorb it, remember it, but not in a literal way, otherwise you will miss the point. I don’t want to create a belief. I want to give you a trust – and that is totally different. Belief is literal. Trust is just the significance of it, the fragrance of it; not literal.

You can read poetry and you can read it literally. Each word in that script has a meaning. You can look at it and get some meaning but you will miss something which is real poetry. That has to be read between the words, between the lines. It has to be read in the gaps. It is not something that you can grab. If you grab poetry, you will miss it. Then you will have only prose – poetry is killed.

You have to feel it. You have to play with it. You have to sing it. By and by you will start feeling the significance which has nothing to do with the dictionary; which has nothing to do with the arrangement of words; which is something subtler that hovers around the words but is not exactly in the words. It is just like a fragrance surrounding a flower... the halo which surrounds a holy person.

That is the poetry. So never look directly to the words; rather go around and around – circumlocution.

In India they go into the temples and go around and around the image. That’s very significant, very significant. You cannot go directly to God; you have to go around and around. Then you catch the halo of it, the light that surrounds it. The flower has not to be touched directly. Rather smelt...

experienced by the fragrance. Then you show taste.

So whatsoever I say is symbolic... it is not literal. And you cannot guess what I really mean if you just catch the word and carry it in a dead way. You will be able to open the word only if you play with it, sing with it, and continuously keep in contact with your heart.

The word that I throw in you is just like a stone thrown in a lake. Those ripples arise. That is the real work.

The stone is not the real thing. That is just a device to create those ripples. So go with those ripples.

Forget that stone; don’t cling to it. It has done its work; now move with the ripples. It has started a chain. Don’t stop at that. That will only be a beginning. The end is going to be very very far away.

And the end will have nothing to do with the beginning. By the time you have an end result, you will not be able to relate it to the stone. It will be com-pletely irrelevant. You will not be able to fit them together as cause and effect. That’s what Jung means by synchronisity.

When I am talking to you, I am not giving you a cause so that a certain effect follows it automatically.

No. I am just giving you a situation in which many things are possible. If you take it literally, something else will become the result. If you take the significance, something else. If you read it with the mind, something else again, and with the heart, again something else.

And if you listen to the music of it there will be something else absolutely different. There will be inner layers. So whenever I say something, listen to it, keep it in your memory. Again and again chew it. Again and again digest it in different situations. And see how it feels to you – and then move with your feelings.

The word has done its work. It has created ripples in you. Now follow those ripples!

Anand means bliss and devendra means god – god of bliss. Devendra comes from the same root as divine.

Forget the old name, mm? The change of the name can be very significant. It can almost be a quantum jump, because if you really drop the old name, the whole past disappears.

The name carries the whole past. It is the nucleus of the past, of all that you have done or all that you have been, all that you have been desiring and hoping. The past, and the future projected through the past are both contained in your name. If you really consciously drop it, suddenly you get out of a pattern, a continuity. Something of the unknown enters. You rise above the stream of the past and the future. You come to realise the moment of the present. And that’s the meaning of changing the name: to help you have a quantum jump.

It is not a continuity. Sannyas is not something that is being added to you. That will not be of much use. It will be a decoration. It will be just changing one part of the whole mechanism, but the mechanism remains the same. And the mechanism is so big that it will change the part; the part cannot change the whole.

Sannyas is not something being added to you. It is something totally new, unconnected. It is a discontinuity... it is a jump. That’s why I call it a quantum jump – the greatest jump that is possible.

Suddenly you wash away the whole of the past. You clean the whole slate. With a new name it becomes very easy because you will have to be acquainted with the new name. It will be a strengthening.

And change to orange. That will remind you that the old is gone, dead. After a few weeks you will see easily that your own past looks as if you had read about it in some novel or had seen a movie or had dreamed about it. When the new crystallises, suddenly you can have a distance and the freedom that brings.

[A sannyasin says: I’m feeling very negative, closed. I can’t seem to be open to [my boyfriend], to you, to me.

I feel very superficial and dissatisfied but for no reason! I mean everything is perfectly all right.]

Mm mm... it happens only when everything is perfect.

When something is missing, one is preoccupied. You don’t have a house; you think when a house is there everything will be good. You will have a good rest and will relax. You don’t have money and you think that when you do, everything will be okay, and that right now everything is not okay because of the money.

So the mind can find some cause and can remain preoccupied with it. But when everything is okay and all that you need is there, suddenly an emptiness comes. One feels now what to do? Everything is as you would like it and there still seems to be nothing.

Only the richest people come to know the deepest poverty. The poor man cannot. He is poor but he dreams of riches and he remains rich in his dreams. He can hope; there is a possibility for him to hope. But when a person becomes rich, he becomes hopeless because there is no point in hoping anymore. He can see the whole futility of it. Whatsoever he has he can go on multiplying it, but now he understands that it is futile. Whether you have this amount of money in the bank or double, what is going to happen? And whatsoever he needs is there so the bank balance can go on increasing but that is not going to help. Suddenly he becomes hopeless. Hopelessness always comes when everything goes okay.

And this is a good situation. It can be used... it is very beautiful. You are freed from causes. Now you can work right on your mind. When causes are there, one goes on working on the causes.

When there is no cause to be unhappy, no cause to be miserable and suddenly one is sad, then you can encounter the mind as it is.

Mind is sadness. Mind is frustration. Mind is unhappiness. Mind is hell.

But you cannot see because the mind always says ’I am not hell. The situation is such that it is making us suffer. Change the situation’. The mind goes on postponing through the causes: find a beautiful man or a beautiful woman, a good house, this and that. But the mind itself is the cause; there are no other causes. So that’s why you are feeling so sad and depressed. Try to understand it. Now the moment has come when the mind has to be dropped. And unless you drop the mind you cannot get out of it. And there is no going back....

So I push people to a point where the abyss arises. You are standing there... a cul-de-sac. Now going back is not possible. That I make impossible. The moment you go on, I withdraw the stairs.

They are not there, so you can look back but you cannot go back. And there is no future. Suddenly

– a great abyss. One step more and you are gone.

Back you cannot go. The future is an abyss and you are afraid. There are only two possibilities: you can go on standing where you are and that will become more and more difficult every day because you will become more and more miserable and closed. Take the jump!

It is very very scarey but there is no going back. Just take the jump. And when I say take the jump, I simply mean that there is no need to live through the mind now. Just live moment to moment.

[She replies: I m so in my mind... ]

Yes, you can go on standing there... you can go on standing there. So this is my suggestion – just a polite suggestion – (laughter) that you start living moment to moment. Eat well and enjoy it; dance and love and enjoy it.

The mind disappears whenever you stop planning for the future. The mind is nothing but a projection of the future. It disappears when you start living moment to moment.

Live moment to moment. For three weeks, try. Whatsoever you are doing, do it as totally as possible.

Love it and enjoy it. Maybe it looks silly. If you are drinking tea it is silly to enjoy it too much – it is just ordinary tea.

But ordinary tea can become extraordinarily beautiful – a tremendous experience if you enjoy it.

Enjoy it with deep reverence. Make it a ceremony. Making tea... Listening to the kettle and the sound. Then pouring the tea... smelling the fragrance of it. Then tasting the tea and feeling happy.

Dead people cannot drink tea; only very alive people. This moment you are alive! This moment you are drinking tea. Feel thankful! And don’t think of the future. Next moment will take care of itself.

Think not of the morrow. For three weeks live in the moment and then tell me, mm? Good.

[To her boyfriend, Osho says:]

Help her. She’s going very very well. But these are critical moments when one passes from one gestalt to another, one pattern to another. It is a difficult thing. Once you learn it, it is very simple; just like a snake slips out of the old skin.

But in the beginning it is very difficult, so just make her happy!

[A participant from the Enlightenment Intensive group says: The group was beautiful but it was hard.

In the beginning I felt that we had to obey just like at school. But on the last day I could see that they were not against us but trying to help us.]

I can understand. Schools have done so much wrong to everybody that any discipline and one feels suspicious. Any sort of discipline reminds one of the school, the master, the headmaster and obedience and all that nonsense. In fact schools have not helped people to be obedient. They have made people disobedient because they have forced obedience and it creates a reaction and people start resisting.

But these disciplines are not the disciplines of a school, and they are not forced on you. You accept them of your own accord. It is you who takes the initiative to accept and enter the group. Once you enter the group you have to play the game, you have to follow the format. It is just as when you play cards and you have to follow certain rules. A certain card is the king and another card is the queen.

You don’t argue about it and say I can’t believe that this is a queen. You know that this is the rule.

In the group, the leader is just playing a role and the led is also playing a role. Out of the group, Amida is not the leader and you are not the led. In the group you have to decided to play a certain game; she will be playing the game of the leader and you will be playing the game of the led. These two parties are needed otherwise the game will be difficult. The game is very paying, once you accept and move into it.

But this was your first group and it is always difficult in the first group because of the old associations in the mind. And you are still young enough not to have forgiven the school yet.

[the sannyasin continues: I wanted to ask you another thing. There is a place where my mind explodes inside. It implodes towards the centre and it is not very nice, because to explode is better.]

No, both are good and both are part of one rhythm. Explosion and implosion are just like in-breathing and out-breathing. Both are good. And the deeper your implosion will go, the bigger will be the explosion.

Nothing can exist alone. The opposite is needed. So your mind is imploding and you are converging on your centre; allow it totally so you become just like a seed. Become smaller and smaller and smaller, just like a seed. That is what is happening to the tree. When the seeds come to the tree, what is happening? The tree is imploding. So it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and then the seed will fall into the earth and then explode. Again the tree will arise.

So the whole life is a rhythm between explosion and implosion. You breathe in. If you take deep breaths, if you inhale well, you exhale well. Then again you inhale. Every inhalation will help exhalation. Every exhalation will help inhalation. These are two polarities but complementary and helpful to each other. So don’t be afraid of it. When it is happening, allow it. Soon you will see that the explosion will be happening.

There are very few people to whom implosion happens so easily as it is happening to you. Explosion is easier to people because more people are extroverts, outgoing. Ingoing people are rare. Feel happy... you are a rare type; you may be a very rare type. People come and are very worried about their explosions; they want to implode. They want to go to the centre but they cannot. The more they try, the more they go outside somewhere. They never come home.

So don’t create trouble. It is good. Enjoy it and help it to go as deep as possible. After two or three groups, explosion will be coming. Encounter will help you to explode and hypnotherapy will help you to implode because it is an ingoing process. So you book for both, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I have come to feel in the time I have been here a great strength of attachment to memories of the past which carry very beautiful emotions, or I am attached to ideas about home.

I understand that they have to disappear sometime, but I cannot see how I can ever have the courage to renounce them.]

No, no, you need not. They will go by themselves.

Nobody can renounce anything because in the very renouncing you will show that you are obsessed with them. Nobody can forget anything by effort because if they try to forget it they will go on remembering it.

They will go by themselves when the time is right.

When you have gone a little higher in

consciousness, the lower attitude disappears automatically. It is just as when you were a small child and you used to play with toys. You could not have believed then that one day you would leave them. But now you don’t remember them, and if somebody gives you a toy, you will be surprised at why he should give you a toy.

When you grow a little mature, toys disappear. They belong to a particular state of mind. This attachment with home, with the family, is also part of growth. That too shows a subtle immaturity, nothing else. A childhood state has remained somewhere in the mind.

Jesus says to his disciples, ’Unless you hate your father and mother, you will not be able to follow me.’ It looks very uncivil and very hard. And it doesn’t fit because he says that love is God, and what is he saying? – ’unless you hate your father and mother...’

But he simply means this: unless you become capable of being without them, if not even in your dreams they haunt you, then you have become mature; you have come of age. So there is nothing to be worried about. You are not to renounce them. If you renounce them they will follow you for your whole life. Never renounce anything. Experience everything and never renounce anything.

Experience as deeply as possible.

Once something is experienced, you go beyond it. Even if you want to go astray, go. Let that also happen so that it is finished. Whenever something is completed the mind forgets it automatically.

So don’t be worried, mm?

[Another group participant says: It was a very powerful group I’m feeling very much more open, but I’m also aware very much that it’s just a very slight beginning.]

On this path everything is always a beginning – always. Because much more is still there and remains so. You will attain much but there never comes a moment when you can say ’I have arrived’.

And it is good that the moment never comes, otherwise you would be dead.

Life goes on. It is an eternal pilgrimage, non-ending, and every end is always a beginning. When you have passed through one door, another immediately opens. When you have climbed one peak, suddenly you become aware that a higher one is waiting for you. And this is endless – that is the beauty of it.

Never be satisfied with anything. Always remember that much more is waiting. This I call the divine discontent. Always feel thankful for whatsoever has happened, and always remain alert that much is going to happen. Go on making all the effort you can.

[Another group-member says: When I was going for a walk in the group, at one stage I felt the wind against my skin and I suddenly felt that there wasn’t any barrier between myself and the outside world.

But then when I had to return to the question of who am I, again I was back in my mind and my old self.]

It will happen many times. Many times one enters into the old pattern again and many times one comes out of it. The old pattern never disappears; it is always there. You can enter into it again or you can leave it. You may be aware that it is just like a house.

If you want to come out, you can come out under the sky. And whenever that sky is too much or the sun is too hot, or it is raining, you come inside the house. The mind is just a structure to be used when needed. When it is not needed you can come out of it. You will become aware of this by and by, but the experience has helped very much.

So don’t be worried that you went in again. Just remain available to move... flexible. Sometimes try it. Just walking in the street or in the garden and the wind blows and touches you. Again remember that moment and fall into that state. Soon you will be able to. That moment will come again because it is within you; you just have to bring it out. Then slowly move into the mind and out; in again and then out, so that you become capable of moving in and out just like in breathing.

In the beginning a few glimpses will come when you will feel out of the mind.

They will be

tremendously beautiful. An infinite grace will surround you. There will just be moments and again they will go. The old pattern will settle in again, but by and by you will be able to slip out of it more easily. Then one becomes capable of slipping out whenever one wants to.

That is mastery of the mind. The mastery of the mind does not mean that the brain has been destroyed. The mastery of the mind means that the prisoner is no more a prisoner; he has become a jailer. He has the key now. Whenever he wants, he comes in; and whenever he wants, he comes out. Then the prisoner is no more a prisoner, the prison no more a prison. It has become a house, a home.

So walking, just walk, sitting, just get into it. There is no how to it. Just remember it and slip into it.

It is a knack... it will come.

CHAPTER 23

You are the Master

25 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Hridaya means the heart and deva means divine – the divine heart. And that is the direction for you to grow towards, the height you have to reach.

By a divine heart, I mean a heart which is unconditionally in love – not with somebody in particular, but just in love with anything, any person, anybody whatsoever. Love becomes your climate; not a relationship. A relationship can grow in it, but you have to make it more a climate rather than a relationship.

Ordinarily love is a relationship, and when love is a relationship you breathe only towards a certain person. You breathe him or her, but the passage is very narrow. The universe is so vast and love gives so much; why make it so narrow? Let it expand and be unconditional, because whenever there is a condition, love becomes ruined. When it is unconditional. it becomes divine.

And love is never satisfied unless it becomes divine because that is the deepest urge in every human being: to be so full of love that whatsoever the condition, the love goes on showering.

So from this moment, remember it. You will forget many times, but again remember. And don’t move indifferently. You are passing through the garden; don’t move indifferently. Touch a leaf, talk to a tree, mm? just say hello; that will do. No need to utter it loudly.

Indifference kills love more than hatred. Hatred is love inverted, but indifference is absolute negation.

People move indifferently. They look at people but they don’t look. They touch people but they don’t touch.

So let this be your basic sadhana. One day you have to come to the point where you can say to the whole existence ’Beloved of my heart’.

The more you flow towards that, the more you will see that it becomes easier and easier and easier.

A moment comes when you cannot believe how you lived otherwise. To live otherwise is simply foolish. It is unaccountably stupid.

Nobody is barring the path. It is just that inside we are solid like rocks. We don’t melt, we don’t flow, we don’t merge. We go on trying to define ourselves as separate. So try to define yourself as one.

That means become more and more indefinable.

When you are sitting by the side of a tree, don’t define yourself as separate from the tree. Let there be a merger. In the beginning it will be subtle; only the psychic energy will be moving. Soon you will feel that it is not only subtle; it has become gross also. Touching a tree you will feel not only a subtle energy has moved; there has been a transfer between you and the tree, and on the gross level too.

Your body is enriched... the tree is enriched.

We have passed through all these states. Once we were trees animals, birds, mountains. We have passed through all these states so a part of us still responds to them very deeply. The past does not simply disappear. It becomes part of the present.

It is just as when a snake is crawling. It pulls its tail; the tail is not left. Again and again it is pulled back, pulled again and again towards the body. Time crawls in exactly the same way. The past that you think is gone, is never gone; it becomes part of your present. Your present carries your whole past, your whole history. And your whole history means the whole history of the universe. Man is tremendously vast. Your present not only carries the past. Your present carries the future also. The past is vast but limited. The future is vast and unlimited.

So this is going to be your basic work: to be more and more loving. It should not be that because somebody has done something for you, you feel love, or somebody is beautiful so you feel love.

Those are charms, attractions; other things.

Love should be your basic attitude so that whenever you approach anybody, even a thing, even a chair, you approach it with love. You treat even things as persons. Soon you will see by and by, a deep urge has started arising, to say silently to the whole universe ’Beloved of my heart’. It will throb, pulsate, vibrate throughout your being.

[The new sannyasin says: The first experience I had of the spiritual was when I was thirteen. A book of yours ’Flight of the Alone to the Alone’ describes the experience very well. Something descended on me and cut me from my body and soul and I felt completely alienated from the world.

Since then my path seems to have been very asocial, very solitary, and often I have been in very much conflict with society and even with people I love or who love me.]

Mm mm, I can see that. That’s why I have given you the name Hridaya.

A few people reach that way also, but very few. It is unnecessarily hard. What i suggest is very simple, very spontaneous. People who walk alone – not through love but in isolation – will have a beautiful experience only at the end. And that end is not predictable. It may happen, it may not. It may happen today. It may happen after many lives.

But the person who follows the path of love has millions of experiences on the way. One who follows a path which is lonely, solitary, the path of the monk, attains one day, but the whole path is like a desert. with no oasis anywhere. It is unnecessarily sadistic.

When you can pass through greenery and beautiful streams on the way, when you can rest under big trees and when many flowers can greet you on the way and millions of satoris can happen before the ultimate happens why unnecessarily choose a path which passes through desert, through which you have to suffer much hell, much pain, many nightmares? There is more of a possibility that you will turn back because it is so hard. It doesn’t lure you; it has no magnetism in it.

The ultimate can be reached but it will be very difficult to stick to the path, because the path in itself is repulsive. There are a few people who have reached through that path but they are exceptions.

They simply prove the rule; they don’t prove anything else.

My emphasis is more on loye. Move singing and dancing. Move, making each point a goal and enjoying it as if the goal has been achieved. Why wait for the goal? When we can turn every moment into gold, why wait for the goal? And of course after many mini-satoris, when the samadhi flowers, it is a lotus flower of one thousand petals. But the path was full of small flowers. They greeted you; you enjoyed them. You come with many experiences; you don’t come empty. The monk one day suddenly explodes. The devotee grows very slowly, very silently, very lovingly.

I can see that you have a tendency to be alone and that tendency can be dangerous. So you start working on love... and much is going to happen.

[The hypnotherapy group are present. The group leader says: It was beautiful. I’m happy with them and I’m happy with me.]

That’s very good. And that’s even better, more basic – to be happy with yourself. Then only can you be happy with anything that you can do. There are so many people in the world trying to be happy with others and they are not basically happy with themselves; everything goes wrong.

The first duty is to be happy with oneself. Then whatsoever you do will have a golden edge to it because that comes out of your grace, your silence, your love, and it carries something of your happiness in it.

The question is not what results come out of it. The question is from where it arises; not where it goes. If you are happy doing a thing, you will be happy whatsoever results come. If you are unhappy, then you will be unhappy whatsoever results come. Even if you succeed outwardly but you are not happy with yourself, it will be a failure. And even if you fail completely, utterly, outwardly, but are happy with yourself, contented, it is a success.

Contentment is the foundation, so become more and more happy and contented with yourself and let things grow out of that. They will always be beautiful and they will help others also. The action is not only a certain quantity of energy. Action is more deeply a certain quality of energy. When you do something, two things meet there – the quantity and the quality.

And the quality is more essential. That is the very soul of it. The quality comes out of your happiness.

You can put in the quantity without being happy but then that energy will carry something as a seed of unhappiness and it will sprout somewhere or other as unhappiness. So always remember when you do a thing, whenever you initiate anything ....

In the East in astrology, they call it ’muhood’ – the right moment to do a thing. If they are going for a journey, they will ask the astrologer for the right moment. That is foolish to ask the astrologer –

one should ask one’s inner conscience – but symbolically it is very meaningful. They just don’t start deciding to go anywhere. One should enquire inside, ’Is this the right moment to take the initiative?

Am I happy and contented? Am I moving out of a tension or out of a relaxation?’

If there is a certain tension then stop: that is not the right moment. The muhood has not come. Wait.

If you are starting to eat, wait. When you are contented, happy, flowing, then start eating. It is good to say grace. It is good to pray, to thank God, so that you settle in a contented state – and then eat.

The same food has a different quality to it. It will be more nourishing; and not only nourishing to the body but to the soul also.

If you are taking a bath, wait. Just before you go under the shower, collect yourself, calm down.

Then the water and the coolness of it will touch your very heart. It will not just be a shower of water; it will be a shower of grace.

So always remember that you have a basic responsibility towards yourself.

And if you are

responsible in that way, you will be responsible in all others. Very good... become more and more happy.

[A sannyasin had come to darshan several weeks ago (see ’Get Out Of Your Own Way, April 19th) saying he was surprised to read in a Rajneesh news-letter that fifty percent of seekers who came to Osho were homosexual.

He expressed concern as to whether he should remain in homosexuality or try to move into heterosexual relationships.

Osho reminded him that he was speaking to a certain sannyasin when he had said that and that what was appropriate for one person may not be for another. He said that soon homosexuality will be considered to be avant garde and progressive and people will simply start moving into it for that reason. Osho said that if he saw that someone’s being was flowing into heterosexuality and the homosexuality was just a rationalisation, he would suggest that move into heterosexuality.

Osho told him to accept the way be was; and that God wanted him as he was and not to reject that.

Tonight he still expressed confusion over his sexuality.]

That is the cause, as I see it, of your depression. The depression is not the real problem so whatsoever you do with that depression it will not help much. It may postpone it a little but it will not be of any permanent value. You will have to tackle the real problem.

Either accept it or change it, but don’t hang in between; there’s no point. If there is a possibility that you can become heterosexual, then become. And you will have to do something, otherwise it will never happen. Move in that direction and don’t waste time. Find a woman and fall headlong.

If I see that that is impossible for you, that you have no attraction to women, then there is no problem; be homosexual. You have to decide.

What do you feel? Can you become heterosexual or do you feel that it is impossible for you?

[The sannyasin answers: I feel that my greater part is homosexual, but actually I think that everybody is bisexual... I feel only a very little attraction for women, very little.]

... I’m not saying to deny your homosexual part. Let both be there. Become more bisexual rather than one-pointed. Become a little more flexible.

Just move in a few more heterosexual relationships. Even if a small, a slight attraction is there, use it as a jumping board. If you can become a little more flexible you will be able to accept your homosexuality more easily. Because then it will not be a problem. You know you can change any moment. When you know you can get out of the prison any moment, you can rest; it is almost a home. But if you feel that you cannot get out of it, it may be your home but it becomes a prison.

The basic problem is freedom. You feel hooked – as if you are hooked in the homosexuality mentality.

Just become a little more flexible. Once you know you can be both, you have a choice. Have a taste of heterosexual relationships and homosexual relationships and then see which you want to choose.

But then you are the chooser.

Right now you feel that you are being forced by a certain tendency in your mind. You feel crippled, suffocated. That is what is making you depressed. You cannot accept this slavery. It is not really homosexuality you are against. It’s this slavery, this burden that you have to carry somehow. Even if you don’t want to, you have to carry it.

So my suggestion is that you simply become a little more flexible. Just for a change move with a woman and see what happens. You may not like it; then you can always fall back. Or you may like it and you can go on still further. But one thing is certain you will be free – and that freedom will bring back your happiness.

Something has to be done. If you simply wait you will become more and more depressed. You will have to take the initiative; nobody can take it for you. Otherwise this sadness will become settled and it will destroy you in a very very subtle way. So first try a little movement to help you get out of the rut you have got into.

My whole emphasis is on freedom. One should be capable of being whatsoever one decides to be.

Even if you decide to be a celibate, you can become capable of becoming celibate. But if you cannot change such a small thing, if you cannot direct your sexual energy from homosexuality to heterosexuality, or if you are obsessed too much, you will feel the burden, you will feel loaded as if something is going on that is against your self and you are helpless. Change it. And when you become capable of changing it easily, it is just as one changes a gear in a car; it should be that easy.

One day you can try; for a few months become celibate. That is the best change that one can make: from sex to no-sex. Then one becomes completely free. Then whatsoever one wants to do, one can do, but there is nobody forcing you, no obsession. You are a free agent.

But try. I don’t see that there is any trouble.

[The group leader suggests: He thinks he ’s born homosexual.]

No, no. Nobody is born anything. These are just attitudes we learn in life. One is only born with sex energy, and then we learn how to direct it, how to channel it. Of course when you have been channelling it into one direction continuously, it becomes automatic It becomes easy; it flows easily, mechanically. To change it into a different direction feels a little difficult. How to start? I can understand your difficulty.

(to the group leader) Just tell some heterosexual to become homosexual, and then you will understand the difficulty. That is the same problem for him. Tell some heterosexual who loves women, to love a man and he will be repulsed and ask, ’What nonsense are you talking?’ Because the attraction is not there, so how to bring it?

But his problem is easier than that. He feels that both the parts are there; maybe minor-major, but both parts are there. That is creating the problem, and that is the solUtion also. There are people who feel one hundred percent homosexual, but they don’t dislike it so there is no problem. Rather they are vehemently for it, aggressively for it. If they want to change, it will be almost impossible because they have not even a part in them. But then there is no problem.

(to the sannyasin) Your problem is that you have a little part leaning towards that too. Maybe it is minor – twenty-five percent to seventy-five percent, but that twenty-five percent is creating troubles. It will not allow you to accept the seventy-five percent. The minority will go on insisting that something is wrong. But that can become the solution also. You can move easily. It is your energy; you can divide it again.

And I am not saying to you to become a heterosexual permanently. There is no need. I am just trying to say to you to play with your energy so that you can become aware that it is not the energy that is forcing you in some direction. You are the master, and if you can decide any way, you can go that way. That mastery will give you complete freedom from this depression. Otherwise it will become suicidal. You may not commit suicide, but by and by the depression will slowly kill you. You become so depressed; almost dead. You will lose your sensitivity.

Just give it a try. If you have tried and you find it impossible, then accept the other alternative totally.

There is nothing wrong in it. If you enjoy using your energy that way, perfectly good. It is not for anybody else to decide; it is your private affair. Not even God has any right to decide how you should use your energy; it is simply your fun. No state, no religion, no priest, has any authority to poke his nose in.

You can remain bisexual. And a bisexual is richer in a way because he enjoys two types of food.

A heterosexual, a homosexual, is poor in a way. They can enjoy only one type of experience. A bisexual is freer.

The future belongs to the bisexual. It is a prediction, and it is absolutely certain to happen. After this century the world is going to become more and more bisexual because man is becoming more and more free and he wants to experiment in all sorts of ways.

I don’t see that there is any problem or that you should feel depressed or anything – not with me.

With me you can feel absolutely at peace. I am not a priest, not a rabbi.

Try it, mm? You are almost ready to be happy! (laughter)

[A sannyasin says she has had a pain in the shoulder for three years, although doctors say there is nothing physical wrong. The hypnotherapist treated an acupuncture point which helped her relax but the pain came back.]

It is just a habit. (to the group leader) Give her a deep suggestion, a post-hypnotic suggestion will be helpful. But take her as deeply into hypnosis as possible first and then make the suggestion.

Make a combination. Hypnotise her and then suggest to her that you will give her three of these treatments to help the pain. Tell her that by the third treatment it will be completely gone and will never come back. So give the suggestion and then the treatment, mm? Work on her for three days.

[A group participant says that group-leader said he enjoyed being a loser – but he doesn’t want to do that any more.]

Enjoy and be a loser! He is right but there is no need to create any trouble for yourself...

You will have to choose between the two. You cannot have the cake and eat it too; you have to choose. Nothing is wrong in being a loser. If you enjoy it, it is perfectly good, but then drop the idea that you are a weakling and have no will. Simply enjoy this. This is how you are. Accept yourself.

If you feel that this is difficult for you, then you will have to pull yourself out of it. Much struggle will be needed and you will have to work hard. I don’t see that there is any need. A few losers are needed in the world, otherwise who will win? (laughter) Think of others also!...

Then this is your victory. If you become a perfect loser, this is your winning. Be a perfect loser!

Never win – let that be your goal. And if you succeed in it, you are victorious. You understand me?

Read Lao Tzu ’Tao Te Ching’. Lao Tzu is the perfect man to help you lose more and more.

There are two types of different possibilities – the male and the female mind. The male mind wants to win, to be aggressive, competitive; the will to power. Then there is the female mind, the receptive, passive mind; ready to lose. That’s how it feels good.

[The group leader] is right – you have a feminine mind, but it is perfectly good. It has nothing to do with the body. There are feminine minds in male bodies and male minds in feminine bodies. You have a feminine mind. Don’t call it a weakling, because there is some condemnation in that word.

Just see the point – that you. want to lose and you enjoy it; so enjoy it more and enjoy it knowingly, deliberately. Up to now you have been doing it unconsciously; now do it deliberately.

And see... soon you will be flowing and flowering. And I think if you try the opposite – which will not be natural to you – you will be in much hardship and trouble. You will become very depressed; it will be almost a torture to you.

But in the West not a single philosophy exists for the feminine mind. So the will to power seems to be the only possibility. The western psychology and everything is full of the will to power. Only the East, and particularly Lao Tzu, developed the philosophy for the other kind – of relaxing and losing; of not fighting at all, of giving way, of no resistance, no struggle. Lao Tzu almost praises the possibility of becoming a driftwood. He praises it tremendously. That too is beautiful. If you can do it you will be more in tune with yourself.

[The group leader] has simply described your state.

He has not given you a dictum or a

commandment that you do this or that’ he simply says this is your state. Now you have to decide.

If you want to be an achiever, a power-maniac, you will have to fight against yourself. That is going to be hard and finally, futile. Even if you achieve it, it will be at such a cost that you will never feel happy. You are not an achiever; you are a loser. But losers are needed. Just as men and women are needed to fit each other, losers and winners are needed to fit each other; yin and yang. The whole tragedy in the West is that everybody is an achiever.

Even women are entering the competition and becoming achievers. The whole of the West is going to become mad sooner or later, because the other part is missing, so who is going to lose? Nobody is ready to lose, but somebody is needed to play that part also.

So be the loser, and feel happy when others win, because you have allowed them to win. This is your gift to them.

Life will take on a totally different quality. You will be able to enjoy it, and your enjoyment will be more subtle, more delicate, more valuable. It is just as if you are fighting with a small child and you fall down and pretend that he has won. He jumps on your chest and feels so happy. And you also feel happy because you know that unless you allowed him, he would not have been able. But he feels tremendously happy that he has become victorious and has defeated you completely. And look how he delights in it! So just delight in it and don’t be worried.

[The sannyasin answers: I think I will have to do Yoga and such things to develop my body.]

You can develop your body, but there is no need to do it in a competitive way. Become strong – but not to win. Become strong to lose – and much strength is needed to lose. Weaklings cannot lose.

That’s why I don’t use that word.

Feminine energy is not weak. It is a totally different kind of energy. It is opposite to male energy but it is not weak. Will you say that the flower is weak and the stone is strong? They are different kinds of energy. Of course if you hit the flower with the stone, the stone is going to win and the flower is going to be crushed. But will you say only because of this, that the flower is weak and the stone is strong? The stone is dead – the flower is alive. The flower has something in it which is very very beautiful and divine... something of the unknown, something of the beyond. It is fragile – right – but not weak.

And it is fragile because it carries something so transcendental. Have you observed that the human child is the weakest in the whole animal world? But that is the glory of man. A human child cannot survive if he is not protected for years. Both other animals and birds are ready to move into the world when they are born. They don’t need the father or the mother. That’s why the family has not developed in other animals. But in man, it is a must. Without the family humanity will disappear because the child of man is so fragile. But I don’t call him weak, because he is the very glory of existence.

Lions and tigers may be strong but what are they compared with a human child who can become an Einstein or a Buddha or a Christ? What are they in comparison? Yes, if the lion jumps on Jesus, Jesus will be killed, but that does not prove that the lion is stronger. It simply proves that the strong is just very low, like a stone, and Jesus is like a flower.

So don’t think in terms of weakness. Think in terms of sensitivity, fragility. Never use a word wrongly, otherwise it can change your whole life pattern. Don’t be worried – be a loser... be a perfect loser.

Allow people to win and enjoy helping them to win, mm? Good !

[A sannyasin says: I’ve got a problem with you. When I came to Poona I felt very open towards you and then when I did the groups – Tathata and Encounter – I began to feel some kind of indifference towards you. I’m really becoming afraid of it.]

Don’t be worried. It happens. You pass through many phases with me. If you come very open, you cannot remain open. You will become closed, you will become indifferent. Again the opening will come and this time it will be totally different.

The first feeling of openness was your imagination. Now it will come more as a reality. But it happens.... Becoming scared is also natural. One feels nervous and wonder what is happening.

Nothing is wrong. When you first come, you come with all your projections, with all your imagination.

You project and imagine many things and you live in an imaginary world.

Then you come here and start working and walking on the earth. That imagination disappears; those projections disappear. One feels as if One is missing something. You will start feeling a different kind of openness which will not be of imagination and which will not be lost again, mm?

[Osho told the zen saying that at the beginning of meditation mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then all is confusion and mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers, until one day, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers again.]

... but in a different light – luminous. And not seen through imagination but through reality.

So don’t be afraid... everything is going well and as it should be.

CHAPTER 24

Love is the Best Drug

26 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been feeling so good in the past few weeks that I can hardly believe it.

But I feel blocked – and that I block other people and myself I have been taking drugs for so long that everything seems to have gone dead.]

Mm, drugs can kill very very deeply. They can make many things dead. Any stimulation from the outside is in the long run very dangerous. In the beginning it seems to be very beautiful, but anything that excites your nervous system through chemistry, by and by deadens it also.

But it will be okay; don’t be worried. It will be helpful if you are in relationship with someone. Love will be good and you will be more flowing.

Love is the best natural drug.

And the beauty of it is that it never makes you dead and dull. It has an inner harmony. It is a drug...

it is one of the strongest chemicals, but it is in-built. You don’t take it from the outside. It is created inside your lab.

So it will be good to move into a relationship and to continue meditating. Everything will be okay.

[The aum marathon group is present. The group leader says: Last time you told me to frustrate myself otherwise the technique wouldn’t work. I think I frustrated myself for forty-eight hours!]

Mm mm, I understand. The first thing to be understood is that love is not a phenomenon that can be created. It can happen but you cannot create it. And the more you try to create it, the more elusive it will be because no direct approach to love is possible. It does not allow anybody to manipulate it. It is so subtle. It is not like a block of wood or a rock that you can manipulate. It is very subtle, invisible.

So once you try to manipulate that invisible energy, you will be in trouble. And because of your effort to manipulate it, you will miss it. It comes, but it comes always from the indirect path.

You do something, and in a certain attunement it comes in. All that is beautiful in life is like that.

[Osho said that a friend can invite you to go swimming and tell you what a tremendous experience it is. You can go with many expectations but be so full of those and so greedy for this tremendous thing that is going to happen to you, that you are too preoccupied – and you miss it.]

Happiness is not a thing that you can make happen, and that you can hold in your hand. It happens only when you have abandoned yourself in some activity completely. When the activity takes possession of you, when you are completely oblivious that you are, suddenly it is there. In all its beauty, in all its truth, in all its penetration, it is there... every fibre of your being vibrating with it. But it comes only when you are not.

Love will happen in a group when the group is completely in tune. And that tune can happen only when you are doing something else; not thinking about love at all. Something else possesses you; you are so engrossed. Suddenly you will see a grace descending. That roundness for which you were waiting will happen. But it is a happening. Nobody has ever been able to manipulate it.

So don’t do anything. In fact don’t move with a certain expectation. Move with hope. Move with prayer. Move with trust. But never move with any expectations. Then much will happen.

If you move with expectations, you will be the barrier; the leader becomes the barrier. The leader is significant because he functions as a nucleus to the whole group. If you are frustrated then the whole group will be falling apart because the centre is missing. The whole group functions as spokes. You are the hub and the whole wheel moves around you.

If the leader is frustrated, he will stop all movement; he will be the cause. So it was not that you didn’t make enough effort. It was because you tried to do something about love which cannot be done, which is impossible.

So never do anything about love, nor happiness, nor bliss. Simply move with the hope and prayer that something will happen. Nobody knows what because each group is going to be different, because different people will bring different energy. They will pool different energies into it, so nobody knows the ultimate outcome and nobody can expect anything. There is no need to. Move into the unknown, the unfamiliar. Let things happen, and let them take their own shape.

You are there just to facilitate the process. Whatsoever is going to happen, you are to smooth the path for it – whatsoever happens; that is not your concern. If anger is happening, you have to make the path smooth so that anger comes to a perfect peak. Then it is beautiful. If love is happening you have to help it to move. If harmony is happening, good. If discord is happening, you have to create the path for that too. You should not have any choice, otherwise that will become a barrier.

If you are thinking that love should happen and there is anger, in a subtle way you will stop that anger. You will say ’I am waiting for love and anger is happening’. Unknowingly you will not allow the anger to happen. And if anger cannot happen, that person will not be able to move into love. So let anger happen.

Whatsoever happens is good. This should be the basic dictum.

And you are a facilitator. You are to help people to cathart. You are to help people to go deeper in their moment, into their facticity in that moment, whatsoever it is – anger, hatred, love, jealousy, envy, happiness. But never expect anything and don’t carry a hidden desire, otherwise that desire is going to create much trouble.

This is how we have destroyed the whole humanity. It is nothing new; it has been the case forever.

Parents are helping to bring something to the children and they have imprisoned them. Husbands are hoping something will happen for their wives – love, happiness. The wife is hoping that the husband will become more graceful; more beautiful, more powerful, good, religious.

Everybody is trying to manipulate everybody else with a very good ambition. All are well-wishers...

and all these well-wishers are destructive. They help – they think they help – but they only hinder.

The path to hell is filled with good wishers.

So remember not to move with a desire. Who are you? Why should you have any desires? If love is going to happen, we will enjoy it. If it is not going to happen, we will enjoy that too. It is just as when the wind is blowing and you enjoy it. When it is not blowing, what can you do? You wait.

So remember it, mm? You will grow with each group. The leader is not a fixed entity; he goes on growing with each group. He grows as much as the participant.

[A group member says: I don’t know how to explain it but something very special happened. I felt in the Dynamic meditation something that wasn’t coming from in me but from another space. But it was just a flash.]

Very good. These moments will be coming more and more. These are the real moments of meditation. They don’t belong to you. They come only when you are not. They are a gap in your being, so they are more like nothingness, emptiness. It is just as if an emptiness is passing through you. Just for a moment, suddenly you are washed away. You are not there. Then again you are there. It is only for a fragment of a moment, but that is the glimpse; what Buddha calls ’anatta’, the glimpse of no-being. That is your real being.

Man is not a thing. A thing has substance in it and man is not substantial. If you penetrate deep into a man you will not find anything. That’s why scientists go on searching and they don’t find any soul. The soul is not a thing. It is a space. If we cut somebody we cannot find the space because the space cannot be grabbed.

That space has passed through you just for a single moment. It will be coming more and more.

One thing to remember: don’t ask for it. You were not asking for it when it came ....

It comes naturally. One starts waiting and that becomes the barrier because when it happened for the first time you were not asking, you were not expecting; you were not even aware. But now the problem will be there, so don’t get attached to it.

It was good – thank God and be finished with it. Forget all about it and meditate again. There is no need to think about it, not even to remember it. Don’t make it a memory, don’t make it a greed, otherwise that will become the barrier.

Many people miss. For the first time meditation happens to many people but then the mind comes in and starts planning saying, ’Now I will meditate and it is going to happen. This time I will hold it a little longer and enjoy it a little more.’ Then you are finished!

So just remember that. It has been very good.

[A sannyasin says: I feel very positive and I feel a lot happening from working in the groups.

And I feel that people seem to like me. They come up and say ’I really like you ’ and that feels really good inside.]

Very good. When one feels good inside, one is liked by many people, very easily. And when you feel good inside you also like people very easily. When one is in a well-being, one wants to bless everybody because whatsoever you see is coloured by your state of mind. When you are happy, you go on throwing happiness all around. A subtle energy surrounds you, and whomsoever comes in contact with you will also start smiling and feeling happy.

Happy people create a certain milieu. Even sad people will come in their milieu and feel happy. They will even forget for a few moments that they are unhappy. So enjoy it, and just don’t hold it – express it. When you feel good about somebody, tell him. Just hold his hand, look into his eyes and say that you feel very very blessed that he is also here; just his presence gives you happiness. Express your happiness and you will find it growing.

[Osho said that ordinary we talk about our sadness and that makes it more sad. If people talked about their happy moments, the world would be happy.]

This positivity has to be used.... It is simply unbelievable how people miss it. Somehow their eyes are clouded because they have a fixed attitude of seeing things.

The world is really psychedelic.... And I have not come across an ugly person yet. Every person is a unique expression of the divinity. Every person carries the signature of God. Every person is a work of craftmanship. Nothing is ugly unless you don’t know how to see beauty. If you tackle things from the wrong end, things turn sour and life becomes bitter.

So use these moments because they are rare. If you can use them more they will be coming more.

Share them. The more you share them, the more you will have. And always remember this law of spiritual life – that the more you share, the more you have. Or let me say it in this way: whatsoever you give to others, you will have, and that which you hold within yourself will die.

Share it before it dies. Let it pass from one hand to another. Whatsoever you give you will become the possessor of. Suddenly you will see that more is arising. So never be miserly in expression, in sharing, in communicating. So very good... feel thankful.

[[A group member says: I feel much joy in the group. I felt that the group was both very important for me and yet not important at all. And speaking to you feels very important and also unimportant too.

I can’t explain it. It seems contradictory.]

No, there is no contradiction in it. Anything that is extremely important is bound to not be important at all. A thing which is really important is also not important at the same time. Only mediocre things which are not really important, which are important only up to a certain extent, don’t have this ambiguity.

For example, a house has a price; You can purchase it, you can sell it, but God has no price. It is extremely valuable and valueless. Love has no price. It is tremendously valuable but what is the value of it? Nothing. On the one hand it costs nothing, on the other hand, your whole life has to be put at stake. So all that is really beautiful and valuable, is at the same time always not valuable, not important at all.

So don’t create a contradiction. It is really a beautiful state. There is no division in it. It is not that you are divided into two; no – that’s how it is. And always remember it. It works from both the ends.

Whenever you come to encounter something which is tremendously valuable, suddenly you will see that there is no value in it. It is so simple, it is so costless.

And remember, when you come across things which are valueless, costless, try to look into them also. You will find something hidden in them which is tremendously valuable. Between these two apparently contradictory polarities is the world of the mediocre things where there are value labels and you can decode which is valuable and which is not. But those are just mediocre, man-made values.

A car is valuable, a house is valuable, but these are man-made things. A flower is valueless and is the ultimate value also. Remember it – it is a good insight. Penetrate into it. Let it become more transparent.

You have been looking at it through the reason, that’s why you are a little puzzled. But there is another side. Just look at things. Look at the stars in the night....

But this is a way of looking at things which is beyond reason. You stand at the back of everything and from there you look as a witness. Then you can see that all that is valuable is valueless also.

Because it cannot be purchased, it cannot be sold either. It cannot be a commodity; it does not belong to the market-place.

Facing me, looking at me, is tremendously valuable. At the same time it has no value. It is tremendously important because between you and me something can transpire... something that can lead you to the ultimate.

But even if it leads you to the ultimate, what is the value of it? You will laugh – because it is not something given to you. It is something that you had always with you. At the most it may be a recognition, a remembrance, but nothing has been given to you.

I can give you all and I cannot give you anything. And both are true together because the all that I can give you is already with you.

Hence if I give it to you, I’m not giving anything. But both these things are true together. This is why religion is illogical. If you ask the logician, he will say this is nonsense; either a thing is valuable or it is not. His ways are clearcut. But if you ask a mystic he will say that both things are true together.

And the mystic has eyes; the logician is simply blind. He has looked into man-made things for too long. He has forgotten the language of nature. Go deeper into it.

[A sannyasin says: I’m still playing the same old games of trying to get people to love me... I’ve been here for a year and have not been into any relationship up to now.]

Move into some relationship, because there are a few things that can be done only by experiencing them. Love is one of them. There is no way to learn it; you have to do it. And by trial and error one learns.

It is like swimming. You have to start first in the shallow and then you become capable of moving towards some depth. Love cannot be prepared for. There is no way to learn it. Everybody has to go into it without any learning, unprepared. So move into a love relationship.

Many problems will arise. We can solve them by and by because each problem is a growth. If the problem overpowers you and you cannot solve it, then it becomes a block. If you can solve it, it is a beautiful opportunity to go beyond it. Once you go beyond it, you have learned something of love. Each problem is an opportunity to learn what love is. You have been avoiding it. When one avoids it, one starts thinking about it too much. Then one starts manipulating because one thinks that something has to be done by the mind. One starts playing gimmicks. But that is not going to help.

Life is not a rehearsal. It is a drama without rehearsal.

So move into a love relationship; with whomsoever, that is not the point. And there is no need for the relationship to be permanent. Right now it has just to bring all the problems up to the surface so that all your problems are in front of you. Then we can solve them. Right now it is difficult to even find out what your problem is.

So that is the first thing, and that is possible only in a relationship. So move into a relationship and love with no fear. The whole point is not to find a permanent relationship, the point is to find ways and means to learn what love is. One learns by many trials and errors. Many times one goes astray, suffers pain. You have been too clever.

Clever people have a few problems. The basic problem is that whatsoever cannot be done by the mind, they try to do by the mind. They think by some intelligence they will find a way. It has nothing to do with intelligence. One has to be a fool to be in love, so be a fool! And be a little mad... drop your cleverness.

One day you will be intelligent but that intelligence comes through encountering problems. This intelligence is just a sort of cowardice. One protects oneself and never goes beyond the limit. One always tries to manipulate people because manipulating people can give you a certain false feeling of love.

For example, if you can force somebody to do something, you will feel a sort of power. Love also has that power but without being aware of it at all. It is not that lovers force each other to do things.

They simply do things because they love each other. You understand?

You can try to force the other to do certain things because you have seen lovers do those things. For example two people who love each other, hug. Now you can manipulate a person to hug you, but that doesn’t mean that there is love. In love hugging happens, but in hugging there is no necessity for love to happen. You can manage the act but the inner feeling will be missing.

So just go in headlong like a fool. And sometimes angels miss what fools attain. And I am here...

just move...

First move with the fears, and whenever new problems arise, bring them to me. I would like to throw you into a whirlwind of problems.

Things will change, don’t be worried.

CHAPTER 25

Simply Rejoice Because you Are

27 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: when I’m with people I feel I’d like to say something but that nobody is listening.

Then I get hostile and put people down.]

Learn to listen rather than talk; then you will enjoy people more. When you are with somebody, become a good listener. There is no need to say much, because in fact there is nothing to say. If you say empty words, nobody listens to you. So rather than getting angry with them find out if you have anything to say. What exactly do you want to relate? What is there to say? Before one can say something, one has to attain something.

Before you can sing a song, a song must arise in your heart, otherwise your singing will be superficial. There will be no throb of the heart in it and nobody will want to listen to it. People don’t listen to words; they are fed up with them. Everybody is throwing words at them. They are all doing the same. It is almost like a volley-ball match with people throwing words at each other.

People are fed up with words. Just try to be silent with people, but not negatively silent – that’s why I say listen.

Listening is a positive silence. You are intent, attentive. You are not disinterested, you are not indifferent. You are not yawning and looking at your watch; you are really listening. You are giving your whole heart to them, opening yourself.

Listen to people. You will learn much about them, about you. Listen to people and you will feel an opening. A great warmth will arise in you – whatsoever they are saying; that is not the point.

Just pay them attention, participate with them and allow them to feel that they have been listened to. You will see that people will think you are a good talker. They will say to people ’[You are] such a good talker. He talks so beautifully’ – and you have not said a single word! You may have said yes or no or something like that, but they will carry the impression that you are a very very good conversationalist. They are seeking, just as you are, somebody who is ready to listen to them.

[Osho said that this is all psychoanalysis is about – paying people to listen to you because nobody else has time.]

Bertrand Russell has written a story about the twenty-first century and there being a whole world full of psychoanalysts – each neighbourhood having a psychoanalyst because nobody will be listening to anybody. You will have to pay someone because you have to unburden your heart. The old days will be gone when people were ready to listen to whatsoever you wanted to say.

The problem is the same for everyone. You think they are not listening to you. They think you are not listening to them. Nobody is listening, that’s true, because everybody wants to unburden himself.

He wants you to be receptive so that he can unburden himself. Rather than finding you receptive, he finds you aggressive. You are trying to unburden yourself... he escapes.

Talk as little as possible – just a few words in between to help the person to go on talking and so that he doesn’t feel awkward. Just a word here and there to provoke him, to reassure him that you are listening. Just nodding the head will do. You will feel much opening.

The second thing to understand is that unless you are enjoying yourself, sooner or later you will feel frustrated. People don’t know how to enjoy themselves. They know many other things: how to go to a movie and enjoy it, how to make love to a woman and enjoy it, how to eat good food and enjoy it –

but nobody seems to know how to just enjoy themselves.

You can see movies but you will get fed up. You can move with women but you will get fed up because it is the same repetition again and again. You can read a few stories and novels but again you will get fed up because it is the same triangle and the same love story. Only details change, but the whole gestalt remains the same. By and by the food is the same; it is the same morning and evening – everything continues. It is a routine, unless you can enjoy yourself – because you are the source of constant renewal, resurrection. Within your innermost core, new life is happening every moment. It is an explosion, an ongoing explosion.

Unless you start enjoying it, nothing is going to help; all are just postponements. You can push frustration a little further away but again it will be there waiting for you.

So start enjoying yourself. Just sitting silently, feel delighted. Just looking at the stars, for no particular reason, start singing or dancing. And don’t think that this is mad. People have a very curious notion. If they are happy for no reason at all they are thought to be mad. People say that you must have some reason to be happy.

As I see it, happiness should be just a natural state of affairs. You are alive – that’s enough. You should be happy. To be alive is enough reason to be happy, to rejoice.

If people ask you why you are happy, you simply say because you are alive! But people think that we must have some other cause: you have won a lottery or have won something in a horse race; you have a new girlfriend or you have become famous; you have become a Nobel Prize winner or something. These people can never really be happy. Their happiness is just like lightning; it comes and goes. It is nothing that you can be nourished by. It is nothing that you can breathe in and out.

So start being happy for no reason at all. Even you will think that something is going wrong; there is no reason to be happy. But I say just being alive is enough.

In the bible, one of the most repeated words is ’rejoice’; almost nine hundred times. Again and again

’rejoice’, ’joy’, ’delight’ – or other synonyms for the same word. And the meaning of the word rejoice is beautiful: you simply rejoice because you are. Try it and get in tune with it.

Again the morning has come. Rejoice and thank God because one day there will be no morning.

Again the night is full of stars. Rejoice and dance under it because one day you will not be there and the dance will not be possible. A night has been given to you again. Why waste it?

And this enjoyment should be simple, unreasonable, irrational. And it should not have anything to do with anybody else. It should be simply within you, the flame of it. And when you can rejoice alone, you can relate; you will have something to say.

Even your silence will become pregnant. Even if you sit silently by someone, he will feel your presence. He will be filled by your presence. He will be touched by you, invoked, invited to your innermost shrine. He will become a guest in you. Whether you say anything or not is irrelevant.

Even silence says much when you have something to say.

And when you don’t have anything to say, you go on talking; those words are empty. They are not pregnant with life. They really don’t belong to you; they have not arisen out of you. They don’t carry any part of you, are not full of your presence.

So first create an aura of rejoicing around you, a milieu, an atmosphere. Then you can create it alone; nobody is needed. And when you are happy you will feel that people are attracted towards you, are pulled almost magnetically. Something inner starts pulling one. Who does not want to be happy? And who does not want to be with a man who is happy? The happy man has become such a rarity.

People go on tolerating unhappy people because what else can one do? Those are the only people available. Become happy and then you will see that even your silence is heard, to say nothing of your words. People simply feel good when they are close to you and then you become open. These are reciprocal things. When your presence makes others happy, their happiness makes you more happy. This goes on and on to higher waves.

[The encounter group is present. The group leader says:

It was a good group. I’m learning to more and more trust the group. But by the third and fourth day a lot of people are stuck and I start to get concerned. Being concerned or trying doesn’t seem to help. It seems to need a balance of the two.]

No, being concerned is not good, because if you are concerned too much, you will become tense.

And if you become tense you cannot help.

Your tension is constantly broadcasted and it makes other people also tense. Watch it. When you are tense and you talk to somebody, you will immediately feel that he has become tense. Or whenever somebody is talking to you and you suddenly feel a tension, you can be almost certain that he is creating a tension around you. So if you are talking to somebody and you feel tense, immediately relax the stomach. Relax at least yourself; that will be a great help.

Care is not concern; it is totally different. When care becomes an anxiety it becomes concern. When concern is minus anxiety, it is simply care. You care about them but you are not concerned because what can you do? You can make the opportunity available and then leave it. Whatsoever is going to happen will happen. If they are ready to participate in it, they will participate. If they are not ready or they are resisting, or they have decided not to participate, then that is their way. Nothing can be done. We cannot force anybody to relax because all enforcement will make them more tense.

So simply be loving, careful, but not concerned too much. Concern becomes more or less a concern about the result. Care is about the person; concern is about the result. If I care about you it is a personal thing; I care about you, I love you. If I am concerned then I am more concerned about what is going to happen. You are not in my focus, but the outcome, the final result. Concern is result-oriented, care is person-oriented.

So even if you are not growing, it makes no difference, I go on caring. I go on loving you, I go on showering my love.

The future is not the question at all. What happens is not to be worried about because any worry is a very poisonous thing. If you become too worried about the result, you send messages around you that you are tense. That tension will create defense measures. People will become alert and defensive. The more they defend, the more concerned you will be, and then it becomes a vicious circle.

So simply go on doing whatsoever you feel is right. Your responsibility is towards your own sincerity, is in seeing that you are not being lazy, that you are not avoiding anything, not neglecting, but are doing whatsoever you can do. And about that too, don’t be too perfectionistic because that will create anxiety. Remain floating and spontaneous. And whatsoever happens is good. I really mean it – whatsoever happens is good.

Sometimes a person does not open; that too is good. That is what is needed on his path right now.

Maybe it will be too soon if he opens. Let him also have the opportunity to resist. His resistance may give him a certain integration; one never knows. One has to always accept whatsoever happens because we cannot know the beginning or the end. A person is an unfinished process. Right now there is no way to predict what will be the outcome of a certain thing.

If a person opens himself easily, maybe in the same way he will forget about this opening when the group is finished. So it is difficult to say whether it was good or bad. Another person resists to the very last and in the very last moment, relaxes. Now the same will happen. Out of the group he will go on persisting with his openness for longer than the person who immediately opened.

So nothing can be said, and everybody functions in a different way. Every mechanism is different.

Conditioning is different, potentiality is different and each one’s future is going to be different. So we can hope for the best but never create any anxieties. Accept and more things will be happening because there will be more flow.

[The group leader, referring to a participant, says: He works really hard but he never goes really deep. It is never a complete catharsis.

The participant says: I was going as deep as I could when I was trying to cathart.]

Rolfing will be helpful for you. Something has to be done in the body it seems. The whole musculature seems to be very tense.

And another, start running in the morning on the road. Start with half a mile and then one mile and come at least to three miles eventually. While running use the whole body. Don’t run as if you are in a straitjacket. Run like a small child, using the whole body – hands and feet – and run. Breathe deeply and from the belly. Then sit under a tree, rest, perspire and let the cool breeze come; feel peaceful. This will help very deeply.

The musculature has to be relaxed. If you like swimming, you can go swimming also. That will help.

But that too has to be done as totally as possible. Anything in which you can become totally involved will be helpful. It is not a question of anger or any other emotion. The question is to get into anything totally; then you will be able to get into anger and love also. One who knows how to get into anything totally can get into everything totally; that’s not the point.

And it is difficult to work with anger directly because it may be deeply repressed. So work indirectly.

Running will help much anger and much fear to evaporate. When you are running for a long time and breathing deeply, the mind stops functioning and the body takes over. For a few moments sitting under the shade of the tree, perspiring, enjoying the cool breeze, there are no thoughts. You are simply a throbbing body, an alive body, an organism in tune with the whole; just like an animal.

[To the group leader:] for people like this in your group, a small exercise will be very helpful.

Whenever you feel that somebody is not going below the stomach, below the belly, is somehow superficial, tell him to walk and pant like a dog. Let his tongue be out, and hang down.

The whole passage will become open. So whenever you feel that somebody has some block there, panting can be very significant. If he pants for half an hour, his anger will flow very beautifully. His whole body will become involved in it.

(to the participant) So you can try this in your room sometimes. You can use a mirror and bark and growl at it (laughter).

Within three weeks you will feel things going very very deeply. Once anger is relaxed, gone, you will feel free.

[Another participant says: I ’m not actually interested in people, in other people s affairs. I have started to open myself but then fall back into myself again.

The group leader says: He has started to open... He always works things out first very carefully. But he’s working and starting to come out.]

No, it will come... it will come.

There are two types of possibilities. If a person works through the head too much, it is not that the heart is really blocked. Energy is just not moving that way, that’s all. There is no block, but the energy is moving in the head and the heart is left aside. This is one possibility.

The other possibility is that the heart is blocked and that’s why energy is moving towards the head.

Then it is very difficult to open it. With you there is no problem. Your energy is moving towards the head because you have used your head up to now and you have used it skillfully. So there is nothing wrong in it. Your heart passage is completely open, so it is simply a question of decision.

Once you decide and you take a step towards the heart, the energy will be flowing. Don’t be worried that it will close again. It is up to you. If you want it to remain open, it will. I don’t see any block in the heart. You have one of the purest hearts. It is just that the energy is not moving that way because you have never moved it. In fact you have prevented it. That always happens to people who are working with the head too much. The heart seems like a distraction.

A person who is working with reason always thinks that feeling is a distraction because it is disturbing. It disturbs reason. Reason is very unfeeling, calculating, exact, mathematical. Feeling brings something which is non-mathematical, irrational. People who work with the head too much, by and by close the passage to the heart because the heart will come in and disturb their whole pattern. Reason has a different gestalt. It is arithmetical. The heart brings poetry which is not arithmetical at all.

But you don’t have any problem, so just allow your heart to move...

Whatsoever you are doing in the group, allow it more and more. The question is not that you should be concerned with other people. The basic question is that when you are concerned with other people, when you take care of them, your heart starts functioning. It is just a way to help the heart function again.

For example a person who works through the head is more concerned with things, not people, because things can be manipulated through the head. A person who lives through the head, even if he becomes a politician, is not concerned with people, but only in counting their heads. So such people by and by avoid all commitment to people. Love and affection seem to be disturbing factors because they bring in alien elements.

For example, a judge has to live through the head. He has to live through the law and to follow the law literally.

If a poor man comes who has been caught as a thief and the judge looks at him, he will feel he has not done much wrong. He is so poor and to steal something seems to be just the right thing to do.

What else could he have done? His mother is dying and he had no medicine. Now if the judge looks at the person and allows his feelings... and the law does not bother about whether the person who has been caught as a thief is poor or rich, educated or uneducated, whether his mother is alive or dead or lying dying on the bed; that’s not the point. Those are irrelevant things.

A person is a thief. The law doesn’t go into the details. If it did there would be no law because each person will be different and how can you decide a particular law for each person? The law has to be general. It has to be unconcerned with persons and their lives. So the judge sits there with his wig on. The wig is a protection. It makes the judge impersonal. Sitting up in his chair with a black coat and a wig, he is no more a person. He simply represents the law.

When he goes home, he puts the wig away. Then he is a husband or a father and he will think differently. Even judges when they come back home think again. Their nights are disturbed. Is what they have done right? Was it humane to do it? But that was not a concern while they were being a judge. When they are a judge, they are simply a judge. Almost mechanical, computer-like they function.

That’s how we avoid the heart, because the heart is very rebellious. It is anarchic. It believes in no laws. It believes in life but it doesn’t believe in law. It does not believe in reason, calculation, mathematics. It trusts life but that trust will not allow the head to function efficiently.

So a person who is concerned too much with the head, by and by cuts his passage, channelises his whole energy towards the head. He becomes hung up in the head.

So start taking an interest in other people as persons. Try it in this group. Mix with people, make friendships. Put away your wig and move again as a human being.

[The sannyasin replies: I have tried to come out of the head by not bothering about things concerning the head and I have noticed that my memory started functioning not very well. I forgot things that I had memorised in former times.]

That will happen. That will happen for a period, for the time being, because when the energy starts moving towards the heart, that old channel to the head will not be so full of energy. It will become feeble...

It will be just as if a river is channelised into a different direction and it doesn’t move on the old river bed. The trees on that bank will start dying; they will not be green. So your memory, your skill, for the time being will feel as if it is becoming weaker.

Whenever your heart has started functioning well, the next thing to do is to become capable of flowing in any direction whenever it is needed. Then you can channelise your energy towards the head and then all the memory that the head carries is revived immediately.

The memory remains there. It is just like a tape recorder. All that is recorded is there but if the electric current is not passing through it, it is there but you cannot listen to it. It is not manifested.

So in the beginning you will feel that.

Forget all about it. Simply move with the heart and many memories of the heart which have become dead will become alive. You will start remembering many beautiful things about your childhood. On the heart path also, there are memories; memories of experiences, memories of feeling, of ecstasy, of elation, of excitement, which are not part of the head. Suddenly you will become aware that a past moment has again come back to life.

You are a small child collecting stones and seashells on the seashore. Again there is the same breeze. For a moment you are there... it is not just a memory. That is the difference between the heart memory and the head memory.

In the head, memory is always a memory about the past. In the heart memory, the experience is relived again; it is not just a memory. It is not that you remember it – you relive it. It is very very alive. So those memories will revive and they will be an enrichment.

The head is not losing anything. In fact nothing is ever lost. Forgetting anything is almost impossible; memory functions automatically. The only thing that is needed is for you to channelise your energy into the head; then those memories will be revived. If your energy is not flowing, then you will feel that you are forgetting things. Nobody forgets. Even things that you think you have forgotten, you have not forgotten. You can be hypnotised and told to repeat them and you will be able to.

So don’t be worried just move more towards the heart.

[The sannyasin answers: I don ’t know how to channelise the energy.]

Again you are asking a head question, of how to channelise the energy. That is not the question.

Just relate to people, hold their hands, hug them, listen to what they are saying. Go into the music group, sing and dance. Go to the river, swim. Find friends and meet and mingle with them; don’t remain aloof.

These are not hows. They are just hints; not devices.

You are a wall but a door is also hiding there and that will be opened.

[Another participant says: I got in touch with deep anger and I felt my possibility of hurting people.

And I got a feeling of being rejected.

The group leader says: I feel there’s a fundamental ’No, I’m not going to change ’]

You need a love relationship. Love will make you soft. Without love people become very hard, and it is only love that helps people change. Otherwise people become very adamant. They don’t want to change. For what? The ego feels very resistant to change.

Only in love one starts thinking of changing because in love you come across your ego as your enemy, not as your friend. Only in love one starts feeling that one’s ego is one’s whole undoing.

Then one wants to drop it. In love one understands that one’s anger is poisoning the whole beauty of It.

If you don’t have any love affair, your anger is not creating any trouble for you. Your ego is not creating any trouble for you so why drop the anger, why drop the ego? In fact in dropping them you will feel as if you are losing something and gaining nothing. Right now what is there to drop them for?

This is my understanding: if a woman loves you, you immediately start thinking in terms of becoming worthy of her. Whenever a woman loves a man or a man loves a woman, for the first time your significance is recognised. For the first time somebody says, ’You are good. You are beautiful. You are fantastic.’ And you know you are not! Now somebody is giving you a very very great image of being beautiful and you know you are not; you are ugly. Now for the first time you become aware that you are ugly. This woman is saying that you are beautiful and you would like to be beautiful; you would like to become as she sees you. An idea to change yourself arises.

That’s why in the East we have emphasised the relationship between a master and a disciple very much. When a master looks at a disciple he appreciates the disciple so much that the disciple starts feeling uncomfortable. He starts thinking, ’I must do something to deserve this.’ Then the idea to change comes easy.

As I see it there is no problem. You are behaving like a cock because you need a hen! And she will put you right.

People who are not in a love relationship try to assert themselves and try to prove that they are somebody. People who are in a love relationship are not so assertive, not so aggressive, because love teaches them the beauty of humbleness.

I don’t see that anger is your problem. I see lack of love is your problem. Anger is symptomatic.

When lack of love is there, anger will be there. Anger is possessing your throne where love should be. And you cannot just dethrone anger. You will have to invite love. From this door love enters and from another door, anger will fly out.

But it has been good; the group has been good. It has brought something to light. For the remaining two days, drop all resistance and see what happens. These are just experiments to see oneself in different lights. For five days you have been resisting, having a deep no within your belly, saying that you are not going to change. You have been feeling powerful that nobody can change you. That was your power trip. Now make it just the reverse. Relax and say that ’Anybody can change me, I am ready. Even a child can meet me and I am ready to be led!’ That is more powerful.

Just reverse the role and after the group I will suggest you find a love relationship and many things will happen through it.

[Another participant says: I’ve learned to open more to you. I want to stay open.]

The openness will stay; don’t be worried. If you loved it, if you liked it, it will stay. Whatsoever we love, stays; and whatsoever goes, goes only because we did not really love it. We may have said so but deep down we rejected it.

If you accept it, it is going to stay. Whatsoever is accepted becomes part of you. So just accept it and it will remain. Enjoy it... it will remain with you.

[Another participant says: I can’t really get in touch with my heart. I feel very blocked. But I now I can feel my heart because I feel it sometimes when I feel you.

Osho told him to do the same three exercises he had suggested to the previous group member – of running, swimming and panting like a dog.]

Nothing is wrong. It is just that you have not used your heart for a long time, that’s all. There is nothing like a block. It is just that you haven’t used it. If you don’t use your hand for many days, it becomes as if paralysed. You massage it and the blood circulates again. Everything needs to be used to remain functioning.

In the modern world very few people are using their hearts; very few. It is not just your problem; it is the problem of almost ninety-nine percent of people. It is good that you have become aware. They are not even aware. They think that the beating, the function of the lungs is what the heart is. It is not.

The heart is something very different from the physical beating, from the blood-circulating mechanism. The heart is something very subtle. It is a totally different world of vision. It is an insight of the immaterial, the invisible. It is what gives the experience of God.

The heart is the medium to feel the presence of God. Love, prayer, God, all happen through the heart.

It is the most essential thing in life, hut it is not needed in any utilitarian way in life. In the marketplace it has no value. In the university it has no value. In the world as such the heart is not needed. The world is absolutely heartless. And when you try to fit with the world, you also become heartless. Not to be is not only useless, it is a sort of hindrance. In your functioning rightly, it will be a distraction.

But you have become aware and that’s good.

[The sannyasin adds: The first time I thought I came in touch with my heart, I completely freaked out... So now I have this fear.]

Don’t be afraid. Once or twice you may freak again because it gives such a jolt to your whole energy.

That world is completely different to the one you have been used to; totally different, diametrically opposite. It is maddening; that’s why people have stopped it happening.

People of the heart are mad people. They can go berserk any moment; that’s why the world does not want to bother with them. They are not reliable, not predictable.

The world needs mechanisms, absolutely predictable, efficient, that’s all. The world does not need man, it needs machines, and the heart is not a machine. It is the most non-mechanical part in you.

So this will happen, but don’t be worried. When it happens, do only one thing. Close your room, lie down on the bed, and have a good laugh. Say things, sing, dance. Don’t go out, that’s all. Whenever you feel like being mad, enjoy it in your aloneness. Never freak in the outside world, because then it will be thought to be mad, and you will start controlling it because it looks awkward. Then the police enter and the court and the law and you are in difficulty.

Madness should be a private thing, and then it is beautiful, worth enjoying. One needs only to be this much aware – to close yourself in your room when a mad moment comes. Soon it will be gone.

And when it goes you will feel so silent... as one feels after a great storm. When it is gone you will feel completely new and fresh, as if you have just taken a beautiful shower.

In the modern world it has become more and more difficult to be mad in public. In the old world, and still in primitive societies, there is a possibility. For example in indian villages, in primitive societies, in the night they will gather together and dance to abandon. They will go almost mad because they say it is religious ,and it is good. But in modern societies that too has become difficult.

A person who is fixed to sanity and cannot be mad is not really alive; is half alive. And a person who is mad and cannot be sane again is half alive. Both are lop-sided. Both are missing something.

My emphasis is that you should be total. When it is needed that you be sane – in the office, in the market, in the world, be sane. But when the world is no more there why continue with sanity? Put it away; become mad. Enjoy both; you will be richer for it. And if you can enjoy your madness you will never be mad. Accumulated madness, unexperienced, unexpressed madness, becomes one day too heavy, and then it explodes. It kills all sanity.

A really sane person always has a corner of his life for his madness also. That is part of life. And life is more beautiful with a little madness in it. So never be absolutely wise. A little foolishness gives a little salt to wisdom. A little foolishness gives humour, humbleness.

And a really wise man is also a fool.

[Another group member says: I couldn’t get the energy together to really cathart. I found out a lot of things in the group but my mind immediately labels them and then they are dead.]

It is a great quality. There are very few people who can remain always miserable (chuckling). It is almost spiritual.

Mm mm... so don’t do anything. For one month, remain as miserable as possible. And no love-making for one month; be celibate. Because I see some connection there. For one month be celibate, absolutely celibate. A catholic nun... and miserable. Both are religious things, mm?

(laughter).

Simply do it for one month and then I will say what I mean.

So, no love-making so that energy accumulates, and be miserable so that there is no expression of the energy, because misery is a closedness.

Almost always celibates have been miserable because they are trying to conserve energy. When you are happy, you release energy. So whenever you find yourself being happy, immediately change it. Even if you have caught yourself in the middle of a laughter, immediately drop it there and then.

There is nothing to worry about. I would just like to see how something in your energy system works and then I will be able to see perfectly what has to be done. Right now it is difficult because your energy system is a little messed up.

[Another group member says: I feel very shy and helpless.

For the first days I was sitting in the corner and didn’t do anything. Now I can go to people and I feel more love for them.]

That’s good. Don’t be a miser about love. Be a spendthrift. The more you give, the more you will have. Love is something that you earn by giving it. If you hoard it, it dies and leaves black holes in your being. If you give it, it flowers and in your being you feel lotuses flowering.

When you give love, you are not doing any kindness to anybody – you are kind to yourself.

Remember – it is selfish. The more you love people, the more happy you will become. Don’t make the mistake that ordinarily the whole humanity is making. People are very calculating about love. Even if they are going to smile, they think twice whether they should smile or not, and whether this person deserves it or not. What foolishness! It has nothing to do with the other person.

If you don’t smile, you will lose smiling. If you don’t give love, it will die and you will suffer. So go on giving it to people. Even go out of the way to love and share. Just with strangers be friendly and loving. Even when you are sitting alone, don’t sit as if you are alone. The whole of existence surrounds you – be loving to it.

Loving should become just a natural attitude, a climate that hovers around you. And everything becomes possible when love becomes possible. Love is the very door to all that is beautiful, true...

to all that is divine.

I can see that you are a little shy, withdrawing, keeping to yourself, not poking your nose into other people’s business, but that is dangerous for you. I don’t mean that you should go out and poke your nose into others’ affairs, but whenever there is an opportunity to share... and small things matter much. Just a smile and it changes your whole being.

Watch. A stranger passes by you and you say hello and smile. Suddenly you have a change. Your whole energy is no more the same as it was just a moment before. It is just as if a fresh breeze passed through you. That man passing by became an opportunity. You were reflected in him. You smiled, he smiled. You don’t know his name, he does not know yours.

Then you are on your way. You will never meet again, but through that energy transfer something happened. You will feel good. Your step will have a dance in it.

CHAPTER 26

Celebrate Simplicity

28 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the west says: My heart tells me to stay and my head says I have to go back and attend to my business, to work and make money. And it’s not even that it’s a conflict.]

Mm mm, it is not a conflict, that I can see. Just a friendly quarrel between the head and the heart; just two friends fighting, almost a loving nagging. That’s very good, because any conflict is destructive.

So don’t make it a conflict. My suggestion is that you go.

This is one of the very intricate secrets co be understood. I can say to you to stay, but if you stay, your mind will think of going, and that can be a burden. Then the whole beauty of staying is lost. So I would like you to go so that the hankering of the mind is finished. Soon there you will see that it was foolish to go, but let that be your experience. Then next time you will be coming more in tune and the head will be less antagonistic.

Always when there is something like this, it is better to go through it. Avoiding is always very costly.

In the beginning it seems cheap, but this nagging from the head will become more pronounced. It will gather more and more energy in its favour and soon it will be almost a hammering, and that is destructive. Whenever it is a question of deciding between the head and the heart, always give a chance to the head first because it is more superficial.

The heart has a more permanent world. The head is almost childish, curious. It is better to fulfill its curiosity and then let it know that it was foolish, so that it learns a lesson. The heart is something very permanent, almost eternal. You can come back again to the heart easily; it will wait. There is no hurry for it. The head is always in a hurry. The hurry is very symbolic.

The constant hurry of the head says that the head itself is aware that its existence is momentary.

One thought passes this moment. If you don’t do it right now, the next moment it may not be there.

So the head is constantly in a hurry.

Going there you will be closer to me. The further away you will be, the closer you will feel and the heart by and by will see the foolishness and stop. Then the whole energy will be available to the heart. Then come back – and next time coming back will be deeper. It is going to be deeper every time.

It is good not to create any conflict. The heart is very patient. If you decide for your head, the heart will never give you any trouble, but if you decide for the heart, the head is going to give you trouble. It is very violent and it is not patient at all. The heart can wait because it knows the beauty of waiting.

The head cannot wait; it is impatient.

So go and do what the head is saying to you, and then come back, mm?

[An ashram gardener says she is having bursts of anger throughout the day. Osho had previously told her to use the energy in work, and rather than throwing anger on people, to dig holes a little deeper, a little more vigorously!

She was doing this but found anger always arose in the same situation: when she was told to do something by someone in authority.]

Authority is a problem because of you. Try to relax about it. Make it a point that you will always follow the authority for the coming month. Let this be your attitude, that whatsoever it is, even if you see that it is wrong and otherwise would have been better, you follow the authority absolutely. Even if the authority is inconsistent, and that one day one thing is said to you and when you are half-way through the work, something else is said, then that too is okay.

This should be your idea – that you have to follow the authority, and then both things will be satisfied.

You are fulfilling your idea, nobody else’s. And of course the authority is to be followed, so there is no problem. Try it and it will be a tremendous insight for you.

These are subtle egos in fight. We rationalise them, but they have to be dropped. So do this and after one month, tell me.

Deva Arjava. It means divine simplicity. Arjava means simplicity and deva means divine.

I have given you the name Arjava so that simplicity can become your goal. Try to be simple in everything. Drop all complexities and then many things will follow spontaneously. If you are simple you cannot lie because a lie can never be simple; it has to be complicated. The very nature of a lie has to be complex. Only truth can be simple.

You have to remember a lie. You need not remember the truth; there is no need to carry it in the memory. But a lie has to be remembered continuously, otherwise in some unaware moment you might utter the truth. It may just be in small things that you lie. Someone may ask if you believe in God and you say yes without considering that you can’t believe if you don’t know. That is a lie.

Nobody will say it is a lie – they will say you are a believer. But how can you believe in something which you have not known?

Belief comes through experience, and unless you know, there is no possibility of believing. How can you trust something which has not even penetrated your consciousness and with which you have not come in any contact? It can only be a concept, verbal. Belief is of the heart; it cannot be verbal.

It is devotion, it is commitment.

We very rarely lie consciously, but we continuously lie unconsciously. Somebody asks if you love them and just to be polite you say ’Yes, you are such a lovely person’. And you don’t mean any harm; in fact you are trying to be polite. But all lies harm – maybe not today but tomorrow. The seed will take time to sprout, but if it carries poison in it, the fruit will carry the poison.

So if somebody asks ’Do you love me?’ think it over, meditate over it. It is going to be a great assertion, a great statement. If you don’t know, simply say, ’I don’t know’ Or say, ’I will think about it.

I have never thought about it.’ If you are in love with somebody and you say ’I will love you forever and forever’, you are lying, because tomorrow is not yours, so how can you promise?

You can say ’This moment I love you.’ Yes, that can be true. You love, and you know it and feel it; this moment it is true. But how can you say something about the next moment? Your future is also not yours yet. You are encroaching upon destiny. And then if tomorrow you suddenly find that love has simply disappeared and your promises prove false, what will you do?

You will get entangled in lies. You will pretend that you still love or you will throw the responsibility on the other person and say, ’You destroyed the love, otherwise I was going to love you for always!’

So remember to be simple in all possible ways. Even sometimes when you are not speaking, you can lie. You don’t want to say something and you keep quiet. That too is a lie, and you have created a complexity in your being. And it is not only with talking or keeping silent. If you are walking down a lonely street and you are walking in a certain way, if somebody else comes along, you will change.

That means a lie has entered. You were different, your reality was different just a moment before because there was no observer and so there was no question of performing. Now an observer has entered into it. Immediately you start performing. You start being false. He is a stranger, he may not even talk to you but just go on his way. He may not even be looking at you, may not even be aware that you are there, but you have lied.

So a lie is not a question of a relationship. You can lie alone, but that creates inner knots in your being. So just be simple and let simplicity be your continuous meditation. Sitting, walking, eating, meeting people, just go on watching. I don’t mean to make it a strain; be very very relaxed. If you are simple there is no need to be strained. You are not trying to prove anything; only a liar is trying to prove something or other.

A simple man is there in his total nudity, in his facticity. He has nothing to prove. If he is good, he is good. If he is bad, he is bad. He accepts himself, that’s why he is simple.

He has no grudge, no complaints. And he never wanted to be otherwise. If he meets God he will thank Him for making him this way. That is the meaning of simplicity: if you come across God you can thank Him for the way He has made you. You are happy and grateful. You don’t have any idea.

no image. You accept the simple facticity, the truth of your being.

Jesus says ’Blessed are the simple, blessed are the meek. Blessed are the humble because theirs will be the kingdom of God.’ In fact I would like to change his statement a little. He says ’Blessed are the meek for theirs will be the kingdom of God.’ I say ’Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God’. It is not anything that is going to happen in the future. The future tense is not right.

Already the kingdom of God is theirs; they are blessed. It is not that in some future, in some coming life, in the other world, the kingdom of God will be theirs. There is no cause and effect relationship.

They are blessed. The kingdom is theirs. There is no therefore in it. They are not earning it. They are simply enjoying, rejoicing, celebrating it.

So, celebrate simplicity. That is the meaning of the word ’arjava’.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been thinking about following and leading and realising that leading is what seems most familiar to me. I’ve been saying to myself that it’s alright to follow.

And I was thinking earlier on, that if you’d said to come, I couldn’t have – my legs just went numb!]

Everything is going well. These are growth problems.

When somebody starts growing there are problems. There are two types of problems. The first type is because you are stuck somewhere, blocked somewhere. There is another type of problem which is brought about by growth but it is healthy. The first type is unhealthy.

When you start growing, new avenues open, new ways. You have never travelled on those paths so problems are bound to arise. For example if you have been a leader and you have created an image of being a leader, then sooner or later you will see that if you want to grow, this image has to be dropped.

In life many things happen only when you are a disciple and not a leader. In fact all that is beautiful happens only when you are receptive, not active.

A leader is active; a follower is receptive, passive. The leader is male; the follower is female. You have remained tuned too much with the male image of leading, manipulating, telling people what to do, ordering. One day or other you will come to the point where you will see that this is not the way to learn the deepest secrets of life.

You are too much of a scout leader. It is good; there is nothing wrong in it. But a scout leader is a scout leader. The leader is basically political. The follower is religious. When one is leading, the ego is strengthened, enhanced, fulfilled. One feels very good. The ’I’ feels very decorated, enthroned, magnified.

When you are following you have to drop the ego. You have to receive. You have to become humble.

You have almost to come begging, head bowing down, surrendered. Then only that which is really sublime, happens. Then you become pregnant with the sublime.

This is a growth problem. And you have to understand it and relax your focused leadership. Drop it by and by. It is not that you need not use it; sometimes use it, when it is needed. But it should not become a constant pattern in you. When you are leading some group it is okay, but when you are out of the group, relax. There is no need for the leader to remain there, otherwise you will miss many things. You will miss love. You will miss truth. You will miss trust. You will miss the beautiful.

Somehow you will go on missing the divine, because for it you have to become empty, open, not knowing anything... and ready to receive and follow. So much ready that even if it goes against your intellect, you still go with it; you take the risk.

That’s what I felt.... You said you had nothing to say, but I was feeling you had something to say.

That too is your ideal of being a leader. It is easier for you to answer; it is difficult for you to ask.

That’s why your legs are feeling numb, because you are going somewhere where you will have to be receptive.

Many people feel nervous coming to me. They write notes to me saying that in the morning everything is okay, and that when they come to listen to me in the lecture they are flowing and perfect. But they say when they come to the darshan, somehow something starts trembling and they feel nervous.

In the morning it is okay because I am not talking to you directly. I am not addressing Bhasha, so you can think that I am talking to others. You can always say, Yes, this is how others are. You are right – others are fools.’ You can always exclude yourself; there is no trouble in it. But when I am talking to you directly, you are the fool! You cannot escape from it.

That creates a trembling, a numbness. But you have to understand it and relax. Start doing a few passive things which will be helpful. For example just lie down on the grass and look at the sky.

Don’t look for anything in particular; there is nothing. Don’t start studying the constellations and the stars and their names, no. Just look with empty eyes... just looking, and that too, very relaxed.

Nothing else to do but simply enjoying; not concentrating. Things like this where you need not do anything; you are simply passive.

Just go and sit by the side of the music group. People are singing, you just sit silently; listen, be passive. Anything in which you are not to play the active role will do. For one month continuously enjoy passivity. The numbness will disappear and you will become more loose.

One should be fluid. When one needs to be a leader, one should be. When one needs to be a follower, one should be a follower. One should not have a fixed role because that’s how people become imprisoned. The role becomes the imprisonment. Somebody is a leader and somebody is a follower. The follower cannot lead and the leader cannot follow; both are crippled.

A really alive energy will be flowing, whatsoever is needed. If the follower is needed, become the follower. If the leader is needed, become the leader. But you are neither. You are that fluidity, that loose energy which is available. You can mould it into any way. You don’t have a fixed gestalt.

Then you are more alive. This is how it should be about all the polarities. One should be a man and a woman both, a woman and a man both. Sometimes you need to be a woman, sometimes you need to be a man. Sometimes you need to be in the head and sometimes you need to be in the heart. Sometimes you need to think and sometimes you need not to think... all the polarities.

Richer is the person who manages to flow in all the polarities. Of course he will not be consistent, remember. A really alive person cannot be consistent. He will be tremendously inconsistent – just like me.

He will say one thing and immediately contradict it because he has no role. Whatsoever the moment needs, he takes on a role. He wears a particular role, but that is for the moment. When the need is gone, the role is gone. Again he is fluid and available.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26