Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There

Talks given from 1/9/77 to 30/9/77

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

1 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and patanga is a special moth that is very much attracted to fire, flame, and whenever there is flame the moth will come and jump into it. Its only love is fire. And hence the name ’patanga’ has become a metaphor in the east – a metaphor for the lover. A lover has to be like the moth – ready to jump into fire, ready to die, ready to disappear. God is the flame and the seeker has to be the moth....

[The new sannyasin says: I have been dancing since I was nine years old, but I never felt so much energy as here. When I danced here it was incredible!]

That’s true! Here the whole energy is of dance. And now your quality of dance will change: you will get more into it. It will not be just a profession; it will become a vocation. And when one can do something with great love, devotion, then each thing in life becomes meditation. And dance is such a beautiful phenomenon. There is nothing like dance as far as meditation is concerned.

So you have one of the most blessed vocations available to humanity. Your very work can become your meditation. So now dance with the idea that it has to be not just technically correct – that’s okay; technically it has to be correct. But it has to be meditative. Bring a quality of silence into it.

And while you are dancing, rather than manipulating yourself, relax; relax into it, let things happen.

Rather than making them happen, rather than creating them, let them happen. Be more innocent in it. And then you will be surprised that not only are you enjoying it, others will enjoy more. Wherever there is innocence, the door to the divine opens... and a dancer can do immense work.

Now you will be my sannyasin, so dance as a sannyasin should dance. And provoke god before you go into dance Remember me and just think that you are dancing for god not for ordinary people and dead churches have arisen. I want to bring all paganism back into religion – all the dance and the celebration and the song. All kinds of wild joys have to be brought back into religion; only they can infuse spirit into it. Otherwise it is dead and people are just carrying its corpse. Sooner or later it has to be buried or burned unless we can bring wild joy back into religion.... So dance! And next time you come here, dance for the sannyasins too, mm ? Good!

[Osho suggests to a sannyasin he sets up a centre in his home town when he returns. The sannyasin replies there is only he and his wife who are sannyasins there.]

Mm mm, but that is enough to start the whole world! Adam and eve and here we go! Start a small centre!

This will be the name: asti. It means be, being. The latin word ’est’ comes from asti, and from ’est’

comes existence; existence means the same. And the most important thing in the world is moving your energy from doing to being, changing your focus from doing to being. The western mind is too concerned with doing, and the eastern focus is how to be. And if you are in a state of being, then all that is good follows easily. It follows like a shadow; you need not do it. And when things follow easily, spontaneously, they have a beauty and a grace. But to attain to being, a few things are needed.

The hippies have the right slogan for being: ’Turn on, get off and be.’

There are two types of people in the world: the people who can be called ’turned off people’ – sad, depressed, negative, dull, dead, dragging as if the whole world’s burden is on them, continuously worrying and worrying. Nothing seems to be bright to them; all is dark and all is doomed. They are always waiting for the doomsday. These people cannot become my sannyasins unless they are turned on.

The other kind is the ’turned on people’ who are joyous, who are always looking for something adventurous, always expecting that something is going to happen. They are leaning more towards the brighter side of life. They can see the white lining, the silver lining in the dark cloud. Only these people are capable of being religious. The turned off people are against god. The turned on people are for god, because god is possible when you are turned on totally, aflame... your whole being in a dance.

So the first quality for a sannyasin is to attain to a state of ’turn-on’ and the second quality is to get off your ego trips.

Otherwise somebody can be turned on, but for wrong reasons. A politician can be very turned on for his ego trip. A money maniac can be very turned on and can always be rushing joyously around for more and more money. An adolf hitler is turned on – a power maniac. So, unless the ego is dropped and the ego trips are dropped, just turning on does not help. So the second principle is: get off your trips, and then to be is very simple. One thing is to be joyous, another thing, not to be involved in ego trips... and the sannyasin is born. ’Asti’ means to be, and all meditations lead to this space, ’asti’.

ancient and old, and you are going young! Your face has really lost all worries.

[The sannyasin adds: If I stayed much longer I would be no age at all.]

You would be! So very good.... Keep on being young and a child. That is the most valuable thing –

if one can persist in being a child. And keep the image of a child of three years old... because it is between three and four that civilisation enters.

Up to the third year a child lives in a totally different world: in the mysterious, in the wonderful, in the fantastic. The child lives in the psychedelic. All is full of colour and potentiality and poetry, and everything thrills him. It does not matter what it is – just pebbles on the seashore. Everything has immense beauty. The child has eyes for it. He is open from everywhere, he is not yet closed. He is not yet sophisticated and destroyed... he is still primitive.

It is always good to go for a walk with a three or two-year-old child and to commune with him, to see what he is doing, to see how he walks and how he becomes interested in everything. A butterfly or a flower or a dog barking and the child is involved with each moment so totally. Only the child knows how to live, or when one again becomes a child, one knows how to live. In between there is only misery and hell.

So keep this idea of a two or three-year-old. Let that be your reality and your chronological age just a social phenomenon, just a facade. Just from the outside be grown-up; from the inside remain a child. And when you are alone, drop all your grown-upness; it is not needed. Behave like a child.

And it will be good – play with small children.

Sometimes take them, go for a walk on the seashore or anywhere – in a garden – and just behave like them; don’t force them to behave like you. Just follow them and you will find new insights arising in you.

You are close to a second birth, that’s why you are feeling this. And when a man is born again, when one attains to a second birth in life, all is attained; there is nothing else to attain.

Don’t allow anything to hinder it, because nothing is more valuable than this. And always remember jesus. He goes on saying to his disciples, ’Unless you are a child again, you will not enter into the kingdom of god.’ Heaven is only for the innocent. For the clever and cunning and the calculating there is only hell.

Sometimes it will be very frightening to feel like a child because then you become so vulnerable, so open, and anybody can hurt you. You become so helpless again... but that helplessness is beautiful.

To be vulnerable is beautiful; to be hurt sometimes is beautiful. Just to avoid those hurts we become hard, we gather a crust, very steel-like, an armour. It is safe but it is dead.

So good, indivar. You are going in a really beautiful space! Remain in it, and invite it again and again.

a channel for me and many people are coming; go on helping them. And remain unworried about everything. I will take care!

[A sannyasin says she feels afraid, as if she is dissolving, and her body is jerking a lot. Osho checks her energy.]

Nothing to be worried, nothing to be feared at all but something to be happy about. The energy is arising and you have to help it. If you are afraid then you will not help. If you are afraid you will start hindering it, you will start controlling it, and that will be dangerous.

The jerks will disappear once the energy has spread all over the spine. It is just at the base, very active, and you are holding it there because of fear. If you drop fear, it will start rising. For a few days you will find great jerks happening; you will become a jerk. But once it has spread all over the spine, jerks will disappear and then you will feel great peace and great power, both together.

And fear is natural, so I am not condemning it; I am just making you aware that you need not get into it too much. It is natural; something so much is happening that one tends to be afraid. Where will it lead? Where will it land one? One knows not.

If we know something, we are less afraid; if we don’t know then we are more afraid. But no need to be worried. Something really beautiful is happening – help it! Whenever you are sitting alone, relax and let the jerks come. Invite them, cooperate with them. If your body is jerking, then help; rather than hindering, help. Sometimes lying down, let the jerks come; sometimes standing up let the jerks come; sometimes sitting let the jerks come. Allow it in as many postures as possible so the energy is spread sooner.

It will take a few days – not more than three weeks, mm? If you allow it and cooperate with it, within three weeks it will be all over you. Then the jerking will disappear and there will be very very calm power inside you. You will feel immensely powerful and at the same time immensely calm. That’s the indication of something spiritual happening.

If there is only power then it is the mind. If it is only silence then too it is the mind; the mind can have it both ways. If the mind becomes very very skilled there is silence. If the mind becomes very very ecstatic there is power... but these are both mind polarities.

When both happen together – peace and power – which is a rare phenomenon... because they always happen separately; the mind cannot be both. Either it can be powerful or can be silent, peaceful. This togetherness is possible only in the beyond; the spirit can be both together.

So this should be your practice for three weeks, in as many postures – sometimes lying on your back, sometimes lying on your chest. Find out as many postures as you can. Invent them; there is no need to ask anybody, just invent. And you will find soon, within two, three days, in which postures it comes more. Then those are the postures to be followed. Drop those postures in which it is not much; choose those ones in which it comes more.

earthquake, that is the right posture. Follow that posture more. Within three weeks you be settled.

Good.

[A sannyasin says her partner acts jealous, makes her more important than she is.]

Not jealous – I think he feels that he is inferior. You are using the wrong word. He thinks that you are a goddess and he is worthless. Is that what it is? (she nods) Then it is not jealousy!...

That too is a way of manipulating people – to make them very important. That’s a kind of strategy, a very parasitical trip. When you make somebody very high, you have power over the person because it is your power now to keep him high or throw him down. If anybody – for example, [your partner]

– puts you very high on a pedestal, you think he is making you powerful. But he is also becoming powerful, because only he can keep you on that pedestal, nobody else. And he knows that – that you will have to depend on him otherwise you will not be on the pedestal; you will be an ordinary woman. He has made a goddess of you! So it is a very very subtle strategy to keep control over you.

By being dependent on you, he makes you dependent on him. And you enjoy the trip – that he is making you so high. When you enjoy the trip, you have to fulfill a few conditions. For example, a goddess should not do a tantra group! That’s so simple. So he is angry because you have gone against the rules of the game. He was making you a goddess and you participate in a tantra group?

It is okay for human beings but not for goddesses! So he will be angry, he will take revenge. He has invested too much in your godhood and now you behave like a woman.

This is the trick; this is very ancient. [He] has not invented it; it is very ancient. Man has always put women on a pedestal so that she cannot come down. Man has either worshipped woman or condemned her. Either she is a worm crawling on the earth or she is a goddess, but he never makes her equal to himself; that is dangerous. Both are okay – either she is very high in the sky, untouchable, or she is very low, again untouchable, but she is never equal. When a woman is very low she can be repressed, punished for anything that the man feels is wrong. Or she is a goddess; then she can be thrown from the pedestal – that too is a kind of punishment.

But woman needs to be equal to man – neither low nor high – and for that man is not ready, because to make the other equal means you cannot control her any more. You cannot control an equal. Low and high can both be controlled but the equal person is free; the equal is equal.

So get down from the pedestal. Just tell him that you are a human being, not a goddess. Now what are you doing? – you must be pretending to be a goddess, so you are cooperating with him. Don’t cooperate! You simply tell [him], ’I am an ordinary woman as you are an ordinary man. I don’t want to be worshipped like a goddess. I have all kinds of desires as any woman will have. I am just plain ordinary.’ Get down from the pedestal rather than him throwing you; simply get down. You will feel good and you will unburden him also.

If he cannot love you, then he will find some other woman whom he can put on a pedestal and that doesn’t suit you. Don’t do that; that is below you. Keep your status.’

So you enjoy the status but then you feel petrified. You would like to be an alive human being. So you are trying to do two contradictory things. If you want to be a fully warm-blooded woman, a real woman, then get down from the pedestal. All pedestals are a kind of disease I call ’pedestalitis’.

Get down and tell [him] that you are not going to become a goddess. Be natural and true and whatsoever happens has to be accepted. If he leaves you, that’s his business. If he remains with you, you will be more free; he will be more free. And this will be helping him too... because he is also wrong. He will never be happy. First you put a woman on a pedestal; then you cannot make love to her. How can you make love to a goddess? – it looks ugly. You cannot make love to your mother and you have put her up as a mother, a mother superior. Then you cannot make love to her, or even if you do, you feel guilt. He will not be happy, because he will continuously suffer from inferiority; he has made you superior.

Tell him ’I am just an ordinary woman. I don’t want any other respect.’ That is the greatest respect we can pay to each other as human beings! That will help. And if some complexity arises, both come together, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says that after she has done groups she slips back into her old space. Osho reminds her that the group can give you a new perspective, a new attitude towards things. It’s up to you to discover which attitudes are helpful and to adopt them as guidelines in your life.... ]

For example, in a group you don’t feel jealous; then don’t feel jealous while you are outside. In a group if there are twelve people you become so much one with the energy you are not separate.

You lose yourself; you become part of the energy that is happening there. Then keep that in your awareness. While meditating become part of the whole meditator’s group. While listening become part of all the people who are listening to me. While sitting with friends, let that be a group. While swimming let that be a group. Just learn the basic principles that help you: one, two, three – there are not many. Just remember those two, three principles and let your life be run on those three principles. Soon you will see that the whole of life is a group.

What can a group do? A group is such a small thing and such a big world is going on all around.

Why not make it a group? It is a group, and this whole ashram is a group.

But you are simply afraid that the old will come and you are not doing anything to prevent it coming.

You will have to learn that, otherwise the old can come; because if you start functioning with your old mind, again it will be there.

At least for a few months one has to function on new principles. Then the old becomes rotten, loses functioning, and you have a new mind to work with. You don’t fall into the old again and again.

So tonight just sit silently, remember what things have helped you in the group. Write them down: one, two, three – in short – just the basic principles about what had helped you, what made you feel

[She has asked several times about being in love with someone who is already in a relationship, and Osho has told her to find someone else. Now she tells him she is still with this person, but feels guilty.]

Be! That is your business!...

There is no need to feel guilty... there is no need to feel guilty. Be with him – just don’t bring that problem to me, mm? because then it has nothing to do with me. It is your business to decide. If some problem arises or something, don’t bring that problem to me, that’s all. No need to feel guilty.

If you want to do that, do it. A few people only learn by experiencing things, so you have to go through the experience, that’s all. I cannot... even knowing that something is going wrong I cannot prevent you and I don’t want to prevent you. Because if I do, you will always think I prevented you, otherwise there was going to be an incredible love affair or something. So go into it, and whatsoever happens is good. Just one thing: once you decide not to follow my advice, then about that thing never write to me again. Then it is your business; that is finished with me, mm ? But there is no need to feel guilt and there is no need to feel that you are doing something wrong. It is perfectly right

– it is your decision. But then whatsoever happens is your responsibility; you have to bear it. I’m not concerned. Right? Good!

[Osho spoke about ’missing’ in the discourse about a week ago. On another occasion he’d said that one shouldn’t feel guilty for not following his advice, so a sannyasin took that as meaning she could do as she liked and disregard Osho’s suggestions about her sadhana. You go on misinterpreting me, Osho told us.... ]

What I said was simply to help you so you don’t become burdened with guilt. I have not said to start doing whatsoever you want to do. I have not said to go against my advice. I have simply said that if sometimes you feel like going against it and it is impossible for you to follow my advice... I am not saying that by not following my advice you will gain something; I am saying that you miss something.

But there is no need to feel guilty; missing is enough punishment. Many of you go on missing but you will never know what you are missing. Only I feel sad for you... only I feel great compassion when I see somebody missing. He is not even aware that he is missing. He may have missed by just a few inches. Home was very close but he will never become aware of it. He will never be able to look back.

CHAPTER 2

2 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, nispati means conclusion. And there are two types of conclusion: one is logical, intellectual, another is of the heart. The logical conclusion is superficial; only the conclusion that arises in life through love is decisive. You can go on arguing and thinking round and round; thinking moves in a circle. It always feels as if something is happening, as if one is arriving, but one never arrives, and each conclusion simply begins to be another question. Each conclusion starts another question. No conclusion is conclusive as far as intellect is concerned. You can come to a temporary decision that this is so, but immediately a thousand and one questions arise out of that and again you are on the way. So the conclusion only appears to be conclusive but is not; it is deceptive. When love concludes, it is really conclusive; then there is no question. Then questioning disappears; one simply knows. There is no proof for it, there is no argument for it, and you cannot convince anybody about your love conclusion – there is no way. One is almost dumb; one cannot say anything about it.

One can live it and those who have eyes will be able to see that one has arrived, that something has bloomed, that there is deep contentment, that life is no more a longing but a satisfaction, no more a desire but an arrival. One has arrived! The very vibe says it, the eyes say it but there is no way to prove it. If somebody wants logical proof then the mystic has no proof: his god is beyond proof. That’s what I mean by ’prem nispati’ – conclusion that does not come through logic but comes through love. God is that conclusion. Let love be your path. Begin in love and you will end in god.

[A sannyasin says he feels a knot in his neck. Osho checks his energy.]

It is there... but it is something to be happy about. The energy has come to that centre; it has never been there before So it is not really a block Just because energy has never been there point. You have not felt it anywhere else because the whole passage was clear. But this part has remained unfunctioning so it just needs to be functioning. And you need not do anything about it because anything you do will be a hindrance in the process; you have simply to allow the process.

Whenever you feel it, this will be a good exercise. Just look up and let the head go as far back as possible and look there, mm? so more tension will be there at the neck. Relax, then come forward; lean forward, relax the neck. Do this just two, three times – two, three times a day. It is just giving energy a help. The energy will do the work on its own... nothing to be worried about!

[A sannyasin says that during kundalini meditation she feels as if her body is dissolving and there is a sensation of energy rising up from her centre. She feels so much fear she cannot do it.]

No, that is the meditation to do because that has given you your first glimpse. But when the first glimpse comes, the first fear also comes. They are associated, they come together. So whenever you become very much afraid of some experience, then remember, that is the meditation to go into.

If you are not afraid of a meditation it is not going to help at all. That means your old identity is safe. Fear comes only when the old identity is in danger, the ground underneath is slipping. You are moving into something, you don’t know what, and one feels panicky. Fear is always a good indication that something is going to happen through this method.

Kundalini has touched your hara, and you have felt something like death around you; that’s why you felt like disappearing, that’s why the feeling of choking, as if you are being killed, as if you are being crucified, hanged. But whenever death is so close by it is a great moment. If you can go into it you will know that you are immortal – that death happens and still you are.

Maharishi Raman attained to enlightenment through death. He was only seventeen or eighteen and suddenly he felt he was dying. He was doing meditations; he must have unknowingly hit his hara.

He was so absorbed in his meditation that he had left home and escaped and was sitting near a temple. The temple was dirty as indian temples are; there were flies and dogs everywhere. He was sitting there, hungry for many days, and all over his body were flies. Dogs were barking and children playing nearby – the indian village scene.

And then suddenly he felt that he was dying, but he accepted it. It was okay: if one was dying, one was dying. He relaxed into death; his body fell down. A crowd gathered and they thought that this boy was dead. And what was happening inside was of tremendous value, ultimate value. Ramana saw his body disappearing. That’s where you came very close to. But he accepted and you rejected.

Then he saw his mind disappearing – but he accepted it. And then a smile came over his face. The body disappeared, the mind disappeared and he was still there! Nothing had died! So he opened his eyes and laughed! He said to people, ’Death is impossible. I have seen the body disappearing, I have seen the mind disappearing but I was still there. I was the watcher; I was the witness of it all!’

Since that moment death disappeared for him. He lived for many years after that – fifty years – but he lived in a deathlessness. Then there was life, and eternal life.

[Osho checks her energy.]

trust me that I will take care. You can afford to die.

So when next time it starts happening, simply go into it and you will find me there. At the last stage of death, you will see me. And kundalini is the method that you have to continue. Do other methods also, but kundalini is a must!

[A sannyasin therapist has led his first group in the ashram and said he felt stuck because it was just a continuation of what he was doing in the West.]

Then I think that for a few days you should not do any groups, mm? – that will be a continuation.

For a few days forget about doing groups. Just relax. And enjoy – if you enjoy any meditation or anything... or just relax. For a few days forget about groups. For at least two months, no group. Let it be a gap, and if then something new arises in your mind and a new urge comes to do something, then tell me; we will make a group for you. But invent something; no need to repeat the old.

[The sannyasin says he would like to take it easy, but needs something to do, otherwise he goes nuts.]

You are nuts! You don’t go nuts! So that’s good – you can do any kind of work I find, otherwise you can do your group.

But in doing your group be more playful and more inventive, more imaginative. Don’t think of efficiency too much – that is a barrier, because if you think too much of efficiency then you have to repeat the old. About that you are perfectly clear, certain; you know the result and you know you will be more helpful. So it is better to do that – but then you are in a rut.

The new thing may not be so good, may not be so successful, may not help people so much, but my vision is always that even if the new fails, it succeeds more than the rut – even if the old rut succeeds. To fail with the new is far better than to succeed with the old, because even in that failure there is life.

And when you are feeling in a rut the group will not have real life because the life comes from the leader. He vibrates it: he is at the centre and ripples arise out of him. If he himself is not vibrating with joy and he is simply doing something because he knows how to do it and he knows what is going to happen and he is following a programme, then there will be no vibe. People will be benefited but the real thing will be missing. There will be no radical change in people. It will be okay – exactly as you said – and okay is not good enough. When you are alive and imaginative and playful, then something is possible; something radical is possible. You will be surprised by it when it happens and others will be surprised. Unless the leader is in a situation that he can be surprised by his own act, the group is dead. So make it a point that you have to be surprised by yourself and not know what is going to happen next. Something is bound to happen! When so many people are there, throbbing with energy, something is bound to happen. Don’t follow a rut. You can do the group that you have suggested, but then be playful. Try that, then we will see.

CHAPTER 3

3 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning of prem nutan: new, fresh love. Love is synonymous with life. If you can be true to love then there is no need for any other religion. Love is the highest religion possible and it takes you tot the ultimate goal. When there is flow, life has a glow. When there is no flow, life is just so-so. When you have lived this moment, drop it, it is meaningless. Dropping the experience each moment is what makes life continuously flowing.

[The new sannyasin asks if there is any value in making descriptions of what happens here, for other people.]

Yes, you can make them; there is no problem. In fact that is one of the ways to get rid of experience.

If something is heavy in your mind the best way is to release it. Write it down and be finished with it, say good-bye. It is perfectly good. In fact, I tell people sometimes to keep diaries only so that they can go on putting their mind garbage in the diary. It can be of some help to somebody but it is not going to be of any help to you. It is not going to be of any help to you; it can be a hindrance to you.

So I say to people to write the diary, but I also say never read it. Because you have lived it – it is finished! In fact writing it is the funeral, mm? – you have done all that you could do. You lived the experience; now you have recorded the experience. If others want to use it, they can; you are finished with it. It can be of some use to others – sometimes of much use because others may not have passed on that way. Others may not have seen that space; others may be completely unaware that things like this exist. That may create an enquiry, a thirst, a longing. That may call a few people to that dimension which you have described... but it is of no use for you!

So if o keep records for o r o n se then don’t keep them

If o are keeping records for

it will be useful for others.

That’s how millions of people are benefited by the experience of others... but not just by reading.

Reading simply gives an enquiry, it does not give you the experience.

If you have experienced me here and you write about it, that writing is not going to help anybody to experience me but it can create a desire. It can put someone on the path towards me. To experience me he will have to come to me. He will have to invite me into his heart; there is no other way. It cannot be borrowed: your experience cannot become his, mm? But your experience can open a door that may have remained closed for him up to now. He may not have looked at this possibility.

So it is good – keep the record... and forget. Once you have written forget about it. It has nothing to do with you; you are completely out of it. You have given the finishing touch and let that be the full point.

[The sannyasin says he belonged to a group which studied Alice Bailey... ]

A good author but without any experience... a very good author. If you have not experienced it, you might almost believe that he has experienced, he is such a good author, has a rare quality. Because if you have not experienced it, to write in that way is very difficult... but he has done that.

In the past hundred years there have been a few very rare authors; he is one of them: a man who has no experience but has great understanding – intellectual. It is so deep an intellectual understanding that only an experienced man can feel that he has not seen it. Sometimes it happens – because to write is, in itself, a great art.

For example, you have experienced me but you may not be a good author, your description may be poor. You talk to somebody who is really an artist; he has not seen me and he has not been with me. You talk to him and he takes fragments from you, elaborates on them, creates a kind of system.

His writing may be far more valuable than your writing... as far as writing is concerned. He may be more logical, more penetrating, more appealing if he has the art, but still something will be missing

– that will be in your writing. Something essential will be missing in his writing. On the surface he will do everything that he can. It will be a lamp without a flame. But for those who have not seen the flame, even the lamp is more than enough. Once you have seen the flame then you will know whether the lamp is lit or not.

Bailey is one of those beautiful authors, another is Leadbeater, another is Rudolph Steiner. These hundred years have seen many people. This is one of the most intellectual ages in history. Our approach is intellectual; we go through the intellect. And if somebody is very articulate, he can create such a picture that you will feel that he has been there; he has been in that space.

But Bailey can be helpful because whatsoever fragments he has gathered from other sources are all valuable. He himself may not have experienced, but he has some contact with sources where the experience has happened. He is making fragments available to people which are true, but only as fragments One fragment that he has taken from one source is true another fragment from another all alive sources. Each technique in itself is right – nothing is wrong about it. Taken separately, each is true. Put together with all the other techniques there is no whole; there is no centre that holds them all in one. They are all eclectic; they don’t have any soul.

It is as if you have cut somebody’s hand and somebody’s head and somebody’s leg and somebody’s body, and then you put all the fragments together. You can sew them together so perfectly that the body looks whole; somebody can be deceived – but the soul is missing! The hands had been alive when they were with their source, the head had been alive when it was with its source, and so every fragment had been alive, had come from an alive man. But now it is no more alive and there is no centre that holds them together.

Good, Bailey is good – he has brought you here – but he is not a master. But these people are also needed; the world needs all kinds of people. The world needs teachers too; he is a good teacher.

And this is the distinction that I make: a master is one who has known himself. He may not be a good teacher, he may be – that depends. There have been many masters who were not good teachers, they were not very articulate: as far as teaching was concerned, they were poor people.

But they knew the experience. There are teachers who are not masters. They teach perfectly well but they have not known themselves. It is very rarely that a man is both a master and a teacher.

When a man is both a master and a teacher – when he has known and has the capacity to make it known to you – that is a rare phenomenon.

Bailey is a good teacher.... But teachers are needed. By and by through the teachers you move towards the masters....

[Osho gives sannyas to someone.]

This will be your new name and a new beginning, a new birth. Think of it as a resurrection – let the old die. And it is only a question of understanding to let the old die. It is dead already. It is not clinging to you; you are clinging to it. So just the understanding is enough: you lose your grip on it, you open your fist and it is gone.

And the name is just a metaphor for the new beginning so the old identity is broken.

Purna means whole, ananda means bliss – purnananda means ’whole bliss’. Whenever we are whole there is bliss. Bliss is a function of being whole. Whenever we are fragmented there is misery; misery is a shadow of being fragmented. And we are fragmented... we have been forced to become fragments; we have been divided in many ways.

Man is almost on the cross, and this is the way I understand the cross: man is divided vertically and horizontally, like a cross. Horizontally he is divided into the lower and the higher. The lower is condemned, the higher is praised, and a rift opens. Then you are never at ease; you can never be at ease – because you are one! Nothing is lower and nothing is higher. It is the same blood that circulates in the heart, in the genitals, in the legs, in the head; nowhere is it divided. It is the same skin that covers you all over. It is the same life that is in the head and in the feet. But we have a The lower has to be condemned and repressed. So the first rift opens; horizontally you become divided – you are two.

And then another division happens: the inner and the outer, the body and the soul, the material and the spiritual. So you are divided again. The material and the outer become the lower. The spiritual and the inner become the higher. So man is constantly in conflict.

R.D.Laing has written a book, ’The Divided Self’ – one of the most perceptive books written in this century. He is one of the most perceptive minds. And he thinks that it is the division that is man’s pathology: if man can drop division he will be whole and healthy.

Purna means whole and ananda means bliss. When this cross is thrown away and you accept your being as a totality, then misery cannot exist. Because misery is in conflict, in fight, fight with yourself... and that is a stupid fight because you cannot win. How can one win against oneself?

There are not two, so nobody can be defeated and nobody can be a winner. It is as if one’s hands are both wrestling against each other. It is going to be indecisive – it will never be decided – because the winner can turn any moment and the defeated can become the winner. And there is only one person and one is fighting with oneself. It is a shadow fight, hence stupid... but it creates much misery.

Even when sometimes a thing is false, it can create very real misery. For example, you are going on an early morning walk, and it is still dark. You see a rope on the road and you think it is a snake and you start running. You are afraid, in a panic and perspiring; your heart is throbbing. Then somebody says, ’That is just a rope, there is no snake.’ Then you will laugh... but the illusory snake created a very real misery.

So it does not matter whether something is illusory or not; it can create a very real problem. This fight with oneself is very very illusory. This division is false but it works; it goes on creating hell.

So this is my message [to you]... to drop all divisions. Accept yourself as a total, one organic phenomenon, undivided. There is nothing lower, nothing higher, nothing outer, nothing inner; it is all one. There is no material, no spiritual; it is all one. There is no world, no god; it is all one.

Once this has been accepted, understood, you will immediately feel a silence descending on you.

The fight is finished. This is what I call arriving home.

And I am not a spiritual guru in the sense of one who helps you to attain to spirituality, who condemns much, who seduces you into a great struggle, who provokes you, challenges you to fight more, to fight more strongly. A spiritual guru is one who wants to change you.

I don’t want to change you at all... I don’t want to change anybody. Change is an ugly word for me. I teach acceptance, not change. I would like you just to be the one that you are. There is no need to go anywhere and to be somebody else. All that is needed to be blissful is already given you. It has already happened; it is already the case. You just go on being miserable; that is your creation.

everybody so perfect that there is no way to improve. All programmes of improvement are doomed.

They create misery and nothing else, because you fail again and again and you cannot improve.

The very idea of improving gives you a goal in the future so the present becomes a misery and your hope hangs somewhere in the future. Great desire arises and you become very tense. So your so-called spiritual people are always tense.

My whole approach is to help you to relax – not to change, not to improve, not to make you better; you are already better. This world is the most perfect world... it cannot be better.

So I am not a guru in that sense. I am at the most a friend who has understood one thing – that if one wants to be happy, one should drop all programmes for the future. I am just happy as I am, and that’s my whole message: I would like you to be just as you are.

[The new sannyasin says he feels finished with everything except love and laughter.]

No, I can see that there is still something left, otherwise I would not have told you. Consciously you may think...

That cross is there. Consciously you may think that you have nothing else left – you may think intellectually it is all mumbo jumbo....

[The sannyasin says that he does not know what to do when he returns to the West, but it is a comfortable not-knowing.]

It is perfectly all right not to know. In fact, it will be wrong if you know what to do. That means you will be manipulating the future from this moment. Just be there and see. Whatsoever happens is good... all that happens is good.

Once we have some expectations that it should happen this way and it doesn’t, then there is trouble.

And even if it happens we are not happy, because then it is just our expectation fulfilled.We knew it already, so there is no thrill, no joy. If it doesn’t happen – and there is ninety-nine percent of the possibility of it not happening – then we are miserable. If it happens we are not ecstatic, because we knew it would. If it doesn’t happen, we are very very miserable; in both ways we lose.

It is always good to remain in a not-knowing mind. That is the true mind – a not-knowing mind, a mind that does not know what is going to happen tomorrow. About tomorrow, if it comes, we will see and respond. Whatsoever we can do in that moment, we will do. There is no need to rehearse it because no rehearsal is going to be adequate. We don’t know what exactly is going to be there so whatsoever we prepare will really be a hindrance in facing the reality that will be there. It will not allow you to see what is there. It will be a prejudice; it will disfigure and distract our mind from that which is. So it is better to go with a not-knowing mind. Something is going to happen, and if we are open we can make something out of it. When one is not ready for anything, much creativity is possible; one is innocent....

interested in being a lover... Sometimes it happens that the man is not interested in being a lover or a husband – he is interested in being a father figure. Then you will fit perfectly well with each other; otherwise there will be misery.

The other way and really the only way is that you pass through a few groups – primal, rebirthing...

because that simply shows something that is hanging from your childhood. So you cannot grow from there, and whenever there is a love space, you relax in it and immediately go back to your childhood.

Something is stuck there; it needs completion. So you can either find somebody who wants to be a father – then you will fit with each other but the relationship will be ill.

There are many ’happy’ marriages which are really pathological. They are happy in the sense that both are satisfied because both have a kind of pathology that fits with each other – for example, a sadist and a masochist. Somebody who wants to torture somebody is a sadist and somebody who wants to be tortured is a masochist. Now, if a sadist and a masochist are married it will be one of the most happy marriages, because one wants to torture, that is his happiness – another wants to be tortured; that is his or her happiness. They will fit like a glove and hand. Sometimes people think this is a very happy marriage; this is an ill marriage. They are both neurotic!

So out of one hundred marriages, ninety are miserable and nine are ill, but they look happy. There is rarely a marriage – it is a very rare chance – where the marriage is not ill, and happy. But that is possible only when both the persons are grown-up, mature, and have no hangovers from the past.

Then there is a different kind of meeting.

So if you just want to be happy – to have just a very ordinary happiness – you can find someone.

There are people who don’t want a woman, who want a baby. That’s why husbands call the wife

’baby’ and things like that; that is stupid.

So find somebody who wants to call his beloved ’baby’; that means he has something for you. He wants a baby. Man’s ego feels very satisfied when the woman becomes a baby. Then you are completely helpless; you have to depend on him totally. He is the provider, he is the master of the house and you are just a child. He enjoys protecting you, patronising you... but this is an ill thing.

You are not a baby any more.

When are you going to be grown up? – because grown-upness has its own joys. Those you will miss. And they are far superior to being a helpless baby, but for them you will have to unlearn something in the past.

Go through primal and rebirthing, and really go into them – because this is of great importance for your whole life. Otherwise one day or other you will find a man who is interested in being a father and you will settle. People will call this a very happy marriage. It will not be a marriage at all, because how can an old father be married to a small baby? – there is such distance. But you will be happy because you will not need to be responsible, and he will be happy because you will be completely dependent on him. His ego will be fulfilled; your irresponsibility will be fulfilled. But there will be no joy, no love; you will not grow out of that relationship.

death is coming; it is no more healthy.

It is time that you get out of this, mm? So rather than moving into relationships, go into these groups.

Good!

[Osho assigned some groups to an Indian sannyasin, who reports that he cannot find any reality inside, not even an ego or feeling... he feels dead. Osho has also suggested rolfing for him.]

Mm mm, rolfing will also help; do rolfing too. I can understand – your problem is there. But in fact, that’s how many indians live. It is just that you have become aware of it.

It is just that the majority of people in india have got into this kind of space; they have lost track of life. For so many centuries life-negation has been taught to them. It has gone into the blood, in the very marrow, so one has become dull. Whatsoever seems to be joyful seems to be wrong, and whatsoever is right makes you dull; this is the dilemma.

But people are not aware of it, so there is no problem; when you are not aware, there is no problem.

Problems arise only when you become aware of it. So in a way it is a problem; in another sense, there is a possibility you can change. They will never change because they don’t have the problem; they are not aware of it.

Somebody is suffering from cancer and is not aware of it. There is no problem at all, although he is dying. He may have been suffering from cancer for years but he has not suffered because he does not know. Today he goes to the doctor, and the doctor says ’There seems to be cancer’; now he will suffer. So he is not suffering from cancer; he is suffering only from the awareness – otherwise there has been cancer for two years and he has not suffered at all. Now that he has become aware, there is suffering; now there is trouble. That’s what the situation is: you have become aware of something of which the east has completely become oblivious.

It is a good indication. You can come out of it – a little effort is needed. And you will never be happy now unless you come out of it; there is no going back.

Ordinarily I don’t allow indians to participate in the groups. I have allowed you for a particular reason, because I see the problem has come into your consciousness You will have to go through some processes to get rid of it. You cannot forget it now. And it is good that one cannot forget – one can solve it. It will be there like an arrow continuously wounding you unless you get rid of it....

Go through rolfing, mm? And right now you are not in any kind of love relationship?... That will help tremendously; that’s what you are missing....

First go through rolfing, mm? – that will relax your armour and your musculature. And that will help.

Then you find a partner. It will be of immense value and the love challenge will help you to become alive. Without love, life tends to become dull and boring because then there is nothing to do. Love brings adventure One can hope that something is going to happen; one can revive hope again It

Mm! he is perfectly okay, not only physically – he is spiritually going very well. Physical okayness is okay, but spiritually he is really going high. He is turned on.

[The sannyasin is leaving and Osho tells him he has much work to do for him. The sannyasin says he also needs to work on himself.]

That I can do. I can spare you! You start work on others, I will go on working on you.

In fact, when you start working on others, much starts happening to you. The best way to learn in the world is to teach, and if you want to be helped by god, help others. That’s how one learns and deserves the help.

If you show compassion to people, great compassion will flow towards you. If you give, you will get...

and a thousandfold. So never be a miser in giving. God is miserly only with misers!

[The sannyasin asks about a buzzing in the head accompanied by a kind of whistling; this has been going on for years.]

It is perfectly good; don’t think that it is something wrong. It is the sound of your innermost being; it is the inner music. But it can drive one mad, mm? it is so constant. And if you become afraid of it, then there is trouble. Accept it, welcome it, cherish it, and whenever it is there and you are sitting silently and there is no other work, just sway with it.

The sound is there – let dance be also....

It will become a violin! Start dancing and you will transform its quality.

[The sannyasin says he would like to understand the symbolism of the Rajneesh Foundation symbol.]

It is a very simple symbol. Just in the middle there is one point; that means one – the ultimate source and the ultimate goal. The journey is from one to one. One becomes three – the triangle around it: the trinity of christians or the three faces of hindu gods, trimurti, or if you understand the language of physics, then electron, neutron, positron... but one becomes three. Then three becomes nine, because each one again becomes three, and so on, so forth.

That nine is the symbol of the world – the world of ten thousand things – because nine is the last digit. From one to nine everything is finished; then there is only repetition. Ten, eleven, twelve; they are all repetitions. That is the symbol: from one to three, three to nine, and then again there is a circle, a big circle surrounding it. So the first point is the source and the last circle is the goal.

It is a very simple symbol.

somebody is seeking only money and power and lives in the East, he does not belong to the East; he is western. And somebody living in the West and searching for god, meditating, praying, going inwards, lives in the East.

So the East has nothing to do with the outside – it is a style of life, a way of life. Create a small east there, mm? – a few people can start searching.... ’Prachi’. It means the land of the rising sun....

CHAPTER 4

4 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Osho explains the meaning of veet nisadha: beyond no, beyond negation.... Drop no-saying; become more and more of a yea-sayer.]

Yes, say yes to life. And if one is aware, then one will be surprised that many times we unnecessarily say no... and we harm nobody except ourselves by saying that. No is fear-oriented; yes is love.

When you say yes, you are in a loving mood; whenever you are in a loving mood, you say yes – they both go together. When you say no, you reject life, and when you reject life, life rejects you. Then one becomes more and more sour, more and more bitter, and then there is a vicious circle. When you are bitter you say no more; when you say no more, life goes on rejecting you. In fact it is not life that rejects you; it is your rejection that is reflected by life. It is your no that resounds back to you. Life is a mirror – it simply mirrors. If you say yes to it, it says yes. If you sing a song, it sings a song. If you are ready to dance with it, it dances with you. It all depends on you: life simply goes on echoing you – so never blame life. Life is absolutely innocent, as innocent as a mirror. Change your face; the mirror is never at fault. If you don’t look beautiful in the mirror don’t try to destroy the mirror

– change your face.

That’s what I mean: when you start saying yes you start changing your face – from fear to love, from rejection to acceptance. And that is the real transformation – from atheism to theism.

I call the man an atheist who has become entangled too much with the no-saying. It has nothing to do with saying no to god. He may say yes to god, but if he goes on saying no to life, that makes no difference. He may believe in god and yet continuously be in a negative space. There are many people who believe in god and say no to life. In fact they say no to life because they think they b li

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life you deny god.

You can go into the church and pray but your denial is there. When you say yes to life you have said yes to god. You may not even go to the church or to the temple. You may not belong to any formal religion; you may not be a hindu or a mohammedan or a christian. You may not even use the word

’god’, but if you say yes to life you have started growing.

With yes we grow; with no we stop. With no we are disconnected; with yes we are reconnected.

[The new sannyasin, who has spent seven years in India, says he has been thinking about things a lot.]

If thinking can lead you to a man who can teach you how to drop thinking, then it has done its work!

[The sannyasin says: It is difficult to drop thinking... It is difficult to know when to say yes to life or not.... What is to say yes to life, for example in my case?]

Somebody holds your hand: see whether holding his hand you are saying yes or no. You will immediately feel... You want to take your hand away? – you are saying no. Somebody hugs you: just watch whether you are in the hug or are withdrawing, and you will know whether you are saying no or yes. Somebody is talking to you: watch whether you are saying no to him or yes. You can be polite and you go on saying no. You are feeling tired, you want to get rid of this man; he is boring.

You go on saying no. On the surface you are polite and you are listening – and you are not listening at all, because how can you listen with a no?

In fact I have never come across any boring person in life, and I have come across so many people –

some of them very very famous for being boring! But I have not felt them to be boring because when you say yes, even a boring person becomes interesting. It is a phenomenon; boredom is not an ordinary art, mm? If you listen to him with love and with acceptance, even he is something beautiful to look into. When you say no, that creates boredom.

So, next time when you are feeling bored, say yes, and see the change immediately coming. It is an instant change – the whole climate changes.

Just this way, by and by become alert about when you say yes and when you say no.... And there are a thousand and one ways of saying yes and no. Sometimes you say verbally, sometimes you say existentially; sometimes you don’t say at all, but you keep it inside. Sometimes by your movement, body movement, gesture, by your eyes... sometimes by keeping silent and sometimes by saying something – there are a thousand and one ways; one has to be watchful.

And I am not saying – I never demand anything impossible – that you will be able to drop all your noes, but ninety-nine percent you will be able to drop, and that’s not a small amount. Ninety-nine percent of noes are just old habit: we go on saying no because we have become habituated to it.

too goes. That one percent will be there to define you, to define your ego – otherwise if you really say yes, one hundred percent, then you disappear. Then you don’t have any definition; who are you then ?

So I am not saying that you can disappear right now, but this will be the beginning. And ninety-nine percent is futile, destructive, and destructive to you – not to anybody else. The same opportunity can become such a flowing experience if you say yes. And sometimes the same opportunity, just by saying no, becomes very destructive....

You are in a crowd and it is noisy. Now, you can go on saying ’Why did I come here? – this noisy crowd and these people are driving me crazy.’ You are saying no and your no is driving you crazy!

Otherwise the crowd is beautiful and the noise is beautiful and it has its own music. If you can relax a little bit and watch it, there is no need to go to any movie. All kinds of actors are there, and all kinds of roles are being played... and free of charge! Once you change your vision, focus, then the same crowd is beautiful, and you start learning from it. When you are not saying no, there is no heaviness.

A child is playing, you are studying a book and he is disturbing – shouting or doing something.

Now, you can say no – and you will be disturbed in your reading because you are saying no, not because of the child. You say yes to the child and you see – the child becomes just background and your reading becomes the figure. In fact the child’s noise and play can enhance your reading,, can enhance your awareness. He will not allow you to fall into sleep; that’s what he is doing – you will remain more alert and attentive.

That’s what I mean: use all opportunities to say yes and see how it changes you. One percent of no will remain – that will go in the last jump....

[Osho explains the meaning of veet yantra – beyond mechanicalness.]

That is the definition of consciousness: beyond mechanicalness. And that has to be your work: don’t behave mechanically. Bring more and more consciousness into your acts – even small acts: walking, eating, talking, listening taking a shower. Make them more and more conscious. Do each thing deliberately with a self-remembering that you are doing it. That self-remembering is not needed ordinarily, because once you have learned to do a certain thing then there is no need to remember.

Then the body has learned the way and it does it mechanically. For example, if you are learning driving; first you have to be very attentive, very alert. As you start getting the feel of it, the knack of it, you become less and less attentive. After a month, when you have got the licence, you can forget about being attentive. Now the mechanical part in the body takes over.

We have a robot part in our mind which always takes over. Once you learn something... while you are learning you have to be conscious... once you have learned, the conscious gives it to the robot part, to the unconscious; then it takes charge. So the conscious again becomes free to learn something else. That’s the natural way: each thing learned becomes part of the unconscious. But this unconscious goes on growing and by and by this mechanical unconscious surrounds you from mechanicalness one has to go backwards again so that each learned thing is taken back again from the unconscious, brought to the conscious. The more things start becoming conscious, the more you will feel alive. When everything is conscious, one is utterly alive. Otherwise people exist like machines.

Yes, there is something in them that is still beyond the machine, but that is very tiny, very very tiny.

The machine is very big and the non-mechanical consciousness is just a small flame lost somewhere in the darkness; you cannot even find where it is. That flame has to be made bigger, and to make it bigger this is the fuel – to start making your mechanical acts conscious again.

Once you have reclaimed one thing from the unconscious, your- consciousness will burn bright –

more fuel is available; then bring another then another.... This is the buddha’s way: the path of awareness. And when you have brought all the unconscious things back into the conscious, the unconscious disappears. That is the moment of satori – when the unconscious disappears. That’s why we call it enlightenment: one becomes light; all darkness disappears.

So read something of Gurdjieff – that will be helpful – because that was his whole method: self-remembering. Read something of the Sufis, Jikr, that is their method. Read something of Buddha, particularly his method of mindfulness. And you are ready for a great pilgrimage, but you will have to go through the path of being more and more alert and aware.

Modern man has become very very unalert... so much so that many scientists, psychologists, biologists, have started feeling that consciousness is a myth. Man has no consciousness – man is just a machine. They even have plans to make a better mechanism than man, a mechanism which can replace man, because man is so fallible. And of course they have done much on that line. Now a computer can do far better work than the human mind. They have developed a new mechanism in computers so that a computer can produce another generation. One computer when it is getting old, worked out, burnt out, can produce another computer just as a man can produce a child. But they are feeling only one difficulty: the computer can produce another computer but the other computer is not higher than the first; it is always lower. And with each generation it will go on deteriorating.

It will become less and less complex, less and less sophisticated. It will become more and more simple and by and by it will disappear.

That is the only problem they are feeling, and that is the only thing that makes them uneasy –

that man must have something more than just a mechanism, because each generation goes on becoming more and more complex. That is rare; the computer cannot do that. If the computer were a very simple mechanism it could produce only a very simple mechanism.

But a buddha is born out of a non-buddha. Out of an ignorant person, buddha is born and becomes enlightened.... Now this is simply something else! No mechanism can evolve – only consciousness evolves. Evolution is in-built in consciousness. And we don’t know how much we can evolve; we live at the lowest rung. We have not entered the palace yet; we are just outside the palace.... And the palace is ours but we have to pay for it – and the price to be paid is awareness.

to create more awareness is to go on dissolving the mechanism in us so that each act becomes by and by fully aware.

[The new sannyasin asks: Can’t I use the unconscious mechanism?]

Yes, you can, but use it consciously... use it consciously. When you use it consciously the mechanism is there, is used, but it doesn’t generate unconsciousness. It is the same mechanism that you are using and I am using. The difference is not in the mechanism; the difference is in the way it is used. If you use it consciously, while you are walking you will be using your body and you will be using the mechanism that makes you able to walk. It is unconscious, but when you walk very consciously, fully alert, luminous, each step in awareness, the mechanism is there but you are no more unconscious; consciousness is turning over the mechanism. So the mechanism cannot create unconsciousness; it creates consciousness – that’s why I call it the fuel.

If you are walking unaware of the fact that you are walking – and you can walk because you are accustomed to walk; there is no need to be alert about it – then walking is generating unconsciousness, and that unconsciousness goes on accumulating in us. If many of our acts are unconscious, then we are carrying a load of unconsciousness. That is heavy on our chest; that is the only block there is. When you start turning your consciousness on to the unconscious mechanism, you are transforming the energy. It is an alchemical process – the process of how lead is turned into gold. Just by being conscious of it, lead starts turning into gold. It is a magic, and it works like magic. You have to use – mechanism has to be used – but consciously. Try it, – for one month try as much consciousness as possible, and you will be surprised, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin had written to Osho to say he had doubts about wearing a mala and ’uniform’. He is returning to the West and will return next year for a longer time. He feels he has not been here long enough to change this time.]

Mm mm... that’s what my feeling is too – not only that you have not been here long enough, you have not been at all!...

This time you missed me. So, whenever you can come, give it one try again! I have to be truthful with you – you completely missed me. Otherwise even these few days would have been meaningful.

You are too much in your head... and I behead people but I go very politely! I was thinking to behead you, but there was not enough time. I don’t jump very suddenly because sometimes people can escape, mm? And that was the fear with you: you were continuously ready to escape and you were just lurking on the boundary, not coming close to me.

So one year will be a long time there. Continue to meditate. If you can do a few groups there, do.

Wherever my orange people meet, something of me is present there. And it may be easier for you to connect with my people than with me because you will be less afraid of them, right?...

But next time you will not be able to miss Many people miss for the first time You can only come to

[A sannyasin says she’s worried about her return to Italy. The love between her husband and herself is now only the affection between brother and sister. What to do? She has fallen in love with a sannyasin.]

That happens! Mm? husbands and wives finally turn into brothers and sisters! But if it happens in India, people feel it as a blessing. If it happens in Italy people think it is a curse!...

You have children? No? And would you like to remain with your husband? If it is finished, if you have become brother and sister, then say good-bye! Because brothers and sisters cannot live long together... not in Italy! Say good-bye; what can you do ? If you have become brother and sister, nothing can be done. Now to live with your brother is almost immoral! Right? So it is perfectly good

– you find another lover. And if a sannyasin is there, then that’s the best thing, mm?

Don’t be worried – just float here with your lover, mm? And your husband will also be happy because he will also be in trouble living with a sister; he will have to find somebody. He is not a sannyasin yet?

[She replies: He doesn’t want sannyas. He’s not happy that I am here. He doesn’t write me.]

No, no, when he sees that you have said good-bye and you have become capable enough of moving with somebody else he will come!...

Mm mm, don’t be worried.Just forget about the whole misery that you have been living there....

Just do meditation, mm? And you will have much group work to do with your husband. It has to be finished! Mm? it will be an encounter .

Mm, but do it happily and just tell him things are finished – he will be free and you will be free. Just be free, mm? Freedom is always good – nothing should be sacrificed for freedom. Good!

[A sannyasin asks: How is it possible to repent? – How can you miss the truth? You can’t miss it because it’s always there.]

It is always there but you can always go on missing it....

If you become very very efficient in missing it, you can go on missing eternally; that’s how people are missing One can become very efficient in missing too!...

You can go on knowing that you have not got it, but you can still go on thinking maybe it is not there; that’s why you have not got it... and that becomes the protection of your ignorance. It may not be there; that’s why you have not got it. But it may be there and you have not got it, and that’s what I mean by missing it. There may be the sun outside and your doors are closed, and you remain in darkness. You can go on thinking, ’Yes, there is no light in my room and I don’t have the light, but from every side, but still one can remain closed.

And what do I mean by repenting? I mean that when you become aware that you have been missing so long, then repentance comes; one simply feels why did one miss for so long? There was no reason to remain in misery for such a long time!

[She asks: What should I do?]

Die!... Let [yourself] die! You cling too much to your[self]! This ego has to go! Next time you come, come here and put your ego outside the gate. You can give it to [the guard]; he can keep it. Next time you come, come here and drop all ego mind. Just being here for a few days will be of tremendous value.

Don’t go on fighting with me. There is a fight, and when I say it I mean it: there is a fight. You go on fighting and you don’t know with whom you are fighting and for what. In any fight with me you will lose – I cannot be the loser. There is no point; I cannot lose anything! In your defeat you will be victorious; in your victory you will be defeated.

So if you want to be victorious, accept defeat and surrender. And next time you come, something is going to happen. I have been preparing ground for it!

CHAPTER 5

5 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Ananda means bliss, svatma means the innermost self, the innermost core, the being. Bliss being

– that will be the meaning of the name... and there is a message in it for you. I give names as messages. You will have to unfold it, live it, and by and by the name will become a reality. Right now it will only be a name, but if you work on it it will become your reality. It will not be any more a name, not just a name. This is the message – that there is no need to improve upon yourself. Drop the idea of improving, drop the idea of progressing. Drop the idea of becoming. Be! This is the greatest illusion that humanity suffers from – that one has to become something, only then can one be happy.

That ’something’ may be anything – more rich, more powerful, more spiritual, more religious, more artistic. But one has to become something, then one will be happy. So happiness is postponed and then postponing becomes your habit. When you have more money, then too the problem will be the same; you will postpone. You will say, ’How can one be happy with only this much money ? More is needed. When I have more I will be happy.

One can go on postponing. And life is very short; it is really short – seventy, eighty years. Out of seventy years one third is lost in sleep. Another one third is spent in just putting body and soul together – work, bread and butter. Another one third is spent in small trivia – driving from the house to the office, from the office to the house, saving, cleaning, taking a bath, eating....

Life is very short, and if postponing becomes your habit then there is no possibility to be blissful ever.

One can easily postpone for these seventy years. And the postponing is a by-product of the idea that one has to become somebody, then one can be happy; that is utterly meaningless. One can be happy as one is, one can be happy only as one is! There is no need to wait for the second moment, for the next moment. Right now, everything is available that can make you happy. Everything that is needed to be happy is already given. It has been with you all along.

struggle, one only arrives at a frustrated state of mind.

Being is non-desiring, no striving, no effort. One simply starts enjoying oneself and the existence that surrounds one. This is the message in your name – that you be. And Once you start feeling that one need not become anything... It is neurotic; the very idea of becoming is neurotic. One has just to be herenow and then tiny tiny moments, precious moments, win start dropping on you like a shower, a fine rain.

Suddenly one day sitting in your room doing nothing, it is there. Suddenly you become utterly aware of the silence in the house... not a thing stirring. Or the bird there. crying... or the sun rays dancing on the floor... or the moon that is just peeping through the Window. For a moment you are in utter bliss.

And the strange thing is: when bliss is, you are not. For that moment you are not, only bliss is, overwhelming bliss, for no reason at all. It has been all along; it is just that you were not alert.

And you were not alert because you were striving to get something, to become something, to reach somewhere. There is nowhere to reach.We are already at home!

[Osho suggests some groups.]

Try these three groups... although trying is a not a very good word. And that’s why I have given you a name that means to be. Trying is never being... the effort!

There is a very famous zen anecdote: A zen master is standing with a handkerchief in his hand talking to his disciple. Suddenly he drops the handkerchief and asks the disciple to try to pick it up

– to try to pick it up. The disciple simply picks it up and gives it to the master and the master says,

’No, that is not the thing.’ He drops it again and he says, ’Try to pick it up.’

Now the disciple is a little puzzled: what is the matter? He did it again and it happened six times.

The master dropped it for the seventh time and he said, ’No, I am not satisfied. Try to pick it up again.’ Then it dawned on the disciple, he laughed – yes, he had missed.

The master is saying, ’Try to pick it up,’ and the disciple says, ’How can one try to pick it up? Either you pick it up or you don’t pick it up. Trying to pick it up is just meaningless! What can you do trying to pick it up?’

And the master says, ’Precisely! So you got it!’

And in life people go on doing that – trying... trying to love. Either you love or you don’t love. Trying means somewhere in the limbo; you will be neither here nor there.

So, just participate in these groups and be. If striving comes, relax and remember. Just repeat your name ’svatma’ inside. Whenever you start feeling something is coming up, stirring, and you want to try something, just remember the name ’svatma’. Make it a mantra; just repeat two, three my name through christ and in the name of god, Jesus and the holy spirit – and I want to take this name now. For me it’s difficult.]

Don’t take it! Be a christian! If you are achieving something, if you are growing, be a christian with my blessings. If you are not achieving anything, forget all about it; then it has not happened. If christening has happened – if you have really received the name of Jesus and god – then why are you here? For what? – just to waste your time and my time? If it has happened, it has happened; then there is no need. If it has not happened, then why cling to it? Then this is another christening; this is the new christening. If one medicine has not helped, you move to another medicine.

It does not say anything about Christ; it is not that Christ has failed. It is only that the type of christianity that you got from your priest has failed. Maybe the priest himself did not have it. How can he give it to you? All priests are not christs. Only a christ can christen. How can the priest do it?

If he had something he could have given it to you. He was just a formal priest: he gave you a formal religion. Good as far as it goes – good that you were not a communist and you were a christian –

but that’s all!

If something has happened through it, then. I am the last person to distract you from that. If nothing has happened this is going to be your first christening. Now I am sharing something with you which can become a blossoming in you. But that is up to you, because these things cannot be given if you are not receptive. If you want to cling to your christianity, cling; nobody is interested in taking you away. But has something happened through it? If it has happened then why should you even think of sannyas? – there is no need.

Now this is how the human mind works: you go on clinging to something which is not useful at all, which has not worked. And remember always, I am not saying that christ has failed; christ never fails! This is the only way he can succeed in you: if you become a sannyasin. Nobody will know that you are a christian, but christ will know. You are for the first time becoming a christian... not formally.

I am not a christian, I am not a priest to anybody. I am not representing anybody; I only represent myself. But something is possible....

If you cling to your old – you can, that’s your business! But nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen through it. You have already been a christian for many years! Why not take another chance? Why not open another door? If this door has proved a wall and you have been knocking your head against it and nothing has opened, maybe it is not a door at all! I am calling you from another door, and whatsoever door you choose, if you can get out of your misery you will be in christ.

Christ has nothing to do with christianity. Deep down Christ has nothing to do even with Jesus –

Christ is a state of consciousness. Jesus became Christ. Buddha is a christ, so is mohammed. And so you can be... but it needs risk!

Jesus was circumcised as a jew but he dared get out of the formal religion. He ventured beyond the boundaries of formal religion. He dared to be baptised by the madman, john the baptist. That’s what I am doing to you. I am a madman! Can’t you see the Jordan river around me?

return the mala. And don’t feel guilty about it; there is nothing, no problem.

With me, everything is allowed, mm ? And take it easy! Right? Good!

[Osho explains the meaning of anand purven – bliss of the East.]

The human mind is divided into these two hemispheres – not the human earth but the human mind.

The West has its idea of happiness – that is of possessing more, of having this and that. The East has its own idea of happiness – of being more, not possessing but being more alert, more aware, more conscious... being more. The directions are different: the western approach moves outward, the eastern moves inward. The East thinks in terms of peace, silence, at-home-ness in existence, with existence. The west thinks in terms of conquering, of possessing. The western mind is basically at war, in conflict, it is aggressive.

So become eastern; change from the western to the eastern. It is a change from the mind to the heart, from the male attitude towards the feminine attitude, from being aggressive to being receptive.

God cannot be grabbed. We can only receive him: we can become the host and we can invite him.

We can keep our doors open for him to come – that’s all that we can do. That’s what meditation is all about.

This will be a great change in you. So from this moment, think less of possessions, less of success, less of fame, less of being powerful. Think more of calm, quietude, tranquillity. And once you start thinking of the eastern approach, by and by you start relaxing. Because then there is no war, no war with anything at all – no war with nature, no war with society, no war even with yourself. Otherwise sometimes it happens that a person can even drop the world, drop possessions, start moving in, but starts fighting with himself; then the fight continues.

That’s what has happened to many christian saints. They are no more fighting with nature, no more fighting with man; they start fighting with themselves. They become very aggressive with themselves. They can flagellate their Own body; they can hurt their own body, they can destroy their own limbs. This is aggression turning upon itself. First they were murderers, now they have become suicides, but the basic approach of violence remains .

So no fight that is the message of the east. Relax, rest – all is good. Nothing has to be destroyed; everything has to be celebrated!

[The new sannyasin says: Last year all these things you’ve said to me now were happening.... I was very aggressive and violent with myself.]

Right! It has been in the past – that I can see. Now the future has to be totally different, diametrically different. It has been there in the past; that is very visible, mm? All those footprints I can see. That’s why I am giving you the name. Now you have to change radically – you have to become a new kind of man. Don’t be a german any more! Good!

[Osho initiates someone saying: Just feel that you are standing outside under the sky It is sunny doing anything, just feel light entering you from above. Soak it in, drink it, let it sink into your heart.

Let it reach your whole body so that you disappear as a material body and you become a body of light. It will come very easy to you, and it will do miracles.

Deva udeepta. It means illuminated by god – deva means god, udeepta means illuminated. Mm?

and that is your meditation.

[A visitor says she feels Osho’s spirit permeating her work as a movement therapist. She doesn’t want to commit herself to sannyas until she can be here for a longer time.]

That’s right – I understand your... Your idea is perfectly right. But there are things for which we should not wait... because one never knows! One can always wait for non-essential things because if they don’t happen nothing matters, but one should not wait for the essential. One never knows –

next time you come I may not be here; next time I am here you may not be.

So your feeling is perfectly right... but still, one should not wait for it. Become a sannyasin!...

There is no need to wait and there is no need to think that you are not centred yet. Nobody is ever absolutely centered, because to be absolutely centred means to die. Something remains wavering; that is part of life. That’s why in the East we say that once a man has become absolutely centred he will not be coming again; this will be his last time... because absolute centering means death.

Nietzsche has said that when something is unripe it wants to live because it longs, desires, hopes.

It wants to become perfect, it wants to reach higher plenitudes of being. But when something is ripe it wants to die.... And he is right!

So if one wants a total surrender it will never be possible, because a part of the mind will always be shaking and wavering. One has to go in spite of it, and one has to take decisions. Even if one is not total, one has to take decisions, because time never waits. If you don’t decide, time is gone and then it may be too late to decide or it may be irrelevant to decide.

There are moments... And you are in such a space right this moment – that’s why I insisted.

Otherwise I would have told you to wait. It is a rare space in which you are. It is very easy for me to connect with you right now. It is not a question of your being centred. It is more a question of your being vulnerable. You are vulnerable at this moment, open.

From your side you may think that if you were more centred then you would have entered into sannyas more deeply. From your side only one thing is needed – that you should be open... and that you are! Much is going to happen, and it will start growing from this moment....

Ananda means blissful, meeta means a friend – a blissful friend.

You have to become a blissful friend: first to yourself then to others, then to the whole. If one can be friendly to the whole, nothing else is needed. In that very friendliness is enlightenment....

So become more and more friendly to your patients to your friends to the people you come across Mm? you have to share me with many people – as many as possible.

[A sannyasin who is leaving to work as a teacher in the West says he is afraid of misguiding the children – he doesn’t know anything.]

Love them! Feel delighted in making the aware of new things. Don’t think of yourself as a teacher.

Think of yourself more as a guide who is taking them on a trip.

... That’s what the obstacle is – to know. Be in this state of not-knowing. But naturally you have lived more in the world than they have; you certainly know a little more than they know. There is no need to become a knower, but you are a little ahead of them so you can guide them in a few things. You can make them interested in new things; you can help them explore.

That is the function of a teacher: to help the children to explore, to help the children so that their enquiry can become a little more systematic. It is not that you have to give them knowledge. You have to give them curiosity; you have to give them a thirst for knowing You have to create in them a great longing to explore this mysterious existence.

The real teacher is a mystic: he simply makes unknown dimensions available, that’s all. He simply opens doors which were closed and invites people to enter.

So be playful – don’t be serious – and your children will love you. Love them! Just be a help so that they can start moving on their own. Nothing to be worried about – I will be continuously helping you!

[A sannyasin asks the meaning of the words: The honey is in the lotus flower and the bee knows it.]

The lotus is a symbol of ultimate flowering, mm? – that is the most beautiful flower in the east And it almost resembles energy when it comes to the ultimate centre – the seventh chakra. There happens a kind of blooming, as if a one-thousand-petalled lotus has bloomed. So, the lotus became a symbol of spiritual unfoldment, and in that unfolding of the lotus there is bliss. That bliss is what honey is, and the bee knows it. You have to become the bee: you have to become the seeker of that ultimate unfoldment in your being. The goal is to be that lotus, and the beginning is to be the bee – the seeker, the searcher. So become a bee!

And the bee knows! If you really start sincerely searching you will know where it is, you don’t need to be told. We are born with that tacit understanding of where it is, we all know about it. We may not use our knowing, we may not translate our knowing into practice, we may go on neglecting, ignoring it, but we know where it is. That knowledge is a given phenomenon – you are carrying it from your very birth. Once you start really longing, once you become really thirsty, nothing can hold you, you will reach. The bee knows where the honey is.

In the beginning you will be the bee; in the end you will become the lotus. You are both – the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

CHAPTER 6

6 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho checks someone’s energy saying: Create a space of fear in and around yourself. Osho tells him that he is sitting on a deep layer of fear. Fear and anger are two sides of one coin. Fear is a good policy but very bad for growth. Anger is not a very good policy but is very good for growth.

Anger is not the end, but it is better than fear because something moves out. You have so much anger hidden in the stomach that it is enough to kill many people. Fear is a kind of spiritual paralysis, but remember, society will appreciate you very much; you are a good man, a nice man. All afraid people are nice. They are always polite; they always follow the etiquette. Such a man will always go on saying yes. He will always be nice – but his niceness will become nauseous.]

You can become that kind of person if you don’t drop out of your fear. Everybody will love you and everybody will like you, but you will be gone down the drain, you will miss all that is in life. So here, this is going to be your work, mm? First become more expressive, take risks. And this is a good beginning – that you are becoming a sannyasin. This is a good initiation into this.

And after you have been flowing into anger, warmth, a transcendence is possible. Then watch your anger; there is no need always to do it – it is just to destroy the fear. Once fear is gone and anger is flowing, watch it and watching it, go beyond it. This is your work.

Ananda means blissful, pardeisi means a stranger – a blissful stranger. That is the lot of all of us on this earth: we arc strangers here. Now it depends on us – we can become miserable strangers or we can become blissful strangers. We can start thinking in terms of alienation, as if we have been thrown out of our home. That’s what christianity goes on teaching – that man has been expelled, expelled from the garden of eden... that god is angry, that man has fallen, that man has committed i

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situations, without any shelter, without any security. One naturally becomes miserable.

So christianity, because of this idea of expulsion, became the religion of misery, sadness. Christians say jesus never laughed. That is just the most stupid statement every made, but that fits with the christian ideology. They cannot allow even jesus to laugh; they cannot allow anybody to laugh. You are thrown here as a punishment; how can you laugh? You have to work your way back home.

But this is our choice. There is no need to think of it as expulsion. Rather, think that you are on a holiday from your home – then the whole quality of life changes. Think that you have not been expelled; you have been exploring the strange. You have not been thrown out, not punished, but sent into the world to grow; it is a situation in which to grow. This whole strange state is a device of god to help people grow.

The child has to be sent to the school – not as a punishment. The child has to be sent one day to the hostel not as a punishment but to grow, to learn, to be. The child has to be sent away from home to the university to live amongst strangers to grow, to confront, to encounter!

This is my attitude: man is not here on this earth suffering from any punishment. This is a growth situation: man is here to mature. And maturity is possible only when you are insecure, unsheltered, and all kinds of challenges and all kinds of dangers surround you.

This world is a beautiful device of god. So be a blissful stranger here!

[Osho explains the meaning of chandralekha.]

It is a tree in paradise, a luminous tree, as luminous as the moon. Chandra also means moon, but the tree is luminous, it is a moon tree. Just as you see the moon surrounded by light, the tree is surrounded by light; that’s why it is called ’chandralekha’. Yes, it is concerned with the moon but it is a tree in paradise; such trees exist only in paradise! And I would like you to become a luminous tree of paradise – that is the message....

But never ask me again because I myself go on forgetting! And one of the troubles with these names is that they can mean many things. Ancient languages are very poetic; modern languages are not poetic. A modern word means exactly what it means; it has a single meaning. Ancient languages –

sanskrit, arabic, hebrew, greek – have many meanings; a single word can have many meanings. So it is very easy to change the whole meaning of a word; one can play with those words very easily.

They are not fixed, they are liquid.

When I give you a name, in that moment I have a certain feeling about you... but you go on changing!

If after three or six months you ask me again the meaning of your name, then you create trouble for me. By that time I have forgotten! By that time I have forgotten in what space you were when I gave the name to you. And you are no more in that space. Six months and the Ganges has flown by so much... so much water has gone down, it is no more the same Ganges. You are not the same

[person] to whom I had given the initiation; now you are in a different space. If I was going to give o a name toda I o ld gi e o another name Yo r hole a ra is different So we have a centre there, mm? – help my people! Become a tree for them too... a shelter and a shade. My sannyasins need many shelters and much shade. And germany is going to become one of the greatest sannyas lands, so just help people, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says that though part of him wants to here, resident in the ashram, he feels he’s got some unfinished karmas with the world. Maybe it’s got something to do with having to prove himself.

He has the the idea of returning to the west but working for the ashram. In this way, he’d be still closely related to the ashram but in the world. Osho checks his energy.]

These are the rationalisations that you are trying to find because you cannot figure out what it is. So sometimes you think it is a karma that you have to fulfill, that it is something you have to go through, that it is something to prove, to achieve. No, it is not that. You just have energy that needs to get involved. It is very active, it needs expression.

So the idea is perfectly good: start doing my work in the west. And don’t go doing it in a worried tense state of mind, thinking ’Why am I doing it? – I could have relaxed and surrendered.’ That day will come... soon. But this too is my work. I need many people to be here and I need many more people to go into the world. So you be the second type. Both will be my people and both will be doing my work.

Just go very easily and happily and don’t create any conflict. Otherwise if you go with a conflict then there you will continuously think, ’Why am I doing this? It is useless – I should go and be part of the ashram.’ You are part of the ashram.

The ashram will have two kinds of people: the residents and the wanderers. It will have a fixed community and it will have a liquid community, moving all over the world; we will need many people.

Otherwise who is going to bring new people to me? You have to go. Start working for me, mm?

Good!

[A sannyasin, newly returned, had hoped to bring his family with him, but had a six-month fight and came back alone.]

Mm mm... one chapter is closed – that’s very good. Now something new can start.

And don’t be worried about the past; it is no more. Don’t keep that hangover. There is no need, mm? You have come clean out of a situation, now start doing something new and become new.

And it is very difficult to drop misery, that I know. It is very difficult to drop confusion, that I know.

One tends to cling to misery and to confusion, because it gives one such a feeling, such an identity, such a definition, that blissfulness never gives.

Misery always defines you. Bliss takes away all definitions, hence people decide to be miserable. It feels very good to be miserable. One feels one is... maybe miserable, but one is.

want to come out of it; then nothing can hold you back.

So start meditating, do a few groups as a cleansing.

[The sannyasin says he misses his daughter very much.]

Don’t be worried. There is no need to leave anybody. Just first get clean yourself; then everything remains possible. The daughter can be with you, the wife can also be again with you; don’t be worried about that.

Right now if you create such problems – which cannot be solved... For example, nothing can be done about the daughter right now. There are three types of problems....

One is where something can be done: then do something. Another kind of problem is where nothing can be done right now: then don’t be worried right now. And there is a third kind of problem: nothing can be done ever; then why bother about it ? That’s not a problem at all. These are the three kinds of problems. Start from the first.

Right now I would like you to clean your mind. The second thing: we will think about the relationship with your wife, with your children. But that will be the second thing.

Right now if you start thinking in a confused state you will be getting unnecessarily tense, anxious, and that is not going to help. That will not bring your daughter back to you, so it is pointless.

First, for three months, forget everything. For three months just clean yourself. Go through all the processes possible so you have a clarity, and then we will think out of that clarity, what you want.

Maybe you decide that it is good that the child remains with the mother; out of that clarity nobody knows. Or you may decide that the child is needed with you or you decide that you need the mother and the child both. But that will be after three months. For three months we will not tackle that problem. And nothing is going to change – the daughter will be there, the wife will be there – so there is no hurry. The problem can wait for three months.

Always remember that the problem has to be solved by you. So first you become clear, unclouded.

And that will be my work here: for three months to just wipe out all the dust from your mind so you have a mirror. And then you can see, and things will be different.

Start meditating.

[A sannyasin says: I used to believe that women were very important to me – the most important things. I’m not sure any more... but that was my only certainty.]

Only? So it is very good – now I will be your certainty! That’s very good. It was a false certainty: you were just believing in an illusion. And I am not saying not to love women – but don’t depend on them. And if you depend, you cannot love, and if you love you cannot depend. Only independent were projecting your mother onto other women. It is good – you are becoming mature. You have to come to your own. Love women, but don’t depend on them; love women and don’t let them depend on you. Love is always favourable to independence, freedom.

And don’t feel confused. I can understand, mm ? Something to which you were holding tight and that you were thinking was very valuable, has disappeared. It was not valuable in the first place and because of it you could not have grown.

The group really did something valuable to you. And I know there will be confusion for a few days, but don’t try to get into that clarity – that you call clarity – again. It was not clarity, it was just unawareness.

Don’t try to get into it again and don’t try to replace it with something else! Don’t miss this opportunity of being yourself....

That’s what one starts with – nothing! If you can live with this nothing, soon you will start feeling who you are. But if you don’t live with this nothing you will never know who you are. You can go on clinging to the apron strings of any woman; you will remain a child.

And no woman will love you. They can patronise you, they will say, ’This is a childish man.’ They will become your mother. That’s not right.

[The sannyasin says he is booked for the tantra group. Now he is afraid of it but before he wanted to do it.]

Because of those women! But now... mm! Now it will be a real tantra! That would not have been tantra; you would have found some mummy! Now it will be real tantra. You do it! Don’t be worried.

[The sannyasin then says he is afraid of the encounter group because he sees he has much violence.

When he felt like hitting someone, he hit the wall, but really he wanted to hurt someone.]

That was not right. The real thing is that you wanted to throw the anger so you have thrown it on the wall, and that is very very good. That is very gentlemanly!

CHAPTER 7

7 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas to a baby who throws the mala off. Then he tells the mother: And always treat him with great respect. Each child brings divine fragrance into the world and each child should be treated as a god or a goddess.

The following morning Osho spoke about him in discourse.]

Just last night, a sannyasin came with her small boy for sannyas. I looked at the boy and there was Adam in the boy’s eyes. He wanted to say no; his whole body was saying no! And I loved the boy!

When I put the mala on his head, he threw it! It has to be so – the boy has some spirit, Adam’s spirit.

He is saying, ’How dare you?! I am myself. I can’t be defined by anybody else.’ It was not in so many words – he has no words – but it was in his gesture, his reluctant look, his withdrawing of the body, his throwing away of the mala. That’s what Adam did; he had to do it to be himself. And it was a design from god to provoke him, because unless he was provoked he would never have become grown up....

When this child threw away the mala I loved him as I have never loved any other small children! He has some courage... and so small but such big courage. So tiny, but ready to fight with the whole world!

And sannyas is nothing but your desire to participate with me, your desire to be together with me...

your desire to dissolve. It is a let-go. From this moment you will not be the old; from this moment you will not be able to shelter in the past. Sannyas takes away the past and makes the possibility for the future When the past is too much in the mind there is no space for the future And the mind the same moment both happen: on one side death, on another side rebirth.

Prem means love, hashya means laughter – love laughter. And laughter is nourishment to love; without laughter love dies very soon. Love cannot grow in the soil of seriousness. The moment love becomes serious, it is no more love; it is a corpse. It says something about the past – maybe it has been there in the past, but it is no more. The breath has left it; the soul has flown.

When you become serious love becomes duty, and duty is as far away from love as it can be. Even hate is very close; duty is even farther away than hate because hate is warm, as warm as love, and duty is cold, as cold as death.

Love breathes through laughter. When love remains playful, a fun, a joy, it grows. It can grow to infinity, but the whole way has to be travelled in laughter. And to remain in laughter many things have to be understood.

First: love should be without any expectations; otherwise laughter dies. When you expect, frustration comes in. Nobody can fulfill your expectations, and there is nobody who needs to fulfill them. They come out of a mad, neurotic mind. If somebody fulfills them then too love disappears. Then the other becomes a necessity, a need, a possession – a valuable possession but a possession all the same.

If the other does not fulfill them, then there is frustration... as if the other is cheating. If the other goes on fulfilling your demands, then by and by you tend to forget the sacredness of the other. Then he becomes a thing to be used. It is comfortable, convenient, but there is no more celebration.

If he does not fulfill your expectations – which is more possible because he has his own way of life to live... He is not obliged to fulfill them. He loves you but he does not love your demands, your expectations; he does not love your neuroses. In fact, if he really loves you he will help you to get out of your neurotic demands. If he does not help you to get out of your neurotic demands he is helping you to remain pathological. Then the relationship is ill.

There is more possibility that the other will not be able to fulfill. Then there is frustration and one feels cheated and laughter disappears. If the other fulfills expectations, laughter disappears; if he does not, laughter disappears. It becomes a routine, dull affair... and when love is dull, life is dull.

When you become accustomed to love and you know what is going to happen, it becomes a routine, predictable; it is no more of any value. Love lives only when it remains unpredictable; one never knows what is going to happen. When nothing can be taken for granted, not even for a single moment, when one can allow and one can accept that this is going to happen, when the next moment remains open with no possibility of predicting, then there is laughter because there is constant surprise.

One should only pray to god for one thing: help me to remain constantly in surprise. Let me be surprised every day, every moment of my life. Then there is laughter, then there is joy. In joy and in synthesis, that happens automatically. If they both go together for long, remain intimate with each other, soon the distinction is lost; they merge into each other. And when love and laughter merge, there is prayer – prayer is born. Prayer is the alchemical transformation of love and laughter. Prayer can never be serious, because it is out of love and out of laughter.

Prayer can only be playful. That’s why jesus says ’Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of god.’ And these are the two things in small children: they are loving... for no reason at all; they are simply loving. And they have laughter.

So this is going to be your name and a message for you – to be loving and be laughing.

[A sannyasin says about his girlfriend: She is a queen. She’s made me feel like a king. I don’t feel like I deserve it.]

That’s a good arrangement.... Everybody is a king and everybody is a queen, because every human being is so valuable. It is not a question of deserving – one is born a queen or a king – but the society creates the idea that first you have to deserve... a wrong notion. The society creates the idea that you have first to become worthy; then you can be – that’s absolutely nonsense.

Worthy or non-worthy, that is not the point at all. One is born a king, one is born a queen. That is our intrinsic nature. You cannot do anything to improve upon it and you cannot do anything to disqualify yourself. That’s how, in love, one starts feeling very high. Because love accepts you as you are with no conditions, with no strings attached, that’s why love is such a fulfillment. You need not deserve it; it comes as a gift.

And I am not saying to become arrogant about it. I am not saying to start feeling, ’Yes, I am the king.’ And I am not saying to start creating a kind of humility – that you don’t deserve it. Both are ego standpoints – arrogance and humility.

When she makes you feel like a king, remember that every beloved makes every lover feel like a king. This is nothing personal! In every love affair that happens. It has to happen, otherwise the affair is not there. If the woman cannot make you feel like a king she has not loved you, and if you cannot make her feel like a queen, you have not loved her.

It is love that creates the king and the queen. Wherever love happens suddenly you have immense value, intrinsic value – no question of deserving. And in fact, if you go deep into it, it is not that she is making you a king or you are making her a queen; it is love that is making you both kings and queens.

Otherwise some day, she can take it away. If it is she who is making you a king, then sooner or later you will start feeling dependent because you will start feeling afraid. Without her you will not be a king and without you she will not be a queen. It can become a very great strategy to manipulate each other. Without you she will be an ordinary woman; without her you will be an ordinary man.

And who wants to be an ordinary man once you have known that you are a king? But your kingship love! It is the love climate. It is as when the spring comes and trees start blooming and the birds start singing and there is joy on the earth. It is love, the spring, the climate of love that suddenly makes you and her start feeling.... It is the god of love that speaks through you and speaks through her.

But never for a single moment think that she is making you a king. Otherwise soon you will start being afraid of her. She can take it back; then where are you?...

Mm, that has to be understood, otherwise soon fear comes in every relationship; fear is lingering just by the side of love. And the reason is that love makes you feel so good that naturally a fear comes. Is it possible to be in such a good state forever ? Will it be tomorrow also ? Will you be able to feel so happy and turned on tomorrow too?

The fear comes because love gives you a peak, and the higher you go on the peak, the deeper the valley looks. Love gives you a light and the darkness looks more dark than ever, in contrast. And fear arises: if this light is gone, then? Then people start clinging to each other. You will not like her to go and she will not like you to go. And soon things are dull and dead – and you have killed them.

Because there are a few things which cannot be caught; love is one of those few things. You cannot hold it in your fist; it dies.

And because of the fear one starts holding love. One becomes frightened; one may lose the woman, one may lose the man... then? Then you will be again in your ordinary rut, and one doesn’t want to go back to that slum, that darkness, that cloudy state. One has seen the palace, one has lived in the palace. It is very difficult ....

So ordinarily the mind and the logic says to grab hold of the woman, grab hold of the man. Make every possible effort so that he cannot escape. Make him unfree; make him more and more dependent. But then you have killed love; then already love is a memory. Then you are stuck together; you are no more friends – you have become enemies.

Remember, it is love – not she, not he; it is love. Whenever there is love you will be a king. And then you are free – because it is a question of love; it does not depend on her. Whenever there is love you will be a king; whenever there is not love you will be a beggar. It is love that gives you the glory.

Yes, the love has come through her window; it can come through any other window. It can simply shower on you without anybody. It simply needs understanding – that it is love, not the person. The person is instrumental.

Then you are not imprisoning the person. Love cannot be imprisoned and there is no need to imprison it.

Love is your song – you can sing it any time. It is like breathing. Nobody is going to take it away from you; nobody can take it away from you.

So drop that idea from the very beginning. I saw your letter and you had written in it that she is it as much space as possible. Give it all that you can, and don’t be worried – because it is something in you; it is your fragrance. Good good!

[A sannyasin describes some experiences which scared her during Dynamic meditation, she felt like she was dying... ]

Everybody gets scared when things really start happening. When they don’t happen people ask why they are not happening; when they happen they get scared. The reason is there.

When something really happens, this is how the mind looks at it. If you are sitting silently and something happens from the beyond, from the blue, the first fear arises that you are not in control of it. It is coming, nobody knows from where. The first fear arises because you are not in control of it...

and we have been taught to always be in control. Control gives a kind of safety.

It is as if you are driving a car and suddenly it goes out of control. Mm? you want to go thirty miles per hour and it is going one hundred miles an hour. Then you will get scared: what is happening?

You go on pushing the brake and nothing works. The car is simply going one hundred miles per hour.... Fear will come in. It is beyond you; now you cannot control it. Where will it land you? It is as if you are flying in an aeroplane and all the engines suddenly stop. Now everything is beyond your control and you start falling from thousands of feet up, slowly slowly, and you cannot do anything!

That’s how it is.

When something comes from the beyond, even a small glimpse, you will feel it is beyond your control. You feel scared; you want to remain in control. You want it to happen but you wanted to remain in control too – and it cannot happen with your control; it happens only when you are not in control. When you are not in control, god is in control.

That’s the meaning of trust. That’s why without trust, nobody can go deep. That is the meaning of sannyas – that these scary spaces will come; then you will have to trust me. And you will have to trust me illogically, because there is no proof! This man may be right, he may be wrong – who knows? How can you know without going into it ? You will only know when you have gone into it, but that is not the point. First the question is: how to go into it? How to trust this man?

So the fear, the first fear arises because it is something beyond your control.

The second fear arises when you go a little deeper and everything is functioning perfectly well; nothing is going wrong. Nothing ever goes wrong, nothing has ever gone wrong. When you see you are completely silent and everything is going perfectly well – trees are growing, birds are singing, planes are flying, trains are running... The world is going perfectly well without anything on your part; you are not doing anything and everything is going perfectly well. You are breathing, your heart is beating, blood is circulating – without you? You are not doing anything! And we have been trained to be doers, great doers, always doing something, so we have a wrong notion that without us everything will stop.

first place; you were not a necessity? You were unnecessarily posing yourself?

The ego falls flat; that is the second fear. And the third fear comes at the last – when you are just entering into the very nucleus of the phenomenon, are at the very centre. Suddenly you see that you are not separate; you are one with the whole. It feels like utter death. Zen people call it ’the great death’. The last fear comes, and one starts rushing away from it, one tries to escape from it.

These are the three points at which the master is needed. So whenever you feel afraid, just remember me and relax!

[A visitor says: I feel that I don’t have a soul.]

That’s perfectly right – nobody has ordinarily. But to know it is a great step towards it. If you feel that you don’t have a soul, this is the beginning of a soul. People who don’t know it are really in bad shape: they go on believing they have souls and they have nothing. This is the right approach.

Nobody is born with a soul: the soul has to be created. The whole life is an experiment to create a soul. It is not something given to you; it is something you have to discover. At the most it is just a potentiality, but unless it becomes actual it is non-existential. You can have a soul – that’s possible

– but it doesn’t exist yet.... But I can help!

If you are really interested, you can have a soul!

[The visitor says: I don’t know yet.]

Whether you are interested or not in having a soul? Mm mm... that too is very good; that is being true and honest.... Do a few groups! That will be very helpful, mm? You will have little glimpses of the soul. And whenever the desire for sannyas arises, come back. It is on the way! It may be just waiting in your hotel room! Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says he feels very strongly to go and learn Kriya yoga... and is it right for him. Osho says: You can go and do it.... That you should not ask because if I say it is not right, it will create trouble for you. You have the desire, so, right or wrong, go into it... waste a few days. Don’t be worried. If you want to go and have a little trip, nothing to be worried about. It will be just a wastage of time and nothing else, mm?]

[A sannyasin says I feel as though I see the positive and negative to everything; I see both sides of dichotomies. I move as though I were mad in a way, and it’s very frightening to me.... And yet you know that I love you.]

Mm mm, that’s there. That’s your only hope!

This ambiguity is natural, so the first thing to be understood is that it is to be accepted as natural.

Don’t make a problem out of it. In fact it is a good sign that one is becoming perceptive, look at it in one part. The other is there but you don’t see it so you don’t feel ambiguous. The other is there and you will see it one day, but there is a basic built-in mechanism in the mind that allows you to see only one at a time. So when you hate a man, you hate; when you love, you love. But you don’t see both together – that you hate and love the same man. It is a built-in biological mechanism so that you can remain in a comfortable state.

If the mind becomes more perceptive – that’s what is happening, and that’s what should happen to everybody. It is a growth. When you become more perceptive, you immediately see both, the negative and the positive. It is a good sign that your consciousness now has a bigger vision, that it has broken a built-in mechanism of seeing only one thing at a time. Naturally, to see one thing at a time is more comfortable because you can choose easily. There is no dichotomy to it. There is no question of choice; there is only one thing.

When you become more perceptive and your vision is bigger and you see both the sides together, you start feeling ambiguous: you cannot choose this, you cannot choose that. Now you have to learn one thing – and that is choicelessness. Let both be there; there is no need to choose.

This itch to choose has to be dropped now. This itch is okay when you only see one. But when you can see both then this constant urge to choose will create misery for you. And you will not be able to choose because you see both the points and they are fifty-fifty.

That’s how it is: it is fifty percent darkness and fifty percent light; it is fifty percent hatred and fifty percent love. Not even a single percent more to this side or to that; it is completely balanced

– negative and positive in balance. That’s how existence is in balance. Life and death balance, otherwise one would have won by now. Either life would have become victorious and death would have disappeared, or death would have become victorious and life would have disappeared. But both are equal energies; there is no way for either to win – they both balance.

So now you have to drop the itch to choose; that is your work now. There is no need to choose. The negative is there, the positive is there – let it be so. Et is how it should be. You remain choiceless. In your choicelessness ambiguity will disappear, because ambiguity is arising not because the negative and positive are there but because you want to choose.

For example, two women are standing there. If you are not interested in choosing there is no ambiguity. Two or two thousand women may be there but if you don’t want to choose, if you are not interested in women, there is no problem. Once you want to choose, then the problem arises – this woman or that? And if they are equally beautiful then the dichotomy; then you will be tom apart.

What to do? Where to go? Wherever you go you will feel wrong. If you choose this you will miss the other; if you choose the other you will miss this. Either way you are going to be in frustration.

So ambiguity is not arising because the positive and the negative are seen together. The ambiguity is arising because of an old habit: to choose. You have come to a new vision; you can see both together. Now you have to learn a new discipline of choicelessness. That means – let them both be there! There is no need to choose. Things will settle on their own; you need not settle them. For settle themselves. What do you think? – that if you don’t choose things won’t settle? Things will settle. Something is going to happen... things always happen. It is not that we do and that’s why they happen; they simply happen. We unnecessarily take the trouble of doing. Even if we don’t do anything something is going to happen. Life automatically goes on balancing itself.

Albert Einstein used to keep his letters for one month; then he would answer them. So thousands of letters would collect. Somebody asked him what the point of it was. He would have to answer them anyway, so why not finish them when they come? Why go on collecting them?

He said, ’But there is a point in it. Out of one hundred, ninety-nine need not be answered. When one month has passed they have answered themselves. Only one remains; I can answer that. If I answer letters every day then naturally I have to answer all! Just two, three weeks, four weeks waiting and the letter has answered itself.’

If he had told this to me I would have told him, ’You wait one year and that one will also be.... Why bother? You have learned a secret – use it!’

Try this, this time while you are here. No need to choose; become choiceless. And whatsoever happens happens; whatsoever happens is good. Let things happen rather than trying to do, and you will be surprised that all ambiguity disappears. It is a by-product of the chooser’s mind, the choosing mind, that creates ambiguity. Otherwise there is no dilemma. Negative and positive are perfectly balancing in life.

And it is the same about me: one part resists, one part is ready to surrender. Let both parts be there. Simply tell them ’You do whatsoever you want to do; you settle among yourselves. Let me alone! I am not interested this way or that; you settle it yourselves.’ One day you will suddenly see that those warring parts have disappeared – and not because of your choice. Then there is beauty, and then there will be a totally new kind of relationship with me which will not be of resistance and which will not be of surrender. And that will be higher than surrender.

If you surrender to me fighting with your resistant part, it will not be surrender. You will have to do it, and a surrender done is not much of a surrender. The resistant part will lie down there fallow in your unconscious, and will wait for its time to take revenge. And there will be a thousand and one moments. One day you are annoyed with me. I have said something and that has hurt you; I have not agreed with you, or something or other.... I have hit you hard, I have pricked your ego or something, and that moment the resistant part will come up and he will say, ’I was telling you from the very beginning.... Escape from this place!’ With vengeance that part will come up, and all surrender will disappear.

If you follow the resistant part the same will happen again – you can escape. But the other part is repressed; it will wait. Back in California you will start remembering me more and more.

My suggestion is: there is no need. Let both be there – you be the third! Why bother? Tell them,

’You wrestle amongst yourselves and you decide, and whosoever wins is perfectly okay.’ Nobody that’s what I call surrender.

So my surrender and your surrender are different. Your surrender is against resistance, and my surrender is when there is no resistance; not even the need to surrender is there. Because the very need depends on resistance. You want to surrender because there is resistance. And you want to surrender; that’s why there is resistance. They continue. You can become split between these two.

There is no need. This is how schizophrenia is created, this is how the whole earth is schizophrenic: always choosing, choosing, choosing. You need not be worried.

And let this be your very fundamental insight... about everything. Just for one year, don’t choose.

The world will not stop – nothing stops. I have not chosen for twenty-five years. Nothing stops; things go so smoothly and so perfectly.

Once you have learned the knack of not choosing then there is nothing else to learn. Everything settles on its own accord, and then there is great beauty because there is no violence to any part.

They have dissolved into each other on their own. And the negative and the positive have a pull towards each other; they are attracted towards each other. They are like man and woman: they can meet, they can merge. And when they have met and merged a new totality arises.

That totality is what I call surrender. It is not against resistance; it is not for surrender. It has nothing to do with being against and for. In fact the dualities have disappeared into each other and you are freed from dichotomy. But the beginning: to have that freedom is choicelessness.

Krishnamurti’s insistence on choicelessness is particularly for this reason. That is the most potential method to destroy schizophrenia. Don’t choose – let things be. And while you are here just let things be. It is going to happen. Good.

[Another sannyasin asks: Don’t you have to choose effort, Osho?]

No, nothing... one has to choose nothing. One has to allow. If effort is coming, allow it! If it is not coming then the question of choice arises. If you are feeling like dancing, then dance. If you are not feeling like dancing, don’t dance! Whatsoever you are feeling, let it be... in that moment. If you are feeling two oppositions simultaneously – for example, in a moment you are feeling that one part wants to dance, another part doesn’t want to dance – then just stand between the two and watch.

Don’t do anything, because there is nothing to do. Let them decide, let them meet together and let them become decisive; then you move.

[The sannyasin says: I’m a lazy man.]

Perfectly good! I am a guru for lazy men! Don’t be worried – you have found the right guru. I am the laziest guru around the world!

CHAPTER 8

8 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning of prem akal – timeless love. And love is the only phenomenon that exists in time and yet is beyond time.... ]

Once a gardener brought to me a summer flower – a small plant. After three, four weeks it bloomed.

It was really a beautiful flower but within three, four weeks the flower was gone and the stem also died. I was a little worried. I asked the gardener, ’What has happened?’

He said, ’Don’t be worried: the stem will come many times – each summer. The root is eternal, the root is timeless. It has a perennial root, what is called ’rhizome’.’ Next summer, the stem came again and there was again a beautiful flower and again it was gone. Each summer it used to come and disappear. When it disappeared, not even a trace was left on the surface; nothing remained visible.

Deeply hidden underneath the ground was the rhizome. When the time was ripe, when the season was ripe, when it was time for the rhizome to send another stem and bloom again, it would come.

That’s how love is: its root is like a rhizome – a root stalk which is perennial; the stem is temporal.

You fall in love with one person then one day it has disappeared. It was a summer flower. And you think in those moments when love disappears that it will never come again. How can it come ? This was so unique! One feels such deep despair and one cannot believe in that sadness that love will come again, that again there will be summer and love will bloom... that only on the surface it has disappeared, that there is something hidden behind, in the deepest core of your being, from where the stem will come again. One day again it is there and again one blooms.

One has to understand this quality of eternal love, and then rather than thinking of the flower that blooms

It is temporary it is only for the time being for a few weeks; it is a honeymoon Once falling today is going to take you to the rhizome. Once you have attained to that perennial root stalk, then love is no more a relationship; it becomes a state.

The love that exists between a master and a disciple is a state; it is not a relationship. It cannot be broken: it is something of the eternal. If it can be broken that simply means it was not there in the first place. If it is there then there is no way to break it.

[Osho gives a name for a centre: batohi. It means a wanderer, explains Osho... one who is not searching for any goal in particular but just enjoying the wandering. It does not mean a traveller; it means a wanderer.... ]

And that is my approach towards life. One should not convert it into a travelling. When you travel, you travel with a goal in the mind. When you travel, you are not interested in travelling itself; your whole focus is on the goal and you miss all that is along the way.

A wanderer is one who is not going anywhere in particular... who is simply enjoying the wandering.

North is good, South is also good. If he reaches East, good; if he reaches West, good. Wherever he reaches he will enjoy. The whole earth is his; the whole existence is his. He is not going anywhere.

He has no mind to go anywhere, so wherever he is, he is totally there.

When you have a mind to go somewhere you cannot be totally in places where you don’t want to be.

You have already moved in the mind, in your imagination. Physically you may exist here but in the mind you have already reached where your goal is. The mind always hovers around the goal. When there is no goal the mind has no place to abide in.

So in the East the wanderer has been one of the most important devices of sannyas. Buddhists call the wanderer ’parivragika’ – one who goes from one place to another. Not that he has to go anywhere; he just enjoys being anywhere, all over the place. He never stays in one place long. He never burdens any place long. He does not make a house anywhere. The tent is his house, so he can fix it anywhere and it becomes his house. He can unfix it any moment and it is on his shoulders.

He is a vagabond.

This wandering by and by relaxes one totally in the moment. Then you can enjoy all along, whatsoever is there – the moon, the trees, the birds, the people, strangers, unknown places. Batohi is one of the most beautiful words....

You have to do much for me. Don’t take it as a responsibility – it is not!

[A sannyasin says: During the tantra group I felt like a child and wasn’t connected at all with my sexual energy... while I was making love with my girlfriend I had an experience – that happens often

– of my body moving by itself automatically.

Osho checks his energy.]

have to control it, that it has to follow you, that it has to go according to you. So when it starts moving on its own you become afraid. In your fear you want to control it, and you cannot control it because it has really good energy.

If it were not so energy-full you would have been able to control it. You cannot control it because it is really good energy; powerful energy is there. And when you cannot control you become frightened; you think, ’What is going on? Am I not the master of my own house?’

In fact, to divide yourself from the body is the beginning of trouble. Rather than telling the body to follow you, you should follow the body. The body has its own wisdom which is far more ancient and far more perennial than what the mind knows. The mind is just a new arrival. The mind is just very very tiny; the body’s roots are very ancient. It has lived down the centuries – for millennia it has lived – and your mind is just a small thing. The part is trying to control the whole; that is creating the trouble.

And that’s why sometimes you will feel impotent; in tantra you felt impotent. Whenever the mind wants to control the body, the person becomes impotent. Not that you are impotent – you have full energy – but people who want to control the body will feel a kind of impotence because they cannot control it. When you want to make love to the woman, you cannot; you feel impotent. When the body wants to make love to a woman, you don’t, because you want to remain in control. That’s how the trouble is being created by you. It is a created trouble, and because it is created it is very simple to solve it. You can just drop it and it is solved; there is no problem.

So three things: first, stop trying to control the body. It is perfectly good that the body is moving on its own. That’s what I am teaching you, day in, day out – to let the body possess you; don’t be a manipulator. Be a participant with the body, not a manipulator. Don’t think the body is the slave and you are the master. You are not separate from the body; the body is not separate from you. The very idea of separation is utterly wrong and creates a thousand and one troubles. You are the body; the body is you. The body is your visible part and you are the body’s invisible part. There is no need to control; there is nobody to control.

Relax into the body, rest into the body. Next time when you are making love and the body starts moving on its own, be thrilled that your body is alive. You have not been able to kill it yet! Participate in it. Rather than trying to control it, become part of it. If the body is shaking, you go into the shaking; be the shaking!

The english word ’shaking’ comes from a sanskrit root, you will be surprised to know. The sanskrit word is ’shakti’; it means power, energy. The english word shaking comes from shakti. When you are shaken, it is energy – it is shakti. Go into it, allow it and cherish it! Cherish the dance!

And the second thing: never try to impose any sexuality on the body; that is violence. When it comes on its own, that’s okay; when it doesn’t come, that too is perfectly okay.

In tantra you must have been trying deep down to bring sexuality. Somewhere deep down you must the body will know; if there is nothing to say the body will know. Trust the body. You missed tantra because you must have got into that male neurosis of proving something. You must have thought to prove that you are a great lover or this and that, that you have great sexual energy. Then you will just fall flat.

Sexual energy is divine energy – you cannot prove yourself through it. You can receive it when it comes, but you cannot provoke it.

[Osho gives a name for a centre: Vikas.]

It means evolution. And now, meditation is the only method through which man can evolve further.

Up to now the evolution was unconscious; nature has brought man to this state. Nature cannot bring man any further any more. Now man has to take his own evolution in his own hands. Now only those people will evolve who deliberately make an effort to evolve; others will remain stuck.

Up to now the evolution was unconscious, but man has become conscious; a part, a small tiny part has become conscious. Now this is the last thing nature can do; it has done a miracle. From now onwards man has to take his own evolution in his own hands. So only if somebody consciously works will he become a buddha or a christ or a krishna. Otherwise people will remain human beings; they will not surpass humanity. Now it cannot happen unconsciously; it can only happen consciously.

’Vikas’ means conscious evolution. And the only method is meditation, because the only thing needed is to become more and more conscious, to dissolve the unconscious, to make one’s whole being full of light, to disperse darkness. And meditation becomes a lamp, a flame....

CHAPTER 9

9 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means blissful, shravan means listening – blissful listening. And there is a difference between hearing and listening. If one is not deaf, one hears; it is the physical part of listening, the gross part. But if you are not listening attentively, if you are not hearing totally, if you are not there in it participating, then it remains hearing; it is not listening. Hearing is physical.

When you are spiritually in it it becomes listening. Listening is a deep participation between the body and the soul. And that’s why it has been used as one of the most potential methods for meditation...

because it bridges the two infinites: the material and the spiritual.

And let this be your meditation; it will help you. Whenever you are sitting, just listen – to whatsoever is going on. It is a marketplace and there is much noise and traffic and the train and the plane.

Listen to it, with no rejection in the mind that it is noisy. Listen as if you are listening to music, with sympathy, and suddenly you will see that the quality of the noise has changed. It is no more distracting, no more disturbing – on the contrary it become very soothing. If listened to rightly even the marketplace becomes a melody.

So, what you are listening to is not the point – the point is you are listening, not just hearing. That is the meaning of ’shravan’. And when you hear it blissfully, cheerfully, joyously, then it goes very deep, because it is only in joy that we open. When we are not in joy we become closed.

Even if you are listening to something that you have never thought of as worth listening to, listen to it very cheerfully – as if you are listening to Beethoven’s sonata – and suddenly you will see you have transformed the quality of it. It becomes beautiful. And in that listening your ego will disappear.

be music, it may be love. Sometimes it can happen in negative emotions too. If you are really in rage and your body and soul are one, suddenly the ego disappears. Maybe that is why people are attracted so much towards anger. It gives a kind of release.

And this happens in many ways, it can happen in many ways. The whole point is that the distance between the body and the soul should not be there. In other words, the distance between the body and the soul is the ego. The bigger the distance, the bigger the ego, the lesser the distance, the lesser the ego. No distance – no ego.

Deva means divine, vishrant means rest... and let that be the key for you. Be more and more in the space of rest. That does not mean lethargy. Lethargy is not rest; lethargy is the opposite extreme of tension. Rest is exactly in the middle of both; rest is a state of balance.

People move from one extreme to another: they exert too much, then they fall into a lethargy –

or they become addicted to one extreme. A few people become addicted to too much work –

what psychologists call ’workaholics’. It is just like alcoholics: they become addicted to work. They cannot be without work, they have to do something. On the other extreme people become absolutely lethargic. When you are lethargic you lose all interest, zest, gusto. That is a kind of slow suicide. To be continuously in a strain is a suicide; to be continuously in lethargy is also a suicide – two different ways of killing oneself.

The real person and the real life happens just in the middle where the pendulum simply does not move to any extreme; it swings no more. You cannot call this man lethargic because he will not be adverse to activity, and you cannot call him a workaholic because he is not addicted to work. He can happily remain without work. That’s the meaning of the word ’vishrant’.

So keep that in your mind – don’t move to the extremes, remain in the middle. And soon you will start having the feel of it, of what it is. For example, if you are walking you can walk in a very lethargic way, like a drunkard, or you can walk like a very tense person whose house is on fire and who is rushing. By and by you have to feel inside yourself where the middle is. You are neither rushing like a man whose house is on fire and you are not simply going anywhere like a drunkard. You will have to learn that art, that feel inside, where you are neither. You are moving perfectly briskly, alive, alert, aware, with joy, but there is no strain and there is no drunkenness either.

You are eating food. You can eat like a madman: you can just go on stuffing, fast, without tasting the food, without enjoying it. You just go on throwing it inside and remain unfulfilled. Or you can eat like a dull person – very slowly, as if not interested. Again there is no joy in it. It is as if it has to be done like a duty so you are doing it, but there is no celebration.

Watch yourself and bring yourself into the middle where you are fully aware, joyously eating, chewing, enjoying, but there is no hurry – you are not stuffing. And this has to be watched throughout the day. Soon, by and by, through experience you will come to feel exactly where the point of vishrant, rest, is.

beautiful season. It is not so in the West, but in the East the coolness of it is greatly welcomed. So, in India, hamant is one of the most beautiful names: it represents coolness. In a hot country to feel coolness is to be in paradise; it is like an oasis.... [The words] mean: blissful coolness. That you have to remember: become more and more cool but don’t lose blissfulness.

There are people who become cool but they lose blissfulness. Then coolness turns into coldness; that is not good. There are people who are blissful, happy, joyous but don’t have any coolness. Then their joy, their happiness, becomes very hot – turns into lust, passion. One has to avoid both and one has to bring a great synthesis into one’s life where bliss can meet with coolness.

And that is the most beautiful season for the inner soul too. So be happy, but in a cool way!

[A sannyasin who is leaving with her husband and child says that she has many wrong attitudes to life such as fear and hopelessness about herself.]

Mm, mm... these are great qualities! Life is hopeless! It says nothing about you, it doesn’t say anything about you. Life is hopeless unless you change it. In itself it is hopeless... there is nothing.

You have to bring great creativity; only then is there any hope.

Life is a blank canvas. If you simply go on staring at the canvas you will not find any picture arising.

You will have to get involved and paint; you will have to splash colours. Only then will the painting arise and will there be meaning and hope. And it will depend on you how beautiful a painting you can make; it will depend on you.

It is good that the canvas is given blank, otherwise what will you do? If a painting were given all ready, then life would be really miserable. Then life would be absolutely hopeless because there would be nothing left for you to do. And without doing something, without being creative, how can you find yourself?

So don’t take it as something wrong; it is something very true. But one need not be confined to it; one can change it. I also say that life is hopeless but it can be transformed into a great hope. And it is good that it is not given ready-made. We are absolutely free to make or unmake it. It is for you to decide whether to paint hell or heaven; it is going to be your choice. So never blame anybody else: if you paint hell you live in hell. And nobody can paint the canvas for you; you will have to paint your canvas yourself. Nobody at all has any access to your canvas. It is so private, in the innermost core of your being, that only you are there. Nobody else can enter – neither your husband nor your children.

So I don’t see that you should be disturbed by it. And by the side of it comes fear... just lingering by the side. The fear is whether you will remain hopeless or you will create hope, whether you will live with this empty canvas or you will paint something; that is the fear. Let that fear become a challenge; don’t think about it as a problem and don’t surrender to it. Take it as a challenge... and start changing your life!

the energy coming up.

Until a man is dead, energy goes on coming up again and again. We are joined with an infinite source of energy. Nothing to be worried about, mm?

[The sannyasin says she often has pain in her navel.]

That may be because of these ideas. Start being more creative and the pain will disappear. It may be just this constant hopelessness and fear that one is missing. It can become a constant hurting feeling in the navel. But don’t be worried about it. Start being more creative, drop your dullness.

Bring in a little more enthusiasm. Much has to be done....

And there are great challenges waiting. Fulfill one challenge and a bigger one comes to face you.

Good!

CHAPTER 10

10 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin couple and their baby are present. The man says he expected to come here and feel better, more loving. Instead, he says, in some ways he feels more sad, tense, angry.]

Expectation always creates misery. If you expect something, that very expectation will become the barrier. So live a life without any expectations. Your expectations are your demands on life and a demanding mind always becomes miserable. Bliss is where demand is not, because only in a non-demanding state can you relax and receive it. So this is not a problem which is personal to you; this happens to many people.

Naturally, you come with great expectation – that this is going to happen, that is going to happen...

many fantasies in the mind. Because of those fantasies you cannot relax; you are always waiting for the result. The journey is no more important; the goal has become important. If the goal is not arising you become miserable. And the more miserable you become, the farther away the goal goes on receding. It’s a vicious circle.

So next time you come, come without any expectations. We cannot demand anything of life; it has no obligation to fulfill our demands. That whole pattern has to be broken, so in a way it has been good that you have been shocked. Now you can learn something beautiful out of it – to never again expect.

Expectation is out of misery, and naturally when a thing arises out of misery it will create misery.

The tree will be nothing but an unfoldment of the seed; the tree cannot be anything else. Why were you expecting to be more loving? – because you must be suffering and feeling that you are not loving Now out of the non loving mind the desire comes to be loving Watch the mechanism expectation is there, comparison is there. The greater the demand, the more miserable you will feel, the more of a failure you will feel. Make a big deal and then you fall short.

If you had come without any desire, without any demand, without any expectation, that would have been the right way to come to me. Next time come without any demand. Just come to be here for the sheer joy of being here – not that something is going to result out of it. There is nothing to result out of it; it is the thing in itself. This is it! And if you can be in this moment without any expectation then there is no misery; then you are open. Then you simply unfold; your flower blooms. There is no barrier to it... nothing can hold it.

But it happens to many people. By and by they learn that expectations are not helpful. So you suffered because you sowed the seeds for it. Next time come just for the sheer joy of being here –

with not even a single idea, no demand about what should happen. Whatsoever happens is good.

If nothing happens, that too is good. With no future in the mind, come.

When there is no future in the mind the past slips, cannot remain there. The past can remain in you only if you project a future. The future is another side of the past. You were miserable, you were feeling unloving, closed – that was your past. You created a future. You think it is the opposite, but how can it be opposite? It will only be just the other side of it. The other side looks opposite but is not. They are together – they are never separate. Unloving, closed, feeling miserable, you created a future, you painted a future: loving, open, happy. And because they are together, you cannot get out of the rut.

Next time create no future, no fantasy, no dream. And then suddenly you will be surprised: the past is slipping out of you! It cannot keep glued to you; it needs the future to remain with you’ So drop the future to drop the past, and when the past and future are not there, there is no way to be miserable and there is no way to be closed. It is impossible to be closed and to be miserable; then one is simply blissful. Not really blissful, but one is simply bliss!

Next time... But remember, when I am saying ’next time’, don’t start creating an expectation for next time. Because I just saw the idea in you, of ’Okay, so next time I will see’... but then you have already created...

I am saying, ’next time’ not to create a desire but just to see what has happened this time. In your seeing it, it will disappear and you will come more innocent, more in a primal state of mind. Then everything is possible.

[The wife says she will miss Osho. Osho replies, That’s right! I will also miss you.]

But you will be coming soon... and I will follow you there! Continue to meditate and remember me, mm ? And sometimes when you are far away, you can be far closer to me than when you are here.

That happens, because when you are physically here I am so obvious that you can start taking me for granted. When you are far away you cannot take me for granted: you have to make great deliberate conscious effort to remember me. In that very remembrance I will be closer to your heart worried about! If you sometimes feel like crying and weeping, cry and weep. And tears are beautiful prayer; there is nothing else more beautiful than tears. Next to tears is the smile... but next!

Tears come from the deepest core of your being. And if they come with joy, if they come as a celebration, if they come as a loving memory, they have infinite value. They can become the whole alchemy of transformation. One can be transformed through tears as through nothing else.

So when you feel like crying, cry. When you miss me, miss me! And let a great remembrance arise in you. Feel me very consciously around you and you will be able to jump across time and space.

That’s how love is said to be beyond time and space. It can jump from one place to another place without taking any time. It is the fastest thing possible. Love is faster than light! In a single moment you can be on another planet. So I will be with you!

[A sannyasin says she has a feeling of sinking into a deep blue liquid and is very afraid and confused.

Osho checks her energy.]

Everything is on the right lines. It can be confusing in the beginning because things are changing; you are no more the same.

And that liquid is very symbolic. You are becoming liquid; you are losing your old frozenness, your old solidity. To be solid is dull and dead; to be liquid is more alive. And I say this is nothing because there comes a point when one starts evaporating; then the real confusion!

These are the three states: solid, liquid, and vapour. These are the three states not only of water; these are the three states of consciousness too. Consciousness can function as a solid thing; that is the most dull state, sleepy. The second is a liquid state: consciousness starts flowing; life starts happening. The third state is vapour: the consciousness simply disappears into the unknowable.

Now you are becoming blue liquid; soon you will become blue sky. Then the real confusion will come! These confusions have to be passed through; they are beneficial. Nothing to be afraid of.

Fear will come, that’s why fear is there. Fear will come about what is happening. Because you will not be so certain about yourself; how can you be ? With the past you are certain; with the future you are not certain. You used to know who you are; now that identity will disappear, and with that your choice, decisiveness – all things will go. So even in small things you will become indecisive. This is perfectly good – nothing to be worried about.

And in relationship also you will find that you are no more as certain, confident, as you used to be, because you will not be so able to manipulate people; manipulation is ugly. You will not be so capable of playing games upon people; games are ugly. You will not be so capable of putting your trips on people; trips are ugly. So naturally you will feel as if the ground is disappearing underneath and you are falling in an abyss. But this is what sannyas is all about!

Soon you will be happy that the o!d solidity is gone, the old ego is gone, and your river is no more stagnant – it is flowing; it has melted.

Things are going perfectly well

Nothing to be worried about These are the moments when trust is moments in which you simply go on doing whatsoever is happening, go on participating in it. Within a few days you will disappear and a new you, and a far better you and a far more beautiful you, will have arrived!

[Osho explains the meaning of deva prayoga – divine experiment. From the known into the unknown into the unknowable. This is sannyas.

To me life is a divine experiment. It is not punishment – it is god’s experiment. It is a design, it is a growth situation.

It is a provocation to go higher and higher and higher. It is a constant challenge – not to remain limited by the past, not to remain confined by the past, not to remain burdened by the known. One has to continuously go beyond the known. Only by going from the known to the unknown does the greatest experiment happen one day. That is: going from the unknown into the unknowable. But one learns from going from the known to the unknown.

So the beginning is dropping the known and always choosing the unknown. Then by and by that quality of adventure, that quality of quest, exploration, gathers, goes on gathering, comes to a climax, a crescendo – and then the quantum leap. The quantum leap is from the unknown to the unknowable. That unknowable is called god. God is just a name for the unknowable. It is just a word, a symbol; it can be dropped. In fact it should be dropped because the very word has become known so much that it no more represents the unknowable.

The priests have used it so much that they have corrupted it by too much use. The word has become so familiar that it rings no bell in the heart. And familiarity breeds contempt – god, god, god... church, temple, mosque. Everywhere people talking about god, everybody believing in god. The whole thing has become vulgar... too mundane. It can be dropped.

Remember: the unknowable. Science only believes in two things – the known and the unknown; it does not believe in the unknowable. That’s the difference between science and religion. Science says the existence can be divided into two parts – the known and the unknown. The unknown is that which we will know some day. It has no intrinsic quality of remaining unknown forever – it is just uncharted, but we will chart it. All that has become known was unknown one day; it has become known. All that is unknown today will become known tomorrow... or some day! it is potentially capable of being known.

Religion says there are three things: the known, the unknown... and up to this point religion agrees with science, there is no disagreement. But religion says there is something more too: that is the unknowable, which cannot be known ever, which will remain mysterious. By its very nature it is a mystery. And religion has some valid reason for it; it is not just illogical.

There are many things we will never be able to know for certain – for example, how this existence came into being. We will never be able to know because we came very very late; there was nobody witnessing it. It will always be more or less a guess. There are a thousand and one theories about creation but all are guesses all guesswork No theory can be called scientific; there is no way no way to make the knower an object of knowledge- It remains subjective. It is always the knower; it is never the known. And there is no way to divide yourself into two parts, and even if it can be done then the part that becomes known is no more you. The part that still knows, is you, so it is irreducible; that mystery of the knower will never be solved.

And the end remains unknowable. What to say about the end of existence? We don’t even know what happens to a man when he dies, and people die every day; people simply disappear. The cocoon is left, the body is left, and the soul? – nobody knows where it goes, whether it remains or not, whether is simply disappears, dissolves or travels ahead. Death happens every day and we are not even able to know death – so what to say about the death of the whole existence ? We will not be there to witness it either. Just as the beginning has been missed, the end is going to be missed, because when the existence ends we will end with it. So nobody will be there as a witness.

These are very fundamental mysteries and there are other mysteries. Love is a mystery: nobody knows yet why and how it happens. And there are other mysteries which happen rarely, so they are not so common – for example, samadhi, enlightenment. They happen but are not common. Nobody knows what happens when a man becomes a buddha. Even a buddha is incapable of explaining it; even he keeps quiet. Even he smiles and keeps quiet. He says, ’You can know only when it has happened to you. It is a taste to be tasted. There is no way to explain it.’

These are the three things: from the known one has to go always into the unknown and one day from the unknown into the unknowable. So there are only two steps of sannyas: first, from the known into the unknown, and the second and the last, from the unknown into the unknowable.

This is the experiment....

CHAPTER 11

11 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin asks if she can train in tantra yoga, as she is a therapist and can use it in her work.]

You can train. You can be of immense help to people....

Yes, you can. So you do the tantra group here. You can bring very good energy into helping people.

And people’s problems are basically concerned with sex energy. Ninety-nine percent of problems can be reduced to sex, and tantra is the only way to go beyond them. Everything else, at the most, settles things for a time being but there is no transformation, even through psychoanalysis. Even through growth groups things only settle for the time being but your root cause remains; it is not even touched. Symptoms disappear, but the root remains.

Sooner or later the root will start creating new symptoms again. Only tantra can destroy the root because it can transform sexuality into superconsciousness.

Tantra is nothing but an alchemical process... and you can bring great energy into it; you are old enough to bring that kind of energy. If a young woman is going to take the group she herself is not yet out of sex; if a young man is going to do, he himself has the same problem somewhere. You can bring a very motherly energy and a motherly atmosphere, and that will be of great help.

In the east tantra was developed by great sages... very ancient, old. When vatasana wrote his

’kamasutras’ he was beyond ninety, but only a man of that age and that experience who has known all ups and downs of life, who has known the ecstasy of love and the misery too, who has known the joy that comes through sex and the frustration... And they both come together; they are both there.

Sex is such a vital energy that it brings both the negative and the positive together; it is a meeting ready, more ready, more in tune with misery, so more misery comes. If a person is really natural then fifty percent joy will come and fifty percent misery will come out of sex. But it is difficult to find a normal person. By ’normal’ I mean a balanced person who exists in the middle, who is not an extremist, leftist or rightist... who walks just in the middle of the way, who follows the golden mean.

Ordinarily people are abnormal this way or that: either they are too indulgent, licentious, or they are too repressive, religious. In both ways misery will be more and there will be only glimpses of joy, far and few in between, very rare... just enough to keep you hoping, that’s all.

If a person is normal then fifty percent joy and fifty percent misery will come. If a person has absolutely fallen below normal – not an extremist, but has fallen below human consciousness –

then one hundred percent misery will come out of it. And if a person has gone beyond human consciousness, has become more alert, has brought some meditative energy to focus upon it, then one hundred percent joy.

Freedom is through joy; freedom has no boundaries – misery has boundaries. The bigger the misery, the closer will be the boundaries. When a person is really in misery he is almost suffocating in the boundaries. They are like an armour pressing him down, pressing him inwards, crushing him.

When you are more joyful, you have a little space between you and the boundaries. If there is real joy then boundaries simply evaporate; then the whole existence is yours.

When sexuality can bring one hundred percent joy without even a trace of misery, then tantra has succeeded. This is the fulfillment in tantra. And when this has happened a person is ready to go into god. If he can tolerate, if he can bear the joys of sexuality, one hundred percent, then only is he capable of invoking god... because that is invoking a storm. Tremendous energy will fall on you! If you are not ready for it you will be crushed. God can become a self-murder if you invoke him when you are not ready.

If you are not ready to see him and you open your eyes to see, your eyes will be burned. Truth is too bright for ordinary eyes; eyes have to be trained slowly, slowly. The body has to be trained, the mind has to be trained. And tantra functions on all the three layers – the body, the mind and the soul. It begins on the body, ends on the soul. Where tantra ends, god begins.

Tantra brings you to the real meditative state because it transforms the whole sexuality into joy. You can bring your energy to it.

Shunya means nothingness, emptiness, nobodiness, egolessness, and praveera means excellence

– excellence in being nobody. And that is your task: become more and more excellent in becoming nobody, then god is yours. It is a promise!... excellence in being nobody. And that is the greatest spiritual quality which has to be evolved. When you have completely disappeared, then all is possible. The ’I’ is the only barrier. Good!

[Osho explains the meaning of prem preeksha: preeksha is the capacity to see, so it means seeing through love, through the heart, through feeling.

capable of knowing through love there is no need to bother about the mind, because that is always secondary. When the heart is not capable of seeing we have to choose the next best, and that is the head. Then one has to follow intelligence, but it is next best.

And the best is possible for you so there is no need to go for the next. Simply start being more feeling, more loving, more sensitive, and as many times as possible, just go there behind the heart and pulsate with it, and it will create a kind of energy in you. Soon you will find that you are streaming with some new energy – which is there. It just needs your attention, then it will start growing. So your name will be: seeing through love, love vision.

[A sannyasin, newly arrived, says: I don’t know what I’m doing here!]

Nobody knows! and nobody cares! I myself don’t know what I’m doing! But it is fun, whatsoever it is.

[She then says that her family and friends were not accepting of her sannyas... she thought it would be easier.]

No, it is difficult! Nobody likes anybody changing because it creates inconvenience for them.

Everybody wants you to be exactly that which you are. Everybody wants you to remain stereotyped so they know who you are, so they know how to behave with you, so there is no inconvenience.

Everybody wants you to have a fixed character, a dead character, so you remain predictable. If you start changing – and this is a great change – then everybody who has been related to you has to readjust. That creates inconvenience; that’s why they become hard and they are very antagonistic.

The reason is that you create work for them; now they have to readjust with you. They have again to learn how to relate with you. You have changed – in fact, it is as if they are being introduced to a new person. And it is better to be introduced to a new person because you can start from abe. But you have known the person for many years and then suddenly the person has changed. Now you will be in confusion. You know so many things about the person and now he has changed.

Now there will always be a confusion. It will take years for them to have a right concept about you and, in fact, my sannyasins won’t ever allow anybody to have a right concept about them because they will be continuously changing. Sannyas is not one change: it is the beginning of change. It is not birth but a continuous birth. Now you will be born again and again every day, and those who are related with you will always be in trouble unless they start learning to change, unless they start accepting an unpredictable person... and that is hard.

And I can understand their problem... but don’t be worried about that. That is their problem – either they will adjust or they will fall out or they will start learning something new about what this sannyas is. But you have created a turmoil in their mind so they become angry. They want to hush you down, back to your old pattern, but there is no way to go back; one can only go ahead.

CHAPTER 12

12 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, vasant means spring – bliss spring. And when bliss comes it comes like a spring. It was not there and suddenly it is there; suddenly the whole climate is different. It takes you unawares. It comes very unexpectedly, and one never knows from where it will start and begin.

which tree will bloom first, will have the first taste of spring, nobody knows. what part of your being will bloom first, nobody can say. It can be love, your heart. It can be intelligence, your head; it can be something else. It can be creativity – that suddenly you become creative, suddenly you start outpouring yourself into songs or poetry or painting. Or it may be that your silence blooms and all expression disappears and you are utterly silent. And that is the blooming of the spring – the flower of silence.

One never knows which tree will start, which tree will be the first receiver, what part of your being will receive it first and when. Neither the time is known nor is there any way to figure it out. But when spring comes then everything changes. Then the whole life has a totally different quality. Birds are singing in a different way. There is fulfillment and trees are delighted. The whole feel on the earth has a new verve, a new joy.

It is exactly the same when bliss comes: for the first time you start feeling that life has meaning –

that it is not a meaningless desert, that it is not just a drag, that there is joy, there was joy, there will be joy; it was just that you were not aware of it. And once you are aware, you are a different man, a new man.

Orange in India is the colour of the spring, the colour of flowers, the colour of life. It symbolises many things. It symbolises the fire because fire is life. It symbolises the sun because the sun is the f lif

It

b li

bl

d b

bl

d i th

f lif

A d fi

ll it

b li

th

colourful, psychedelic.

I am giving you this name so that you can remember two things: one, wait for bliss. You cannot grab it; it comes like spring. One can only wait. One can wait hopefully. One can wait very expectantly.

One can wait with great thrill. But one can only wait – nothing can be done about it. You cannot bring it; spring cannot be forced to come. It comes when it comes.

So the first thing to remember is that all that a man can do for god or for bliss or for truth, is to learn how to wait. But the waiting should not be the waiting of despair, anxiety, hopelessness. The waiting should be full of thrill, enthusiasm, trust, hope. And then it comes... it certainly comes! It is sure to come.

The moment waiting is total and you are utterly open for it, exactly in that moment, immediately, it happens. And when it happens, then only do you know what joy is. Before that, whatsoever you had known as joy was nothing but a kind of entertainment, merriment. Those were toys that you were playing with because the real thing was missing. Then all those joys of the past suddenly fade out.

When the real comes, then only do you have the criterion to know what is unreal. All that you had known before simply becomes shadowy....

[A sannyasin who is leaving says she wants to say something to Osho but cannot think of anything.]

There is nothing or there is so much that it is difficult to say, but both are the same. Language is mediocre. If there is nothing to say, it cannot say it; if there is too much to say, it cannot say it. It is just luke-warm, just utilitarian... is needed for the day-to-day world.

Whenever you go beyond the day-to-day world – if it is love, if it is trust, if it is beauty – then suddenly the language flops down; it becomes absolutely inadequate. But there is no need to say everything that one wants to say. Sometimes it can be said without saying it. There are other ways to say it. One can just be silent; one can just be in deep love and gratitude. And the very vibe, the very pulsation, becomes communion.

Language at the most can communicate, but silence can create a communion. It goes far deeper because it comes from the depth. So no need....

[The sannyasin then asks: I was wondering if I could perhaps have a name for a centre there.]

You start! – that’s what is needed now. That will be your way of saying things to me, mm?

This will be the name for the centre: prahari. It means the watchman. And everybody has to become a watchman in the inner world. Unless you start watching yourself, the ultimate mystery remains far away. We see things, people, but we don’t see ourselves. Meeting people, seeing people is a kind of encounter, but unless our energy moves from encounter to ’in-counter’, we will never be able to see the ultimate source of reality.

– the doer, the watcher, the object and the subject. But that is where the source of all consciousness is.

[A sannyasin, who had previously written a letter to Osho, is leaving and says she wants to bring her husband with her next time.]

It is not much of a problem. The mind is greed – and unless the mind disappears, greed goes on lingering in some way or other. Greed is simply nothing but the constant fear of the emptiness of the mind. It is an effort to somehow stuff the emptiness. So it can take any form. Sometimes you can go on stuffing food or relationships or love affairs and the mind can move from the world, can become spiritual. But it remains the same – the greed is greed; there is no worldly, no other-worldly greed. Greed is simply greed. You can be greedy for money and you can be greedy for meditation; it is all the same.

You can be greedy for power, you can be greedy for paradise – it is all the same. In fact the second greed is more dangerous because it is very subtle and you can pretend that you are not greedy.

Somebody searching for god can easily pretend he is not greedy. He has left his home, money, prestige. How can you say he is greedy ? He is standing naked in a cave, just searching for god; how can you call him greedy? He is greedy... but his greed is very subtle.

The worldly greed is very gross; it shows on the surface. His greed is deep inside him; will not show on the surface. And then it is more deceptive and more dangerous because even he may not be able to see it.

... But this is the nature of the mind. You cannot drop greed without dropping the mind itself. So don’t make greed the problem – that’s what I want to say: don’t make greed the problem. The problem is the mind.

And this happens many times, that if you make greed the problem – which is just a symptom, not a cause... And whenever you start working from the effect, the symptom, you will be lost in a long struggle, unnecessary and futile, fruitless, because the cause is not there. The cause is hidden somewhere else – and you fight with the symptom.

Sometimes it is possible if you go on fighting too much that you can make the symptom disappear but then somewhere else, some other symptom will bubble up. The greed may disappear, anger may come; the anger may disappear, fear may come. The fear may disappear, then something else... because the cause is there.

It is as if you have put water on to heat and it is evaporating. Now, you don’t allow the vapour to go out from this side, so you close that part. The vapour starts moving from another side – you close that; the vapour starts moving from the third side. And it is good that it goes on moving. If you really close it in from every side then you will go mad. You will simply explode into bits and pieces. That’s what happens sometimes: a man can be so successful in stopping the symptoms of the disease that there is no ’let-out’. There is no safety valve allowed to work. The vapour can go on accumulating cause is. And the cause is one and symptoms are many; then the problem is very simple. There is no need to fight with the greed, anger, sex, etcetera. They are all symptoms of an empty mind which is constantly hankering to fill itself because the emptiness creates fear. It is frightening that one is empty, that one is nothing. Although that nothingness is our nature we don’t accept it; we go on rejecting It.

So my suggestion is that you start accepting emptiness.

And you will be surprised: just by

that acceptance, the strength of the symptoms will become very very very weak. They will start disappearing; they will start dying on their own accord.

First, accept emptiness; second, start rejoicing in it. And then the third experience will be there –

that emptiness is your nature; there is no way to fill it. There is no need to fill it because it is you! And the more you fill it, the more you will be burdened, and the more you will be dragged downwards.

The more you will not be able to fly into the sky. For that, weightlessness is needed.

So accept, rejoice, and then see what happens. And sometimes emptiness has to be rejoiced in in other forms also; that will be helpful. For example, make your room completely empty and rejoice in emptiness. That’s what zen people do. Their rooms are utterly empty. Just the most essential is there, otherwise it is empty. You can remove the essential within minutes and the room is completely empty. This is just acceptance of emptiness.

See a zen painting: the painting is just somewhere down in the corner and the whole canvas is empty. Now the western painter cannot figure it out. Why this wastage of canvas ? If you are going to just paint in a small part of the canvas, then why this big canvas? The western painting covers the whole canvas – it does not leave a single spot empty; it is too much afraid of emptiness. But the zen painting is really empty... as if those small figures and trees and rocks are just to emphasise the emptiness, to create a contrast so you can see the emptiness clearly – but that is the right proportion. Just look at the sky and the earth and the trees. They are just small, and the whole sky is empty; that is the proportion. Emptiness is more in life!

So keep zen paintings, keep your room empty. And sometimes start enjoying the emptiness when you are feeling hungry; rejoice in it. That is the meaning of fasting.

Fasting does not mean to force yourself to remain hungry, no. It simply means rejoicing in the emptiness when the stomach is empty, because when the stomach is empty there is a great door opening inside you. When the stomach is empty, one is more conscious; otherwise the energy gets involved in digesting. And you are not so conscious as you are when you are hungry. That’s why if you are hungry you cannot sleep in the night. Food creates a kind of drugged state; it makes you unconscious.

So sometimes just enjoy the emptiness of the stomach. Feel the hunger, dance with hunger, sing a song with hunger. There is no hurry to fill it; one is not going to die. At least for three months... if you continuously don’t eat for three months you will not die, so there is no hurry. One day one can miss! One can easily miss one meal, and you will be benefited by it.

You can run, dance, in a better way, and you will feel more in tune with existence. That’s why all the religions by and by started loving the idea of fasting. It was not a torture – it was a joy!

So anything that gives you a feeling of emptiness, start enjoying. Keep your bathroom completely empty, your room empty. Sometimes simply sit without doing anything; don’t fill your life with activities. Sometimes just sit outside, doing nothing – watching the trees, the river, the clouds.

It will not be paying for you: they won’t fill you; they will not do anything to you. You will just be doing something utterly useless but immensely beautiful. By and by you will be able to enjoy, and this enjoyment will change your greed. Nothing has to be done directly with greed.

And don’t force your husband to come; just invite him. If he enjoys coming, bring him. But in no way should you put your trip on him... in no way. Otherwise that very thing becomes a barrier. He will come because you dragged him, you nagged him into coming, but then he will not feel in tune with me. So just make him available to me, share me with him; just let him be acquainted, that’s all. If the desire starts coming in him, and it will come... Seeing you, watching you, feeling you, the desire will come because he will see that something immensely valuable has happened to you. And he will become interested; then it will be good.

[A sannyasin had submitted a question for discourse which Osho answered. Now the sannyasin is disturbed about the answer, and says that he now feels that what he has been experiencing was not real.]

No, it was real, but real things can be disturbed very easily. Never think that because something has been disturbed it was not real. That idea persists in people’s minds – that reality has to persist.

Reality is very fragile. Unreality is very persistent. Misery persists more than blissfulness and any small thing can disturb it. In fact, if some small thing disturbs it that simply shows it was real.

So nothing to be worried about. And when you ask a question you get into trouble!

You have been happy too long so that can be... One starts looking for trouble. But nothing to worry about. No, everything is good – just a little noise in the mind – otherwise nothing to worry about.

It will come again – mm? tonight it will come. And you will start crying and weeping in gratitude.

Right?!

CHAPTER 13

14 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, prasava means birth – birth of love. And let sannyas be a birth of love... a birth in love. Live love as intensely as possible; let that be your doing. Everything else in life is a means; the end is always love. And if the means fulfill love then the person is sane; if the means don’t fulfill love then the person is insane. Sanity has only one definition: that your means should fulfill the end.

If one can manage that – the harmony between the means and the end – then one is sane. When your means don’t fulfill your end and you go on doing them and you never arrive anywhere – no fulfillment, no flowering – then you are neurotic. There is no harmony between means and end.

If you want to go to the river and you start moving in the opposite direction, then you are neurotic.

If you want to go to the river and the river is flowing east, you have to go east, not west. Then you are healthy, sane. According to this definition there are very few people who are sane. Ninety-nine percent of people live a life without love, hence it is meaningless, hence it is without poetry, hence it is without romance. They simply drag – there is not that quality of dance in their life. They are not thrilled and delighted but live as if fulfilling a duty. A serious duty has to be fulfilled but there is no joy in it.

Love is the fufillment of life’s whole effort, endeavor. So whatsoever you do, remember one thing, that it should somehow become related to love, only then is it worthwhile.

Even if you are cleaning the floor it should be a fulfillment of your love. Somebody is coming you love and you are preparing the house. Or you are cooking food – your son is coming, your friend is coming and it is out of love. Make every act of your life dedicated to love and sanity arises out of it. Wholeness, saintliness, and all that is beautiful, will follow automatically, just let this be your criterion

This is the meaning of

prem prasava: birth into love birth for love

represents life, represents expression – just as flowers start opening when the sun is there....

[A sannyasin, who works as an ashram guard, asks if he should do any meditations; he enjoys guarding.]

Yes, that can be of immense value – it can become zazen, just sitting there silently, watching the trees and the birds and the sky, and nothing in particular to do but just being there. A watchman can become a great witness very easily; it is one of the best things. You have only to be alert, that’s your job, and to be alert is the whole of religion.

So in fact there is no need... You can simply be more and more watchful; enjoy the feel of it. And don’t think about it as a job; think about it as a meditation. Then you will be transformed by it. And it is only a question of attitude. If you think about it as a job, you miss the point. Then you are most concerned about the time – that you have to go when your time is over; you are looking at the watch.

There are a few people working in the office who go on looking at the watch; they are missing an opportunity .

It happened in the french revolution – a very rare phenomenon – that people went berserk destroying things. But one thing particularly was destroyed all over paris – all the clocks, watchtowers, church clocks, schools, colleges. People were shooting the clocks. It was mysterious! Why? Why were people destroying the clocks? Then only by and by did people become aware that there was some hidden meaning. Maybe even the people who were destroying those clocks were not aware of it.

Those clocks had destroyed their whole joy of life; they had reduced the whole of life to work.

Time is destructive to eternity. Time is mind. When you slip out of time you slip out of mind. So sitting there, slip out of time. Just be alert, as if nothing else is important. Just being aware is the only thing you have to do. And enjoy it, cherish it. Don’t make it a serious effort that you have to be alert, just playfully be alert. There is nothing else to do; why not be alert ? And when you are alert you will see the greenery of the trees has changed; it depends on your alertness.

When your alertness is very dim, trees are green but not psychedelically green. When your alertness is a little more, you become more sensitive, more open. Trees change – they have more greenness.

When you become a little more alert, the greenness is not only greenness – it is throbbing life. When you become a little more alert, the tree becomes luminous. It is not only green – it is a luminous green; a light is being diffused by that greenness.

It depends on how alert you are. As you go on becoming more and more alert, you will find life becoming more and more of a celebration. The more dull you are, the more dull life is; it is exactly the way you are. If you are dull, life is dull. If you are alert, life is alert. To change the whole world there is only one simple key: change your alertness.

It seems perfectly good – you continue, mm? Good!

Love is the only problem! Once love is not there there is no problem left! There is nothing else left....

Love brings both – the peaks and the valleys. The higher the peaks, the deeper will be the valley, and one has to learn to accept the negative part of it; it is always there. If you want to drop the negative part, the only way to drop it is to drop the positive part, but then the whole love is dropped.

You cannot drop just the hate part. Love is not just a love relationship; it is love-hate relationship.

It is being in a constant turmoil. There will be moments of peace just as there are moments of peace in war. And they are beautiful, mm? because against the background of the conflict, when those moments come they are beautiful. Against the noise comes that silence, and it is beautiful. But it has something very basic in it that needs to be understood: if you love a person you want to come close, but there is only a point up to which you can come close. Beyond that the privacy of the other person starts.

The moment you start interfering with his privacy or he starts interfering with your privacy, fight starts. We allow the other only to a certain extent – and nothing can be done about it – otherwise your soul will be destroyed. He wants you to be close to him but he does not want to be completely effaced. Otherwise you will take him inside you. Then he will become afraid: ’This woman is going to kill me!’

You would like him to be very close to you but only to a certain extent. And by and by you will know, by and by you will watch and you will see where the point comes where you start overlapping on him or he starts overlapping on you. Immediately the energy changes: you start pushing him, you start going away. That’s part of it; you have to go away.

When you are again distant to a certain extent, you start feeling love for the other and you would like to come close. Mm? that’s why it feels like being a yo-yo, but love is a yo-yo. It is coming together just to separate again; it is going apart just to come back again.

That coming together and the joy of it depends on going away. If you don’t go away, then you are stuck; then there will be no joy. It is just like you eat; then for six, eight hours you fast. You cannot go on eating twenty-four hours a day. Otherwise all joy of eating will be destroyed – you will feel nausea. So for six, eight hours you forget about food – again hunger is there and again you are asking for food, longing for food.... And you will eat! And the moment you eat the hunger starts disappearing. So the first bite has a different value; the second bite has less value than the first; the law .of diminishing returns. It is not only economical; it is a very fundamental law. The second bite is not so satisfying as the first, the third will be less, the fourth will be less, and so on, so forth, and after thirty minutes you are finished. If somebody forces you now, you will say, ’What are you doing?’ You will start fighting.

In my family it was a usual affair. My father is so much for giving food to people that he will invite people and he will force them, almost physically! Almost physically he will go on putting ladoos in the mouth! Unless it becomes a fight, unless the person starts almost being angry and in rage... but that was how my grandfather was too And he used to say ’This is our family tradition that unless

So you stop and you forget food for a few hours. It is the same with love. Love is food – food for the soul. You cannot eat it for twenty-four hours a day. So a real love affair is a constant honeymoon/divorce, honeymoon/divorce. That way it goes – like a yo-yo.

So it is perfectly good! If you want a love affair this is how it is to be. If you want a marriage – nice, secure, no fight, nothing, goody-goody – then you can manage that too. But that is not worth much.

One has to pay for every joy, remember it! You cannot avoid paying. The fight is the payment, the price. If you desire that joy of being together, of melting and merging into each other, then you will have to suffer the pain of going away again and again.

And remember: love is the only problem! Once you have gone beyond love the world is finished; then you will not be coming back into the world again. That is nirvana – gone forever.

And that’s why I go on helping my sannyasins to be more in love – so that you can see all the joy and all the misery of it, the ecstasy and the agony. Watching, moving into it, living in it, experiencing it, one day you will go beyond it. That day – when you go beyond love – is the day of meditation.

Then you start being happy just in your aloneness; then you don’t need the other.

These are the two steps towards god: love – you are happy but somebody else is needed, your happiness has a kind of dependence, the other is needed. You are not enough unto yourself, you are half, and only when the other is there do you feel a kind of wholeness. When the other is not there you start being miserable; something is missing. But through the experience of love, the authentic experience of love – which is not possible in marriage because marriage is bogus... Nobody can go from marriage into meditation, it is impossible, because the man has missed the first step.

It is only through love – the anguish and the ecstasy of it – that you learn, that you see, that you visualise, that you become capable of coming to certain conclusions. And the greatest conclusion that one arrives at spontaneously one day is that if one really wants to be eternally happy, then that happiness has to be in aloneness; it cannot depend on the other. That which depends on the other certainly depends on the other – you are not the master of it; you are a slave. And that’s why there is conflict: nobody wants to be a slave.

Freedom is a higher value than love, and the whole conflict is between these two values: love and freedom. But you can know only that freedom is a higher value than love if you have been in love.

Going through experience beyond love, you arrive at freedom. I’m not saying that you become unloving, no. Then a different quality of love arises in you which is more like friendship, not like lust.

Then you can give your love to anybody who is available but you are no more dependent on it. Then there is no more any honeymoon and no more any divorce; it is just a pure sharing of energy.

If nobody is there you are perfectly happy, not an iota less. If somebody is there you are perfectly happy; there is no difference between your aloneness and your togetherness. That’s what meditation is – but that’s a higher state... higher than love. My emphasis on love relationship is basically so that I can drive you towards the beyond.

moment you are so happy. And the distance is so much that to travel continuously from these two distances from one to another is almost like going from one planet to another. But that will make you mature, integrated, and capable of being alone one day.

You continue! Good!

CHAPTER 14

15 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, samoda means delight – divine delight. And let that be your climate – live in it, breathe in it. It is only a question of remembering, and it comes. And you can do it very easily. You can easily become miserable, you can easily become blissful; it is one’s own creation. And once you have learned the fact – that it is one’s own creation, heaven or hell – then there is no point in being in misery, no point in choosing hell. We go on choosing hell because we are not aware that we are the creators. We think we are forced to be in it, somebody else is doing it, and we go on finding scapegoats. We go on avoiding the real factor that is behind it: it is us. When you are in misery, remember, you have created it, and you can uncreate it immediately because it is just imagination.

So these are the three steps towards inner realisation....

First: recognition of the fact that the misery is our own creation. People are such great artists in creating misery – they have become so skillful. That’s all that they create; they don’t create anything else. And naturally, life after life they have been in the profession of creating misery for themselves; they have become proficient. They are not amateurs; they are professionals.

The first thing to recognise is that the misery is of our own creation. In that very recognition it starts disappearing like smoke. It is no more solid. How can it be solid when you see that you are creating it ? How can you go on creating it when you recognise the fact that you are creating it! In that very recognition something clicks; the misery is apart and you are separate. The bridge is broken. And that is one of the greatest steps.

The second step is that we can create our joy, our delight. If we can create misery, then why can’t we create joy? That follows like a shadow to the first. In fact to create misery is more difficult than to t j

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us then the second thing is child’s play: to create joy, delight. That is the second step – when you create a climate and you live in it; you create your own world. You paint your own world, you sing your own song. For the first time you become individual and for the first time you become free; now nobody can disturb you. If you want to get disturbed, that’s another thing; that too is your choice.

But you are never a victim again so you never make anybody else feel guilty for it.

And the third step is that when you have understood that you create the misery, you create joy; then you must be separate from both because the creator cannot be his own creation. You can paint a picture but you cannot become the painting. You can write a novel but you don’t become the novel. You can sculpt a beautiful statue but you don’t become it. The creator can’t become his own creation.

So if we are the creators of misery and joy, of hell and heaven, of pain and pleasure, then the third step follows very logically. One day suddenly you recognise the third too; it follows the second. They are in a chain: How can you be miserable or how can you be joyful? You are separate. You are a separate reality, you are a witness. And that’s what we call nirvana, enlightenment....

So I am giving you two steps; the third will follow. First, the place where you are, where everybody is – the miserable place, suffering. And this is the step you have to take – samoda. You have to become delight. And the third will come on its own: whenever you are ready, it comes. It comes like a benediction.

Then misery and joy both disappear... then there is utter silence. You can’t define it as joy. No, not even that is possible. It is so much more than joy, it cannot be confined to the word joy, bliss, no. No word will be able to express it; it is just a wordless silence. Ecstasy but with no movement. Nothing moves in it because nothing is in it. It is total silence, total absence.

First misery disappears, joy, delight arrives; then joy disappears, the witness arrives, and finally the witness is gone. That is nirvana, that is the great nothingness.

[The new sannyasin says: I had an accident and I was unconscious for about eight hours. I felt very different afterwards... but I don’t know where I was.]

Mm mm, it can happen sometimes. Sometimes it can happen in an accident that the whole structure of the mind can change. And for better... sometimes for worse; an accident is an accident. And my feeling is that it has been good for you; it has not been devastating. It has put your mind on the right track.

[The sannyasin adds: First I bothered about losing memory, because I can’t remember that period at all.]

That eight hour period? No, that you cannot remember because when you become unconscious that means nothing is recorded. That is a blank, a gap. You can only remember it as a gap. You cannot remember the content because there is nothing recorded.

receiving consciously. It records a few things unconsciously too; they may be there. But it depends how deep the unconsciousness was. If it was like a coma then almost nothing is recorded. The mind functions no more because the senses function no more. They are the messengers to bring things; they are not bringing. The postman doesn’t come so the letters are not delivered.

But my feeling is that your energy is perfectly good; that accident must have helped you. And some day meditating you may fall again into unconsciousness. If it happens, don’t resist. This time it will be far more beautiful. And once something has happened, it is more possible that it will happen again. And sometimes in an accident, rare opportunities open.

Once I was travelling with a friend and there was an accident. Our car fell down from a bridge, twenty feet down, mm? upside-down. I had been talking to this man; for years I had been telling him about meditation and he was a very very learned scholar. But he would always say, ’Whatsoever you say, I cannot think that there is a possibility of a mind without thought. How can the mind be without thought?’ And he would argue... And of course, there is a point: how can the mind be without thought? Content is needed; the mind can only be minding about something. It is very logical.

Consciousness can only be of something. If there is nothing then how can you be conscious? Of what? The very word consciousness means conscious about something. Content is needed so that you can be conscious of it; consciousness and content go together. That is very very psychological, logical... but it happens. And I would explain to him but he was too much in his mind. And that day it happened!

Just for a few seconds we became aware that the accident was going to happen, mm? We were coming down a hill and the driver lost control, something went wrong in the car, and for a few seconds we were aware that something was going to happen because the brake was not working, the steering was not working. The car was going on its own; now wherever it was going, nothing could be done. And it was really a steep hill! So for a few seconds his thoughts stopped, because in such a strange situation you cannot think; what to think about?

You cannot go on thinking your ordinary thoughts because they are too trivial in such a moment –

when death is just there waiting for you down the hill. Within moments you will be gone! The very shock of it is enough to stop the process of thinking. When he fell and when I pulled him out of the car, he was laughing. He said, ’But is this the way to prove it? Couldn’t you have done better? It was too dangerous!’

Nobody was harmed. It was really dangerous – the whole car was destroyed – but he had a glimpse.

Since then he has not argued about it; he knows it. That accident proved a great revolution in his life; a radical change happened....

He was not driving – he was just sitting with me. Somebody else was driving; we were just the passengers. But he came to see the point – that consciousness can be, and without content. So that accident was a blessing. And I thanked the driver and said what I had been trying to tell this man for years and was not able to, he had simply done!

He became a totally new man.

So that accident was good. It will happen sometime again, deep in meditation one day. It will be almost like it but on a higher plane. Maybe it can be paradoxical too: on one plane you become unconscious; on another you remain conscious. Then it is far more beautiful, because then you go on seeing what is happening. The body becomes numb and goes off, the mind becomes numb and goes off, but you are still turned on. You are still there, hovering like a presence. No more identified with the body and the mind... almost a holy ghost!

This is possible – that’s what I feel.

[A sannyasin asks how he can combine living here and living in Europe as he is involved in many things there.]

Yes, it can be done; there is no problem. It can be done and it can be done perfectly well....

You can go and come and go and come. Mm? One day you will do that too – you will pack and you will never go back – but till that day comes there is no need to force it. This is your home; whenever you feel like coming, you come. Be here and then you can go. And don’t create conflict.

I am against all kinds of enforced things. Then things start going wrong. If you force yourself to be here then something within you will have to be repressed, and that is not good; there is no need.

I am against all kinds of repressions. If you have the desire to go, it is perfectly good. The desire in itself is not wrong. There may be something that you need to fulfill there and which can only be fulfilled there. Because there are a few things which can be fulfilled only in the marketplace... and they are part of growth.

So nobody should be taken out of the marketplace unless he is really ready. If something is lingering, it has to be finished, completed. And there is no hurry either.

Just keep in mind that this is your home and there you simply go to fulfill something, that’s all. Then sooner or later you will be back one day, finished, but no need to create any tension around it.

Be here only when you feel like being here. Anything that you would have to do against any part of your being is disruptive and creates a kind of guilt.

For example, if you force yourself to be there, you don’t come here and you want to come, that will be creating guilt. You force yourself to be here and don’t go there and you want to be there; that will be guilt. You can simply float. And whenever you become guilty about something... And by guilt I mean whenever you do something against yourself – that you never wanted to do in the first place and are doing for some other motives, forcing, the spontaneity of your being is lost – you will feel guilty.

This gland in the throat is called adam’s apple, because adam ate the apple and he could not half of him was afraid. And he did it in a conflict. So don’t create more adam’s apples, never! Do things totally so you can swallow them and digest them. It is perfectly good!

Prem means love and sameda means offering – love offering to god. And that’s what you have to become, an offering.

Literally it means... In ancient India there were fire rituals called ’yagnas’. India has worshipped fire for centuries. Fire has been the first most important invention of humanity. It is through fire that man has survived, so it became very very sacred.

And sameda is the special wood chosen from the forest for the fire ritual. It is an offering to the fire god... and god is fire. Hence the colour orange has been chosen for sannyas; it is the colour of fire.

God is fire, and we have to become like wood so we disappear in god, the fire consumes us. We are no more, and the day we are no more, that is the first time we are. By losing ourselves, we find; by dying we are reborn. So it is one of the most important words I am giving to you as a name.

[A sannyasin says he has been feeling very miserable. Last night he stayed up to look after his son who was sick. He has heartburn often and thinks it is repressed anger. Osho checks his energy.]

Nothing to be worried about.... Just ordinary cycles of misery and happiness. I don’t see that there is really any cause for it. One thing you have to understand about it is that the mind functions in a cycle.

There are three cycles in human existence. The first is the physical. It takes twenty-three days to complete, and it affects a broad range of physical factors, including resistance to disease, strength, coordination, and the other basic body functions, and the sensation of physical well-being. The second cycle is emotional. It takes twenty-eight days to complete, just as it takes twenty-eight days in the feminine body for the menstruation to come. Just now science is becoming alert that even man has a kind of monthly period and that after each twenty-eight days it happens. The feminine period is visible and physical. Man’s period is not visible and not physical; more pyschological, more emotional, but it happens. The emotional cycle governs creativity, sensitivity, mental health, mood, perception of the world and ourselves.

When a woman is in the period, for three, four, five days she is in misery, sad, negative, dull, dead, feeling very low, jumpy, shaken. But women become accustomed to it because it is so visible. By and by they learn that it has to be so, so by and by they are not so miserable. It is an every month thing and so visible, so things settle. But man’s problem is more difficult. The period is there – the male period – but it is not visible and you don’t know where it comes from and when it goes.

Right now my feeling is you are in a menstruation period, so for three, four days, you will suffer.

This is one cycle. It will be good if you read something about bio-rhythms – a new science that is developing; bio-rhythm. And it will be very helpful for you.

This is a twenty-eight days cycle in the body; it follows the moon. So whenever there is moon you will be more happy, and when there is no moon you will be less happy....

Sometimes you have a period in the negative phase and the others in the positive, and vice versa.

When all the three cycles are in the positive, peaks of joy and ecstasy happen. And when all the three are in the negative, one lives in hell. Heaven means all the three are in the positive and hell is the other end. And to be free of both is nirvana, moksha, absolute freedom.

So it has nothing to do – at least about you I am certain – with any cause. Those are just excuses; that boy’s illness was just an excuse. If he were not ill then you would have found something else.

So don’t be angry with him. And it has nothing to do with anger. You have just to understand your phases, and you have to be a little more watchful. Start keeping a diary about these negative phases. Within three, four months, you will be able to make your chart, and then you can predict that next monday you are going to be in a bad mood, and then be alert.

In ancient days yogis used to make such charts. The science of bio-rhythm was well-known and practised in the yoga and sufi schools. And these charts were very helpful because if you know that for the first week of every month you become very very negative, then a few things can be avoided.

In that first week don’t do anything for which you can repent later on; don’t fight, don’t get angry.

The people who are really following those charts will not move out of their rooms. They will not do anything for those seven or four or three days, because whatsoever they do will be wrong.

And then you know when your positive mood comes. That is the time to relate, to go to people, to meet, and nothing will go wrong. You will be in a different state altogether.

So start keeping a diary from tomorrow morning. And by diary I don’t mean that you have to write all kinds of details; just the diary of negative and positive moods – morning, afternoon, evening, night

– four points. Every day note down how you were feeling for three months; then make a chart. Just look at that chart. When your positive moments are there, those are the moments when you should meditate, love, sing, dance, go swimming, relate to people, do something creative. And you will be much benefited, because suddenly god is available in those moments – you are very close.

When you are in a negative mood then don’t do anything... just the necessary. And remember that the mind will tend to find some cause but don’t look for any cause; the cause is inside you.

Watching this way, within six, eight months you will be able to become a witness, and then nothing disturbs. Then you know it is just part of nature – nothing to do with you. Seeing it, you start transcending.

No, nothing is a problem. And you are a moon type, so you have to be very watchful about the moon. Mm? you can become really excited. Use that excitement too. The moon can drive you mad

– hence the word ’lunatic’; it means moonstruck, lunar, from lunar the lunatic. Many more people go mad on the full-moon night, many more people commit suicide and murder on the full-moon night, and many have become enlightened also on the full-moon night! It depends on how you use it. It is great energy released.

energy.

If you don’t use it rightly it can become destructive. For example, if in the full-moon night you can’t sleep then it is better not to sleep. Why not sing, play, dance; why bother about sleeping ? It is not the night to sleep. It is the night to dance, celebrate. Next day, exhausted, you can go to sleep. If you try to sleep and you cannot sleep then it becomes misery.

There are tribes in India – primitive tribes – who will never sleep on the full-moon night. One is not meant to sleep. They will dance the whole night – they will dance like crazy – and the next day will be a holiday. Their holidays are according to the moon, not according to the sun; they don’t have sun days. When the full moon has come, the next day is the holiday; then everybody has to sleep.

The whole community will sleep because the whole night they will drink and dance and celebrate and it will be an orgy of joy.

And my own observation is that people can reach to the highest peak of joy on the full-moon night.

They are at the lowest ebb on the no-moon night.

So you just watch – I don’t see that there is any problem. Good!

CHAPTER 15

16 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says she has a lot of fear, and perhaps she is running away.]

No, it is not escaping. It is not running away; it is part of the process. If you want to come close to me, sometimes you have to go away. Then next time you will come even closer. Then again you will have to go away. Slowly, slowly, one proceeds. After each time of being away from me you will gather a little more courage to come closer.

It is just like when you want to take a big leap: you go back so that you have enough space to leap forward. It is happening to everybody. And it is very very significant to go away sometimes so that you can be alone, far away from me. That too is a very necessary ingredient in growing, mm? – just like a small tree needs to go away from the big tree, otherwise it will not grow.

So sometimes it is very good to have your own space, your own world, nobody to advise you, nobody to direct you, so that you can feel more how you feel, so that you can try to find out your own direction. Nothing wrong if you commit a few mistakes; they are perfectly good. It can be dangerous sometimes to always be guided, even if the guidance is absolutely right. You will become weaker, you will not be on your own, and you will become more and more dependent. I would never like any sannyasin of mine to become dependent on me. I would like every sannyasin to be as strong as possible.

Take all of my advice but never become weak and dependent. So it is good sometimes to be far away for a few months. You will have to depend on yourself. You will have to find your own way, your own direction. A few times you will go astray and come back again. That’s perfectly good. Then you ill come back stronger more rooted in o rself and then o

ill come into me more deepl When

surrender. Weaklings don’t know what surrender is. They can become dependent but they can’t surrender. For surrender, a very very integrated will is needed. Surrender is the last act of will, the highest act of will. It looks paradoxical, but that is how it is. To surrender totally you will need great will, great individuality, integration, rootedness, centredness. Only then can you take that great jump.

Otherwise if you are weak you can become dependent but not surrendered. And there is a trick in dependence: any person who is dependent wants to manipulate.

There is a famous chinese saying – that wherever you find one slave there will always be two. And that has great wisdom in it... because a slave cannot be alone. The person to whom he has become a slave has also become a slave to him; it is a mutual understanding. The master, the so-called master, also becomes a slave of his own slave.

That’s how it is happening in every relationship: the husband thinks he is the master of the house and the woman knows far better who is really the master, who is really the boss. But the woman pretends to play the role of the dependent. And through dependence she manipulates; that is her politics. And the man thinks that things are going perfectly well because he is the master and the woman is surrendered to him. But the woman goes on manipulating and controlling him in subtle feminine ways, soft ways that he is not even aware of.

The feminine strategy is very very indirect. If she she wants to hit the husband she will not hit the husband; she will hit herself. This is very subtle and very diplomatic. If she is angry she will start crying. In fact she wanted to hurt the husband and wanted to see him cry but she will not hurt him. She will start crying. Now she is playing the role of the dependent, and when you see that the person is so much dependent on you, you have to concede, you have to compromise.

I don’t want anybody to be dependent on me because I don’t want to become dependent on anybody.

Wherever there is one slave there are two. So I don’t want to be anybody’s boss! At the most I am a friend. You have all the advice that you need and you need not even feel thankful. There is no need.

You need not even feel obliged.

It is my joy to give you advice. Just in giving it. I am delighted; there is no need for any return. So remain independent and take out of your independence, not out of your dependence. You choose –

your surrender is also your will. It is your decision to become a disciple. It is your decision to listen to me. It is your decision to go according to my advice. In the final analysis you remain independent.

Sooner or later the day will come when you will not need to go anywhere because then you can be independent just here with me. That is the real meeting of the master and the disciple: when they disappear into each other. You are surrendering and there is nobody who is surrendering. Two nobodies meet, merge, and disappear.

So you go – nothing to be worried about!

[A sannyasin says she can’t sleep at night. In the encounter group she was sent out running because her energy was too perverse for the group. Her head won’t stop.]

don’t become creative it becomes perverse. Perversion is not really any abnormality; it is unused energy. If it goes on accumulating in you it creates wounds. You have more than you ordinarily need.

And this is good! You are rich, but with richness there always comes the danger that if you don’t use it it will destroy you. If you use it you will be immensely joyful, extraordinarily joyful – very few people can be as joyful as you.

So it depends on you. If you become more creative – if you sing and dance – if you become more creative in any way then there is no problem at all. Then sleep will come very beautifully and your meditations will be better and your mind will not go on rushing round and round. It is not the mind that is rushing, it is the energy that is rushing in the mind. That’s why you cannot sleep – because it goes on working and you are feeling crazy.

All creative people are crazy. In fact, sigmund freud has a theory about it – that creativity is abnormality. He thought that creativity itself is abnormal because normal people are not creative.

Normal people are not creative. He had this idea that all poets and all painters and all musicians are mad people, abnormal. They have to be treated, psychoanalysed, and brought back to the normal fold.

And although he was wrong his observations have some truth, partial, but the truth is there. The insight is correct, in the right direction. It always happens that creative people go crazy. But it is not that creativity is crazy. It is the unused creativity that drives them crazy, not that they are creative.

Not all creative people are crazy, but in the west it is so. Buddha is immensely creative but not crazy; nietzsche goes crazy. He is as full of energy as a buddha but he goes crazy. The west does not allow that superb creativity that creates a buddha, that auto-creativity of giving birth to oneself.

Van gogh goes crazy and murders himself, but in the east that is not so. In the east great painters have lived and have lived more beautifully than ordinary people. Naturally they should live more beautifully because they create beauty and they have that sense of beauty, that sense of splendour.

In each small thing they see something immensely, tremendously fantastic. They are not mad – they are really the natural people; others are below normality.

Others may be in the majority – that does not make them normal. They are below normal. Only buddha is normal and unless one is a buddha one is below normal, abnormal.

Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Nietzsche, people like these, have great energies but they don’t know where to put it and how to use it. God goes on pouring into them and they are unable to use it It accumulates and they become afraid. It starts becoming shaky. Their whole being starts feeling as if it is exploding; then one day or other they are thrown to bits. But it is the same energy that becomes explosion. It could have become implosion. If it becomes implosion, only then will you feel that you are in the right direction and your life is becoming more and more meaningful and fulfilled.

So I understand.... When you came here you were not aware of your creativity; now you have become aware so you are more disturbed. This disturbance is a good indication. It simply shows your madness into creativity. Then madness is the most precious thing in the world. All great people are mad people. Not to be mad means just living a dull and stupid life.

So rather than trying to solve problems – for example, you are more concerned how to sleep... I’m not concerned with that. I am concerned that you should play your flute, you should sing more, you should dance more. Sleep will take it own course. It will come; you need not bother about it. If you are not feeling sleepy then play on the flute, paint something. What is wrong in it? The night is so beautiful and everybody has gone to sleep and the noise has disappeared. Now, play on the flute, have a little dance, sing a song – do something! What is the need of sleep? If sleep is not coming that means sleep is not needed. Don’t be worried about it. Get exhausted through creating and then you will find a great sleep coming, and that will be totally different.

Ordinarily, the people who think they sleep well are simply in a kind of coma. It is not really sleep.

The real sleep comes after you arc exhausted in creativity, when all your energy is used and you arc empty, spent; then you fall in a deep, deep sleep.

We have two names for sleep in India – in english you don’t – because we make a distinction. The ordinary sleep we call ’nidra’, and the extraordinary sleep we call ’sushupti’. ’Sushupti’ means a sleep which comes only to creative people. It is so deep that patanjali has said that sushupti is just very close to samadhi. Just a little effort more, a little awareness has to be brought into sleep, and that sushupti becomes samadhi.

You will have a good sleep but not by trying to bring more sleep – no, not by any technique; it will come indirectly. You forget about it; it is not a problem. It is not the problem – that there are so many thoughts – because I don’t see so many thoughts in you. And if you watch, you will be surprised.

There are only a few thoughts but the same energy turns them over again and again. Again and again, like a whirlpool, the same water goes on moving. It is the energy that is creating the problem.

You don’t have many thoughts; you are not a thinker. Once the energy is used you will find your mind is getting silent on its own accord.

So you go, but go with this idea – that you have to become more creative. Mm? – and whenever you feel like coming, come back. And it is not perversion. You have energy. It can become perversion if you don’t use it. It will become heavier on you. Use it! And I don’t think that there is any problem because one has energy.

It is better to have problems with energy than to have problems with impotence. A dead man has no problems. The more alive you are, the more problems, and they have to be faced, encountered; one has to grow beyond them.

My approach is that rather than solving the problems, grow beyond them. Take the challenge, use them as stepping stones, and grow beyond them.

And this is my observation – a very fundamental observation – that not a single problem is ever solved. People only outgrow them – that is the only solution and salvation. I don’t help you to solve standing on the hill. It is no more a problem. You can laugh with it, you can play around with it.

And that is the real meaning of growth: growing beyond problems. And I am not saying that when you grow out of these problems there will be no problems. There will be other problems, far more complicated, far more subtle. They will be higher; grow beyond them. And this is the way one goes on and on. One day certainly it happens that one has grown out of all the problems. One is simply standing there, a watcher on the hill, with no problem.

That’s what enlightenment is. But before one reaches to that gourishankar, that everest, one has to climb many peaks, and each peak will be bigger than the preceding one, and the succeeding one will be still bigger. But take them as challenges. They are god’s gift. Don’t be antagonistic to them.

And things will change....

[A sannyasin, who has been working on a book in the Himalayas, said it was heavy being away.]

It is good – you have come, mm? There is no need to go anywhere North or South, East or West.

But sometimes you have the urge of a wanderer. That is there so it drives you somewhere. But nothing to worry about – more and more you will feel that you need to be here. But don’t repress that urge. When it comes, one has to suffer it and one has to go. It is some karma one has to finish!

[The sannyasin says he felt very negative about the places he went to, Ladakh and Kashmir, so he is having difficulty writing the book. Osho encourages him to write the negative things.]

It will help many other wanderers not to go anywhere!...

There are more negative people in the world than the positive. Positive things people don’t like. It will sell! You write it! Make it really hot!...

Yes, the truth about it! Mm mm, that’s nothing to be worried about. You write it and enjoy writing!

And you have to write out of your feeling and out of your experience. No need to make it lukewarm.

Be true; whatsoever you feel, you have to write. So go into it, otherwise this by and by will disappear and then you will start writing cliches. That will not be of much use. You jump into it! And four-letter words are beautiful words!

[A sannyasin says she is getting headaches in morning discourse. Osho checks her energy.]

Nothing to be worried about. It is energy rising – you have to allow it. It happens in the talks because you are so close to me, and constantly listening to my voice, it goes on hitting you.

Do one thing: every night at least for one hour, sit silently and just try to listen to me. My voice will start coming to you and then the same energy will rise. It will be better, because here you are with so many people; you have to control yourself. the headache comes because of the control.

Energy comes and then you start controlling it, unconsciously and naturally, because others will be disturbed.

first time.

Energy is moving perfectly, moving rightly. Mm ? nothing to be worried about!

[Osho explains the meaning of archan.]

It means prayer. Prayer has to be evolved in your being, mm? And prayer has a different, a little different quality than meditation. It is meditation plus – plus love. Meditation has no love in it. The other is not involved in it. You can meditate all alone. In fact, you can meditate only when you are all alone. It is solitude, aloneness. It is the beauty of being alone.

Prayer is the beauty of being together. It is the highest peak of love. So even if the devotee, one who prays, is alone, he is not alone. The god, the beloved, is there surrounding him. Prayer is an I-thou dialogue. Meditation is solo music; there is no dialogue, there is no other.

Prayer is far easier for women than meditation. Meditation is more male. Prayer is more female. It is just unnatural to a woman’s being to think that something without love can be fulfilling. Love has to be there as an essential part of anything that can be fulfilling. Even meditation has to have some love in it. Meditation plus love is prayer – that is the meaning of archan.

So start growing prayer. Meditate – that is one part of it – but start having a prayerful mood.

Sometimes in the morning or in the night sit silently with deep love, gratitude, towards god. And you don’t know what god is but still the gratitude can be created. You don’t know where god is, you don’t know the address but still you can raise your eyes towards the sky and have a little dialogue.

By and by the dialogue will grow.

And after a few months you will be able to see the difference – that is not only imagination: existence responds. In the beginning it is imagination, but that is only in the beginning. Once your imagination has come to a point from where existence can relate with you, it responds. Prayer really done is always heard by existence, and not only heard – there is a reply, and you will be able to listen to that.

Meditation is silence... nothing is heard, nobody to relate to. Prayer is dialogue...

CHAPTER 16

17 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving for Goa says: Thank you.]

Meditate in Goa, mm? Goa is very related to me! Either the sannyasin has first to go to Goa then come to me or has to come to me and then go to Goa! This way or that but Goa is related. It is a beautiful place, so be on the beach in the sun and meditate, mm? And always remember that being in nature is being in god. Nature is the visible god, so be very respectful. It is not only beautiful – it is holy, it is sacred! That very idea becomes your surrounding, becomes a milieu, and in that milieu things start happening. So watching the sea and the sun and the sand, you remember god, you remember me, you remember the beyond. Remain always available to the beyond and use every opportunity for the beyond; then only some day the blessing, the benediction....

[A sannyasin, newly returned, says that while he was away he had experiences where he was completely dissolving. He was afraid he was going crazy, that it would happen to him in the street and he would be institutionalised.]

Mm mm... you should have dared! Now you can dare here; no need to worry....

Mm mm... crack up anywhere, and you will meet god there. Just crack up! I can understand – it is very frightening. I know it is frightening, and when for the first time it happens nobody has courage enough to continue it. So you have not done anything abnormal; it is normal, mm? But now how are you feeling? Is some disorientation still there?...

You meditate again and things will be okay. Disorientation happens and it will happen many times.

Disorientation only means that you are being transported from one plane of being to another plane with it. Then a new plane is brought by the meditation and you are transported to the new plane.

It is as if a tree is being transported to another plane. So the tree is disoriented; the whole tree is shaken. It is being uprooted, and naturally the tree cannot believe what is going to happen. The tree will think it is going to die. It will cling to the soil, to the earth – it will not like to be uprooted. But sometimes the tree has to be uprooted from the old place and moved to a new place where it can have more space and more sun, where it can grow more.

So in meditation many times this will happen. This is the first time, but the first time is the most difficult. The second time it happens you will know; then you can be more at ease with it. It will come again. This time when it comes, don’t become afraid. Celebrate rather than becoming frightened.

Use the energy in celebrating it. It is going to happen.

[The sannyasin says: I kept telling myself that in more lucid moments. But when it really started coming on strong my mind wasn’t there to give me any courage.

Osho checks his energy.]

It is still lingering, it is still there. You have to just start meditating and soon it will come. It has not left you yet. The space is just close by, by the comer. That’s why you are still a little disoriented. But it is good. You are fortunate – it is still there; you have not lost track of it. It can explode any moment.

So continue to meditate....

Do Vipassana and you join Sufi dancing also, mm? – that will be helpful. That will teach you a little celebration. That is one of the problems with Vipassana: it is a non-celebrating meditation. It is a buddhist meditation; they don’t know anything about celebration. It is absolutely ascetic, dry, desert-like. It is immensely powerful, but one thing is missing in it that is missing in Buddhism itself

– that is the greenery, the flowers, the rivers, the mountains, the joy. That’s what is there in Sufism: great joy, celebration, jubilation.

But Sufism has not that great meditation of Buddhism. So this is one of the basic problems in the human mind: Buddhism has the greatest meditation but without celebration: Sufis have great celebration but don’t have that great meditation.

My effort here is to give you both together because if you only meditate and you don’t know how to celebrate, you will become sad – silent, but sad; that’s what buddhists become. Very silent – no comparison to their silence – but very sad. Their silence has no dance in it, no song – just silence.

But sound has its beauty.

Silence is good, but if it can be a dancing silence then it will be far better. Sufis have the dance and the sound but that silence that comes through vipassana is missing. So you can dance, you can sing, but it will remain a little superficial. It will not go to your very roots, to your very depth.

creation arising out of it. It will not be dull – it will be very shining. It will have a kind of gusto, verve, otherwise it can become the silence of the cemetery.

Let it be the silence of a garden where birds sing and trees bloom and peacocks dance and rivers flow and waterfalls have their own song and the winds blow... and yet there is silence! The silence is not disturbed by it – it is enhanced by it.

All these sounds – the whispering wind and the swaying trees and the river – all these sounds become the background, and in the background of this sound silence comes more clearly, more loudly.

It is easier to be silent without celebration; it is easier to be celebrating without silence. That’s why sufism has chosen another. But I am not for the easy... I am for the rich. The richest should be tried. When you can have both, why have one ? Why miss the other ? And the coming religion of the world is going to be this kind of synthesis.

So start sufi dancing and continue vipassana – that will help, mm? And everything is okay. Good!

[A sannyasin says: I don’t seem to be able to make close connections with people in the ashram....

I don’t feel anything to speak to them about. They feel pushed away by me.]

My feeling is that you shouldn’t try anything. Whatsoever happens, let it happen. If you allow it to happen things will settle. If you are not in a space where you can relate very intimately, closely with people, then there is no need. Why force anything on yourself? Just be casually related. There is no need to be very deeply related. And when the need arises, when you start feeling that now the time has come to relate deeply, then it will be natural. And these two things always happen; they are periodical.

When you don’t feel like going into deep relationship, if you force yourself to, it will be ugly; it won’t make any sense. If you don’t force and still go with people because of what they feel, then they will feel rejected. There is no need!

If you are not feeling in that space, just be with yourself more and more, meditate more.

These are the two things – meditation and love – and they are like day and night; each is followed by the other. In the night you go to sleep, you don’t bother about work, you don’t think about how to do more work. In the day you work and you don’t bother about sleep.

When you are in a meditative space be alone and enjoy your aloneness. And when you are in a loving space enjoy relationship. And don’t try to mess things up, otherwise you will be in difficulty and others will be in difficulty.

You must be trying... you must be trying because you feel that one should relate deeply. That seems to be your idea deep down – that something is wrong if you are not relating deeply. This has come that something is wrong. Why are you not relating? Why are people feeling rejected by you? And people will feel rejected because they have also the same idea that you should relate very deeply.

There is something very strange about man – that he always creates something or other to feel guilty about. In the old days if you were not meditating, if you were not praying, it was guilt. Now, if you are not loving, not relating, it is guilt, but guilt remains. And both are human parts: to be alone sometimes and to relate sometimes. If you are really alone then you will have energy to relate one day, and if you relate then one day you will have the energy to be alone.

And they are just like a rhythm. Don’t force! Just enjoy your aloneness. And do a few groups which need this kind of space – Vipassana, Zazen; do those groups....

This is the right time to do! This will be the right time when you can enter them. This is the time to do Zazen. It is a Buddhist meditation – being absolutely alone, with nothing to relate to.

[She says she feels lost; she needs energy; she goes cuckoo alone; she needs to care for her child.]

You are creating it! Right now you don’t need any company. If you force company on yourself then....

You will go cuckoo if you force something which is against your space. You are not yet gone but you are on the way. But if you feel like it then do tantra and see what happens. Go cuckoo, mm?

Energy does not come from people. Energy comes from people only when you give energy to them, and right now you cannot give, so how can you take? Who is going to give you? Energy docs not come from people – it comes only when you give. It is a response, but the giving is the basic thing: if you give then you get. You cannot give; in fact your whole idea is to relate with people to get energy.

They will feel suffocated by you and they will feel you are exploiting and they will avoid you....

What I am saying is to please avoid them. It is good for you and good for them! Right now there is no need. Use this opportunity of being alone for zazen and vipassana, and then later on do encounter and tantra.

[The sannyasin who started the ashram school says: I just don’t understand what it means to be a teacher to children here... ]

Yes, that is right – it will be a totally different thing! It will be a totally different thing....

It can’t apply here. A few things to remember, and then you can work them out.... The first and the most basic is that we are not to enforce any pattern on the children. We have just to help them to be themselves. So there is no ideal that has to be enforced on them. You just have to be a caring atmosphere around them, so whatsoever they want to do you can help them to do better. Just help them to do it better. And they are not in any game, ambition-game.

We are not trying to make them very very powerful, famous, rich, this and that, in their life, no. Our

– they should try painting – or creating something else, but let it be creative; let them do things on their own. And don’t bring in your criterions.

For example, when a child paints, don’t bring in adultish criterions; don’t say that this is not Picasso.

If the child has enjoyed it and when he was painting he got absorbed in it, that’s enough. The painting is great! Not because of any objective criterion – the painting may be just nonsense; it may be just colours splashed, may be messy.... It has to be because a child is a child; he has a different vision of things.

For example, if a child makes the face of a man he has a different vision. He will make very big eyes; the nose will be very small. The ears may be missing – he has never looked at them – but eyes are very important for him. If he makes a man he will make the head and the hands and the legs and the torso will be missing – that is his vision. For you it is wrong but from his standpoint that is how he looks at a man: hands, legs and head.

So it is not the question that you have to judge whether the painting is good or bad. No, we are not going to judge at all. Judge ye not. Don’t make the child feel good or bad about it. If the child is absorbed in painting it, that’s enough. He was in deep meditation, he moved with the painting utterly... he was lost in it! The painting is good because the painter was lost.

Help the child to be completely lost, and whenever a child is painting on his own, he will be lost. If you force him to paint then he will be distracted. So whatsoever the children want to do, let them do; just help them. Mm ? you can help in many technical ways. You can tell them – if a child wants to paint – how to mix colours, how to fix the canvas, how to use the brush; that you can help with. Be a help there; rather than being a guide, be a help.

Just as a gardener helps the tree... You cannot pull the tree fast; you cannot do anything in that way, nothing can be done positively. You plant the seed, you water, you give the manure, and you wait!

The tree happens on its own. When the tree is happening you protect it so somebody does not hurt it or harm it. That is the function of a teacher: the teacher has to be a gardener. Not that you have to create the child; the child is coming on its own – god is the creator.

That’s what socrates means when he says, ’I am a midwife.’ A midwife does not create the child.

The child is already there, ready to come out; the midwife helps.

So help them to be creative, help them to be joyous, because that has disappeared from the schools.

Children are very sad, and sad children create a sad world. They are going to inhabit the world, and we destroy their joy. Help their joy, help their celebration, make them more and more cheerful.

Nothing is more valuable than that. If they are not doing mathematics it is perfectly okay, because mathematics is not the point. The point is joy!

If they are not learning language, forget about it; they are learning something far more valuable.

In this atmosphere of joy help them to learn two things – language and mathematics. History is meaningless bunk!

Just two small things

a little mathematics will be needed in their life And about that too: we are second. Everybody is just the same. We make the space available for them to learn – they all have learned according to their capacities but who are we to judge? So no gradation, no examination.

And when children are a little grown up let them learn practical things – carpentry, pottery, weaving

– and they will enjoy all those things. When they are still more grown up let them learn something about electricity, cars, mechanisms, technology, but practical things.

That’s why the other day I said the university that is going to be will be rajneesh international anti-university. We will make everything anti: no examinations, and the vice chancellor and the chancellor will not have any degrees. Only sweepers and cleaners will have degrees!

And you have to work it out soon because when we move, then at least one hundred children will be immediately available....

Start working so it takes some shape before we move. Because there you have to start a full-fledged school. But it is going to be a totally different kind of school, because I am all for de-schooling society.

Man can be saved only if society is de-schooled or if totally different kind of schools which cannot be called schools are evolved; then only humanity can be saved.

So no ambition should be there, no comparison ever. Never compare a child with another and say,

’Look, the other has done a better painting!... That is ugly, violent, destructive. You are destroying both the children. The one you say has done a better painting starts getting the idea of the ego, superiority, and the one who has been condemned starts feeling inferior. And these are the illnesses

– the superior and the inferior – so never compare!

It will be difficult for you and other teachers because comparison is so much in us. Never compare.

Each child has to be respected on his own. Each child has to be respected as unique – no comparison, no marks, no gradations. Because we are not going to create clerks or ugly things like that. We are going to create men and women.

Yes, they will need a few things in life so they are practically helped. Those things we should give them – and then they have to choose their own. In the new place we will make everything available

– painting, music, dance – so wherever they want to join in, they can; whatsoever they want to do, they can do. They can have their own combinations. There will be no syllabus – there will be only opportunity.

And the teachers will work because of their joy... because they enjoy the company of the children.

So only choose teachers who are not teachers, because ordinarily teachers are people who are a little sadistic. They want to torture, and the best way to enjoy torture is to become a teacher. A teacher is a torturer, and that is the most legal situation in which to torture: school.

Parents are in favour of the children being tortured – for their own sake; the government is in favour, everybody is in favour. Everybody is for the teacher because he is doing a good job. So all the people who arc sadists by and by start moving towards particular professions the teacher, the policeman.

choose teachers who are not teachers, not torturers, but people who love small children. Choose gardeners, so they can create a space for children to grow in. And they should be happy, they should not be sad and long faces. They should be able to see the humour of the children, the sense of humour. Children have immense sense of humour and teachers are very dull. They should be able to laugh with them and dance with them and hug them. They should be human.

So be very careful about choosing. In the new place, I will choose; right now you start working, but be very careful. No sadist has to be allowed there; nobody who is a disciplinarian has to be allowed there.

And I am not for order at all. Disorder is perfectly beautiful. So let there be disorder – nothing wrong. Order is one of the most dangerous calamities that has happened and obedience is one of the greatest blocks man has suffered from. They should not be forced to obey and they should not be forced into order. They should be allowed all chaos, and in chaos there is creativity, growth.

Order and discipline are needed when you have certain ideals to impose upon them – that there is a nine month or six month session and you have to go through all this. You have to pass, otherwise you will be a failure; then order is needed.

We have an eternity available! Let children enjoy – there is no hurry; there is no need to have a programme of enforcement. Just let things happen; let it be a growing nursery. And be very careful, because out of this school will come a bigger school, then a college and a university, and everything will follow. This will be the seed.

And whatsoever I have said about education and about things you just go through so you have some idea about what has to be done. But it is going to happen.

And we have beautiful children around here – you just start, mm ? Good.

CHAPTER 17

18 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho talks to a new sannyasin about being a therapist. He says, do you know the word ’therapist’

comes from an ancient parsi word from Buddha’s time meaning elder brother?]

Anand means blissful, and Rinzai was a great zen mystic – a Chinese – founder of the Rinzai sect of zen.

Literally the word means: one who helps people to cross the river, the boatman. And he helped many people to cross the river; he was one of the greatest boatmen. There are only a few names in the history of religion which can be compared to rinzai. So first help yourself, then help others.

And read something about Rinzai – books are available, mm ? It will be helpful if you read. Zen will be your path. Dhyana, meditation, will be your path... and Rinzai was one of the greatest meditators.

His meditation is the simplest – just sitting and doing nothing. It is the simplest and yet the hardest, because if people are told to do something, they can; even if it is difficult they can manage to do. But when they are told not to do anything and just to sit it becomes almost impossible. Nobody knows how to do nothing, nobody knows how not to do. People know how to do things; it is easier. Once the knack of it comes to your consciousness, you will laugh that it was so simple; one can simply sit.

So, start at least one hour sitting, mm? I will give you other groups that you can do, but make it a point that whenever you have time to just sit silently under any tree. Go to the river or anywhere and just sit. There is nothing else to do, just go on sitting for one hour. Thoughts will come – let them come and go.

Rinzai’s famous saying is: Sitting silently doing nothing and the grass grows by itself There is no You are carrying great beauty in your heart. It has to be released – otherwise you will feel very very frustrated. That fragrance has to be given to the winds. That’s your potentiality. A really beautiful life can grow out of you. Just the idea has to enter your being and things will start happening. And always remember, beauty has nothing to do with the body; beauty is something non-material. Yes, sometimes it reflects in the body too but it is not of the body; the body only reflects it. It is like the moon: the moon has no light of its own – it simply reflects the sunrays – but we think that it is moonlight The moon has no light of its own. So the body has no light of its own: it reflects the beauty, the light of the soul. People who start becoming too interested in the bodily, the physical beauty, arc going in a wrong direction; they will be frustrated. The West has become too interested in the physical, and the physical has no beauty of its own. At the most it can reflect, but it can reflect only if there is something inside. If the sun is there then the moon is full of light; if the sun is not there, all light from the moon will disappear. The moon functions like a mirror.

It is so with the body too: all that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is good, is of the soul. Reflecting it, the body also becomes beautiful... but just bodily beauty is of no sense, no meaning.

So keep it as a seed, protect it, and it will grow through your meditation. That’s the purpose of meditations: to help, to enhance the inner beauty, to facilitate ways and means for its release. It is there like a prisoner – it has to be freed! And the day it is freed is a day of great jubilation.

[A sannyasin says she is afraid of doing some of the active meditations as she has recently been diagnosed as having a heart complaint. Osho checks her energy.]

Nothing to be worried about, mm? It is just the fear that is creating the complaint; it is not the complaint that is creating the fear. Your heart may have become affected by your constant fear but the heart is not in any difficulty. If the fear is dropped then the heart will function perfectly well... but the fear is there. And if you go on repressing the fear it will become more and more and more and it will affect the heart.

Remember always that fear and love are the two things, very important, for the heart. If there is love the heart functions very very healthily. Love is food for the heart, nourishment; the heart goes on dancing. When there is fear then there is a problem. You are collecting poison; fear is poison. And if fear is continually there then naturally the love will start feeling starved. Not only starved but this poison will start polluting it, and it can create many physical problems too.

Finally, if something goes on, goes on in the mind, it affects the body. The body is not very far away

– it is very close – so anything that happens in the mind is going to affect the body. And fear and love are two aspects of the heart. Either you can be loving or you can be afraid; you cannot be both together. If you are too much afraid you will become non-loving; then love will disappear.

Out of fear you can pretend love. You will feel alone so you want somebody. You pretend that you love but you will not be loving, because out of fear there is no love possible. And if you love then fear is not possible; it is the same energy. If it is used in love fear disappears.

because it is psychological you can do something immediately. If it is physical then you have to depend on the physician. There is no need; if they suggest some medicine or something you can take it but there is no need to be worried about it.

First thing: move into love more and more. Have you come across the modern research which says that not a single man has ever died of heart attack while making love? Never, it has never happened.

It should happen really because ordinarily making love is such exertion.

Mm? we tell the heart patient not to go upstairs, not to walk fast, not to do anything exerting. But no heart patient has ever died while making love! And love takes out of you as much energy as it takes to run four miles. Either you can run four miles on the beach or you can make love; both take the same amount of energy.

Physicians are interested in why it never happens that a heart patient making love never dies. He can die in any other work but never while making love. Then they started working, experimenting, and now they say that if somebody has a heart problem love is the best exercise. Ordinarily, in the old days – just five, ten years before and in india still – the physician suggests to people who have heart complaints not to make love; it is dangerous. But modern research says it is very good for heart patients to make love. It relaxes the heart; it feeds and nourishes the heart. And the reason is very simple, because when you are in love fear disappears. Fear kills! Love is life; fear is death.

So start moving more with people – be loving. And while you make love be wild! Just really go into it; make the man really frightened!...

Be wild! Be almost like an animal – innocent, pure. And you will be very much helped as far as your heart is concerned. And continue to do the meditations....

Do a few groups. First start with soft groups so you can gather courage, mm?...

[Osho suggests several groups ending with tantra. She says she is afraid of tantra.]

That is the one that is going to take away your fear! That may be the cause. Nothing to be worried about – simply go into it. That will be of great insight to you, and out of it you will become very flowing and glowing.

CHAPTER 18

19 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says he is not sure about becoming a sannyasin.]

Nobody knows unless they become! How can one know without becoming? It is something to be experienced; it is something existential, experiential. It is not something that can be explained in any way. It is like love or like death: you know only when you have gone through it. Only one thing that I can say is that it is worth trying; it is not something that one should miss. It is the real psychedelic trip, mm? – without any drugs! If you have courage then become a sannyasin. Or if you are not courageous, then think about it. Cowards think; courageous people jump. What should I do? Mm?

If you have some fear then you can think for a few days. There is no hurry.

[The visitor says he has searched for a long time and something happened inside says yes, without his making a decision.]

Right! That’s how it should be... that’s how it should be. And then you can go very far in it.

Then it can bring great peaks of experiences to you, because it depends.... If somebody goes into it reluctantly then he can only go so far because he himself will be destructive to his own effort. If somebody goes half-heartedly he can go only so far because the other part of the heart will go on holding him back.

If one can go simply by saying yes – a total yes – then one can go really deep. And the depth is abysmal; there is no end to it. There is only a beginning – there is no end to it. It is the eternal journey. Then close your eyes and say yes and go into it!

you tremendously....

Deva videha. It means divine yes. And that is the greatest factor for spiritual growth because it is the yes attitude that brings you closer to existence. By saying yes there is a communion with existence; by saying no there is a separation. The no separates; the yes joins. Whenever you say yes there is an immediate bridge. Yes becomes the bridge with reality.

When you say no the bridge is broken; you withdraw. When you say no you shrink; when you say yes you open. So yes is one of the greatest requirements for spiritual growth....

[A sannyasin says she has not been able to do the meditations because she feels indifferent and can’t go into them.]

Do a few groups – that will take away your indifference. It will make you flowing, mm? Nothing to be worried – it happens to many people. It is out of fear. You are protecting yourself; you are afraid of getting into some mad thing. And all that goes on here is mad, so one just pulls oneself back and withdraws. One has to gather courage. All that is beautiful happens only to crazy people –

and you look very very well-adjusted; that is your problem! In the west people help the maladjusted people... and I help the adjusted! My whole work is how to maladjust you! But that will happen, mm? Something is going to happen – don’t be worried! Good!

[A visitor says he has been learning Shastri Sangeet from a guru in Bombay but he is not satisfied with it; the technique is becoming strong but not the emotional side.]

And don’t you feel strong enough to start doing it on your own?...

Not yet? Because there is a problem in it. Shastri Sangeet – the classical indian music – is technical, so it is not the fault of the guru. It will be very very difficult to find a man who can teach you from the heart. The whole thing is technical; it has not much to do with the heart.

The whole thing – the approach – is technical. If you hear a great master then you don’t know what the great master is doing. If you see him practising eight hours per day then you will know that he is a technician. There are a few people who are innovators but it is very rare to find them.

My feeling is that if you really want to learn it, you have to be with a technician, mm? The whole approach is technical, it is technique, it is technology.

Once you have known the technique perfectly well then you can move on your own and bring your heart in, not before it. When you have known the technique so well that it has become part of you, you can forget about it. Then you can move on your own because you know the technique is there.

It will be used by the unconscious automatically – you need not deliberately remember it. Then you can feel a satisfaction in the heart, otherwise not.

You can change the master but you will find another of the same kind. The problem is the very thing.

technical and scientific.

Listening to a maestro is one thing – he knows the technique, he plays through his technique.

Because he knows the technique he affects your heart. The technique is how to affect the heart.

But he is a technician and his own heart may remain unaffected by it.

I have known many great musicians.... In their life they are very ordinary people; nothing has happened to them. But when they play they are really great, incredible. Then you know not the man, not his heart, but his technique. But the technique is such that it goes on playing on your heart so your heart starts feeling a dance and you think it is really of the heart. It is not! The heart is affected by it but in itself it is not coming from the heart.

In that way modern music is more of the heart; black music is more of the heart although there is not much technique in it. There is a problem – it has always been so: if you go too much towards the heart, the heart is not technological, it is more wild. The mind is technical but then it is not wild and not of the feeling. And it always happens to every science, to any discipline. By and by the mind goes on refining it, refining it, refining it, making it more and more perfect; one day there is only technique left.

It is just as if you go to a man like Kinsey or Masters and Johnson – those who have known everything about sex technically. They know everything about sex technically, all that can be known, and they can give you a beautiful discourse on the technique of sex, but that doesn’t mean that their sex life is fulfilled! It doesn’t mean that at all.

In fact, the very thing that they became so technically interested in sex, may have been caused by some defective perversion in their minds. You will be impressed by the knowledge that they can bring to the subject. They are technicians of sexuality – they may not be good lovers! And my feeling is that they cannot be, because a lover does not need the technique. When you are not a lover then you start looking for the technique.

So if you really want... And I can understand your problem, your dilemma – it is a great dilemma: four years and now you must be feeling stuck with the technique. It will become more and more dry and the more you go into it, the more dry it is, because you start moving into more systematic, mathematical, grammatical parts of it. Then it is just mathematics and you will not feel fulfilled.

But if you really want to understand indian classical music you have to know the technique first. Then one day, when you have known the technique, you start playing on your own; then you innovate.

For example, Ravi Shankar – he is an innovator but indian classical people won’t appreciate him much. They will condemn him, they will criticise him, because he is not perfectly in tune with the classical science.

So no innovator is ever appreciated by the conventional and the orthodox. And it is such a long process to learn, that there is every possibility that by the time you have known the technique you one in Poona – you can be here and can find a very good man here it is possible. But start working on your own, side by side. Go on learning with the master and never bring innovations to him. He will not like them – he will throw you out!

They have found the perfect method – they don’t bother now that any amateur person should come and improve upon it. They have improved it to the very last. They don’t think that it can be improved anymore. It cannot be improved, that is true, but you can play many things on the side paths, mm ?

You can move on the side paths and you can go and take your own direction. That you have to do on your own, and don’t tell your master anything about it.

You go on learning the technique from the master with a great respect, and on your own in the night go on playing so you keep your heart alive. Otherwise in four or five years time – and it is a long training, eight, nine, ten years – they will destroy your heart.

So this is your duty: to keep your heart alive... at least until the time you are freed from them; then you can go on your own.

You can come to poona, you can find someone here or you can remain in Bombay. Nothing is the problem; even with the same master you can continue. And I understand your difficulty. Start doing something on your own; that will satisfy you more.

Then one day when you feel that you have known enough to go on, drop the teacher and start moving on your own – then there will be joy! Good!

CHAPTER 19

20 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyasin to someone saying, just feel lost; lose control; don’t hold yourself together; just fall into pieces, and if the body starts falling on to the floor, allow it. Don’t be worried.]

The easiest is the most difficult; the difficult is not so difficult. The ego is always ready to do the difficult because doing the difficult the ego is enhanced; it feels good. It looks like a challenge, and the ego is ready to fight with the challenge. It is provoked out of its lethargy by the challenge. It fights back, it tries to conquer, it becomes aggressive. The greater the difficulty, the more aggressive the ego becomes. Aggression is its food. That’s why the simple is the most difficult. The ego does not feel interested in it. The ego feels a kind of death through it. The ego cannot lose control because in losing control it will lose itself. The ego cannot lose tenseness because the tenseness is its very existence. If you are non-tense, if you are relaxed, the ego simply evaporates. It cannot exist in a relaxed state of consciousness; it is no more needed.

It is your disease, and you have to be alert about it. Unless your ego falls into pieces, is shattered, completely shattered, so utterly shattered that you cannot put it together again – like humpty-dumpty it falls from the wall and nobody can put it together again – only then will your real life start; only then will you be real. Otherwise you will remain unreal... and with unreality there is misery. Only the real person can be happy; only the real can be celebrated. With the real is festivity. With the unreal there is only dark, dismal depression. With the unreal we are in hell. Hell is not a reality; it is a nightmare created by the ego.

I wanted to see whether you could do it or not. It is good that you did not pretend – that part is good.

Sometimes it happens, when I say to relax, even if you don’t feel like relaxing you just fall. So the bad news is that you have a very very controlled ego The good news is that you are not a pretender that we exist by a deep agreement. When we agree with the divine, we exist. Whenever we don’t agree with the divine, we start dying. Our life is in being harmonious with the whole. That is the meaning of the word ’health’: to be in harmony with the whole. And that is the meaning of the word

’holy’ too: to be in harmony with the whole.

Health is of the physical and holiness is of the spiritual, but the secret is the same: to be in agreement with the whole. The ego is always in disagreement; it w ants to say no. It is very hard for the ego to say yes; it doesn’t come. No comes easily; no is simply there, always ready.

You will have to learn to say yes more and you will have to drop your no more and more. Be more conscious so that the no is no more supported, and support the yes more. And soon you will be able to see: whenever you say yes whole-heartedly to existence there will be a silence that comes out of it, a well-being and a kind of new quality to your being that you have never experienced before. It is just as if one has lived for years in a dark dungeon and then one day one is released and comes outside and for the first time sees the sun and the moon and the stars and the trees and the flowers and the birds. Exactly like that, when you are in agreement with the whole you will be in the open.

When you are in disagreement with the whole you will be imprisoned within the ego... and the ego is a very very small dark cell.

Learn to be in agreement with the whole.

[Osho suggests some groups for the new sannyasin.]

You have to go through many processes, mm? Slowly, slowly you will die and you will be born. The harder part is death. Birth is very simple; it happens on its own accord. So do everything that you can do to die, to disappear, and then suddenly one day, absolutely unawares, you are for the first time; the new, the utterly new is born into you. Nothing has to be done for that. We have only to make way for it, and that’s what I mean by dying. So don’t go on holding and don’t go on controlling yourself; don’t go on protecting yourself. Relax and be!

[Osho gives another seeker sannyas.]

Just visualise a rosebush. Become the rosebush. Don’t visualise it as something separate from you: let the observer be the observed. Become it.

Your head is nothing but a bud. The bud is opening, the petals are opening; open with it. And if something starts happening in the body, allow it – any moving, shaking, trembling.

Deva means divine or god and sarti means charioteer, the driver of a chariot. The meaning is: let god be your charioteer. Let him drive you; you vacate yourself for him. Just come down from the throne so he can possess you. That is the whole secret of religion: how to be possessed by god, how to be driven by god, how to surrender and to lose all kinds of ideas and plans and hopes and expectations of how one should like to be and what one should like to achieve. Drop all that is in this moment and you will never be frustrated. Expectations gone, nobody can frustrate you, no situation keeps himself in the driver’s seat. He is afraid to lose control. He is afraid that if he is not in control then something will go wrong, and in fact everything goes wrong because he is in control. You in control means ignorance in control. You in control means darkness in control. You in control means a part, a tiny part in control.

Let god be the charioteer – let the whole be the charioteer. The whole knows where it is going, where it is all going. The whole knows what your destiny is. You cannot know it; you can know it only when it has happened.

Having private goals different from the whole, contrary to the whole, in opposition to the whole, is madness. It is as if a leaf in a tree has a private goal and is trying to attain it. How can the leaf attain any goal privately? She exists only with the tree, in the tree, as the tree. We exist in the whole as the whole; we cannot have any private goals.

To have a private goal is to be ordinary. To drop that nonsense, that stupidity, is to become a sannyasin, and that is the meaning of your name....

In india we have a great epic, mahabharata, and whenever some westerner reads it he becomes a little puzzled about the story. The story is that there is a great war. Krishna is the master of those days – one of the greatest enlightened persons of all the ages – and in the war he becomes a charioteer and friend to one of his disciples. Now, the job of a charioteer is a low job; a chauffeur is a chauffeur. The disciple sits inside the chariot – arjuna is his disciple – and Krishna becomes the charioteer. He drives the chariot into the battlefield.

Western people are always puzzled: this looks a little odd; it should not be so. They cannot imagine christ being the charioteer, the chauffeur, and thomas or luke sitting inside the chariot; that is impossible. But the east has far greater insight into it. That story is a parable. It says that only god can be the charioteer. Only the master can be the charioteer; how can the disciple be the charioteer?

[The new sannyasin says he has been doing the meditations for two years, but finds that instead of growing through the groups and... I’ve been getting more afraid to love and more and more resistant and closed to people.]

I have given you one group, Vipassana, which will decide. My feeling is that in your past life you have been a Buddhist monk, and that is still there. Vipassana will decide; that is a Buddhist meditation.

How you go into it will be very decisive. If you really enjoy it, then your path will be very clear; there will be no problem.

Anybody who has done any Buddhist meditations in past lives for long becomes that way, because buddhist meditations are basically to bring you to your innermost core in absolute aloneness. They are not love methods. They don’t believe in relating; they believe in dropping out Of all relationships.

That is happening. Don’t be worried about it, because that is also one of the ways to reach to the ultimate. There are two ways: love and awareness.

need anything – you simply go into your aloneness.

In the West that has become very difficult because the whole western mind thinks that relationship is life; there is no other life. There is!

There is a different kind of life which has nothing to do with relationship. In the West there has not existed any religion like Buddhism. Christianity remains a path of love and devotion and prayer – so is Judaism, so is Islam. These three religions have impressed the West. Buddhism is for the first time now entering the western hemisphere. Buddhism will bring a new approach which has been missed for centuries in the West.

In the East both the paths exist, and both are valid. They look diametrically opposite but they are not; the ultimate aim is the same. On the path of love, the I and thou come closer, closer, closer and one day meet and mingle and disappear; nothing is left in the hands. It is the same thing that starts happening on the path of awareness from the very beginning.

Stop relating. And my feeling is that Vipassana will decide. Go into it totally, mm? so we can come to a conclusion. But nothing is wrong in it, not at all. It is not that you are not growing; you are growing inward. That’s your growth. That is perfectly okay; be happy about it. And don’t enforce any relationship unnecessarily if you don’t feel like going into them. If this is how you feel then this is good. The natural is good and the spontaneous is good. My feeling is that you are on the right track, mm? but this Vipassana will be very decisive. After Vipassana, you remind me again. Good.

[Osho tells another initiate to feel as if she is making love. Let that radiance come to your body, to your being, and if something starts happening in your body, allow it. Even if you feel orgasmic – that the whole body is shaken by it – go into it.]

Love seems to be difficult!... and that is the thing to be developed. You are very withdrawn from your body; you don’t pour your energy into your body. You are kind of afraid... if the body gets the energy it may lead you astray. And the body is your temple – it is through the body that we live. The body has to be very very sensitive and very alive; it has to be orgasmic. It is through the body that we are related to existence.

But this has happened to many people. Religions have condemned the body so much that the body seems to be almost the root cause of all sin. From the very childhood we are taught some antagonism about the body and by and by we start withdrawing. So millions of people have become non-orgasmic. Even while making love they don’t have real orgasm; they don’t go into wild joy. The fire is not there, it is very cold. They don’t go into wild ecstasy. They go only so far, in a very miserly way.

So it is nothing special about you – it is so about many people – but I would like you to become more alive in the body. Love your body. By loving your body you show your respect towards god, because it is a god-given gift. By rejecting it, you reject god. By rejecting it, you reject his gift. And the body has so many mysteries in it; all the mysteries are there. If you start opening the book of your body Vedas or the Koran. If you can read your own body, you have read the real scripture.

So my first impression about you is that unless you start flowing in your body, you will not start growing. It needs just a little consciousness and it will happen.

Deva means divine, chayya means shadow – shadow of the divine. In the beginning it is just a shadow; by and by it starts becoming the reality itself. First become the shadow and then you will become the real. So start thinking in terms of your being divine, a reflection of god. Thinking about oneself as less than that is humiliating, insulting.

We are shadows of god. The shadow belongs to the real in a sense and yet is not real. It is just as if you have seen your face reflected in a water pool. It is your face and yet not your face; it is just a reflection. But the reflection is not a mere reflection either; it reflects the real. So the shadow is a paradoxical phenomenon: it reflects the real and yet it is not the real. This is the situation where man exists: he is a shadow of god. If he starts understanding it, starts moving, growing, one day he will become god. If he is not aware that he is a shadow of the divine, then he will remain a shadow and by and by he can become even a shadow of the shadow and so on, so forth....

[A sannyasin says that after he did the enlightenment intensive group, he felt deeply depressed and ideas of suicide came to him. Now he is feeling better. Osho checks his energy.]

It appeared like the idea for suicide, but it was not. A better expression for it would be to say it was a kind of ego suicide. The ego wanted to die in that moment, not you, but because you are so much identified with the ego you felt it as if you wanted to die. And that was a good experience. It was really good, but when it comes for the first time it frightens. It will come again. When next time it comes simply be a witness to it. Don’t get identified; don’t start thinking that you want to die.

Even if you want to die you cannot because you are eternal, you are immortal. Only the ego is born and the ego can die. In the real sense there is no way to commit suicide. You can try but nobody has ever succeeded. The soul cannot die. The soul means life. But we are too much involved with the ego... so much so that we don’t think that we are separate. When in deep meditation sometimes it happens that the ego feels death coming, one gets very much frightened and scared. But it was perfectly good. Nothing to be worried about, mm?

You are not a person who can commit suicide. And once you have become a sannyasin it is almost impossible even to try – because these are alternatives: sannyas and suicide. You have already committed one, now the other cannot be done.

You will be surprised to know that in the east suicide has not been so much prevalent as in the west; in the west it is almost five times more. And the reason is when in the east somebody starts feeling depressed, he becomes a sannyasin! Why go that far and commit suicide? This is a more creative way of committing suicide!

[A sannyasin had previously written to Osho that she’d been having dreams about him.... ]

too. First it starts happening in a dream because our existence is a dream existence. And things can happen only from that place where we are. You are in a dream and you are a dream. Even if I enter into your being it will be from the door of the dream because that is where you are. Unless you are real how can you be really with me? If you are fast asleep how can you communicate with me who is not asleep ? When you are awake you will be able to commune with me. But one thing is possible: you are asleep, you can dream about me, and that is going to help. So every night when you go to sleep, just remember me. Remain with that remembrance and fall asleep. And you can have me every night!

[A sannyasin says: I feel like this is a family but I’m sort of an illegitimate child. I don’t feel close to anyone in particular.]

There is no need; just be yourself.

Mm mm, nothing to be worried about... because there will be every kind of people here. A family really means that everybody has the right to be himself – nobody interferes. That is the meaning of a family. If you feel good being yourself, isolated, the family is the place where it can be allowed, and you need not feel guilty. If you start feeling guilty then it is not a family, and if others start interfering and telling you that this is not right, then it is not a family.

The idea of a family is that everybody is allowed to be himself; nobody is going to interfere. Your space is yours and everybody will respect it. Nothing to be worried about.

And you are not illegitimate!...

It will happen on its own, mm? – you need not force it. Good!

[Earlier Osho had said: This commune is not an ordinary commune. This is an experiment to provoke god. You may not be aware of what is going to happen. You may be aware only of your problems – you may have come to me only to solve your problems. That is secondary; I am cooking up something else! (laughter) I am trying to create a space where god can descend more and more.

This commune will become a connection. The world has lost connection; god is no more a reality.

The connection is broken, and god can only be through the connection. God may be there, we are here, but there is no bridge so how do we know ? This commune is an experiment to create the bridge.... ]

CHAPTER 20

22 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says that he has been thinking on, and getting depressed about, the past. Osho says that to keep looking back to the past is an effective way of making misery for oneself. Good or bad, the past is finished. It has no more any validity, no more any relevance. Look forwards, never look backwards. Looking back is like a man who drives his car backwards by looking in the rear vision mirror. That is no way to drive. Sooner or later there is going to be an accident.

The sannyasin then says he has no energy.]

That may be just the same thing. If you live with the past too much you cannot have energy. Energy comes through the future; energy comes through openness to new things. When you have new things to do, you will find energy. When you have nothing to do – just brooding about the past – you don’t need energy at all, so energy won’t be coming. You get as much energy as you need – not more than that, never more than that. If you jump into some creativity you will get more energy.

This is something to be understood: creative people have more energy. People ordinarily think that because they have more energy they are creative. That is false! Just the vice versa is the case: they have energy because they are creative. But people think, ’What can I do? He has so much energy; that’s why he is creative.’ That is wrong, absolutely wrong, not true, not even half true... not a single iota of truth in it.

Creative people have energy because when they create, more energy comes. It is just like drawing water from a well: the more you draw, the more fresh water comes in.Just sit silently, just brood, and energy will disappear. You don’t need any; you don’t deserve it. For what do you need energy?

God gi es energ onl

hen o are doing something

ith it Paint sing pla

dance lo e

do

you will never feel a fulfillment. It is just as when a tree has fruits and flowers it feels fulfilled. When you can have a few creations around you that you have created, then you are fulfilled; that is your flowering. A barren man or a barren woman will not feel fulfilled.

So my understanding about you is that you are unnecessarily bothering too much about the past and you are not putting any energy into the future. And you are not doing anything creative so you don’t feel happy and you don’t feel energy.

So anything that you want to do – I am not saying to do anything in particular – do. Just think for a few days what you would like to do, what you would like to achieve, what you would like to express, and then start working for it. You will suddenly see that energy is flowing.

[A sannyasin says: I keep going round in circles... I’ve been in so many different spaces lately that I feel... I need help!

Osho checks her energy.]

Everything is perfectly good. Rather than calling those moments ’moving in circles’, find a better word. Because when we say ’I am moving in circles’, it is a condemnation. We have not accepted it; a deep rejection is there. But the whole existence moves in circles; all movement is circular. The stars, the moon, the sun, the earth, the seasons, the wheel of life and death – everything is circular; there is nothing linear in existence. Linear – the very idea of linear – is a western idea with nothing corresponding to it in reality.

[She asks: Would ’spiral’ be a better word?]

Spiral is perfectly good, mm? That’s an evolving circle; that’s perfectly good. But never use condemnatory words – they unnecessarily create problems. ’Spiral’ is perfectly good.

But nothing is wrong in moving in circles too. Just move with the dancing energy, that’s all. There is nowhere to go – that’s my basic teaching. Even when you say spiral, you have some idea of going somewhere, because a spiral means you have joined the circular and the linear. So the spiral means that now you have started moving upwards in a line; again the linear has come in.

There is no need to go anywhere. All is beautiful as it is! Existence is not going anywhere at all. It is simply here. It is a dance – it is not a marathon race! It is simply joy. So accept that and relax into it and give it the quality of dance.

... Let it go wherever it goes! Don’t try to be in control of it. Let it go! That’s how it has to be....

If dancing you reach hell, it is perfectly right. If you reach heaven sad, bored, what is the point of it?

Deep down in your mind there is some value, some idea, that one has to reach somewhere. So the line has to be there – that from this point to that point you have to go; you have not to go astray. The you are going. Go astray perfectly happy and dancing.

Nobody is going to miss, because in the first place there is nothing to miss! Just enjoy – jump from one point to another; it is perfectly good. And let god be in control, you drop out of control.

[A sannyasin says: You told me six weeks ago to dive within and I have, and I’ve got into a very quiet, still place... where I feel detached, disengaged, alone and distant... ]

Perfectly good! That’s what I wanted; so it has happened. Don’t try to come out of this space. It will disappear on its own and then you will see for the first time what communication is. If you pull yourself out of it, it will be unripe; just let it happen.

This is beautiful. Be distant, be detached, be disengaged and be alone. This is from where one should always start; this si the first step from your deepest core. Everything else that you do is peripheral; this is very central. All else is circumference. Love is circumference; meditation is at the very centre. This si the centre of the cyclone.

So enjoy it, savour it. Rather than hugging, savour this. This is the way you are getting into yourself.

This is hugging yourself; let this happen first. This is loving yourself. Let it happen first, and let it happen totally; then one day you will suddenly find you are overflowing. Then a hug happens, but that has a totally different quality to it. You have not done it – god has done it through you.

Then you will again come close to people, but this will not be physical closeness. The physical is included in it but it will not be only physical. It will be something more than that; it will be spiritual.

And a hug, when it is only physical, is meaningless. When it has something of the spirit in it, then it has significance.

This is exactly what I wanted, and it is happening. Be happy, feel blissful; feel fortunate that it is happening. Enjoy it, don’t disturb it; it is the right space to be in. And from this point everything right starts. One day you will be loving again but in a different way. It will be a separate kind of reality.

You will talk to people, but you will talk from a different vision. It will not be just for talking’s sake; you will really try to communicate. It will not be just verbiage, it will not be just a conversation – it will be communion! You would like to share something, and you will talk only when you have something to share. Otherwise you will keep quiet; there is no need to talk!

And you will not pretend any more. If laughter is coming you will laugh. If it is not coming then that not coming is perfectly okay. Nobody is needed or required to laugh twenty-four hours a day, so whatsoever will come, will come from your inner being. And when it comes from the inner being it comes from god. Whatsoever we manage to do on the periphery is just managed by the mind and the ego, and naturally it can’t have much meaning to it.

People go on hugging and people go on talking and people go on loving, and it is all superficial, all casual, all just accidental. They go on moving through these gestures because they don’t know what else to do. If they don’t do these things they feel left alone. If they don’t do these things they feel afraid That loneliness starts gnawing at their heart If they don’t do these things they feel no And many more people choose to do because at least it keeps them occupied. It keeps you so occupied that you don’t have time to think about the ultimate meaning of life. It is a kind of avoidance, an escape.

People go on rushing from one thing to another. They don’t allow any gap, interval, where they can see what they are doing and for what, and what’s the significance of it all. That question hurts.

People go on throwing that question away. They don’t want to see it; they don’t want to confront it.

Tired, they go to sleep and dream, and by the morning they start rushing again. In the night through dream they avoid; in the day through activity they avoid.

Now, this is what should be done. You are coming home; you are not avoiding it. So drop these words also because these words can create a problem for you. Don’t call it ’disengagement’ because that very word is negative, derogatory. Call it ’engagement with oneself’. Don’t call it ’detachment’.

No, call it ’a love for oneself’. This is what I mean by being auto-erotic. One falls with love, deep love, into oneself; one loves oneself.

So for a few days be a narcissus...

and with no judgement, no condemnation – with great

blissfulness. And out of that, one day, suddenly you will find you are so full of some energy because you have not been wasting it; it will become a reservoir.

Hugging, talking, loving, moving, doing, you are wasting energy. These are the thousand and one holes through which you go on dissipating energy. When you are not dissipating energy it becomes a great reservoir. And one day suddenly you feel it is so much that you cannot contain it – it is overflowing. And when energy overflows on its own accord it is far out! It is incredible! It is ecstasy!

In english the word ’ecstasy’ has become very very important, but the other part of it has not been used very much; that is ’instasy’. Ecstasy means moving out; instasy means moving in. This is the state of instasy.

In the East whenever we talk about ecstasy we first talk about instasy. Instasy means going in.

Instasy means implosion; ecstasy means explosion. In ecstasy there is dance and celebration; in instasy there is absolute silence, aloneness, solitude. But ecstasy comes only out of instasy; there is no other way. The tree can go high in the sky if first it goes deep down in the earth. First it has to grow roots – roots are instasy – and the foliage and the branches and the flowers, they are ecstasy.

Without the roots there will be no ecstasy.

So just get rooted!

And I am very happy – you did it! The other will come on its own. Good!

CHAPTER 21

23 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asks how to make his hobby of painting a meditation.]

Art is meditation. Any activity becomes meditation if you are lost in it. So don’t just remain a technician. If you are just a technician then painting will never become meditation. You have to be crazily into it, madly into it, completely lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what you are doing, not knowing who you are. This state of not-knowing will bring meditation.

Let it happen. The painting should not be painted but only allowed to happen. And I don’t mean that you just remain lazy – no; then it will never happen. It has to ride on you. You have to be very very active and yet not doing it. That is the whole knack, that is the whole crux of it: you have to be active and yet not a doer. You allow your activity to be possessed by something that is beyond you.

You have seen a sunset. It is there in you and it wants to be expressed. Whenever there is a great experience, either of beauty or of truth or of love, it is followed by a deep desire to express it. That desire to express it is part of it, intrinsic to it, built-in. You have seen a sunset and you are full of it.

The dream of it is surrounding you. It is there inside you – all those colours and all those nuances of the clouds and the wind and the birds and the sand. All are there and they want to be expressed.

So you become available.

Go to the canvas. For a few minutes just meditate. Just sit silently there before the canvas. It has to be like automatic writing: you take the pen in your hand and you sit silently and suddenly you find a jerk in the hand. It is not that you have done it – you know that you have not done it. You were simply waiting for it; the jerk comes and the hand starts moving. Something starts happening.

your tiny conscious mind is no more alone. Something bigger than it has taken possession, has become more powerful. The conscious mind is only an instrument to it, whatsoever it is – god, the mystics call it god, or nature, or the psychologists call it the unconscious. ’It’ has possessed you –

something nameless.

That way you should start your painting. A few minutes for meditation – just being available.

Whatsoever is going to happen you will allow to happen. You will bring all your expertise into letting it happen. Take the brush and start. Go slowly in the beginning so that you don’t bring yourself in.

Just go slowly. Let the sunset start flowing through you of its own accord and then be lost in it.

And don’t think of anything else. Art has to be for art’s sake, then it is meditation. No motive should be allowed to enter into it. And I am not saying that you are not going to exhibit it. That’s perfectly okay, but that is a by-product; that is not the motive. One needs food so one sells the painting, but it hurts that one sells it. It is almost like selling your child, but one needs to so it is okay. You feel sad, but it was not the motive; you had not painted it to sell. It has been sold – that’s another thing – but the motive was not there. Otherwise you will remain a technician.

And that is the difference between a technician and an artist: the artist is a meditator and the technician is not. The technician has to concentrate on what he is doing, and the meditator, the artist, has to be lost in it. There is no concentration; there is nobody to concentrate. There is great joy if you can be lost into your painting. It will be sold, it will be appreciated, it will be exhibited. That is another thing; that is just a by-product.

And the second thing that you asked.... You should get lost. Forget about the first idea; you should get lost. You need not remain there. You should completely disappear into your painting, into you dance, into breathing, into singing. In whatsoever you are doing you should be lost completely, in uncontrol.

We are very much afraid of uncontrol because it looks like madness. And this world is so mad that if you really become sane, you will look mad to people.

The case of Claude Eatherly is revealing. He had been chosen to give the signal for dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima. At the time he didn’t know what he was doing. On learning the consequences he was horrified. As an act of expiation he joined civil disobedience groups, calling attention to the atrocities of thermonuclear weapons. This the authorities were not prepared to brook. Soon a medical board of remarkable patriotic psychiatrists declared him to be mad. The moral is simple: in our world one must be mad to be human.

Now, this man was becoming sane – and this society cannot allow that! The moral is clear – that if you want to become sane you have to be ready to be insane. If you want to become human you will have to suffer madness.

So there is a fear of uncontrol. If you uncontrol yourself then you don’t know where you are going and what is going to happen. Will you ever be able to come back to your old status quo? – nobody has to go whole-heartedly into the unknown, wherever it leads. He has to risk his neck.

It will become meditation. So these two things... but it is one thing in fact: whatsoever you do, get lost ! And much is going to happen....

Come for a longer time. And next time you come, start painting here and something new will happen that has never happened before. Be around me and paint so I can paint through you. Next time bring your things, mm?

[A seeker says he wants to take sannyas only when he feels total about it.]

You are asking the impossible. You cannot be total right now – whole body and mind – in anything.

If you decide that, you cannot do anything. You cannot even move, you cannot utter a single word.

If you decide that you will utter the word only when you are whole and total in it – body, mind, all –

you will not be able to do a single movement in life. Because how can you be total right now?

Totality comes through sannyas. Sannyas cannot come through totality.

[The seeker asks: So do you mean that it’s possible to take sannyas in spite of doubts.]

That is the only possibility! Everybody has doubts. How can you trust right now without any experience? Trust comes by and by. When you experience, you go a little more in. You start feeling me more and your heart opens a little more; the trust grows. Doubts are natural, nothing is wrong about them. One is simply cautious; that’s what doubt is. And it is very good because doubt prevents you from moving into many wrong directions; otherwise you will be going anywhere.

Doubt is not bad, and one has to go into sannyas with doubts. The only thing to decide is whether your desire to take sannyas is more or your desire not to take sannyas is more. Only that has to be decided. If you think that sixty percent you would like to become a sannyasin, then become. If you think that only forty percent wants to become a sannyasin, then wait.

Totality should not be demanded – only the majority of your being, that’s enough. That is humanly possible. If you become total you will become enlightened! There will be no need then for sannyas, because a person who can do a single act totally will become enlightened. A single act is enough.

So if you are waiting for totality, you will have to wait forever; it will never happen.

Ask that which is possible... and humanly possible. Don’t be too inhuman about yourself and don’t make great ideals of totality, perfection, absoluteness. That is a trick of the mind to avoid.

If a man thinks that he will only love a woman when he loves totally, he will never love. Just think of it – that you will love a woman only when you love totally. Will you ever be able to love a woman? It will be impossible! Yes, total love is possible, but that is possible only when you start loving a woman and you become more and more intimate and things start growing and flowing. You come closer and closer and closer and fears drop. You know that you have found the right person for you – that suddenly it is there: you know that you love totally. But that is a very much later stage. If you ask for it in the beginning as a first step, then you cannot love; you cannot do anything!

If a poet thinks that he will write his first poem only when he can write totally, then no poem will ever happen. But if he starts writing... And in the beginning great poems are not going to happen. Slowly, slowly, he will move into deeper realms of poetry, and one day he may create something which is really perfect, which lacks nothing, which has no flaw. But that is a whole life’s effort, dedication, a whole life’s work. One has to pay for it!

So think about only one thing – that should be the decisive thing: if the major part of your mind wants to take sannyas, then go in spite of the doubts. If the major part doubts, then wait.

Come close and close your eyes and just listen to the heart. Just go there near the heart. Stand there and listen to the heart beat. Visualise a flower, a rose flower, in the heart. The flower is opening – open with it! The flower is swaying in the wind and you sway with it. Become the flower.

Let your heart become the flower....

Anand means bliss and gulab means rose – a blissful rose flower. Meditate on the rose flower as much as you can. Whenever you see a rose flower, sit by the side; have a little dialogue with the flower. First see the flower then close your eyes; see the flower in the heart. Visualise the heart opening like a rose flower. Soon it will become a great meditation for you and you will start opening with it. When you feel the opening of the heart there will be great joy.

[A sannyasin says all her life she has been looking for a place where she belongs and she is unsure if this is it. Osho checks her energy.]

I can understand. There are no obstacles and this is where you belong, but if you have been looking for your whole life, then looking for it becomes a habit. Even when you have found it you go on looking; that’s what is happening....

The energy is perfectly right. Just an old habit; you will have to learn to unlearn it. It happens to many people. It happens in many ways. A poor man suddenly becomes rich, by heritage or he wins a lottery or something. He becomes rich but his habit is that of being poor. He has everything but he cannot enjoy, he cannot spend a single pai. That’s why there are so many misers in the world.

A miser is a man who has lived in a poor way and now has become rich, but the habit of being poor continues. That’s the whole psychology of the miser. A man has lived alone for many years then he finds a lover but he remains alone. The bridge does not happen. He has become frozen in his aloneness, he cannot melt.

You have been looking too long so your eyes have become fixed on some faraway point. Because whatsoever we are looking for cannot be here, otherwise why should we look for it? When we look for something we always look far away – the distant star – so our eyes become focused. You become far-sighted but you lose the near-sight. You can always look at a star which is far away.

have to remind yourself of a little bit ....

[A sannyasin asks for guidance on how to be choiceless where important decisions are needed.]

There is some subtle problem, and it comes to everybody who wants to remain choiceless. But there is a misunderstanding, that’s why the problem. Choicelessness does not mean that you will not have to choose. In life, in practical things, you will have to choose, you will have to decide. If you want to go somewhere you will have to decide whether to go by car or by plane or by train. And if you start calculating all the pros and cons, then by the time you decide you could have reached just by walking! It is sheer wastage. And you will have to decide – you cannot just leave it and you cannot remain choiceless. The practical thing will have to be decided.

About practical things when you are making decisions the only thing to be remembered is that they are trivia. Whether you go by train or by car or by plane does not matter really. So whatever you decide is okay; it doesn’t matter. There is no need to ponder over it so much; anything will do.

But even when you choose there is no need to become too much attached to your choice – that’s what choicelessness is. There is no need to become too much attached to the choice. If somebody else is going by car and you are going by train, you need not declare that you are right and he is wrong. That means you have become attached to the choice. You are thinking it is very very important or something; you are making too serious an affair of it.

And if you choose to go by car and later on you find that it would have been better to have gone by train, then too there is no need to feel repentance and guilt about why you didn’t do that. By being choiceless it means that one has to choose, but one has to remain unattached... in practical things.

About things which are not practical you can remain choiceless. About things which are beyond you you can remain choiceless; your choice is not needed.

For example, death. You have nothing to choose. It is going to happen some day, so it is okay. Love

– you have nothing to do about it. If it happens, it happens; if it disappears, it disappears. It is not a practical thing. It is something mysterious and has nothing to do with you.

So remain available to the mysterious and go on deciding about the practical and the mundane, but don’t get attached. For example, now you want to be here or you want to go. There is no need to be much worried about it. If you feel like being here – which feels more important – then be here.

Nothing is lost, what can you lose? Maybe financially you will be a loser but spiritually if there is some gain you can stay. If you feel that there is no spiritual gain and you will be financially a loser, then why stay ? Go!

Things should be looked at like lightning, not in details, brooding about it and thinking about it and worrying about it. Just like lightning. If you feel that something important is happening here, which is more valuable than the financial loss – finished! Forget about it! Or if you think this can happen next time, there is no hurry and you are not in any impatience for your spiritual growth, there is no problem; you can simply go.

things, do them and forget about them; no need to waste time.

People waste too much time before they do and they waste too much time after they have done.

And almost ninety percent of energy is wasted in brooding, and that is the major part of life. Only ten percent of life is used in doing, and only doing can satisfy. That ninety percent is simply gone in the desert, down the drain.

So do whatsoever you feel like doing but don’t get attached to it. That is choicelessness in the ordinary, practical world. And there is a possibility also one day that by remaining choiceless about really essential things, you may decide to become choiceless about practical things also. That is the old concept of sannyas. People have lived that way also. They don’t decide at all.

A certain kind of sannyasin exists in India called ’paramahansa’. He does not decide about even practical things. He decides not. He simply floats! There was a paramahansa in a town in which I lived for many days. A really great man but very difficult even to recognise, and he was really choiceless. If you held his hand and you took him to your home, he would go! He would not say,

’I was going somewhere else. Where are you dragging me?’ No, he would not say a single word; he would go with you. Many times he was stolen, because disciples and conflicts... So one disciple would just abduct him, and for months he would not be found. He would not say no to anybody!

People would give him money so he would take it. He would not say no. Then somebody would come and snatch the money and he would not say no. Somebody would give and somebody would take away and he would be sitting there. Somebody would take hold of him and put him in the rickshaw and he would go to another town! And he lived that way for twenty years... and perfectly happy!

You can visualise his happiness. There was nothing to decide! Some day somebody brings food, it’s okay. Some day he has to fast, so he has to fast; there is no choice on his part. That too is a possibility, but I don’t suggest that right now.

Right now take decisions for your practical things and remain choiceless, detached. One day if you start growing, growing, one day it can happen. Then you can become absolutely choiceless; there is no problem in it. Many people have lived that way and have enjoyed great bliss. But I’m not saying that you have to go towards that. If it happens, it happens; the possibility is there.

But these people cannot be creative; that is the flaw. That’s why in india there have existed many saints and sages, uncreative – blissful of course, but of no use. They don’t bring any beauty to the world. Now this man lives in perfect peace but he brings nothing to the world; he shares nothing with the world. He will live and he will die as if he has never been born; he will not leave a trace.

A few people can move that way, but my suggestion is that a person should be creative. And the joy of a creative person is far greater than the joy of a negative person who has simply dropped out.

This is the real drop-out. In India these people have been worshipped – not wrongly: the worship is perfectly valid – but still, suggestion for a real sannyasin is that he should remain creative.

So about practical things go on deciding and for essential things remain available allow them to for the other world too; you would like to decide for everything, mm? That is the western attitude.

Then it creates tension, anxiety, anguish, neurosis. The other alternative is: don’t decide for this world and don’t decide for that; remain choiceless for both. That is eastern. That too is simple but the person becomes uncreative. The person will never be neurotic but he will be uncreative. He will never be tense but he will not be a benediction to the world.

My effort here is to create a new kind of sannyasin who is a synthesis between east and west, who is as creative as van gogh or picasso but not neurotic at all, and who is as silent as ramakrishna or raman but not uncreative. This is my vision.

So certainly there will be problems because it is a dichotomy and you will feel many times: ’What to do? If I have to remain choiceless then what do do about this small thing?’ No, about small things you can decide, but don’t think that any decision has any value.

It is just a practical decision. It is just as if you have to decide whether you sit here or you sit in that comer or in that comer. It makes no difference; you will be sitting anywhere anyway. And then there will be no problem.

[The sannyasin then says:... Particularly in my situation now, is it important to steer, to aim in some direction?]

No. You will create anxiety for yourself. Let things happen. Let things take their own course; you remain available. And don’t steer, otherwise you will create trouble for yourself and for others. Just make this clear to all those who are related to you – that you will not steer and whatsoever happens you will accept.

You have two lovers. If one leaves you will accept it but you will not drop either of them. You will go on the way things are going....

Just watch it, remain a witness. Remain choiceless, because that is not a practical thing; that is more important than practical things. Just watch.

And my feeling about you is that your energy is bisexual. So if you force anything – whether to choose the man or to choose the woman – you will have to deny some part of you, and that denied part will take revenge. Basically a bisexual person is more rich sexually than the hetereosexual or the homosexual, because he has two dimensions in him. There is every possibility that the future is going to be more bisexual than homo or hetero because bisexuality means that two dimensions are possible. A man can love a man and a man can love a woman, both; it is a kind of richness. So don’t make a problem out of it. It is really richness – to be able to love both.

It is difficult.... A man who is heterosexual cannot even think about homosexuality. It looks like a perversion; it looks simply ugly and horrible. The person who is homosexual cannot think what people go on seeing in a woman’s body.

man’s body. They are lopsided. The heterosexual and the homosexual are both fanatics, fixated. A bisexual is more liquid, more fluid; he can see that both are beautiful. So don’t make it a problem –

rather think about it as a richness... and it is beautiful!

And don’t try to steer. What can you do ? Just let things happen and enjoy whatsoever happens.

When you don’t steer and you don’t have an idea of how things should be, then whatsoever happens is good; you never feel frustrated.

Just make it clear to your lovers that this is your situation. Accept it and enjoy it and make it clear that you are not going to do anything about it; now it is their problem. If they want to decide something, that is for them to do, otherwise you will remain available to both.

CHAPTER 22

24 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin newly returned says: I’m pretty shaky but I feel good.]

One is shaky if one is feeling good! People don’t feel so shaky when they are not feeling good.

People are acquainted with that state of not feeling good. They are perfectly familiar with it; they are not shaky. When you really feel good you feel shaky. Feeling shaky means that you cannot settle with your past. Something new is happening or is going to happen and one feels expectant and that creates shakiness. It is good. Don’t settle with the past again... because we have to uproot ourselves continuously to go into the future. Movement has to be kept alive. Nobody should ever settle – for anything – because the day you settle, you die. Remain shaky and remain uprooted.

Every day one has to seek new soil, new lands, a new being. And the journey is continuous. It is eternal. There is no goal to it – the journey itself is its own goal. So become more and more in love with the shakiness. If you become more and more in love with the shakiness, many more things will happen to it. If you become afraid of it and you start holding yourself and controlling yourself, that which is going to happen will be stopped.

[A sannyasin, returned from a visit to the West, says it was so difficult for him to readjust there he was unsure whether to come here again.]

It happens many times in life. When your consciousness starts changing you cannot remain in the old pattern any more; you have to change it. In fact, if you watch life carefully you will see it happening many times but it happens so silently that you don’t become aware.

For example, below the age of fourteen you had a few friends. After fourteen those friendships disappeared Something happened to o

o became se

all mat re Those friendships started

it the old way. You have changed so you have to readjust everything. That’s why many people have decided against growth, because growth brings problems. If you grow, then each time you have to change many things. Something looks very very valuable at this moment and you go a little deeper into meditation and it no more looks valuable. So change. That becomes a little inconvenient for people... and inconvenience is very very deep in many dimensions.

For example, you love a woman and your consciousness changes. Suddenly you see that that woman is there, you still like her, you still feel for her but that romance has disappeared. You are in love with a certain kind of work and then you change. That work simply seems no more relevant, no more valid for you.

People have decided to remain at a fixed state of consciousness so that they need not change every day. They have become stagnant. If they remain flowing then every day: new shores and new trees and new people and new towns and new mountains and new valleys. The river will have to come to new things every day.

People have decided to remain static out of a desire for convenience. Psychoanalysts say that usually the mental age of people never goes beyond thirteen, fourteen; that is where they have stopped. They have decided that now this is the last. Now they are going to remain with it. This is their work, this is their hobby, this is their liking, this is their love, these are their friends. Now they have settled their world and they are not going to change it. The only way not to change is to stop your growth.

A growing person has to live in inconvenience, insecurity. And my whole approach is that growth is life. Life is dangerous. Death is very convenient, very comfortable. To be in a grave is the last in luxury. You cannot improve upon it; whatsoever you do will be something less than that. So many people live in the grave.

I will suggest only one thing – to never cling to the past, whatsoever the cost. Always remain open to the future because only the future is going to come. The past is not going to come. You will not meet it again; you will never come across it again. It is finished and finished for good.

So loosen your grip on the past, and whatsoever happens, trust life. And if you feel that you are no more enjoying your job then change it! Nothing to be worried about. If you feel that you are no more enjoying the west then come to the east. Nothing is a problem.

One should not cling to safeties, and then you will go on growing. To the very last moment of death one can go on growing.

If a person dies at seventy, then his mental age should be seventy – that is my idea – not less than that, because if something is less than that then that man has not lived totally. This is the minimum

– the maximum can be more. A person of seventy can have the mental age of two hundred years or three hundred years, because if the man of seventy can have the age of ten years, why not two hundred years? – both are possible.

agonies. If you want to be in an inner state of bliss you will have to go through many pains. They prepare, they cleanse you.

So whatsoever you feel, go with your feeling and always listen to the heart. Whenever you want to decide something, don’t decide only by the mind; decide by the heart. If you still feel that things are going perfectly well, continue; there is no hurry. But if you have started feeling that something is amiss and you are no more in tune with it, then what is the point?

We don’t live for anything else – everything else is for our life. If somebody paints and loves it, good. If one day he finds that it is finished – he cannot paint anymore or no more loves it – he can continue, he can go on dragging, but the love has disappeared. He should drop it! There is no need to carry on in it. He won’t be creating any big painting any more. And it is possible that one day he may come back to the painting. After twenty years he has completely forgotten about it and again it starts coming up. Then again he can go into it and there will be great joy. And after twenty years forgetfulness something more original will come out of it. He will be no more a technician; it will be more original. He has forgotten all that he knew – it will be no more out of his knowledge. It will not be anymore out of his expertise; it will be simply from his heart. And of course, all that he has known has become part of his bones and blood and marrow so it is there but no more visible; it is an invisible force. But always listen to the heart and go with it. Sacrifice anything that is needed. At the altar of the heart, sacrifice everything. If you feel like coming here, come here. This is your home!

And if you want to continue in your work, continue... but listen to your heart. I am not saying to do this or do that. What you do is not the point, but do whatsoever you do with joy and celebration.

[Another sannyasin said that she found her visit to the West difficult.]

Very good! I will make it more and more difficult so that finally you decide to be here forever. That’s the conspiracy! Would you like to do a few groups? This time you do some, mm? And leave it to me

– I will do a good job of making things difficult for you!

[A sannyasin reminds Osho that he wrote to him recently about smoking hash. Recently while smoking he felt in contact with his own inner master.... He has given it up several times, but then returned to it. He feels this is only the tip of the iceberg.]

Right.

One thing, and the very basic: try to live a life without any decisions for the future. Live in the moment. To live with a decision is to live a wrong life. To live with a decision means to live always through the past.

For example, today you decide something – that tomorrow you will not smoke – but by tomorrow, today would have become past, dead. And tomorrow, if you follow the decision of today, you will be forcing death over life. And if you feel like smoking tomorrow, then how can the dead win against the live? That is not possible.

If you make it win then by and by you will become dull and dead If you don’t help it to win you will If you have understood that it is meaningless then don’t smoke today, that’s all. Tomorrow when it comes, if the understanding is still there – and I don’t see why it should not be there...

If it is not there there is no need to drop smoking even today. Because you cannot do anything against your understanding. You can try but you will fail. Only understanding succeeds. If today you feel that it is meaningless, if it is your understanding this moment – and I am not saying total understanding, absolute understanding – if this moment you feel that this is your understanding –

you don’t feel like smoking – don’t smoke.

[The sannyasin says: I am so much like a victim of this thing that it has become bigger than myself.]

Nobody is a victim. Even to remain a victim is your decision. You are the master; it is your responsibility. Nobody is a victim. And you are not losing anything, because do you think that those who are not smoking are gaining anything?...

They are not gaining so you are not losing. They are fooling around in their way; you are fooling around in your way....

I am not saying not to do it – I am simply saying: whatsoever feels good in this moment, let it happen and don’t be very judgemental. By and by, moving from one game to another, from one foolishness to another foolishness, one becomes wise. There is no other way to become wise. Wisdom is not like instant coffee. It comes very slowly, it grows very slowly. It is like a cedar of lebanon, a very slow-growing tree. It is not a seasonal flower, and one has to do a thousand and one foolishnesses before a small drop of wisdom accumulates.

One has to sin much before one becomes a saint. A thousand and one sins create a small drop of sainthood. There is no other way. If you want wisdom instantly you will remain mediocre, you will never become wise. You may not do foolish things but you will remain mediocre.

I am just saying one thing – to live the moment and live through your understanding in that moment.

Maybe tomorrow you will think that it was foolish, but that is tomorrow saying about something that is no more there. You have grown, so retrospectively you can call it foolish but that is not right. At that moment when you were doing it that was your understanding and it was perfectly right.

If you understand me, what I am saying is that whatsoever you are doing in the moment, if you are doing it with no judgement you are always right. Maybe later on you come to feel that it was wrong but that is a standpoint that comes later on. What can you do about it? You could not have brought it in that moment when the thing was happening. After three years you will become a little wise and things will look more foolish, after six years a little more wise and things will look more foolish.

But you cannot feel guilty for them because from where could you have brought this wisdom? This wisdom has come only after three years. And in fact, this wisdom could not have come if you had not committed those foolishnesses.

It has come through them!

that whatsoever you are doing, do according to your understanding of the moment, without any judgement. Smoking or not smoking is not relevant....

You look at it. You don’t decide for your whole life – you cannot, nobody can. Tomorrow will come and bring its own vision, insight, understanding, and you will live tomorrow according to them, not according to things you decide today. And today, don’t follow what you have decided yesterday because it is no more meaningful! It was yesterday’s understanding and the day has changed. It is no more friday; it is saturday.

Up to friday you had a certain understanding. You have grown twenty-four hours more, you have lived in life twenty-four hours more. You have to make place for this twenty-four hours of life. How can that decision remain valid ? These twenty-four hours will bring a great change.

So never live according to yesterdays and never think about tomorrow. Today is enough. That’s what jesus means when he says, ’Look at the lilies of the field. They think not of the morrow’... And there is beauty!

I am neither for anything nor against anything. What you do is not the problem....

That is what is right for you in this moment. Tomorrow maybe movement comes and you move.

What can be done? I cannot push you! If I push you will become angry. If I give you a decision you will never be able to forgive me. Then you will be in a bondage. I don’t want to put you into a prison.

You are a free man – be free! And yes, you will commit many errors and mistakes but that is the way how one learns.

And there is no hurry either! You will become a buddha one day but not so soon! Good!

[A sannyasin says a lot of fears have been coming up, connected with anyone telling her that they love me, or if she feels that someone loves me. It just fills her with terror and hatred and revenge.

Osho checks her energy.]

So spread the rumour all around! Whosoever comes to see you, they just have to say ’I love you!’

It will go and you will start enjoying it. It is such a beautiful thing.

You have always waited for somebody to come and love you and say, ’I love you.’ It has not really happened so you have become very sour about it, that’s all. It is really your desire! But you have waited so long and nobody has turned up. That’s what has happened. You wanted that people should love you but now you want to show them, ’I don’t care’; not only that, ’I hate it when you say I love you.’ You have waited so long and you have become bitter about it. But that is foolish – foolish...

because love is the only reality, and only through love does one live and can one live; there is no other life. So you have to drop your attitude. Your attitude is just a kind of revenge.

It is just like a small child who is hungry and is searching for the mother and crying, ’I am hungry. I But his no is not true. What he is saying is ’Enough is enough! I have asked so long that I feel humiliated even to say that I am hungry. I will deny the desire because there is nobody to listen. I have been knocking and knocking and nobody has answered, so I will deny that I have even ever knocked. I will deny that I desire any love, that I need any love.’ That’s what has happened... but you will have to unlearn this habit. Now love is going to happen. We are creating a love commune, so people will be loving and people will be loving to each other. Everybody will be a loving member of this family. It is not going to be a monogamous game; it is going to be a loving commune. You will have as much love as you can absorb – more than that. So prepare, get ready for it. Don’t start resisting. So... tell everybody that whosoever sees [her], that has to be the greeting for her – ’I love you!’ Let her go through her pain....

[A sannyasin says she has always been afraid of the dark, of ghosts and spooks who want to kill her. Osho checks her energy.]

It is there – the fear of darkness is there, and out of that fear of darkness you have imagined all other fears. They are secondary; the ghosts and spooks and others are secondary. In the first place they don’t exist at all; they are just imagination.

Mm mm, but you could not help it because you are so much afraid of darkness... and darkness exists! Out of the fear of darkness you have created all kinds of fear. But it is one of the very deep-rooted human fears – the fear of darkness, the fear of night. It is associated with the fear of death, because death is dark.

The fear is there, deep-rooted in humanity. It has a long history; it is almost fifty thousand years old.

When man used to live in the caves it was a reality to be afraid of the darkness because night was the most dangerous thing. Fire w as not yet invented. In the day everything was okay. Man was capable of protecting himself from the animals, wild animals, enemies. In the night it was very very difficult to protect himself. People used to die in the night because the animals would come and drag them out of their caves. You have to fall asleep, and in sleep you become unprotected.

So the fear became very very deep. For millions of years the collective unconscious has gathered the fear of darkness. That’s why death looks dark, because death used to happen in the dark. That’s why many people are afraid even of falling into sleep, that’s why many people suffer from insomnia.

They don’t want really to go into sleep. They are afraid, because who knows what will happen?

Sleep is dark and you are unprotected.

It is a primitive kind of fear, now absolutely meaningless. Now you are not living in caves! Now wild animals don’t exist. But the fear is in the collective unconscious. It is there, and somehow it has floated into your consciousness too. In childhood you must have had some experience, some accidental experience.

Maybe in the night you awoke, and there was lightning, thunder. You were alone in the room and you got very much afraid that something was going to happen. You may not remember it but something associated with the night has happened to you and that has provoked the fear from the unconscious.

But it can be undone; nothing to be worried about It is not a neurosis or anything just a primitive

after encounter you will be doing tantra? (she nods) That’s perfectly good, mm? So after encounter you remind me. It is going to go, because it is absolutely meaningless. And you understand it, but understanding won’t help. You will have to go deep into your fear, see the root of it and uproot it from there. Encounter will do it, and then immediately doing tantra... Tantra is a love group – you move into love.

First uproot the fear and then move into love. The energy that is involved in fear has to be released in love. Once you have started flowing in love, no fear. In fact lovers love the dark night so much. Only lovers know the beauty of the dark, because it is so soothing, such a relaxation, and in darkness you can easily become one with your lover. In light you are separate. Light separates, divides, because light makes clear the definition, the boundary. In darkness two persons can enter into each other and dissolve. The darkness is beautiful.

And if you cannot love darkness you will miss many beauties in life. You will miss the beauty of love, you will miss the beauty of sleep, and finally you will miss the beauty of death. And these are great things; one should not miss them.

But the problem I have understood – you need not worry. Just go on doing a few groups and after encounter you remind me.

If it has not gone, then I will do something, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 23

25 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin has brought her son because she is worried about the way he doesn’t eat, which may be causing bronchitis, and how he relates with other children.]

What is the way? I think the problem is more with you than with him!

He seems to be perfectly okay! You seem to be too worried about him. Sometimes even that can create tension in his mind – if you are too worried. Take every care, but worry is not care. Certainly you love him and you have to take care, but worry is not the way to care. Worry is very destructive.

It is destructive to you, it is destructive to him, because if he finds that you are too worried about him he will start feeling guilty – that it is because of him that you are so worried. That may cause bronchitis, that may cause asthma. He may start eating less; he may start punishing himself.

That’s what my feeling is right now – that you are too much concerned. No concern is bad but too much concern is also bad. Extremes are always bad; it is good to be in the middle. You are over-protecting him too much. You are too much of a jewish mother. You can make him almost feel suffocated; that’s what bronchitis and asthma is. Asthma can start if the person feels he is being suffocated... and that’s what you are creating. And you are not against him – you are for him; it is for his own good.

So your intention is not bad – I don’t suspect your intention – but what you are doing is not good. Your intention is perfectly valid but the way you are doing it will be suicidal for you both, mm? Because the more you will be concerned, the more he will feel suffocated, and then you will become more concerned.

Just Leave him on his own Love him but leave him He has his own life Just give him more freedom Mm? you become concerned about him so you can avoid your own worries. That becomes a good excuse, that becomes a rationalisation. You can escape from your own inner chaos – you can become concerned about him. That’s what millions of people are doing. Children become scapegoats.

You can put all your problems on him and you can feel very good because you are concerned about your child – which is natural, and nobody can say that you are doing something wrong. People will tell that you are a great mother, you are so caring – and all that you are doing is avoiding certain problems in your own life. And if you are left alone, if there is nobody to worry about then you will have to encounter those problems. Encounter those problems; they have to be transcended. And don’t make a problem out of it, otherwise he will become a problem!

And if you in a deep way have some investment in his being ill, in his being troubled... This is an investment, because if he is perfectly healthy then what will you do? You will be thrown back to yourself. So deep down somewhere in the unconscious you would like him to remain the way he is.

And he will feel it; children arc very intuitive. He will feel it and he will fulfill your desire. What else can he do? He will fulfill your unconscious desire and he will keep you engaged, but his life will be spoiled. And you will miss an opportunity of encountering yourself.

My feeling is that you have some deep problem to solve – that’s your love. So rather than pouring everything on him, find a lover, a friend.

It happens many times that a mother can hang around the child. She can say, ’What can I do? I have no time to move into any relationship – I can’t afford it.’ No, you have to move into your own life so that you can leave him a little alone. Give him his own space. I think he is perfectly okay; don’t be worried at all. The worry is not going to help; it can harm.

And once he feels that you are giving freedom you will see him flowering. What you really desire will happen but you have chosen a wrong way of having it. And nothing v. ill be lost in australia, but start giving him more freedom. Respect him as a grown-up.

Each child has to be respected as being on the same plane. You should not try to patronise a child.

Help, but don’t patronise him. Support, but don’t guide; give all that you can give, but that’s all. Don’t make any conditions on him – that he has to return or he has to repay you in some way. Don’t make him feel obliged and don’t do anything that can create guilt in him – so he starts feeling that it is because of him that his mum is so worried. Otherwise he will start thinking it will be better to die; the mother will be happy.

Not exactly in these words, but existentially this happens to many children. They simply start shrinking because they see that because of them there is so much trouble and so much problem, so what is the point of being here? They start shrinking. They can die slowly, slowly....

So first: give him freedom. Don’t suffocate him. That’s what his asthma is saying to you; it is a message. And don’t enforce food on him otherwise he will reject. There is no need! A child knows good. Let him miss the meal. When his real hunger comes he will come running! Don’t force. Many mothers force food on the child and destroy many things in doing that.

Once they destroy the natural appetite of the child, by and by he becomes completely oblivious; when he is hungry, when he is not hungry, he knows not. No animal starves. When the animal is hungry he will eat; when he is not hungry he will not eat. And no mother is taking care of him; nobody is guiding him. And children are animals, pure animals.

Just leave him! If he is not eating, that is good for him; if he is eating, that is good for him. Just watch – you need not be worried about it. And within a month he will start eating in his own way.

Whatsoever he likes, let him eat. Keep your plans and your knowledge of how a child has to be brought up to yourself and if you have any guidebooks, burn them! Because in the west people have guidebooks. They are reading books and trying to follow what the knowledgeable people, experts, say should be done. There is no need at all – nature is enough! And give him freedom: let him move, let him do things in his own way. Within three months your problems will disappear... but you have to tackle your problems!

When a mother becomes too much concerned about the child it means she is trying to find in the child, the child and the husband both. That’s dangerous! You should start looking for a friend. That will divert your mind from him and it will save him!

Always remember that the greatest discovery of this century is that almost ninety-nine percent of people who suffer from neurosis, psychosis or some kind of mind disease, suffer from mothers. This is one of the greatest discoveries of this century – that deep down it is always the mother. So don’t do that to your child. It has been done to millions of people, it is being done everywhere.

You can go to any psychoanalyst and ask, ’What is the root cause of psychological disease?’ and he will say ’The mother.’ The beauty and the paradox of it is that no mother wants to harm the child. Every mother wants to help, every mother wants to sacrifice her whole life for the child. Every mother is a martyr, and still this is the result. So something is going wrong. Intentions are good but the methods used are wrong.

Deva means god and pramana means proof – proof of god. There is no logical proof for god, no intellectual proof for god. One cannot argue for god. Down the centuries many people have argued but they have not proved – not a single bit. God remains unprovable. But there is another way to prove god – and that is by your being, that is by your existence. Your eyes can prove, your very climate can prove, your behaviour can prove, your silence can prove, your joy can prove. But they are all existential proofs, not intellectual proofs.

So this is the message in your name – to become a proof of god. Live in such a way that god is proved. Live such a life of joy and celebration. Bring the song of your heart to your lips. Express yourself, be creative, be loving. Transform your passion into compassion and you will become a proof of god. Only godly persons are proofs of god. Books cannot prove – only living persons can prove....

tell you! Many enlightened people are here but if I declare who is enlightened and who is not, there will be great conflict. Mm? There will be great competition and it can be very dangerous. Laxmi is very delicate and small and people can kill her, right? That’s why! Good, your question is very good!

[A sannyasin who is working in the ashram kitchen says lately she’s been in touch with a lot of fear and anger from other people. She always take it in, and it hurts. She has done several groups.]

Do you see any part that you play in all this – provoking people’s anger towards you?

[She answers: I don’t know. That’s what I’m confused about.

Osho checks her energy.]

No, I don’t see that there is much problem in it. And you need not do any groups, mm?

You are a different type of person, that’s all. You are not very out-going; your energy is in-going. Your energy is not extrovert energy; it is introvert energy. That sometimes can provoke people. People can misunderstand it, feeling that you are very egoistic. Because in-going energy does not relate and the ego also does not relate, so from the outside it is very easy to misunderstand. Then they can say things to hurt you.

And it is not your ego that is hurt because you don’t have much of the ego – that I don’t see there. Yes, just a normal ego is there but it is not such a problem. What hurts you is that nobody understands you. It is the continuous misunderstanding of people about you that hurts you; it is not the ego that is feeling hurt. But you have to understand that the majority of people are extroverts and you are an introvert. That’s why those groups didn’t suit you.

Whenever you can, you should do vipassana, the buddhist group, which is an introvert group. Mm?

whenever you want to do it – there is no hurry – but whenever you want to, do vipassana. That will give you immense joy because it will fit with your energy. It will just go with you and you will go with it. That group will help you. It is not a group really; it is a meditation.

You continue to work in the kitchen. Now there is no need to be hurt and no need to feel guilty that it is your ego that feels hurt. It is not ego; it is just a misunderstanding. It is almost as if people in China speak Chinese and you don’t, so nobody will be able to understand you.

That is the situation of the introvert. The world has become more and more extrovert; the introverts are 6r and few in between. They are no more in a big majority. A very small minority is left and they are disappearing like many other species. Lions are disappearing, tigers are disappearing.

Many species are being destroyed, and the introvert type is being destroyed. The whole world is extroverted. Nobody likes an introvert because the introvert is in-going. He does not relate; he does not bother about relationship.

Even if he is loving, his love is of a totally different kind. It is very silent and cool; it has not much world. But it is beautiful to be an introvert because one can go very easily to the very core of one’s being. Love will be difficult for you but meditation will be very easy for you. Meditation will be your path, not love. I am not saying not to be loving – be loving – but that cannot lead you to your ultimate ecstasy. The ultimate ecstasy will come through being silent, centred in your own self, forgetting the whole world and disappearing into one’s own being....

[A sannyasin says she feels confused; stuck and not flowing. Osho checks her energy.]

Nothing to be worried about. I don’t see that you are not flowing with the river – that is not the confusion. The confusion is just the vice versa: for the first time you are flowing with the river, and that is creating confusion in your mind. The mind does not want to flow with the river, never. The mind exists always in fighting. The mind wants conflict, friction. The mind enjoys going upwards, not downwards with the river – upstream – and you have been going upstream your whole life so the mind is acquainted with going upstream.

You have been a fighter and a warrior. Now for the first time you are relaxing a little bit and moving with the river; that is creating confusion. If you continue fighting there will be no confusion; it will fit with you, with your past. Confusion comes only when something new comes. Whenever something new comes you have to readjust yourself again, hence confusion. Confusion means you have brought new furniture in the house; now you have to rearrange everything. Just bring a new chair and you have to rearrange everything.

There is a very famous story – and not just a story but an actual historical fact....

A Chinese man presented a German philosopher with a wooden box – a very ancient antique, near about two thousand, or even more, years old. He said, ’There is only one condition which has always been followed. This has been the wish of the original owner. The box has a history of who has owned it in the past. This is the wish of the original owner – that the box should always be put in such a way that it faces east.’

The German philosopher said, ’There is no problem; this can be followed!’ But when he went home and put it in the drawing room facing East, the whole drawing room looked maladjusted. He was worried, so he had to readjust his whole drawing room. He had to order new furniture to fit with this box.

Once he had arranged the room he started feeling that the room did not fit with the house. Now the whole house looked one way and the room was so different; the room became Chinese. But the wish had to be followed and the box was so beautiful that it would be a betrayal not to follow the wish of the original owner. So he changed the whole house! By and by the whole house became Chinese. Then he suddenly saw that his garden didn’t fit with it; the garden was German. He had to change his garden! He has written in his autobiography that such a small box changed his whole life!

That’s what happens when a new thing comes into your being: you have to change everything changes. It is never the same – it can never be the same again; the triangle has come in. Anything new and there is confusion.

So it is not that you are not flowing with the river. You have started flowing with the river – and the mind still wants to go upstream; hence the dichotomy. The mind wants to go this way and you are going that way – hence the anxiety and the confusion.

Now don’t listen to the mind. The mind is worthless because it is the past. Let the mind adjust with you; don’t you adjust with the mind. The mind is your servant and he has to follow you. You are the master and you need not follow the mind.

Yes, for a few days the mind will create trouble because it has been bossing you for such a long time and it is difficult to drop it so easily. It will resist, it will fight; tooth and nail it will fight. But if you go on flowing, sooner or later it will start flowing with you....

CHAPTER 24

26 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho tells an initiate to close her eyes and to feel a sound arising from her heart. Let yourself be possessed by the sound. If it starts coming – any sound – allow it. If you start saying it loudly, go with it; go into it.

Osho then explains the meaning of prem bhajan – worship through sound. Bhajan is offering god your heart’s song... ]

And it is there – you have just to cooperate with it and it will come. A thousand and one songs will burst out in you.

Everybody carried the possibility more or less, but your predominant character is the possibility of going into god through sound; sound is your element. So don’t be afraid. Join all the music groups here – dance, singing – and get in tune with them. Sometimes it will look crazy, because the world does not believe in music, it believes in mathematics. The world does not believe in celebration; it believes in calculation.

The world can allow a few people to sing and dance – just as an entertainment, not more than that. It’s okay if music is entertainment because in entertainment nothing is involved; you are not committed to it. But when music becomes life the world is absolutely against it. Then the world will tell you that you are crazy.

But the head has one kind of sanity and the heart has another kind of sanity. The sanity of the head looks insane to the heart and vice versa: the sanity of the heart looks insane So the mind. They don’t meet; they are enemies. And you are not a mind person, remember.

you will have to slip out of the head. That is not your way and that cannot be your door.

All this is implied in the name ’love worship’ – prem bhajan.

[Osho gives sannyasin to someone who begins crying. She says she has been in primal therapy for five years.]

I had the suspicion! When you started crying I had the suspicion that it was something from the primal, mm? But it has not happened yet; you have not reached the primal. You have tried; you have not reached yet. Once you reach to the primal crying disappears. It has to disappear; that is the indication.

It will become more and more intense when you are moving towards the primal – towards the first moment of life when you were coming out of the womb and you were suffocated by the tunnel. It was narrow and dark, and the child was being uprooted from somewhere where he had lived for nine months.

Those nine months are almost eternal, because the child has no idea of time. And things are so beautiful, so beginningless, so endless, and he is so happy. Psychologists say he is in paradise –

floating in the liquid of the mother’s womb. Not knowing any worry, not knowing any tension, not knowing any responsibility – absolutely at ease and relaxed. Then suddenly the world starts and there is a great trauma.

When the child is born there is a great shock to the whole system. That shock is the primal. One has to go backwards to relive that shock. Once that shock is relived you are freed from all crying.

Then instead of crying, laughter starts arising in your heart, and real laughter arises only then.

Only a primal process can bring a person to real laughter, otherwise people go on laughing but the laughter is not true. It is just manipulated, managed; it is fake, it is pseudo. It is just on the mask

– not on their real face. Just the mask goes on smiling; it does not come from the heart. It is just created in the throat. It is shallow.

Only after a primal experience does one start laughing. Then the laughter comes from the very soles of your feet. It spreads all over your body. It is mad! It is authentic, it is existential, it is great ecstasy! But it has not happened. Maybe you went into primal too early. There are a few other processes to do, mm? then one becomes easily able to go into the primal; otherwise one goes on resisting.

Sometimes it happens that the primal therapist goes on prodding you, provoking you, and just to make him happy you start pretending... just to make him happy – poor fellow, poor chap! He is working so hard that one starts feeling that it is better to give him a little reward. That happens to many people, mm? – to people who feel for others, who care for others. Then you start screaming and he feels very good. You say ’Okay. Even if I am not feeling good, you are feeling good; that is worth it.’ One starts obliging the therapist. That’s what must have happened: you must have obliged the therapist

many things before one can go into the primal. That’s why it works only on a few people – others are not ready. Not more than five percent of people are benefited by the primal. The ninety-five percent go on hanging – for years they can hang – and one day they get fed-up with the whole thing and they drop out.

Yes, there will be some benefit from it. Even crying so long and kicking and shouting is good, mm?

– that is a catharsis. It is good as far as it goes but it does not go far enough. So a few other groups and then I give you primal!

[Osho tells an initiate to close his eyes and feel as if he is standing before a great source of light.... ]

You are facing the sun and the light is showering on you. It is brilliant, bright, it is dazzling. The body starts swaying and trembling before this experience. Absorb it, drink it, and let the body have its own movements. If it starts shaking, trembling, allow it.

Anand means bliss and rasal means full of juice – full of the juice of bliss. And everybody is full of the juice but we never look at it, we never taste of it. We never drink at our own source – hence we remain thirsty. The waters of life which can quench each and every thirst are just flowing within everybody. That is the meaning of your name. So look within, search within, drink within... and much is going to happen!

[A seeker says she is afraid to take sannyas. In reply to Osho’s query she says she has no work.]

Mm mm, then there is no fear! There is only fear that if you work somewhere then problems will arise. Otherwise there is no problem – your life is yours. And if you are going to be here long it will be good if you are a sannyasin; things will happen faster and sooner. Otherwise you will remain a little distant from my people. You will feel that and they will feel that. There will be a kind of gap. And you will always remain afraid of sannyas – that if you go too much into things then maybe sannyas will happen. So you remain a little in control and go only so far.

This is my observation: people who are not sannyasins go only so far because the one fear is always there – that if they go too much into things sannyas will happen. So it is good to become a sannyasin.

Finish that fear from the very beginning so you don’t have to fear anymore. Mm? Whatsoever had to happen, has happened. ’The worst has already happened – you have become a sannyasin! Now there is nothing else! What should I do? Should I make you a sannyasin?... Now I take your fear away from you. Now things will be easier.

Deva means divine, mahima means splendour – divine splendour. And each thing in life is nothing but a signal of the divine, god’s signature. Rocks and the moon and stars and man and animals and birds are different forms of god’s splendour. god’s greatness. Everywhere god is expressing himself. Forms are many but behind all forms there is only one formless reality. Songs are many but the singer is one. Paintings are many but the painter is one. So great respect is needed towards yourself, and you cannot respect others if you don’t respect yourself. Respecting yourself has nothing to do with ego. Respecting yourself is simply respecting god. And when you respect way, to think that they are worthless, sinners, worms, ugly. That’s what the so-called religions have been teaching people – a kind of self-damnation. And when people feel condemned, how can they respect others? – because they see the same kind of people all around. If they cannot respect themselves, they cannot respect anything, and hence they cannot respect god. Because he is the author of all. If you can’t respect yourself, how can you respect the creator who has created you?

So my whole teaching teaches self-respect. And it has nothing to do with self, it has nothing to do with the ego. A really self-respecting person is very humble, simple. He is humble and grateful because god has chosen him to be. That is the meaning of mahima.

[The ashram doctor who is setting up a medical laboratory says that while he really enjoys his work he tends to feel a certain amount of stress with it too... ]

No, that must be just an old habit. You have to drop the stress. The work has to be just a joy. There is no need to be in any stress or strain, because we are not performing anything. This is just your way of worship; this is your way of being here with me. You are not going to gain anything out of it, so why be in any stress?

Stress comes when one is result-oriented. You will not get anything out of it; you are doing it out of the sheer joy of doing it. Stress is irrelevant. Stress is natural when you are looking for some result, mm? Then the result is heavy on the head – whether you will be able to make it or not, whether you will be able to succeed or not, whether you will be able to compete with others or not, whether you will be the first or the second or the third, what is going to happen.

But here there is no competition with anybody; there is no result to be got out of it. It is just for the sheer joy of doing it. Because you know how to do it you would like to share, that’s all. So enjoy it.

Learn how to enjoy it more and don’t be worried about it. Nobody is observing you and nobody is going to judge you.

This is one of the basic things every sannyasin will have to learn – that there is no result out of it.

Then stress simply disappears.

Stress comes always out of the goal. When there is no goal there is no stress. It is more like a morning walk than going anywhere. You can enjoy the sun and the birds and the trees and the people on the road. And you can turn back from anywhere because you were not going anywhere; there was no target.

[A sannyasin therapist, Veeresh, who works in a drug-rehabilitation centre in Holland is having confrontations with the authorities because of the number of people there who have taken sannyas.]

You will have to give a good fight!...

This is going to happen. This is the same situation as it happened with the early disciples of jesus: wherever they went there was trouble. It is natural. Now, because you are almost twenty sannyasins that is the fear. What they say is irrelevant – the basic fear is of power.

No need to be afraid. A good fight has to be given. That will be a good challenge for you and for other sannyasins too.

And enjoy it! It has not to become a tension, it should not become a worry – let it be playful. Laugh about it, let it be fun! And give the fight also, in a new way. Not in a political way – in a religious way.

For example, if you want to protest there is no need to shout slogans. Have a good dance around the boss. You can do Kundalini! You can play music and sing songs.

This has to be done and this is a good beginning. More and more people will be coming.

And there is no need to compromise for anything... whatsoever the consequence. If you are thrown out from there then this is your home; you can come any time. Mm? I am making a situation here so that anybody who is thrown out from anywhere will be welcomed home. There is no need to be worried about that. So you can fight with total heart. There is no need to think about the finance and no need to think about what will happen tomorrow and if you are thrown out, fired, then where will you be? No need to worry – I’m your home. So you can fight anywhere, you can go to any extreme, you can accept any consequence that comes out of it... and no need to worry!

And this will become a pioneer thing, because in other places also that is going to happen. If one sannyasin is there in an institute, people will laugh. If two are there they will become a little serious.

If three are there, they will start fighting. One is good – you can laugh about him; no need to take him seriously – but when two are there then people will become serious. When three are there the whole trinity is there; then there is danger. One can be tolerated easily but now you are twenty there.

You are already a force: you can decide the fate of the institution. And we are not going to leave the institution so easily!

If the people who don’t want sannyasins there, if they want to leave they can. Just tell them that sannyasins will take over the whole thing....

Collect all the sannyasins and tell them whatsoever I have told you – that it has to become worship.

This will be worship, this will be a gesture of love towards me. This will be sacrifice but let it be. And you will come out of it more integrated, more centred than ever.

There are a few things which happen only when there is a great challenge and great danger, otherwise they don’t happen. The greater the challenge, the greater the integration. It is a blessing.

You will become closer. The twenty sannyasins will no more remain aloof and separate from each other – they will become more one. And you will start planning and thinking what to do and how to do it. And this is going to happen to many more people, so it will become a precedent. Others can learn from your experience of what happened.

And as I can see it, if you give a good fight the institute is going to be yours... because I don’t teach Otherwise go to the court, take it to the court, and let it become a big thing. Let people think about it and talk about it. Let it be in the newspapers and... Perfectly good! Let it be a scandal!

CHAPTER 25

27 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand vipal – bliss moment.

And remember that the moment is the penetration of eternity into time. The moment is not part of time; the moment is something that comes beyond time. In fact, the real moment is between two moments of time. It is just as these two fingers are there and there is a gap. One second passes; another has not come yet, is just coming. Between the two is the vipal, the gap between two time moments. And that gap is from eternity. It has not time in it... it is timelessness.

That is where one finds bliss, that is from where bliss enters your being. Bliss is transcendental to time. Time is misery, time is hell. Time is madness, because time is a constant hurry – rushing somewhere, not knowing where exactly, but rushing... trying to reach something somewhere in the future. Time is desiring.

In the moment, vipal, there is no time and no desire. And one is not going anywhere. One cannot go... there is no space to go. It is just a gap between two moments. And there is your home. There is what we call samadhi – the ultimate in meditation. When time disappears, the mind also disappears with it, because the mind can exist only in time.

And these moments, these vipals come. Even in ordinary existence they come. Sometimes making love to your woman that gap comes. Suddenly time disappears. All desiring disappears. You are utterly contented in that moment: you are not going anywhere, you don’t want anything. You are not a beggar in that moment. You have all! Or sometimes looking at nature or listening to music or just sitting silently not doing anything, those moments come. They cannot be brought. At the most e can in ite them and ait for them b t e cannot man fact re them e cannot order them We

out of the blue. They come suddenly; they always take you unaware. Hence the beauty, because they are so unexpected. They suddenly knock at your door. The world disappears and you are transported into another dimension.

Yes, those moments sometimes happen in drug trips too, hence the appeal of drugs... through alcohol also, but that is forcing your body chemically, coercing your body chemically. That is a kind of rape on the body chemistry. Rape can look like love but it is not. Yes, physiologically the same phenomenon happens when you rape a woman, but spiritually there is as much distance as is possible.

When you make love to a woman it has a totally different quality to it. You are not doing anything really; it is happening. It is not that you are making love to the woman; the language is wrong. It is not the vice versa – that the woman is making love to you; that too is not true. You are both engulfed, encompassed, by something called love. A climate called love, a cloud called love has possessed you both. You are not doing anything; you cannot do anything. It is happening... it is raining on you.

You are both bathed in it but it is something from the beyond. It is a gift from god.

Through drugs we can rape our body chemistry but that is foolish and stupid. I don’t say to be on a drug trip is to be a sinner. I say it is simply stupid, it is simply foolish. It is a mistake, not a crime...

but a great mistake, because the more one gets accustomed to these moments of rape, the further away love will become. One will forget the language of love. Love is persuasion, never coercion.

So these moments come in ordinary life too. One has to watch out for them and one has to learn the knack of how to invite them. I call it a knack – it is not an art; it is far more subtle than art. And it is not a science at all. Nobody can teach it to you. You will have to learn, you will have to be observing continuously. When these moments come you have to be a witness and you have to see what is happening all around. Why has this suddenly come? What have you done? How have you accidentally stumbled upon it?

If you are looking at a sunset and somebody is playing on the flute, watch the whole that is outside and inside and try to find the knack of it. After watching many moments of this joy you will know the knack and you will never be able to express it to anybody. It is beyond language, and it is so individual that your knack will not be of any use to anybody else either. It will be utterly yours; it will be something personal. It is your direct line to god; it is nobody else’s direct line. That is the way you connect with god and god connects with you. There is no other you and there has never been any other you and there will never be. Once you are gone, that direct line will disappear with you. It comes into existence when a man is born.

That is called ’vipal’. It is of great significance, the word. ’Pal’ means moment and ’vipal’ means the gap between two moments, just the gap. It is so small that it cannot rightly be called even a moment. It is just a meeting place of two moments, just a boundary line that divides two moments.

One has to be very very alert; only then can one see this gap. And you will be able to see – just go on watching....

start fighting and arguing with me, that’s all! If you can go on saying yes, there is no problem.

[She says she has been alone a long time; that’s why she is always fighting.]

Now you will not be – I will not leave you alone anymore. And you cannot fight with me either, because my presence will not take your aloneness or your freedom from you. It will enhance it. It will make it beautiful... it will make it an ecstasy.

People who have lived alone for long are naturally afraid. They fight. They are afraid because if they relate and go into any relationship too deeply their freedom and their aloneness will be lost.

Because aloneness is not only aloneness – it is freedom too. But with me there is no problem: I never encroach on your boundary.

I will only give your aloneness the quality of a song, music.... And now you are not alone on the path.

[A sannyasin couple are present. The woman has just returned from the West. The man says he had more energy and was dancing while she was away: Maybe I should be doing dancing and active meditations every day, because the energy just stays inside me and goes bad.]

[Your girlfriend] is not preventing you from doing those things, mm?

This is very simple.... If you love a woman or a man, then being together naturally a routine is created, things become routine. You start moving in a circle, and the joy of being related to the other by and by is dissipated, disappears. So if one has gone away for a few days you will feel real freedom. That simply shows that you love her – nothing else. If you had not loved her there would have been no problem. If she were here or gone away would not have made much difference.

If you love a person, only then do you start being heavy on each other. And it is natural; you cannot avoid it right now. It can be avoided only when you have become very very conscious of things, otherwise not. She went away; you felt a kind of relief and you had more time and more energy.

But if you drop her or you drop out of relationship, you will not enjoy your dancing anymore. You enjoyed it because she had gone! If you drop out of relationship, within a few days your meditation and your dancing will become just like [your girlfriend]. That will be your relationship then. Soon that will become a routine and you will start hankering to find a woman. When you meet a woman you will be relieved of the meditation and the dancing. That’s how the mind goes on.

So there is no problem. Your relationship is going so beautifully. There is no need to create some trouble in it. Learn one thing: sometimes it is good to be on holidays from your relationship, that’s all. That is the lesson to be learned – not that you have to drop out of relationship.

So sometimes manage it that [your girlfriend] goes away for a few days and you go for a few days, and that is perfectly good. In fact, that should be done very very knowingly. After two, three months for three four days be separate There is no need to go anywhere just be here but be separate

with meditation and dancing. It had something to do with her going. A burden disappeared; you felt free. You felt that now you are not to take any responsibility, any care of anybody, that you have not to look to [her] for what to do and what not to do, that you need not have any orders from anywhere; you are perfectly independent. So you enjoyed! But that independence cannot last long; soon it will become a tyranny.

This is to be understood – that people are such that they cannot live together and they cannot live alone either. When they are together they think about aloneness, the beauties of aloneness, the joy of aloneness, the silence of aloneness. All kinds of poetry arises in them about aloneness. When they are alone, they start thinking about the joy of love and the relationship and the ecstasy of it.

That’s how the mind works: whatsoever is the case it tends to forget; it thinks about the opposite.

Watch this duality of the mind and by and by go beyond it. Then you can be in love and alone.

And [your girlfriend] is becoming very very understanding; she will help you in every way. People who are around me here are changing tremendously. Their insight is growing deeper. They are becoming more understanding and more compassionate. And by and by you will see here relationships flowering and yet nobody trespassing on anybody’s being.

When one can be alone and yet in relationship that is the highest synthesis – the synthesis of love and meditation. It is very simple to meditate, it is very simple to love; nothing much to brag about, a very simple phenomenon. The real poetry arises when love and meditation go together... when love enhances your meditation and meditation enhances your love.

So good. (to the woman) It is a good insight, mm ? – just give him a little more rope!

[A sannyasin says that words cannot communicate what he wants to say. Osho checks his energy.]

Words are inadequate. When you really have something to say they are always inadequate. When you have nothing to say they are very adequate....

Knowing this, one can do two things: either one can become a poet or one can go into silence. And my suggestion is that to go into silence is negative. The positive is to become a poet. Knowing this

– that words cannot say much – try to say through some other means. Poetry is that. What prose cannot say, poetry tries to say.

Poetry does not depend on words. It uses words but it doesn’t depend on words. It is as fire comes out of wood but is not wood; it is the same with poetry. It comes out of words but it is not words. It is not wood – it is fire. The beauty is that the fire comes out of the wood and consumes the wood finally. And it is the same with poetry: it comes out of words and consumes the words finally. Only silence is left, but not a dead silence – a singing silence, a silence with the throb of life, a silence full of music and harmony.

Knowing this – that words are inadequate – become a poet, become a painter, because these are the ways to say without words. Become a musician, because music is the ultimate in saying things words are foolish – and they are – then only these two alternatives are left: either keep quiet, don’t say a thing, or say things knowing well that words are inadequate so they should not be taken very seriously. They should be used as a vehicle – as fingers pointing towards the moon. That’s what poetry is... and I am in immense love with poetry. Become a poet!

[The sannyasin says: Before I was aware of you I was a painter, but this interest and this fire for you... The painting has dropped.]

It will come again and it will come with a new vitality and with a new message. It has not gone out

– it is just waiting for- the right moment to come back. It will come. No need to force it; just when it comes welcome it, embrace it. It will come.

Because my whole approach is creative. My whole approach is that we participate in god by being creators – in whatsoever way. Maybe you are a potter; you just create pots. That’s okay: god is a potter too! One should worship god through creativity. One should offer one’s whole being in creativity.

Prayer should not be impotent. Prayer should be a real effort to offer whatsoever you have to god...

whatsoever you have. You can paint; then that is your prayer. You can dance; then that is your prayer. And there is no other prayer. Other prayers are just impotent.

It will come – it is waiting right now. And it is good that it dropped for the time being, so the continuity will not be there. It will be something new this time, mm ? It will erupt as something absolutely unknown to you.

Then it will have the joy and the wonder and the awe of something unknown. It will possess you one day....

[A couple, newly returned from the West, are present. The man says that whenever he has to deal with authorities – for example to get a visa – or even see a policeman, he feels tense.]

I understand. The world is run by fools, and it is very difficult to live in it. The more wise you become, the more difficult it is. The more intelligent you become, the more difficult it is, because then you see the whole nonsense that goes on... for no reason at all. Nations are no more needed, boundaries are no more needed. The earth has become such a small village... and we all belong to this earth, so why distinctions, why divisions and why passports, why visas? But the world is run by fools, and the fools are very powerful. Only fools seek power, so the more foolish a person is, the higher he will rise because the more stubborn he will be.

And their whole game depends on these things: nations, religions, churches, politics, ideologies; their whole game depends on these things. If all these disappear then where will be your prime ministers and your presidents and your police and your magistrates ? They will be just meaningless, irrelevant. They are irrelevant! They are out of date. They should be finished by now but they have the power so they go on persisting. They go on creating wars, conflicts, and they go on destroying fool and live in a stupor there is no problem; you think everything is going perfectly well. Nothing is going perfectly well – everything is going wrong and everything has been going wrong down the ages. Man has not yet found a civilised world. Civilisation has not yet happened – it is just a word.

How can a Christian and a Hindu be civilised? And how can a Mohammedan and a Christian be civilised? And how can Indians exist in a civilised world... and german and dutch and english and americans; how can they exist ? These things are so foolish and so childish! So many flags and so much antagonism and ego. That simply means that the world is still not civilised, still not cultured. It is a very very stupid world but there is nothing you can do right now to change it.

When you cross the boundary of a country then you become aware that you have been living in a prison. You only come to know when you cross the boundary. Then you know that the prison is a big prison. But you are a part of a prison; it is not a country. No country is yet free because a single country cannot be free: either the whole world can be free or not. These are just small or big prisons.

Inside the prison you don’t become aware because you are free to move. You can go from Poona to Bombay and from Bombay to Delhi so you feel you are free. But just try to go from Calcutta to Dacca and there will be problems, or from Bombay to Karachi, and the problem. Suddenly you find that there is no respect for you, for your freedom, and petty officials start tyrannising you. They enjoy it – that is their power.

They can destroy you. They can say no to you. They enjoy the trip of being authoritative, authorities, and the whole game is based on stupidity. But right now you cannot do anything. You have to live with these fools and in such a way so that you don’t start fighting with them; they are powerful and they are in the majority.

Sannyas is just the beginning of a civilised humanity. My whole effort here is to create a miniature world in which no distinctions exist. Nobody bothers whether you are a catholic or a protestant, hindu or a mohammedan, indian or a german – nobody bothers. And by and by a point has to be reached when you are not even bothered about whether you are man or woman... because those are also distinctions.

When you see a human being as a human being, when no caste, creed, sex, ideology, country, divide, then for the first time you become a human being. Then you have a vision, a perspective, in which truth can happen – not before it. But we cannot fight, because if we start fighting our whole energy will be lost in that. That’s why I am not a fighter: I know that that is pointless. All that energy that I have got or the time that I have got has to be used creatively to create a few human beings, to create a small human community. Then they will function as seeds.

It is a very slow thing, it will take hundreds of years for the earth to become civilised, but we should start. Even if we can make a few people civilised... And the whole earth will be against you.

Wherever I am, people will be against me because deep down I am cutting their roots. Consciously or unconsciously they are feeling it – that something is going on which can take away the very earth will be a support to me. I have to depend upon rebellious individuals. But the rebellion has to go so silently that we don’t come in direct conflict with any nonsense, because that is destructive to our energy.

So don’t be worried about it; it is so. Just make ways so that you don’t get caught in any trap. Just that much alertness is needed.

[The sannyasin says that perhaps he does not trust himself enough.]

No, nothing, just the foolish situation all around. Nothing to do with you... nothing to do with you.

And there was a deep longing for me so the fear arose as to whether you would be able to come back or not. They can create situations – they can stop people coming to me. They do whatsoever they can do.

[The gestalt group is present. One participant says she was beaten in the group and wanted to defend herself but couldn’t because of a burning pain in her head and chest. She has the same feeling of exploding in her chest during Kundalini.]

That has created your headache and the burning sensation: you really wanted to fight but somehow you managed not to. You were not true to your feeling – hence the headache and hence the feeling that you wanted to explode and something was holding you.

Next time, go with the feeling. Nothing is wrong in defending yourself: it is very natural. When others are attacking you, you have to defend yourself. If you don’t you will become a buddha! So beware!!

[The sannyasin says: I would like to be a buddha!... I really have the feeling of being a killer.]

This is there, so first go through it otherwise you will remain a killer. You can pretend and sit like a buddha under a tree; that won’t do. You should listen to your feelings. If you were feeling like defending, you should have defended yourself. You would have felt very very relaxed, and there would have been great joy, because whenever you go with your feeling wholly, totally, there is harmony.

Now, your being wanted to do one thing and you pulled back. That’s why the headache and that’s why the feeling that something is not exploding and wants to explode. You missed a moment. And I am not saying that you have to defend yourself whether you feel like it or not. If you don’t feel like defending and then you defend, again it will be untrue. No, if you don’t feel like defending then it is perfectly okay. You should lie down there and let them beat you and enjoy it! You don’t want to defend so there is no problem. You would have enjoyed that too!

Joy always comes when you are true to your feeling. Misery arises – not only mental but bodily problems and illnesses can arise – if you are not true. Then you are creating a kind of conflict within your being: one part wants to do this, another part goes on holding it. It is as if you are accelerating the car and braking it also; you will destroy the whole mechanism. If the engine becomes hot it will be perfectly natural You accelerate and you go on braking it You don’t allow it to go fast and you somehow you managed not to do that. You thought it was wrong, you thought it was not good. Next group go totally in it. Nothing to be worried about.

One day it will happen that you will not like hitting back. You will lie down there enjoying their beating. Then those beatings will fall like flowers on you. There will be joy in that, because your whole vision will be different. There will be no fight, no defence; you will simply absorb the energy.

When somebody hits you he is throwing energy at you. If you can absorb it he will soon be tired.

That is the whole secret of judo. By defeating a person, not by fighting with him, the judo expert will simply exhaust you, provoke you to hit him, and will not do anything. He will simply absorb the hit.

Energy will go on jumping from you to him and he will go on absorbing it. Soon you will be weak: you will hit him and you will fall down because that hit will be too much. He will be standing there laughing and enjoying – fresher than he was ever before, more vital than before, because he has absorbed your energy....

CHAPTER 26

28 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving has difficulty surrendering to the commune. He asks Osho to decide whether he leaves or not... ]

Then I can just direct you what to do. Then there is no problem.... The problem arises only when you start doing your own thing, and then you fall out of tune with the things here. Here the only way to be is to be totally in tune; otherwise you suffer and the whole community suffers. You will not feel happy and people will not feel happy with you.

So here you have to dissolve... and then there is no problem at all. In fact, this mind that you feel continuously goes round and round in a crazy way will disappear by and by, once you have stopped listening to it – and that is the whole point of disciplehood. It is very difficult to get out of the trap of the mind because it is the mind that decides. It is the mind that even tries to get out of it.

The essential of disciplehood is that you cannot get out of your mind on your own, because who will try and who will get out of it? – it is the same mind. So you choose a person and you say, ’I will do whatsoever you say.’ You trust a person and you surrender. Then your mind will go on for months together, even for years, but by and by it will become less and less powerful over you because you cannot decide so you cannot support it.

If you have to listen to me and if you do what I say then this mind cannot continue to be crazy for long, because your support will disappear. It exists with your support. It is almost like cycling: you go on peddling, the cycle goes on. After the moment you stop peddling how long can it go on for?

Maybe out of the past momentum for a few yards, and if you are on a downhill road, then a few miles, but it cannot go forever.

listen to laxmi because then your mind starts asserting itself. And there is every possibility that you may know more than laxmi but that is not the point. Laxmi may be right in some things or may be wrong in some things, you may be right, but that is not the point either.

Even if Laxmi is wrong and she says to do something, then take it for granted it is from me and you have to do it. In the beginning it will be a little difficult – difficult because you see that you can do better, difficult because you know a better alternative.

And I am not saying that you are wrong, remember – you may be right but that is not the point. Right or wrong, you are not to decide. And this is part of my device – that sometimes I will not say to you what to do; Laxmi will say. Because when I say it is very easy to accept it. I will bring it from such a source where it is very difficult to accept. But to accept there will bring the surrender.

And I am preparing something for the future so I don’t want any dissidents here in any way. Because once things become bigger, if a few dissidents are here they will create cliques and will disturb the whole work.

I want it to be absolutely homogeneous – with one voice, with one direction, with one soul. In the west many communes come into existence and die. In fact the average life of a commune is not more than three years. And the basic reason is that sooner or later dissident voices start becoming powerful, cliques form, and politics enters. And when politics enters into any commune, death has entered. Then conflict, then struggle, then power, and everything comes in from the back door.

And remember, when politics enters it always enters with good slogans; that is its way to deceive.

Even the person who brings it in may be deceived by it because he thinks he is doing something for the good, something for the welfare of everybody.

I am trying to make this commune slowly in such a way that no politics enters in it. Thousands of people are going to come to be here with me, and I would like you to be part of me because you have great capacities, great creative possibilities to grow and to help people grow. But that is possible only if you surrender utterly; otherwise all your creative energy will become destructive to the commune.

And it is better to be alert from the very beginning. I love you and I would like you to become part of my work. I know your potential, but potential people can be dangerous too; only potential people can be dangerous. So sometimes it happens that I will have to depend on the second-rate; I may not be able to depend on the first-rate. I would have liked to bring the first-rate into the work, but sometimes it will be far more feasible and practical to choose the second-rate because the second-rate cannot be dangerous, he cannot bring in politics. So you have to be alert about all your possibilities.

And Poona has just been a jumping board. That’s why I would like to leave Poona soon – because its work is finished. I have chosen people; now I can move into a more permanent commune. Poona was just an overnight’s stay; its work is finished.

So you have to be alert about all these things. And if you feel that you can drop all kinds of mind games then there is no need to go; just be here. And I am waiting for that moment – that’s why I have not even taken you inside the ashram yet There have been many possibilities You have same trouble and you will go on doing the same thing – you are not yet able to get out of the past and the mind – then there is nothing wrong. You can go for a few days and take your group there and come back.

So, whatsoever you say, mm? And I know it is difficult to decide in that way, but it has to be decided one day or other, and the sooner, the better, because if you enter the ashram while I am in Poona it will be easier. With the new commune I am going to become more hard on people.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving says that while Osho was talking to the previous sannyasin he was thinking about deciding; he doesn’t know how to decide.]

Never listen to things that I say to somebody else! That was not for you – that was for [him].

Never listen, because that creates too much trouble. Because when I am saying something to [him], I am saying it to [him], absolutely to [him], to nobody else in the world. It is not applicable to anybody else and will never be applicable to anybody else, because each individual is so unique....

And right now don’t even think about it, mm? For just one month you feel and go into things, and it will surface. Because I can see it is there. It just needs a little time to come to your conscious mind.

And it is better to let it come rather than force it to come. It will come! Mm? Good!

[A visitor says: I like the way I am now and I don’t like to wear orange all the time. I live like a sannyasin already.]

You cannot live like a sannyasin! A sannyasin needs courage – courage to defy the world, courage to be oneself, courage to be crazy! You cannot live like a sannyasin, otherwise there would have been no problem for you to take sannyas. The problem is there because you are afraid of public opinion, of what people will say. What can they say? At the most they will say you are crazy! So that is not a problem.

Crazy people are good people... in fact, they are the only good people! The world has suffered too much from the so – called sane. The crazy are lovely people. They bring something beautiful into the world – some poetry, some song, some painting, some creativity.

You are not afraid of sannyas – you are afraid of public opinion, of what others will say; that is the fear. But I am not saying to take sannyas, because if the fear is there then why create trouble for yourself? Mm? there is no need.

Next time... You will be coming. I will haunt you! I am coming with you tomorrow. And next time you will have enough courage to become a sannyasin. You will miss me there – beware! And come whenever you can come.

[A sannyasin says he feels incompatible with others, very different, as if he comes from a different planet. It is not unpleasant but he wonders why.]

You are different and one has to accept one’s difference One should not create a problem out of it them will start thinking that sagar is doing perfectly well being himself, why cannot they be like that?

Because they will have some problems that you will never have.

When you relate you have to face many problems. Utter a single word and there is going to be difficulty. So by and by many of them will think that sagar is doing perfectly well, gets into no difficulties with people. And that’s how it goes on – everybody thinks that others are doing perfectly well and that something is lacking in them... You need not worry about it.

Everybody has to accept their difference, uniqueness. One has to respect it – not only accept, but respect. That’s what I mean by self-respect. It is not an egoistic attitude; it is simply the way you are.

You have to respect your being! Whatsoever you do against it will be hypocrisy. You can be natural and spontaneous only with it. That is one thing.

The second thing: you have very perfectionistic ideas in your mind. You have great expectations about everything... about yourself too. Because of that, comparison arises. You would like to become a person who relates perfectly with people; that is your idea. And you fall short of it –

everybody will fall short of it. Nobody is perfect and nobody can be perfect and nobody needs to be perfect. Imperfection is beautiful – it is human – and the world is far happier with imperfect people than it would ever be with perfect people. Perfect people are neurotics.

But you have that idea of being perfect in everything that you do, so now in relating you have to be perfect. There is no need! Drop ideals and you will never suffer anxiety because then there is nothing to compare with. Then you are simply the way you are. There is no scale to put yourself against, to contrast then suffer and condemn yourself and become miserable.

If you have to drop anything it is your perfectionist attitude about things. Once you drop that you will become very very easy and happy. And there is no need to relate. Whatsoever comes easily is good! You are perfectly happy so what is the point?

And your new work is going perfectly well. Mm? I have heard all kinds of beautiful reports, except one – that you hit Deeksha. Otherwise ninety-nine percent reports have been perfectly good.

[The sannyasin says: I have never hit a woman in my life – never!]

That may be again a perfection! Why? Why have you not hit a woman in your whole life? That’s not good!

Nothing to worry about, but at least don’t hit Deeksha. You can hit [your girlfriend] or anybody else you can find, but don’t hit Deeksha, because if people start hitting her she will be in trouble, mm?

She has to manage so many people. and the way she manages is such that everybody w ill start hitting her! So don’t start!

She is doing such a good work that we have to accept a few things that she likes to shout and use four-letter words. That’s okay, that’s okay.... Because I can stop her doing these things but then her very angry with you. I thought it was against my temperament, but I felt it was very good.]

That’s how I have to force things on you sometimes which you don’t like. But I have to force because I know they will help. Your liking cannot be the criterion. In fact your liking is bound to be wrong because it will come from your past. You can’t have any vision of the future – you cannot see what is going to happen; you can only see what has happened in the past.

When I decide something for you, I look into your future more than into your past, because the past is finished. In fact we have to get rid of it; we have to get out of that pattern. So sometimes I have to suggest things which you don’t like which you hate. You will feel angry. Many people even drop the suggestion. Then they miss an opportunity and they will never know that they have missed an opportunity.

You did well that you didn’t drop it. Even if sometimes you are feeling hate for me, angry at me, be angry, be hateful – but do what I say! And you will never be at a loss. It was good!

[The sannyasin then says she feels horribly frustrated with men and has not had a lover for a long time; she has a lot of anger, hatred and expectation. Osho checks her energy.]

You have something in you that is very antagonistic to male energy. It has nothing much to do with your expectations. Those expectations are just to avoid, those are tricks of the mind – they are not problems. The root cause is not there; the root cause is that your energy is very male-antagonistic.

And because it is antagonistic you have to create a few tricks so that you can always avoid men.

Nobody is according to your idea; that’s a trick, a strategy. Nobody is beautiful enough, nobody is good enough, nobody is moral enough, nobody is worthwhile, nobody is extraordinary; all are very ordinary people. That is the trick of the mind so that you can avoid men. First you decide that this person is an ordinary, very worthless creature; then it is very simple to reject him. Then you w ill not feel guilty that you have rejected him. Before rejecting you labelled him – that he is worthless.

But deep down it is not just expectation. Your energy is anti-male. Something must have happened in your childhood that has made you very anti-male. You may not remember it, you may have forgotten about it, you may have repressed it. Maybe your first encounter with a man was ugly. The first encounter, if it is ugly, creates great trouble. Then the energy simply becomes anti.

And it is happening more and more in the world. The world, as it becomes more free, becomes more and more ugly. Even small children have to encounter ugly sexual phenomena. And once a child has been in some way violated, in some way offended, then the energy recoils and becomes anti.

But it can change; there is no problem about changing it. If it were expectation it would be more difficult because that is a mind thing. This is more a body thing – it is far easier, because the mind is very complex. It is more physiological....

is frozen up with it.]

It is just that christianity has gone into your blood and bones, that’s all. You suffer from christianity.

And it is a far more dangerous disease than cancer because it goes into the very spirit. The whole christian religion depends on the concept of guilt, and down the ages the priest has always been creating guilt in people. That is his way of dominating: if he can create guilt in you he can make a slave of you.

About everything they have tried to create guilt and not only Christians, others too. But Christians are the most perfect in it. About food, about women, about men, about clothes, about everything, whatsoever is possible – they have tried to create guilt. They have surrounded man in guilt.

A guilty man cannot be a rebellious man and a guilty man cannot remain intelligent either. A guilty man is carrying such a load on his heart that he is crushed by it. A guilty man has invisible chains around his hands and feet. The guilty man is himself the prisoner and the gaoler.

It creates a kind of schizophrenia in you. You are guarding, fighting, destroying yourself. You will have to understand and drop it totally. The whole concept is basically wrong. There is nothing like sin. And if there is sin, then god is the only sinner – nobody else. Then he should commit suicide.

If you have sex in you, you have not produced it; it is a given phenomenon. Why should you be guilty about it? It is as foolish as somebody being guilty because his eyes are green, or somebody is guilty because he has blond hair and somebody is guilty because he is six feet tall or something.

Those things will be just as stupid.

Sex is there, a given fact... so is anger, so is everything. And I am not saying that one has to always remain sexual, always angry, but the way to go beyond them, to throw them, is to go through them, is to pass through them, is tO go with great understanding, compassion, caring about oneself.

Then one day anger becomes compassion, sex becomes love, and finally all the emotions pour their energies into one pool, and that pool becomes prayer.

There is nothing one should feel guilty about. If you feel sometimes that you have done anything wrong, don’t do it again – but there is no point in feeling guilty. Making an error is one thing; you never feel guilty about making an error. If you make some error in doing mathematics you don’t feel guilty. If you make two plus two five, you don’t feel guilty. You simply feel that you have committed an error; you put it right... and finished! Exactly like that life is a mathematics.

It is natural. We are not omnipotent, we are not omniscient and we are not omnipresent, so some errors are bound to be there. We are not perfect, that’s true, so some errors will be there. Once you find an error put it right! But the problem is that rather than putting it right you start feeling guilty.

You never put it right and you start feeling guilty. So you have entered into another wrong which is far more serious than the first, because the first can be changed; the second cannot be changed.

Guilty persons go on doing the same thing again and again; they never change. I have never seen else is needed?’... and the wrong remains the same.

Put your energies into changing it, and once you do you will find there are not many errors. What error can you do ? What errors are possible? They are very small – they can be counted on your fingers – and they can be put right very easily.

Just try to understand. And you cannot even pinpoint where your guilt feeling is focused at because it is not focused at anything. It is simply a climate around you: you are simply guilty. Mm? just for being you are guilty. This is just absurd!

This guilt will go. You cannot be here long with me and keep the guilt too. Both cannot go together!

Mm? Good!

[The architect who has been to start work on the new commune has returned and says: It seems a little paradise.]

It is! And you have to make it one. Much has to be done there. We have to make it a paradise

– small, but a paradise. It has to be converted into an oasis. The world is turning into a desert.

People are losing all that is beautiful, all that is valuable. Values are disappearing. Man is becoming very very barren. If this continues then after one century love will become just absurd; the word will not mean anything. And that is the very heart! The day love disappears, all disappears – freedom and dignity and all. The day love disappears, man is a machine. It is only love that keeps man as something above being a machine.

Mathematics can be done by the computer, logic can be done by the computer... and far more efficiently than by man. Only love cannot be done by the computer. So that is the only quality that can save. That is the only thing that is more in man than in a machine.

We have to create a love oasis so the value does not simply disappear. People can come and see love almost visible, tangible. And it is possible.

Much work has to be done, so put your whole energy into it. This is your life’s opportunity!

CHAPTER 27

29 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, madhumaya means sweet as honey.

And love is the only sweetness; everything else is bitter. We can even tolerate bitter things if there is a little mixture of love in them; otherwise life becomes unbearable. Life is unbearable; it is only love that makes it bearable. Life in itself is meaningless – it is love that brings meaning to it. So the more love, the more meaning, the more love, the more sweetness, the more love, the more joy. And love exists ordinarily in a very very small quantity. Ninety-nine percent is poison and one percent is love.

The percentage of love has to be developed, and one has to work consciously. It will not grow on its own; it has grown as much as it can on its own. Man has come to a point from where he has to take his fate into his own hands. One has to start working, cleansing the inner house, dropping poisons, repressions, inhibitions, taboos; they are all destroying life’s beauty.

The day is great when love is more than everything else added together. When love is fifty-one percent in your life, everything else is forty-nine – that day is the day of great liberation. It brings the first satori, the first experience of ecstasy, and then things become easier. Beyond that things are very much easier; before that things are very hard.

Once you have known that the major part of your being has become full of love, then the minor by and by starts following it. It stops fighting, it is no more powerful. And soon the day comes that one becomes ninety-nine percent love; that is the second satori, the second samadhi. And the third happens when one becomes one hundred percent love.

Madhumaya means one hundred percent love one hundred percent sweetness That is the symbol It will disappear; no need to worry about it. Just go through groups, mm? Be here one month, and in this one month try to carry on without drugs as much as possible. Don’t be too hard on yourself either: if sometimes you take a little bit, nothing to worry about. But keep it in mind that the less you take, the better. I am also a drug. Once you are addicted to me, then things are very much simpler

– you can drop other drugs!

That is my way of helping addicts, mm? – I make addicts of a new dimension. And once you are with me, sooner or later you will not be able to remain in it. In fact there will be no need to drop drugs.

They by and by become irrelevant; they become meaningless. You start seeing the suicidalness of them; they are destructive. But unless something bigger than that happens, how can you drop it?

That’s the problem

So I am not so much for dropping them. My whole effort is to bring something greater than they can bring, and that is the decisive factor them. If something can happen through meditation, through sannyas, through groups, which gives you a better glimpse, at no cost... You are not paying for it by your health, by your chemistry, by destroying your body and other things. You are not to pay anything for it and it happens! You are the master of it – you are not dependent on anything for it.

You can make it available any moment you want. Once you know the key you can unlock the door whenever you want. Something greater, higher, has to be made available to you.

All over the world that has been the problem down the ages: people have tried to help others to come out of their drug trips but it almost always fails because you can’t provide anything better. The people also want to get out of it – everybody wants to get out of it because it is a bondage and everybody understands that he is creating a subtle bondage which will become bigger and bigger and one day he will be surrounded by walls, china walls, and it will be difficult to get out of them. By one’s own effort, one is creating such a big wall and then it will be difficult to destroy it; one will be caught in it. One’s whole life will become a kind of sickness.

And it is vicious. If you take a drug, while you are under its impact everything seems good. Then out of it everything feels so dull, so meaningless that the drug seems to be the only possibility again and again. Then the quantity of drug has to be increased and by and by one is lost. Drugs are so powerful that they destroy the very chemistry of your brain. The brain is very delicate; it cannot live with such violent coercions being made on it. Those very very minute and subtle nerves start getting damaged. Then one loses alertness, intelligence, becomes dull, becomes insensitive. Then the drug remains the only possibility, the only meaning that one can get.

But just to say these things doesn’t help. Just to preach doesn’t help. Just to say that this is bad and a sin does not help; in fact, it makes the problem worse! The person is already in suffering and now you bring in another problem – that this is sin – so he feels guilty too. The drug was enough to destroy him; now guilt will destroy also. You have added more poison to the problem. You make the person feel immoral, criminal – and these are all wrong attitudes.

The person needs help, the person needs sympathy, the person needs love. Maybe the person has and feel something that is bigger and greater than any drug can make available. And that’s what I am trying to do here.

So don’t be negatively concerned with drugs. While you are here become more concerned with me.

Listen to mc, meditate, be more and more around the ashram, have the feel of it. Be very loving to people, be open, relating, dance and sing. By and by you will see that what the drug can do, I can do and in a far better way. And that is the only possibility of getting out of it. It will happen – don’t be worried! Good!

[A sannyasin therapist had been asked to take over the encounter group while the usual leader was ill. He said it was really good and he learnt a lot from it.]

Sometimes things that you have to do without any planning turn out really beautifully because they start from a deeper part of your being than the mind. Because the mind is in a shock. The mind needs time to plan, to visualise, to project some ideas, some blueprint. The mind needs a guide, a map.

The mind goes logically, step by step: this has to be done, this has to be done; it has a pattern.

But you were caught unawares so the mind had no time. And to do something spontaneously has far more beauty because you are no more a manipulator. You were less a groupleader and more a participant in it. You were not standing away from people’s problems – you were solving your problem! It was your problem what to do now.

Good... and sometimes that too is very good – a sudden change for the group. People were going in one direction and you simply changed their direction. They are also shocked because that is illogical for them. They were going North and you tell them immediately to turn about. They were enjoying going north and they were learning how to go North. They were becoming efficient in going north, they were becoming skillful, and now suddenly you uproot everything. They are also caught unawares.

Through this experience, in the future you should plan a group which takes many sudden jumps.

One day it is one thing; another day it is another thing. In seven days time it is seven things. It has no plan; it is haphazard, zigzag. Nobody knows what is going to happen – not even you. In the morning you get up and it is whimsical, eccentric. And with the whimsical you will see people flowering more spontaneously.

Otherwise they start learning the technique of the method. They learn the method, the group process

– and once they have learned it they start obliging the groupleader. They know what is expected of them. They know what they should do so they should be thought good; they know what is not expected of them.

So there will be two types of people as there are always: a few, the obedient types, will simply follow the process and will go into it, and the rebellious type will resist and fight. But both are following a mind pattern that they have followed their whole life.

that.

It has been good. It has been really a shock to you – can see it!

[A sannyasin says that all his problems seem to be dissolving faster than he can create them.... he is being penetrated by Osho’s energy.]

It is happening – it just takes a little time, mm? And one has to learn patience. Sometimes there are a few things which cannot be done in a hurry, which take their own time. Even if you are in a hurry nothing can be done. In fact the hurry can make them delayed. Rather than bringing them faster it can delay them. And that’s how it happens: if you can wait a little longer your problem will dissolve. By and by sannyasins learn that. Give a little time and you will see the problem dissolving, and when the problem dissolves without any effort on your part, you attain to an insight.

When you try to dissolve the problem, it is intellectual. Yes, you can force the problem, you can repress the problem. You can explain away things but have not changed it. Sooner or later it will erupt again into your consciousness; through some other excuse, from some other comer, it will come back.

But if it dissolves on its own and you were just a witness... you had not really done anything to dissolve it or solve it; you were just watching and waiting, and one day you suddenly found that it is no more there. One morning you wake up and the problem is not there... then there is great insight; it is intuitive. Then only can energy penetrate.

It is more a question of relating to me without the intellect than of anything else. So it is more difficult for people who have been in some kind of intellectual work. The intellectual mind is a different mind.

If you bring a problem you bring it from the intellectual part. That is the left hemisphere of your mind.

And when you bring a problem and I have to solve it, I have to feed your same mind. There is no other way, because only an intellectual problem can have an intellectual response. So the wrong part of the mind goes on being given more and more energy.

When you don’t bring a problem and you simply wait, waiting is from another type of mind; that is the right hemisphere. The feminine part waits. The male part attacks the problem, the male part wants to solve it. The feminine part simply waits for its disappearance. When you don’t bring the problem your feminine part starts working, and the energy can penetrate only through the feminine part. From the male part the energy cannot penetrate; the male part cannot absorb energy.

So the old scriptures say that a disciple has to become feminine. That’s why there have never been great women masters but there have been great women disciples. And it is not only an accidental thing; it has something very deep inside it. The greatest disciples have been women and the greatest masters have been men, because the master’s whole work is to attack you. He can use his male part in attacking and hammering you, but the disciple’s whole function is to absorb.

So this has been a good experience. Just start waiting and start floating more.

CHAPTER 28

30 September 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says his wife, a non-sannyasin, wants to study psychology.]

Where can she study psychology better than here? Just tell her!...

Anywhere else you can study psychology as a dead subject – here it is alive. Here people are opening up, growing, and that’s what psychology basically is: the science of the soul.

The western psychology is yet not worthy enough of being called psychology. It is still struggling with behaviour – not what man is, but how he acts, and that too the western psychology decides by the behaviour of the animals: rats and pigeons and... because man’s behaviour is complex; even to study it is difficult. And there is something in man which cannot be studied, something elusive – and that is his very soul.

The rat can be understood, studied, observed. The rat is simple because he is almost like a mechanism. He has no freedom of choice, he has no dignity of being a soul. He is absolutely unconscious; there is nothing conscious in him. So you can figure out how he behaves.

In man something has become conscious; a part, a very minute part has evolved beyond behaviourism. Man has a kind of will and man has a potential to be free. That freedom is the trouble; that is the very crux of the matter. That freedom cannot be studied because it is unpredictable. It cannot be reduced to laws, to logic. You cannot predict man; that is the problem. And that’s what western psychology has been continuously doing for these hundred years – trying to find a way to predict man, to find a way to prove that man is not more than a machine.

kinds of freedom and all the kinds of problems that freedom naturally brings. She will have a real vision of man, and it will not be through the books. It will not be bookish; it will be existential. So if she comes that will be the best thing.

No need to force sannyas on her. Tell her to come just to see what is happening here, and she will never think again to go to a university and study psychology. Just make me available to her, and if she still wants to study then help her, mm?...

So if she comes, that will be very good, mm ? And then leave it to me, mm ? – within three, four days she will be a sannyasin!

[The sannyasin then says whenever he comes into a new group of people there’s a sense of deja vu

– it’s just exactly how it has to happen. He need not have any sorrow... like a dream unfolding... ]

Deja vu is a reality... and for you it is not a mind thing. For a few people it can be, mm? because wherever there is reality there can always be a misunderstanding too. You can project some idea; you can interpret some situation in such a way that it starts feeling like a deja vu. But deja vu in itself is a reality, because you are not here for the first time; nobody is here for the first time. All are eternal pilgrims, journeying, journeying, from one life to another. And all that you have experienced, you have experienced many times; it can’t be new. Existence moves in a circle, not in a line.

It is like the rotating wheel of seasons: you have seen many springs and again the spring comes.

Again you hear the sound of the birds and it reminds you of other springs. You see the flowers blooming and it reminds you of other bloomings. And they were almost alike. I say ’almost’ – I don’t say that it is an exact repetition; nothing is ever repetition exactly. But it is so approximately alike that it is very difficult to make a distinction – hence deja vu. You again see the clouds floating in the sky and the sun and the birds and the trees. The spring has come again with all its joy... and you have seen those springs many times!

So somewhere deep in your unconscious you are carrying all the memories of all the past lives. It is very, very possible that again and again you will come to situations which are alike and suddenly you feel as if it has happened before. And it has happened before! Maybe the actors were different, but how can they be very much different ? Human beings are human beings after all.

For example, just listening to me, you can be surrounded by a sense of deja vu: you can start feeling you have listened to me before, the same way. I may not have been with you before but you may have listened to some other master. And they have all the same look in the eyes, the same scent to their being, the same song to sing. Words differ but the rhythm, the constantly running underground rhythm is the same. So right now you can be caught in a deja vu.

You have listened to many more people before. It is not possible that you have come for the first time to a master.... How is it possible? For millenia you have been searching. It is impossible not to have come across... You may have come across a jesus or a buddha or a krishna or a rinzai or a bodhidharma. Down the ages in so many lives how can you avoid not coming across a buddha? It like me. You may have looked with the same love at some other master, with the same trust, with the same open heart, and again it is happening! You may have drunk from some other master in the same way with such sensitivity and receptivity... and again it is happening! It can bring to your memory the floating fragrances of past lives, the nostalgia.

And my feeling is that you don’t have a very very strong division between this life and your past lives; that’s why deja vu happens. Deja vu happens to everybody but how strong it can be depends – the strength depends on what type of barrier exists between this life and the past lives and other lives.

If it is a china wall, very thick, it is very difficult for things to cross over. And even if they cross, they become distorted. The wall distorts them and by the time they reach you the moment is lost.

You don’t have what you call ’an iron curtain’. Mm? – you have a bamboo curtain, so things can slip from one life into another very easily. It is perfectly good. Enjoy it and it will become more and more possible.

And it can be very very weird sometimes because when you go into it you can start feeling as if you are in a dream. You can start feeling as if you are living a fantasy, not reality... as if those people around here are not there; maybe it is just a memory. And that makes for a kind of weirdness. It can be scary too, it can frighten too; it depends on your interpretation.

So accept it, welcome it, and when it comes, enjoy it, and you will become more and more capable of it. My feeling is that you can easily remember your past lives sometimes, and that’s a great experience. So allow this phenomenon more and more accessibility to you. It is coming on its own, mm? – you have just not to hinder it. And don’t think whether it is a projection, whether you are just imagining it – because these are barriers.

If this idea gets very settled in your mind – that this is a kind of imagination – then those deja vu’s will stop. If you think it is just a mind thing then you will start dropping it. You will become resistant, defensive against it. No, deja vu is a reality, because we have lived so many lives and we have loved in so many ways.We have been angry in so many ways with so many people. We have been friends and enemies, and all that is happening to you now has happened many many times before.

Sometimes two similar things – not exactly alike but almost alike – get hooked with each other, and suddenly there is deja vu. And I am not saying that everybody who thinks it is a deja vu is really experiencing a deja vu, but about you I am certain. It is deja vu – go into it! Good!

[A visitor tells Osho he has done primal therapy for two years in the West. Osho says, but I don’t think it really went deep. The visitor agrees with him.]

Mm mm... because it has not changed your aura. Your aura is still adultish. When somebody has really gone into primal his aura becomes childish. And to be childish is beautiful; to be adultish is ugly. From that point when one has become a child again, things start moving in a different direction, in a different dimension. Then you really start growing.

what pain is... and that is there in you.

A few groups will be of immense help, mm?... Do these... groups and in three months we will go slowly, slowly towards primal again. The last group to do here is primal.

Primal should not be done in the beginning; one should prepare for the jump. The process is of immense value – there is no doubt about it – but in the west what happens is that people start by primal. That cannot be done. Even janov thinks that it is enough unto itself; it is not.

Many things are needed to be done before it, and many more will be needed after it. It is just a fragment – immensely valuable but still a fragment. It is not the whole philosophy of man.

[The visitor says: I feel problems about the outside society and here... too much antipathy between the Indians and what is happening here.]

That has nothing to do with you... that has nothing to do with you! If you want to take on other people’s problems, then you can. If you are searching for problems you can have as many as you like. First solve your problems! What do you have to do with those things? That is their problem. If indians have some antipathy, that is their problem. What does that have to do with you? You have not come to solve their problem, and you have not come to solve the problem of the ashram and the people. That is none of your business.

You have come here for your problem. Solve it first, and by solving it you will be able to see that that is nothing unnatural, that antipathy. That has always been there, otherwise why was jesus crucified?

Because people loved him too much? Is that why they crucified him ? Why was socrates poisoned?

Because athens was very worshipful towards him ? They were antipathetic – they could not tolerate socrates. How can they tolerate me? They could not tolerate jesus. They cannot make an exception of me.

This has always been so and this is going to remain so. Now think of a young man, think of yourself.

Go back two thousand years and you go to Jesus. You say to him that you are very much disturbed because people are very antipathetic towards him. That will be wasting your time and Jesus’ time.

Those moments are rare. Drink of him as much as you can! Hold his hand. Walk a little way with him; then you will know what walking is. Then you will know how far one can go with him. Just have a taste of it. But you will be worried about this – that because others are antagonistic towards him, you are puzzled. But that is wasting energy, opportunity.

Forget about what Indians say! I am not an Indian and I don’t exist here. I belong to people who belong to me. I belong to the orange world... wherever it is. They are my people and I am theirs....

And I am not worried about others – there is no point in it. This is not their trip, so it’s okay. They don’t want to be benefited; that is perfectly okay. They don’t want to take this opportunity, use this opportunity. That is their decision and I respect their decision. They are antipathetic because they feel the attraction but they are not courageous enough to take the jump – hence, they create a barrier to come to me, that’s all. But that is their business, that is their life. They are masters of their life.

They have missed Buddha, they have missed Jesus, they have missed Krishna. If they want to, they can miss this opportunity too.

But you have not come to solve their problems. Don’t become a saviour. Just first solve your problems and then you will have a clear vision. Then you will see what the problem is.

There is no problem really. This is a natural tendency in the mass mind. The mass mind cannot allow anything revolutionary to happen in the world. It is very dangerous for the mass mind and its investments.

People want to huddle together like sheep; they don’t want to become individuals. And my message is to be an individual. It is asocial. My whole emphasis is that this is your life and you have to respect this. You have to be responsible towards your life – nobody else has the authority to manipulate you.

To allow somebody else to manipulate you – the society, the religion, the state – is to betray yourself, is to betray god.

So my message is individualistic. No society will like it. The society lives with lies – ancient, old lies, so ancient that people have completely forgotten that they are lies. They have been repeated so often and for so long that they have become truths.

Adolf Hitler has said that if you repeat a lie continuously it becomes a truth sooner or later... just go on repeating it. People live with this repeated lie they call truth. Whenever you declare the truth they are antagonistic because it goes against their truths, so-called truths. They are lies – because in fact no truth can go against ally other truth; that is not possible. Two truths are always friendly. It is impossible to find a dichotomy between two truths.

Two lies are always friendly; it is difficult to find any dichotomy between two lies. So when you speak one lie you will have to speak many lies to support it, to protect it, to defend it. If you speak one truth you will have to speak many truths, but truth and lies are two worlds apart, like light and darkness.

When jesus is crucified it is darkness crucifying a light. When socrates is killed it is the social lie destroying the individual truth – and truth is always individual.

So simply forget about it; otherwise you will be wasting time. Just start moving. They are there and perfectly okay – don’t listen to them. Start meditating, go into groups, and within a month you will start becoming clear about things. Then you will know that whatsoever they are doing, that’s all that they can do. That’s why Jesus says – his last statement is – ’God, forgive these people because they don’t know what they are doing’....

So we can only forgive them, that’s all; nothing else can be done. Forgive and forget! Good, mm?

[Another visitor says she feels many emotions.]

That’s good! That is very good! Emotional people are good people; intellectual people are just useless They make too much fuss about nothing much ado about nothing Emotional people are from the heart, and all that is courageous comes from the heart. The heart knows how to take risks.

The head never knows; it knows only how to calculate.

[The visitor says she has done primal therapy in the west. She doesn’t want to do groups here – she would rather do something more playful.]

Mm mm, but you don’t know what groups are going on here – they are playing groups! Just try two, and then you will decide. Then if you want to do more you can do more, otherwise no need, mm?

But try at least two groups so you have a feel what is going on here....

Then we will see – if you like to do any more... Because they are of immense value. You are just not aware what is going on here. You must be thinking about your primal. There are many kinds of groups here. I see what a person needs – then only do I suggest. You need something playful. You go into it!

[A visitor has previously written to Osho to say he runs a million-dollar-a-year business in India, and at the same time is looking for himself.]

Much is possible – your energy is perfectly good and flowing. You just have to learn the knack of growing... and it is a knack. Otherwise one can go on stumbling for one’s whole life and will not find the door. Sometimes it happens the door has always been in front of you but it is so obvious that you became oblivious of it.

[Osho checks his energy.]

You are in a very very ripe space from where things can start growing. My feeling is that you have been avoiding, somehow escaping from it and getting involved in things so that you can forget about your inner self. There is nothing wrong in doing things but one should not escape from one’s own being because that is our ultimate home. We have to come to terms with it. And the right time has come to come to terms with it. Why don’t you become a sannyasin?

Deva means divine, manoj means beauty. You are carrying a great possibility of flowering in divine beauty, and it is your responsibility to help it, not to hinder it. The greater potentiality, the greater is the responsibility. Your success in the world, in the business, is not ultimately going to prove you successful, no. Do it – it is perfectly good in its own place – but don’t for a single moment be deceived by it. That is not going to become your fulfillment. The fulfillment comes only from inner riches. And you can be as successful in the inner as you are in the outer, because it is the same energy that you put into the outer when you start succeeding there; it is the same energy you put in when you start succeeding there. It is only a question of dimension; the energy is the same. It happens almost always that the richest people in the world are the poorest as far as their inner being is concerned. It is not so difficult to find a poor man who has a rich soul, but it is very very difficult to find a rich man who has a rich soul.

Why does it happen? – because it is the same energy. You can buy the inner riches or you can buy cannot take them away.

In the eastern scriptures we define riches as that which cannot be taken away from you. That is our definition of richness. That which can be taken away is just borrowed. You can befool yourself for a time being but sooner or later it will be taken away. Death takes everything away except meditation, except your inner experience of ecstasy, so that is the only kingdom. Hence jesus goes on saying,

’The kingdom of god is within.’

I see a great future for you. And you are courageous too – you can simply move into the inner.

[The new sannyasin says he loves to chant.]

Good. Chanting is very good; it will suit you. Start chanting: every day for at least one hour chant and go mad in chanting. It should not be done in a lukewarm way; it should not be done in a ritualistic way. It should be wild; only then will it help. You should be completely lost in it. It should be so total that not only are you chanting by the throat – your whole body starts chanting it. You will start feeling the vibration. Chanting done totally vibrates every fibre of the body from the head to the toe. Chanting has to be from the guts.

Chanting is perfectly good. Devote one hour to chanting, but make it a wild joy! And there is no need to have any form. Even if the chanting becomes absurd, nonsensical, becomes gibberish, it is perfectly okay; that is not the point. The chanting has not to be meaningful.

Chanting is the meaning; there is no other meaning in it. What you are chanting is irrelevant – that you are chanting is relevant. So you can chant ’ram, ram...’ or ’allah, allah...’ or anything. Or you can change as the feeling moves you. Sometimes you can simply start uttering wild noises. And you will be transformed by it – it will change the very chemistry of your body – so chanting is good.

And one thing – if you can do it before you come – is Vipassana. It is a Buddhist meditation course.

Otherwise, when you come here do it. Chanting will do for these two, three months. Good! And help my people there! Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says she was sick and wanted to return to the West, but now she is well she wants to stay but has doubts – fear.]

Fear is not a doubt! Mm? In illness it is possible to have doubts because doubting is also an ill state of affairs. When you are healthy you have trust; when you are unhealthy you have doubts. So people who have doubts never become healthy... healthy in the sense of being whole. The doubts go on feeding their pathologies. A really healthy person, a really whole person, is one who has absolute trust in life, whose doubts have completely disappeared... just as darkness disappears when you bring a lamp in.

But it is very natural – when you are weak and the body is ill, you are suffering, you are in pain and anguish, all kinds of doubt come; they come in weakness. It is just as if you are Lying down space, negative, all doubts start penetrating you from every door, nook and comer. You become a collection of doubts. So that was nothing to be worried about. As you are becoming again healthy, those doubts will disappear. They were part of your illness; they have nothing to do with you really.

But if you have some other reasons to go, you can go and come back. If there are other reasons –

you would like to visit your parents or friends or you would just like to go, just a desire to be there

– then there is no need to repress it. Because this love affair with me is strong enough, so there is no problem. You can go away for a few months and you will come back closer to me; that is not a problem. You can afford it. This love affair is strong enough – it can survive ail doubts and all separations. You can go for a few months, you can enjoy it there and then come back.

But if there is no special reason to go – just a vagrant idea in the mind – then why waste time? Your body will be okay within a month, perfectly okay. And continue working, mm? Would you like to stay permanently here, finally?

Mm, so... before finally deciding to be here you can go and say good-bye to your friends there. And you can always hook a few people for me! Right! Good!

[The new movement group is present. The leader says sometimes the group got stuck and he took the responsibility on himself and sometimes he thought participants caused it.]

You have to drop that idea. You have to remember that it is your love, not your duty. It is your love for me that you work; it is your love for people that you help. But it is not your duty, it is not a performance. You need not worry about it. If something happens, good; if nothing happens, good. Nothing is there to worry about it... but the worry comes; in the beginning it comes to each groupleader. By and by you will learn to leave everything to me.

When something good happens, let me enjoy the joy of it. Don’t say that it is happening because of you. And you will not be a loser, because when nothing happens then I am responsible... and nothing happens more often so you are not a loser really! Just drop every responsibility on me. Here you represent me, that’s all. Here, be anonymous... just a vehicle for me. Then you will never feel these ups and downs. And if you feel ups and downs, the group will too.

The leader decides the direction – unknowingly, unconsciously – because you are the leader;that is the meaning of being the leader. If you are going down, they all go down. Where else can they go?

– they follow you! If you are going up, they all go up. And the beauty is that you think because they are all down you are going down. They are going down because you are down! It can be a very vicious circle – and you have to break out of it!

The people who come to the group are new. By and by they will become related to me more and more, but you have to be absolutely related to me.

Whenever this idea of responsibility comes, always remember it is ego. It is a love offering, not a responsibility. When you feel nothing is happening, your ego feels hurt. Why in the first place should you expect that something should happen? Just create the space if something happens good; if

high so that they can say, ’Yes, you are a great leader, a great groupleader.’ You have to understand this: this need has to be by and by understood and dropped. And if you drop this need you will find things flowing more easily. You will not find so many moments of being stuck, because when you don’t have any expectations how can you be stuck? in what? Expectations are the rocks where we get stuck and the flow stops. Deep down somewhere you must be hankering for the attention – that people should give you feedback that you are great.

You are great – there is no need to hanker for it. Nobody can make you great. You are great as everybody is. I have never come across a man who is not great; it doesn’t happen in nature. All is great because all is from god. God creates only great people. But we have a very wrong notion that we have to prove ourselves great. That is the beginning of madness!

Then we constantly hanker that everybody should give us certificates.

We go on gathering

certificates, piles upon piles, and we sit on top of them feeling that we are great. But you have been great from the very beginning! Not a single moment have you been anything else!

The very idea ’I have to be great’ means that you have accepted that you are not great. That’s why a very very strange thing happens in life: people who reach to the height of their success are more polite and humble than the people who are not at the peak.

The story is told of a private in world war one who shouted, ’Put out that damn match, you son of a bitch,’ only to find to his chagrin that the offender had been general ’black jack’ pershing. When he tried to stammer out his apology, general pershing patted him on the back and said, ’That’s all right, son. Just be glad I’m not a second lieutenant.’

I liked it! He said, ’If I had been your second-lieutenant you would have been in trouble. Be glad that I am your general,’ he said, ’and not your second-lieutenant.’

When people are at the peak of their career they become humble because there is nothing left to prove. A small fry is always arrogant; in fact the arrogancy shows how small he is. A policeman is more arrogant than the superintendent, and so on, so forth. The emperor is always very humble and polite because there is no need to prove anything: he is the emperor.

My whole approach here is to declare to you that you are emperors from your very birth; you need not prove it. And your being an emperor does not depend on somebody else being lower than you, no. It is non-comparative. Others are also emperors, just as you are. Your uniqueness does not depend on somebody else being mediocre. Your uniqueness exists in the uniqueness of all, with the uniqueness of all. This whole existence is unique and superb. It is the most perfect world possible.

With this understanding and acceptance all fear disappears. Then you are no more nervous; you are not proving anything. Then things move so smoothly that miracles start happening.

So drop that idea. The next group you do, just leave it to me. And whenever you feel stuck, just remember that it is Osho’s business; you are just a representative. If he wants people to be low, let two and a half years, which means coming and going from here. Her heart wants to stay here, the mind says she should finish the studies.]

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

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

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28