Far Beyond the Stars

Talks given from 1/7/77 to 31/7/77

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

The moment you become part of the community, you dissapear 2 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Rama prem. It means love for god, and create that love more.... ]

It is there, it is just like a small drop; it can become an ocean, it can become bigger than you. And when it is bigger than you and when you are drowned in it, you have arrived.

It is there just like a small drop trickling but it can grow: all great rivers arise out of a small drop trickling. The ocean is nothing but drops and drops and drops. Right now it is a small drop like a small seed but it can become a big tree. One just has to be a little more careful about it, more conscious of it, more protective of it. It can be destroyed by carelessness; many people’s love for god is destroyed by carelessness.

[A sannyasin tells Osho he is scared of him.]

Mm! That’s very good! That’s a good indication. When you become scared of me that means you are coming close to me! Then only does one start feeling as if one will be burned. A master is a fire. You come close – first it is warm, then it becomes fiery, but you cannot go back because that fire has a great magnetic attraction too.

In fact where can you find a place to die which will be better? So be consumed! Let this fire consume you... and out of that is the resurrection. Out of that you become totally new. Out of that you become impregnable, invulnerable.

This is the paradox: you have to be absolutely vulnerable to become invulnerable. You have to die to attain deathlessness. You have to go through fire to become real gold.

You need not be afraid: only that which is not true will bum – that which is true will remain. Truth cannot be burned, only the false, but we are too attached to the false, hence the fear. The ego will be in danger. You will not be in danger but because you think you are the ego, the fear arises. Just a little detachment from the ego is needed.

I am going to destroy the ego... and it is good that it is destroyed – the sooner the better – because only when it is destroyed will you be able to see who you are.

The ego is very very ordinary and the being is tremendously extraordinary. The ego is just a shadow, it is not really you: it is a reflection in the mirror. I am going to destroy the mirror and the reflection will be destroyed but you are not going to he destroyed at all.

But it is natural, mm? – when somebody hits the mirror and the mirror is falling into pieces, you will see that you are falling into pieces because your image will be falling into pieces. But only later on when the mirror has fallen down on the ground into pieces – your image has disappeared – suddenly you find that you are still there; you are not your image!

But that happens, in primitive societies it happens.... People are afraid, if their photograph is taken they are afraid, they are afraid that if somebody burns the photograph, then? Or if somebody insults the photograph, then? Still in primitive communities in india, if you go to an aboriginal society, they don’t want to be photographed because they feel that you are imprisoning them. Then the photograph will be with you and whatsoever you want to do with the photograph you can do. And sometimes death had happen ed with the idea of it.

In the primitive society this goes on: somebody makes an image of someone, does some mantra and things, and kills the image with a sword. the man comes to know and he falls dead, with the belief that he has been killed!

Still in civilised countries effigies are being burned. That is just a primitive idea, as if by burning the effigy you are going to destroy the man.

I will destroy your effigy but not you... mm? Good.

CHAPTER 2

One needs the courage to be oneself

3 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning of prem veeresh. Prem means love and veeresh means courage, and you have to imbibe the spirit of love and courage. Love is the basic quality of the religious man, and out of love, courage grows.]

When I was a small child at school there was a wrestling competition for the whole district; I have never been able to forget that incident.

There was a wrestler, the most famous wrestler in those parts, who was defeated. He was going to be the champion, the district champion or something, and he was defeated by a totally unknown man! The whole crowd laughed in ridicule, people enjoyed it like anything! And I was surprised, everybody was surprised; in a second everybody fell silent, because he also clapped and laughed...

the man who had been defeated! He laughed so uproariously that the whole crowd fell silent in embarrassment; what was the matter with this man? And when they fell silent he laughed even more!

Later on I went to him; he was staying just in front of my house in a temple. And I said, ’This is strange – and I loved it! It was very unexpected!’

He said, ’It was so unexpected, that’s why I also laughed! It was really unexpected. I had never expected that I would be defeated by an ordinary man of whom nobody has ever heard! The whole thing was ridiculous, that’s why I laughed!’

But I have never been able to forget his face, the way he laughed and the way he clapped and the way the whole crowd fell silent. This man defeated the whole crowd and their ridicule... he participated! But great courage is needed!

To me he was the winner, and I told him, ’I am a small child and I cannot say much, but to me you are the winner and I will remember you.’ After twenty years I visited his town and he came to see me.

He was a very old man now, and he said ’Do you remember me? I have not been able to forget your face either – a small child coming to me and saying ”You are the real winner; the other is defeated.

You have defeated the whole crowd.” I have not been able,’ he said, ’to forget your face either.’

A great courage is needed in life to be yourself, in failure, in success, in appreciation, in condemnation, when you are going very high and when you are going very low... and all climates come.

[A sannyasin has recently separated from her lover, and said she still feels very sad. She has tried to make new friends, but feels lonely and sad.

Osho checks her energy.]

A few things, mm? The energy is in a perfectly good space. I can understand why you are feeling lonely but my suggestion is, don’t stuff it with anything too fast; let it have its time. You need it –

this is a very necessary gap, otherwise what happens is that one relationship is there and it ends.

You start feeling lonely; you jump into another relationship. All the rubbish of the first goes on being carried into the second. There has never been a space to clean: one guest has left, another has come in the house, and you had no time to clean. And that is very bad – it will destroy the other relationship That’s how it goes on happening with people.

When you say good-bye to one relationship it takes a little time. It is not so easy to really say good-bye, mm? It goes slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly; slowly, slowly, again you become an individual.

When you are in a relationship you lose your individuality, you become part of a dyad. Then [you and your lover] are really one individual; that’s the meaning of the couple. They suffer together, they are happy together; they are involved in every way with each other. They penetrate each other, they become members of each other. A few parts of his life will get into your parts, a few parts of your life will get into his parts. Mm? it is just as if you have one suitcase his clothes and your clothes are all in it together: everything is mixed up and in a mess.

When you get out of one relationship it is wiser to come out of it completely – slowly, slowly, you again emerge as an individual, because all relationship is against individuality. Hence, for thousands of years, people have left the world of relationship and gone into loneliness, because all relationship is basically against the individual. The relationship encroaches on you, the other starts overlapping you, and then you don’t know who you are. Everything becomes coloured with the other... even small things start becoming coloured with the other.

If you are sitting in a room and there is a chair and [your lover] used to sit on the chair, suddenly,

[he] is there. [He] is no more there, just the chair, but [he] has got involved with the chair. You have always seen him sitting on the chair; that chair was special and he loved it very much. Now that chair is no ordinary chair; for you at least, it has a psychological vibe. So to get out of these vibes it takes time... and you are coming out perfectly well.

When you start becoming an individual you start feeling lonely, you feel lonely. This is not tripping; this is therapeutic... it is not bad.

First, really become lonely! That means that the appetite has arisen again. There are two types of people: one person eats exactly at the time he always eats, he does not wait for the appetite. His lunchtime is there so he eats; he has forgotten what appetite is. All rich people forget what appetite is – before the appetite arises, they eat. A better way of eating is to wait for the appetite. It may not come at twelve – it may come at two or three or it may not come for one day. Next day it will come; it cannot remain not-coming forever.

When the appetite comes food is joy. When the appetite comes, when you have become individual and you start feeling really lonely, you are virgin again. That’s what I mean by being individual. Again all that was your past has disappeared – those dead leaves have fallen. It is no more part of you: you are out of it as a snake moves out of the dead skin, the old skin.

Then it will be easier to find a person You will have better eyes and a better perspective and a better flow. And it will be easier for somebody else to find you: your very appetite will attract somebody.

Right now you will be searching out of misery, not out of appetite – and these are different things.

Right now you will be simply searching for a substitute for [your lover]. [He] is missing; you want another [lover]. Let [him] go completely, be clean of him, and then you will be looking for somebody new. Somebody new is better because you have lived with [your lover], and if you get [him] again that will be miserable. Mm? again the same thing, the same trip will come in.

Wait. My feeling is that the energy is perfectly good. You are just coming out of the relationship; you are emerging: the flood is going, receding. Soon you will become an individual again, as you were before you ever fell in love with anybody.

A person becomes a virgin many times in his life if he can simply wait. Virginity has nothing to do with your body; that is a foolish attitude about virginity: virginity is the purity of the soul. One again becomes virgin in the sense that one is completely finished with the past. You are as fresh as you were when you fell in love for the first time.

Each love is for the first time – remember! And if the love is not for the first time then you are seeking a substitute. You are just missing somebody and you want to put somebody else in his place so that the chair is not empty... but that will not happen. lust wait.

And become happy with your loneliness – because this is good... I was waiting for it. The best thing in life is to attain to your individuality again and again and again; then by and by one becomes capable of a great art. One can fall in love, one can be in love, and remain intact in one’s individuality

– that is the lesson! Mm? then love is just joy, it is never pain; then it never brings any hell.

You are always in it and yet out of it; you never get too overwhelmed. You go into it, you go dancing into it. You enjoy it as much as possible but you remain capable of getting out of it any moment if the climate changes. If something goes wrong you can get out of it with no scar.

So wait a few weeks. Go on meeting people, be friendly, but don’t be hankering – hankering is wrong.

CHAPTER 3

Love is the natural meditation

4 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: If I run a group and the group goes well I feel good, and if not, I feel bad. I wanted to ask you how to avoid this... how can I avoid this dependence?]

Rather than avoiding it... Because it can be avoided but then you will miss something; then the quality of the work will suffer. You can do it in a very detached way; then you will not feel good or glad about it: you simply do your duty, indifferent. You have no involvement in it, you don’t really become a participant. You remain an outsider, a spectator: whatsoever happens is not your business.

This can be done, many people have done this in their life, but then joy disappears. Sadness will disappear, when you fail with somebody there will be no sadness, but together with sadness will go the joy too... and that is not my choice

Rather than avoiding it... We have done that in the east too much; the whole of the east for at least five thousand years has been doing it. It is a very simple trick to avoid pain, but once you avoid pain, unwittingly you have closed the door to pleasure too. So the east is not miserable and is not happy either. This is a very deadly state of affairs.

It is better to be sometimes in pain and sometimes to be in tremendous joy than to become so indifferent and dull and dead. That creates a kind of crust around you and you become indifferent to everything; whatsoever happens is okay. You withdraw into yourself.

That is very disrespectful to people, disrespectful to the work, very destructive to the creative possibilities. It immediately closes all potential for growth and you will become a zombie! Nothing will affect you: if something goes well, it is okay; if something goes bad, that too is okay.

I am not for it – my whole approach is to make you great participants! So the first thing to be understood is: don’t try to avoid it, rather get more involved. When pain comes feel it, when pleasure comes feel it. You will become more sensitive through that. Pain too is good! That has to be evolved, that is what real religion should be or is.

Joy is good... so is the state of sadness: both are aspects of the same energy and both go together like two wheels of a bullock cart. You take one wheel off – the bullock cart stops, falls down; they go together, they help each other. When something goes really deep, when somebody is helped and you see some person flowering into health, into well-being, you feel joy. That is very natural... it is how it should be!

Then you are not only helping the patient, the therapist is also being helped: both grow through it, both attain something. Of course when the patient attains nothing you feel that you have failed.

Nothing is wrong in it. Feel pain because that pain will help you not to commit the same mistake again. That pain will help you to grow more understanding, to find new techniques, new ways to help the person. That will become a creative process.

When you fail you have to see why you have failed. Don’t try to dull that pain of failure.... And don’t call it dependence; it has nothing to do with dependence. When a painter succeeds he feels joy!

When he fails he feels sad; this is how it should be. It has nothing to do with dependence: you are simply in love with your work.

So the first thing is: not to avoid involvement. Get involved, really involved, and the more you get involved, the less will be the possibilities of failure. Because are really involved therapist is bound to transform the energy of the patient; there is no way the patient can avoid or escape. If he escapes from one door you attack him from another door, you corner him somewhere.

And basically he is with you. Superficially he may defend and he may try to prove that you have failed. Superficially he will cling to his illness. Everybody clings to his misery; that’s why he will do all that he can do superficially so that you don’t succeed. Every patient protects and defends, but that’s how you learn the art of his defensiveness and how you find ways and means to destroy that defensiveness.... But deep down he is with you because he wants to be healthy, he wants to be whole; he wants to attain a well-being otherwise he would not have come in the first place!

He is split, that is true; he has two layers. Deep down he wants to become healthy; he is tired of the way he is but up to now he has lived that way. That way has become his very style, that has become part of his ego, so he will not be easily available... although he wants to be, mm?

See the dichotomy of the human mind: although he wants to be cured, he wants well-being, he wants a new way of life, he wants to tackle his problems in a new light and with a new consciousness – all that he wants, that’s why he has come to you – the moment you start hammering on his armour he starts shrinking and protecting because that armour is also his. His deep consciousness is ready to move into the future; his superficial consciousness is clinging with the past. So watch it... and you have to be really involved!

If you are indifferent you will not be helpful at all – then you will fail more and more. If the failure does not bring pain to you why should you bother to succeed? Then it is his business! If he wants your help he will take it, if he does not want, he will not. But people are not so simple and so uncomplicated.

They want your help and yet they will destroy your help; that’s how things are. They desire to be helped and they will create all kinds of hindrances. This split is so deep that just by saying, it cannot be dropped; you will have to work on it... so get involved in it.

The patient is your painting, the patient Is your poem, the patient is your music. If the instrument is not cooperating with you, you fix it: you tie the wires or loosen the wires. You do everything... you are involved in it! You are not dependent on the instrument. You don’t say, ’I don’t care; if the wires of this guitar are loose it is okay. I don’t bother, I am not dependent on this instrument’... but then the music will be destroyed.

You have to be involved in it! When you have taken the responsibility of helping a man, then it is your business too as much as his. And sometimes there are moments when it is more your business than his, because your responsibility is greater than his.

He is in a mess, he goes on destroying his own well-being; he is neurotic. You are not in that mess, you can see the whole point more clearly than he can. He is too close to it; you have a little perspective, a distance – you can see it. Your responsibility is great so don’t become indifferent and don’t withdraw into yourself.

If the patient is trying to defend himself and trying to make you fail, let it be a challenge. That will create a real therapist in you. Give him a good fight! Now it is not only a question of him, it is your problem also. If you don’t give him a good fight you are failing. When therapy fails it is not only that the patient has failed to cooperate – on a deeper level it is the therapist who has failed to participate.

And remember: the responsibility of the therapist is more always because he is in a better position.

In Soviet Russia, when a student fails the teacher is thought to be responsible – that’s right, absolutely right – and he has to answer for it. That should be the case all over the world.

When a student fails the teacher has a responsibility. What was he doing for the whole year? The student has come from a lower class, he has passed the lower examination so he was capable of understanding whatsoever was being taught.

Somehow the teacher has been missing his

responsibilities, avoiding. That is the only country – in that way I appreciate the soviet system –

where the teacher has to be responsible: he will have to answer if a student fails.

One of my friends was there, he was a professor in Leningrad university in Russia. He was a professor of sanskrit and he had only seven students. As things go in India – he was a professor here before he went there – you can’t pass all the students. That is a tacit understanding – that all cannot be passed, a few have to fail, otherwise people will think that you are biased; you have passed all the students.

So when he checked the papers he found that they were all passable, but thinking that people would think he had been too biased.... He was their professor and the examiner too, because in the soviet system they say that the person who has been with the students for the whole year knows the students far better than anybody else. In india it is not so: the teacher cannot be the examiner because he will be partial. A new examiner has to come who does not know the students at all so he can remain impartial.

He was the teacher and he was the examiner, it was on his recommendation they were to be passed, so he was very much afraid because they were all passable. He told me that he failed two and passed five. He was immediately called up by the head of the department who said, ’You will be in trouble! Why did these two students fail? What were you doing the whole year? Your salary will be reduced!’

My friend could not understand it... what was this? If two students failed that was their responsibility

– how was he concerned? But the attitude was: what had he been doing for two years with these two students? If they were not up to the standard he should have worked more on them rather than on the other five: the weaker should have got more attention.

I understand – this approach is far better: the teacher should be responsible for the taught, the healer should be responsible for the healees and the doctor should be responsible for the patient.

So don’t try to avoid and don’t try to withdraw yourself. Get more involved, and the more you are involved, the less is the possibility of failure. And each failure when it brings pain, has to be accepted.

That is part of life, part of the game – you can’t always succeed. And that will not be much joy either, if you always succeed. Sometimes failure is a good change... so pain is good, pain is as good as pleasure.

This is my approach: accept pain and pleasure both, and when pain comes start finding ways to do better next time; that will help you to grow. Otherwise you will become an Indian, and I don’t want to make you an Indian at all, mm?

Your work is good – work with greater involvement, with greater commitment, mm Good!

[The therapist who gives individual primal sessions was present with her client. She says that it could have gone on longer, and she used some esoteric group techniques as well.]

One thing: no process is ever complete and cannot be by its very nature, so do the utmost you can

– bring it as close to completion as possible – but no process can ever be complete because life goes on.

The process has a limitation with those seven days or seventy days or seven years – that doesn’t matter – but life will go on beyond the process. So all processes have a limitation. They help, they give you a new insight, you can change your life through that insight, but no process can give you the real thing so that you can feel ’Now it is complete’. And it is good that it is so, because if the process can give you the real thing what will you do in life?

The process can give you only a taste of it, a very tiny taste of it; then you have to develop that taste in your life, you have to make your whole climate according to it. And then too it will never be complete until you die, because even if it is complete the day before you die, then what will you do about that one day? So each process has a certain limitation, but we should try to bring it to its utmost, to its maximum, to its optimum.

But you will always feel that; in fact the more you succeed with a person, the more you will feel it.

Because things were going so well and the person was succeeding and cooperating and things were happening; then suddenly you see that it is not complete. If the person were not going anywhere you wouldn’t bother – you wouldn’t expect it to ever be complete: you would know from the very beginning that it would not be complete.

But when a person is really going into it and still you come to a point where you feel ’Now, the process is finished’.... It is not a question of just extending time. Again after two days you will feel the same, after years the same will be felt, because life goes on and the process ends somewhere; life will go beyond it.

So all that has to be understood, and you have to make it clear to every person who passes through primal therapy that this is just to give him a glimpse, a faraway glimpse of the Himalayas; then he has to travel. It is just that the window opens for a second; then he has to come out of the house, to travel... and the journey is long.

The therapist has succeeded if he opened the window for a single moment. That is enough, more than enough... even that seems impossible. If the therapist has created the desire that the process should continue more, enough! Then he has succeeded: the patient has felt something is happening.

Now, that something that is happening has to be taken care of by the patient – the therapist cannot go on too long. And sometimes to go on too long with a patient can be dangerous, can be harmful: the patient may start depending on the therapist. The therapist has not to become a substitute for the therapy.

It happens – a psychoanalyst becomes a substitute. Whenever you are going to be analysed it is good, you feel good; when you stop the analysis you again start feeling bad so you have to go again.

It can be prolonged for years, and it will always remain the same. Then you have become addicted to the therapy, to the therapist, to a particular process: it has not been of help, it has become a crutch.

So sometimes if you feel to and it is possible, it can be extended for one day or two days; but always remember the process is never going to end. You will never feel that now your work is finished with this person; it cannot be so. Nothing ever ends in life – this is something to be understood.

We say ’a child is born’. We should not say that – language creates the trouble: the birth continues.

The child is not just born at a certain moment, at seven o’clock in the morning, and then starts living, no. He will continue to be born till he dies, so it is a continuous birth process for seventy years.

The first day is not the birthday, it is just the beginning of the process of birth, and then he will be born and born and born and born. Again and again in a thousand and one ways he will go on growing. The process ends only at death, and that too, only apparently.

Those who have known deeply, they say it never ends: beyond this life it will continue into another life. It ends only when a person has attained enlightenment; then the life wheel stops. Then there is no birth and no more birthing.

So all these techniques are helpful, are of tremendous help, but to just give a glimpse. And when that glimpse comes the person naturally feels something more is possible. The person is thrilled: something is stirring. He can feel it, he can feel the kick inside. It is almost like when a woman feels the kick of the baby in the womb for the first time. Now she becomes alert: life is there. Something exactly like that clicks sometimes – with that click, more desire arises to have more of it.

Make the person very, very alert about it, that this has to be followed in life. Mm? whatsoever you have understood, experienced, whatsoever has become clear to you, whatsoever clarity has come, transform that clarity into your day-to-day life rather than thinking that it can be completed; it cannot be completed.

But if you have time you can give... one or two days more – it is perfectly okay, mm?

[The client then says: The reason I felt to ask to continue a couple of days is that I feel as if I’m using my energy against myself.]

Mm mm, everybody is doing that, everybody is doing that... otherwise we would not be in misery at all! On one hand we go in this direction, on another we pull ourselves into another direction, so we never go anywhere: we are stuck. You are moving for the whole of your life and yet are stuck, going here and there but never really going anywhere because we go on destroying whatsoever we create; our energy is against ourselves.

We are self-destructive, we are suicidal people. Man is the only animal who commits suicide... and that suicide is not only for those who really commit suicide. Mm? – slowly, in a very homeopathic dose, everybody does it. On one plane of your being you love a person – on another plane you hate; you go on destroying your love.

And that happens in therapy very much. You have gone into the therapy to cooperate, but your whole past is there, it cannot be just dropped like that. It is there... it will put up great resistance.

The therapy is against it: the therapy is trying to take you out of your past, to bring you out of your attachments in the past.

Even if the therapy takes you to the past it is only to take you out of it. If it makes you travel backwards it is just to see where you are clinging, where you are still hooked, so that you can unhook from that point and your energy can start flowing.

So therapy is against the past, primal therapy particularly is against the past; it makes you free of the past – hence it takes you into the past so that once you have gone into it thoroughly, intelligently, deliberately, you can destroy all the places where your energy is caught. Once those spaces are destroyed your energy is fully available to grow, to move into the future – you are free of the past. To be free of the past is to be free.

So the past will give all kinds of resistance. It is your ego! The whole past, whatsoever you have done, whatsoever you have thought, whatsoever you have been, that is all your ego. You will not relax easily. It is as if relaxing against yourself, but by and by one understands that the past is not you.

You are always the potential, never the actual. That which has become actual is no more you; it is finished. It is as if you travelled on a path for two miles... now it is finished. Yes, your footprints are left on the path but that is not you – you are here. And if you look deeply into yourself you are only the potentiality to go on moving.

You are the present and the future – you are the future through the present. The past is no more and you are not it, but we are identified with the past so whenever there is a conflict between past and future this will be so. One part of you, your real being, will go with the future and your unreal being will go with the past, and there will be great tension in you.

But to understand it is to go beyond it. You have done well – you can have one or two days more, mm? It will be good.

[A sannyasin was in the massage group and feels that still, after the groups he has done here, he has much anger and hate inside: I hate everything – the people and everything.]

Very good – something is happening! There are people to whom even hate doesn’t happen. You are alive! If hate is happening, soon love will be coming.

Just let me see your energy – raise your hands....

These are the three states.... People can be very cold, then nothing comes: no hate, no love – they are just frozen. That’s how you are – frozen deep down, very frozen.

There is some reason why you are frozen: you must have controlled yourself too much, you must have disciplined yourself in some way; you have never allowed yourself any foolish thing. And the only way not to allow oneself is to become just like an ice block, then you are in control. And the society also likes such people, who are ice blocks, because they are predictable, not dangerous.

They will not become saints but they will not become sinners either. They are very good people, respectable people. They never go to the extremes: they are never hot so extremes are not possible.

Millions of people live in this cold -’fridge’. That’s why when you start moving into encounter or groups like that which stir you, which try to melt you, hate first will come – anger, aggression, violence –

and then you will become afraid and will shrink again because that will create fear.

You want love, you want compassion, you want good things; everybody is searching for good things, and in the search you find these things! You shrink back; you say ’Something is going wrong’... but that is the way one can move towards love. First will come hate – if you can pass through the hate courageously, hate itself turns into love. First you will pass through anger, violence, aggression, and the same energy turns into compassion. Nobody can become a saint without becoming a sinner, otherwise adam would not have been expelled. There is no way to become a saint before you go into the world of sin.

So you are just living in a cold space... but it is good that something has stirred. Right now you controlled again – nothing was coming: no anger, no hatred, nothing. Mm? you are afraid of that.

You have to drop that fear, otherwise you will never come to love... and not to love is to miss the whole of life.

[Osho suggests he do individual primal therapy and turns to the primal therapist.... ]

Go deeply. He has great potentiality because he is a land which has not been used for any crop, so he is cold but has great potential. If once he accepts seeds he is going to yield a great crop.

(to the sannyasin) So in a way you are in a bad shape and in a way in a very good shape! Mm? the potential is there ready to explode. If you help it a little you will flower.

Do primal, mm? Nothing to be worried about – I am here! You are going to melt!

CHAPTER 4

Will divides, awareness unites

6 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asks about the pattern her relationships seem to fall into: I feel very attracted to a kind of power, aura, and then in the end it’s very destructive for me.... I find myself loving that person a lot and then they tell me that they don’t really think that they’re interested in me.]

There are a few things to be understood.... One is, you have a subtle perceptivity, you can feel people’s auras – and that disturbs. Whenever a person has that, it is a disturbing phenomenon.

If you can feel the aura of the person in some way, you know something about the person that the person himself does not know. You are bound to get in difficulty because you will react to the knowledge that comes through the aura, and that person does not know anything about it so he will not feel related to you. You will be missing the target – he will be by the side. You are aiming at his unconscious and he does not know anything about it.

This happens to perceptive people: if you know more than the person himself knows, then it will be a difficult relationship. If you feel more than the person does about himself, then it is going to be on the rocks. And this happens to many women, women are more intuitive than men, they see more than the man knows about himself. And that creates trouble... that creates a kind of embarrassment too.

When you can see through the person it is very embarrassing – the person will never be able to forgive you. Somehow he also feels that you are right but still he cannot accept it. He will start avoiding you, he will start getting further away from you.

Ordinarily women are more perceptive but you are extraordinarily perceptive – you can feel exactly.

That capacity can become of great benefit to you, it can become a great harm; it depends how you use it... and you don’t know how to use it. Up to now it has been just there, accidentally.

Now, we will manage: it can be used in a very very creative way. But always remember the distinction

– that when you see something more in the person of which he is not aware, it is better to keep it a secret. Don’t bring it in; don’t let the person be aware that you know something of which he is not aware. First he will deny it, he will reject it, he will fight, he will be resistant, and then he will be angry. And if you persist, sooner or later the relationship will be broken.

Your relationship can only go well with somebody who has the same perceptivity, who can see into you, also, in the same depth. Then there will be no problem; then he will be able to see himself also in the same depth.

You can relate only with a certain kind of person... otherwise you will not be able to relate with anybody and everybody. They may be good people but you will not be able to relate with them; something is missing.

It is almost as if a person who has eyes wants to relate with a blind man. Something is missing with the blind man. If the man with the eyes is moving with the blind man, the blind man will feel angry many times because he will stumble and the other will not stumble; he will start feeling very very jealous. He cannot believe that you have eyes any more than he has, that you are more talented in any way. And men particularly are very hurt when they see that the woman is very talented.

This has been one of the greatest calamities in human history: because women have never been appreciated for their talents, they have by and by retarded their talents. Because a retarded woman was appreciated more, a foolish woman was appreciated more: she just had to have a beautiful, proportionate body and no mind, nothing more. She should be a cow – with no intelligence, with no inter-penetrating awareness. That was expected, otherwise the man would feel embarrassed, hurt.

So women have learned a trick down the ages – that the rule of the game is that the woman should not show her talents. If she is intelligent she should pretend she is stupid. If she is creative she should not do anything. She should confine her creativity to small household things – the drawing room and the kitchen and things like that. She should not do anything that can hurt the ego of the man: she should not write poetry, she should not be a painter, she should not sculpt – otherwise the man feels inferior.

This male ego does not allow a woman to have any say... and she has a few qualities which the man does not have and cannot have in that proportion. All that is intuitive is more available to women than to men; all that is intellectual is more available to men than to women. Man appreciates intellect, naturally. he has intellect so he appreciates it, and he condemns intuition: he calls it blind faith, nonsense, stupidity, superstition. He condemns it because he has not got it.

In the middle ages the women who were called witches and were burned were really very perceptive women. The male could not tolerate it, the priest could not tolerate. The whole church has remained male-dominated, the whole christian community is male. Not a single woman is involved in the trinity; the whole hierarchy is male.

It was not really against witchcraft, it was against woman. One day or other when history is written rightly, it will be shown that the movement was not against witchcraft. Witchcraft has nothing to do with it; it was man against woman. It was intelligence against intuition; it was reason against something which is irrational but very powerful.

Those witches were burned, killed, murdered, tortured, and out of fear the woman shrank from the world into her own self. She became afraid! If she showed any kind of talent she was thought to be a witch. If the man showed the same kind of talent he became a saint. He was worshipped as a miracle-man and the woman would become a witch. She was in the hands of the devil and the man was a specially sanctioned person from god himself... and it was the same quality!

You have that quality very clearly there so you need to be a little more alert. Don’t bring it into your relationship otherwise relationship will not be possible. Mm? avoid it – if you want to relate with a person keep it aside. You can use it with people to whom you are not relating sexually or in any other way. You can use it and it will grow... and help it to grow.

You can become a perfect witch! Mm? (laughter) And we will need them soon – witches we will need! We are going to open witches’ covens.

[A sannyasin says he noticed in the vipassana group, and in other groups, that something stops him being total in things.]

If you are alert, by and by it will go – only alertness is needed. There are a few things which start changing when the alertness starts growing; this is one of them. It is not needed that you do anything else, because if you do something, if I tell you to do something, you will do that half-heartedly too, mm? So it cannot take you out of the problem – the problem persists. The only thing that you need is to watch.

When you see that you are doing something half-heartedly, watch, watch it perfectly. Out of that watchfulness you will see that a little more energy is moving towards work. But go on watching.

Don’t force, because the moment you force it, it may shrink back. Enforced, it is not going to change, by will power it is not going to be changed – just by awareness.

There is a difference to be understood: will always divides and awareness always unites. When you are aware, you are one; when you will something, you are two. It is as if the moment you will, you become the rider on the horse. The horse and the rider are two: the rider trying to force the horse in some direction and the horse resisting.

When you try through will, you are a rider on the horse, you are divided into two: then your mind is one and your body is another. There is a continuous conflict, a fight, and that fight dissipates much energy. Rather than helping it, it makes you more and more weak, and again and again you will feel frustrated. Because the horse is powerful, the real power belongs to the horse. The rider has no power really; it is just a mind thing. The real power belongs to the horse but the rider has the idea

’I am the master’. The idea of the master is in the rider and the real power is in the horse, so again and again the rider is going to be frustrated. And the more you get frustrated – the more you feel it is impossible, that you cannot do it, it is not going to happen – the more you will lose confidence.

This is what happens to people who try will. I am not for will at all, because will divides you.

In awareness, the rider is no more separate from the horse. You are a centaur, one whole: that horse is nothing but your legs and the rider is nothing but your consciousness; you are one. Awareness in a sudden enlightening, makes you one, and out of that oneness by and by you will move more totally into things. So just keep alert – don’t force, don’t be a fighter. What can be done?

If you are doing something and only half-heartedly – you are dancing and you feel that you are dancing half-heartedly – watch. Okay, go on doing it half-heartedly and go on observing that half of your being is not participating. lust watch: the horse is dancing and the rider is not participating or the rider is dancing and the horse is not participating. You become a watcher – this watching will break these two.

One day out of watching comes fusion. Suddenly you are one, and in that moment you will see that you are dancing totally or you have stopped totally; both are good. I am not saying that you should dance totally – that is not the point; even if you stop totally, that’s good. To be total is good. Either go totally, or stop totally – either way you become integrated; half-heartedly, you never become integrated. So don’t bring will in – bring more awareness.

CHAPTER 5

Sannyas is pure adventure

7 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

First, a few things about sannyas.... It is an initiation into the formless. It is not an initiation into some rigid form, it is not giving you a certain discipline – on the contrary it is an initiation into freedom, into a formless creative chaos.

The old concept of sannyas all over the world was to give you a rigid discipline, to give you a character, to give you a certain form, a pattern, a life style. My sannyas is not like that at all; it is a radical charge. I don’t give you any character, because to me the man of character is a dead man.

I would like to take all character from you so you are left in a creative chaos... so each moment one has to respond to life, not out of a certain pattern. The pattern comes from the past, and if the pattern predominates, the past predominates, and to be guided by the past is to be guided by death.

The past is dead.

To respond in the moment without any pattern, just out of spontaneity – whatsoever the feeling of the moment decides, to act just like that – is what I call ’creative chaos’... a characterless consciousness, a present without past, a freedom unhindered by any discipline. This very process of relaxing into freedom is what brings a person to reality. The more we are, the less the reality is; the less we are, the more reality.

We are a kind of resistance: what we call the ego, the personality, is nothing but a kind of resistance to reality. It is a kind of frozenness, it is a kind of fear and greed. It is a kind of private idiocy – that you would like to live your own life. It is against the universal and the total, hence it brings misery.

Sannyas means: now I will live in the universal. I will not have any private opinion of life – I will let the whole decide; I will not pretend the part is the whole. I will no more be decisive on my own. I will allow the decision to arise in my consciousness and take possession of me.

To live that way is to live the life of a sannyasin. It is utterly beautiful, utterly blessed, but great courage is needed because you don’t have a guide, you don’t have a particular form; you cannot depend on the past. One has to move from the unknown to the unknown and one never knows what is going to happen next moment, where one is going to land. There is no security in it, no safety in it; it is pure adventure.

So I don’t make you a hindu, I don’t make you a Christian or a Mohammedan; I simply make you a non-being. And there is every possibility that the freedom can grow in you. Just a slight push, just a little courage. And you are on the brink; the jump can happen any moment. It will not need any preparation – it will need only courage.

In fact, preparation is a kind of cowardice: people prepare to avoid the fact that they are cowards.

When you are not a coward there is no need for any preparation. And all illumination is sudden, it is not gradual. It is not that slowly, slowly, you become blessed, no. Just a single moment before you were in misery and a single moment afterwards all misery has disappeared: it is a quantum leap.

This is the very revolution that this new kind of sannyas brings into life. So from this moment keep a little alert not to allow the past to interfere. Let the present moment be decisive; let it gain more power. And don’t think too much of the consequences. The man who thinks of consequences becomes a coward.

This moment, whatsoever feels right, do it – whatsoever the consequences. Don’t be too considerate of the consequences.

We consider the consequences too much and we go on missing the opportunity. The opportunity is only for those who can take it, so don’t be at all concerned about the consequences and the results; they come on their own.

If one acts totally in the present a beautiful future is automatically created. If you have been loving in this moment, the next moment is going to be of greater love, obviously, because it will grow out of this moment; it cannot come from anywhere else. You need not worry about it.

A man who becomes courageous enough to live in the present starts creating a future without even thinking about it. And a man who is not courageous and goes on thinking about consequences, pros and cons – what will happen if he does this and what will happen if he does that – goes on missing the present. And naturally he goes on missing the future too, because if you don’t sow the seeds now there is not going to be any morrow.

Tomorrow again you will be thinking about another tomorrow because when tomorrow comes it comes as today. You become accustomed to the habit of thinking always of the tomorrow and the tomorrow never comes. So only this moment is, and to live in this moment as if it is absolute – no past, no future – is what sannyas is all about.

It needs tremendous courage and it is the greatest adventure there is, but it brings great ecstasies

– unimagined, never even dreamt about. It brings great joy, great celebration... and unmotivated, uncaused: one simply feels joyful for no particular reason at all.

When joy is without any reason it is divine; when it has some reason it is ordinary, it is just worldly.

You have won a lottery and are feeling happy; a friend has come to see you and you are feeling happy – but your feeling happy is dependent on causes. Those causes will disappear soon and then you will become unhappy. So the same causes that create happiness will create unhappiness, and one goes on moving in this vicious circle.

The search is to find a joy which is uncaused. One simply is joyful for no reason at all... one is joyful because one is.

Prem means love, madhu has two meanings – one meaning is honey, sweetness, another meaning is wine – and love has both the qualities: it is sweet and it is intoxicating. It is as sweet as honey; in fact there is no other sweetness in life except love. It is only love that makes you sweet, it is only love that gives grace and dignity. It is only love that takes away all bitterness of life: through it all thorns simply disappear and one starts blooming into a thousand and one lotuses.

It is the only honey and it is a wine too. It makes you intoxicated with life – and to be intoxicated with life is to become religious, because to me life is god and to be utterly intoxicated with it is to be in god.

Deva means divine, pushava means celebration. And religion to me is not a fast but a feast. It is not serious, it is festive. So don’t think about religion or about your sannyas in a serious way. Take it easy... in a playful mood.

It looks profane to think of god as fun but god is fun. And once we start thinking of god as fun, we can relax; the tension disappears and the guilt too. Otherwise god becomes such a serious affair that people become very sad about it. When they cannot find a way they become more and more repressed, depressed. and more and more they start feeling that they are unworthy and a great guilt arises. They start feeling that they are condemned, foredoomed. And the whole nonsense happens because from the very beginning they have been taught or they have been thinking that god is a serious affair – god is not!

This whole existence is a very non-serious play, it is leela.

So that is the meaning of your name and that meaning has to be brought to your consciousness more and more. Mm? you have to absorb it. So dance, sing, celebrate – let that be your approach towards god.

[A sannyasin says: Osho, for a long time I’ve been feeling relatively negative.... Just lately I’ve been having positive feelings... but I find that I’m being more selfish, more arrogant... How can I destroy my ego and yet retain my competence?]

Nobody can destroy the ego because the very effort to destroy it will create a new ego. One can only understand the ego, and through understanding it disappears. It cannot be destroyed, it simply disappears.

It cannot be destroyed because in the first place it is not an entity, it is like a shadow. You cannot fight with the shadow: you cannot have a sword and kill the shadow, you cannot burn the shadow.

The fire will be impotent, the sword will be meaningless. The shadow cannot be killed that way and if you fight the shadow with a sword you will finally come to the conclusion that the shadow is very strong, more strong than the sword.

If you try to destroy the shadow by fire you will naturally conclude that the fire is impotent, the shadow is so strong it cannot be burned, but the reality is that the shadow is not, that’s why it cannot be burned and cannot be cut by a sword. One has simply to understand: the ego is not an entity, it is not something that you can destroy. You cannot shatter it on the floor. It is nothing, just a shadow, so you have to look into it, that’s all.

So don’t be in any hurry – just go on looking. When it arises, just watch where it is, what it is, and watch very very carefully, patiently. The more alert you become about it, the more you start recognising it and its subtleties – because it is very subtle. It comes in a very round-about way, it comes very indirectly. It never confronts you from the front, it comes from the back door.

So just watch it, become more and more watchful. The more you watch, the less it will be: one day when watchfulness has become perfect, it is not there. And you will laugh then, you will say ’It was never there, I was just not alert!’

To me the ego is absence of alertness – just as darkness is absence of light: you bring light and darkness disappears. Don’t fight with darkness otherwise it will never disappear. Just bring light, burn a candle, and that will do!

So become more and more alert about it – one thing, mm?

And negativity always comes to everybody. It is only after negativity that the positivity arises. To some people positivity comes first, then they become negative; to some people negativity comes first and then they become positive. But everybody who is around here has to pass through both the phases; they are like day and night.

So don’t be worried about that either, it is natural: the mind changes its climate. Sometimes you will be negative, and when you are negative you will be very very negative, mm? because you are an extremist – that I can see. When you are negative, you will be very very negative; when you are positive, you will be very very positive – you will never be lukewarm... but perfectly good!

Enjoy while you are positive and enjoy while you are negative. Enjoy the no when you are negative and enjoy the yes when you are positive... and both are beautiful! Nothing is wrong in the no, no is as beautiful as yes.

Enjoy both and remain watchful.

By and by for a few times you will move in the wheel –

positive/negative, positive/negative – then you will see the whole pointlessness of it. When you see the pointlessness of it a totally different quality comes to your mind which is neither positive nor negative; only that day do you become my sannyasin!

By being positive you don’t become my sannyasin – don’t carry that idea in your head. Many people think that when they are positive they are really with me. They are not, because the positive will be superseded sooner or later by the negative: the day will end in night.

And those who are negative feel very much disturbed that they are not with me. They feel so far away and so against and they start feeling guilt. Nothing to be worried about! The night is going to end in day soon; every night ends in morning.

But whether you are in the positive or in the negative, both ways you are not yet with me: you are in your mind. Listening to it, seeing it, going into it many times, you will become capable of coming out of both. That’s what transcendence is: when you come out of both. And then you are with me –

nobody can take you away from me; all barriers have disappeared. Then there is no yes and no no.

There is pure love... without any conditions. That’s going to happen – don’t be worried!

[The leader of the chanting group says that someone has told her that the sanskrit words used in the mantras are being mispronounced. She’s been having difficulty in being both spontaneous and correct.]

Don’t bother too much about sanskrit and grammar and language; that will destroy the whole joy of it. You will become too much concerned with the rules of the language and the pronunciation and this and that, and that is not the real thing.

So last time (when the group came to darshan) it was not as it could have been. Invent! The english language is as divine as any sanskrit: any sound which feels aesthetic and beautiful, any sound which creates a thrill and joy in the heart, will do.

Even if it doesn’t belong to any language – that is not the point at all – you can find just pure sounds that are more deep-going. Because when you use a certain word it has certain meanings; those meanings create a limitation. When you use a pure sound it has no limitations: it is infinite.

For example, if you say ’ram’ it has a limitation: the hindu idea of god and everything is there. If you say ’allah’ it has a limitation: the mohammedan concept is there to define it. If you say ’aum’

the whole indian mind is behind it. For centuries they have repeated the word, they have put much energy into it, they have put much meaning into it. All that meaning is put in.

But you can find any sound which has no meaning, which belongs to no tradition; you can be inventive, and then there are no rules and no limitations, and no problems. and you can go more deeply into it. The whole thing is how to be lost in it, how to become the sound. When you are thinking about the grammar you cannot become the sound. Mm? the mind goes on keeping watch

– something may go wrong. You cannot go very deep.

So forget all grammar, forget all language; use any words and any sounds that you feel like. the whole point to remember is that the people who are chanting should be completely lost in it; they should become drunk.

So the best was your ’allah’, mm? that day – that was the best – because people were really getting into it, and the reason was that no Mohammedan has been teaching you! Otherwise there are flaws, and then if a Mohammedan comes and he feels that this is wrong and you should not say it this way, then you will be disturbed.

[The Indian] disturbed you because she told you that sanskrit language has to be pronounced this way and that – she disturbed... no need! It is good for her because for her it is not a problem but for you it will become a problem and it will not lead you where I want you to go. And for everybody it will become a problem.

And the second thing: when you come next time you should not do too many, mm? because when you do too many you don’t get into it. Two are enough; fifteen minutes each will do. And when you are doing it there (in Radha Hall where the groups practise) do four – fifteen minutes will do, or even sometimes thirty minutes... because the longer you go the deeper you go. In fact near around forty minutes one enters the unconscious depth.

So there is no need to change, because we are not worried about how many mantras you chanted; that is not the point. One mantra will do, but if you get into it then let it be there and go on and on and on and on so you completely lose yourself in it.

So when you do it here, you can do either one mantra or two at the most.

[She then asks if they can use percussion instruments.]

You will become like the music group...

Mm, then it will lose its distinctiveness....

It is better to keep to sound, only sound, because that again is a different thing. Then you become more interested in the music and the music affects you – not your own sound. And chanting should be free of all instruments so a person can do it anywhere. If he is sitting in the forest or on the river bank or in his bedroom, he can do it. It should not be attached to anything that is needed; it should not have any requirement, just his own sound is enough.

Don’t do that, mm? Just sound is good.

The whole point is: don’t be too much worried about the letter... just the spirit. You can use words, I’m not saying not to. You can use hindu words, you can use christian words, you can use mohammedan words; that is not the problem. Just don’t be too much worried about the letter. And if somebody comes, tell them that Osho is not insistent upon that, his insistence is to go into it and forget about yourself – so we are not worried about the grammar.

Many people will come, particularly these people. There are always stupid people who look for the non-essential. If they see that you are doing a mantra and that you are not pronouncing it rightly they become too concerned – as if something is going very very wrong or some sin is being committed.

Don’t be bothered by these, just tell them that you are not concerned. That’s what I am saying, that if you invent some words, some sounds, that will be perfectly good. Then nobody can come and say

’What are you doing?’ You are always right, mm?

y

CHAPTER 6

Sipping tea can be prayer

8 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

A few things about sannyas.... The oldest concept of sannyas was very life-negative, it was utterly against life, but my idea of concept is absolutely life-affirmative. Nothing has to be dropped, everything has to be transformed. All that is available is immensely valuable: anything denied will never allow you to be whole, and if you are not whole you can never be holy.

So the old sannyas was an unholy sannyas: it accepted only part of life, it denied the remaining part. It accepted the mind, it denied the body; it accepted love but it denied sex; it accepted god but it denied the world... and they are all together. There is no demarcation between where the world ends and god begins. God is in the world, the world is in god. In fact these are two terms for the same phenomenon. Looked at rightly it is god, looked at wrongly it is the world. The world is only a distorted vision of god... but there is no other world! It is god reflected in a distorted mind. Once the distortion disappears and the mind is at peace, the world becomes divine.

So the old sannyas was an unholy sannyas because it never led anybody to the wholeness of life. It was very perfectionistic – I am not perfectionistic at all.

Perfection is a kind of neurosis. The moment a person tries to become perfect he is getting ready to enter trouble. He is bound to become more and more mad and he will lose all contact with real life.

He will start living an unreal life, the life of the ideals, which is just fictitious. And because of those fictions he will condemn himself because he will always feel he is falling short, that he is never up to the mark. So great guilt arises... and all the old religions have done that: they have created a guilty humanity. Rather than transforming humanity they have made humanity very poisoned.

They have not been of help, they have been of immense harm, and the fundamental harm is: if you can create guilt in a man, no more harm can be done. That is the last harm that you can do to a man. He will never be at ease with himself, he will never be at home with himself, and he will be constantly fighting.

Life is a mystery to be lived, a song to be sung... not a war to be fought. Life is not your enemy. You come out of life, you are part of it, it is your mother, and you will be going back to it.

So my sannyas is absolutely life-affirmative, hence it is wholistic rather than perfectionistic. I don’t want you to become perfect human beings; they are bores. It is very difficult to tolerate a perfect man. Just be total and whole... that is very different. You can be whole right now, listening to me, you can be whole. Drinking water you can be whole if your drinking is total. Making love to your woman you can be whole if you are totally in it. Totality is not an ideal; it is not somewhere in the future to be fulfilled. Each moment of life it can be lived and can be lived very easily.

So, my sannyas is life-affirmative: I am utterly in love with life. It is non-perfectionistic, it is non-guilt-creating; it does not teach you to condemn anything in you or in anybody else. It makes you more and more aware of all the limitations of life and yet helps you to enjoy within all those limitations. They are there but there is no need to be worried about them... in fact those limitations are protections.

Let this sannyas be a great love affair with life itself... and there is no other god. If you can find life, you have found god....

Deva means divine, praghosh means a declaration – a divine declaration. And that’s how each sannyasin has to be; but this is not to be an ideal! Each moment of life – cleaning the floor or taking a shower or just chit-chatting with a friend or sipping a cup of tea – ordinary things of life have to be declarations of god.

Yes, you can drink the tea in such a way that it becomes prayer, that it becomes a great gratitude towards god. And that is the meaning of praghosh....

So get in tune with the new name; let the old slip out of the mind. Sometimes miracles happen only by dropping the old name because our whole identity is attached with it. With the dropping of the old name, the whole past becomes irrelevant. You become discontinuous with it; you start from abc again. Now you will have to find out who this praghosh is. Again you will have to look, again you will have to search. The known, the familiar is no more there; you again become unknown. That’s the beauty of the new name – it is a new beginning, a new birth.

[A sannyasin says that he’s been doing Sufi mediations with Ilyat Khan for the past four years. Very good! says Osho, and suggests that he do the hypnotherapy group here. It will give you much clarity about what you have been doing, Osho says, because in the name of many meditations we are really using hypnosis. Once you consciously know that, things become different.]

Anand means bliss and maya means magic. And bliss is almost a magic – it is not a science, it is not even art; it is just magic.

If you want to be blissful you can be this very moment: just by desiring it, it is there. People are so miserable because they want to be miserable. That is their magical trick, that is the magic they are playing on themselves... notwithstanding what they say.

They may go to many people – to the psychoanalyst, to the guru – to find out ways to get out of their misery but they don’t want really to get out of it, because if you want to get out of it nobody is barring the way. The door is open; you can simply get out! It is not even locked and nobody is guarding it; nobody is going to prevent you. It is your magic that you have played upon yourself. Misery is magic... so is bliss.

The day somebody understands it he can create his own reality. Then it is up to you: you can be blissful, you can be miserable, you can create hell and you can create heaven – whatsoever you want.

The word magic is meaningful. It is the oldest science in the world, and the people who lived with magical ideas were the liveliest people – the pagans.

Once this is understood – that we create our world, that it is our mind-projection, that whatsoever comes on the screen is projected by us – once this is understood, then there is no problem. If you want to see a horrible thing you can; that is your decision, your joy to see it.

That is the exact meaning of the word maya: that the world is magic – you create it. And everybody lives in his own world, it is not one world: fifty persons are sitting here, there are fifty worlds sitting here and each is living in his own world. We never come across each other’s worlds but sometimes if we do, there is always clash. That’s what happens in love: two persons come very close – their two different kinds of magic start clashing.

There are as many worlds as there are people – and when I say people I include the trees and the rocks and the animals and the birds, because they create their own magic! A tree lives in its own magic world.

This, rightly understood, becomes a great key, it becomes a great secret; then you can change and transform.

And my feeling is that you can do it very easily, that’s why I am giving you this name. Start playing around with this idea. One morning, decide to be miserable... and be miserable! See how you can create it. Another morning decide that you are going to be happy and blissful, and create it. Within a month you will be surprised at how strange it is, that you can do it.

The day you create the blissfulness everything in the world helps your bliss, and the day you create misery everything in the world helps your misery. The world is always there to help you. God is always available; whatsoever you decide, he is ready to help you. He will not even prevent you from going into hell! That is the dignity of man, the freedom – if you want to go into hell you are free. He will not force you into paradise; if you choose on your own accord, that’s good.

This is one of the very fundamental things: magic first came into the world, then it deteriorated into religion and then religion deteriorated into science. We are living in the most deteriorated concept of the world.

The people who had lived with magic were immensely powerful people because they were their own masters. Still a few primitive societies live in magic. In india there are a few primitive tribes in the dense forest and in the hills which live in magic still.

I would like you to become a magician – that’s why I am giving you the name!

[A sannyasin had previously written to Osho saying that what Osho has shown him is so far beyond him, that he doesn’t see how he can ever reach that point. Osho says, you miss the whole point if you make totality an ideal. The mind always wants more and that creates discontentment; don’t try to be inhuman. It is not a question of being aggressive towards the beyond, Osho says – it is only a question of letting it happen to you. So rather than thinking how much more intensely you should work on yourself, think about how you can do it more relaxedly. Rather than asking for more, feel grateful for what has already happened.]

[A sannyasin, who has studied martial arts for many years, asks how he can develop the yin side of himself... the emotional side.]

Continue – I think it is perfectly good for you. The opposite can also be learned... and learning the opposite is of immense help because they are polarities. If you simply know the male energy and you don’t know the female energy in your being, you are always half....

You have to know both. So there is no problem; it is simply a change of gestalt....

You can do both: you can learn feminine ways of being and you can learn masculine ways of being.

And by and by you will come to a higher synthesis of both, which will be neither masculine nor feminine – which will be a kind of transcendence. and that is the real point. Then you don’t know who you are, man or woman, and that is a great experience when you don’t know who you are. Then things start happening without any self-consciousness. You can forget all that you have learned and still nothing is forgotten.

The basic thing is the same, the secret is the same whether it is masculine energy or feminine energy. Once you have learned both you will come to know the basic secret – that the basic secret is not different.

It happened once that a great dancer came to a master....

The dancer wanted to learn swordsmanship, and the master looked at the dancer and he said ’You are trying to deceive me: you already know it!’ The dancer said ’No, sir! I have never learned anything! I don’t even know how to hold the sword.’

But the master wouldn’t believe it; he said, ’No, I can see it. It is in your aura, it is in your energy.

Don’t try to fool me. You know it!’

But the man denied it again and again. Then the master started thinking and he said? ’Maybe you are right but have you learned anything else?’

The man said, ’I am a dancer.’

And the master laughed. He said ’That explains it. If you have known the secret of dance you have known all secrets, because the secret is not different.’

In Japan they say: ’Even a man who knows the art of the tea ceremony knows all that martial arts can teach’... because the basic equilibrium is the same. You have come to a moment where you drop yourself, where you are in an utter let-go... when the sword moves on its own – you don’t move it. It is exactly when the dance happens on its own, when you are nowhere to be found, when you are completely empty that something happens – out of that emptiness.

If the self comes in you are not a great artist yet: the self will be a disturbance. If the idea comes to you to protect yourself, to defend yourself, or to defeat the enemy, you are not a master yet. When no idea interferes – when you don’t know who the enemy is, when the enemy is no more like the enemy because the self is no more there so the other cannot be there, when the self and other are lost – then there is something. That something can be found in many ways – feminine ways, masculine ways.

So learn both... and don’t be puzzled, they are not opposites; they are complementaries. And by learning both you will come to a higher synthesis.

One can create a kind of dialectics in one’s energy....

Dialectics means that you can use two opposites for a higher synthesis.

For example these two hands are opposites but they can be used to hold something.

Dialectics is when the thesis and the antithesis are used to create a synthesis, something higher than both – which is in a way the secret of both and yet beyond both.

Don’t be worried about it, mm? continue... continue.

CHAPTER 7

When the abyss is your home

9 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and himani means coolness – mm? divine coolness. And that is the whole secret of bliss: if one wants to be blissful in existence, one has to be cool. The moment we become hot we lose our centre; the moment we become hot we start moving towards the periphery. The hotter you are, the further away from yourself; the cooler you are, the closer. When it is perfectly cool, utterly cool, you are centred.

So keep it as a key, and whenever you start feeling that you are getting hot about anything – anger, passion, lust, greed, anything – just remember; that very remembrance will suddenly click something in you. Relax and start feeling cool. It is only a question of learning the knack of it.

All the mind moods depend on us – we are the masters. Even when we are working like slaves we are the masters: even being the slave is our choice. So just watch: it is very unconscious – this getting hot, getting feverish. Mm? somebody says something, you start boiling and you are not even aware of it. By the time it comes to the very surface you are hot all over. You become alert – but then it has done the harm already; something inside has burnt. There is no need to be so destructive; each heated state of mind is suicidal, so learn to be cool more and more, mm?

The word ’himani’ comes from the same root as himalaya, that’s why we call the mountains the Himalayas. They are the coolest and the purest and the most silent existence on the earth.

Inside also there exists a Himalaya, the Himalayas within. There is no need to go to the outside Himalayas if one can move within-wards. Mm? the coolness that is there in the Himalayas is just an outside coolness. Yes, there is a silence and there is peace, but it is only in the circumstance, the moment you come back to the plains it will be lost. But if one goes into the inner himalayas the change is not in the circumstances: the change is in the psychology itself. The change is not outer, it is interior; then you can go anywhere.

There is a zen saying which says ’Even in the fire the man who has attained satori remains cool.’

Even in the fire.... The whole house can catch fire – everything is burning, your body is burning – but still the man who knows his inner world remains cool. Nothing is disturbed at all... not even stirred.

To attain to that is the goal and to be cool is the way.

[A sannyasin says she feels terrific inside and is experiencing a sensation of movement going up and down. Osho checks her energy.]

Everything is perfectly good. Energy is coming up: it will spread by and by all over the body, and when it spreads all over the body in a balanced way you will feel immensely blissful.

In the beginning when it starts coming out of the hara – it comes from just below the navel, two inches below the navel; there is the source of life and death – when it starts coming out of the hara, it is too much, mm? it is unbearably there. One can feel very heavy. One does not know what to do, one feels as if one is going crazy, but by and by it spreads all over the body.

And when it has spread all over the body in equal proportions it gives a new kind of feel, a very orgasmic feel to the body: one feels as if one is making love to the universe. The orgasm continues; then it knows no end.

That’s what mystics have called the ecstasy. It is just like sexual orgasm, but sexual orgasm lasts only for a single moment or a few moments at the most. It is like a peak and the moment you have attained it, it is already gone, so in its wake it leaves much frustration, much sadness. Each love act ends in deep sadness: one never really feels so sad as after making love, mm? because the vision, the peak and then suddenly the valley – the contrast.

Ordinarily we go on living in the valley, we are accustomed to it; there is no comparison, it is the only thing that we know. Then the peak suddenly arises. Then you fall back into the valley so it is darker than before. The spiritual ecstasy has the same quality of orgasm but non-temporal, it is not momentary. It is just like breathing continuously for twenty-four hours: one is simply in it.

Very beautiful energy is being released by the hara. Allow it, don’t stop it. The mind tends to stop it because it becomes afraid and scared. The mind starts feeling stoned by it, mm? – it is almost as if one is drugged. So don’t listen to the mind; help the energy to spread.

And do one thing before you go to sleep every night. When you lie down on the bed, just put your box below the navel, two inches below the navel. Feel me, and just allow the energy to move all over the body – just as your hands are moving.

These are called ’mudras’ in yoga. They come out of energy moving into the hands and they have a particular language. Just by the movement of the hand the kind of energy that is inside can be deciphered, because the hand moves only in a particular way when a particular kind of energy is inside.

In India they have developed a perfect science, the language of mudras. That mudra, that particular gesture, happens only in a particular state, otherwise not. So just as they are happening in the hands, they will start happening in the legs, they will start happening in the face, in the eyes.

Every night make it a practice for ten minutes at least to sit or lie down in the bed and allow the whole body to move into orgasm. Let the body have great ecstasy and let it do whatsoever it feels like doing. Don’t hinder it even if sometimes it feels very crazy, mm? – because you will start doing contortions of the body, postures of the body. Allow them; nothing is crazy.

And once you have allowed these gestures, these postures, then the energy will start making roots into the body; that’s how it makes the roots. Once it has made the roots all gestures will disappear.

Then there is no movement in the body; the energy has moved to every nook and corner.

But things are going perfectly well.

[A sannyasin has difficulty expressing herself so a therapist explains she wants to go back to being a child... to play and be a child. Osho suggests groups.]

And the idea is very good, the feeling to go back and become a child is of great importance. It simply shows that you are trying to relive your past and you are moving backwards to a point from where your growth stopped.

It always happens to everybody. A child grows up to a point, for example, seven years, and then from that time he starts becoming more and more a civilised being, so he loses his natural track. He starts pretending, playing games, showing off. From that time he is never real again.

And whenever through rolfing or primal or encounter or through some understanding attained by yourself you feel that you are false, the desire will arise to go back and become a child of seven so that you can be true again. And from there you can grow again.

So it is a good desire, perfectly good. Allow it....

Something is being released in your being. Allow it; become a child of a few months.

For a few days it will be there and then it will go and you will come back. Then you will come back whole-heartedly to the present. It is a hang-up: something is hooked with the past, it has to be broken. Only you can go and you can break it, nobody else can go for you, because nobody else can go inside you; it is available only to you. Only you can go backwards, reach the point, unhook yourself from that space and flow again. Then you will become really young for the first time.

That may be the reason why, when somebody loves you, you shrink back and cannot totally love somebody, totally trust somebody and go into it whole-heartedly; that may be the reason. Your child inside is very much afraid of love. Maybe people who were around you made it very heavy; many times parents do that. They make their love so conditional: they say, ’Do this, then I will love. Do that, then I will love. If you follow, then we will love, otherwise no love.’ So love becomes too much like a bargain to the child and he becomes afraid of love.

So whenever again somebody will love you the idea will arise that now there is going to be some bargain, there is going to be some conditioning, there is going to be some bondage. You will become afraid and you will shrink back – that’s possible.

If that happens, how can you flow into love? And without flowing into love, one never lives, one simply drags. So go into it!

[A sannyasin says: I keep telling myself that I’ve got to just allow things to happen.

Osho checks her energy.]

It is going to happen, mm? and you will be able to allow it. You are getting ready, that’s why you are feeling unsure.

In fact you have always been a doer, you have never allowed; this is something new. You have always been a very very strong doer, almost masculine. This is the great change that is making you very unsure: for the first time you are becoming feminine, and with the feminine one becomes fragile.

With the feminine one becomes vulnerable, with the feminine one becomes soft. Your securities, your safeties, will not be working around you any more. They are not needed at all but you will feel unsure. Mm? you have become acquainted with a certain ground and I am trying to take it from beneath your feet.

You have to be left in a vacuum.

[Osho says that tao needs to experience this period of the great doubt – where one has broken bridges with the past but can’t see what lies ahead.... ]

But this moment has to be passed... this is part of growth. Once this is passed you will stop hankering for surety and security. And when one stops hankering for security and surety, there is security: the security of insecurity. It is a very very paradoxical state, the security of insecurity.

The security of the secure is nothing, it is just bogus. They believe in the bank account, they believe in the balance, they believe in the house, in the wife, in the children. This security is not very secure.

The security of the secure is not much, it is just a make-believe.

The real security is of the one who has accepted insecurity; now nothing can make him insecure.

Even insecurity itself is totally accepted; now who can take it away?

And that is the whole point of sannyas – to bring you to a point where no security remains but suddenly the hankering for security also disappears. Then there is no fear.

The fear does not arise out of insecurity, it arises out of the longing for security. See the difference clearly: the danger does not arise out of insecurity, the danger arises out of our clinging with the past, the secure. Once that clinging has gone, once you have accepted a fact which is obviously there, that nothing is secure, once this has got deep into your heart, you have swallowed it, digested it, then there is nothing to worry about; suddenly you are secure.

So this miracle happens: the secure people are never secure and those who have accepted insecurity become secure. That is the meaning of all the zen paradoxes when they say ’The river stays and the bridge flows.’ Life is really absurd! Those who succeed fail and those who accept failure have succeeded.

Jesus says ’Those who are first here will be the last in my kingdom of god, and those who are the last will be the first.’

This is going to happen.... So you are on the verge... and I am not going to console you, I am not going to support you. I am going to throw you into this abyss because once you accept this abyss there is no more any abyss. Suddenly the abyss is your home.

Things are going perfectly well. It will take a little time but you are getting ready to allow things. Your doer will disappear.

[A sannyasin says she’s done three groups here and has been feeling much pain and a sense of dying. She can’t go through this feeling, and senses that the breakthrough won’t happen in groups....

]

I think you should do a few groups more. You will not be able to do it in the groups but groups will make you ready to do it somewhere else, otherwise you will not be able to do it anywhere else.

This has to be understood: sometimes, in fact in the majority of times, the real thing doesn’t happen in the group but the group prepares you for it.

The group is an artificial situation, a created situation, but it intensifies everything. It may not happen there because you are so consciously doing it there, but it creates the seed in you. Then one day suddenly out of nowhere it may happen... but without the group it will not happen there either.

So your feeling may be right – it may not happen in the group. To a very few people it happens in the group but groups help it, and then it can happen anywhere. Sometimes, for years people have to work, and then one day not doing anything, just lazying around or lying down in a swimming pool, it happens. But never think that if they were lying there in the swimming pool from the very beginning it would have happened. No! All those things that they did before functioned, brought it to a particular.

point.

It is as when you heat water: up to ninety-nine degrees it is not evaporating, at one hundred degrees it evaporates. Up to ninety-nine degrees it was not evaporating, it will evaporate only at a particular degree, but these groups will bring you to a ninety-nine-degree point; they will bring you closer and closer to the happening. Sometimes it happens in a group too... but very rarely. But every kind of group prepares you; it gives you a little heat: you go one degree, two degrees more into it, but everything helps finally.

If you don’t want to do groups there is no need to, but my suggestion is that if you can do a few more groups it will be helpful. Even this insight has come through the group – that it will not happen through the group. This is a good insight... it may be true!....

It is getting closer, mm? Before death happens one has to get ready for it.

[A journalist, who came to do an article on Osho, has decided to take sannyas.]

Good! I was waiting and waiting for you!...

I recognise my people when they come to me. And it is very natural to hesitate, very natural to think and waver; it is very natural to be a little scared, afraid. These are all natural things and they are good. Because once you have wavered, thought about it again and again, and in spite of the wavering and in spite of the fear you decide, it is going to stay because you have seen all that wavering already; nothing more can be there.

People who take the jump sometimes without thinking what they are going to do start repenting later on, start thinking how to escape, how to get out of it. They are not very reliable people; a responsible person always thinks. Thinking is not necessarily negative; it brings you to a positive conclusion too.

Rightly applied it simply makes you aware of the whole situation, and when you decide, seeing the whole situation, the decision is going to be more valid.... You have looked all around, you have thought in every possible way. Yes, there are pros and there are cons but you have looked into them. Now nothing is left, nothing new can disturb you.

And something very essential is going to happen to you through sannyas. Because it is going to happen, the idea has been haunting you from the very moment you came. Your unconscious has felt something. The conscious takes time. The unconscious is intuitive – it jumps without a process, so it concludes immediately; but the conscious mind follows a little bit slowly. It has to be more cautious... and it is good.

Raise your hands and close your eyes and just feel as if you are a tree in the wind. Let the wind blow, let the wind sway you. Don’t hold yourself: just become like a small, small, innocent tree, with no mind at all.

Satya means truth or true and ananda means bliss – true bliss. And there are many untrue blisses in the world which only appear to be blissful from the distance: illusions, mirages. The closer you come, the more frustrated you feel. Once you have become really close, the mirage disappears and again the old mind starts looking for another mirage somewhere else.

The bliss that is in the future is illusory; the bliss that becomes available right now this very moment is true. All that is true is in the present; all that is untrue is either in the past or in the future. The future and the past are both lies: one is no more, one is not yet. Only this moment is all there is, so never be deceived by the future.

And there are only two types of people in the world: a few people are deceived by the past – their golden age is always in the past; and a few people are deceived by the future – their utopia is in the future... and both are deceived. There are only very rare, fortunate people who are not deceived by the past or by the future... who live in the moment like the lilies in the field, who don’t think of the morrow, who are utterly satisfied with this moment whatsoever it brings. Yes, sometimes it brings sadness but to be satisfied with sadness is blissful. That may look paradoxical but it is true.

If you can be contented with your sadness, suddenly you will see a bliss arising out of it. Bliss has nothing to do with happiness or unhappiness, bliss has something to do with contentment. If you are contented even with unhappiness, there will be bliss; if you are discontented even with happiness, there will be un-bliss, there will be misery.

So bliss is not equivalent to happiness, bliss is the attitude of contentment. Whatsoever is...

sadness, it’s okay. If there is unhappiness it’s okay, one accepts it. What else can one do? –

one is helpless. Out of that acceptance, suddenly a great bliss arises. That bliss comes only by being true.

We have been taught to be untrue in a thousand and one ways: we have been taught how to wear masks, how to have false faces, how to act, how to play – all games. And because of those games and those lies, we become unavailable to bliss. Bliss is whenever we are true, whenever we are authentic, whenever we are not pretending, whenever we are absolutely the way we are and there is no hide-and-seek game going on.

If one can be just the way one is, suddenly there is benediction, there is bliss, there is great blessing.

That is the meaning of ’satyananda’: bliss is through being true, through being authentic.

CHAPTER 8

The victory that comes through surrender

11 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Jayananda. It means victory and bliss... but this victory is something very paradoxical: it comes only when you stop desiring it; it comes only when you accept your utter defeat.

So there are two kinds of victories in the world: one is that which comes through desire, aggression, fight, mm? – the worldly victory. One has to conflict with a thousand and one things, one has to prove one’s ego in many ways and one has to be really violent. One has to use all sorts of means, good and bad, because the only goal is to be victorious; nothing else matters.

So the worldly victory is political: it depends on violence, it depends on destruction. It depends on others’ miseries. You cannot be victorious in the world without creating much misery around you, so it is ugly in a way. The more a person becomes victorious, the more ugly he becomes, the more and more he loses his soul, the more and more he becomes a disaster, a calamity, a plague.

There is another kind of victory – the inner, the divine. It comes not by desiring, not by fighting: it comes by surrendering... it comes by accepting one’s total helplessness. But it has a beauty because it does not depend on anybody’s misery; on the contrary, whenever somebody becomes victorious in this inner way the whole world becomes victorious in him..Not only is he blessed, the whole world is blessed in his blessings. His celebration is the celebration of all. People may know, may not know, but even his presence, just his presence, is a great enhancement to human consciousness.

So become victorious in the inner way....

Prem means love, samveda means consciousness – love consciousness...

and that is the

only consciousness there is. Without love there is no consciousness, without love we exist as unconscious life, asleep. Only love awakens! Only love brings the challenge to be alert, otherwise people go on dragging themselves like zombies. Only love brings radiance, vitality. Only love brings a dance in your life... and following that dance comes consciousness.

[A sannyasin had previously asked Osho about a dizzy sensation in his head since he was laid up with an illness. Osho told him it was just energy in the head not being properly channelled and suggested he do the tantra group. He missed the group, and says the sensation has been getting worse and is accompanied by much fear and panic. He is returning to England and wants to know if he’s going to be okay.... ]

No, it will be okay, there is not much of a problem. Tantra would have really helped. Somewhere your sexual energy is not flowing as it should but that is not very abnormal because that has become the normal condition of humanity, mm? Nobody’s sexual energy is flowing as it should, so it creates many problems.

If the sexual energy is flowing perfectly well then everything hums rightly, everything remains in accord. Then you are simply in tune, vibrating, and there is a kind of equilibrium. Once the sexual energy is getting stuck somewhere there are repercussions all over the body. And naturally they will come first in the head, because sex is one pole and the head is another pole – it is a polarity.

That’s why people who are too heady start losing track of their orgasmic qualities. People who are too heady forget about their sexual energies; they are neglected. If not repressed, they are neglected, otherwise they are repressed. They remain in their head, their whole joy is there; their whole body suffers and the head becomes like a dictator.

The society has emphasised sexual repression for this reason too, because if energies are repressed at the sex centre the head becomes powerful. These two centres are competitors: if sex is powerful, the head remains impotent; if the head becomes powerful, sex becomes impotent.

These are like the two sides of your being – and they are always in conflict.

So, the society wants the head because it can be used for many things; it is very useful and sex is very useless. It may make the person joyful but it has no social use. In fact a joyful person is too dangerous to the society, because he does not bother about the society, he does not listen to the ambitious goals that the society goes on proposing – to earn more money, be successful, become a chief minister or a prime minister. A really sexually healthy person does not bother a bit about all this nonsense because he is so happy; why should he become a prime minister? For what? Nothing more can be added to him.

So sex has to be repressed, then all energies are moving in the head. That’s what is happening: somewhere sex is still not flowing so more energy is moving in the head – it creates a headache.

But it is not much of a problem.

Just start doing two things, mm? One is, every morning after your sleep, just stand in the middle of the room and start shaking the whole body. Become a shaker, mm? – shake the whole body from the toe to the head and feel that it is almost orgasmic... as if it is giving you a sexual orgasm. Enjoy it, nourish it, and if you start feeling that you would like to make a few sounds, make them, and just enjoy it – for ten minutes.

Then rub the whole body with a dry towel and take a shower. Do this every morning and within two, three weeks, the balance will come.

And next time you come, do Tantra, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin, returning to the West, says he feels energy in his throat and belly. Osho checks his energy.]

Mm mm... it is there, but nothing to be worried about. Start doing two things. One is: whenever you feel a choking in the throat start chanting loudly. Any sound that you feel like, any gibberish will do, mm? or if you feel like singing a song, sing, but in that moment you should start using the throat.

It is good to just create meaningless sounds, they are more helpful, because with meaning, things become very very limited... so ’ahhhahhh’ or anything that comes at that moment. Just feel the body and allow it and sway. It will go.

When you feel it in the stomach do another thing. Just close your eyes, put your hand where you are feeling it, and start moving upwards with your hand slowly and bring it to the throat.

It is the same thing. Sometimes it is not coming to the throat – bring it to the throat, and when it has come to the throat, make a meaningless sound. If it is in the throat, it is good, make the sounds; otherwise first bring it to the throat.

It will come up. Just direct it, say to it ’Come on!’ Call it upwards and bring it to the throat. Collect it there and then burst into a song.

This will disappear: it will take at least three, four weeks to go, but it will disappear, and once it is gone you will feel very very free.

[A sannyasin says that since taking sannyas and coming to Osho everything became very clear for him, but now he has to leave he is beginning to feel the way he did before taking sannyas.]

Mm mm, it happens many times, many times it will happen; it happens to everybody. You come close to me and then as a natural rhythm you go far away too; you come close again, you go far away too – this is a natural rhythm. Sometimes you will feel so much for me and sometimes you will not feel anything at all, but both are part of growth and one has to pass through both.

To pass through the positive is not much; it is more important to pass through the negative. Once you have passed through the negative and you have still remained with me, then there is no way to go away; then you will come closer and closer. Each peak of closeness will be bigger than the one before and each valley of separation will be deeper than the one before. But once you have understood that with the peak going higher the valley also goes deeper, then you accept it.

Prem means love, astha means trust. There are mysteries in life which are available only to love, which are not available to reason, and the people who live confined to only their reason live a very very starved life. They miss the really real – they only live on the surface. they miss all that is beautiful because they miss inner sensitivity, inner receptivity.

One become vulnerable only through love. And when you are open the winds blow through you; then god comes in many many ways – in the crying cuckoo, in a flower, in this moon, or in the roaring sea, sometimes very vocal and sometimes very silent. But if one lives only confined in the head, one goes on missing; all the great messages are missed.

It is as if the diamonds were very very close, available, and one continued to collect pebbles on the shore. One can collect many pebbles on the shore – that’s what reason goes on doing: trivia, detail, the superficial reality, the peripheral. Reason goes only skin-deep, it never touches the core of reality.

So these are the three very important ’h’s’: head, heart, and hara. People who live in the head only live ten percent. People who live in the heart live ninety percent, and people who live in the hara live a hundred percent.

The head is reasoning, analysis, concept-formation, logic. And you have a very analytical mind; that’s why I’m insisting that something is there, ready to explode. But you will have to allow it... and when the reason is very much trained we don’t allow: a trained reason becomes a hindrance for the flow of the heart.

The head is reason, the heart is love, the hara is trust. All trust arises out of the hara. The hara is just below the navel, two inches below the navel... and these are the three centres of consciousness.

The child is born – at that moment only the hara functions. Then the child grows and his heart starts functioning. Then the child is conditioned by the society, educated, cultured his head starts functioning. From hara to head is what we call ’the social trip’; from head back to hara is what I call

’the sannyas trip’.

So that is the meaning of sannyas. You will have to allow the heart a little more, and when the heart is throbbing with joy and is delighted with life, then allow the hara: slip even deeper, deeper than the heart.

There is a point in our being, the centre-most, the very core, which is neither thinking nor feeling...

which simply is. That is the meaning of the word ’be-ing’ – it simply is. The heart feels; it has gone a little further away from being. Feeling has entered, something is stirred. Silence is no more a silence; emotion has entered.

Then you go into the head: something even more foreign has entered, thought, which creates great turmoil. From the head it seems almost impossible to reach to the hara. Mm? between them is a bridge, the bridge of the heart.

Your name means, first, prem – love, and then astha – trust. In the head you already are – start slipping a little deeper: start looking at life without bringing your head in. The head is useful, use it when it is needed: when you are doing some puzzle, some problem, when you are facing some objective reality, use the head. It is good, it is a great detective; it works perfectly well as far as the objective search is concerned.

But when you are looking at a flower forget the head, otherwise the flower will disappear and there will be left only trivia, the chemistry of the flower. The psychedelic existence of the flower will disappear and you will find only a few elements out of which the flower is made... which are not really the flower. The flower was made out of them, but the whole is not the sum total of the parts –

the whole is something plus.

If you see a beautiful man or a beautiful woman, the beauty is not just the sum total of the parts.

It is something that is hovering around the sum total but it is something bigger, something greater, something higher. Yes, it is certain that if you take the parts away it will disappear; you will never find it. When the whole is functioning and humming, it is there. If you dissect the flower the beauty will disappear; if you dissect the song the rhythm will disappear. If you dissect a face the grace will disappear; if you dissect a child life will disappear. And the head goes on dissecting. It knows only one way: how to dissect, how to cut things into parts.

Use it when it is needed. It is a butcher, it is a murderer... it is very very german. It is very useful, there is a dimension where it is very useful, but to be confined to it is to live a very impoverished life.

Start looking at other things....

The song is there, the dance is there, the flower exists and the sun and the moon and people. Look at them! Eyes are there – look into them... and don’t look with a deceptive mind: just have a look with great love. This will be your first step towards sannyas: be more loving; relax your hardness, become more loving.

And then the second step – when you have started loving more: look into the aesthetic world, the aesthetic dimension of life. Start in some moments just being, not even feeling. Sitting silently, doing nothing, just be... as if there is nothing to do; in fact there is nothing to do. All has already happened or is happening or is going to happen; one is not needed to push the river. Sometimes just sitting silently, idle, lazy, just be... and see the world happening! Then you will know what trust is.

Trust is not belief, trust is not faith even, because in fact trust has nothing as an object to believe in

– it is a totally different quality of your being. The mind reasons, the heart feels, the hara trusts. If you are in the head you are bound to think; if you are in the heart you are bound to vibrate with love, feeling. If you are in the hara, suddenly all stops, everything comes to a halt as if nothing has ever happened, as if not a thing has ever happened, and all is utterly quiet and silent.

There is something that is called trust; it is something one should not miss. To know it is to know god, to know it is to know samadhi... to know it is to know the ’summum bonum’, the highest good that is possible to man.

[The new sannyasin says she is a psychotherapist in the West.]

So, really in the head! But the work is good, mm? One can go beyond it, one needs to go beyond it, otherwise the psychotherapist is in a great danger... more in danger than the patients he helps.

[Osho says that more psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession – and it’s easy to see why. Being with neurotic people they unknowingly begin to adopt their ways. Meditation is a must to keep one unstressed and able to be of help to others, so astha should do at least one meditation a day, Osho suggests. And love is the key.... ]

Give them love and you will find your therapy succeeding... and really succeeding: not only helping the symptom to disappear but helping the cause to disappear. But for this you will need to go deeper into your being. The deeper you are, the deeper you can help.

If you can go to your hara you will be of tremendous help. So next time when you come here, be here for a longer period so that you can really go into a few groups, a few meditations, and you can find out what meditations will suit you.

Continue one meditation for at least six months while you are there, so that when you come back sannyas will not be just formal – it will have happened!

CHAPTER 9

Every pain can become a satori

12 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who came to Osho because he has cancer of the foot, has just discovered that it has now spread to the rest of his body. He says he feels strangely at peace. He is returning to the West.]

Mm mm, no, nothing to be worried about; just go. But this time don’t be scared of the operation: if they suggest any operation, go through it. If they want to remove anything, let them. Mm? don’t be worried, and accept it so totally that you come out of it very much benefitted and enriched.

Every pain can become a satori... satori, a samadhi, it can become a breakthrough, because it is really the points of pain which become breakthroughs. It is through pain that one transcends, never through pleasure, because in pleasure one indulges and one becomes more and more oblivious of one’s being. When everything is going well, who bothers? Then one is on a merry-go-round, lost.

But when pain is there, suffering is there, one naturally becomes more alert, more aware – one has to be: the pain is a great challenge.

If you accept pain, if you don’t deny it, if you are not scared of it, if you accept it as part of life with no judgement, with no idea of whether it is good or bad – it is simply there, it is a fact, neither good nor bad.... Once you accept the facticity of it you start transcending, you become more alert, more a witness. The pain is there but you are no more identified with it.

The leg may be cut but you will remain intact. Nothing will be cut from you, your consciousness will not lose anything in it... and that is the real thing. The cutting of the leg is almost just as if you cut the sleeve of the shirt – mm? inside you remain intact: you are not your shirt, the sleeve is not your hand. In exactly the same way, the leg is not you, the body is not you. Even if the whole body disappears nothing disappears – one remains. So let this be a great experience.

My whole approach is to accept whatsoever life brings: accept it with gratefulness, with thankfulness.

Don’t have a grudge. It is very natural to have a grudge but through having a grudge you miss the point.

You can be very very angry inside: ’Why has this to happen to me? Why not to others? What have I done – what karmas, what wrong have I done in my past lives? Why should it happen to me? I am so young and the whole life is there. The leg has to be cut or something else has to be removed –

why am I suffering?’

Don’t ask that ’why’. Things are for no reason at all. That is the highest understanding: things are, for no cause at all. There is no karma, nothing... these are just explanations to console people!

They bring consolation, nothing else; they don’t bring any understanding.

Now, if you go to some old orthodox indian mind, he will say ’It is because you have done something wrong in your past life.’ It explains; an explanation helps you to be consoled a little because somehow the ’why’ is answered.

You may have murdered somebody so now you can see that there is no need to be angry: you did something wrong, now you suffer for it. You sow and you reap accordingly, so it is okay; it is just that one has to pay. Then it becomes rational but in fact nothing is explained. Why did you murder in the first place? The question remains the same: Why did you murder? – nobody else did. Then again go to another past life in which you were a criminal or you were aggressive or this and that, but it is just postponing the question; ’why’ remains the same. It simply goes one step back and stands there ’Why? Why was I aggressive and others were not?’

So if you look deeply it is simply foolish, the explanation is foolish, because it leads to no explanation.

It only satisfies stupid people who can’t see far enough, who don’t have a vision to see the whole, so they just push it a little back, saying that in the past life you did something wrong. But why in the first life did you do wrong? There must have been a life which was the first – then how did it happen in the first life? Ultimately the total, the whole, remains responsible.

Then the grudge is there, and with a grudge you cannot grow because you cannot relax. It creates anguish, tension, anxiety, and with all that anger, anxiety, anguish, how can you pray? How can you thank god?

He has given so many things but you will remain confined to the leg. He has given you beautiful eyes – you will never thank him for that but you will be angry about the leg. He has given you a thousand and one things which are functioning perfectly; you will never thank but curse him. The curse can go so deep that in a moment of deep anger one can say that there is no god: ’If there is god, it cannot happen to me because god must be compassion, love... at least just. He is not even just – it is better to drop the belief.’ Then everything is accidental: one suffers but there is no need to be angry with anybody because there is nobody.

That too happens to people: when they suffer they deny god or they find explanations somewhere so that the ’why’ can be pushed backwards. But neither denying god nor pushing away the ’why’ is going to help. The thing that is going to help is to accept that things exist for no reason at all; it is just as it is. It is a mystery – that’s what I mean when I say it exists for no reason at all. If there is a reason there is no mystery.

It is mysterious... it is unknown. And all those who claim that they know are just on ego-trips. Not a single thing is known and not a single thing can be known. All our knowledge remains superficial, just an acquaintance; it never solves the mystery. So this has to be understood – this I call understanding

– that not a single thing is known and not a single thing can be known... that ignorance is utter and ultimate but it is innocent and very intimate.

Things are as they are, and we have to accept; what else is there to do? In that acceptance is transcendence. Then you don’t have any grudge; you are happy the way you are. And who knows?

Life is so mysterious that one never knows.

Once it happened that a young blind man came to me. He travelled from Kashmir – a very poor boy, with no money, with dirty clothes. I was surprised; I asked him, ’You are blind, has somebody come with you?’ He said, ’No. I need not have anybody because I am blind so everybody helps me.’

He was so happy! He said, ’Because I am blind, everybody helps me. Somebody gives me food, somebody buys a ticket and this rickshaw-walla has brought me here and he is not ready to take money for it!’ He said, ’If I had eyes it would have been difficult for me to come to you – I am blind, so everybody just has compassion for me. I am never in any trouble: wherever I am, somehow somebody starts helping me!’

Now, this I call acceptance. This young man has the capacity to become spiritual. He has found something beautiful even in his blindness. He is thankful to god that he has made him blind.

Just try to understand. Once you accept, doors start opening. So simply go. Not for a single moment be worried, there is no need to worry; there is nothing to worry about. The whole body is going to go one day, mm? – sometimes it goes as a whole, sometimes it goes in parts, that’s all! So nothing to be worried about.

Go and surrender to the doctors and tell them that whatsoever they want to do, you will let them, and enjoy this whole trip. Meditate in the hospital: Lying down in your bed, relax, accept and enjoy whatsoever is available. You will come out of it more whole, more healthy, more yourself. And I am with you!

(Osho gives him a box) Keep this with you, and whenever you need me just put it on your third eye, mm? and keep it in the hospital with you. Just keep it under your pillow so I will go on working on you.

[Deva means divine, Osho explains, and veepul means vastness, infinity, unboundedness.... ]

And let this be your discipline: always look for the vast and wherever you can find the vast, become dissolved in it.

Watching the vast ocean by and by become one with it.... Watching, lose the watcher: let the observer become the observed so that you are no more standing aloof, separate from the ocean.

You have become part of it: the ocean is within you and you are in the ocean. Those big waves are arising in you, that roaring sound is your sound.... And you will find great glimpses of meditation through it.

Just looking in the night sky, become it – the whole firmament, all those stars, are within you.

Wherever you have a chance, wherever the vast is close by, invite it to come within you and by and by start losing your boundaries with it.

Those boundaries are just make-believe: we have boundaries because we believe.

Those

boundaries exist only in our belief; they are not real. Even in this moment you are not separate from me and I am not separate from you.

These trees are not separate from us, and this noise is our noise, because existence is one, it is all together.

But it is so vast and our minds are so small that we cannot conceive it, so we conceive small boundaries, we create very tiny boundaries and we live hidden behind those boundaries. Come out of them!

That’s what religion is all about: dropping beliefs in boundaries, dropping beliefs in limitations and by and by allowing a merger, a melting.

Sometimes for a single moment the merger happens and then there is great joy. In the beginning it will be only for a moment but once you have tasted it, it will be coming more and more. Sometimes it will stay a little longer and you will be thrilled you will not be able to believe that this can happen.

When it happens it is incredible, unbelievable, but once it has started happening, then more and more is going to come because you become more and more capable of absorbing it, of allowing it.

God need not be searched for, god only needs to be allowed. He is searching for you; from every nook and corner of existence he is trying to approach you, to find where you are lost.

In the bible there is an old story.... When Adam disobeys god and eats the fruit of knowledge he becomes very much afraid, naturally – sooner or later he will be found. He starts feeling guilty just like a small child who has committed something which the father has said not to do. Mm? just like the small child he is afraid and he is hiding... and because he is hiding he has been found. If he were not afraid, if he were not guilty, it would be possible that god might not even suspect.

But god comes, looks around. Adam is hiding somewhere and god starts searching – where has he gone? All over the garden he goes on calling him, ’Adam, where are you?’

And my feeling is that since that time he has been calling, ’Where are you?’ From every nook and corner he goes on calling, ’Where are you?’... and every Adam is hiding.

Come out of this hiding and start merging, melting!....

[A sannyasin, who is setting up a weaving workshop for sannyasins, says: I find that there’s a conflict. You talked before about art being between science and religion. My mind starts thinking and then I can’t tell it to shut up when I’m working. I have the need to work things out with the head and then it won’t stop.]

There is not really any necessary conflict between religion, science and art. We have created the conflict, that’s true, but there need not be, and in a real person there is none.

Religion is the goal, science is the technique, art is the way. In a really integrated person that’s how it happens: he uses all the science that is possible to move on the way. Science makes it quicker to move; it helps tremendously. If science itself does not become the end it is of great value. When the means start pretending to be the end, then the trouble arises.

Science is not the goal: science cannot give any value to human life but it can enhance values. It can create a better world in which values can exist more easily. It can destroy poverty, it can destroy illness. Just by destroying illness nothing is achieved, but when you remove the weeds from the garden there is a possibility for the roses to grow better.

Just by removing the weeds, roses will not grow – that’s true: you will have to bring the roses too.

Just removing the weeds is not enough; it is necessary but not enough Then you have to bring the rose bushes, you have to plant the rose bushes. But once the weeds are removed there is more possibility of bigger roses flowering.

Religion is the ultimate goal. Science can make the earth so beautiful, so happy, that prayer will become easier. When a person is starving it is difficult for him to pray. In fact to expect prayer from a starving person is cruel; it is hard. When the person is well-fed, well-sheltered, lives in convenience and comfort, it is easier for prayer to arise. Prayer is like a rose, it is the ultimate luxury, but the basic necessities religion cannot provide. That’s why religious countries have remained poor, the east has remained poor.

That’s a great experience for the whole world: why has the east remained poor? Religion cannot provide the basic necessities, it has nothing to do with them; to ask that from religion is nonsense.

If you want to make a house you have to ask the architect, not the mystic. If you want to grow more food you have to ask the agriculturist, not the mystic. And if you want to create factories to produce more things, to help people live better, if you want a better standard of life you have to ask the scientist.

When all have done their work – the architect has made the house and the road, the scientist has made the factory and the technology, the agriculturist has done farming – when all have done their work, then comes the mystic; only then can he come! He is the last! Only then does prayer and god become meaningful and significant.

You don’t play a guitar before a starving and dying man. He will kill you, he will destroy your guitar; he is not ready to listen to music. You are offending him by playing music.

So there is not necessarily any conflict, not for me at least. My whole approach is that science is the servant and religion is the master; religion should remain the ultimate value. It is not against science: science paves the way for it. And art should be the middle-man between the master and the servant... the manager.

Art is the bridge. When somebody lives comfortably, when basic necessities are fulfilled, then art is needed. Look at it in this way: science is like the body, art is like the mind, religion is like the soul.

When the body has its desires fulfilled the mind starts asking for something – good music, painting, art, sculpture, novels, poetry. When the body is fulfilled the mind starts asking for new things. When the body is fulfilled the desires of the mind arise, never before it. That is a higher desire, the desire of the mind.

To ask for Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart or to ask for Shakespeare or Milton, is a higher need; to ask for bread is a lower need. That’s what Jesus means when he says ’Man cannot be satisfied by bread alone.’ Yes, bread is needed – he is not saying that man can be satisfied without bread; nobody can be, even jesus needs bread – but that cannot be enough.

Once bread is there, once your stomach is contented, a new desire, a higher desire, arises in your mind; you start desiring beautiful music and poetry and song and dance. Now what else is there to do? The body is fulfilled; psychological need arises.

When psychological needs are fulfilled – you have Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner and Shakespeare and Milton and Tennyson – then suddenly a still higher need, the spirit, the spiritual need, arises. You start asking, ’What is prayer? What is meditation? What is god? What is the ultimate meaning of life?’ Now, even music is not enough, painting is not enough; you want the ultimate meaning of life.

So there is a hierarchy: the science is the base, art is the structure of the temple and religion is the golden peak. There is no need to be worried. Don’t look at them as if they are enemies; they are not.

Look at life with a total vision and let everything be absorbed in it; then you have a richness. There are religious people who are against science. They are foolish people – I don’t give much value to their standpoint: they have been the cause of the east’s misery, starvation, poverty, ugliness. And there are scientists who are against religion. They also are foolish, they are saying that bread alone is enough. A good house is needed, bread is needed, wife, children – finished; there is no higher need. They don’t know anything about man, they are utterly ignorant of man’s real needs. Both are wrong.

A great synthesis is needed between religion and science and art, between east and west, between man and woman... between all, a great synthesis is needed.

So here, living by my side, being my sannyasin, by and by look with a synthetic vision, mm? and then these conflicts will disappear.

Have you found some other weavers?

[A sannyasin couple say they would both like to do a group together.]

My feeling is that you still should continue to do a few groups separately, mm? Become a little stronger, because to do a group together needs more strength. It can shatter the relationship if you are not strong enough. That’s why I don’t allow people to do groups together, mm? – because a relationship is a very fragile thing. The most fragile thing in the world is a relationship between two human beings. It is very difficult to have a relationship, it is very easy to destroy it.

A group is a hard thing for a relationship because sometimes what happens.... The whole approach of the group method is that you have to be true and our so-called relationships exist on lies – not deliberate lies, not that you are lying deliberately... poetic lies. They are not deliberate in any way relationships move on these lies: these lies function like a lubricant.

In a group you have to be true or you will miss the group process. You have to be true, you have to be utterly true; you have to be very sincere and honest. Then many things will bubble up, many things will surface which may destroy your relationship. If you are not strong enough the relationship can simply disappear. If you are very strong the group process will help your relationship to become even stronger.

This is strange but this is how it is: a weaker relationship will die, a stronger relationship will become more strong. This is the strange arithmetic of life, but that’s what Jesus says – that those who have, more will be given to them, and those who don’t have, even that which they have will be taken away.

So if you are really strong then nothing can destroy your relationship: everything that can destroy it will help it to become more strong, each problem, each challenge. You will find you have come out of it stronger, integrated. But if the relationship is fragile, as ninety-nine per-cent of relationships are, then once it is broken, it is like glass broken: you cannot put it together. You can glue it together but a glued mirror is a glued mirror; it will never be the same again.

So why are you in such a hurry to glue it together?

[The couple say that they did primal and marathon groups together in the West, and the relationship was better for it.]

Then you can do a group. I’m not.... That’s not a problem for me. If you have done a group before and you feel the relationship becomes stronger, try it again! But here groups are different.

The groups you have done in the West are so-so, lukewarm. Here, things are really strong, because I don’t believe in homeopathic doses, I believe in allopathic doses, mm?

But try – nothing wrong. Try them... it is worth trying, so both book for Encounter together, mm?

[Osho suggests some groups they should first do separately.]

And don’t be worried – we will see. I will tell [the group leader] to be really hard on you! If you can survive after [his] group, then you are really married! In fact every person who wants to get married should pass through some group like Encounter. If you can pass through the encounter and come out alive and safe, only then should you get married, otherwise not.

In a better world every magistrate will ask first, ’Have you done the Encounter together?’ A certificate will be needed, mm? Do it! Good!

[A sannyasin, who is a teacher in the West, feels he doesn’t get enough time to himself, so he thinks to leave teaching and find other work. He works five to six hours a day plus many conferences.]

I understand, but in a school you get so many holidays. I don’t know how many in Germany, but in India you have at least six months... per year. The reason is that there are so many religions and every religion has its festival days and all festival days have to be.... So the total amount of freedom in a school is more here than anywhere else. But my feeling is that everywhere the total amount of freedom is more in a school than in any other job: you have summer vacations and this vacation and that, and christmas vacations.

Count all that, then you will not find more than six hours or five hours per day. And this much we should not worry about.

The few things that you can avoid, avoid. For example, conferences cannot be a must, many of them can be avoided; at least you can be there but not present. I have been a teacher so I know how to be.... You can simply sit and meditate there and let the conference continue!

If you have a few hours free in the day, then make it a point to move somewhere or to just close your eyes and sit in the staff room and meditate.

Soon people will start feeling that this man is a little eccentric, so allow him... and with this dress (indicating the orange robe) it will be easier, mm?

When you go back just pretend that you have gone completely bizarre.... Berserk!... Mad! That will help, mm?

[If he can’t adjust he should seek other work Osho says, but suggests he try to work something out first.]

[A sannyasin asks about writing poetry. After he’s done groups and is in a meditative space, he finds that words come to him easily – as if they’re not from the head at all. It can happen, Osho nods.

The groups cleanse your inner passage: they flood you with emotion and then you start overflowing.

All the accumulated dust and various blocks leave your system, so for a few days after the group your system is clean, innocent. In such a state, Osho continues, you can receive messages from the beyond. In fact that beyond is your within, the deepest core of your being. The words will be not from your head but from your very centre... the words will have a poetry of their own.]

[A non-sannyasin visitor, wrote to Osho a few days ago because the violence in the group upset him. You’re new here, says Osho, that’s why you don’t understand it. We are born with the capacity to love, but the anger, destructiveness and violence we are forced to repress as children, impedes its flow. It cannot be unblocked unless violence is released and experienced consciously – and the groups provide a setting in which that can happen.... ]

So we have three kinds of groups here. The first kind of groups are hell groups, mm? You passed through hell, and this man, (the leader) is a devil! The second type of groups are purgatory – a little mild. Once you have passed through hell, you pass through those. The third kind of groups are like heaven – relaxing, peaceful, loving: hypnotherapy, vipassana. And these three groups have to be passed through in that sequence: hell, purgatory, heaven. When you have passed these three, I am the fourth and the last: nirvana!

So it is natural that you became disturbed, it is natural a few people become disturbed. But one has to pass through it. It is very deliberately so. mm? Good!

CHAPTER 10

Meditate on the early morning....

13 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, and aruna means early morning, dawn... the sun is just going to rise, just before sunrise. Mm? the East becomes red but the sun is not yet on the horizon – it is coming; it is very imminent, just within a second it will be there but it is not there yet. That is the most precious moment in twenty-four hours. The night is no more, it has gone, and the sun has not yet appeared. Between the two there is a different quality of light in existence. Darkness is not there, and because the sun is not there the light is not coming from the sun; it is a very diffused light, a very cool light. With the sun things will become hot; more energy, more heat will be there.

So this cool light is very symbolic of the inner experience of light. Sooner or later you will understand the meaning of your name. It is light with no heat in it, it cannot burn. It can only enlighten; it cannot burn. It is almost like moonlight but still with a difference: the moonlight is a reflected light; it is not original. The moon has no light of its own: it simply reflects the sunrays. The sun has its own light, it is original.

This inner light is also original: it is not a reflected light; it is not the reflected glory of anything else or anybody else. It is your own, authentically your own, but it needs no fuel. The sun needs fuel, so every day the sun is becoming exhausted and tired, every day its treasure is being spent. Sooner or later, one day – scientists say in somewhere around four thousand million years time – the sun will be spent and will become a dark hole. No more light will be coming: it will have given all its heat to the world and it will die. Stars are born and stars die. Whenever there is some source it cannot be infinite.

This inner light has no source, hence it is infinite; it does not depend on any kind of fuel so it is inexhaustible. It has been there for eternity and it will remain there for eternity. We may look at it, we may not look at it, but it is always there. When one starts turning inwards one starts feeling it.

Because of this inner experience, in the east the early dawn became of tremendous importance, the most auspicious moment... very symbolic of the inner. The night is no more and the sun has not come yet: it is an interval, a gap, where gears change, where day is born and night disappears.

Because of this gap, this moment is for prayer, for meditation. The same happens inside, a gap arises, and the outer gap can be of help for the inner gap, because outer and inner are not really two; they are joined together.

So whenever it is possible, get up early in the morning and meditate on the early dawn. Once the sun has come up there is no need, but just before the sun is coming up look to the east and be filled by it, be possessed by it, dissolve into it. Drink it and become it....

[A sannyasin says: I feel all the inner organs are not well balanced – I can feel them separately and especially around the stomach.... Whenever blocks happen, there is an enormous pain especially around the stomach.

Osho checks his energy.]

Things are perfectly beautiful. The stomach is disturbed because it is going to settle on a higher plane. It has remained disturbed for long; you were just not aware of it. Awareness is coming so you have become alert that it is disturbed. Soon these fragments which are functioning separately will fall into one unity.

Everything is on the right track. You are in a process of dismantling, mm? – the old structure is being destroyed, and that’s a must before a new structure can be built. The old building has to be removed because in the same place the new building will be built. So there will be a time, an interval, where you will feel lost, but don’t be worried!

Your sannyas has done many things to you and many more are going to happen, so be happy and be receptive. Your energy was previously moving more in the head, now it is moving more in the stomach. That’s a good indication, a great shift, because from the head the energy has to be called back to the stomach.

In ancient japan they used to think that we think from the belly. That moment is coming soon – when you will start thinking from the belly! It is strange when it happens for the first time, but nothing to be worried about!

[A sannyasin says that in the mornings she feels very depressed and asks Osho to suggest something for it. She has done primal and is having rolfing sessions.]

One thing more to start doing in the night: every night just before going to sleep, lie down on the bed and for five minutes simply repeat that in the morning you are going to feel incredibly happy. You have just to create a climate, that’s all.

Mm? it happens to many people, that the morning is depressing. It should not be so because the morning is the most alive time in twenty-four hours. One should be really more flowing, ecstatic, in the morning than at any other time, but it doesn’t happen. Many more people are very dull, sad, depressed – it takes many hours for them to come out of it; near about the time the afternoon is passing they become alert and awake. That creates another problem....

By the evening you become alert and awake, you would like to stay awake longer in the night, so people are very very happy in the night, which is a time to rest, but they are excited and happy so they cannot rest. If they go to sleep, sleep is not easy; thoughts continue because they are excited.

Now this is a very topsy-turvy state of affairs. In the morning you should be excited, full of energy, just bursting forth – that’s how it should be naturally – and by the evening you should become slow, ready to go into sleep, no thought, no excitement.

But that is not happening... and particularly in the west, not at all. The morning is the dullest time –

the night and the club and the dance and this and that is the exciting time. So it is a vicious circle: when you are too excited in the night you cannot sleep well, when you cannot sleep well, in the morning you feel depressed. When you are depressed in the morning, again by the time you are awake and alert and alive the day has passed. So the vicious circle goes on; it has to be broken.

The most precious time is the morning. God is closer than ever in the morning, prayer is easier than ever in the morning; meditation simply happens without much effort in the morning. At other times you will have to make much effort and you will have to fight, will will be needed; in the morning surrender will do. But this is happening... the whole society is neurotic, not natural; everything has gone unnatural.

[When she makes the suggestion, she should simply feel that it is going to happen, not command that it should, Osho stresses, otherwise she will create a split inside herself and will be divided into the one who orders and the one being ordered. She should simply give herself the suggestion with the trust that it is going to happen... should just gently persuade herself.... ]

With this climate in the mind, that it is going to happen, you will be happy in the morning, very happy.

The second thing: in the morning, the moment you feel that you are awake, don’t open the eyes; first create the climate again that you are happy. Don’t say ’I should be’, just ’I am happy. I am happy’

.... Create that climate. Turn over this side and that and let it surround you. The earliest moment in the morning when you are just awake is the most potential moment, if you suggest anything it goes deep into your unconscious; just as in the night the last moment you are awake is the deepest-going moment.

These two moments are the most potential moments because you are very close to the unconscious.

When you are falling into sleep you are leaving the territory of the conscious and coming closer to the unconscious. Soon the curtain will drop and you will go inside the unconscious, so you are very close. If by the time the curtain is falling you go on feeling that you are going to be happy, it is going to happen, because once the unconscious has heard it, it works. It is in the unconscious that it works.

And it is exactly the same in the morning: you are again coming out of the curtain – the curtain opens, you will be coming out. At that moment if you again feel that you are happy and the unconscious hears it, it becomes a seed-thought: you will feel that way. Just try it for seven days and if it starts working, continue it, because it costs nothing!

It takes only four, five minutes in the night and one minute in the morning but it can change the total quality of your life.

CHAPTER 11

The key is in your hands

14 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, manoj means out of the mind, born out of the mind, so the whole name will mean, born out of the divine mind.

And that’s where we come from, that’s the stuff we are made of. We can forget about it but we cannot be other than it. We can remain oblivious of it, for many lives together we can go on ignoring it, but it remains there.

The english word ’ignorance’ is very good – it means the one that has been ignored: ’ignor-ance’.

So, we can ignore it and we can remain in ignorance. The moment you look into it, the moment you stop ignoring it, it is there. It has always been there, it has been always yours; you just have to knock, you have to ask for it.

Just for the asking it was going to be yours, but you can keep it behind yourself. One can go on having the key and may not unlock the door. That’s how it is: every man is born with the key and the treasure, but we never manage to unlock it, we never use the key. The key is attention and the treasure is god.

Once you become attentive about yourself you will come to realise god. You are the lock, the ego is the lock. Behind the ego is god, the treasure, and in your hands there is the key. That key is what attention, meditation, dhyana is called... to become more aware, aware of one’s own being.

We are aware of other things. Passing through a garden you see the trees but you don’t see the seer. Moving on the street you see the traffic, you see everybody except yourself moving there; you just go on missing yourself. Your attention is everywhere all around... just not turned inwards.

To change the attention from the object to the subject is the whole of religion.

[The new sannyasin asks why the foundation’s symbol is yin.]

In fact the reality is a transcendence of both. Yin and yang, the out-going and in-going, are only aspects, not the total. The totality is bi-sexual, it is neither yin nor yang. The totality is trans-sexual, it is neither man nor woman. So only on the surface are you a man and somebody a woman, but the deeper you go. the more you will come to know that the deepest core is neither this one nor that.

People are extroverts ordinarily, hence they need introversion; that is the meaning of the symbol.

People are in the outside. they are already there; people are yang. The yin is needed for balance.

Once the balance has happened neither yang nor yin is needed. Then you simply transcend both, and when you transcend both you really arrive at the reality... which is neither.

How can reality be male or female? And how can reality be divided into the outer and the inner?

The reality is one. This door you are seeing... does it lead in or out? If you are standing outside it leads in; if you are standing inside it leads out, so how will you define this door – in or out? Will you call it an entrance or an exit? From one side it is an entrance, from another side it is an exit; it is both! It is neither, that’s why it is both; it depends on you, where you are.

Because people are yang all meditations belong to yin. People are out-moving, out-going, wasting their energy in the objective world, in the world of ten thousand things. Hence meditation teaches them how to come in. Once you have come in you know that there is no out and no in. Then you can be in the marketplace and meditate: you can go outwards and remain in... then divisions disappear.

So that symbol is yin, mm? just to help people who have become too yang. Good.

[A seeker who is visiting the ashram for several months, says he has been meditating here, but has not done groups. He was in primal therapy in the West for two years.]

Very good! After primal there is nothing left except sannyas! The other day I was reading about janov, the founder of primal therapy. He has become very disturbed by a fact that people who have gone through primal have become apolitical; they are not more interested in politics.

I was surprised that he is surprised. that has to happen, that should happen. that is not something to be disturbed about; that is something he should be happy about! We need a world without politics, and if anything can help people to become apolitical that will be a blessing. But he has become very disturbed, he thinks that something has gone wrong. But soon he will find one thing more: people who have gone through primal will not only become apolitical, they will become sannyasins!

That is a second step: when you are no more political nothing is left than to be religious.

[The seeker says: All my early childhood I was thinking about the reason of living, thinking ’What’s the goal? What’s the meaning of life?’ When I was seventeen suddenly thinking stopped, and I knew that there is nothing, there is no god.... It was so frightening for me that since that day I have never been aware again of myself, of what’s going on.]

It has been a great revelation; you simply misinterpreted it. Because you interpreted it as emptiness you missed the whole point. You had come very close to god! That is the face of god – emptiness.

God has no human face, god is a facelessness. When you look into god it is empty: you will not find anything there. You can look into my eyes and you will find the same emptiness.

You simply misinterpreted it... but that happens, mm?

[The seeker says: I know it was the deepest depth I saw – that there is nothing, absolutely nothing....

And why was it so? Why was it not a joy?]

That is your interpretation, that’s where interpretation comes in.

The experience was of pure emptiness. It is neither good nor bad.

Mm mm, so that’s why you became afraid, because you have been brought up in a christian atmosphere where god has always been thought to be something positive, joyful, this and that.

There was nothing so you became trembling. You are still trembling, and many years have passed but the shock is still there in your body; you have not been able to forget the shock.

If you had been in the East that would have been a satori, a samadhi. If you had been by some accident a buddhist, you would have danced! There would have been another kind of interpretation because you would have been brought up for this experience, you would have been trained for this experience – that this is what god is; this is the ultimate illumination: emptiness.

It depends on the interpretation. That’s why I say that Buddhism is a higher standpoint than any other religion, because all other religions prepare you for childish things and then when you come against reality you are shattered. They simply give you toys to play with, and when the reality erupts it is terrific and you cannot tolerate it.

Only Buddhism prepares you exactly for the reality as it is, but then it doesn’t appeal to people. Why bother about emptiness? This is the problem.

[The seeker answers: I knew that was the only and the first time I was really in reality.]

You were in reality... but you missed it! You missed it because of your christian mind, because of your whole upbringing. There was no thought at that moment but once that experience became part of memory the whole past interpreted it.

When you say it was empty and it was nothingness and there was no joy in it, this is all interpretation.

Once you know that that’s how reality is, then great joy will arise out of it – not that there is joy but because you have come across reality you will feel great joy arising in you. But your background didn’t allow that joy to arise. rather it created the trembling... and you are still trembling.

If you are here go through groups, through meditations. I will try to help you to move again into that same reality. It will be difficult this time because you will hesitate to go. That time it happened....

Mm, you were not aware, it happened out of the blue, so you could not prevent it. This time you will try to prevent it because you are still trembling. When you come closer to it you will start escaping.

So it will be good if you are here for three, four months. Do a few groups and this whole atmosphere will help you to go into it again and to have another vision of it, with a new interpretation. Listening to me, the new interpretation will enter your being.

Once you can see emptiness as all, as the face of god himself, it brings great celebration. But in fact you were fortunate to have it that way, mm? It was a great blessing... it was a gift, and it will be coming again.

Do a few groups, mm?

So what should I do about your sannyas?

[Osho gives him sannyas.]

Prem means love, shunyam means emptiness – love for the emptiness. And create great love for it: just nourish and cherish the idea that it is coming again... just make way for it. And this time, very happily welcome it and dissolve into it.

It is your very being, it is the very ground of all being. The whole existence arises out of that utter emptiness and dissolves back into it. We are all waves of that emptiness.

But the indian word ’shunyam’ is not just empty. The english word ’empty’ is negative, the eastern word ’shunyam’ is not negative: it is very positive. It means full of emptiness, not empty of anything but full of emptiness, full of nothingness, bubbling with nothingness, exploding with nothingness. But nothingness is not thought of as nothing but only as no-thingness. You will not find anything there, that’s true.

[The new sannyasin says: Not even I was there.]

Yes, that’s right, because you are also a thing. All are things – all disappear into that.

No, nothing remains. Only nothing remains, and only nothing is true....

You are not there because you cannot be in front of nothing – you disappear. You can be only with things, you exist only in relationship with things because you are also a thing....

You are; whether you allow it or not you are part of it... we are part of it, we are it! This time it is going to happen in a different way, in an eastern way, you will see.

[A visitor says he has done many things in his life, always changing from one thing to another.

Osho says that’s not a bad thing; in fact it is the people who are fixed who get into trouble. It’s easy to find yourself when you’ve lived a fixed, unchanging routine, but the self that you find will be simply dead.]

[Another visitor says she is very confused since she came to Poona.

That’s very good! says Osho. That’s the right beginning. That’s what happens in Poona – first, confusion!

He goes on to say that everyone is confused but we pretend we aren’t and cover it up with masks and hypocrisies. the situation here doesn’t bring confusion, Osho explains; it simply destroys one’s pretenses and efforts to hide the confusion that was already there.

It is as if someone who is ill goes to a doctor who confirms the illness. The man will feel confused

– he was perfectly okay before and now this doctor is creating trouble – but the illness was there all along. So you have come to the doctor, chuckles Osho. People who start getting confused when they come to me are my people... they give a right indication. Give me an opportunity to destroy you so utterly that the new can be born. Once the disease is diagnosed, it is better to take the whole treatment, mm? Become a sannyasin!]

[A sannyasin who has completed the groups Osho suggested, says she feels beautiful, more open and accepting, and moving into more relationships. But in her present relationship, she says, at first she felt no expectations and then jealousy came up – she is afraid to allow it in case it destroys the relationship.]

No, don’t repress, otherwise the relationship will never be really a relationship. Jealousy is not good, but a repressed jealousy is far more dangerous than an expressed jealousy. No jealousy is the best thing to have, but if it is not there then the next choice should be jealousy expressed; the next best is jealousy expressed.

Hope for the first but you will have to try the next; the first comes very very late in your personal growth. it is indicative of a very very integrated person, that he doesn’t feel jealous. Only a person who has accepted himself so totally and one who is so happy with himself and does not have any idea of comparison with anybody else can be non-jealous. jealousy arises because of comparison.

For example, you love a person and the person loves you and then one day you see him being attracted towards some other woman – and comparison comes in. So he is deserting you; so he has found somebody who is better than you? Then has he found somebody who is more beautiful than you?

You may not figure it out so clearly but that’s exactly what creates jealousy: the very idea that somebody can be better, that somebody can be more beautiful, somebody can attract your man more than you yourself. That creates a kind of inferiority inside and you start being jealous. You will create all sorts of hindrances possible to destroy this possibility.

No jealousy is possible only when you have come to accept yourself so utterly that now there is no comparison; you don’t compare yourself with anybody. Even if your man moves to somebody else it does not create any comparison; it is just a simple fact that he became attracted to that woman. It does not bring you into any conflict with the other woman; it does not say anything about you. If it says anything, it says something about the man, nothing about you, it has no reference to you at all.

But that is possible only when you have become so integrated that you can live without a lover, you can live without being loved and you will be as happy as when you are being loved, when love is no more a necessity but just fun. If you are loved, good. if you are not loved, perfectly good – you don’t hanker for it.

There is no ego need in it and you don’t make it an ego trip. You don’t say that this man loves you

– that means he has chosen: you out of all the women of the earth and you are the topmost. And when this man chooses you and you choose this man, this man is the topmost in the world and he has chosen the topmost girl in the world. Naturally then one feels very good: so the two topmost persons are together!

If you start becoming interested in some other man he feels hurt, because what will happen to the topmost man now? He is no more the topmost. Or if he starts being interested in some other woman you are no more the topmost girl any longer.

This is all that goes on in the name of love and relationship. But one has to accept the reality – you cannot do that which is not possible right now. So right now two things are possible: expressed jealousy is possible, repressed jealousy is possible.

Repressed jealousy is very dangerous.

Expressed jealousy is thrown out of the system: you are finished with it, you get rid of it; you don’t accumulate it. Repressed jealousy goes on being accumulated: it becomes more and more like a volcano – one day it explodes. One day for no reason at all it will explode: any small thing will become the last straw on the camel and it will happen. Then you will look foolish and stupid because it is out of all proportion.

For example, your boyfriend is reading a book and he is not looking at you; now this becomes the last straw on the camel. You take the book and throw it away and say ’While I am here, why do you go on reading the book?’

This is out of all proportion. The book is not a woman, but this becomes just an excuse and all that he has been doing and all that you have been repressing has exploded. Now, he will think this is very strange – just for the book! And you will also feel very strange, feeling that this is not the real reason.

That’s how relationships become very stupid, because in the right moment you repress, then in some wrong moment it comes up. It is better to bring it up when it is alive, at least it will be in context; it will not be stupid, one thing.

And when you always bring it up, it never accumulates, it never becomes volcanic. It is better to say to your man if you are feeling jealous, that you are feeling very very jealous! There is no need to make him feel guilty – simply state the fact. You are not saying that he should not do this –

remember; there is no need. If he wants to move with another woman he will move. What can be done about it? One is almost helpless.

Before he became your boyfriend he must have loved other women, so he has moved from them: some day he will move from you too. One comes to accept realities, that it’s okay. If he were not a mover he would not have come even to you in the first place, he would have been stuck with one woman forever, but he is a mover so you could get a chance. Now he’s moving, so it’s okay.

Don’t make him feel guilty – simply state your jealousy. Say, ’[I am] feeling jealous. Nothing is wrong about you; whatsoever you are doing, you are doing. What can you do? If I cannot stop my jealousy, how can you stop your lust for others?’ You understand?

’If I cannot stop my jealousy, what can you do? When a woman passes by and suddenly you become interested, what can you do? You are helpless, as I am. So I understand; please try to understand me too.’

This is what I call the basic understanding that is needed in every relationship: don’t make him feel guilty, that’s all. He does not make you feel guilty and ask why you are feeling jealous; one should not feel jealous. That is not the point, that one should or should not; one is feeling.

But don’t repress it; if you repress it your love will become poisoned. So when this man is holding your hand, your hand will be cold if you have repressed jealousy. Your hand will not have the flow of energy, it will not have any warmth. How can you be warm with this man? You know well that he is destroying your happiness so you become cold; you hold yourself. He may be loving to you, he may be making love to you, but you remain cold, you don’t show any sign of love. You simply pass through it as if you are at the most tolerating all this nonsense; you start showing boredom.

This will be automatic because that jealousy is there in your stomach – it will poison. It is better to get rid of it. Right now you have to go through it, get rid of it: when you are feeling angry, be angry!

Don’t accumulate madnesses, drop them. Whenever they are alive, lively, warm, go into them. And this will not destroy your relationship, no – this will make it more warm, hot.

Don’t be worried whether it is going to last forever or not; nothing lasts forever. So if it is going to last for a few days, let it be hot – why make it cold? Otherwise before it is finished, it is finished!

One day, through learning, through experiencing many relationships, one becomes mature. Then jealousy disappears. Then you are simply happy if this man comes and shares his energy with you, or if he wants to share with somebody else you are happy That is his freedom, you have nothing to do with it. We are only our own masters and nobody should pretend to be a master to somebody else. When freedom is left intact love grows infinitely.

So at this moment you can do only one thing: don’t make him feel guilty, that’s all. If jealousy is there, say so: be angry, break a plate, mm? slam the door. Do all the things that are needed.... And no woman has to be taught about that – they are born with the ideas!

Keep this with you (Osho passes her a box) and whenever you are feeling very jealous and very angry put it on your third eye. It will help you, mm? Good.

CHAPTER 12

With me, nobody is going to be a loser

15 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, returning to the West, says: I’d just like to ask you about sannyas for my children. I have two children, six and eight, and they’re probably going to come back with me in January for about six months.

I have some doubts about sannyas, that it seems to be another form of baptism to put on them.

Could you say something?]

No need to make them sannyasins just now; that will be a baptism and that is not good, mm? Let them come, let them feel. If they decide on their own, that’s good; don’t decide for them. Anything decided by somebody else is ugly; it is a kind of imprisonment, an indoctrination.

So whether it is christian or hindu or mohammedan doesn’t matter. It can be my sannyas – it doesn’t matter. If it is enforced by somebody else, with good wishes; that is not the point; that is not doubted at all.... When you want your children to be sannyasins you want it with good wishes – you feel that will be a blessing for them, but that is your feeling – and even if it is right, it is wrong to impose it on them... unless they decide on their own. So all that we can do for children is to just bring them into the situation where they can feel.

And children are very perceptive... more perceptive than they will ever be again. Their eyes are more clear, they can see truth more easily than grown-up people because grown-up people have learned many things; the grown-ups naturally are conditioned more. Their mirror is no more a mirror: it has many clouds around it and much dust has gathered.

So if you feel that something good is happening anywhere and you would like to share it with your children, bring the children to the situation and help them to be there, that’s all.

Never for a single moment enforce anything... don’t even persuade. Don’t even utter a single word about sannyas – let them come. They will be able to see, and if they feel, that’s good; then they have the right to move into it.

There is another kind of indoctrination which is anti – you can prevent them: when they want to do something, you prevent them; that too is the same. If the son of a mohammedan wants to become christian he will be prevented. That is in a negative way but again you are forcing something.

If you love the child you love the child’s freedom too. And never for a single moment think ’How can children think?’ ’How can they decide for themselves?’ That is one of the oldest pieces of nonsense prevalent in the world – that people think ’How can the children think for themselves? We have to think for them!’

If they cannot think for themselves then nobody else can... and I am not saying that they will always think rightly. Freedom to think implies freedom to go wrong; that’s part of freedom. If you always insist for the right then you don’t give the freedom at all. If you say only right should be done, then you decide what is right and you decide what is wrong and then again the freedom is crippled.

Freedom means to do anything they want to.

So bring them here, let them feel, and if they start feeling something then it is good. Mm? the day they want to take sannyas don’t even come with them – let them come alone!

[A new sannyasin says: I want to be near you and I’m fighting it. I’m a big fighter!

I allow all kinds of fighters around here chuckles Osho. Come and have a good fight with me. The more you fight, the sooner you will be defeated!]

[A sannyasin says: I have so many problems with my mind in every meditation – I can’t stop it!]

I understand. Start doing one thing: every day, for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, sit and say whatsoever comes in the mind, loudly, mm? so that not only do you think it, you hear it. Whatsoever it is – if nonsense comes, let it: you are not to edit it and you are not to make it beautiful because it is not meant to be a performance; it has to be that which is inside. If a few words come – and they will – if the sentence is not even complete and the words stop, then stop; don’t complete it. Then if something else comes, say that. But whatsoever comes, just watch it, articulate it, say it... whatsoever it is!

You have that garbage in the mind, it has to be thrown. You don’t throw it so it goes on revolving inside. Nothing is a problem; you are creating a problem.

People go on keeping that garbage, they don’t throw it. It is as if you are accumulating garbage in your house and you don’t throw it outside so it stinks and when it becomes too much you are disturbed. Wherever you move it is always there and everywhere you come across it. It has to be thrown!

The mind creates a certain garbage just as the body does – it is part of life. You eat something: a part of it is digested – becomes your blood, your bones, your flesh, your marrow – but ninety percent of it is just rubbish that has to be thrown out. If you don’t throw it you will accumulate it in your stomach and then you will be creating poison for your body. That’s what happens when somebody is too constipated, he starts creating toxins in the body; then the poison will circulate in the blood.

The same food that was going to be nourishment will become a deathly poison... the same food! So one has to go on throwing it out.

The mind functions in exactly the same way on a subtle plane. You hear somebody talk, you are hearing me talk, you read a book, you are in the market, you listen to people, you see a movie, you listen to the radio, you read the newspaper, all this is going in. Part of it will be digested – a very small part of it is worth digesting; the remaining – what will you do with it? It will go on revolving.

That’s why you know that the content is not important: the content is not important. When somebody is constipated it is not that he is holding gold in his stomach – it is just rubbish, excreta. And that’s what goes on moving in the mind: excreta.

One has to understand the process: just as you cleanse your body, you cleanse your intestines, just as everyday you throw the excreta out of the bodY and that keeps you healthy, in the same way mind needs tO be cleansed every day. So this will help you – one hour in the morning, one hour in the afternoon.

First many thoughts will come, mm? After a few days you will see thoughts are not coming but only fragmentary words... not even thoughts but just words. Then by and by you will start feeling that even words are no more coming but sounds – gibberish. When gibberish starts coming, come back; then you have touched the right level. Now thoughts are not coming, words are not coming, gibberish is coming. That means that much is cleaned and then meditation will be easy.

This you have to continue at least for six months – this will be your meditation – and you will be completely freed.

[A sannyasin says that he was waiting for discourse one morning and felt strange. The next thing he knew he was lying in someone’s room and they said he had had an epileptic fit.

Osho checks his energy.]

No, it was not an epileptic fit at all, it has nothing to do with epilepsy....

Nothing to be worried about mm? It was not epileptic at all, but it can appear to other people from the outside like epilepsy, because from the outside sometimes a satori looks like epilepsy; from the outside the symptoms are almost the same.

Even up to now doctors suspect that Ramakrishna used to have epileptic fits.

Even about

Ramakrishna they suspected epilepsy because from the outside the symptoms are almost the same.

It is a particular kind of satori – what we call in India ’bhaw samadhi’; it is an emotional satori .

There are two types of satoris – one that happens through the intellect.... Then one remains alert

– not only alert: one becomes tremendously alert. That’s what happened in zen satoris. The whole approach is through the intellect – through the koan, the intellectual puzzle and thinking and meditation. They are all bringing a focal point where the mind comes to the most intense of tensions, beyond which there is no more to go. It comes like a peak, like a sexual peak, and then from there everything explodes. But the person remains very very conscious – in fact more conscious than ever. It is a flash of consciousness – that is zen satori. But they are not aware of another kind of satori, because zen is half of the path... what in India we call ’gyana yoga’ – the path of knowing; zen is that.

There is another path – the other half, the other aspect of reality – ’bhakta yoga’, the path of devotion.

On the path of devotion, when a satori happens it happens through the heart not through the intellect.

It happens through the emotions, and when it happens through the emotions one goes unconscious

– it is a flash of unconsciousness. Both are satoris – one happens from the head centre, another happens from the heart centre – but this satori is not so much known in the West.

And you are a devotee, you have a very very vibrant heart. So coming from the Himalayas you may have gathered it and then here, close to me, it came to a peak and you went flat. But it was perfectly good, mm? – it has nothing to do with epilepsy. If it happens again, tell people who are around you not to be worried, mm ?

It can happen again sometime, mm? so just keep a small card as diabetic people do – just a small card saying:

This is a bhaw samadhi. Please don’t think it is an epileptic fit and don’t treat me in any way. Just let me rest.

[The sannyasin says: It felt very very strange for quite a long time after... I didn’t know where I was.

I was very vulnerable too.]

Mm mm. It is strange... it is strange. But it has been a good, beautiful experience... very valuable.

Next time it will take you deeper and next time after it you will not feel so strange, you will feel very grounded and very rooted.

This time you became puzzled as to what it was. When you came back and people told you it was epilepsy, you became disturbed – the interpretation became a disturbance; it is not. Good!

[The Enlightenment Intensive group is present. A group member asks Osho: Did I miss? Osho replies, no, not at all! With me, nobody is going to miss. It is going to happen sooner or later – it is only a question of time. With me, nobody is going to be a loser!]

[Another group member says: During the group I found out that I was really afraid of death and I really understood the energy.... Now I have lost this understanding.

Osho checks his energy.]

Good! It was a real glimpse but just a glimpse. It was good to begin with. More glimpses will be needed; then it will become your insight.

Just like lightning it happened, for a moment it was there, but that’s how it happens for the first time; one should not hope for more. If even for a single moment you have seen your fear and your death it is of tremendous importance. More glimpses will be coming soon so when it happens next time accept it.

Everybody is afraid of death; it is a basic fear. It is not that one is a coward – it is basic to life. It is life-protective: it is a strategy to protect life. Accept it, and if you accept it you will be able to go deep into it.

The day the glimpse becomes an insight, the fear disappears, because then it is revealed that life and death are one and the same thing. They are not two but two aspects of the same coin – not opposites but complementaries....

[Another participant says since the group she’s had the feeling that she doesn’t understand what people are trying to say when they talk to her. It just seems like a foreign language and makes her feel confused....

Yes, after this group it can happen, but that’s a good sign, mm? – that means the gestalt of your mind has started changing. Nothing to be worried about.

The first thing: when people are saying things they may not be saying anything! They may not have anything to say: they may simply be hiding the fact that they have nothing to say through words. So it is not necessarily that there is some meaning... very rarely. Out of one hundred people you will find one person, and out of a hundred of his sentences you will find only one sentence which really has any meaning.

So after a group it can sometimes happen: you start seeing into things so you will feel that there is no meaning – why is this man talking? You understand the words of course, you know the language, but there is nothing, no content in it: he is just throwing empty containers at you. What does he mean?

And then one becomes disturbed – maybe something is wrong with you? He must mean something when he is saying something. Not necessarily... people go on talking, meaning nothing! If you insist on knowing their meaning they will be puzzled and embarrassed, they will not be able to figure out what they are really wanting to convey to you.

Man lives in such a madness that all conversations are just called conversations – there is no conversation going on. One person throws his garbage at the other, then the other throws his garbage back on him. That is a mutual arrangement – you empty me, I will empty you – and both feel good.

That’s why sometimes when somebody does not give you any chance to empty, you feel bored, mm?

he becomes a little taxing. He goes on throwing his garbage and he doesn’t give you any chance to throw yours; you feel bored. Boredom means: please give me a little chance too.

It may be a beautiful insight – don’t be afraid of it. Just watch, look into it. And after intensive enlightenment it can happen. This is a kind of disorientation with the old habit, with the old idea that when somebody is saying something he must mean something. That is just not true.

CHAPTER 13

No answer is needed....

16 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, nirvakar means purity, innocence, virginity....

It is a very very important term in the East – nirvakar. It means your originalness, the way you essentially are, uncorrupted by anything foreign from the outside... Like the mirror when nothing is reflected in it: a mirror not reflecting anything, not even a reflection corrupting it. That’s the state of nirvakar, innocence, purity... and that becomes possible again through meditation.

Meditation is nothing but an effort to drop all the foreign elements so that you can see yourself as you were before you were born, mirrored in its purity. It is a great silence and a great joy to be there, and once you start abiding there, there is no death and no time. All fear, all greed, all anger, disappears: one is just there with no idea, no desire.

This is the goal towards which sannyas moves: the utter purity of consciousness.

[A sannyasin, just arrived back here, says that when he was away he felt very close to Osho. On the way back to Poona, he felt hesitation about being with Osho again. Now, he says, I feel more and more confused.

It’s natural, says Osho. When you are far away there is no fear; my existence is just your idea.

When you come close you are facing me, not your idea, and you cannot manipulate me as you can your idea of me. I will shatter your ideas and you, and it is only through that shattering that a new consciousness will be born.

First the master is a cross and then a resurrection. Who wants to come close to a cross? I make it as comfortable as possible, but what to do? A cross is a cross!]

[Another sannyasin, who has also just returned to Poona, says he was feeling angry with Osho until he heard what he just said and then he understood some of his feelings.

Osho says that one does feel angry with the person one loves; by and by anger disappears and only love remains but in the beginning things are mixed because the mind is mixed.... ]

It is as if you dig a well, mm? – for many feet you will find only rubbish, heaps of rubbish, junk; even clean earth will not be found. Then after a few feet you start finding clean earth but dry. Then by and by you come across wet earth: now this is the first indication of water but you cannot drink it. It is just wet earth but it is an indication, there is still too much earth. Then you dig a little more and find dirty water, still not drinkable, mm? much dirt in it but now it is water. Then you go on digging; as you go deeper the fresh springs of water will become available. That’s how it happens between the disciple and the master....

I am trying to dig a well in you. First only rubbish comes up – hence all these groups; they help.

Mm? that is the spade work: they throw all kinds of junk from your mind. Once the dry earth is available meditations start working. After the wet earth is found, silent meditations are needed... no more active meditations. Once the muddy water is found even silent meditations are not needed: one has just to wait and sit silently. The mud settles if you wait; if you go on doing something the mud will be continuously created by your doing.

Once the muddy water is available one need not do anything – then non-doing is needed. That’s what Lao Tzu calls ’wu-wei’, non-doing. Sitting silently, doing nothing, the grass grows by itself... if you can sit silently with tremendous trust that the mud will settle on its own accord.

All these stages one has to pass through. Only finally does pure love become available – pure water, crystal clear. Then there is no anger, no confusion: all foreign elements have been discarded. But on the way you have to pass through all these things, so don’t be afraid about them and don’t disown them. Don’t say that something is wrong, because once you say something is wrong you start repressing it; that has to be understood.

Once you say ’One should not feel angry at one’s master’ then what will you do with that anger?

And it is there! Just by saying that one should not feel it, it is not going to disappear. You cannot do any magic – it is still there.

You can do only one thing by thinking that one should not be angry at one’s master, that this is not right, this is ugly – you can do only one thing: you can put it by the side where you don’t look at it or you can throw it in the basement. So when the well is dug deeper, again you will have to come across it. Or if you hide it so permanently that you never come across it, then something of your being will remain undeveloped, discarded, disowned.

That part of being is your being and you cannot grow without it growing with you because the growth is organic. If one part remains retarded and other parts grow you will become a monster: one hand goes on becoming bigger and bigger and one hand remains small; one leg becomes very big and another leg remains small. You will be a monster and you will be in much trouble and much pain and anguish; it will be difficult to even live.

That’s what has happened to millions of people: they have become monsters because much has been disowned. The disowned cannot grow because it cannot come to light. The disowned cannot grow because you never give any nourishment to it, you don’t look at it! You have discarded it completely but you cannot cut it because it is you.

So never disown anything: if the anger is there, own it, accept it – it is part of growth. Be humble before it, know well that one has to accept it, one has to go through it. Go on working but never disown anything.

Sooner or later you will find that you are growing organically in a deep balance – there is an equilibrium. No part is growing at the cost of another part. No part is denied so no part can take any revenge any time. Nothing is repressed so by and by the unconscious disappears, because when there is no repression the unconscious cannot exist: it exists through repression. And when there is no unconscious your whole house is full of light.

That’s what joy is, that’s what ecstasy is. That’s where we are all trying to move to, to that ecstatic point where no darkness remains, nothing unconscious remains.

So nothing to be worried about, it is perfectly okay. Feeling angry at me is perfectly okay! Good!

[A visitor says she has thought about sannyas but feels confused and frightened. Osho says, You can wait a little but from my side you are already a sannyasin! There are a few things to be aware about, in regard to sannyas. Firstly, you can never be ready; one can only be ready by being in it. By taking sannyas you simply show your willingness to be ready; the real sannyas happens sometime after you’ve taken it. Secondly, if you wait to be total in your decision to take sannyas you wait forever because the mind is never total about anything and cannot be. And sannyas is not something you can think about; it is a love affair. Either you are in love with me or you are not. And lastly, it is better to take the jump without thinking... ]

... because when you think too much and then you conclude, you miss something very very essential

– the thrill of the unknown, the thrill of trust you miss. A moment was close where you could have trusted but you didn’t, you trusted your own mind. So you thought: you thought of pros and cons and you made a long list, mm? and then you decided whether to take it or not to. If you decide not to take you don’t miss anything, but if you decide to take then even your surrender is through your will. Then it is your decision: because it is your decision something is missed.

Let it be an adventure into the unknown. Just look into my eyes and go into it rather than thinking about it. At least do one thing in your life that you have not thought about. You have been thinking your whole life, you have been doing things through your thinking – where has your mind led you?

What has it presented you with? What gift has it given to you? Where are you? Where do you stand through all your thinking? Just look at it! You will be adding one thing more to it, in the same way.

I would like you to take something new, something that you have never done before, something that you will be doing for the first time. And maybe that will change your whole gestalt, your whole life pattern, your whole life style, because you will be tasting something new for the first time – that yes, that too is possible: surrender is possible too. One can live without thinking and one can let things happen rather than deciding and doing them.

My suggestion is: let it happen. But still you are free; if you want to think about it, you can.

Deva means divine, sambara means discipline – divine discipline. That means, a discipline not imposed by you, a discipline not managed by you... just a surrender on your part, on your part just letting go. And the moment you let yourself go totally, with no condition, god starts disciplining your life.

Except for man, god is managing everything and everything is going so beautifully, so rhythmically.

Trees have that discipline, and the clouds and the stars and the whole cosmos is perfectly balanced, disciplined... except for man. Except for man, nothing seems to be neurotic. From where does this neurosis of man arise? From the effort to discipline oneself, the egoistic effort to cultivate a certain kind of life.

So this, your jump into sannyas, is a beginning. Now relax and let god discipline you. Be a tree or a rock or a river. Forget that nonsense that every human being is taught – that you have to discipline yourself. Be a chaos, and then discipline comes, a discipline descends which is not of your mind, which is something of the beyond, something transcendental. And only that which comes from above is beautiful. That which we cultivate and manage is ugly; it is very mediocre.

That is the difference between a real saint and a false saint. The false saint is one who has disciplined himself according to a certain code of conduct – buddhist, hindu, christian, mohammedan

– who lives according to principles, whose life is secondary, whose principles are primary. He lives according to the books; he lives a pseudo life. It is a hypocrisy, well-managed. It is a kind of repression because his real life is repressed and only an unreal life is managed on the surface.

Deep down he remains very very ugly; on the surface very painted. This is the false saint.

The real saint is one who knows nothing of principle, who has not even known about the word, that one has to conduct one’s life in a certain way. One is not, so how can one conduct one’s life? One is one with the total. One is in a great, deep, at-one-ment, in tremendous accord with the whole of existence, so one lets the whole have its say. One flows with the river; one does not push. One does not even swim – one simply floats with the river.

You lose all ideas of separation, you become one with the river. One does not know that one is separate from the river; one becomes just a ripple in the river. Mm? then there arises the great saint, the sage, who does not know anything about how to live – he simply lives.

When hungry he eats, when sleepy he sleeps. He does not manipulate himself; he has no dictatorial mind in him. He has no mind: he is just empty of mind, just like a hollow bamboo so god can use him as a flute and whatsoever songs he wants to sing, he sings.

[A sannyasin says: I look inside but really, I don’t have anything to ask you... or even to say really.

But something is there... there’s still a question, a question mark.]

I know that question mark! When questions disappear and only a question mark remains it is a great indication that you are on the right track. Soon the question mark will also disappear. First questions disappear, then the question mark is bound to go sooner or later because the question mark cannot exist long without a question. The question mark starts feeling foolish when there is no question, just the question mark. It becomes irrelevant with your being: sooner or later it will be dropped.

Simply go on as you are, things are going Perfectly well. You need only my blessings – no answer is needed. Good!

CHAPTER 14

While you are here let your head disappear

17 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives someone sannyas.]

Sit here! Raise your hands and close your eyes and just think of yourself as a tree. Forget that you are in the human body but are in the body of a tree and these hands are like branches in the sky.

It is raining and the tree is feeling very very delighted. It is windy and the tree starts swaying. Just be the tree and allow . the body to feel like the tree: if it starts swaying trembling, shaking, go with it.

Deva means god, arpita means surrendered – surrendered to god, surrendered to the divine. And that’s my basic teaching: all that I teach is how to surrender, nothing else is needed.

Man cannot do anything on his own accord. Anything done by man goes wrong because the moment you do something the doer arises, and the doer is the problem, the ego. So doing is really the very undoing of man. You have to become a non-doer. You have to allow god to do things through you: you have to become a vehicle, a passage.

You can become – the energy is there; that kind of energy is there which can be very easily moved into a let-go. Of course you are afraid and you are holding it. The energy was vibrating but you could not sway, you could not go with it; you prevented yourself – the doer came in.

You could not relax. And it is not that the energy was not there: the energy was there, the energy was ready to sway and dance in the winds-but you could not allow it; you tried to control it. That control has to be dropped.

Once that control disappears man starts blooming. That control is crippling everybody... and we have been taught to control. We have been taught to manipulate our own being, and that is the basic reason for all kinds of schizophrenia. Because the moment you control, what happens? You are divided in two – the controller and controlled: you are never one then.

There is always the top dog and the bottom dog and the top dog trying to control the bottom dog.

The problem is that the bottom dog is more strong than the top dog, because the bottom dog is natural and the top dog is social. The top dog is education, conditioning, culture, civilisation, and the bottom dog is natural, biological; it is very ancient, it is very eternal.

The top dog has only just now come into existence, is a very late arrival, is very very junior, and the bottom dog is very ancient and very powerful and very strong. The weaker tries to control the stronger so problems are going to happen. The stronger will subvert, will sabotage all efforts of the top dog to control it: it will find all strategies, all techniques, to avoid being controlled. It will find loopholes; it will assert itself. It will find weak moments and then it will jump upon you.

For example, if one is trying to control sex the idea to be celibate is a very poor and weak thing and sex is tremendously strong. You are made of it, you are born out of it; every cell of your body is a sexual cell.

But the weaker pretends to be the master. And why does it happen that it manages to be the master?

Because it is articulate, that’s all. The bottom dog is dumb: it is powerful like a wild animal but dumb.

And the top dog is very weak but very articulate, logical, rational, can convince, can argue; it is a professor!

So the bottom dog cannot argue, that is true; it cannot defend itself, it cannot prove itself. Then it finds very very subtle ways to sabotage... and life becomes a conflict.

The top dog is never going to win, it cannot win in the very nature of things. That becomes the frustration of the whole life, the whole life feels frustrated. You are defeated every time. Every time you decide no more sex you will be defeated; every time you decide no more anger you will be defeated. Every time you decide no more this and no more that you will be defeated.

And continuous defeat naturally frustrates, that’s why so many people look so miserable. Nothing is wrong with them – it is just that they are not winning, hence they are miserable. And they cannot win because they have chosen such a wrong conflict that it is not possible. They can win only with the bottom dog, with the bottom dog’s help; they cannot win against it.

This is one of the basic secrets of life: that you can be victorious but never against your instinct –

always through it, always with it. So befriend your bottom dog; don’t try to control it. It is beautiful, it has nothing wrong in it.

It has to be helped – it is dumb, so you can become its mouth. Then there is no conflict. One becomes a unity and unity is beautiful. Then one is organic, and in being organic there is grace, there is elegance; a luminosity arises in the being.

So this has to be remembered: while you are here let your head disappear! Let your body be accepted, welcomed. Let your pure energies be allowed to have their way and to have their dance.

Once this happens you will never be neurotic, you will never be mentally ill; you will never be a schizophrenic, a split personality. And when one is one there is joy.

Joy is a by-product of being one integrated individual; joy is a by-product of being an organic whole.

One simply starts feeling delighted for no reason at all, the reason is nowhere else to be found. It is in your inner unity; you become a chorus or you become an orchestra and everything fits with everything else; you become one piece....

That is the meaning of ’arpita’ – to be so utterly surrendered to life, to nature, to god....

[Osho gives a sannyasin a name for a centre.]

Autara. It means god’s coming downwards... and the descendence of god.

There are two concepts in the East: one is of man rising and becoming a god. That is a Jaina and Buddhist concept: there is no god at the top, mm? the gods are here. They evolve, they evolve, and at the ultimate peak of evolution one becomes a god. So there are millions of gods; as many people evolve, they all become gods.

And the Hindu concept is that god is on the top and he descends. When you are ready it is not that you grow; when you are ready you disappear. Suddenly god descends, it is a descendence.

And it is of tremendous importance, this idea of ’autara’.

CHAPTER 15

Now begin the enquiry into god

18 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

The new name is of tremendous significance: it is closing accounts with the old, getting out of the old continuity.

The name is the only continuity: everything else goes on changing, only the name remains continuous, and because of the name, the fallacy exists that we are not changing. The child changes into a young man, the young man changes into an old man, life changes into death. Everything goes on changing, it is a flux. Only this false name remains static... but that creates a great illusion: that gives you the idea as if you are permanent.

The body goes on changing.... First physiologists used to think that in seven years the whole changes completely; now they say it changes in one year. Whatsoever is true, it changes: by and by the whole body is renewed again and again and again. You don’t have the same body; you will never have the same body again. It is exactly as old heraclitus says: you cannot step in the same river twice. You cannot be in the same body twice, next moment it is something else. The ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same; just the name ganges remains the same. And that creates a false illusion of our being permanent, of there being some entity, something static that exists.

There is no entity that exists. It is all liquid, there is no solid thing anywhere; there is no substance.

And just like the body, the mind goes on changing even faster than the body. The body may take one year to change; the mind changes every moment. Just a moment before there was anger and now it is not there. Now you are so loving and one moment afterwards you are so sad, so unhappy. The mind goes on changing every second but the name gives you a false idea that there is something substantial that continues to be the same.

This name becomes the ego: the name almost becomes identical with the ego – my name, my family’s name, my country’s name, my religion’s name. They have become so important; people fight for them, people kill each other for them... for names!

And the reality has nothing like the ego. That is one of the deepest revelations in life, that nothing is static, everything is dynamic; god is change. That’s my approach – that god is not something absolute, not something that remains the same. God is this whole totality, this flux of totality...

millions of forms changing into millions of other forms. This whole movement, this whole energy, is god! All these changes together is what god is.

Hence, this is very important, to change the name sometimes, mm? That gives you a break, a breakthrough, a gap. From this moment you can start thinking about yourself in a new way. With the new name you start again from abc. With the new name whatsoever you do will not be an addition to the past; it will be something separate, utterly separate. And the beauty of it, the newness of it, the freshness...

Deva mimansa. The name means enquiry into god – deva means god, mimansa means enquiry.

And that’s the only enquiry worth calling an enquiry. That is the only enquiry that is significant, that is meaningful; all other enquiries are trivia. The only thing to know is to know god because to know god is to know oneself and to know all.

One of the most important indian scriptures, ’Brahmasutra’ starts with the sentence, ’Athato brahmajijnasa’: ’Now, begins the enquiry into god.’ It is the only book in the world which starts with the word ’now’. No other book starts with the word ’now’, because it looks as if one is in the middle. ’Now, begins the enquiry into god’ – it feels as if something is missing: something must have preceded this now. Nothing has preceded this now.

This ’now’ is very significant. It simply says, ’You have lived a life of illusions – now, begin the enquiry into god. You have lived a life of worldly pleasure, pain, misery, problems; you have searched in many directions and you have found nothing – now, begin the enquiry into god. You have lived through the ego, you have lived through the self and you are tired. You have come to a cul-de sac and there is nowhere to go any more – now, begin the enquiry into god. You have accumulated money, you have power, you have fame but nothing has been of any fulfillment – now, begin the enquiry into god.’

This ’now’ is significant: it does not mean that the book starts in the middle, it says enquiry into god starts in the middle of life. It cannot start from the very beginning, that’s not possible. A child cannot enquire into god, he has first to enquire into life. He has to go astray; every adam has to go astray.

Every child born of human beings has to lose god, has to go far away. Only then, when darkness becomes too much, anguish too heavy and the heart starts sinking, does one start thinking of doing something utterly different from what one has done. Then comes that moment – now, begin the enquiry into god....

My feeling is that now the moment has come. Let your whole energy be devoted to this enquiry...

this is the only thing worthwhile. If one can know what god is, one need not know anything else, and if one knows everything else and has not come across god, all that is just absurd, meaningless; it is not going to take you anywhere.

[The new sannyasin says she is in primal therapy; she has been in psychoanalysis and done psychodrama.]

Primal therapy? Very good. Mm mm, that’s one of the good things to do and to be in. It certainly prepares people for me because after primalling only sannyas is left!

Mm mm... it is great. There is much great insight possible through it... but it is only a beginning. And Janov has fallen into the very ancient trap: now he thinks that this is the end; that’s where things go wrong.

Primal is a beginning, mm? it cleanses you, but then something has to be sowed in that clean heart, otherwise you cleanse the ground, you prepare the ground, but it is not yet a garden. When you are preparing for a garden you cleanse the ground, you uproot the grass, you throw the weeds away, you remove the rocks, but it is not a garden yet. Mm? you have to bring rosebushes. So primal is a good cleansing but is just a beginning; then you have to bring rosebushes.

Now this orange is your rosebush. You have to sow some new seeds of being and life otherwise you will again accumulate the same rubbish... because a land cannot remain fallow for long. If you don’t sow rosebushes the weeds will start growing up again... and the weeds don’t need to be brought, mm? they grow on their own. The rosebushes don’t grow on their own, they have to be protected, brought, cared for and loved... only then.

Now Janov has fallen into the old trap – it is one of the oldest traps that the human mind always falls in: when you discover something valuable you start thinking, ’This is the end. Now nothing else is needed. This will do.’

That happened with Wilhelm Reich. He thought if a person can have a beautiful orgasm then nothing is needed: to be orgasmic is enough. A good insight, to be orgasmic is very very helpful, but it is not enough. Just to be orgasmic is not going to lead you anywhere.

Marx thinks that once people are well-fed and they have good shelter and good clothing, all is solved.

It looks very very simplistic. Nothing is solved, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t need good shelter and don’t need good food – they do. Something is solved; it is a good beginning.

The same thing happened with Freud and the same thing has been happening down the ages: every thinker when he stumbles upon something valuable, gets into the trip and starts thinking that now he has come to know the whole and the all of the truth. Now this is going to solve all of the problems; now this is going to become the panacea that humanity has been searching for forever.

Nothing ever proves the panacea, nothing will ever prove the panacea. All that you come across remains partial, and one....

Nothing is ever the ultimate cure – everything helps towards it. It is always arriving but it never arrives, so one has to remain open, open-ended; that’s one of the greatest signs of a healthy mind.

So never think that anything is the end, nothing is ever the end; everything is again a new beginning.

A new door opens, a new journey starts, a new peak is arrived at, but once you have come upon the peak you will see greater peaks are waiting for you just further ahead. When you have climbed those greater peaks again you will find still greater peaks waiting for you ahead. It is a non-ending pilgrimage, this life.

Deva sumargo. It means the right path to god – deva means god, sumargo means the right way. And man has to become the way, there is no way to be travelled: man has to become the way for god to come in. It is not that god is somewhere and you have to travel. You are not to go somewhere, you have to disappear herenow. The moment you are not, the moment you disappear, you become the way, and through that way god comes in.

Man is the hindrance. Man cannot travel towards god – man himself is the hindrance; how can he travel? Wherever he will be it will be impossible for god to enter into him. Man can only become a vehicle, a passage, a hollow bamboo, so the song can descend and it can become a flute. The flute is nothing but a hollow bamboo, but great music is born out of it, out of that hollowness. The moment man becomes hollow he becomes a flute and god’s song starts flooding him.

And you can become that passage very easily. You have the capacity to imagine, to visualise: you don’t have a mind which is too much burdened with reason and analysis. You still have intact your intuitive capacities; you may not be using them but they are intact there. They just need a little tapping and they will start functioning.

So you have to become the way for god!

[The new sannyasin says: I’m a nurse. I’ve been working in a therapeutic community up until a while ago. I stopped to look after myself right now.]

Your energy is perfectly on the right track... it is on the way to become very orgasmic.

Everybody is born to become orgasmic. If we don’t it is our own fault, we cannot complain against life. Life has given everything that is needed to become orgasmic, to become ecstatic; nothing is lacking. But if we don’t use all those potentialities, if we don’t make them actual – if the seeds remain seeds and they never find soil anywhere, they are never watered, nobody takes care, and even if sometimes they sprout they are trampled on by the animals or children – then nobody is at fault except ourselves. Our responsibility is tremendous... and the responsibility is not towards anybody else, the responsibility is towards your own being, towards your own destiny.

A great promise is what man is. The jewish Torah says that man is a promise, man is not yet. Man can be, but that is the encounter with all one’s capacities, potentialities.

[A sannyasin who is a doctor asks about studying acupuncture.]

The idea is good, mm? worth trying, but remember one thing – that acupuncture is utterly eastern.

So when you approach any eastern science with the western mind you miss many things. Your whole approach is different: it is methodological, it is logical, analytical.

And these eastern sciences are not really sciences but arts. Even to call them sciences is not right: they are arts, intuitive arts. The whole thing depends on whether you can shift your energies from the intellect to the intuition, whether you can shift from male to female, from yang to yin, from the active, aggressive approach; on whether you can become passive, receptive. Only then do these things work... otherwise you can learn all about acupuncture and it will not be acupuncture at all.

You will know all about it but not it. And sometimes it happens that a person may not know much about it and knows it, but then it is a knack, just an insight into it.

So this is happening to many eastern things: the West becomes interested because they are profound the West becomes interested in an eastern thing but then it brings in its own mind to understand it. The moment the western mind comes into it the very base of it is destroyed. Then only fragments are left and those fragments never work. And it is not that acupuncture was not going to work; acupuncture can work but it can work only with an eastern approach.

So if you really want to learn acupuncture it is good to know about it but that is not the most essential thing. Learn whatsoever information is possible then forget all the information and start groping in the dark. Start listening to your own unconscious, start feeling en rapport with the patient. It is different....

When a patient comes to a western medical man the western medical man starts reasoning, diagnosing, analysing, finding out where the illness is, what the illness is and what can cure it.

He uses one part of his mind, the rational part. He attacks the disease, he starts conquering it: a fight starts between the disease and the doctor. The patient is just out of the game, the doctor does not bother about the patient. It is as if the disease exists on its own without the patient. He starts fighting with the disease, the patient is completely neglected.

When you come to an acupuncturist the disease is not important, the patient is important – because it is the patient who has created the disease: the cause is in the patient, the disease is only a symptom. You can change the symptom; another symptom will come up. You can force this disease by drugs, you can stop its expression; then somewhere else and with more danger, more force, with a vengeance, the disease will assert itself. The next disease will be more difficult to tackle than the first. You drug it too, then the third disease will be even more difficult.

That’s how allopathy has created cancer. You go on forcing the disease back from one side, it asserts itself from another: then you force it from that side. The disease starts becoming very very angry... and you don’t change the patient, the patient remains the same so the cause exists and the cause goes on creating the effect.

Acupuncture deals with the cause. Never deal with the effect, always go to the cause. And how can you go to the cause? Reason cannot go to the cause, the cause is too big for the reason: it can only tackle the effect. Only meditation can go to the cause.

So the acupuncturist will feel the patient. He will forget about the illness, he will forget about treating him, he will forget his knowledge; he will just try to get in tune with the patient. He will fall en rapport, he will start feeling a bridge with the patient. He will start feeling the disease of the patient in his own body, in his own energy system. That is the only way for him to know intuitively where the cause is because the cause is hidden. He will become the mirror and he will find the reflection in himself.

This is the whole process of it, and this is not being taught because it cannot be taught. So my suggestion is that it is really worth going into. First learn in the West for two years, then for at least six months go to some far eastern country and be with some acupuncturist. Just be in his presence, just let him work and you watch... just absorb his energy.

And then you will be able to do something, otherwise it will be difficult. It will be difficult but worth devoting your energies to, mm?

So whenever you can manage, come. And start acupuncture!

[A sannyasin says: Last year I smoked hashish... I felt like some energy was coming up from my legs. I was so overwhelmed that I tried to stop it.... And sometimes after that without smoking or drinking it would happen.

Osho checks his energy.]

Come closer, raise your hands and allow that energy to come up... it will start coming. And if something starts happening in the body you allow it.

Let me be your hashish!

Next time it happens don’t be afraid at all. It is nothing to be afraid of, it is something very beneficial, but it is better to get into it through meditation than through hashish....

Without drugs it can happen. It can happen; it has nothing to do with the drug, the drug can only trigger it. But it can be triggered by many other things, and it is better never to take the help of the drug because then one becomes dependent, and all kinds of dependence are a slavery. It is better to remain the master of your home.

When a thing can be done very easily without any dependence it is better to do that in your freedom

– otherwise, more and more of the drugs will be needed and it will be less and less effective because the body becomes accustomed to it.

And then there are other consequences of the drug. It is very destructive to the chemistry of the body, very destructive to the consciousness and very destructive to the subtle nervous system of the mind and the brain. It creates a dull mind, it creates stupidity, stupour; it makes a man mediocre because it is very very violent on the system.

And this can happen in any way. Just allow it – when it happens, just allow it; don’t be afraid. And once you drop the fear it will be coming more and more.

[A sannyasin says: I feel sometimes it’s very difficult for me to be really open and loving with a man and I worry about it.

Osho checks her energy.]

It will go... nothing to be worried at all. Leave it to me, it will go. And this is the place where it is not possible to continue in that way.

It is in a way a natural defence of the mind... and there is nothing wrong in it. One cannot be open in this horrible world every moment of one’s life, one cannot remain vulnerable, because then one will be exploited. One will be exploited very much, oppressed, because there are wolves all over. The world is not yet really such a place where people can always remain open. Mm? they have to see: sometimes they can open when the right situation and the right person is there and sometimes they have to remain closed; that is a natural protection.

But here we are creating an alternate world; there is no need to be in any way protective. Nobody is going to exploit, nobody is going to oppress you. My whole idea is, sooner or later, to create a small world of our own where everybody is allowed to be utterly vulnerable with no fear... where nobody is the enemy and nobody is competing and nobody is in any ego-trip... where everybody is as open as you are. When others are open it is very easy to be open. When everybody is open around you how can you remain closed? It is impossible to remain closed! It is so foolish and meaningless.

Just the opposite is the case right now: everybody is closed and you try to be open. It is very difficult.

To be open in the marketplace means danger: then all kinds of infections will enter in you. And you cannot even be open to your friend because when you open the door the enemy is also standing outside; so you are always afraid. If the door is open the enemy will also enter and sometimes may enter before your friend.

So one is suspicious, one lives in suspicion, and when one lives in suspicion how can there be a really beautiful life? This world is not yet the place for people to open and bloom – that’s why so many millions of people remain buds. They never open, they die. They are born as buds, they live as buds, they die as buds. They never see the light, those petals never open, and they have never that joy that comes when you release your fragrance to the winds.

But it will become very very easy, and once you start enjoying it by and by you will be capable of going into the world too. But that is a next step. Everybody needs an alternative world, a small world where one can learn to be open. Once you have learned to be open, once you have seen how beautiful it is to be open, then you can take all the risks – they are worthwhile. This is going to happen... nothing to be worried about!

[A black American who is a centre leader in the States says: There are many Afro-Americans... and by using your meditations they are beginning to come. But there’s a block: they are afraid of eastern things; they are not so relevant to black American or African things. The dance and the music brings them but there’s still a block.]

That will be possible, mm? – soon those blocks will disappear. Those blocks are there for a natural reason: they have been exploited so long that they have become afraid of everybody. And naturally when a society is repressed too much, exploited, oppressed, it clings to its own world just for a protection. So they are afraid of everybody... but tell them that I am a black man!

And you people will be able by and by.... Once people start coming... a few people will come, then it will be dissolved, mm? With me, everybody can feel at ease and at home, because I belong to nobody so I can belong to everybody. I have no religion and no country and no colour so whosoever comes to me, I am of his colour and his country and his race and his religion, and there is no problem.

It is going to happen, many more Africans will be coming. Don’t be worried. Good!

CHAPTER 16

I am not a guru – at the most a friend

19 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin reminds Osho that he had darshan with him a year ago but did not take sannyas because he had just left the Israeli army and wanted to see a bit of life.]

Mm mm, good, but that was not the right time – one has to wait for the right time. Many times people come to me but still they don’t come to me. They can talk but they are not talking. Only when the right moment arrives, when you fall en rapport, when something clicks in the heart... then the communication! Otherwise we can talk and we can meet together but togetherness does not happen that way. It happens somewhere deeper, in your very depth of being. When it happens there, then only is it of any meaning.

So many people will come and will go back and will have to come again. Later on they cannot believe why they missed for the first time, why they couldn’t get into it before. It was not right... but now the moment has come! Good!

[Another sannyasin says she is off touring. Osho tells her, you can go, but it is just the mind that is restless. You can go South, you can go North, but unless you go inwards nothing is going to happen.

Things are the same everywhere – the same nonsense, the same illness, the same madness. The houses may be a little different but the people who live in them are just the same: they fight and quarrel, are angry and possessive and full of hatred. Love has disappeared; they are tired and fed up. The real problem, he continues, is that man is not happy with himself. One has to learn the art of being happy by oneself, then one can travel. Then wherever you go you will carry a heaven around you. Right now you don’t have those eyes that can see beauty, you don’t have those ears that can hear music....

[A visitor says he will be staying another two months, but is unsure whether to take sannyas.]

Wait, mm? There is no hurry about it – let it come.

Let it come. It is nothing to be forced upon yourself.

And not only this, but never force anything upon yourself: anything forced remains superficial. Let it come from the very core of your being. It is coming, I can see it on the way: soon it will come and erupt in your consciousness. When it comes by itself... And it comes; one has just to be a little patient.

Being here with me, how can you avoid sannyas? It is going to happen, that’s what you have come for, but this is how life is so mysterious. You are not accidentally here; you may think so but you are not accidentally here. There are connections, nothing is accidental, and there are deep causes.

So it is going to happen, it has already happened somewhere deep down; the news just has to reach to you and sometimes the news takes time. It is a very old kind of communication system, it doesn’t travel very fast!

There is a parable in Friedrich Nietzsche’s ’Thus spake Zarathustra’.... Zarathustra comes down from the mountains and he meets an old hermit who is praying to god. Zarathustra laughs and says,

’Have you not heard the news that god is dead? To whom are you praying? You surprise me! Have you not heard the news – that god is dead?’

The hermit is puzzled. What nonsense is this man talking? But this man looks very authentic, Zarathustra himself... one of the most godly men who has ever travelled on the earth. The hermit is shocked and doesn’t say a single word. Zarathustra looks at him and he says, ’It seems I have come a little early; the news has not arrived. And the wonder of wonder is that it is you people who have killed him... and yet the news has not arrived? Man has killed god and the news has not yet reached man. It takes time....’

It is a beautiful parable.

Somewhere in the unconscious you are already a sannyasin.

And

Zarathustra is right – somewhere in the unconscious, man has killed god. Not that he has killed god

– how can you kill god? – but he has become godless, that is the meaning. And it is not suddenly this century that has become godless, it has been coming and coming for three, four centuries. For three, four centuries the human unconscious has been preparing the ground for godlessness.

We cannot take the whole credit for it, mm? It is three hundred years work of millions of people: Marx and Freud and all kinds and all sorts of people have been working hard to make man godless.

And now when it has happened even man is puzzled, even priests are puzzled – and they have been the murderers. They are puzzled, very much puzzled: what has happened? Their hands are red with god’s blood, they are the most responsible people, but even they are puzzled because the news has not reached them yet.

In the same way many things happen. Between the conscious and the unconscious there is a vast difference. and we have made our life in such a way that we don’t allow the unconscious to have its say: we protect ourselves from the unconscious. The unconscious is like a wilderness and our conscious is like a small english garden – well-groomed, prepared, symmetrical, the lawn and the buses and everything cut in size and shape and everything man-made. And just beyond the fence is the wilderness. If you allow it it will run over the man-made garden; it will destroy it.

And that’s how it is: the unconscious is vast and tremendous, uproarious like a sea, and we live in a small, small corner of our being where we have made everything clear and everything is put in the right order and disciplined and controlled. Somehow we go on managing that small area of our being and we are very much afraid so we create great walls around this area. We don’t even want to remember that there is a wilderness outside which is waiting and knocking on the doors and wants to come in.

That’s why the unconscious sometimes takes so much time to reach to the conscious. That’s why it tries to convey its messages through dreams when you are fast asleep, when the conscious is no more functioning and the guards are a little sleepy.

But it is coming – it is just on the door and any moment that you slip, it will be in. And I hope you slip soon!

[The visitor says he has done some kabbalistic groups and they were very good.]

They are good. That is one of the most secret sciences and much is possible through the Kabbalah, but the Jews have completely forgotten about it. And because they have forgotten Kabbalah they are a people without religion – the only race which is without religion.... Because Kabbalah is the basic, fundamental, essential religion for them and they have forgotten about it. It is almost as if Hindus forget about Yoga – then it will be a meaningless religion. It is as if Buddhists forget about Dhyana, Zen – then it will be meaningless.

Exactly like that, once Jews have forgotten Kabbalah they have forgotten everything. Then you go on carrying your dead scriptures and.... But that is history, it is not religion, and kabbalah is one of the most fundamental sciences ever developed for human transformation... it is almost a science.

[A sannyasin said that he imagines he is being asked to leave India because of a past experience in the States with a guru, and he feels this guru is still watching over him.]

It is just your imagination again... just your imagination!

[The sannyasin answers: But nevertheless I feel physical sensations.]

Yes, you can create them because imagination is a great power. The guru has no power but imagination is powerful. The power of the guru is nothing but the power of your imagination, and the real guru will make you alert about and aware of your own power.

The pseudo guru will pretend that it is his power; it is your imagination, and you are free to give as much power to your guru as you decide to do. If you want to you can give him all power; it is your projection. But imagination is a powerful faculty, the most powerful: reason is just impotent in comparison to imagination.

All that happens through imagination; nothing happens through reason. First it happens through imagination; then reason comes in and figures it out, that’s okay. Reason comes only secondary: it gives explanations, analysis, makes things clear, de-mystifies things, but nothing ever happens through reason.

Just the other day I was reading about Albert Einstein. He says that his theory of relativity didn’t happen through reason. He relates a very strange phenomenon. He says, ’It happened in my body...

it was kinesthetic.’ He says, ’Obviously, naturally, I was very much puzzled.’ He could not figure out what was happening. It was something of a bodily sensation and he could not even find where to put it, how to pigeon-hole it, into what category, and what concepts to use for it.

For months he remained dismayed but he continued to search and seek to put it into rational terms.

But this is very strange that he says, ’It happened first in my body, a bodily sensation, and then for months I had to find words and language and mathematical formulae to put it in order.’

All that happens is intuitive. It is your power; please don’t bring that guru in! Nobody has power over you except yourself. You can give this power to somebody, then he has power over you, but my work here is really to make you free of all kinds of gurus.

I am not a guru, at the most a friend, and I would like you to be unburdened of all the gurus... and I am included! If you start giving power to me, I don’t like it. It is your power. Because if I accept –

and it is very flattering... When you go and give some power to somebody it is very flattering to him, he will not be able to reject it. He will accept it with a smile. You are falling into his trap on your own.

Why should he say ’This is your power’? Gurus have exploited people as much as leaders have...

but these are not really gurus.

In the East we have two words, ’guru’ and ’satguru’. The guru is just a teacher, the satguru is the master. The master is one who makes you utterly free of all kinds of entanglements, who makes you really free of all kinds of bondage. He will not allow you to put any kind of projection on him; he will not function as a screen.

It is your imagination and that very imagination is telling you to go away, to do this and that. That imagination will create many troubles for you because the imagination is there, the power is there, but you are not yet in a state of meditation. Imagination becomes very destructive if there is no meditative quality around it – then it can go berserk.

The same imagination can become madness. Madness is imagination gone berserk, that’s all. Mad people are very imaginative people: they could have been great poets or painters or inventors or mystics. Many mad people have the qualities of the mystics and all the mystics have the qualities of mad people; it is the same imagination.

Imagination alone is dangerous, imagination plus meditation, then you are in a right balance. Then the meditation will never allow you to go beyond the limit and it will use your power of imagination in a creative way.

[The sannyasin says he has done nine groups but no meditation, except everyday living.]

That’s very good, but for a later stage. That’s very good, mm? but just wait a little. Become first a paramahansa, then...!

Just do a few meditations – you need meditation, you need it urgently, because this imagination is....

And you have a powerful imagination; it can drive you anywhere. If you don’t do meditation and you simply eat and sleep, then what will you do? You will imagine, you will dream.

Put your energies into meditation, at least one meditation. For twenty-three hours be la y, one hour pull yourself out of it. And I don’t feel that this is the time for you to go – be here.

Prem means love and prateeksha means waiting with infinite patience. Love waits, love can wait infinitely, only love can wait. If you love, you have such trust that you can wait.

And god comes only to those who know how to wait. God never comes through desiring, he comes through waiting. Waiting is a passive desiring: you desire and yet you don’t desire; you desire and yet you don’t say ’right now!’ You say, ’Whenever it happens, I am happy and I am contented.

Whenever you decide, that’s the right moment: this life or another life, it doesn’t matter. I will be waiting, I will wait forever!’

Time becomes irrelevant for one who can wait; hurry is no more there. And when there is no hurry and no time-consciousness, in that very instant god happens. God can happen this moment. We just need to be utterly silent and waiting.

So this is the paradox: if you ask that he should happen right now you will have to wait very long...

maybe forever; if you are ready to wait forever he can happen right now. In fact if you can wait he has already happened in that very waiting. He comes so silently, even the footsteps are never heard.

So meditate over it and allow that feeling of waiting....

CHAPTER 17

We can all become gods....

20 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains to a new sannyasin, You are ready for me, and for many more things! Having a new name is significant, because it is my reading of you and it has a message. It is like a seed that I have put in your hearat. Soon you will find many things arising out of this small seed. A name given knowingly, with an insight into your being, can become your whole future.

In the East, names, and particularly sannyas names, are not just labels. How can you label a person? The name can become a map, a guide, a finger pointing to the moon.

Deva Neelamber: divine blue sky....

’Neel’ means blue – that is the symbol of depth. And vastness is always deep – the vastness cannot be shallow; only the limited is shallow. How can the unlimited be shallow? When the river is deep it becomes blue. That’s why the sky looks blue. In fact it is not: there is no colour in it; it is colourless.

But anything deep gives an appearance of blueness.

Because of this idea in indian mythology we have painted Krishna as blue, which is very rare because blue human beings don’t exist! Black human beings are there and white human beings are there and yellow and pink and many shades of colour, but blue human beings don’t exist, have never existed.

And Krishna we paint as blue. If you have seen some pictures of krishna that looks very absurd.

Why blue? – just to indicate depth, just to indicate the skyness of his being... that he was as deep as the sky. The blue is just symbolic, it doesn’t show reality; it is just a metaphor.

And once there is depth and there is infinity there is divinity. Divinity comes into existence only when there is depth and infinity – then everything is holy, everything is godly.

In the East we don’t bother about god as a person – our interest is really very different from the western interest in god. In the West god has just become almost a replica of man. Mm? the bible says god created man in his own image. the truth seems to be just the reverse: man has created god in his own image.

In the East we don’t bother about god as a being, as a person, not at all as a human being. Our idea of god is more of godliness rather than of god. the idea is more of quality rather than of an ego.

So the eastern god is not the western idea of god; it is godliness. We can all become gods because we can all become godly.

In the West it is very difficult, mm? – even to say that one is god is very heretical. Christians will never forgive you; they cannot tolerate that. Even Jesus is not god, just the son of god, mm? Only that much they have relaxed their rules for Jesus... not much. But in the East it is not in any way sacrilegious because everything is divine, you are divine, but with the christian idea of god as the creator of the world you are certainly not the creator of the world.

But that is not our idea of god at all. Nobody has created the world; god is not a creator standing aloof. God is not like a painter; god is like a dancer. The world is divine – he is herenow.

In the East we don’t use the pronoun ’he’ for him, we use ’it’, ’that’; we take all personality out of him. Then what is left? – infinity and depth.

So become as infinite as the sky and become as deep as the sky. This is the message.... And meditate on the sky as much as you can, mm? It will come closer – just befriend it.

[The new sannyasin says he has been a ’serious student’ of Ken Keyes who wrote ’Handbook to Higher Consciousness’ and developed the Living Love method.]

Write to him! He sends his books to me and he seems to be very interested....

Just write to him some time. He should come and be here for a few months, mm? he will enjoy it.

He is a really good man....

That’s very good, to be related to him is good. All his ’serious students’ are going to come to me sooner or later.

[A sannyasin says he is interested in mime. Osho says mime can be of tremendous benefit and a great way to meditate. If you become absorbed in what you are doing a great silence descends in your being.

Acting helps you to be aware of the great drama that life is; that’s what meditation does too. If you know that all is just a drama, nothing disturbs you.... ]

In Japan, when wrestlers fight, this is a ritual – that first they will bow down to each other; it is very symbolic.

The zen explanation is that whether you are defeated or you become victorious does not matter, and you both need each other, you both depend on each other. If you are defeated and the other has become victorious, the other has to bow down to you because without you he could not have been victorious. His victory depends on your defeat so he is dependent on you – he has to be thankful. He cannot take it that this is his victory, he cannot be victorious alone; without you he will be nowhere, so he has to thank you and feel grateful. So even victory does not create an ego-trip. And if you are defeated and you know this is just a game, nothing serious to be worried about – no problem arises.

In Mexico they have been studying some school children. The ancient tradition in Mexico is that the father has to give rewards, toys, things, to every child irrespective of their success or failure in life.

One child has come first in the class, he gets a reward, and the one who has failed also gets one.

And there is no difference – it is irrelevant. That’s tremendous insight: it doesn’t matter whether you fail or you succeed – all is a game; you are rewarded all the same.

And the psychologists who have been studying this have come to feel that the mexican children are more at ease with life – unworried, non-tense, more relaxed. The civilised child becomes very very tense from the very beginning five years old, six years old – and he carries the whole burden of the earth. He is so tense and so worried and afraid about whether he is going to make it or not.

You have destroyed his childhood and you are creating the poison of ambition. You are making things very serious: if he comes first it is something great, if he comes second he has not been up to the mark, and he will carry that wound always. If a child has not been able to always come first he will carry the inferiority complex, and when the child comes home as a failure nobody even looks at him, everybody’s eyes are condemning. We make things unnecessarily serious.

Life should be taken as an acting, so acting is good because in acting you learn how life should be taken. Join the mime group and I will suggest a few other groups....

[A visitor says that he wants to overcome a disease he has – of being cowardly. That we can destroy easily, says Osho; that is not a problem! He asks him if he has done any groups. The visitor replies: I had hoped that in studying psychology, philosophy, I could find my groups.]

No, that won’t help much, mm? The psychology and philosophy that is taught in the universities and colleges is all just humbug, mm? just rotten old crap... nothing worth much. You will know what psychology really is through a few processes – because it is a question of going into your own being, only then do you know how the psyche functions, how the mind really functions. You have to go into your own mind. You cannot read it through a book, and whatsoever the book is going to say will be just superficial. It can say something about your behaviour but it cannot say anything about you because from the outside only behaviour can be watched.

These so-called psychologists go on watching the behaviour of rats and rabbits and this and that, and they go on applying that to human beings. It is very insulting and humiliating: man is not a rat.

In fact, even rats will feel insulted if you study man and apply it to them: they will say that rats are not man... so different.

And what can you study from the outside? A man may be smiling and in the heart he may be carrying deep wounds. Those wounds you will not be able to see, nobody can see them. You can see the smile may be just pseudo, a mask.

The innermost core remains unavailable to the outside spectator. That is the difference between psychology and meditation: meditation takes you deep into your being and makes it possible to see how your mind functions. And to know how your mind functions is to be liberated from it because the very knowing, the very understanding of how it functions – how you get angry, how you are sexually aroused, what really happens inside – starts changing you. When you start seeing it exactly and understanding it, you have a transcendence.

You start looking at it and it becomes far away. It cannot manipulate you any more: the anger will come, it will surround you like smoke, and you will watch it. Sooner or later it will dissipate and will go and you will remain as you were – untouched, uncorrupted by it. Once you have seen that you can simply watch and things come and go and nothing disturbs you, you have come home; you have become centred.

And what about your sannyas?

[The visitor says: I just want to wait, please.]

Wait. It is going to happen within a week – count seven days, mm? That too is part of your cowardice, nothing else!... Otherwise you want it right now, but just the cowardly mind.... Wait, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says she’s been having a lot of headaches lately and difficulty in sleeping. She wakes up in the early hours, is wide-awake and can’t get back to sleep for hours. Osho checks her energy.]

Just two or three things....

One is, that on the whole you are going very well, so that may be the cause, mm? You are a miserable type – you enjoy misery. Even when you are not miserable at least you go on keeping the mask of being miserable.

In the day time you are a little more happier so that misery takes revenge in the night, nothing else!

Drop that! That misery does not pay. But you have learned the trick somewhere so you just keep yourself miserable even when you are not. For these few days since you have started doing the tantra group you have been looking very good. That may be the cause: the whole day’s relaxation and you have carried the habit of being miserable for long, so that may erupt in the night, that can disturb the sleep. But it will go, nothing to be worried about... nothing to be worried about at all.

It is just a change that is happening in your gestalt, mm? For these two months you have been really good; I have been happy about you for these two months. The tantra group has been of great help to you; it has relaxed many things in your being and you are enjoying it tremendously. Whenever you enjoy something tremendously it makes you happy and one feels worthy and meaningful, significant, one feels as if one is needed, and that has been of great help to you. So that is the reason.

And something is changing inside that can create a little headache or something. So don’t take it amiss – these are good indications; they will go.

In the night if you suddenly feel awake, just do a few exhalations from the mouth. Just exhale from the mouth and don’t inhale; let the body inhale. So inhalation will be very small, because if you take deep inhalations it will keep you awake longer.

Exhalation is very very helpful for falling into deep sleep. Let the body make small inhalations and you take deep exhalations, and soon you will feel tired... but do it by the mouth. It is almost like yawning when you feel sleepy, you yawn; if you yawn, you will feel sleepy – they go together. The best way to fall in sleep is to start yawning and suddenly you will feel the mechanism starts working.

So if it happens next time, simply lie down on the bed and yawn; enjoy it and just exhale. Within five to seven minutes you will fall asleep.

Just in the interval the change is happening, mm? you are going to become a little happier soon.

And drop this mask – it is not needed. You must have learned it from [your former husband].

Nothing to be worried about. After one month, tell me, just report to me how things are. And there is no need to be reporting misery – you can report happiness also; nothing is wrong in it!

CHAPTER 18

You have known me, heard me – you cannot go back

21 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva avigan – divine harmony... and that’s what has to be attained....

That’s what is missing everywhere in every human being: people are in discord, in conflict, in division. Man is not one, man is a crowd, and that is the problem. So one part of you is going north, another part going south, and there is constant friction. That friction destroys your energy: you go on losing, wasting energy. And that energy is precious; that energy is life, that energy is god.

Through conflict one never reaches anywhere, one cannot. It is only through accord, harmony –

when your whole being pulsates in one rhythm, when all your parts function like an orchestra, in total unity, unison; only when the hand is not against the eye and the eye is not against the ear, the heart is not against the head and the head is not against the belly, when they are all in a deep friendship, in a great love and there is no higher, no lower, and you don’t have any preference for any part of your being, not a special liking, a meaning, a prejudice, when you are absolutely impartial, all parts are accepted joyously, each part is given the same value and no part is more important than the other – that one can reach.

But down the ages just the opposite has been taught to people, mm? – that there are higher parts and lower parts; the lower has to be condemned and repressed and the higher has to control the lower. There is no higher, no lower: the body is not divided anywhere. It is the same blood that circulates all over. There is an inner unity... but ideas have corrupted the human mind.

There are many parts which are not accepted: the genitals are not accepted. When you think about yourself you only think of your face, you don’t think about your whole body. There are millions of people who don’t know how their body looks, they have never looked at their own body. The naked body is not accepted: just the face they can recognise. If you cut off their head, their head will not be able to recognise their own body. And a few parts are completely disowned; naturally one loses all song, all accord, and becomes discordant. When you are in discord you are in misery: misery is nothing but discord in being.

Out of accord, harmony, bliss is born. Bliss is not a goal waiting for you somewhere, it can be achieved right now. Just all your parts have to sing a chorus together – altogether together. Nobody is a master and nobody is a slave: they are all tremendously valuable and they are all equal.

Once this equality is understood, and condemnation dropped, judgement thrown away, you start falling into unity. A great silence arises and a great bliss and a great benediction; that is the meaning of avigan.

’Gan’ means song, ’avi’ means in organic unity – a song in organic unity – and once the song of your life is an organic unity it becomes divine. Then you have learned to read life rightly.

Just the other day I was reading somebody’s article and I liked it.... The person says that if you read ’evil’ backwards it becomes ’live’. If you read ’live’ backwards, it becomes ’evil’. So if you live wrongly life becomes evil: devil is nothing but god upside-down. Once things are put rightly, nothing is evil: even evil becomes pure love once rightly understood, managed rightly... and to be in accord is to manage life rightly.

[A visitor says, between sobs: think I am already a sannyasin but there’s something in me that is resisting too... ]

It is very small resistance, there is nothing much, mm? You can become a sannyasin; that resistance will go.

It is very bogus, this resistance is very small – nothing important, mm?

Become a sannyasin! Raise your hands and close your eyes and if something happens allow it.

[The visitor is shaking with tears and laughter.]

You cannot deceive me by your resistance! Come here! I have taken that resistance, don’t worry!

Prem Manoj. Prem means love and manoj means born out of the mind, mind born. The whole name will mean ’born out of the love-mind’. And there are two minds: one is the logic, the logical, the rational, the masculine, the aggressive mind, argumentative; another is the love-mind – the heart, the emotional mind, the receptive, the feminine. and your growth is going to happen from the love-mind... mm? your sannyas is coming from your love-mind. Resistance is from the head, and that is not your mind; that’s why I say it is small, it is nothing to be worried about.

There are head people; if they have resistance in the head then I tell them to wait, otherwise that will be forcing something on them. They have only their head, they don’t have any heart pulsating, so their idea of sannyas is from the head and their resistance is also from the head. Both are on the same level; it is going to be a great conflict in them.

But when the heart is ready and only the head resists, it is nothing to be worried about because all energy comes from the heart. Once it is functioning then the head can be put aside. The head has no power: the head has power only when the heart is not functioning. Then it becomes tremendously powerful, immensely powerful; it exploits the whole energy of the being. But your heart is pulsating perfectly.

Your sannyas is through the heart and resistance through the head – that I will take care of. Don’t worry, mm?

[A sannyasin who has just done the Leela group says: yesterday... I felt that I was a totally new person.

Today everything... It is as if walls closed and again I am grabbing for what has been.]

It happens, mm? But whenever it happens, this next thing also happens: whenever you feel the door is open, great greed arises in the being. Whenever you have a new lease of energy you desire more of it. It is human and natural to desire more of it – it is so tremendously beautiful; how can one manage not to desire?

But the moment you desire, the doors will not open. They never open through your desire: they open only without any desire on your part. They open suddenly, they open unexpectedly... it always takes you unawares.

You relaxed in the leela group, you were not expecting anything, you simply relaxed: you were playing and relaxing and playing and suddenly it opened. There was no desire, there was no expectation, there was no demand, and you were not even waiting for it – hence it happened!

But when it happens, naturally the desire arises, and the moment desire arises desire becomes the wall. When it is closed, naturally you struggle hard to open the door. You know that the door exists, you know it has happened and you struggle and you fight... but you are fighting in vain: the more you fight, the more impossible it will become for the door to open.

It opens only when you are not fighting... it opens only when you are not! So don’t fight, accept it.

For that much be thankful to god, that for a few days it opened... that’s all! And start working again, start moving again; one day again you will find that it has opened, and you were not waiting for it.

Suddenly walking on the road not even thinking about it, it is there, again it is there... and next time it will be more intense, more deep, and wider will be the impact of it. Next time be a little more alert; when it happens take it very very easily, don’t grab it. Don’t start hoping that now this will remain with you, now you will gain it again. Don’t try to possess it, that is the point.

We destroy many things in life through possession. We destroy love, we destroy meditation; we destroy all that is beautiful and true through possessiveness. Once it is there, we grab. We grab out of the fear that if we don’t grab it may be lost... but in grabbing it is destroyed. It is so fragile, you cannot grab it. You have to remain like an open hand; you are not to become a fist. If you become a fist you will lose it.

So next time take it more easy... as if nothing much is happening, it’s okay. You will lose it next time also. By the third time you will be able to take it very very unselfconsciously... just as a natural thing.

The breeze has come, mm? you take it, you don’t even think about it. It is beautiful, suddenly the breeze is there, but you don’t become very self-conscious about it.

You know that there is nothing that you can do about it: it comes when it comes. It rains when it rains; what can you do about it? When you know that you can’t do anything about it then why be in any way possessive? When the door opens you will enjoy; when it does not open you will enjoy that too – that should be the attitude.... But it has been good!

[A sannyasin says that since he planned to leave he’s been having horrible nightmares about Osho and the ashram. He feels he’s trying to create a distance between his heart and Osho’s so that he can actually get himself together to leave. He says he wants to make money while away and to stay here longer next time.... ]

Things are going perfectly well and because things are going perfectly well there is this trouble.

When somebody is really becoming very close to me it becomes difficult to go, very difficult, so your feeling is right that you have to create a kind of distance, otherwise how will you be able to go?

There are only two possibilities: either you become completely one with me – then you can go, then there is no problem; or you have to be very distant from me, then you can go.... And you are just in the middle: you are neither very distant nor one with me yet. You are on the way to being one with me, but on the way; that’s why your mind is creating horrible nightmares and things.

You have judged it rightly, that it is to create a sort of distance. You can go back, that is easier, and create the distance; then you can go easily; or you can come closer to me and drop the distance completely. Again you can go, but I am coming with you so there is nowhere to go away and no problem. Now it depends on you – both are the possibilities.

You have chosen the easier possibility but it looks easier only in the beginning. It is impossible: it appears easy but it is impossible. If you have come two steps towards me there is no way to go backwards. It looks easier because the old situation is known to you, familiar: you know where you can move in the old, but you cannot move in the past; it is no more there. That place, that space, exists not. You cannot go anywhere now; that bridge is broken.

It feels to the mind that you can go back and create the same distance as there was: you can again become a stranger to me as you were before. That’s how the mind and the logic works: it says ’You were a stranger one day – you had not heard about this man, you had not known this man. You can again move into that same space’.... But how can you move into that space?

You have known me, you have heard me, you have loved me – something has grown in you... you cannot go back. It looks easy but is impossible. It appears easy but that is a false appearance; don’t be deceived by the appearance! The other looks harder and impossible but it is not.

Come closer, then those nightmares will disappear. Because you are trying the impossible those nightmares are there; it is creating a great stress on your mind. And these are the only two alternatives: one is an impossible alternative but appears easy; the other is not impossible but appears difficult.

Basically it is not a question of choice: you cannot choose, you can only delay, but you will have to choose .the second thing. So rather than wasting time in nightmares and horrible dreams and ideas, in the few weeks you are here just get into things more totally. Before you go move totally into me. Then you will be going, in a way, and in another sense you will not be going anywhere. Only outwardly you will be going; inwardly you will remain here... and that’s the right way to do it.

And this time work hard there so you can come for a longer period or even if you can manage to be here permanently, you can come.

Just try to come closer to me rather than fighting and going far away, mm? When you want to go physically far away, come spiritually close – that is the way, mm? And see me when you go! Nothing to be worried about.

CHAPTER 19

Happiness is a gift that only you can give to yourself

22 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin married couple bring their one-year-old daughter for sannyas.]

Deva tara... It means divine star. Tar means star, mm? – the english word ’star’ comes from the sanskrit root ’tara’. In sanskrit it is ’sitara’; from sitara it has become tara in Hindi and star in English.

But tara is also the name of a tantra goddess.

There are two traditions of tantra – one is Hindu, another is Buddhist. In the Buddhist tradition tara is the name of the tantra goddess. And every Buddhist tantrika has to practise the idea of the goddess with the beloved.

When a tantra worshipper is making love to his woman, first, for months he has to visualise the woman as being the goddess Tara. By and by the visualisation becomes settled; by and by he completely forgets that she is a human being. When she is no more a human being, only then is love allowed, not before it. The master goes on watching, the master has to observe, and until the moment that the master allows them to move into love-making they are to remain celibates because before that moment it will not be love; it will be simply lust.

So every day for hours the practitioner will sit in front of the woman. The woman will be on a high pedestal, sitting naked, nude, and he will simply sit and look at her for hours together and imagine

– in the beginning it is imagination, visualisation – that she is divine, that she is not his woman, that she is the mother-goddess Tara.

And by and by, months, sometimes years pass, by and by the body is no more human – it is no more made of bones and skin and blood; it starts becoming golden.

In fact it is so; the visualisation does not create a projection – it simply helps you to see the reality as it is. It simply helps you to drop the concept, the hypnotic concept, that the body consists only of the physical. Once you are helped through imagination this body no more really seems relevant; there is another body hidden behind it that starts being realised.

And this happens not only to the man: the woman is also continuously meditating on the same phenomenon – that she is no more a human being, that she is no more a woman and the man in front of her is no more a lover but a child and she a mother-goddess.

They both go on creating this harmony; one day it happens and it happens together – to both of them. That’s the beauty of it, it synchronises: when it happens, it happens to both. And then there is no doubt about it. It is not that the man is still uncertain as to whether it is his imagination – if he is uncertain, it has not happened. When it really happens there is no uncertainty, no doubt – it is one hundred percent so. And suddenly both become divine; it is a transfiguration. In that moment one can see their auras meeting, and the master then allows them: now they can move in love. Now there will really be love, no lust, it is no more sex. It is something divine, something of samadhi.

So that too, is the name Tara, mm....

[The couple as about their marriage. They’re both feeling fond of each other but there is no sexual attraction now. Osho says this is perfectly natural and understandable. Sex is the desire to explore the other; once his or her territory is known sex is finished. Then one looks around for the new, the unfamiliar, the uncharted. Osho suggests that at this stage in their relationship a new element can arise – of friendship. He advises the two remain together as friends, allowing each other the freedom to have lovers if they want.... ]

Deva means divine and sugatta is one of the names of Buddha; it means well-gone. ’Gatta’ means gone, ’su’ means well. The english word ’go’ comes from the same ’gatta’.

And it means one who has gone so perfectly that he will not be coming back again – that’s the meaning: so well gone that he has not left any roots in the world... no desires left, no clinging left, no mind left, so there is no possibility of his coming back.

Hence Buddha has been called sugatta, and everybody has to become that. Because this world is misery – it is ’dukkha’ – it is pain, it is suffering, and it is a vicious circle. One suffering creates another and that creates still another: it goes on moving like a wheel and we are caught in the wheel

.

You can change from one spoke to another, that will not make any difference because the wheel is the same and it goes on moving. One has to jump out of the wheel then one becomes sugatta –

well-gone; one will not be coming back. The day Buddha became enlightened he looked at the sky, laughed loudly and said, ’Builder of the houses, now you will not need to build any more houses for me – I am finished!’ That was his first statement: ’Builder of the houses, you will not need to build any more houses for me. I am finished with the world, I am not coming any more.’

These bodies are our houses into which we come and Buddha is saying that now there will be no need to create any more bodies for him – he has destroyed all his desire to live; the lust for life has disappeared utterly.

That is the meaning of sugatta – so get into tune with it!

[A sannyasin couple have returned from running a centre in the West. They say that they learned a lot from the experience: We became very unaware and we can see it now. A lot of things dropped once we came here... so it has been a teaching.]

Living is always a teaching, and living together with somebody in love is a great teaching. The greatest teacher you can find in the world is love: it teaches you sometimes very painfully and sometimes very pleasantly. Sometimes the journey is just beautiful and sometimes very rough, but it teaches you all the same in all the ways, and both ways are needed.

But it is good – you are back; now many more things will happen.

[The woman says: I don’t want to leave you again!]

There is no need! You wanted to go so you went, mm? If you had asked me I would have said don’t go but you wanted to go. But it was needed, otherwise it would have remained in the mind to go.

Now it is good... there is no need to go.

[She then says that she and her partner have decided to live separately but she cannot imagine not having a sexual relationship with him.]

Mm, there is no need to imagine it right now – when it happens it happens! Right now there is no need even to imagine it and there is no need to create it; when it happens, it happens. Wherever you are, in whatsoever space, be happy there. It is very good....

If you can be very very independent of each other there will be more possibility of love, because when you are independent, when you are no more in any need of being dependent and keeping the other dependent, then all diplomacy drops.

And really only two independent persons can love. Dependent persons hate each other; how can they love? You can never love somebody you are dependent upon. If you think your happiness is dependent on him you will never be able to forgive him because he is exploiting you: he is the master and your happiness depends on him. And if he feels that you keep the key of his happiness how can he forgive you? It is impossible to.

When both are independent and happy on their own and out of happiness both sometimes meet and are together, then love really flowers. Then it has no smoke around it, no jealousy, nothing of that kind of poison; the flame is pure.

So this is the space right now – you need not imagine anything else, mm ? That will also happen some day when there is no need to imagine it. And one should not jump ahead, never, because that creates problems. Move slowly, move with your pace, and never make any ideals. Never be afraid of anything because there is nothing to be afraid of. Life belongs only to those who are utterly unafraid to accept whatsoever it brings.

Take it as a gift, be thankful, enjoy it, celebrate it, and when some other gift comes enjoy that too.

Sometimes you may not be even able to understand that this is a gift, sometimes it looks like a curse, but life never gives anything except gifts. It is your misunderstanding.

Life always gives you blessings; how can it curse you? We belong to it, we are part of it: in being cursed, life will be cursed. It is impossible for life to curse anybody, it always comes as a blessing, but our understandings are tiny, our expectations are many, and if it goes against our expectations we think it is a curse. But all your expectations are not good for you, so who knows?

Finally, when one becomes more and more mature, one starts looking back-wards, looks retrospectively, and then one is simply surprised that everything was as it should be: there had never been any curse... all was a blessing.

Much more is going to happen, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says she thinks it is time to go inside and stop depending on external things to make her happy. She asks what she can do to help this.]

This is a great insight that has happened to you – now keep to it! Don’t forget it the moment you go out of Lao Tzu house, mm?

Just one thing – don’t forget it; just remember, that’s all. It is such a simple phenomenon if you can remember one thing – that in life nobody else can make you happy or comfortable or anything; it is not possible. That gift can be given only by yourself to you, nobody can give it to you. And because people go on begging from others, they suffer, because....

And those others are not really doing any harm. They cannot give and you cannot receive it, that is not the way to get it. You go on begging and they go on pretending that they are going to give.

They cannot give and you cannot get; then there is frustration and anger, rage, madness and then things.... Then you start again begging somewhere else with somebody else but you do the same thing again.

Again the same thing will be repeated; it is the same story played on different stages with different people... but it is the same story, not an iota is different. Again you will have the same illusion – that

[your partner], has failed, now [another lover] will give you happiness; now the right man has come.

If you want to learn this illusion you can go and make Divya your master. Every week she finds a man and she writes a letter, ’Osho, this time I have found the real man! Incredible! It has never happened before and it is happening now!’

She forgets that she writes every week, and every week it is a different man. Again, within three, four days, it is gone, and then she forgets about that man, that incredible man. Again it is happening and it has never happened like this before and this time she would like to remain with this man forever and forever... and she forgets! The miracle is that she forgets that it is the same letter she writes once or twice every week. You can ask her if you want to create this illusion – then she is the master, Divya.

Then drop it and just remember: don’t ask for any happiness from anybody – nobody can give it.

Only you can give that gift to yourself, it is a self-gift.

So give that gift to yourself and be happy! When you are happy... I am not saying not to relate with people but now you relate from a totally different dimension: you relate from happiness. Now you relate from unhappiness, you relate like a beggar. Begin to relate like an empress or emperor: you are not seeking anything from anybody, you are sharing.

When love is not a seeking and not a need but a sharing, it has tremendous beauty. Then nobody is worried about whether it is going to last forever or not – why? If it is there only for this moment it is perfectly good – one shares. If tomorrow you meet again with the man and he is ready to meet you, you share again, otherwise good-bye! You thank him because there was a moment when you shared and it was a happy moment; you don’t want to make it a permanent thing. The idea of making something permanent arises only because you are in need. You are afraid: this man has given you happiness; tomorrow, if he says no – then you will be again unhappy. So make arrangements that tomorrow he cannot escape: lock the door! Once the door is locked that energy is no more there, even in this moment, because love happens only in freedom.

Once the door is locked, once the man starts feeling that he has been caught, once the woman starts feeling she has been caught, finished! Now, it may take years for them to recognise the fact, but it is finished right now! It depends: if you are very stupid it will take many years; if you are intelligent a few months; if you are very very intelligent a few days. If you are really alert this very moment you will be able to see that you have killed it. The child is no more alive, it is a corpse, because you tried to possess it.

And why does one want to possess? The reason is because you think: ’Who is going to provide for me tomorrow? This man has provided happiness for me today.’ The moment you recognise that this man has not done anything, you have given a gift to yourself. Then there is no fear; tomorrow again you can give it to yourself. Sometimes you can give it together with somebody, sometimes you can give it when you are alone. Nobody is giving it to you, it is only you giving it to yourself.

Sometimes we give indirectly: we give the gift to the person and then he gives it back to you. He gives a gift which is really for himself, to you and you give it back to him. This is just via the other but it is your gift that you give yourself.

Once this is understood then there is no need to go such a long route – a short circuit. You can simply give the gift from one hand to the other hand and you are as happy as you are with anybody else: alone you are happy.

So just remember it; nothing else has to be done. When you next start creating the illusion again, remember about Divya... and relax! I am not saying to become a nun, I am not saying that. I am saying to become an individual, not a nun. Become an individual. Love out of joy but not out of need.

Love not as a beggar, love because you have too much and you would like to share with somebody.

Don’t try to hold anybody and don’t try to cling, otherwise this will happen again and again. Then you will have many loves in your life and many lovers.

Sometimes such an individual person, such a free person who is capable of giving happiness to himself, such a person can love the same person for many years but each time it is a new love affair because he does not connect it in time; he does not think of the morrow. Today he is finished with today.

Such a person goes to bed and he has finished with this world, this world of today. Tomorrow morning he will rise again into another world. Even if the person is the same, for such an individual she is not the same. So maybe the person is the same or maybe the person is not the same, it doesn’t make any difference: a man who is happy goes on loving; a woman who is happy goes on loving.

And don’t ask anything out of love. It is good that one loves... in loving, one is blissful. Thank the other that he accepted; thank the other that he danced with you for a moment, sang with you for a moment, and then be finished. No need to prolong it, no need to say ’What about tomorrow? What about the day after tomorrow?’

Don’t bring in the future – remain free. Tomorrow is going to bring its own joys. Why make a repetition of today? Who knows? – better joys are waiting for you tomorrow.

So be thrilled with the future but without any expectation... with no hope, with no demand, just a thrill. The new is going to happen, the new is bound to happen!

Very good... the insight is good, but I am afraid – will you be able to keep it? That’s the problem. Try to keep it. Whenever you start slipping out of it you Can just ask for a silent darshan, mm? and sit here. The moment you see me you will remember, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: I’ve become a sannyasin... after fifteen months!]

That’s very good! It is early – people take fifteen lives! Fifteen months is fast.... Very good!

Whenever you really become a sannyasin it is always early, mm? because sometimes it happens after thousands of lives. One never becomes mature enough to understand what life is, mature enough to rejoice in it... mature enough to go with it whole-heartedly wherever it leads, and strong enough to surrender!

It is not the weak who surrender, the weak cannot surrender: they are so afraid of their weakness.

They protect themselves, how can they surrender?

They defend themselves, how can they

surrender? It is only the very very strong people who are capable of surrendering – because they are not afraid!

And when one surrenders one becomes a sannyasin. It is a surrender, an utter surrender ro life, and a trust... a trust which needs and knows no conditions, an unconditional trust. Good.

CHAPTER 20

Being lost is the beginning of finding oneself

23 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, who is returning to the West, says he is feeling emotionally exhausted since he completed the primal group two months ago: I feel there’s just big wounds inside me, and I’m just a bit afraid that they won’t heal when I go back to the west. I feel very vulnerable.]

Wounds heal only when they are open – wounds never heal when they are protected, defended.

It is painful; to have an open wound but that’s the only way it heals. So don’t try to close it again.

Remain vulnerable, mm? – let the wind and the sun rays touch it, play with it. Yes, many times it will hurt, but remember only one thing: this time let it hurt but don’t create a wall to protect it. Those walls ultimately become our imprisonment.

First we create them so that we are not hurt. It looks very rational to create a wall around oneself, an armour, so one is never hurt. Good – it feels very reasonable, logical – but by and by they not only protect you from being hurt; they also protect you from being communicative. Then nobody can communicate with you: you become unapproachable, unavailable, and then you are a prisoner inside.

Yes, you will not feel much hurt but you will not feel blissful either; how can one feel blissful in a grave? And this is a self-created grave. It is suicide... a slow, gradual, suicide. That’s why you can’t see it, because it comes so slowly and so logically that you never become aware of what you have been doing. If for your whole life you have been protecting your wounds and then suddenly they are open, one feels exhausted; hut it’s natural. It is such a new phase: you have again become a child, vulnerable in exactly the same way as when you were a child. You don’t feel strong enough, you feel helpless.

But remain that way this time – don’t miss this opportunity – then you will start growing from your childhood towards maturity... and that is a totally different route. The maturity that you think you had was just a false maturity: hidden behind the wall was a child – that’s how it has come out. If you were really mature then by destroying your walls, your protections, why should you feel such a situation? Why should you feel so much like a wound and vulnerable?

Hidden behind was a child and you were wearing the mask of an adult man. Now the mask has been torn apart and suddenly you look in the mirror and you are a child – helpless, exhausted, afraid, scared of the world. How are you going to manage? Because you don’t know how to manage the world without the mask... you don’t know how to talk to people directly, immediate, without the mask.

You are afraid people will cheat you because they will see that you are a child. You can again start wearing the old man but you will be back in the old rut. It has not helped... it is not going to help.

This time be vulnerable; don’t commit this mistake that you had to commit when you were a child, because that was not done consciously, you had to do it. The whole society and the family and the whole system that surrounds a child helps to create it. The first time you did it unconsciously.

You were not at fault, you can be forgiven. But if this time you do it you are at fault, you cannot be forgiven.

Let it be so. If you feel helpless, say ’Okay, so I am helpless but I will not create a wall. This time I Will grow in my inner strength.’ These are two different things. To grow in inner strength is one thing; to remain weak inside and just to create an iron wall around yourself is a totally different thing. It simply gives you the feeling that you are strong because the wall is there and you are protected and nobody can come and hurt you. But if nobody can hurt you, nobody can love you either because hurts come from the same window, from the same aperture, as love, as joy, as friendship, as celebration.

If you are too much afraid of thorns you will miss the roses too because they are there together...

and what is life without a rose?

I was reading a book in which the author plays with the word ’eros’. He says, ’If something goes wrong, the same word ”e-r-o-s” becomes ”sore”, ”s-o-r-e”. If everything goes right the same word becomes rose, ”r-o-s-e”; those letters remain the same’. I liked the play with the word... it remains eros, those four letters.

If you go on protecting yourself and your energy, your eros energy will become sore. That’s what has happened: it has become a wound. The same wound can become a rose, it can become a flower, it can bloom with great joy, but then you will need open sky and winds and the sun. Yes, there is danger. You can put the rose in your protected home under the shelter; it will die! It needs all the challenge of the open world; all the dangers are needed. Those are nourishing dangers: they are nutritious, they are essential vitamins.

Something very essential has happened, I can see it: you are like a wound. This is the same energy that can become a flower but for that you will have to be courageous enough to remain open whatsoever comes. Accept it if sometimes you feel hurt. Nothing is wrong in feeling hurt: it simply shows that one is alive. To feel hurt shows that you are not dead.

It is very very good and indicative that the person is still alive. Many people have become dead. The only way they know how to protect themselves is to become completely insensitive so nothing hurts; they grow a thick skin around their consciousness. They become thick, dense, mm? but nothing hurts. Then you remain protected, certainly, but you are no more living, you are no more celebrating this life. This eternal celebration goes on and you remain far away stuck in your fear, stuck in your defence, stuck with yourself.

My suggestion is: be courageous. This time don’t protect... and if you don’t protect you will start growing because the same energy that you put into your protection and into creating the wall will fall into your being and will start helping you grow and you will become mature.

That’s what the difference is between right education and wrong education: wrong education gives only a false idea that you are strong and behind it you remain weak. Right education will really make you strong without creating an armour around you. You will not need the armour because you will be strong. Only weaklings need armour – why should a really strong man need any armour? He will trust himself and he will trust life and he will play a thousand and one games with life. Sometimes it will be dangerous too but he will be adventurous.

So, this time don’t fall back into the old pattern. And this is good, that you are going, mm? There you will be really hurt by many people... and this is going to be a blessing to you. Accept those hurts...

respond!

If sometimes you feel hurt and you feel like crying, cry like a baby; what can you do? And sometimes you feel angry, then be angry. Don’t hide it: be true to your feelings.

I don’t see that your emotional energy is exhausted, no, only your repressive energy is exhausted...

and these are different things. Emotional energy is there, really coming up for the first time, and that’s why you are so afraid. You are not only afraid from the outside, that is a secondary fear; you are more afraid from the inside, and you have not even mentioned it.

You are more afraid from the inside because if all these emotions.... The armour protects you from the outside and the armour protects you from the inside too: it does not allow anything to enter in you so there is no need to respond. Somebody insults you and you are dense; it does not reach you. Somebody dies and you are thick, it does not penetrate you so you remain perfectly okay; no emotional response is needed.

Now if somebody dies you will feel almost like dying. If you love somebody and he dies or she dies, for a few days you are going to be really in death. When a beloved dies, for a few days at least one has to go with the beloved into deep depth, into deep death... into those gloomy nights, into that shaken, shocked, uprooted world. And you will feel a thousand and one things, small things: sometimes just a bird crying in the trees and you will feel so full of joy that you will cry – for no visible reason.... Sometimes just a breeze comes and you are surrounded by the cool breeze and you feel so joyous that tears come.

These are the basic fears, more primary than fears from the outside. This is what you really mean when you say you have become like a wound. Everything is going to hurt, but by and by through those hurts, through your real response for the first time without any mask, you will start growing in strength; you will become more integrated.

And I don’t mean that when a man becomes really integrated he is never disturbed – I’m not saying that He is disturbed but that is momentary... he is totally disturbed, but that is momentary. He is innocently disturbed but he is total in it: it comes and it goes and after one second he is out of it.

These disturbances disappear only when you are no more.

These are the three stages of human life: the disintegrated human being – a crowd, split... a polypsychic state, many minds, many selves, not one self. Then there is the second state – the integrated human being: one self has arisen, strong, really strong, self-confident, trustful, loving, alert, aware. All those small selves have dissolved into it; a big self has arisen. Those small selves are no more there; a new self with a capital ’S’ has arisen. This is the second state – that has to happen to you if you allow: if you give this gift to yourself this will happen.

And then the third state is when the self disappears and no-self arrives; then there is no disturbance, nothing. There is no outside, no inside: all has disappeared... the whole drama has disappeared.

This is the total end... this is what nirvana is, but on the way to nirvana, from the third stage one cannot jump to this highest state of no-self. From many selves one cannot jump to no-self – from many selves one has to come to one self and from one self to no-self.

... Really be courageous and allow this wound to heal on its own – don’t create any armour for it!

[A sannyasin says she is feeling weak and helpless and lost like a child, and feels that she is rejected.

This causes a lot of pain which she finds difficult to simply sit back and watch. Osho says that sitting back and watching won’t help; that will just be a trick. When you really start growing, he explains, First you regress to the point where natural growth stopped.... ]

If you really want to grow, you will have to move back to the point where you stopped being natural.

That is the whole point of primal therapy. And my family is a primal family – the therapy is on-going; you may know it, you may not. And this is only the beginning: soon, when things will really take shape, you will see incredible things happening for no reason at all. Just the vibe of the commune will create those things.

So, if you are doing primal therapy you know why it is happening. But you are not doing a primal therapy, you are just working in the garden. But it is going to happen in the garden – it is my garden!

It is going to happen to everybody whether they are doing groups or not. If you become associated with me, to become associated with me, you will have to fall back to your reality. Now this is the beginning....

All those years that were false are a barrier between me and you, and you think those years are of wisdom, strength, knowledge, hence you are feeling weak, otherwise you are not weak at all; this is just a wrong interpretation.

But naturally, a four, five year old child, seems lost because he does not know anything. All that has been imposed on you is disappearing; all conditionings are being washed away so you will feel lost.

But this is the beginning of real search, the beginning of finding oneself. Being lost is the beginning of finding oneself... so don’t be worried.

And if weeping and crying comes, which is natural to a child, allow it. It will disappear when is work is finished but till its work is finished you need not stop it. That stopping is harmful, it will stop your growth.

So first you will fall back, you will regress, and then by and by you will start growing again – from five to six, from six to seven... and it is not going to take that much time. Mm? you can just jump years in months because your body is grown-up; the mind just needs to come up and be with it. The mind is hanging somewhere around the age of four and the body has become forty; that gap has to be fulfilled. Once the mind comes close to your body age and both are synchronised you will feel tremendous joy and health. That’s why you are feeling ill and you are feeling weak and exhausted: it is the gap, the yawning gap, and it seems unbridgeable.

Right now it is unbridgeable but it will be bridged, so just relax; continue working. And that’s why the feeling – that you feel rejected, unworthy, unaccepted; that’s how every child feels because a child has no utility in the world. He is not an engineer, not a doctor, he is not a bread-earner. He is just dependent on others for everything; he demands and demands and he is nothing and not doing anything for anybody. He is a dictator, and he feels ’I go on demanding but I don’t do anything’. He suspects that everybody hates him... that is your suspicion – but nobody is hating you.

Here at least in this community nobody is worried about anybody else. People are working on their own growth – they have their problems; who bothers about [your] problems? Only I can bother because I have no problems so I have to create some problems for myself to hang around a little bit more, otherwise who bothers? They have their problems to solve. And my whole teaching is be selfish – first solve your problems.

Nobody is rejecting you, this is your idea, but it comes to a four, five year old, child; it feels ’I am rejected. Nobody loves me.’ No proof is enough proof for a child that people love him because deep down he understands he is useless, just a nuisance around the house. That consciousness is there in the child so he himself feels he is unworthy but he projects it onto others, that others think he is unworthy... and that’s what you are doing. But it is natural at that age, at that age it is natural.

So you will project that nobody loves you, everybody seems to be against you; everybody is rejecting you and you are left alone. Nobody is left alone – I am with you and that’s enough!

Nothing to be worried about. Just enjoy this space and soon vou will start growing. Good!

[A sannyasin, says he feels shy and embarrassed when he feels good and people say nice things about him. It is so with many people, nods Osho, because to feel happy feels unreal. Happiness is so rare... just like an oasis.]

CHAPTER 21

A space created for people who want to be spontaneous...

24 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho checks the energy of a sannyasin who has come to darshan for the first time.]

The energy is perfect... just on the verge, mm? Something is going to happen, it can be predicted.

Very few people are on the verge, so much has to be done before they can come to that, to the verge, because only from the verge is the jump possible.

And you are just standing on the precipice – a little push and you will be gone... gone forever!

The energy is really good and it is coming closer to me every moment. Not only physically have you come here, psychologically also you have arrived. Many people come physically and it takes a long time for their psychology to come too; the psychology lags behind. Mm? the body can come very easily; there is no problem.

The earth has become very small, you can travel from one corner to the other within hours. Physical travel has become very very easy but psychological travel has become more difficult than ever before. Physically people are very crowded, close... psychologically they are very closed. It has happened in the reverse: as they have come closer physically, they have gone farther away psychologically.

People live together and yet live alone...

even lovers are living alone.

Living together, that

togetherness makes that aloneness even more clear-cut – it gives a context. When you are alone, you are alone, there is no background to it: you are like a white line drawn on a white wall. But when you are living together with a person thinking that you are in love and still you live alone, then you are a white line drawn on a black board. You have a context in which the aloneness becomes very very painful, penetrating. The other simply defines your aloneness, that’s all. The other marks the boundary and says, ’There you are alone – I’m here alone.’

But you have come psychologically too. Your psychology arrived before you came... and that’s how it should be: the mind should come first. The body is not a problem at all, the whole problem is with the mind, and when the mind is ready the body never creates any obstacle. The body is infinitely surrendering; it is always ready to go into a let-go. That’s why it is easy for the body to go into sleep; it is not so easy for the mind. The body falls into sleep, the mind continues dreaming. If the real world is not available for it to go on and on, it creates a world of fantasy, but it goes on.

And the same happens in meditation: the body is very ready. The body is very innocent, and all the so-called religions have been condemning the body and praising the mind. The body is utterly innocent. It has not known anything that is wrong, it has not done anything that is wrong; it cannot in the very nature of things. It is still in tune with nature.

The mind has gone far away and has lost all contact with nature because it has lost contact with the body itself and the body is in tune with nature. The mind is not even in tune with the body; how can it be in tune with nature? And when you come to a master the whole problem is of the mind... but that will not be so difficult for you, mm? your mind is with me and things will happen easily....

[A seeker takes sannyas and her body reacts with some vigorous movements.]

Good! Come here! You can go crazy! But it is beautiful, mm? Only people who can go crazy are real people, others are just dummies, because when you have energy only then can you go crazy.

And the same energy can be transformed: the same energy that becomes insanity can become super-sanity, but the energy is the same.

So it always happens that very creative people are almost always prone to go mad because they have too much energy: if it is not used it will drive them berserk. And all the people who are mad are really people who could have been used in a better way. But the society has not yet allowed, has not yet evolved the methods, techniques, to help these people. They are very potentially powerful people.

That is one of the new insights in western psychiatry. Now a few people like r.d. laing and others have started feeling it, that mad people are not just mad: they are carrying some great energy in them and that has to be used rather than throwing them into madhouses and torturing them; this is just foolish.

It is just like the lightning in the clouds, it is the same electricity, but for thousands of years man was afraid of it. All the world over there are mythologies – people were afraid of clouds, thundering, lightning; people used to think that it was god being angry. It was not anger or anything, nobody was angry, nobody is there to be angry; it was pure energy. Then by and by we learned: only in this century have we been able to learn how to use it. Now the electricity has become a domestic servant – now god is no more angry. Now god is serving in many ways, in a thousand and one ways; now we cannot live without this servant, electricity.

In exactly the same way, many energies are still there which have not been used and we don’t know how to use them. Craziness is one of the very potential energies of humanity. It can create great painters, it can create great poets, it can create great inventors. All that is great comes out of it but if something goes wrong then it can destroy you too. It is fire: you can cook your food but you can burn your house too. And you have great possibilities of going crazy but we will use them, mm?

Prem means love, asashya means total, entire, complete. And this is the way I am indicating that your energies should move: be more loving. Let that be your meditation: love. For twenty-four hours remember one quality – that of love. Even if you touch the chair, touch with great love, almost caressing as if it is a person. If you look at a dog, look with great love. Hidden behind the body of the dog is god.

Just go on finding ways and means to be loving. The more loving you are, the more your energy will start flowing in the creative dimension. Love is the channelization of energies into creativity.

When people love, they become creative; when they don’t love, they become destructive. They can be destructive to others, they can be destructive to them-selves, either they become murderers or they become suicides, but the energy is the same as that which could have been a blessing... to themselves and to others too.

So just let this path be created slowly, slowly: move in love. This whole world has to be your object of love: all kinds of people, all kinds of animals, all kinds of trees, all kinds of situations, but remember only one thing – that you have to exhale and inhale love.

Even sitting silently, you are not doing anything, inhale with deep love. It is god entering you, it is life entering you. Exhale with love; you are pouring your being into existence again. Let it be a prayer, a chanting. And then in small acts... You are taking a bath, standing under the shower, stand with great love; this body is your temple. You are also a god, a goddess, and the god is thrilled with the cold water. Let this be a joy and let this be a love.

Then by and by slowly, slowly, you will feel small things trigger off something very deep, unimaginable small things trigger. You are passing and you look at the tree and a flower opens... and something opens in you too; you will feel infinitely grateful to the tree. You are just passing and a bird flies above you, and suddenly something starts flying in you too... because we are connected. We are interrelated with everything that is, that has been, that will be: past, present, future – it is all one unity.

Small things become points from where great things jump into you. Small trivia . from the outside look ordinary; once love energy meets with them, they becomes extraordinary. So that is the message....

[A sannyasin says for several years he has much energy in his neck and throat which seems somewhat blocked. Osho checks his energy.]

It is there... it must have been from your very childhood. You have become aware of it recently but it must have been there.

From your very childhood your expressiveness has never been as it should be. You have felt hindered from every side: you have not been able to say what you wanted to say, you have not been able to do what you wanted to do. It has been always lukewarm... you could not do anything intensely.

That unexpressed energy is there in the throat. The throat is the centre of expression: it is not only the centre of swallowing in things, it is the centre of expressing things too. But many people use the throat centre only for swallowing things, that is half the use, and the other half, the more important, remains starved.

So do a few things.... It has nothing to do particularly with the throat, it has to do with your total personality so don’t remain obsessed with the idea that the energy is there in the throat so what should you do with the throat. That is just symbolic; that throat is simply indicating something: it is a message from the unconscious that you need to become more expressive.

If you love a woman, say the things that you want to say, even if they look foolish; sometimes it is good to be foolish. Say the things which on the spur of the moment are born in you; don’t hold them back. If you love a woman then go totally into it, don’t remain controlled. If you are angry and you want to say something, then say it really hotly.

Only cold anger is evil, hot anger, never... because cold anger is really dangerous. And that’s what has been taught to people; remain cold even when you are angry, but then that poison will remain in your system. It is sometimes good to shout and so on and so forth, with every emotion.

My feeling is that you always withhold: if you want to hold somebody’s hand you think thrice. By that time the moment is no more there; it is gone. You think too much, and when people think too much they become non-expressive. Thinking is just moving inside round and round and round; that’s what is creating the trouble in the throat.

To start with, in these few days that you will be away, every night just sit in your bed and just start swaying, mm? And the swaying has to be done in such a way that when you move to one side, one buttock touches the ground or the bed. So sit on something hard, and when you move to the other side then the other buttock touches the ground. Only one should touch at one time, not both together. That is one of the very ancient methods to hit the energy from the base of the spine.

Something is there in the throat, some energy is there in the throat, and this much energy you have become capable of controlling. Now more of a flood is needed so that your control becomes less and the energy is more and you cannot control it so the dam bursts. Do it from fifteen to twenty minutes.

Have you been doing chanting here?... No? Next time you come, do the chanting, and particularly when they do ’allah, allah...’ and they sway. But remember this, that only one buttock should touch the ground at one time. So really sway from this side and that, so that one buttock leaves the ground.

That movement and the touch of the ground hits the base of the spine, it vibrates the spine at the base, and once the energy is stirred there, it will start rising.

First you will feel very much in trouble because more energy will be coming and the throat will become more suffocated, so don’t be afraid. This much energy you have now, you can control; you have become accustomed to it. You need more energy... so much so that you cannot control.

And after ten minutes of this exercise, just sway and start saying ’allah, allah...’. Say ’allah’ when you go to this side, then ’allah’ when you go to this side, and by and by you will feel more energy coming and the ’allah’ will become more and more loud.

A point will come after ten minutes when you will be almost shouting ’allah’. You will start perspiring, the energy will be coming so hot, and ’allah... allah’ will become almost mad.

When the dam is broken one goes mad. Those two words are very good – they have the same letters. If you read it backwards it is ’dam’; if you read it from this way it is ’mad’.

So while you are there, do it, and if you enjoy it... You will enjoy it; it will be weird but you will enjoy it. Then you can do it twice – in the morning too: twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening. And then when you come back report to me how you are feeling.

More energy is needed... more than you can control, that’s all. But it will go. Come back soon!

Good!

[A sannyasin says that while she’s been in the West she has been reading ’The Book of the Secrets’

(one of Osho’s books), and wonders which meditation technique out of the one hundred and twelve described is suitable for her. She says she hasn’t actually tried any because she’s afraid of leaving her body.... ]

It is good to try a few. Whatsoever appeals to you while reading, try. Try it for at least seven days, and if it is going to fit you seven days will be enough to turn you on; then go into it. If it doesn’t turn you on it is not for you – then forget about it.

But it almost always happens that if you are reading minutely, carefully, you will be attracted only by the technique that is going to work on you because the appeal is not in the conscious mind; the appeal is in the unconscious. Suddenly you fall in love with a technique: suddenly something clicks and you feel, ’This is for me.’

And ’The Book of the Secrets’ is really made in such a way that if you go on reading the right technique will click. Out of those one hundred and twelve techniques at least four, five techniques, will immediately click with you and out of these four or five you have to choose one. And it is better to go according to your liking.

There is no need to be afraid – that is the whole purpose of my being with you: there is no need to be afraid. If you want to go out of the body, go out of the body. Just before you leave the body remember me and say to me, ’Osho, after fifteen minutes I would like to be back in the body’ – and within exactly fifteen minutes you will be ! Don’t be worried – try it here.

[Osho says that if she wants to try the out-of-the-body technique while she is here, she should contact the sannyasin who was running the soma group, which, among other things, used techniques to facilitate the experiencing of astral travelling.]

[A sannyasin says she feels that groups are created situations and that life itself can be used instead to gain similar experiences and to put insights gained into practice. Yes, but will you be able to do it in life? Osho asks. The idea of the groups is that they offer you a unique opportunity, they give you a safe place in which to do those things that society won’t tolerate.... ]

If in this ashram you suddenly start dancing nobody is going to take any note of it, but if you do that on M.G. Road then the police will immediately come in – they will think you are crazy... and you are not doing anything really crazy; you just wanted to be spontaneous. Now how are you going to be spontaneous on M.G. Road? It will be difficult! But here you can be, this is a special space: it is created for people who want to be spontaneous. Nobody will interfere and everybody will be sympathetic, everybody will give you support. Good – if you feel like dancing, dance!

The world is not so supportive... it is very very murderous. It wants mechanical people, it doesn’t want spontaneous people. It wants stupid people, it does not want intelligent people. It does not want any kind of awareness in people because people who have awareness are very dangerous, rebellious, unpredictable; one never knows what they will do, how they will behave. They themselves don’t know because they will behave out of their awareness: whatsoever the moment brings, that moment will decide. They don’t carry a plan and a blueprint.

So the society is completely against buddhas. The society wants people who are stupid, mechanical, robots... hence there is no possibility really to work it out in the wider world. Only after working through many groups, by and by will you be able to learn subtle techniques of how to move into the world and yet remain alert... how to manage in spite of the world; the world will be against it. That has to be learned, it is a knack, so you don’t come into conflict unnecessarily with the police and the state and the people; you by-pass them and they don’t become too attentive to you. You don’t create any kind of situation where you become noticed. That has to be learned by and by, and you start going and doing things by yourself – hiding in fact.

That is how all great religions by and by became esoteric – they had to become; they went underground. On the surface they maintained the social etiquette and the mannerisms and this and that. Deep down they continued to work, but the work became underground.

Sufis say to their disciples to maintain on the surface that they are ordinary men, absolutely ordinary.

They should never allow anybody to know that they are doing something special: not even their wife or their husband should know... not even their children.

And sufis have existed in a very ordinary way: somebody is a shoemaker and somebody is a carpenter, and nobody knows; the customers come and go. Somebody else is just a beggar, and nobody even suspects.

Great masters exist that way, and you have to find out.... If a disciple wants to find out, it is almost impossible – next to impossible at least – to find out the master, because he will be hiding somewhere in a very ordinary life. The reason is that the society is against it.

You decide, mm? My suggestion is that it is good to pass through a few more groups, different kinds of groups, so you learn different sides of your awareness. There are many sides: awareness is a multi-faceted phenomenon. One group tackles it from one side, another group from another side, another group from still another side. And when you become alert about this diamond of awareness, all the facets of it, then you can be capable, at least one can hope that in real life you will be able to experiment with this awareness a little, and then by and by it will grow.

These groups are not for your whole life – these are not life, that’s true. One has not to become group-addicted... one has not to become a groupie. Just do a few groups and then when you have learned the knack, try it in life, because really the thing has to be decided in life. So your intuition is perfectly correct, I approve of it, but it is a little too early.

But if you have some idea that it is not needed then don’t do it right now. When you feel it is needed, then do.

[A sannyasin describes an experience in the enlightenment intensive group. At one stage they were doing a breathing exercise. He held his breath and started to faint but in fact he, his consciousness, didn’t faint but remained separate, alert.... He found it frightening.]

It has been good... it has been really good! Next time it happens, allow it – relax into it. For the first time the fear enters....

Yes, it is frightening because one feels one is almost going into death, but it was really beautiful. If you are feeling faint and at the same time aware, it is tremendously meaningful. That means you are simply dropping out of the identity. Only the identity is fainting, only the ego is fainting, the self is fainting, but something behind the self, which is more than the self, is alert. You fainted and god remained alert.

And because of this dislocation, fear arises. Dislocation is the same as it happens in death, so you became frightened and you pulled your whole being back out of the experience of fainting. The fear created an alarm and you could not fall to the very bottom of it. Next time it happens go to the very bottom – nothing to be afraid of. It is so beautiful, but fear comes the first time to everybody....

It comes immediately but you are not there to recognise it. When you become alert, when you come into yourself, then you will be able to recapitulate and recognise that the fear is there, but the fear comes immediately.

It is not like fear – you cannot call it fear: it is just frightening. You cannot verbalise it, you cannot put a name to it, but it is simply scary. You don’t want to go into it any more, you start running back to your old identity and the old self. But it was good.

CHAPTER 22

My work is with individuals

25 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning deva aukash. It means divine space.... ]

Create more and more space within yourself. Remove all furniture, remove everything from the inside; let there be just pure emptiness. When nothing exists, god exists: nothing is synonymous with god.

When you cannot find anything within yourself, not even yourself, then god is... that very space is divine. To be is to be cluttered, to be is to be part of the junk, to be means to be occupied. Thoughts occupy, feelings occupy, memories, dreams, desires; a thousand and one things are clamouring within you and they don’t allow the space to exist in its purity.

This has to be remembered: whenever you are sitting, just sit silently like a statue. Just feel spacious... that you are space. I am not saying that from the very beginning thoughts will disappear or feelings won’t arise. They have their momentum, they have been always there, so they will continue for the time being, but you remain indifferent, unattached. If a thought arises let it be so but keep your space undisturbed. The thought will arise like a bubble on the surface of your space and will be gone because no thought can stick for long; it is very momentary.

So no need to be antagonistic; if a thought arises just watch it very indifferently, as if you are utterly unconcerned. If it arises, okay; you don’t have any prejudice, you don’t have any liking, disliking.

When you like and dislike, you invite, you attract, you rebel, you react. When liking and disliking is no more there, a thought will arise out of the old momentum. The old habit dies hard... it will come because of the old habit; you remain unconcerned. It will come and it will go. You will see it coming, confronting you, waiting for your attitude of being friendly or antagonistic, or something. The thought will wait and look at you, but don’t be concerned at all. If it stays, good, if it goes, good: don’t have any say, don’t say anything, and you will see it going.

When it has gone there is again silence. Again a thought will arise, but if one remains indifferent by and by bigger intervals will happen: a thought will pass and another will not be coming. There will be a bigger gap and the gap widens and by and by and slowly, slowly, one day one is simply surprised: minutes have passed and not a single thought has arisen, no desire has arisen, no dream has flashed. Then you will have for the first time the taste of what I mean by space, spaciousness, emptiness.

And once you have tasted it, it is incomparable. No life experience can be compared to it; not even the orgasm, the sexual orgasm, has anything in it compared to that inner space. It is very orgasmic, it is tremendous joy and at the same time very cool – great ecstasy without any excitement. And that is the beauty of it: when excitement comes, ecstasy is disturbed.

When the mind is no more there – when the tiny mind has disappeared, that tiny self is no more there, when nothing defines you and you are infinite – you are out of your small self, you are standing as if out of yourself, out of the old self and just watching the thoughts unconcerned. This is going to happen.

So give more and more time to it. Whenever you have any time, just sit silently; this way is perfectly good. So your name is your meditation too.

[Deva veda – divine wisdom. These words are tremendously significant, Osho says. Both deva and veda consist of the same four letters just arranged in a different way.... ]

’Veda’ means wisdom, knowing, seeing; the literal meaning is the capacity to see. The English word

’video’ comes from the sanskrit root ’veda’: the capacity to see, the clarity to see, the transparency of seeing. And when one is absolutely transparent, whatsoever is seen is called ’deva’. ’Deva’ means that which arises when there is capacity to see. That’s what god is: when you have the right eyes god immediately arises in vision.

It is not really god who is hiding, it is we who don’t have the right perception. It is almost like a radio: you have to tune it to a certain station. The station was there, the vibrations were there, the radio waves were there, the message that was delivered on that particular wavelength was passing through the room. The radio, the mechanism was there – all that was needed was to put the mechanism into a certain state, to tune it to a certain wavelength, and immediately you start catching that station.

That is exactly the case with humanity: we have all that is needed to see god, nothing is missing.

God is present, ever-present, around us: not for a single moment is he absent, he cannot be by the very nature of it. That which is is god so how can it be absent? And we have the capacity to receive; just the tuning is needed.

So ’veda’ means tuning yourself rightly. Through meditation, through prayer, through love, through devotion, worship, one brings one’s needle to the right place. The moment this capacity to see is attained, immediately god is known.

’Deva’ means god – the literal meaning of the word is: the shining one. The English word ’day’

comes from deva, the shining one.

But if your eyes are closed, even if the sun is there you cannot see it. The shining one is present, but you are keeping your eyes closed. Open the eyes and it is there – it has always been there. So all that is needed is to learn how to see. [These words carry] both the polarities: the seer and the seen....

Start meditating and start mixing with people. That is one of the most essential things: to start meeting, mixing, becoming friendly, participating in all that goes on around here. That creates many possibilities, so don’t remain aloof.

One can come here and can remain aloof. One can go on keeping a subtle armour around oneself; then it takes unnecessary efforts to break that armour. There is no need: this is your home and my people are your people now, from this moment. Mm? this is your orange family, so mix with people, be friendly, be loving, participate in all that goes on here. Mm? just lose your... that quality that everybody carries of being an island. Lose that quality and become more and more continental.

That will be of great help and within two, three weeks, things will start happening. Good!

[A sannyasin asks Osho to forgive her for having thrown her mala. It happened at the end of a group when she went crazy: The thing that I loved the most in the world, I threw... ]

Good! Nothing to be worried about. When you love me sometimes you become angry also... that’s natural. You can throw that mala – nothing to be worried about....

Let me hold your mala – that will do.

Next time if you feel like sometimes throwing it, you can.

And if you will get disturbed, kiss it (the locket) and that will do! Right? But don’t tell everybody otherwise they all will start throwing!... I wanted to drive you crazy and it happened...

[Osho gives a seeker sannyas.]

This will be your name: Swami Prem Avdeepa. It means to burst out in a flame of love – prem means love, avdeepa means to burst out in a flame.

Love is a flame; wherever life is, love is. If love is not there then life is not there. It is the flame of love that makes life really alive, otherwise the lamp is there but unkindled. And it happens exactly like a bursting forth. Love is not a gradual process; either it is or it is not; you cannot have it in small installments. It comes totally – the whole descends. That’s the meaning of bursting forth into a flame. It is sudden... in a single instant it happens. Just a single moment before it was not there, a single moment afterwards it is there... and it is a total revolution.

Just a moment before there was darkness and darkness and nothing else, and once the flame is there all darkness disappears and it is light and only light; one cannot even imagine that there was darkness just a single moment before it. So it is going to happen to you like a sudden flame – that’s why I am giving you this name....

There are two kinds of people: a few people grow very gradually – step by step they go; they go in a very calculated way – and there are a few other people who simply take a jump, a plunge. They don’t go slowly, they don’t go gradually, they don’t go calculatingly. These are the gamblers, they are not business-like: they risk.

You belong to the second type, that’s why I am giving you the name, ’prem avdeepa’. So keep it in mind, remain alert about it. Meditate, do growth groups here, and wait for the moment – it will happen suddenly. Suddenly you will become aflame with a new kind of life-energy. It is there like a bud, mm? I can see it, it is there like a bud.

If you cooperate the petals will open and there will be great joy in your being... and that’s exactly what you have come here for....

[A visitor says, I’m worried about the misery of the world – people who are poor, who don’t know how to get out of their misery. I wonder what I can do. If I become a sannyasin I will be only for me and not for all the other people.

Osho asks him, you don’t have any problems about yourself?

The visitor answers, Yes, a lot of problems.

First solve them, Osho suggests... because this is one of the basic problems in the world – that people, to avoid their own problems, start solving others’ problems. It is one of the most ancient strategies of the mind to protect itself.

What you say looks relevant, true, things are there, but meanwhile you are missing your own problems... and those are the only problems that you can solve. Other problems are too big, almost eternal, and you will be here only for a few years.

You are part of this world: if you can drop your problems one millionth of the world has gone beyond problems... that much the world has improved. And if your mind is transformed you will have, the clarity to see how to help people. Once you have clarity you can decide how to use your life. I am just here to help you be aware and alert and meditative. Each person is so unique that he will find his own way to help.... ]

My work is with individuals – I am not concerned with the society and the world. That is how it feels good to me, mm? I’m not saying that this has to be your life also, no. This is how I feel good, this is how I work. This is how it has happened when I came to my own being... this was the way I started functioning.

One never knows.... When you come to your being, what you do will be decided by that moment.

And right now there is no need to worry about it, right now you cannot do anything. Right now you can get worried, troubled, you can become anxious, you can go crazy – the problems are big – you can become a politician or you can become a missionary but you remain yourself, blind .... and a blind man leading the blind is a dangerous man.

That’s what is happening all over the world: people who don’t know who they are are trying to help the whole world to come to a state of peace, silence, bliss. They are mad people, and whatsoever they do, notwithstanding their good wishes... I’m not suspicious about their good wishes – the good wishes are there – but adolf hitler was also full of good wishes, joseph stalin was also full of good wishes, and the path of hell is paved with good wishes.

And I’m not suspecting.... But these people have been trying to improve the world. In fact it is because of these people the world is not improving – it cannot improve because of these people.

They don’t know who they are, they don’t know where they are standing; they have not even an inkling of their consciousness. They are unconscious, intoxicated with utopian ideas and trying to force those ideas on people.

I am not a political man, I am very very apolitical. I am not in any way interested for or against. I simply help my people who come to me and then I make them free. I don’t say to my sannyasins: don’t go into politics. If you feel like going, go; that is your freedom.

But my feeling is that a man who has a quality of meditativeness will do good wherever he goes; bad cannot happen through him. And I trust his meditativeness, so whatsoever he chooses is right.

Different people naturally, choose different things to do; they have different personalities. You cannot become a singer suddenly, but if you have that capacity to become a singer and meditation happens, the first thing will be that you will start bursting into song. Because the capacity is there and meditation has happened, the capacity and the meditation will join together and immediately you will become a singer – or a dancer or a painter or a social reformer, a revolutionary... it depends.

And the world is rich because there are so many kinds of people. Meditation does not make all people alike, in fact. just the contrary: it makes everybody absolutely individual... it gives you uniqueness.

Right now, get out of your personal neuroses. First clean your heart and clean your mind; that can be done and that is more feasible. It is not such a big project as you have in the mind: your project is almost unfulfillable – my project is something which can be fulfilled.

But after my project is fulfilled you can go and choose your direction in life. Yes, one has to do something; after one has attained to meditation one will have to do something. In fact you will feel more, you will become more sensitive. Right now this whole idea of helping people may be just an ego trip. Then it will not be an ego trip, the ego has disappeared. Then you will be really helping and you will not enforce anything upon anybody... otherwise good people sometimes become do-gooders, and that is dangerous.

The first thing first: become a sannyasin, meditate, clean your heart. The world can wait – don’t be worried! Don’t be worried that by the time you become cleaned the world may not have any problems and then what will you do? Don’t be worried! They will wait and by the time you have really become a meditator the problems will be more than they are now; you will have enough opportunity to serve.

Prem means love, avadhyan means meditation, mm? and these two qualities you have to grow by and by: be more loving and be more meditative. And for the time being forget about the world. When these two qualities have really grown, then I will send you into the world – then go into the world and do whatsoever you feel like doing, but then whatsoever you do will be right because you will be right.

It is not a question of right action, it is always a question of right being.

There is a very old egyptian saying: Even the right thing becomes wrong in wrong hands. And the contrary is also true: Even the wrong thing becomes right in right hands.

Ultimately things are decided by the quality of your being – not what you do but what you are; that has to be remembered....

[A sannyasin says on two occasions he’s had the experience of being sucked down into a whirlpool of energy. He went through it both times, felt he ’died’, but then nothing happened afterwards; he came back and he was himself again. He says he is afraid of the point at which he dies, and wants to overcome this fear.]

It is something beautiful, nothing to be worried about, but it is not happening in its totality; that’s why you are missing. You just go only so far and then you slip out of it.

You are not really going to the very bottom of it, otherwise you will come out of it totally changed; you will come out of it rejuvenated, fresh, a new being. It is something very important this is what happens in deep meditation – but you are not going into it fully because you don’t know how to go deeper into it; it is just happening and you don’t know anything about it. It takes you in only a little bit because you are not prepared to go deeper. And that preparation is needed: once you are ready to go deeper it will take you deeper.

This is the hole one has to go into but we slip out from the middle. It will be frustrating and you can become a little worried and scared also because it is something that is happening without your will and you are not in control so it is scary and strange. But when you come next time, remind me again, and be here for at least two, three months; then things will clear.

It has to be total, that’s all. And once it has been total it will never happen again. Unless it is total it will happen again and again, and to stop it is not good.

[He answers: It felt total already.]

No, if it were total there would have been no problem. It is not total; you don’t know what total is.

If it had been total then there would have been no problem; all problem about it would have gone.

When it is total you will be able to compare; you will be able to see that it was not total.

The total will be really a death and you will start again very new, discontinuous with the past; there will be no link between the past and you. Right now the link remains: you come back to your old self; you don’t come back to a new space. You go into it and then it is new, but when you come back you come back to the old space again. If it is total you will never be the same again: you cannot find the old man anywhere. Even if you search, you will not find.

This is what the zen people call satori: the old simply disappears as if it was a dream and it is no more. You are awakened to a new reality....

[The sannyasin is leaving and will return in a year. Osho suggests that he visit the centre near him, and when he returns, to be here for at least three or four months, and then things can be done... ]

And you are on the right track. You are fortunate that it is happening on its own. It must have something to do with your past life: you must have meditated or done something. But when you come we will go deeply into it; right now it will not be good, mm?

[A seeker has been undecided about taking sannyas for a year. He explains, my heart wants it and my mind is against it.

Osho advises, Whenever there is a conflict between the head and the heart, listen to the heart. The very decision to go with the heart will start a change and then many more things will happen.

Nobody has ever attained to ecstasy through the head; the intellect is very barren. No life is born out of it, no love, no celebration. So choosing between the head and the heart is really choosing between death and life: the best of the heart is the best of life. So whatsoever you say! – if you choose the heart, become a sannyasin!]

[Another sannyasin asks whether she should return to the West to do a probationary officer’s course.

Osho asks about her feelings, then agrees that it is better not to do it. He says, Choose something else... choose something joyful. This is just nonsense – drop out of it! There are born social workers; you are not. You can easily become a happier person than a social worker!]

[A nine-year-old sannyasin tells Osho that some years before, in Germany, his mother had walked out on the family, his father and brother and himself. Sometimes she visits them, but he misses her and would like her back.

He is crying. Osho holds his hand and touches his head.]

... We will try! Nothing to be worried about. I am your mother!

Whenever you need your mother, just remember me, and I will take care of you... and you are coming finally to stay with me here in India! You want to stay in Germany or come here?

[The child replies: Come here!]

So then why bother about the mother! Soon you will be coming here, mm? And next time your mother comes to see you, tell her about me and tell her to come here and meditate and become a sannyasin!

Give her some books and give her one of my pictures – then I will start haunting her!

Mm? and I will pull her here; don’t be worried. What is her name?...

You enquire of your father, if you have a picture here, next time bring it. I will start working on her, mm? Don’t be worried – be happy. Good!

[The young sannyasin asks for groups to do.]

Groups you want to do? Mm! Next time we will be starting a small group for children. I will make you the leader – you wait!

CHAPTER 23

The unfamiliar has to be invited, the unknown has to be loved...

26 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I’m a horrible kid, she says, embarrassed – I’m always wasting everything!]

Stop doing that, because it is wasting a great opportunity; you are not wasting anything else but your own opportunity. Life is very precious and these moments may not be repeated. Sometimes the door is open – one should use the chance to get in....

[A sannyasin couple with their child are present. the woman says she is afraid of everything.

Osho says: All fear is basically the fear of death. Once you accept that death is part of life, the fear disappears. If you simply start accepting whatsoever is the case, great love arises... not only that one loves life; one can even love death, because death is the peak of life; it is the greatest orgasm.

Do you enjoy your sleep or not?

She nods a yes.... ]

Death is the great sleep – mm? when you have just a small sleep, for few hours you disappear...

and how beautiful it is in the morning! In death one goes into deep sleep for a longer period, and one comes out of it rejuvenated: a new life starts. If you accept death, death is not the end of life but the beginning of a new life. Then the whole perspective changes.

Start accepting it – it is great! And this time it will happen... this fear will go away. Good!

[Her son is fast asleep on her lap – Osho looks at him.]

Mm! fast asleep! This is how one should love death too! Now he is not afraid; sooner or later you will make him afraid: your fear will start entering him. So before he becomes infected by your fear, drop it! Mm? Good....

Deva sampitta – divine togetherness, divine integrity....

Ordinarily man exists like a crowd, in fragments – one part going this way, another part going that way. That’s why there is no progress, no evolution, because one part goes on annihilating the work of the other part. By one hand you make, by another you dismantle: with love you create something and with jealousy you destroy, so man remains in a mess.

There is great energy available to every human being, but something can be created only if it functions in an integrated way. If one is together only then can one arrive somewhere – body, mind, soul, all should be together – but ordinarily we are taught conflict. The soul is going its way, the mind is fighting the body, the body is fighting the soul. It is always a war, hence there is no peace, no silence.

This word ’sampitta’ means togetherness.

[Deva sambodh – means divine awareness. Osho says, Awareness can also be wrong. Many times we think we are aware but we are aware in a very very wrong way.... ]

For example, when you are self-conscious, you are aware but you are aware in a wrong way. The emphasis is on the self and not on consciousness; then it becomes wrong. You become nervous, you are afraid. You start wearing masks, you start pretensions: you become pseudo.

The emphasis should be on consciousness and not on self.

A really right awareness is

unselfconscious. It is consciousness but it has no self-consciousness in it: the self is missing, the self is simply not there. When awareness is without self it is right – then it is called sambodh.

When it is with self then it is wrong – it is ill, sick.

[The new sannyasin says she has done hypnotherapy and tantra – the latter was difficult for her.... ]

You could not relax in it? That’s what my feeling is. You are too self-conscious, and when one is self-conscious one cannot relax. That self becomes a tension: it does not allow you to be true and authentic and sincere. That’s what my feeling is... otherwise everything is right. Once this shell of the self is broken the bird is ready to come out and fly into the sky. And the shell is not very strong either – it has a very thin layer which can be broken very easily. So with just a little effort you can come out of it. It is not going to be a very arduous thing, it is not going to be a very uphill task because I don’t see that you have a very strong ego, just a fragile ego but very sensitive.

So tantra may have been a little difficult because you have to lose your self-consciousness in it, you have to become utterly spontaneous. You have to forget the body, the mind, the divisions of body and mind. You have to forget all the old concepts of the moralities, the religions... and they all clamour inside the mind saying that this is wrong and that is right and this should not be done.

But it is good that you did it... soon things will change.

[Osho suggests that she do the intensive enlightenment group followed by encounter.... ]

Encounter, I hope, will do the work, mm? – and the shell will be broken. Once it is broken you will find such beauty and such joy arising in you that you cannot even imagine it... you have not dreamt about it.

[To a newly arrived sannyasin Osho says, Much is going to happen! You are ready for many things.

Just remain available, open, indefensible... don’t defend! That defensiveness is the only barrier.... ]

God is not happening to many people because they are defending themselves, and how can god happen if one goes on defending oneself? We have created so much armour with which to defend ourselves: we don’t allow love to happen, we don’t allow prayer to happen, we don’t allow surrender to happen; we don’t allow anything to happen. Our whole life structure is fear-oriented: just defend yourself and go on defending; one day death comes and one is finished. All defence leads to death.

Nowhere else, and meanwhile one loses all possibilities of life.

Life is for those who can remain in a kind of indefence, in a kind of vulnerability, in a kind of openness.

All that is needed is that much. Mm? don’t cling to security and don’t cling to the known. The unfamiliar has to be invited, the unknown has to be loved and the stranger has to be allowed to become your guest – then one starts growing.

With the strange, with the unknown, unfamiliar, is growth. With the known and the familiar and that with which you are acquainted, there is no growth: there is only repetition... and a repetitive life is a dull and stupid life. Live dangerously, live non-repetitively – only then do you live!

So here, become part of my family, forget the whole west. Relax, remain open and let things happen.

The mind may come in many times to defend you; put the mind aside. Say that if death comes it is okay but you will not defend.

Once defence is dropped all problems disappear and life takes on a new quality – the quality of joy, celebration, ecstasy....

[A sannyasin, who is very esoteric, asks about her relationship – they had a higher plane relationship and never did work out their sexual problems. She wonders if they should be together.... ]

Yes! The higher plane finally comes lower! Wherever you start, finally you come to the earth – that’s how relationships go! You can start in heaven but finally you will descend to earth.

So it will be difficult because you are really a spiritual person... it will be difficult for you to come to the earth! Mm? With occult bodies it is okay but with the real body it will be difficult! But if you can go into it, it will be a good experience, because this body is as good as any other body –

mm? those subtle bodies and astral bodies are good, but this body is good too. So don’t have any condemnatory attitude about sex. If you have a condemnatory attitude then please don’t go into it.

Just from the very beginning say, ’I am not for it’, but don’t go into it with a condemnatory attitude otherwise you poison the whole relationship from the very beginning.

One should go into love with great reverence. You will be surprised from where this word ’reverence’

comes: it comes from the same root as venereal disease. Veneration, venereal, reverent, reverence

– they all come from the same root. The original meaning was love, ’venereal’, but love can go very high; then it becomes reverence. It is the same thing, flying: it becomes respect. When it settles back on the earth it becomes love; love and respect are two aspects of the same energy.

So I can understand your problem, mm? – it was reverence, the relationship was of respect, and now it is settling on the earth and becoming venereal so you are a little puzzled. But the body is also as divine as the spirit... and sex is as spiritual as anything else! This is what I call a total perspective of life, balanced.

If you can go very very joyously and reverently, then go into it, otherwise it will not be good. Just tell him ’I respect you – you are a holy man and I have always looked towards you as a master. Now, this is impossible.’ It is very easy to move from the lower to the higher – the so-called lower; for me there is nothing lower. It is easier to move from lower to the higher. It is difficult to move from the higher to the lower because one feels one is falling down, but that is just an idea. I don’t see that there is anything wrong... but you have to decide.

If you have a small poison inside and you see that this is not good then don’t go into it, because with that idea you will never be total in it; it will never flower. And when it does not flower you will feel more depressed and you will say ’I knew from the very beginning that this is bad. Now it has led me into this frustration.’ It is self-defeating if you go with the idea that something is wrong; then it will prove something is wrong because whatsoever idea we carry becomes a thing sooner or later.

If you can go with great prayer and respect, only then go: never enter into the shrine of love without respect. Otherwise, just tell him that this is not for you – he can find somebody else. You decide, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin body therapist says that one of the people who took part in their encounter group in the West was sent to a mental hospital a month later and then committed suicide. She felt shocked initially but has recovered now except that whenever she thinks about it she feels depressed.... ]

Nothing to be worried about it, mm? Things happen! The person was going to be mad, whether he was in the group or not won’t make much difference because you cannot drive a person mad unless he is carrying madness in him: you cannot create madness. Can you drive me mad?

You cannot create madness – madness is there: the person must have been carrying it like pus, a great wound. Your group touched the wound, scratched it: the pus started coming out. You have not created it but you made it possible for the man to know his reality. And the suicidal instinct must have been there. Nobody can commit suicide, nobody can be persuaded to commit suicide unless the instinct is there, unless the idea is there, very deep-rooted.

Things happen only because they are going to happen. The very idea that you have done something is wrong – it is an egoistic idea – but remember it when something positive happens; then too remember it. If somebody attains a satori in your group don’t feel that you have done great things.

Yes, that was also going to happen!

So never take the credit for good and never take the credit for bad, otherwise you will not be able to work at all. One should continue working, go on doing whatsoever you feel is good. Whatsoever happens is god’s responsibility.

This idea, that you are responsible, is a very egoistic idea... and ordinarily people think this is a very religious idea. It is not! People think [you are] a very religious being: the man became mad and she is feeling troubled by it; how much she feels for him! And you don’t feel an iota, you are not worried about his being mad: you are worried because you have driven him towards madness. You are worried about your self-image! It is not that you are worried about his suicide; you are worried that you have some responsibility in it.

Just see exactly what your worry is. It is your self image: you are afraid you have fallen short. Mm?

this man went mad so you are a part in it. This man committed suicide so you are a part in it... and how can [she] do such things? She is a great do-gooder!

Just drop that idea. What can we do? Go on doing whatsoever you feel – that’s your thing to do. Whatsoever happens, happens. Once this is understood, then no self, no doer, starts being accumulated. Otherwise, good and bad – many things will happen! If you start taking credit for good and credit for bad, you win be constantly in anxiety and you will never know a single moment of peace. Accept it – that whatsoever happens is god’s responsibility.

This is one of the most fundamental things for all those who are helping in my work in any way to understand: you should not become the doers. Do – but just be the vehicles.

And what is wrong in being mad? Are you thinking that the people who are not mad are very happy?

We have very tacit concepts in the mind, that people who are not mad are naturally very happy.

So what is really wrong in being mad? Who knows? – that one month may have been the only month of joy that he knew. Almost always mad people are happy people – you will not find normal people so happy! This may have been the only time of his life when he was unworried and happy.

So what is the point of living thirty years if you are unhappy? It is worth choosing one month of being happy.

And why should one consider suicide wrong? These are just concepts. We have accepted the idea that life – whatsoever it is, howsoever it is – is good: it is not so. There are a thousand times when life is not good.

Just think if Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in 1930: would it have been bad or good? It would have been perfectly good! And if [you] had helped him to commit suicide the world would have been benefitted! Or you can think about benito mussolini!

Nothing as such is wrong, nothing as such is good. Sometimes suicide is good and sometimes life is good; who are we, and how to decide? So don’t bother about these things – just leave it to god; it is so complicated. Mm? if the man were alive he may have committed a few murders – then?

[Osho says there is a sect of Jainas in India that don’t believe in doing anything for anyone – even giving a dying man a drink of water – their rationale being that no one knows what might happen out of their action. If that man later commits a theft or murder, then the crime is on their heads too.]

Now you will be afraid whether to lead a group or not again because somebody can go crazy. There is no need to be afraid, otherwise you will destroy your own life.

It is your joy that you make a certain thing – the encounter group – available to people. If people choose to be benefitted by it, let them be. To some people life will be enhanced, to some people life may not be enhanced.

There are millions of people in millions of situations: it is a very complicated affair and nobody knows what will lead to what. So one has to surrender everything to god and one goes on doing one’s own work.

CHAPTER 24

Spirituality is a vision of living this life with totality 27 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives a seeker sannyas.]

And just start visualising a bluish light at the third eye... just a bluish flame. Forget everything and let that flame be there, the only focus... the whole consciousness focused on it....

Prem means love, chinmaya means consciousness – love consciousness. And these are the only two things worth having... all else is just meaningless. Love for others and consciousness for oneself, and life is perfect! They both go together, perfectly well together – in fact they cannot exist separately: they are like two wings of a bird.

If somebody tries to be just conscious, meditative, without love, he falls into a kind of selfishness; that has happened in the East. And if somebody tries to just remain in love and forgets about consciousness, he becomes a christian missionary... and both are incomplete. The East has suffered from one excess and the West has suffered from another excess. And the perfect human being comes only when both the wings are perfectly balanced: love for others, consciousness for oneself. When you look at the other then you become love and when you close your eyes you become consciousness, just pure consciousness.

This is the whole man, the holy man, and the future will depend on this man. If we can produce holy men on the earth then there is a possibility for humanity to continue a little longer – otherwise it seems almost impossible.

And both the experiments have failed: the Buddhist experiment has failed, the christian experiment has failed. Buddha has not failed, Christ has not failed, but these experiments have failed because they were lopsided.

In the East, particularly in India, you can see that love has completely disappeared. Nobody has any concern for anybody else: if somebody is dying it is his karma; if somebody is starving it is his karma. Nobody has any compassion, people are hard. They are thinking of their salvation: they will meditate, they will pray, they will go to the temple, they will go even to the himalayas. And they are immaculate meditators, but something is missing; concern for the other is missing.

So the whole religious mind in India has become very very self confined: one has to look for one’s own goal. This is a failure, an utter failure, because unless your meditation brings compassion it is not on the right track.

Buddha has said that – that perfect samadhi will automatically result in perfect karma. Meditation will bring compassion... on its own accord. Buddha has said, ’Let that be the criterion: compassion, let that be the criterion of whether meditation has really happened or not.’

But in the East people have become very hard... and in the West the other side of the coin: christianity became too much concerned with compassion, with service. Serve poor people, serve ill people, create more hospitals, more schools, this and that. The whole concern became non-meditative so the inner is missing and only the outer is there.

Somewhere we have to create the balance so that both can go together in deep harmony, supporting each other, helping each other. They help each other – they become great supports to each other.

[Before giving sannyas to a seeker Osho talks about the significance of disconnecting oneself from the past, that when you die to the past, the future disappears, and that rather than trying to solve problems, one can simply drop them.

Osho explains the meaning of deva aretha – divine no-discipline... not to create scriptures, armour, character, around oneself. Consciousness has no character. It does not depend on memory; it can use memory but it does not depend on memory. It functions on its own – it goes directly tot he thin; it responds directly.... so depend more and more on consciousness, on being more and more aware, conscious, alert. Become more like a mirror.... ]

[A new sannyasin says he has no idea how long he will stay here.]

Mm mm, that’s right – that’s perfectly right. One day that idea will also disappear! When you have found your real home that idea will disappear.

Everybody has a deep longing for the home but it has nothing to do with the physical home. The physical home has become just an object for a deep longing for the home – it is just an excuse.

Because we don’t know the real home we create a small home and we cling to it. This gives a sort of consolation, it makes one feel that one has a home. In fact, we don’t have any home on this earth.

The home exists not here – the home is somewhere inwards, very deep in the innermost core of your being, but to go there is a long journey and arduous and dangerous.

This is simple, to create a home and to feel that one is at home. And in this world you are never at home ! To convert a house into a home is a psychological trick – it helps; it is like a tranquilliser.

It is like the blanket of linus: it helps one to feel secure, to feel that one is not uprooted, that one has roots, that one has somewhere to go, that one belongs somewhere. Hence we create countries, nations, motherlands, fatherlands, churches, temples and a thousand and one things, but the search is for the home... and you cannot find it anywhere outside.

One day that idea will also disappear; when you start looking for the right home all ideas about the outside disappear.

And I am not saying that you have to leave your outside home – there is no need – but one comes to know that this is not the home. It is perfectly good as a house, comfortable.... Make it as comfortable as possible. I am not ascetic at all and I am not against the world, I am all for it. But still the truth remains that the home is not there outside: the home is some inner thing, inner phenomenon... the kingdom of god is within.

Be here as long as you can and as long as you feel will be good.

[Osho speaks through a translator to a Japanese seeker who has no understand of the English language, and consequently of what is available in the ashram. Osho suggests to one therapist present, and to the translator, that special groups are arranged in Japanese, Italian and German for those who cannot follow english.]

[Osho says about vipassana that it is the very source from where zazen has come – it is the original Buddhist meditation; zazen is a by-product of vipassana.]

[Another sannyasin says he had some questions but since being in front of Osho they have disappeared.]

That’s very good – so kind of you! Good!

Questions are meaningless. It is very good to be related with me without any questions – it goes far deeper. Through questions you can be related with me – it remains intellectual. A question basically is part of the intellect, and if I answer, the answer will reach your memory and become part of your intellect.

It is better to be related without any question, to be related directly with me, not with my answer... it is far more enriching. Good!

[A sannyasin asks about her illusions of spirituality and reality... she still has desires which are somehow not spiritual... ]

You have a very wrong idea about spirituality – you have very old rotten ideas about spirituality...

very orthodox ideas about spirituality.

Spirituality has nothing to do with other-worldliness. Spirituality is all inclusive, it is not an exclusive thing: it is not against anything, it is not a choice at all. Spirituality is a total vision of living this very life but in a more total way. It is not against life at all... but you have that idea, that christian idea.

[She replies: All my life people have been saying – and I know this; I’m even doing primal therapy and I know it. I can analyse the whole thing and still it’s happening – ’You should know better.’]

That too is again the same thing: nobody knows. You can do primal therapy, you can analyse, you can help people, and you never know anything – not a single thing is ever known. Not a thing is ever known... everything remains unknown. This is all a game, the game of knowledge. You can go on playing it, and while you are playing you can be very perfect in it, but how can you play the game for twenty-four hours a day? Sometimes you are on a holiday and then again it is there... and you know that you don’t know. When you are playing the game you forget. It happens in every game....

You are playing chess and you forget that it is a game; it becomes your very life. When it is finished, then you know, then you start laughing at the whole thing – it was just a game. But at the moment when you were playing it took a very serious turn.

So when you are primalling people it is a perfect game and you do it well....

There is no other way to be other than the way you are. One can go on suffering and suffering and suffering, but one day one comes to simple fact – and then it is very ridiculous; one simply laughs at the whole thing. You cannot be anybody else other than who you are; there is no way. You can try and you will fail. You can only be the person you are, that is the only possibility – there is no improvement ever.

Once this is understood there is nothing to worry about and nothing to compare with – then life becomes total. Accept even this! What I am saying is to accept even this: accept that [you are] this way, that she is hankering for something and she knows that there is nothing. She knows this and still she remains ignorant. This too is okay.

I am not saying to change this, otherwise you will again be in the same trap. I am not saying to drop anything, I am saying simply that this is the case, this is how you are and this is the only way you can be... so be and let all that comes be enjoyed.

The problem is not there; you want a problem to be there so you can fight. You want the problem to be there – if it is not there you will create one because the problem gives you something to do and to remain occupied with.

There are very few people who can live without problems because to live without problems means to live unoccupied – nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to expect tomorrow; all has stopped completely. To live in that vacuum is difficult. It is difficult – that’s why we go on creating problems.

If one problem is solved, we will create another.

And spirituality means simply that there is no problem... there has never been from the very beginning. We create problems like toys to play with. And I am not saying there is anything wrong in it – if you are enjoying, enjoy it! But you cannot improve... the very idea of improvement is a mad idea, it drives people neurotic.

And I don’t see what you are missing – what world you are talking about that you are missing and what life you are talking about that you are missing. In fact here in this community, people are living at least seven lives simultaneously... and soon we are going to make it a bigger thing so you can live seventy lives, mm?

[She wails: I’m tired of hearing about spiritual talk and about ego and about this and about that!]

Who says to listen? Don’t listen! Who says? You can come with earplugs. I will send you earplugs

– I have good ones!

Do you think I hear you? Otherwise I would go mad! Who bothers about what you are saying? I go on saying whatsoever I want to say – you need not hear anything! Good!

CHAPTER 25

The significance is not in the goal but in the journey

28 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin says he’s been doing zen meditation for two years... he was frustrated; it was only discipline.]

It is... but we will change it. Once you have passed through a few cathartic groups, you will start enjoying the same zen meditation.

The technique is very significant but one has to approach it in a right way. Sometimes the right thing also turns into a wrong thing if you are not ready for it; if you are ready for it then things are different.

Zen simply approached without any catharsis, without any primal therapy, encounter, and things like that, is just discipline – dry, dull, boring, frustrating. But once you have gone through catharsis, you have thrown out all the rubbish that one naturally carries, then those same techniques will fit and will be of tremendous significance. So do a few groups here, mm?

And right now stop your zen meditations. When you are ready I will tell you to start, and you will see the difference then, mm? First one has to get ready. Zen is very very significant but you have to be ready for it. You started without getting ready – that’s why it has been frustrating.

[Osho explains the meaning of deva sandhan: god, the goal – and unless god is the goal one remains frustrated. Joy arises only when there is significance in your life... when each act contributes to its total quality... when you move in a direction and you feel that something is growing, one is arriving somewhere.... ]

There are three kinds of goals: one, the very very small range goal, the mini-goal. One is feeling hungry and one wants to eat – that’s a mini-goal; within an hour, once you have eaten, it is finished.

Again after eight hours you will feel hungry and again it will be there – thousands of times it will come and go – it is a mini-goal. It gives satisfaction; not fulfilled it gives dissatisfaction but nothing arises out of it. In itself it is meaningless – one can go on eating and defecating, eating and defecating, but life has no sense.

Then there are short-range goals: one wants to become a doctor or one wants to become an engineer or one wants to become a wife or a husband or a mother – small range goals; they help a little bit. For a few days or for a few months or for a few years, one has a certain aim and one has drive but once one becomes a doctor, then what? Suddenly one falls flat and then comes to feel that it doesn’t make much difference whether you are a doctor or an engineer or a carpenter – it only helps your mini-goals: you can get food, shelter, a car. So the short-range goals only help mini-goals and mini-goals are meaningless. Naturally the short-range goal is also not of much use....

God is the really major goal, the only ultimate goal. There are mini-goals and minor-goals but god is the ultimate goal. And the beauty is that you are always coming closer and closer but you never really come. It is never exhausted, hence it is the ultimate goal.

You will be growing towards it and you will find every day that you are coming closer, and the closer you feel, the more happy. But it never happens that one day you can say that now you have arrived.

If you have arrived, it was not the ultimate goal – it was again a short-range goal, the second type of goal. Then again the question will come: now what?

God is the goal that is never achieved, hence it always remains significant. The significance is not in the goal but in the journey... but the goal makes the journey possible. So one should choose a goal that can never be achieved really, the impossible should be chosen... and god is the impossible goal, the absurd goal. We call it a ’goal’ because we try to achieve, but it is not the goal because it is never achieved, hence it is the absurd goal, and only a very few courageous people choose it.

Millions of people remain with the first type of goal – the mini-goal – eating, drinking, merrying.

The other kind of people, a minority, choose slightly bigger goals: becoming famous, becoming a president of a country, a doctor, a scientist, a poet, a painter – things like that. But that is a minority, not more than five percent of people; ninety-five percent remain with the first, five percent choose the second type.

Very rarely does a person choose the meta-goal, the ultimate goal. Great courage is needed...

almost absurd courage is needed. That is the meaning of your name, ’deva sandhan’.

[A sannyasin who is teaches martial arts in Taiwan says: I found in the encounter group I did, that certain emotions brought out anger, and I could see how to use T’ai Chi for love, but things like pain and fear, I cannot come in contact with.]

T’ai Chi can be used for many many things, and for this also, because each movement of the body can have some relevance to the emotions. That’s why they are called ’emotions’ – because they are connected with body motions: each emotion has a particular body gesture related to it, corresponding to it.

[Osho describes the James Lange theory that was evolved in the beginning of this century which proposes that in a situation that could be fear-provoking, it is the running away that causes fear, not the other way round. There is some truth in it, Osho says, because the fear and the running are deeply connected... ]

When you become angry your eyes have a certain gesture, your hands have a certain gesture, your teeth have a certain energy, your jaw is more aggressive; you are ready to destroy, to be aggressive.

The energy accumulates in the hands and in the teeth, because when man was an animal that was the only way to be angry. Still animals are angry with their teeth and with their nails; we still carry that mechanism.

If you try to be angry without using your hands and your teeth and your eyes, you will be in an almost impossible situation – you cannot be angry. That particular gesture in the body is a must. And what precedes what cannot be said, so lange is also true. In fact it is just like saying: ’Which comes first?

– the hen or the egg.’ Does fear come first and then the gesture of being frightened, or does the gesture come and then the fear? They both come together; they are simultaneous.

You can work it out... but t’ai chi masters will not be of much help because they have not used it in that way. T’ai Chi has many potentialities which have not been used in the past. In fact, T’ai Chi has been used to repress, not to express.

All the eastern techniques are in a way repressive. Rather than expressing your anger, your sadness or your negativity, the techniques have been made in such a way that you can very very politely persuade them to go into the unconscious, to the basement.

So T’ai Chi masters won’t be much help... but you can work it out on your own. Learn T’ai Chi from them but then you can work it out in a very cathartic way and you can throw negative emotions through T’ai Chi movements; they can be thrown out. You can develop that thing and it can be helpful for others too. It can become a new dimension in T’ai Chi. I have always been thinking that some time or other, that dimension has to be developed in t’ai chi. As it is, it doesn’t exist right now.

So don’t talk about it otherwise they will say no... because the east is very orthodox. They have a certain use and they have used it down the ages and they have become very fixed; they are not even exploring new possibilities.

The same is the case with yoga in India – it has become a frozen science: for three thousand years, not a single development. So is the case with T’ai Chi: for three thousand years not a single improvement. It remains exactly where it was three thousand years before... as if three thousand years have not passed.

The East is very very orthodox: once it finds that a certain thing works it uses it only in that way. The west is very very exploring, hence the West could reach from the bullock cart to the space jet. The East could not, the East still carries the bullock cart; it is the same bullock cart! In the same bullock cart Buddha was moving, in the same bullock cart Patanjali was moving, in the same bullock cart Lao Tzu was moving, and in the same bullock cart the East is still moving.

[The sannyasin asks: How to use the movements to cathart?]

Do it alone – don’t talk to any t’ai chi master... the first thing, mm? Don’t talk about that.... Just learn T’ai Chi with them and alone in your room try it.

Just stand, hold your energy in the hara, concentrate at the hara, and then just whatsoever you feel like... If it is anger, mm? – for example if it is anger, then just feel the energy arising from the hara taking the form of anger like flames, spreading all over the body. Then relax and let the body move with those flames.

You will find that gestures start – they may be more like latihan, subud, they will be more like subud movements. But if you know t’ai chi, they will take the t’ai chi form easily.

So just like flames – if you are thinking about anger, then think of flames.

[The sannyasin asks: Then you watch the movements and you trace them back?]

Yes, trace them back.... Trace the energy, yes, and just go with the energy and allow the energy to take its own shape and start moving.

By and by experiment and you will be able to fix the movements, that these are the movements that always come whenever you think of anger, and whenever you think of flames arising in you and taking shape, then this happens. But you try with anger for a few days so you come to an exact formulation. Then try with some other things – sadness, hatred, jealousy – but remember not to get confused. If you try with anger then try anger only for three weeks, so it settles. It settles so much that you can tell somebody else to do the movement and if he does the movement, he will suddenly say that anger is arising in him and anger is being thrown out. You follow me?

Then you try something else when you have come to a fixed pattern about anger. And whatsoever your negativities, you can search....

[The sannyasin says: In t’ai chi some of the forms take an hour – there are many many more movements. When you can separate the parts, when you link it together, you just let each one go out as it goes out?]

Simply let it go out, let it be dissolved into the cosmos. Don’t make a circle, don’t take it in; simply let it out. It moves into the existence and disappears... you have poured it into existence.

[The sannyasin asks: And this can also be done silently?]

Yes, quietly you can do it... you can find your own ways. These sciences – t’ai chi, yoga or things like that – are arts, not really sciences, and everybody can play around and find out their own ways.

One should be very very free about them. They are not very fixed things... they have great freedom in them.

So learn the art and then use it in your own individual way – give it your own flavour. And never become an orthodox follower of these things otherwise rather than helping they constrict you. They help in a certain limited way, but if you can improve upon them, innovate, then you can be benefitted tremendously.

Go and learn and experiment. Mm? I would like many people to go everywhere and learn everything and then innovate.

[The sannyasin asks: Osho, I have been doing this for nine years... in teaching it, is there not a danger of anger or something coming out and then it going very far?]

No, no danger, not at all... not at all. Catharsis is never dangerous – repression is always dangerous... and people never feel danger with repression, and with expression they always feel danger!

The very english word ’expression’ is negative because people have never been allowed to express.

The word means express, it means ’squeezing out... ex-pressing’. It is not very positive: it is as if somebody is squeezing something out of you and you don’t want it... just as you squeeze juice from the fruit and the fruit naturally does not want it. It is not a very positive word.

The sanskrit word for it is ’abivenjana’ – it means flowering, like a bud opens... not squeezing but like a bud opening. Not that somebody is doing something to it – on its own accord it opens. It has a grace and beauty.

Repression has been the accepted mode – people have been taught to repress – and it has been thought that a repressed person, a controlled person, is a good person; there is no danger. And in fact this has created all the danger! The controlled, the repressed, is the most dangerous person in the world because he is carrying a volcano which is going to erupt one day or other.

There is a certain limit to which you can repress things, then they explode. If you don’t express, they explode. If you express, you remain the master; when they explode they become the master. You are no more the master... the key is no more in your hands.

That’s what madness is: explosion. Had you been expressing all these things there would have been no need for going into madness; madness is the last natural resort. The man has been repressing and nature comes to a point where it cannot tolerate it any more – it explodes. That is dangerous, when you explode in madness or you explode in violence: you murder or commit suicide.

Every ten years the society needs a great world war and small wars in between so we can explode.

This society is a dangerous society, it is a mad society... and the whole thing depends on repression.

With expression there is no danger because if you go on expressing you never accumulate these negative things inside: they never become a wound in you, they never grow like a cancer and they cannot spread over your whole being. You always remain the master.

A little anger here and there is not bad; it simply shows that one is alive, and if one is really alive, then even one’s anger has a beauty to it. And it adds something to the personality, it enriches it; without anger something will be missing.

Mm? just think of Jesus with a whip in the temple, throwing the boards of the money-changers. That flair makes Jesus rich, gives him a quality of youth, of rebellion... makes him powerful. That anger is not bad – it is very creative. A little anger here and there, rightly used, gives a little salt to your personality. You are not without salt; you have some taste. But if the anger accumulates and then explodes like a cancer and pus starts oozing out all around, then it is ugly.

Repression is dangerous, always dangerous – expression, never. So whenever there is a choice always choose expression and help people to express. There is no danger....

[An ashram therapist says he’s had an intermittent fever for the past few weeks with weight loss of forty pounds and a sensation of weakness. Osho checks his energy, and says that everything is okay... the energy is returning, and that he began to hypnotise himself into believing he was weak when he noticed he was losing weight.... ]

Once I told two young men – both were my students in the university – to go on a fast for seven days.

And one I had conditioned, talked to for a long time, that every day he would become stronger and stronger through the fast, and the other just the opposite, that he would become every day weaker.

They both had their minds conditioned, and it happened exactly the same way: after seven days one was really feeling younger – as he had never been. He was just flying... he was very alive and very very strong. The other was simply dead after seven days of continuously fasting and with the idea revolving in his mind that he was becoming weak, he was becoming weak....

And there are a few things which are very very suggestible. One is: when you are hungry you become very very suggestible – that’s why many religions have used fasting as a process for hypnosis. When a person is hungry he is very suggestible; when a person is full he does not bother, he is less suggestible. When a person is hungry and empty he takes anything in – that’s why he is suggestible. He wants anything to stuff in: anything you give he stuffs in, keeps it in the stomach... any idea and he will take it in. When a man’s stomach is full he does not take things so easily; he does not swallow things so easily.

Poor people are very suggestible people – you can provoke them for anything: communism, fascism, anything, any nonsense idea can be put into their minds. Well-fed people are not so suggestible.

Karl Marx declared that rich countries would become communist first but he was proved wrong, his prediction went wrong – only poor countries started becoming communist; not a single rich country has turned communist – because he didn’t know the basic idea of hypnosis. He must have known much about economics but economics is secondary as far as the mind is concerned; hypnosis is far more primary.

You cannot hypnotise a person who is living perfectly conveniently, comfortably, has good food, has good shelter, wife, children – you cannot hypnotise him.

Russia turned communist first... and that was the poorest country. Then China turned – it was again another poor country; now India, the third poorest country in the world can turn. Only poor people are suggestible. Marx was thinking that America would turn or Germany or England – they have not.

So when you are hungry, it is very easy to be hypnotised... or when you have not been allowed to sleep well you are very suggestible. Keep a man awake for three days, don’t allow him to sleep, and he becomes absolutely suggestible.

So a few religions have used fasting and a few religions have used vigilance – both are tricks.

Mohammedans have used vigilance: keep alert the whole night and go on repeating a certain idea.

You can create your visions very easily.

Jainas have used fasting and Mohammedans have used vigilance but both are the same trick. Both are very very important. So hindus say to pray before you eat and to pray before you go to sleep.

Those two moments are very suggestible – put the idea in at that time. Before you eat, put the idea in the stomach and then eat; press it down with the food. And before you fall asleep, put the idea in; then it is very close to the unconscious. Fall asleep and then it goes on reverberating in the unconscious: the whole night the vibrations will be there and it will condition you.

When a person is ill he is more suggestible than when he is healthy. In these few months while you were losing weight, you became very suggestible and you continued to suggest to yourself the idea that you are becoming weak. And that is the western logic – if you are losing weight you are becoming weak; in fact it is not necessarily so.

If before the age of thirty-five you are losing weight maybe something is wrong, but after thirty-five it is perfectly good to lose weight because your body does not need so much weight.

So start suggesting to yourself that you are perfectly good and you will be perfectly good within a week. It is nothing, you have just put the idea in your mind. Start feeling good! Mm? follow emile coue – that you are getting better and better every day and feeling perfectly good. Enjoy and feel good! Weight is not the problem at all.

And if you feel good, soon you will come to your normal one hundred and sixty-five pounds; there is no problem in it. And I don’t see that you should be troubled or anything. You need not go to doctors

– you don’t have anything. Just enjoy this lightness that has come.

[The sannyasin then says that he just stopped smoking recently after fifteen years.]

For three weeks you will be in trouble... at the most: Three weeks is the time for all kinds of mind change. If one can persevere for three weeks, then anything can be changed. The whole problem arises between those three weeks.

So just for three weeks remain alert and don’t relax, and don’t say that once in a while nothing is wrong. That ’once in a while’ is more dangerous, because the continuity of the habit.... And it is good that you have dropped it.

But that too can give you a kind of feeling, mm? because there are chemicals in smoking, in tobacco, in coffee, in tea, which give you a false feeling of strength – just a false feeling; it is not true, it is just illusory. So when you stop that the illusion disappears. You have lived for fifteen years in that illusion; then suddenly you feel very very weak... but after three weeks it will go.

Things are good. Good.

[A sannyasin says she was counselling and running groups before she came here, but she didn’t believe in the philosophy behind what she was doing. She says she believes in the philosophy here and wonders if there is a branch of psychology she can pursue that would be more in keeping with what is happening here.]

Really, nothing yet in existence; mm? – just a few beginnings in the West but nothing in particular that has taken the shape. There are a few beginnings here and there; many people are working and groping in the dark. Something is going to materialise soon but not yet. But in a way this is a very very potential situation. One can contribute much in these days of transition. The future of psychology is going to be altogether different to what it has been up to now: a great change is going to take over – almost a new birth for psychology. Any day it is possible: the coming twenty, twenty-five years, this last part of the century will see a new psychology being born.

So you cannot find a ready made thing, but in a way that is far better. You can help, you can become a contributor... and that is more exhilarating, more ecstatic, to contribute to the birth of a new science. You have been here – you will be going to the east now. Look! There are in the East many trends developed down the centuries. Just be an open mind and find out as many things and absorb them. And don’t be in a hurry to formulate; first absorb, absorb as much as you can, digest as much as you can. And don’t be worried whether two things are consistent or not – just go on absorbing. Out of the criss-crossing of many things, a synthesis arises on its own accord... not a synthesis made by you but it comes out of the meeting, the cross-breeding of many many trends.

So in the far East you will be moving.... India has worked down the centuries for at least five thousand years and has worked out a totally different outlook – a totally different image of man through yoga, tantra. In the far east, taoists have developed a totally different image of man... zen has evolved many things. And these techniques – T’ai Chi Chuan, Aikido, Karate – all have fragments.

Just go and absorb all of them, and soon you will start feeling new glimpses of new things fitting together; then start writing them and work out your own plan. That will be very very satisfying to you. Rather than borrowing a ready-made branch of psychology from somewhere, why not evolve one? That is more satisfying... and whenever a person evolves something on his own, it works miracles. In fact it is the man who works miracles, not the science.

My suggestion is – and this is my suggestion for everybody – always work a way out for yourself, and when you have found something on your own you will have tremendous power, and through that power you can help many people. So rather than borrowing, why not invent?

And these days are very pregnant... very few people are fortunate enough to live in such pregnant times. When a science settles then there is no scope for invention.

For example, it is very difficult to invent anything in mathematics: now the science is almost settling.

Only once in a century will a person be able to invent something – it cannot be a day to day thing: once in a century, Albert Einstein. Now after Albert Einstein it will take a hundred years for another man of such genius to come to invent something that becomes an addition, a contribution.

To invent something in physics is more difficult – the science is settling – but with psychology the scope is infinite; nothing is settled yet. In fact psychology is still in the womb, the child is not born yet. There is great scope and great freedom.

So rather than looking for a settled thing somewhere, a ready-made formula, roam around the world... and the east has many things to teach. Remain acquainted with the western methodology and the eastern insight – eastern insight and western methodology, eastern heart and western reason. If they just criss-cross something very beautiful can come out of it... and that will be very satisfying, it will be a great contentment.

[A sannyasin, who has completed individual primal therapy, says he feels really cleansed and clear.

But he has to leave soon to do one year in the army... ]

In fact it can be a very very good training. If you take it positively it can be very good. It can give a tone to your personality, it can give you a certain integration. If you take it positively it can be of tremendous value but if you take it negatively it can be very destructive – it depends on you.

Otherwise one year of military can be very good.

One year live very surrendered, do things as you are ordered to, drop your mind completely. Thinking is not needed in the army – you can pull the head away. You can make that one year an experience of non-thinking, an experience of no head... and that can be very great experience for meditation....

My suggestion is – you do it. It is very good; after one year you will come back very very strong.

[The sannyasin says: I am a little afraid because I get very angry the minute somebody tells me....

I’m very sensitive.]

If you go with that idea, with anger, then it will be destructive. Then you will be continuously fighting and continuously angry and complaining and feeling bad and thinking ’Why have I come?’ and ’Why has this been enforced?’ then all those negative emotions will be very bad, like wounds, and you will carry those wounds your whole life, as if you have been humiliated.... That is your interpretation.

If you understand me, what I am saying is that you just go and for that one year remain surrendered.

There is no question to ask: whatsoever they say you follow... and that will give you an insight of surrender. Then you will be able to see: yes, the head can be put aside – and then it doesn’t disturb at all. Then everything can be enjoyed.

And if you can enjoy it in the army, you can enjoy it anywhere then, because that is the worst place!

It is good to have the training in the worst place because then nothing can be worse than that. Mm?

you have lived in hell and happily; then finished... all hell is finished! Then wherever you are, you will always be in a better position.

In the ancient days that was one of the fundamentals of education. Even the sons of emperors and kings had to pass through very great hardships. They had to live the life of a very ordinary man, and they had to pass through all ordinary hardships; no special concession was given to them.

In the East, particularly in India, every child had to go to the forest to live with the master and for twenty years, twenty-five years, he had to go through all kinds of hardships. Food was not for taste but only for nourishment... no comforts, no luxury. After those twenty-five years of hard living, poor living, whatsoever life was going to give was a great joy – it was a very psychological experiment.

Whatsoever life was – a small hut, a bed to call your own, ordinary food – was great joy compared to those twenty five years. The whole life was full of joy because in the basement of life, they learned what hardship was. Now the whole thing has turned upside-down....

The student in the university lives in a very comfortable way, lives on government money, public money, lives like a prince, and then after twenty-five years comes into life and becomes a clerk or a station master... and life is never satisfying. It is always comparatively less than it was in the university. One is frustrated... one carries a continuous complaint and grudge. The university gives so many promises and all are shattered. The university gives so many hopes and nothing is fulfilled later on.

The eastern method was just the opposite: the university was not going to give any hope – the university was going to give you a hardship, as much as possible, as much as a man can tolerate.

Then whatsoever life was going to give was good, far better, and there was contentment.

That one year can be of tremendous education. My suggestion is – if you can go positively, go; if it is difficult to go positively, then avoid, don’t go. But if you listen to me, my suggestion is always to go through as many experiences as possible. The army is an experience – a totally different kind of experience. It will not be available anywhere else. The experience of a civilian is one thing, the experience of an army man is totally different. He lives in a totally different world, and it is good to know it – that that world is also there.

And it is only a question of one year. Don’t miss it! And after that, come here, so you will be coming fresh without a head and we start working on you, mm? See me before you go, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 26

Become a part of the family

29 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is a teacher says she gets angry with her students. No, we will take it away, promises Osho. The problem is not with the students – it is with you. The expectations create trouble, and teachers down the ages have enforced things; now they can’t do that.

Drop the expectations! Children are children – they are not dead: they are the most alive people on the earth. We are going to destroy them sooner or later; all the teachers together are going to destroy them. Children are more oppressed than any other class of people because they are so helpless: they cannot even rebel.... ]

I was also a teacher for many years... but a different kind of teacher. My children were absolutely free to do whatsoever they wanted to do. If they shouted, I would join them! Why should I be just standing there? Then they would become silent because that is... they could not believe what was happening! If they laughed, I would laugh. I would tell them so many jokes that they would say,

’Stop, sir! Our bellies will burst! You make us laugh so much that we start crying!’

I was turned out from one college because so many students who were not my students would come to attend my class... but my doors were open. It was a crowded class, and students from other classes would come. The principal was of course angry and the other professors were angry and they said ’This is not right. Our classes are empty and people are there and they make so much noise! It is such a celebration – what is going on? And why do you allow people who are not your students?’

Just be here and just look into your problems, into your expectations, into your ego trips, into your obsessions and into the ideas that have been put into your mind, for which you have been conditioned.

Once they are dropped one cannot find a better job than being a teacher. Otherwise it is very ugly: if you cannot drop these things I will tell you to get out of it, to do something else that you can love and with which you are not angry. But first we will try – if you can drop these things... and these can be dropped. I can see that you are a perfect person – you can see things clearly; you have just not been courageous enough to drop them.

Once you see that the children are victims of the society, the family, the teachers, you will love them; you will feel much compassion for them: you will be for them and with them! You will become part of them, and once you are part of them you will see how much they can love you. Nobody has really been there to whom they can show their love and their respect, and they have great reverence in their minds, in their hearts, but nobody seems to be worthy.

Your old teacher has to go, and that old teacher is not good – it is making you disturbed and it is making those children also worried because when a teacher is angry, students cannot feel good.

They also feel guilty that they are making you angry, that they are doing something wrong, that they should not be doing such things.

You are creating the guilt feeling in them: you are getting angry and they are becoming guilty, and this is how all neuroses arise. Our schools, our colleges, our universities, are breeding grounds for neuroses.

But I will make you a different kind of teacher. Mm? just be here!

[Osho suggests groups for her and she says she did Encounter in the West, and Tantra with Y – .]

No, but here it will be totally different... you don’t know what it is here, mm? Just the name is the same – the quality is totally different!...

What can Y – know about tantra? Nothing!...

He may know something about yoga but nothing about tantra...

and both are such different

approaches – yoga and tantra – antagonistic, diametrically opposite.

But in the West it is happening – anybody who goes from the East knows everything, mm? And it is so simple to become a master in the West. Just to be an Indian is enough to be a master – nothing else is needed; that is enough qualification, mm? I know many masters!

Book for these two and then we will see, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says that he doesn’t really enjoy sex but does enjoy meditating. Should he only meditate he wonders, or does he have to go into relationships and work on his sexuality? Osho checks his energy.]

Good! You need not be worried about sex – you can by-pass it; you are really finished with it. It will be a drag on you and it will be a wastage of energy.

I can understand your problem because in this life it seems too early to be finished with sex, but in your past life something has happened so that you are already finished with it. You can go into sex but that going will not be joy; it will be a kind of work.

You can go into it through will – but when you go through will, sex has no joy in it, no delight in it, and afterwards you will feel very very exhausted. You will have headaches, will feel frustration, body aches, and for two, three days you will not feel good; for two, three days, you will fee that something is missing... you will remain disoriented.

Simply by-pass it – that is not for you. Put your whole energy into meditation. It is perfectly right, this is the right time to go into meditation.

You are born old... but that’s very good! There are a few people who are not old even when they are ninety – they are really pitiable. It is perfectly good. Good.

[A sannyasin says she finds it really hard to be here... near to Osho. Osho checks her energy.]

Good. Nothing is a problem – this is natural: this is going to happen to everybody who is really going to stay here forever! This is a natural resistance of the mind. The mind tries hard to drag you away and you know you cannot go; even if you go, you will have to come back. So there is a conflict inside: one part understands perfectly well that this is your home; another part that is not yet relaxed, not yet with me – a very minor part, nothing to be worried about – goes on trying to pull you away. Once you start understanding it, it will disappear.

Start doing something in the ashram, start working – that will help. Become more a part of the family... that’s what is needed.

And soon we will be moving to a bigger place and many people will be needed for many things, so start working a little, mm? Find some work and start. Good.

CHAPTER 27

Everybody is carrying a sun within him

30 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Anand suriya. Anand means bliss, suriya, the source of light: the sun, blissful source of light... ]

And everybody is carrying a sun within him. If we are living in darkness it is not because we don’t have light; it is because we never look at the light. The light is in and we look out, hence the darkness. The light is behind the eyes; unless we turn our eyes to the inner source we remain in darkness. The outer light cannot help: unless the inner being is bathed in light, life remains a groping, a stumbling... meaningless, inconsistent, sort of mad.

Once the inner light is known, felt, lived, life starts becoming a consistency. There arises a subtle poetry in it; it is no more a jumble of words; it starts falling into a rhythm, starts becoming a song.

And that’s what sannyas is all about: creating meaning in a meaningless, accidental life, bringing a subtle consistency into the inconsistent events of the outer life, creating an inner source of light so wherever one is, one is never in darkness.

And that source already exists, it just has to be tapped. Because we have not looked at it for many lives, our eyes have forgotten how to turn backwards: they have become fixed, they have lost the capacity to move backwards. It is almost like paralysis: you have the limb but it is paralysed; you cannot move it. The eyes are there, the source is there, but the eyes cannot move towards the source.

The whole process that goes on here is nothing but loosening your eyes, losing your fixation, making your eyes more fluid, more liquid, so they can easily turn backwards. That is the whole secret: once you can see within then nothing is missing.

That’s what jesus goes on saying again and again – ’The kingdom of god is within!’

[A sannyasin, recently returned from the West, says he’d like to work in the ashram. Last time he was here he was a guard in the Vrindavan juice bar, and would like to do that again.]

Guarding can be very very useful – it can become a great meditation if you do it rightly, because all that is needed for the meditation is a requirement for being a good guard. For example you have to be alert, very alert, you have to be watchful about who is passing and what is happening all around...

and that’s what meditation is!

There is a hassidic parable.... A hassidic rabbi could not sleep one night, so in the middle of the night he came out of his house and walked on the road. There he met another man who was guarding a rich man’s house, so they walked together, and the rabbi asked him, ’What kind of work do you do?’

And he said, ’I am a watchman.’ The watchman asked, ’What kind of work do you do?’

And the rabbi laughed – he said, ’I am also a watchman hut not as good as you! I fall asleep many times. My alertness is not perfect – I miss. There are gaps in my watchfulness.’

Meditation is a kind of watchfulness and a sitting, just looking around with no purpose – because there is no purpose. If anybody passes by you have to look without any purpose, without any judgement; you have just to see. That is another quality of meditation: to look at things without any kind of prejudice – good or bad – without any judgement. And then sitting there the whole day doing nothing the energy settles – it is not hectic; it rests.

That is another quality of meditation. That’s why zen people call their meditation ’zazen’; zazen means sitting and doing nothing. The very word zazen, means sitting doing nothing. The work of a guard can become zazen.

That’s very good.... If you liked it, try it here. Mm? that will be of great importance. And anything basically can be transformed into meditation, one just has to look deep into things and find some ways to transform it into a meditation. A gardener can become a meditator, a farmer can become a meditator – it doesn’t matter what kind of job one chooses, but the job can be transformed into meditation. You just have to contemplate a little and you will find keys, because from every door one can enter god.

[A sannyasin therapist says, I’m very insecure still. You have to learn what my groupleaders are doing here, says Osho: let me be the guide. Just become my vehicle and you will never be afraid.

Whenever you feel you are stuck close your eyes, take the locket in your hand and remember me.

Just a single minute of remembrance and you will suddenly find that the key is in your hands.

Osho goes on to say that it is not that he will actually come and do something, but through trusting in and surrendering to the thought of Osho, one’s worries and tensions dissolve and one is open.

Through that opening the unconscious can immediately share its wisdom with one.... ]

That is the whole secret of the guru, of the master: he simply helps you to relax. Your love for him, your trust in him, helps you to become unselfconscious... and when you are unselfconscious everything is available to you. Everything that is available to me is available to you when you are unselfconscious.

Even if I say that I come it is the same thing. I can say ’Yes, I will be coming’ – and I am not lying! It is the same because my deepest core is available to me. Even if I come and make my vision available to you it will not be better than your own inner core can reveal; it will be the same! Our conscious minds are different, our unconscious mind is not different – it is one.

When I use the word, unconscious, I am not using it in the freudian sense – the freudian unconscious is pathological. It is a very very small part of the conscious mind, repressed; it is not really unconscious. It is the conscious mind, the basement of the conscious mind, where we go on throwing things – rejected, denied, parts of our being.

The unconscious is exactly what god means; it is better to call it the super-conscious. But with the super-conscious another problem arises: you again become conscious and the self enters; that’s why I continue to call it the unconscious. It does not function as a conscious entity, it has no self in it. It is what Buddha calls ’anatta’, no-self. It is what Lao Tzu calls the void, the emptiness, inner emptiness.

So try here, start here: whenever you feel, just remember me. Relax, and you will be surprised how much great wisdom everybody is carrying in him and how one never allows it to function in one’s life....

[A sannyasin, who is deaf, cannot lip-read what Osho says because of his moustache and beard –

so he writes down his questions and answers for her. She says she came to Poona with someone, who was unable to come to darshan because of perfume. The sannyasin says her friend is afraid of Osho. Osho writes: Tell him I am not going to make him a sannyasin... he will come once he knows I’m not going to seduce him into sannyas, he will come!]

[Another sannyasin says his wife is resistant to Osho and to sannyas. Osho says, People who are against me are going to become sannyasins! They have already taken some emotional attitude: they are already in a love/hate relationship. They start with hate – that doesn’t matter! If she is against it, I will see: she will become a sannyasin!]

[A sannyasin says she is not feeling happy, she is judgemental towards herself; feels scared and stupid.]

No, no, nothing to be worried about. Mm? just being okay is not enough. Just being okay is just tolerable. Unless one is ecstatic, one is not living rightly; something is wrong.

Ecstasy is just natural; to be okay is to live below nature. To be okay means just pulling somehow, dragging hopelessly... but there is no need. and being close to me if you only remain okay, then where are you going to be happy?

But small things are disturbing. You have a very very subtle ego that is creating trouble. And it is a choice – you choose the ego rather than ecstasy – so nobody is at fault. It is your choice – you can drop the ego and choose ecstasy – but one has to be conscious of why it is happening.

For one month live without the ego, don’t allow the ego any support from your side. Wherever you feel the ego is arising, drop it immediately – immediately drop it. Just live as if you don’t have any ego and the ecstasy will happen... it will start happening right now!

And where are you working?

[She answers: In the canteen.]

That’s the perfect place to drop the ego – if Deeksha (who is in charge of the kitchen) cannot help you to drop it, nobody can! So just surrender to Deeksha, mm? Deeksha is the dragon-master!

When I don’t succeed with somebody, I send them to Deeksha!

Just go and surrender to Deeksha, mm? And just utterly, unconditionally – whatsoever she says –

do it, right or wrong. No reasoning, no logic has to be allowed; all reasoning, all logic comes from the ego. Don’t ask why. Even if sometimes you see it is absolutely wrong, then too, you are not to interfere. That will be a great discipline... and that’s all that is needed.

You need just a little hammering on your ego, and once it is dropped [you are] perfect.

[A sannyasin says: I feel very hard inside and very untrusting, and at the same time very fragile.

Sometimes I drop that completely and I feel that I come to a deeper being, but very often I find myself back in the first thing. It is as if there is a big load of misery that I’m carrying. I know I make it, I create situations for it to be there.... ]

You make it and you make it perfectly well. You are very skillful, efficient – you do a good job of it – and you will have to unlearn it. You are really skillful at it, so unlearning is going to be difficult, because when one becomes very very skillful in anything – even if it is creating misery –

one becomes attached to it; that becomes one’s knowledge, one’s art. That becomes one’s ego.

When you do something very perfectly you don’t want to lose that art – and that’s the trouble. It is as if a painter has become famous and he is doing perfectly well, and then you say to him, ’Drop your painting and start writing poetry’. He will hesitate; it will be very difficult for him because he is already famous and he is doing well. And the same happens with misery: by and by one becomes so knowledgeable about how to create it, so perfect in doing it; then it becomes difficult to unlearn it.

And it is not only a question of unlearning it; one has to learn how to be blissful – another art, totally different, diametrically opposite.

But if you see the point then there is no problem. The sooner you do, the better, because the more you remain in it, the more skillful you become. It goes on accumulating – every day you are becoming a better hand at it. One day passes, and in that twenty-four hours you have learned the trick more.

So the moment you see it, don’t postpone – drop it then and there. And it is good to be ignorant, it is better to be without any art than to be very very artful in creating misery. You see it and there is no problem in it: you see how you do it, you see that you do it.

[The sannyasin answers: Oh, I see that I do it, but... I don’t see how I do it.]

Yes, I understand... because you are so skillful you cannot see the how: you do it so fast.

When a person is learning something he goes slow, his movements are slow. If a person is learning to drive you can see what he is doing, all his actions are very slow movements. It is like a film being moved on the screen very slowly, you can see every movement. But then one becomes skillful, one becomes unconscious – it becomes automatic: one goes on doing but not consciously, that’s why you cannot see it.

So just do one thing for a few days: whenever you feel you are becoming miserable, go slowly into it, don’t go fast; make slow movements, T’ai Chi movements.

If you are feeling sad, then close your eyes and let the film move very slowly. Go slowly, slowly into it, having the vision all around, looking, watching what is happening. Go very slowly so that you can see each act separately, each fibre separately. If you are getting angry – go very slowly into it.

For just a few days do slow movements, and in other things also, you slow down. For example, if you walk, walk more slowly than you have been walking up to now. From this moment when you leave here, lag behind. All the sannyasins will be going their normal pace – you lag behind; just go slowly. Eating, eat slowly... chew more. If you take twenty minutes, take forty minutes; slow it down fifty percent. If you open your eyes fast, slow down. Take your shower in double the time that you usually do; slow down everything.

When you slow down everything, automatically your whole mechanism slows down. The mechanism is one – it is the same mechanism you walk with, it is the same mechanism you talk with, it is the same mechanism you become angry with. There are no different mechanisms; it is only one organic mechanism. So if you slow down everything, you will be surprised: your sadness, your misery, your anger, your violence – all are slowed down.

Buddha used this very very deeply for his disciples, for himself. He told them to walk slowly, to talk slowly, go into each movement so slowly... as if you have no energy. And that creates a tremendous experience: your thoughts slow down, your desires slow down, your old habits all slow down.

For example if you smoke cigarettes, then your hand moves very slowly... goes into the pocket...

takes the cigarette out... puts the cigarette in the mouth... takes the matchbox. And you go slowly –

it takes almost half an hour for one cigarette!... You will be surprised... and you will be able to see how you are doing things.

Just slow down for three weeks... but slow down. For three weeks simply slow down and then report to me how things are. This has to be broken – it can be broken. You know that it is you who creates, now you have to know how you create... and once you know the how, it is for you... If you want to, you can create in a better way; if you don’t want to create, you can stop! It will go, mm? Good.

[An indian sannyasin, who is a filmstar, says she is miserable. Osho tells her that she is happy by nature but she uses sadness to get sympathy when she cannot find love. This morning (in the discourse) I was watching you: half the time you were sad, then half the time you were perfectly good. You forget, it seems! When you forget, you smile; when you remember, you are sad!

Osho continues that because she is not getting love, she uses sadness to get sympathy, but people are only attracted to happiness and if she drops being miserable, she will get as much love as she wants... more than she needs. I don’t see that there is anything barring the path, Osho says, the door is open, and you miss the opportunity – that this is possible. You can miss the possibility, you can miss the opportunity that I am for you....

Osho had suggested groups for her including Encounter, but she said she ran away because she was afraid she would snap, go mad.]

You will have to go into a few groups, and once you have done one or two groups you will be surprised at how simple it is to get through things and how simple it is to take yourself out of your old patterns. It is so simple and people are so easily growing.

And that’s what I mean that you can miss this opportunity.

There is one parable....

One man asked Jesus, ’You always talk about the kingdom of god – what is this kingdom of god?’

Jesus said that the kingdom of god is like the feast that was given by a rich man to celebrate his daughter’s wedding. A rich man invited a few people for a feast, but one invited person said, ’I am too busy. Some guests have come and I cannot come.’ Another said, ’Tomorrow I am leaving for a far-away journey. Sorry – I would have liked to come – but I am preparing for the journey and I cannot come.’ A third said, ’Tomorrow there is a case in the court and I am so much puzzled and so worried, that this is not the right time for me to come to a feast’... and so on, so forth: nobody turned up.

When the messengers came back and the rich man said, ’Where are the guests? – because the feast is ready and we are waiting,’ the messenger said that somebody had said this, somebody had said that. They all had excuses so nobody is coming.

So the rich man laughed and he said, ’Now go into the streets and find anybody – whosoever is willing. Find anybody, even beggars will do, but the feast is ready, the food is ready and it cannot be wasted...’

Jesus said that the kingdom of god is like this rich man’s feast: god goes on inviting people and they go on finding excuses. They say ’Tomorrow I am going for a journey.’ ’The guest has come and I am too busy.’ ’I have purchased land’ or ’Tomorrow there is a case in the court’... and they find excuses.

You are one of those people who go on finding excuses... and later on you will repent....

When I send you into a group, there is meaning in it. Ordinarily I am not sending Indians into the groups, you know. Very rarely do I send Indians to the groups. You may be the third or fourth person I have sent to the groups. I am not sending them because they are repressed people and they will not be able even to understand the language of the group.

You can understand the language; you have been brought up in a western way... and there is some problem. Your mind is western but your unconscious remains eastern, and there is a conflict.

Consciously you seem to be of this century – unconsciously you are not... and I would like to bridge that gap. Once that gap is bridged you will feel very very easy, relaxed; a let-go will happen. And that is possible only through groups, otherwise it is not possible. A group can do within a few days that which you cannot do in many months work on your own self. And who will work?

You will be working and again you will find the same excuses; today you are tired you cannot meditate, and tomorrow something else: you are working and you are going somewhere else. You have to take hold of your life if you really want to do something with it, otherwise it will be a wastage.

So even if it looks hard you have to go to at least two groups, to go through two groups, and then if you don’t want any more I will not tell you to do more, but two groups you have to go through. So let it be a torture but go through it; let it be a punishment, but go through it.

And my feeling is that you will come out, and once you are out you will be a totally different person.

But you decide... whatever you feel like.

And you become so afraid of the group, that you have even stopped coming here. You must be afraid that whenever you come, I will say ’Go to the groups!’...

Something has to change within you – then you will be able to see things in a clearer way....

CHAPTER 28

Life is eternal dance, a non-ending hallelujah!

31 July 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho suggests groups to a newly arrived sannyasin, who replies that he has been running groups himself in London. Osho stresses the importance of his putting aside all his knowledge, for it is a barrier. When people become knowledgeable they lose the childlike quality of innocence and the ability to wonder, to be surprised. They cling to their knowledge, hence to learn the new is difficult.

They become efficient in what they know – but are dead, unlike children for whom each day brings new mysteries to be wondered at.... ]

So just do this group as if you don’t know anything about groups... and you will be thrilled; you will learn more than anybody who has not known anything about groups can learn. Later on when you have passed through this experience, you can sort it out – of course, you can sort out what has happened more efficiently than anybody else. Use your memory when you are looking backwards, when you are recapitulating, when you are considering what has already happened, but never bring in your memory when something is happening.

That is the difference between these two words, ’experience’ and ’experiencing’: when you are experiencing something, when it is in the process, don’t bring in your knowledge. When it has become an experience, you can bring in your knowledge, your expertise, your know-how... and it is perfectly good. Experience means the process is complete – now it is a dead thing; now you can dissect. Experience is a dead thing, a body, a corpse – you can dissect it – but never dissect an alive body; that will be murder.

Never dissect experiencing; when you are experiencing something just go into it whole-heartedly with no knowledge, with utter ignorance. When the experience has been transferred to the memory and it is no more happening, it is no more a process but has become a thing, then you can dissect and then you can bring in all your expertise, all your knowledge, all that you know. You can focus your whole past and your whole experience onto it, but don’t bring it in while you are passing through an experience.

This is my observation – that people who should be able to go deeper into life don’t really go, because the thing that can take them deeper becomes a barrier; they don’t know how to use it.

They use it in the wrong moment and then it becomes a hindrance. If used in the right moment it can become a great help.

Good... it is good that you have come. Much is going to happen. Just don’t resist me... just remain open to me!

[A sannyasin says for a couple of weeks he’s been feeling hazy... as if there is a veil over his eyes or he hasn’t quite woken up. Osho checks his energy.]

Good! Just accept it, mm? – it is nothing bad. You are just starting to grow something mystical in your eyes – very good! The eyes are becoming a little more poetic. The logical mind is getting uprooted, hence you are feeling hazy; the logical mind is being shattered. The defined world of concepts is becoming confused; a chaos is arising, a beautiful chaos, and chaos is always creative.

You are slipping out of the hold of the logical... and it is a great blessing to slip out of it. It will look like a kind of haze, a kind of madness. You will start thinking: what is happening? Are you losing clarity?

A different kind of clarity is going to arise but before it arises, you will have to lose the old clarity.

[The first kind of clarity was of the head, says Osho, the new will be of the heart – and you are just in the middle of the two.... ]

One day, suddenly you will find that another clarity has arrived, a totally different kind of clarity. It is not the clarity of conceptual minds, it is the clarity of the loving heart... not the clarity of thinking but the clarity of feeling... not the clarity that language brings but the clarity that comes in silence....

Just go into it – accept it and enjoy it. Things are good!

[A visitor says she would like to take sannyas but is afraid she cannot dress in orange and wear the mala at home in the West: otherwise I’d take it right this minute!]

No, you will not be able to do that! You can wait if you want to, but if you become a sannyasin you will not be able to do anything that can make you hypocritical... that I can see. You have a very sincere heart and if you commit yourself to something you really commit yourself – that’s why the fear.

Deceptive people are not afraid. From the very beginning they have the idea in the mind ’What is the difficulty?’ Here they can wear orange, the mala, be a sannyasin, and feel good, be at home with people, and when they go home they can drop it; that is there in their mind from the very beginning.

These are the deceptive people, dishonest people – they are not afraid; they are ready.

But whenever an honest person comes, the problem is natural. One has to think what one is going to do there; will one be able to remain true to the commitment? It is a love affair... and I know when I see people who are in love with me!

[She laughs: I knew that if you made me laugh it would be all over!]

Mm! So what should I do? Would you like to wait or?... Become a sannyasin! There is no point in waiting, so you can suffer a little – an orange dress for me... I don’t ask much!...

Anand means bliss and leela means play... and don’t take life seriously. The moment you start taking life seriously it becomes serious – You make it serious and then there is sadness. Take life as a play and then there is no seriousness and no sadness. And when you are playful whatsoever happens is good, even to fail is good; there is no obsession to succeed. That obsession comes from seriousness. In a play it is good: to fail is good, to succeed is good. Both are the same – it doesn’t matter... all that matters is the play. The end doesn’t matter, the result is meaningless.

It is like one is going for a morning walk: it does not matter whether you reach somewhere or not –

there is no destination. You can go to the north, you can go to the south, you can go this way or that and you can turn back from anywhere. It is not work; it is just play. You are enjoying the walk itself, not that you are going anywhere.

That is the difference between a serious life and a playful life.... The serious life is always end-oriented, result-oriented, and when you are too much result-oriented you miss the whole joy, because the joy is in the journey, not in the goal. The joy is in the very walk and the birds and the trees and the sun rays and the people passing by: the joy is in the process. When your mind is too much concentrated you don’t listen to the birds, you don’t take any note of the people passing by. The sun doesn’t exist and you don’t know whether the wind is there or not: you are just rushing towards the end.

The western attitude is end-oriented – hence so much anxiety and so much hurry because one has to reach fast: time is short and time is money. The western mind thinks in terms of how to reach faster.

The eastern mind thinks in a totally different way. It is not a question of reaching somewhere – the existence is not going anywhere: it is simply herenow... it is simply a joyful dance. The joy is in the very activity itself.

This is the meaning of leela, and this is one of the most pregnant terms in the East....

We call the world god’s leela; in the East we don’t say ’god’s creation’ – no, creation stinks of work.

So the old biblical story says that for six days god worked hard and on the seventh day he rested.

Of course when you work hard for six days, the seventh day you rest. But in the East god has not created the world – he is playing a game! And it is not finished: it is a continuity, it is an on-going thing. It is still playing!

The Christian god is a dead god: in six days the world was completed; now he is no more needed!

Even if he died after seven days, it doesn’t matter to the world. It is as when a painter dies, his painting will exist: the painting has no need of the painter any more.

So if the West has become atheistic it is not just an accident, it is basically the christian attitude that god’s work is finished. Then whether he is ill or healthy, whether he is still alive or not, who bothers?

In the East we say that god has not created the world like a painting – he is the dancer... nataraj. If the dancer stops, the dance disappears. It is not like a painting – the painting can exist without the painter; the dance cannot exist without the dancer. So he is still in this breeze, in this tree, in your eyes, in my eyes, everywhere. He is still working, he is still playing, he is still creative... and there is no end to it! He is happy! Not that something will be created and then he will be happy; it is out of his happiness that this world is created. This is a totally different dimension.

There are moments when you sing because you are happy... then it is play. And if you sing because you want some result, some prize then it is a totally different thing, and the quality of the song will differ. When you simply sing in your bathroom it has an utterly different quality, mm ? – it is just out of joy... it is divine ! And when you go and perform on a stage and sing, you are paid for it; then your heart is not in it. You cannot be totally in your work – you can only be totally in your play.

[The new sannyasin says she has done EST and some TM.]

EST? That’s very good....

TM is okay to begin with – that’s good – but est is really good. TM is okay, it does bring many people to meditation, gives the idea of meditation, and if it doesn’t work then they start looking for some other technique. That’s the only utility of tm: it introduces people to meditation and then they start looking... and that’s good! Then they are condemned about meditation.

But EST is really meaningful. The meaning cannot go very deep – it is like lightning. It is a very concentrated effort to break down the mechanism of the mind, the old pattern and the old gestalt.

For a moment there is a lightning-like flash... and it changes the quality of your life.

But it is a very small dose. These small things can give you a glimpse but they cannot transform you in your totality....

To be transformed in totality the whole life has to be devoted. Meditation has to become your very style of living – not that you do it sometimes for twenty minutes: it has to enter into your ordinary life.

It has to become like breathing. Not that you do a group and then after a certain process you come to a point and you feel something, but that your whole life becomes a process and each day brings you a new satori, a new light, and each day goes on becoming accumulative: more and more light, more and more light. No day is without new experiences, and you are growing.

[Osho had sent a message (see July 30th) to a visitor that he would not give him sannyas, because the visitor was afraid to come and see him. Tonight the visitor asks for sannyas!]

Hello! Come here! Very good! No more afraid?

That’s good. I knew it... you will be coming soon... because people who are afraid are already in love. In fact a person who is indifferent to me, will not be afraid – why should he be afraid? If you are really not indifferent, then naturally fear arises because if you come closer something is going to happen and who knows what? It may be good, it may not be good, so fear arises. When you want to go into something, only then fear arises; if you don’t want to go into something there is no point in fear – you can by pass it.

When [your friend] told me that you are afraid, I told her to wait... soon things would start happening.

[Osho tells him not to put himself down as being cowardly because fear is part of intelligence. You are taking a jump into an abyss, a totally new dimension, an experience for which a language does not even exist... a place beyond the mind. You move into a more poetic dimension but one where the mind cannot label, analyse, control, and so naturally the mind feels impotent and fearful.... ]

In India we have a saying that camels don’t like to go to the Himalayas because there they feel very much confused. They like to live in the desert because there they are the mountains and they are the masters. Coming to the Himalayas, of course they feel confused – such huge peaks and they are nobody!

The mind is very at ease with science, with mathematics. The mind is afraid of poetry and more afraid of religion because religion is the ultimate in absurdity. It is almost going into a vuluntary madness. Hence mystics and poets tend to be a little mad, but all joy arises out of being intoxicated with something or other. It may be god: when you are intoxicated with god, there is joy!

When you are left alone in the tiny room of the mind, yes, everything is defined and clear but you are bored to death because there is no more to it – everything is already known!

Hence a great meaninglessness is arising in the west – particularly in the minds of those who are very very clear, logical, thinkers – a great boredom: what else to do? Everything seems to be finished. They have explored the small room totally and they don’t go beyond the boundaries. Great mysteries are waiting, but those mysteries are so big that they will possess you; you cannot possess them.

When you come to god, god will possess you – you cannot possess god. When a small, tiny river comes to the ocean, the ocean will possess the river; the river cannot possess the ocean. The part cannot possess the whole, hence the part is always afraid: if the river trembles and thinks thrice about coming too close to the ocean, it is just natural.

Sannyas is entering into the illogical, into the paradoxical... but life is there! With the mind there is only death, only death.... The mind functions perfectly well with things; with persons it cannot function at all because a person is a mystery. And the mind goes on keeping to the earth. It looks only a few feet ahead and goes on keeping to the earth: it never raises its eyes to the sky, to the mysterious stars, because then there is fear. then man feels so tiny, so lost, that it is impossible even to think that he can be the master.

To come to know that we cannot be the masters because we are not masters – we are parts of an infinite whole – is a great relaxation. Then tension disappears, anxiety is no more relevant. Then we are in the bosom of the whole and the whole will take care....

This is what religion is, this is what trust is – that the whole will take care. We come out of the whole and we go back to the whole... and it is the whole’s business to take care of us. We need not be worried, we need not create private worries.

And this is my observation – that misery is private; joy is universal. Misery is man-made; joy is natural. Joy already exists, you need not create it: we are simply to participate in it. Misery we have to create; misery takes much effort. Great work is needed to become miserable and people do great work to become miserable. Joy needs no work, and if it looks at all that joy needs something to be done, it is only because we have done so much to create misery that we have to undo it, that’s all; otherwise joy is simply there. Once we have undone the mechanism that creates misery, joy is there

– an eternal festivity, an eternal dance... a long, long, non-ending hallelujah!

So you are entering into a great, festive dimension. it will not be logical – no, i cannot promise that! It will not be possible for you to define it. But anything that can be defined is small, tiny, trivial, mediocre. Search for the indefinable, search for the oceanic, search for the vast and the enormous.

Search for something in which you can be lost....

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