Get Out of Your Own Way

Talks given from 7/4/76 to 2/5/76

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

7 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a sannyasin, a film-producer who is returning to the States, Osho said that meditation could be introduced to many people through the medium of film and television.... ]

Books are very old media. The days for books are gone. People don’t have that much time to read, because reading is active; you have to do something. Television is perfectly okay. You have nothing to do; you simply sit and see.

So something that is active is not going to spread very fast – rather, something that people can simply sit and see. And eyes are more powerful than ears. When you listen to something you tend to forget it, but when you see something, you remember. Seeing is the most primitive language, so through TV the most primitive has become the most modern.

Children see... their language is pictorial. If you talk about mangoes, you have to show them the picture; the picture comes first. Through the picture they learn the word cat. By and by the picture is forgotten; superimposed by the word. Then we talk about a cat, never realising that there is no corresponding picture inside.

Mind has become more verbal on the superficial level, but deep down it remains pictorial. If you think of love, you start visualising... imagination starts working. Hence the appeal of pornography

– because you can see something. And it has been realised for centuries that the eyes are very potential. That’s why we say, ’Never believe a word that you have heard. But if you have seen it, then it is true.’ But why? Why so much preference for the eyes and not for the ears?

Whatsoever is seen, people think is true, so TV is used by all sorts of people; because when people see, they believe. Seeing is believing. The moment you see, you cannot doubt – hence all the advertising that goes on. In fact TV shows are not meant for shows; they are just in between two advertisements. The real thing is the advertisement.

When you are relaxed and in a passive mood, anything that is said to you or you see, impresses deeply. You are vulnerable, almost in a hypno-sleep. And when you are watching for hours together, the eyes become focused, hypnotised. TV is the latest hypnosis. People become almost glued to their chairs; they cannot move – and then the advertisement.

In the past also, we have always talked about seers. Those who have realised the truth, we call seers. In India, philosophy is called vision – darshan. The truth has been seen. But why seen? Why not heard? Why not touched? Why not smelled? Why not tasted? Because eyes are just a member of this whole operation of senses, but they are very dominating.

Almost eighty percent of your personality is dominated by the eyes, so the book is almost out of date. Now people would like to see, and soon people will be seeing books also; they will not be reading. Sooner or later books are going to disappear. There will be microfilms of books so you can just put them on the projector and see the books moving on the screen; you can simply sit.

Film is one of the most potential things that man has yet invented. It has given people their childhood again... again they can think in pictorial language.

So go back home and think about it, mm? And continue meditating....

[A sannyasin said that he felt he was destroying his body through smoking cigarettes and taking hash... He enjoys the dreams it creates.]

That is just dreaming. What is the point?

Stop it, mm? It is destroying not your body but your brain, because all chemicals which affect your consciousness in some way are destructive to the brain. The body may not be destroyed – you have a perfectly good body – that is not the point. But if you take hash too long, it is going to affect your mind, your consciousness. It will make you more dreamy, sleepy. You may have very beautiful dreams but what is the use of beautiful dreams? One has to stop all dreaming.

And all that drugs can do, at the most, is to give you beautiful dreams. That is true too only if everything goes right; otherwise they can give you nightmares. But it is useless wasting your energy and time and opportunity. Dreams are not the goal. They have to be dropped. One has to come to a point where one attains to a non-dreaming consciousness. That will not be possible through hash.

And it will become more and more impossible even with meditation if you are on hash too much.

All religions have been against drugs for a certain reason. The antagonism is not because drugs as such are dangerous. No. The antagonism is because drugs are substitute meditations. They give you a false idea of meditativeness, of visionary experiences – but those are just dreams. The real thing you can find through meditation, so why be bothered by drugs?

I am here to give you the ultimate in drugs, so why be bothered about hash? Drop it!

It will take a little time, and it may be a little difficult – because habits struggle hard. But to fight with habits is beautiful in itself. The more you fight with dead habits, the more alive you will become. And the more you win over your habits, the more you will see that you are becoming truer and truer.

So hash has to be dropped first. Then we will think about cigarettes and smoking; that too is useless, mm? Just try....

[A sannyasin said her relationship was going much better since she and her man had decided to have no secrets between them.... ]

It’s very good never to keep any secrets. If you love a person, open your heart completely, because even if you keep a small secret, that remains like a barrier. It may not be visible, but underneath it separates you.

All secrets are like walls. If you drop all secrets, suddenly you are unburdened and the other comes closer and closer. Love should not have any secrets. The intimacy is so much that the secret cannot be allowed to stand between two persons. So that’s very good.... Just open. What is the fear? If you love the person, what is the fear?

Because we don’t love, we go on keeping our secrets. We are afraid that if we tell everything, the other may not like us, may not love us; may go far away. But if it is going to happen, it is going to happen. By keeping your secret you are not going to change it. In fact he may go sooner because you will remain closed. If you have a secret you cannot allow the other person to the innermost core of your being.

So just drop all secrets. That’s the beauty of love... that all secrets can be dropped, all privacy can be dropped. Nothing exists between two persons, nothing. Then they can flow into each other and an understanding arises. One feels unburdened and clean....

[The ashram’s music group played at darshan tonight.]

Very good! You want to do one more?... Bring a greater climax, mm? The whole point is to lose oneself. The climax will come only when you are not individuals... just the group soul has evolved and things are controlled not by individuals, but by the group soul.

So just lose yourselves – then the climax will come. You cannot bring it, you can only allow it. So allow it this time.

[One of the singers, said that a lot of the heaviness she felt she had been carrying around all her life was disappearing and that she was feeling many physical changes in her body... ]

There is nothing to be worried about, mm?

Music helps to bring you in tune with yourself. If you are really involved in the outer music, it brings you in contact with the inner music. So just remember one thing – forget yourself while singing, and just be totally possessed... as if you are not there, but just a vehicle for something unknown, something from the beyond. Lose control.

It will help... you will become completely fearless. Fear arises because we are not in tune with ourselves. In a harmonious moment there is no fear. Fear is a discord, a disharmony in the being.

Fear simply shows that we are not happy. In deep happiness there is no fear. It simply disappears, as darkness disappears when there is sunrise.

So get more and more in tune with music, singing, dancing, and you will be unburdened.

This feeling that some changes are happening in the body may be true, not just imagination, because when you change inside, your body also changes. The body has to readjust again with your new being. So allow it, whatsoever it is. Sometimes you may even feel painful, awkward, strange, difficult to accept, but still accept it – whatsoever it is. Always trust the body... the body never lies. It is the only truthful thing left to man now. So just listen to it and follow it. Lose yourself more in it.

[A musician says he has been composing songs with one of the singers and that it seemed different from the group’s approach.]

You can do it, mm? Individually, or whenever you feel with somebody that you have a certain at-one-ment, you can make dyads, couples or three or four persons, and you can evolve. But in this group, you have to work totally differently. No individuality should be brought in... as if the whole group is one individual. Because if you all start being individuals, then there will be no group soul possible, and the beauty is in the group soul. I would like your group to increase by and by and become bigger. So the initial group should be so much in tune that when a new individual joins, he simply falls in line.

You are going to be the very base of a bigger group which will be coming soon – so-get ready! If you are not in tune, when new persons come they will not be able to get in tune. They will get into your disharmony, and they will go on their own way. Then everybody is moving away from each other and the group disperses. You are all playing and singing solo, so it is not an orchestra.

I know it is difficult to be in an orchestra and spontaneous, but that difficulty has to be faced.

And once you know the knack of it – how to be spontaneous and yet not out of tune, how to be spontaneous and yet flowing with everybody else, flowing in your own way and yet with everybody else.... It is a little complex and subtle – but that’s the beauty of it. By and by your group will become bigger and bigger. When a hundred persons will be singing and playing together, you will create a pinnacle of energy, a tower.

And that has to be so... Like a pyramid, mm? On the base you are a hundred. When you join together, the pyramid becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. Then comes the peak where every individual is lost; just the point is left. There will be a pyramid of music, singing, ecstasy.

So do whatsoever you feeL like doing separate4. You can form your own small music friendships, but that is separate. When you join this group you have to follow a certain discipline, and yet you have to be spontaneous. It looks paradoxical, but soon you will have the knack of it. Once you know how to dissolve yourself, once you are not there, you will simply be surprised, amazed, mystified, that somehow the whole group is moving in one way, and spontaneously.

Then you will feel an expansion of consciousness, because you are not there as an individual; you have joined together with a collectivity. No more islands... everybody has melted. And then the whole thing becomes intuitive. When you are separate, you are in directions. When you are not separate, you become intuitive. You are joined by a telepathic cord which surrounds you like a climate . . .touches you all... plays on your hearts, together. That climate takes over, and you are possessed. You have to learn it once and then you will know that everybody is moving together and yet nobody is forcing.

Have you ever been in a crowd which is going to kill somebody, or going to bum a temple or a church or a mosque? or in a crowd which is protesting, shouting, screaming? Suddenly you will find that you have started shouting and screaming; that you are getting hot. What has happened? Just a moment before, you were cool and calm, and you were going to your job or somewhere else. You meet this crowd and people are shouting, and suddenly you feel you have fallen in tune.

Have you seen soldiers walking in a rhythm? The military scientists say that whenever an army is passing a bridge their rhythm should be broken, otherwise the bridge can fall. Sometimes it has fallen, because the rhythm is such a thing that the whole bridge starts shaking – so soldiers are not to move on the bridge in step.

Nietzsche writes somewhere, ’I have never seen a greater music – greater than when I see an army marching together.’ He was a military-minded man. But he is indicating a certain truth. The truth is that whenever so many people are together, individuals disappear, egos disappear. An egoless consciousness arises which is bigger than all; bigger than the totality of all. It can be destructive... it can be creative.

Hitler used it in a destructive way. He created a mass-mind. That mass-mind was complete4 mad. It almost brought the world to destruction, to total destruction – almost to the very brink. But the same thing can be creative. That’s what I want you to be.

If a collective soul can be destructive, why not creative? If people can move with such totality, such involvement and commitment that they are not there and something bigger controls them, then why cannot the same be used for creativity?

And this is my understanding: if it is not done for creativity, again and again it will be used for destructiveness. If you cannot create groups which can enjoy being together in music, in poetry, in singing and dancing, people are going to shout in the streets, scream, go berserk, destroy... unless we can create just a parallel world of people who are creative in their togetherness. Individuals have been creative, but the problem is this – that groups have been destructive and individuals have been creative. The individuals are bound to fail.

When a Hitler comes, he creates a group. When a Mozart comes, he plays individually. When a Mussolini comes, he creates a destructive harmony. The same is to be done by a Buddha also...

exactly parallel. And if you can give people a creative togetherness, who is going to be destructive?

Nobody. In fact the whole charm of the destruction is not in destruction – it is in being together.

Let this be nailed into your heart – that the whole charm is of being together. People are fed up with themselves. They want to lose themselves somewhere, in an orgy – that is the attraction. But if you can give them a creative togetherness, they will not go in a destructive direction. There is no need

– they will be so fulfilled.

So this is just a beginning, remember. Everything that I am doing is a beginning. You may not be aware of what is going to happen.

More and more people will join, so let the base be perfectly solid. When new people come, you Will be twenty. When one new person comes he is bound to flow with the twenty – if the twenty are in harmony. If these twenty are not in harmony, he will go on his own way. Then it becomes a crowd.

It will be destructive... it will create chaos. Even music can be destructive.

Have you come across the latest research about music? Indian music and western classical music is creative. The modern western music is destructive. If western classical music and indian music is played around plants, they grow fast. If modern pop music is played, the plant doesn’t grow at all; it stops. It doesn’t come to bloom... it becomes crippled and something in it dies.

The modern music creates anxiety, anguish.

So music can be destructive, can be creative.

Everything can be either this or that. Togetherness can be creative or destructive.

This group has to be very disciplined and yet spontaneous. It will take a little time for you to feel, but once you feel, once the vision has come to you and you have a glimpse, then you will be simply amazed how many treasures were already there and you never looked.

CHAPTER 2

8 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin studying acupuncture, said that he was a little dubious about the value of what he was doing... ]

Just these weeks you spend here will create much. It will give you more confidence and centring.

And everybody hesitates in the beginning. It is good... only fools don’t hesitate. You are moving in a very delicate world. When you touch anybody’s body or you work with needles, you are working on God. One has to be very respectful, very hesitant. One has to work not out of knowledge but out of love. Knowledge is never adequate, is not enough, mm?

So feel for the person. And always feel inadequate, because knowledge is limited, and the other person is an entire world, almost infinite. Man is never going to know man totally – that’s impossible.

Once you have known something totally, it is exhausted, already dead – has become an object. And man is not an object.

People can see you but they never see you. Just a part, the visual part – a very small part, almost negligible – they see. They touch you but they never touch you. They touch only the periphery, and you are there somewhere deep in the centre where nobody enters except love.

Man is a mystery... and is going to remain a mystery forever. It is not something accidental that man is a mystery. Mystery is his very being. If it were accidental then some day the mystery would dissolve; we would come to know. But the very thinking that one day man will be known is sacrilegious. That means man disappears; he has become an object like a table or a chair or a house. You have known him. In knowing him, he disappears; then he is no more. He is reduced to an object. Impossible! It is not going to happen – ever.

Whatsoever science goes on doing, it is bound to be a failure. And now even scientists are feeling the inadequacy of knowledge. Leaving man aside, even matter has defeated them. Now they are not as certain as they used to be hundreds of years ago, or even thirty years ago.

Now matter is a mystery again. We are back into the poet’s world, and physicists talk as if they are poets or mystics.

Eddington has said that when he started working as a scientist, he used to think that someday or other, matter will be known absolutely. In those days, science used to divide the whole world into two compartments: the known and the unknown. The known – that which we have known; and the unknown – that which we are going to know ... but nothing unknowable.

But in the end, when he was dying, Eddington said, ’Now I feel totally differently. After a whole life’s effort of coming closer and closer to knowing, I have come closer and closer to more and more ignorance. Now matter looks more like thought than like a thing.’

With Eddington’s assertion, physics died. Since then, physicists have never been certain again.

Then Einstein came, and things started disappearing more and more.

[The sannyasin says: Some western scientists have tried to do the same thing with acupuncture as with everything else.]

They will do it with everything. They will do it with everything because they have a certain attitude about life and they want to look at life through that attitude. They have done that to acupuncture...

they are doing that even to meditation. They are trying to make it an object, trying to observe it from the outside... not tasting it from the inside.

That is the whole scientific dilemma – that science tries to see from the outside, and believes only whatsoever can be known from the outside. She is still afraid of the inside statement; not yet trusting the inside statement. But scientists will have to come to realise that. More and more limitations of their methodology will be revealed. More and more they will come against walls which they cannot penetrate.

Science is doomed to be a failure. When I say that, I don’t mean that science is not going to be useful. It has been useful, it will be useful, but it cannot be ultimate. That dream is shattered.

Religion is, and is going to remain, the ultimate, because it accepts a different category – of the unknowable.

Man is not the unknown. He’s all three: known, unknown, and unknowable. And the real essence remains the third – the unknowable.

Whatsoever you do, it will elude your grasp... you will not be able to grab it. And the more you try, the more you will find that it has slipped out of the hands. That’s the mystery ... and that’s the beauty.

That’s the grandeur, the splendour.

So be hesitant; don’t be worried about that. That’s good. It shows that you respect the fact that you are moving on sacred ground. When you touch another’s body you are almost entering the temple of God. The body is the temple of God. So first pray and then move, mm?

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: When my heart hopes, I will come back.]

Very good! Your heart I am keeping here! (laughter) Only you are going. So whenever you need your heart, come back. I can always lend it to you, but I can never give it back to you. You can borrow it for a few days, that’s all!

And start a small centre for me, mm? so just a few friends can meet and talk and listen to the tapes and read, meditate. Then things go on.... I will give you a name for the centre.

This will be the name: Deepam. It means the light, the lamp. In India we have a special lamp which is called deepam. It is made of mud. The very poor people in the villages use it – just a small cup of mud filled with oil. So deepam means an earthen lamp, but you can tell people it means light or lamp, mm? And I am coming, don’t be worried!

[A sannyasin, also studying acupuncture with the sannyasin Osho just spoke to, said that they hoped to work together sometime.]

That will be very good... It can be very helpful. If you finish the course first, next time when you come I will tell you how to work together.

If a couple can work together in deep love, acupuncture will be more successful than a single man working alone, because it is a question of yin and yang.

Every patient has a man and a woman inside. If only a man is working, it will be easier for him to find the female points in the body, very easy. But it will be very difficult for him to find the male points, unless he is a homosexual. And if a woman is working on the body, she will be more perceptive about the male points than the female points. So if a couple can work in deep togetherness much can happen.

It has not been tried. Even in China it has not been tried; it has just remained a possibility. But if you are both working together, learn together, be together, and whenever you treat a person, treat him together. Move In deep harmony, as if you are one. That is possible. Once you finish your acupuncture, then both come and I will teach you how to be together so that your energy functions as one unity... and tremendous are the possibilities.

Man alone cannot be a good healer, and woman alone cannot be a good healer, because alone they are half; alone they are not whole. They themselves are not healthy, so how can they help health to happen to somebody else? Health is nothing but wholeness. The very word health comes from the same root as the word whole or holy; they belong to the same root.

So if you can function as a whole, together, meeting and merging, surrounding the patient from all sides; if you can pray and move together, you can bring something great to the very science of acupuncture. I am talking about something absolutely new. The concept exists but it has never been actualised, mm? Very good.

[The Aum marathon group are present. The group works on negativity. Recently Osho suggested it was followed by a positivity group. The groupleader, Veeresh, said that people were not totally responsive, and that he himself was becoming insensitive.]

A few things.... Firstly, whenever you are working on people’s negativity, with their negative emotions, their negative, darker side, moving through a deep negative catharsis, they will swing towards the positive automatically. So when a person becomes really angry, where can he go? A moment comes, a climax comes when he has to come back from anger. And then compassion arises... he relaxes. Tension brings relaxation. It is always the opposite that comes up, always. That’s why all the groups in the West insist on being negative. Because through the negative, the positive comes up.

If you really go deep in your sadness you will start feeling happy, because how far can you go? There is a limit. Sooner or later you touch the bottom. Then you start moving to the opposite because now there is no further movement, no further space, so you turn back. You come to a dead end and then you turn back, because the energy needs movement. You become sad, you become angry, or whatsoever, and you go into it. Then a moment comes when you are against a wall and there is no door. So you move back, you move to the opposite.

So if you go deep in hate, you will come up with love. If you go deep in sadness, you will come up with happiness. If you go deep in anger, you will come up with compassion. If you go deep in no, you will come up with yes. That’s why the whole western encounter movement is basically centred around the no, because it brings the yes.

When you start working with the positive you will have this problem. Suddenly you will see that just by the side of sadness, happiness is existing. And if you make a man really happy he is bound to become sad, because a dead end will come. If you laugh too much you are bound to cry... tears will come. If they are not coming, that simply shows that you are not laughing totally yet, that you have not travelled totally in the direction of laughter. You have not come to the dead-end... it is not yet the climax. Once the climax comes, the wheel moves, has to move, and the spoke that was on top starts moving towards the bottom.

This is the whole wheel of life... the wheel of day and night. When the day ends, night comes. When the night ends, day comes. This is the very wheel of life and death.

So I wanted to start this positive group. It will make the wheel turn completely. I was not hoping that by doing the positive group you would come to some very positive understanding. No – rather you come more to the negative! But I didn’t say anything to you because I wanted you to move into the unknown and see what happened. This has happened. That’s why you are a little uncertain about what has happened. It is exactly what I was hoping was going to happen.

Now if you feel it correctly, it will be good to do the positive first and then the negative. Do the positive

– that will bring the negativity. In fact it will be negative! And when you do the negative, it will be positive. Do you follow me? Because by your doing you bring the other. It is not always that which you do that happens. No. If you want to relax, tense yourself as much as you can and relaxation will come. We always do it wrongly. If you are feeling tense you want to relax, and you by relaxation. It is going to fail. If you are feeling tense and you want relaxation, you will become more tense.

If a man is unable to go to sleep, don’t tell him to lie down on the bed and to tell the body to relax –

all nonsense! Tell him to tense the body, jump and jog and to go around the block four or five times; to breathe deeply and to make his body as tense and trembling as possible. For ten minutes let the whole body perspire and then lie down on the bed. Forget about relaxation – it is bound to come; you need not bother about it. This is one of the greatest understandings in the very core of life.

So first do the negative – that will be positive. Force people to be happy and high (laughter).

The leader has almost to be a buffoon, and a positive group means a circus. Bring them to such happiness that tears start flowing.

And now if you are capable and Sudha (the assistant) is courageous enough, don’t make the gap.

There is no need. Those three days (between the marathon and the workshop) will be a disturbance.

So bring up the negative and then move to the negative group immediately. Otherwise that gap will relax people and you will be missing much unnecessarily. When the climax is coming, when you are making them happy and laughing and enjoying and they are almost on the verge of exploding into crying and being sad and miserable and going to hell, immediately bring hell. So next time try with no gap.

It is going to give you tremendous results, and the wheel will move completely. Anybody doing the Aum marathon will feel a completion which is not felt in the other groups. Something remains hanging as if something has remained incomplete. No group is complete unless the positive and negative exist together and are joined together. No man is complete unless he has been to hell and heaven both.

Nietzsche used to say, ’If you want to go to heaven, you have to go to hell. And if a tree wants to touch the sky, it has to send its roots to the very hell. The higher the tree rises, the lower the roots have to descend.’ That means the higher the tree wants to go, the lower it has to go. The higher and lower are not two separate things, but two polarities of one phenomenon. The positive and negative are not two separate things, but two polarities of one energy. They are just like negative energy and positive energy, minus and plus electricity.

And the second question that you raised about yourself is very meaningful. It has to come to anybody who is working with people and working with human consciousness. By and by you don’t love a person, you simply love. Maybe that love is focused on a person, but by and by it becomes more like a quality than like a relationship. That’s how it should be. When you love a person, that is only a learning ground, a schooling, a discipline. You love a person to learn how to love. By and by love spreads far and wide. That person remains significant because that person became the door, and from that door you start moving this way and that. This is going to happen – there is nothing to worry about.

Love becomes more important than the lover, than the loved. By and by it becomes like your quality.

It surrounds you every moment of your life. If you play with a dog, you are in love with the dog in that moment. If you hug a tree you are in love. It is not a question of a tree or a dog or a man or Asha (Veeresh’s partner). It is a question of your quality.

If you are loving, what can you do? If you hug the tree, you love the tree. So first a person loves another person, then by and by it starts spreading. First you love one person, then you love other persons. First you love another human being, then by and by you start loving other beings – a dog, a tree, a rock. And then a moment comes which is the final moment of love, when you simply love.

Even if you are sitting in an empty space, you hug the empty space – not even a tree is there to hug.

You are simply hugging – there is nobody. Do you understand me? Simply hugging... because now hugging is not an act. It is a climate that surrounds you. You hug emptiness... you love and kiss emptiness.

And this is where love becomes prayer. Then a new name is needed because the old name will create trouble. It becomes prayer.

It is just like when a flower opens and the fragrance spreads. The flower remains attached to the tree, but not the fragrance. The fragrance is like a cloud moving with the wind in all the directions.

The flower may die, but the fragrance will go on and on spreading to the very end of existence.

A person who has attained to love may die – his love continues. Buddha is dead, his love continues.

I will be dead, my love will continue. And those who will be sympathetic, those who will be receptive, will be able to receive it any moment, anywhere.

So you should be happy that you have become capable of hugging trees and dogs. One should be capable. It is not a question of your activity – just the way you are. You touch the chair, you touch it lovingly. Wherever you touch, your touch makes it an object of love ... your touch transforms it. It becomes almost a person.

Just see the opposite. When you look at a person with hatred you have reduced him to a thing.

That’s why hatred wants to kill, because the hatred cannot accept that the other person is a person.

He should be reduced to a thing; should be killed. Then the other is just like earth or stones – dead.

Hate reduces the other to a thing. Love reduces nobody to a thing. On the contrary it raises, uplifts, even things into persons.

So whatsoever a person who loves has touched, becomes a person. You can talk to the trees if you have love. You can talk to the rocks if you have love, because then the rock is no more a rock. It has a personality of its own, unique. No other rock is like that This rock is not a carbon-copy of another rock. It has an individuality of its own. Touch it... feel it. You will never feel another rock giving you the same sensations, ever. This is what personality means, individuality – that everything in this existence is unique, incomparably unique, unbelievably unique.

[A sannyasin says: I feel the groups are just opening me up, splitting me up... but not clearing me up... I won’t let a woman get near me, and that I’m afraid of being possessed.]

This is just the beginning. One has first to understand many things. The very understanding helps.

So don’t think that this insight is nothing – it is valuable, immensely valuable.

If you understand that you don’t allow a woman to come close to you, next time a woman approaches you, you will allow her a little more. This understanding will help a little more. You will feel that there is nothing wrong; she has come so close and yet everything is going so beautifully, why not a little more? This insight will help you to move... and one moves cautiously in the beginning. It is natural.

There is no need to be worried that the insight has not yet become a realised truth. No insight can immediately become a realised truth. An insight is just a glimpse. A window opens – now you have to travel. An insight gives you a vision of the far away. You can close the window and can forget about it. You will remain in the same room. But you can jump out of the window... nobody is hindering the path.

You can run towards that far-away peak. It will take a little time. It will be hard, arduous, but it pays; it pays tremendously. The closer you come to the peaks, the more you are transformed. So whatsoever you have learned... you may have seen only a few glimpses which show something about how you are – but they are valuable. Once you see that this is how you are, what you are, already a possibility of change has opened. Now it is up to you to use it.

A group cannot give you life – it can only give you insights. Then you have to implement these insights. You have to go into life and see how you can work with these insights now. Old habits will come in the way. They will try to create confusion, but don’t listen to them. Put them aside. Tell them, ’I have been working with you long enough. Enough is enough! No more of that nonsense.

Let me try the new insight.’ Whenever there is a fight between the old and the new, always choose the new – because the old you have tried and it has not done anything.

The old has much appeal because it is the familiar one, the easier one. You have been on it for so long that you can move in it like a robot and there is no problem in it. The territory is known and you have the map. You can move with blindfolded eyes. You know where to turn right and where to turn left, so things are easier. With the new, things are harder, but with the new there is the possibility of your becoming new.

So never listen to the old. Always choose, vote for the new... go with the new – even if you go astray sometimes. Sometimes you may go astray, but there is nothing wrong in it. Even that is better than going with the old. Just being repetitive is the worst thing in the world. If your virtue has become repetitive, I will say choose a new sin. But at least let it be new, because that will renovate you, renew you, release new life in you. So choose the new, move with the new. Implement it... allow women to come dose!

And whatsoever insight you have gained, before it disappears give it roots in your being.

[An assistant says: In the group I really feel a lot of love for people but then somehow when I come out, I’m very negative with my partner].

There is going to be a difference in the group and outside it, but there is no need to be disturbed by it. The difference is natural. The group is a special situation... the world is not like that. If the world was like that, there would be no need for the group! The group is needed to give you a glimpse of the world as it should be, but it is not.

So don’t expect when you move out that the world is a group – then you will be in trouble. Learn whatsoever happens in the group, absorb it, but when you come out of it don’t expect that the world is going to be the same. You have to move cautiously in the world so that whatsoever you have learned can become part of you. It is not going to become part of the world. The world is not going to be changed by [your being in the group. The world is big and vast. Only you are going to be changed.

So whatsoever you have learned, there are two parts in it. One is something that you can carry out in the world, that belongs to you; and something that cannot be carried out into the world, that belongs to the group. In a group there are two persons – you and the group. So whatsoever you can carry out – your awareness, understanding – carry it out. That will change much. If you are changed you will have a different world around you. The world is not going to be changed. Don’t expect that the world is the group. That part has to be left. This discrimination has to be continuously made, and one has to be alert about it.

And of course, in a group, love is not a commitment ... it is a game, so it looks beautiful. But when you come out and you are with [your partner], it is not a game – it is a commitment.

Many people find it very easy to love strangers, because there is no commitment. I know one woman who will make love only to strangers in trains, in hotels. She will not even ask the name of the man.

What is the use of asking the name? – just a casual meeting and then finished. That simply shows that she is very immature; she is not ready to commit herself. And unless you are ready to commit, you never grow.

A group is a game... three, four days meeting strange people, every type of person, and everybody open and things opening and the whole milieu is such that one moves with the stream. It is very good; there is no problem in it. Everything can be sweet and everybody can be sweet. But when you live with a person, there are problems. Problems of actual life – struggle, conflict, jealousy, possessiveness, everything.

So take your understanding from the group and use it with yogi. That is the real group... that is going to be a permanent group. It is a marathon. Marriage is a marathon – just two persons doing the whole marathon! (laughter) Everybody trying to be the leader and the other being made to be the led.

I have been watching that in the West it happens very often that people who go to the groups almost always bring more trouble when they come out. Many couples break, separate, after the group, and they think this is being very sincere and authentic. They think that they were not sincere, and that’s why they were together. Now they are being authentic, so how can they be together? They become very realistic out of the group and they start saying things – nasty things. And they think this is being authentic, true! This may simply be being violent. A group has to give you insight, compassion.

I am not saying that every couple has to remain together – no need. But I am not saying the opposite either – that every couple has to separate. One has to be understanding. If some relationship is such that it is simply destructive and it is not helping either you or your partner, and you have tried all the ways and it doesn’t work, doesn’t click, then better to separate. But if you feel that you love and you feel that there are beautiful moments also, that there are moments when you flow into each other and everything looks just heavenly, then think again. Separation is very easy – to be together is very difficult. And sometimes separating from one and another and another, you may get into the habit of separation.

There are people who are divorce-addicted, so even before the marriage they are thinking about how to divorce. The moment they think of marriage, they also think of divorce – as if their meeting is only for separation; separation is the goal. Don’t become that way, mm? Because in three weeks you wrote me one letter saying that things are not going well with [your partner] and everything is disturbed. Then you wrote to me just after one week that things are going tremendously beautifully and you have decided you will never separate from him. And now just one week has passed and again you are there. So just watch what you are doing.

If you go on this way nothing will settle. This is taking the plant up again and again and looking at the roots to see whether they are growing or not. The plant will die! And nobody else will be responsible.

So when you are with a person, try to be a little more alert. He has difficulties, you have difficulties –

everybody has difficulties. So don’t be cruel and don’t be violent and aggressive. Try to understand –

as you have difficulties, he also has difficulties. Sort them out together; figure out where the problem is It is easier to sort them out together rather than separately. And don’t hide problems... everything should be opened. There should be no secret.

In the group Learn things, but don’t expect things from people that you have seen in the groups.

You will never find that anywhere – and then you will have to go again and again into groups. There are many people who live from one group to another. Their whole Life consists of marathons, encounters, tathata. That’s not life! These are holidays from life... Sundays. Don’t make the week a week of sundays, or else it will be difficult to live. One day it is good to go to the beach and rest in the sun, but for six days even God has to work!

[A sannyasin says: At the moment I feel like I’m drifting.]

So drift!

You must be resisting – that’s bad. Drifting is not bad. But don’t resist... at least enjoy that. Always do whatsoever you want to do, but do it totally.

I never say what to do – that is not my way. I say whatsoever you do, do it, but do it totally. If it is good it will become part of you. If it is not good you will come out of it. That is the beauty of being total... that is the secret of being total. You cannot be totally with the devil. You can only be totally with God. So totality is the criterion.

I don’t say don’t commit a sin. I have no commandments. I don’t say, ’Do this. This is moral and virtuous’ – nothing I say whatsoever you want to do, do. If you want to be a thief, be a total thief. If it is virtue it will become part of you. If it is not virtue you will come out of it. If you want to be angry, be totally angry. If It is worthwhile you will enjoy it. If you feel it is simply nonsense, it will simply drop of its own accord.

Totality is the criterion. So drift – but don’t resist. If you want to resist, then resist it totally and don’t drift! rm not saying drift. Remember always that I never give you direction. Who am I to give you direction? And people who direct you are manipulators. I simply give you an understanding.

So choose. With one foot on one boat and another foot on another boat you will be in trouble.

And the boats are moving in diametrically opposite directions; you will be tom apart That’s what is happening to millions of people – torn into pieces, everything falling apart. Then life becomes a misery, has to become.

Life is happy when you are together. Happiness is a function of togetherness. Misery is a function of dividedness, fragmentariness. So just decide.

Good... the group has given you a good vision.

[A group member says: During the last night of the group I was vomiting and I had diarrhoea, and very much pain... ]

That can happen, mm? When something is released in the mind, the body also releases. There is always a parallel holding in the body. In people who repress, the intestine always holds something which should not be there – much toxins, poisons. It has to be that way because when the mind is holding some poison – anger, sadness, hatred – a parallel poison has to exist in the body to support it, otherwise the mind cannot hold it. The mind and body are not two; each corresponds with the other.

So it happens almost always that when the mind releases something, suddenly the body releases –

diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting. They are very good indications.

In India, Yoga has been working for centuries. They start from the opposite end. First they cleanse your intestine. In Yoga there is a method where the yogi has to vomit every day in the morning.

[Osho went on to describe this method, as he had done in a former darshan when he suggested that a sannyasin do it in order to remove some blocked energy. (See ’Above All, Don’t Wobble’, darshan Wednesday, January 21st.)

The next thing is to cleanse the intestine, and there are many yoga postures which give a deep massage to the intestine and help it to release whatsoever toxins it holds. And it can hold toxins.

Sometimes in post-mortem examinations the entire intestine has been found to hold forty, fifty year-old matter; it clings to the sides of the walls. That creates tremendous poison. But that is part of the mind. Yoga starts with the body; it is body-oriented. First it cleanses the body and the stomach, and then the mind becomes very easily able to release, to cathart.

Now the western methods start with the mind – catharsis – and then the body releases. But both are absolutely right. You can start either from this way or from that, because both belong to the same family.

[A group member said she was very slow and therefore might be missing something.]

There is nothing to be worried about. There are people who are fast runners and people who are slow walkers. Because you compare, the problem arises. When you see somebody running fast and you are walking slow, you compare.

You say, ’He is running so fast that he must be getting many things, and I am missing.’ But you don’t know the runner. He looks at you and thinks, ’Maybe she is enjoying the scenery more because she is moving so slowly. She must have got something, that is why she is moving so slowly and so happily.’

Don’t compare. You have to keep your pace. You are nobody else – you are you. So whatsoever is natural to you, that’s the way you have to grow. Never compare, and never hanker for one hundred percent. In life, only death happens one hundred percent. That too, the physicians say is difficult to determine – whether the person is one hundred percent dead or not. They have not yet been able to demark the line where one can say a person is really dead. Exactly when? When the heart stops, then? When the mind stops, then? When the breathing stops? When? Nobody knows exactly where the line is. But at least death seems to be one hundred percent. Everything else is always approximate.

So don’t ask too much; that creates frustration. Whatsoever you receive, enjoy it and feel grateful for it. Thank God that you are a slow walker. Perfectly good! You can enjoy the scenery more... the smell of the earth... the flowers. A runner never enjoys it. He is simply running – mad! But don’t say anything to the runner, mm? because I have to console him also! (much laughter)

[A trainee therapist says: I tend to come on more as a therapist than just as a loving type of person.]

When one first goes on the therapist trip it is a little difficult... it happens to everybody. The therapist takes so much possession of you that you look at everything from that angle – even one’s own love-affair.

I have heard about one psychoanalyst who married a very ugly woman... very very ugly. And everybody was simply surprised; they could not believe it. He was a young handsome man –

flourishing, successful, with a good practice, a name, academic recognition, everything. What had happened to this man?... a very ugly woman. It was almost Impossible to look at her directly – with one false eye, all teeth false.

So friends asked him, What have you done?’ He said, ’I know she is ugly. One eye is false... all her teeth are false. She stinks (laughter) and she has very bad breath. You cannot sit close to her. But boy! what nightmares she has, what nightmares!’ A psychoanalyst – more interested in nightmares!

So this is a honeymoon with therapy, mm? Don’t be worried... it goes. Every honeymoon ends –

even with therapy!

[A group member says: I found the first part of the group horrible... I split up with the person I was with before the group... I cannot let myself be close to anyone.]

That has to be so – it was the negative group. It has to be horrible...

You have to be close to yourself, that’s all. Then the other thing always happens on its own accord.

The group may have been horrible but I can see that it has given a grace to your face. It may have been horrible but it has made you more centred, more collected.

Sometimes a bitter medicine also helps. You did well in swallowing it – and this Veeresh-medicine is a little bitter! But once you become accustomed to it, it is good.

The whole thing is that you have to be closer to your own feelings, then you will be closer to anybody that you love. If you are not dose to yourself, you can never be close to anybody else. If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love anybody else. So be selfish. That’s my whole teaching: be selfish.

The first thing is to love yourself. Once you love yourself, you can love... you become capable of love. Then it is for you to decide whom you will love or not love, mm? But it has been good...

CHAPTER 3

9 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin about his responsibilities as a father as he would be separating from his wife. His wife and he had arranged that the three boys would live with him, while the girl would live with her mother.]

Much will have to be done, because when the mother is not there, your responsibilities become greater, bigger. You will have to be both father and mother. But in a way it can be a great challenge and a growth for you.

When you are just a father, your innermost core is not involved in it... just the periphery. The father is a peripheral thing. It is institutional; it is not natural. Fathers exist only in human societies – society has created it. It has no natural instinct; it is just a conditioning. So when you are a father, nothing much is involved in it. When a woman becomes a mother, something tremendously meaningful has happened to her. But nothing much happens to a man who becomes a father.

For a woman it is almost a new birth. Not only the child is born; the mother is also born. The mother gives birth to the child, the child gives birth to the mother. Just before it, the woman was just a woman. Now she is a mother. It is something which is very difficult for a man to understand unless you are creative.

If you have given birth to a painting or poetry or something, then just a little glimpse can happen to you. When a poet has given birth to a poem, he feels tremendously happy. Nobody else can understand what has happened just by composing a poem. But it is not just a poem. Much was in turmoil within him, and the poem has settled many things.

The poem is only the outermost expression of something. Some deep harmony has happened in him. The poem is just an indication that something has fallen in line within his being. The poem brings news to the world that a man has become a poet. It is just a very small fragment of the fragrance that has happened inside the poet. He is no more the same person. He is no ordinary mortal human being. He has competed with the gods. He has given birth to something . . . he has created.

But it is nothing compared to a woman when she becomes a mother – nothing. A poem is a poem.

The moment it is born it is already dead. When it is inside the poet it has life. The moment it is expressed it is a dead piece of furniture. You can hang it on the wall. You can throw it on the rubbish heap, or whatsoever you want, but it is no more alive.

When a woman gives birth to a child, it is life. When she looks into the eyes of the child, she looks into her own being. When the child starts growing, she grows with the child.

So up to now you have been just a father. It was a duty, but nothing much was involved. Now you will be both. You will have to be both – mother also. And if you can be a mother to your children, then don’t be bothered about responsibilities – they will be fulfilled. Just start thinking in terms of being a mother. Become more feminine, more receptive.... You will have to become less and less a father, and more and more a mother. This is going to be a great challenge and a great transformation for you.

If you can use the opportunity, you can almost achieve to a great satori through it, a great samadhi.

Through it your inside will come to a reconciliation. The reconciliation will be within you – the man and the woman within you, the yin and the yang within you will come to a meeting, a crystallisation.

And by and by you will lose the notion of who you are – man or woman – because you will be more motherly, and yet you will be a father. This can become a very alchemical situation.

And my whole effort is always to give you an insight, in whatsoever situation you are in, that can become a point of growth. So just try to look at your children as if you are a mother. If you cannot do it for twenty-four hours, then at least for a few hours. And then catch hold of the man. Because it is totally different.

When you are a father you would like to dominate the children. You would like to make them like you. You will become dictatorial. When you are a mother you would like to give them freedom to be themselves. You will not impose yourself upon them. You will be a help in need, but your deepest desire and your prayer will be that they should become themselves. You will not be ambitious through them – a father is always. a mother, never.

She loves the child just for the being he or she is. There is no expectation. She is not going to fulfill any ambition through the child. In fact women are not ambitious at all. That is male aggression, male violence – doing something, proving oneself.

But you can divide your time. You can have a certain programme in your mind – that when the sun sets you will be a mother; up to sunrise. The whole day you can be a father, the whole night you be a mother. The woman is more like the night. She surrounds you... engulfs you... drowns you, and without huffing you, without even touching you. When darkness surrounds you, you cannot even touch it. It is there, but it is almost as if it is not. Its very presence is through absence.

So when you are a mother become as absent as possible. Don’t try to prove anything. Just be a help – and that too, very indirectly. Don’t think in terms of responsibility. Think in terms of inner growth. Once you think in terms of responsibility, duty, you are already moving into anxiety. You are already losing a great opportunity. You have taken a wrong step.

Responsibility – one feels burdened. Duty – one feels one has to do it. Duty is a dirty word, a four-letter word. Love, not duty. You enjoy and you love.

And enjoy the whole situation that has happened. Then someday you may feel grateful to your wife that she left and allowed you to become a mother; otherwise it would have been impossible. And not only in this case – in every situation in life, always try to find a way how to use it for growth, how to become more yourself through it.

A man is half and a woman is half. When both become one, the perfect man is born. And the whole is beautiful because it has grace. The whole is beautiful because it is at home. The whole is beautiful because it lacks nothing. The whole is beautiful because all the opposites have come to an inner reconciliation, a synthesis, a harmony. Then man is not a crowd but a crystallised being.

Then all the noises inside have fallen into an orchestra.

And once you know how, you can slip from man into woman, because the inner soul is neither – or both.

So drop the word duty, and forget all about responsibility. Love is enough.

And meditate deeply – that will make you strong enough to face this situation and to grow out of it, mm?

(to a new sannyasin) Forget the old name, mm? Just by dropping the old name, many things drop automatically. The moment you can think in a new language, the past drops as if it never belonged to you.

And every moment the past becomes a burden. One needs to be unburdened again and again and again. It is just as rubbish goes on accumulating in the house; one has to throw it out every day.

The same happens in the mind.

So this will be your new name: Ma Deva Pujan. Pujan means worship, deva means divine - divine worship, or worship of the divine.

[Pujan said that as she had heard of Osho through her husband, from whom she was estranged, she felt some resistance.]

It happens every day.... Because he has hurt you much, it is natural not to trust. And because he is my sannyasin, automatically one starts thinking about me also through him. But you can be directly related to me. [Your husband] need not be in between you and me. And always remember that nobody knowingly hurts anybody; it all happens in the unconscious.

Nobody wants to hurt anybody – but it happens, that’s true. So never carry wounds. It is not only a question of [your husband. If you carry the wound and the hurt feeling, you will become incapable, by and by, of loving and trusting – and that is bad. It is not only that [your husband] has hurt you –

he has hurt love. Whenever you move in a love relationship again you will shrink, you will become afraid. Or you will move up to an extent, and not more than that. And that is bad. Persons come and go. One should never become distrustful of love.

Love is bigger than the whole world. One [husband], a thousand and one [husbands] come and go, but nobody should be allowed to disturb the trust in love. Because if that is allowed, you lose all meaning in life. Always remember that when one door doses, another door immediately opens. So don’t go on sitting by the closed door. Look somewhere – one door has opened for you.

Life is always ready to give you more and more and more, but we become clingers. If we are thrown out of one house, we think that now there is no home. It may be that you are just being pushed from one house so that you can enter a palace. One thing is taken away so that you have space enough for another thing to enter.

Always trust life, and always remain open, flowing. Never carry wounds from the past. The gone is gone – why carry it? If somebody has given you love and pain, why remember the pain? Just remember the love that he gave.

Man is very very helpless. Even if you want to make somebody happy, some inner mechanism does not allow you to. Even sometimes you may have wanted to be with someone but something inside takes you away in spite of you – as if you are driven, possessed. I see so many people destroying their relationships. They cry and weep – they don’t want to do it, but they feel helpless.

Remember that only a very small part of the mind is conscious – one tenth; nine tenths is unconscious. And everybody is ruled by the unconscious.

For example, a man falls in love with you. You think he falls in love with you? Something in his unconscious is stirred by you. That’s why people say, ’We don’t know why we have fallen in love.’

Hence the word ’fall’ – because one is almost helpless; one cannot do anything about it. Something from the unconscious arises and clouds the whole being.

[Osho went on to say that we find rationalisations for why we are particularly attracted to someone

– but they are just rationalisations, for the ego feels unsettled if it can’t find any reason for why one fell in love. One day someone has attracted something in your unconscious so that you believe you are in love, and the next day somebody else stirs something in your unconscious – and again you are in love. You feel guilty, but you are helpless.... ]

This is how man is – almost a mechanism, not yet conscious.

And that is my whole effort: to make you so conscious that unconsciousness no more dominates you. You become master of your being.

Then you love a person because you want to, not because the unconscious forces you. Your love has a totally different quality to it. You possess it – you are not possessed by it. Then love can be a life-long thing, or even can go beyond life, can become eternal.

In the East, and particularly in India, where we have been working with human consciousness for so long – for almost ten thousand years – we have tried, and succeeded in many cases, with a couple dying and then being reborn again in the next life and falling in love again. We have managed that for a series of lives the couple remains the same. But that has to be very conscious, absolutely conscious.

Right now you don’t know. You may go out on the street and you see a man and immediately something stirs in you. And you are not in control, so what to do? You are in love, madly in love. You try to control it, you try to avoid it, you want to go away, but something like a magnet pulls you. This is what is happening.

In the West, because people are so free now, and everybody is moving in a permissive society, the unconscious has full play. I don’t see that any permanent marriage is going to be possible in any way soon; it will be almost impossible. If a couple remains for two, three years – enough; more will not be possible. Three years seems to be the most, the average limit.

But don’t be angry and don’t complain... and don’t have a grudge. It has nothing to do with [your husband. [your husband is helpless. He is a beautiful person but as helpless as you are!

And now you are here I will take away the whole of the past, mm? Just be here for a few days... be totally here. And you will be going a total4 different person. The person who had come is not going to be the one who goes – somebody else.

[The mother of a sannyasin says: I came here because my son is here... I came here angry at you for taking him away. I’m not angry now. But I want to be able to let go of him.]

Very very good!

I understand. It is always a problem. One day or other every mother has to face it.

[Osho went on to describe the various stages of separation of the child from the mother. (See ’Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle’, Monday March 15th.)]

This is a natural process – hard. Hard for the mother. Hard for the child also, because he would not like to hurt you in any way. But one has to go away from the mother.

It is just as if a seed falls under a big tree – it will not be able to grow. The seed has to go far away.

Every tree finds a way to send its seeds far away, so that they can find a ground of their own and be independent.

Rather than fighting with him, simply let him go. It will be difficult, hard. Cry and weep – but let him go. And if you allow him to totally let go, he will never go so far away. Because when a mother allows, the whole point of fight is not there. When a mother fights, then the fight arises.

That is part of being a mother. And a mother is expected to be wiser than the child – has to be. So if he is going to do something foolish he can be pardoned. But you cannot be pardoned that easily.

You have to allow him. And I don’t say that it will not hurt. It will hurt, but life hurts in many ways.

That too is part of growth.

You will become stronger if you can let him go. So simply let him go – and help. Cooperate with his going. Then he will not go anywhere; he can remain near you. He can remain with you – and free.

[To her son:] Give her a good fight, mm? (laughter) That is going to help her. If you give her a good fight and she allows you, she will fulfill her motherhood. And if she allows you to go, then there is no point. How can you fight?

But don’t relax too soon – otherwise her motherhood will remain unfulfilled. It is difficult for you to fight with a mother. Who wants to? It is fighting with yourself, with your innermost core of being. It is as if you are cutting your own body. Who wants to fight with a mother?

But if you don’t fight when the need is there, you will never be independent. And if you don’t fight, you will never give her an opportunity to let go. If you give a good fight,.you are fulfilling your sonhood; if she lets you go she is fulfilling her motherhood. And if both are perfect and total, both will feel the fulfillment. And then you come closer – closer than ever. A new sort of closeness will arise. You will become friends. And to find a mother as a friend, or to find a son as a friend, is one of the greatest and most beautiful things in the world. You cannot find such a thing anywhere else.

And this is my whole work, that I have to say to you to give her a good fight and say to her to let you go, mm? (laughter)

[The Tao group is present. The group leader said: The energy of the group was beautiful and people went very deep. But I just don’t seem to have any energy.

He described a spinal complaint he had developed... Osho suggested he see the appropriate doctor, but also said he felt Rolfing might help.]

Because I have been watching your mind, and my feeling is that your mind goes up and down so much that it can create trouble in the body. The body cannot change as much as the mind. The mind can change in a second, but the body is very slow-going, very orthodox. It does not change so easily and so fast. If you change your mind so many times, the body has to linger, and sometimes the alignment will be lost.

For example you are happy. The body parallels your happiness – the body is happy. Then you become unhappy. The body cannot change so fast. It remains happy, you become unhappy, the adjustment is lost. By the time the body becomes unhappy, you become happy again; again the adjustment is not there. So Rolfing may be helpful.

And the second thing I will suggest is that even if you cannot remain happy for long, remain unhappy, but remain that for a long time; make it permanent. Give the body a chance to adjust.

[The group leader said he did feel high when people were working in the group, but when the group was finished, he went down.]

Then that may also be one of the things to be considered – because in the West you were working continuously. Here sometimes you work and sometimes there is no work. That too can create a misalignment in the body. If a person has become accustomed to activity and activity brings you happiness, then inactivity will destroy you.

There are types. There are inactive people to whom activity is just a burden. They carry it somehow, but they become unhappy when they are active. When they are not doing anything they are happy.

Then there are the active types; they are happy only when they are doing something. They are the ones who are creative.

[The groupleader said he was only high when someone was actually working when he was in touch with their energy, but that after that his energy would go right down.

Osho said that he should then simply sit near people when meditations were happening. or join another group and just sit in it, inactive. Osho said this would revitalise and nourish him.]

[A sannyasin says: I’m losing understanding.]

That’s very very good! (laughter) You had understanding before?...

You must be losing the thought of understanding.

One can never lose understanding. But everybody thinks that he understands. Then one day when understanding starts, you feel as if you are losing understanding. If you think your illness as health, then when illness disappears, you will think your health is disappearing.

Very good! Lose it! It is not understanding. That which can be lost is not understanding. That which cannot be lost, whatsoever you do, which is impossible to lose, only that is understanding. So all that can be lost is borrowed. Drop it – the sooner the better! It is better to be ignorant but to be on one’s own than to have borrowed knowledge and understanding and information. All rot, mm? Get out of it. And it is losing itself, so that’s very good.

You are getting better every day, mm? There is nothing to worry about.

[A sannyasin says: Everything is so new and I’m feeling like I’ve never felt before.... ]

Very good! Much more is going to happen – just remain open. Opening is just the beginning. You have opened the door, now much is going to happen... much you have never dreamt about, much that you cannot imagine. All that you know is irrelevant. When the door is open, something from the unknown comes in.

So just remain open, and enjoy the very feeling of openness. Get in touch more and more with your feelings. Forget thinking completely. Let the whole energy move through the heart. That is the way of God.

Mind is the way of man, and heart is the way of God.

Move more in feelings. Trust them more and they will lead you into mysteries – which are the real goal of life.

CHAPTER 4

10 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I want to feel more of an intensity with you, but things seem cloudy. Nothing is wrong, and nothing is especially right.]

That’s how it should be. Because anything special is not going to last. Anything special is a sort of excitement. No excitement can become a permanent thing. It is a honeymoon... it ends. It has to end. So there is no need to hanker for anything special. Just allow it. This is good.

There is no need to feel my presence too much because that can become heavy... that can be even destructive. One should become more and more normal, natural. And the relationship with me should almost become as if it is no relationship. Then only will you be in tune with me. Then there will be no excitement. There will be a very silent flow, almost invisible, imperceptible. If you would like to pinpoint it, you will be unable to. That’s why the mind says it looks like cloudiness. It is not cloudy.

When the mind is absolutely clear one cannot pinpoint where one is. When you are really silent you are not even aware that you are silent; you cannot be. Only a mind which is disturbed can be aware of silence. A silent mind does not know. A healthy person does not know that he is healthy. The problem arises only when you fall ill – then the question of health arises. If the question arses to a healthy person, it simply shows that he must be hiding some illness somewhere which wants to erupt.

Lao Tzu has said, ’When I look around, everybody seems to be talented, so intelligent. I am muddle-headed.’ And he was one of the most perceptive men in the world ever. He says, ’I am such an idiot that I have nothing to prove, nothing to say, nothing to be, really.’

So if you feel that everything is flowing silently, the river is flowing silently and there is no noise, it simply shows depth. When a river is shallow it makes much noise. When the river is really deep, there is simply silence. You cannot see whether it is moving or not because the movement is so subtle. So this is good: don’t create a problem.

The mind is a problem-creator. Problems arise in the mind as leaves come out of trees.

If for a few days there is no problem, one starts feeling uneasy. That’s what has happened. I have been watching. There has been no problem...

[The sannyasin asks: But what’s the point of my moving into the ashram or not?]

This is the point – that if you are out there you will have a certain excitement, this way or that.

Sometimes you will feel too much in contact with me. Sometimes you will feel too far away. I allow people to move into the ashram so that they can forget me completely. Then I become part of their being, and there is no need to remember me.

You eat something. When it is in the mouth you will feel the taste. You enjoy n or you don’t enjoy it, but once it is down the throat you forget about it. It has started becoming part of you. Now I am almost down the throat so you will not feel me. But now I will function better inside you. I will become your blood and your bones. One has to forget about eating. Continuously remembering that now it is in the stomach, now it is being digested, now it is moving in the intestine, you will go crazy. You just taste it in the mouth, that’s all.

So when people come to me in the beginning there is much excitement, resistance. People move to extremes, then by and by they settle. Once they settle, the real work starts.

That is the point of moving in the ashram – that I become so much part of you that you need not remember me. To remember, a certain separation is needed. To remember, a certain distance is needed. When you are really dose you forget. But nothing is wrong in it. The mind may create a problem, so put the mind aside.

[A visitor says he is afraid; he wants to take his time; he doesn’t want to take sannyas just to be part of a crowd.]

... But always remember, trust in the unknown. The known is the mind. The unknown cannot be the mind. It may be something else but it cannot be the mind. One thing certain about the mind is that mind is the accumulated known. So, for example, if you come across a fork in the road and the mind says ’Go this way, this is familiar’ – that is the mind. If you listen to your being, it would like to go to the unfamiliar, to the unknown. The being is always an adventurer. The mind is very orthodox, very conservative. It wants to move into the track, the trodden path, again and again – the path of least resistance.

So always listen for the unknown. And gather courage to move into the unknown. That’s what I feel

– that you want to move, but the mind says, ’Take your time.’ It is not really you who wants to take your time; it is the mind who wants to deceive you.

One can become part of a crowd, and that’s not good. Others have taken sannyas, others are taking sannyas, and then you feel that you also should take it and you become an imitator, a carbon-copy.

That’s not good.

But you may resist only because others are taking sannyas; so how can you? Then again you are following the crowd – in a negative way. If nobody was doing it then you would have done it. Then again the nobody is the point of reference. Others are still in the mind.

So a person can be a conservative or a person can become a rebel. But the real revolution happens somewhere when you are neither. Because to rebel against the crowd is, in a subtle way, being decided by the crowd again. It is more subtle than the first. The first is plain – one simply follows the crowd. Everybody is going there so you also feel like going. Everybody will be pleased and you will not feel like an outsider; you will be accepted by the herd. That’s okay. That’s plain and simple that one should not do that – not at least with me. I would like to relate to you.

If you come to me because of others, that crowd will always be between me and you and it will be impossible to relate to you. I will always have to go via the crowd; you will have to come via the crowd. We will not be in direct communication. The telephone line will not be direct, and it will not be of much help. When the message moves through the crowd it automatically changes. Nothing can be done about it.

So you have to be immediate to me. But remember, the mind can say, ’Don’t follow the crowd. You have to be yourself. Because the crowd is doing this, don’t do it. Take your time.’ Then again you are being decided by the crowd. The crowd is in your mind. You are deciding negatively, but the crowd is controlling you still. Drop that too. Forget the crowd!

... The very effort to be free of the crowd is doomed to fail. The very effort to be free from somebody is going to be dominated by somebody. You can go away, but you can never be free; that is not the way of freedom.

Never think in terms of being free from; always think in terms of being free for. And the difference is vast, tremendously vast. Don’t think in terms of from – think for. Be free for God, be free for truth, but don’t think that you want to be free from the crowd, free from the church, free from this and that.

You may be able to go far away one day, but you will never be free, never. It is going to be some sort of suppression.

Why are you so afraid of the crowd?

... If the pull is there, then your fear simply shows your pull, your attraction. Wherever you go you will remain dominated by the crowd.

What I am saying is, just look at the facts of it – that there is no need to think in terms of the crowd.

Just think in terms of your being. It can be dropped right now. You cannot be free if you struggle.

You can drop it because there is no point in struggling.

The crowd is not the problem – you are the problem. The crowd is not pulling you – you are being pulled, not by somebody else but by your own unconscious conditioning. Always remember not to throw the responsibility somewhere on somebody else, because then you will never be free of it.

Deep down it is your responsibility. Why should one be so much against the crowd? Poor crowd!

Why should you be so much against it? Why do you carry such a wound?

The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate. So the question is of your cooperation. You can drop the cooperation just now, just like that. If you put any effort into it, then you will be in trouble.

So do it instantly. It is just on the spur of the moment of spontaneous understanding, if you can see the point that if you fight, you will be fighting a losing battle. In the very fighting you are emphasising the crowd.

That’s what has happened to millions of people. Somebody wants to escape from women. In India they have done that for centuries. Then they become more and more engrossed in it. They want to get rid of sex and their whole mind then becomes sexual; they think only of sex and nothing else. They fast and they will not go to sleep. They will do this and that pranayama and yoga and a thousand and one things – all nonsense The more they fight with sex, the more they are enforcing it, the more they are concentrating on it. It becomes so significant, out of all proportion.

That is what has happened to christian monasteries. They become so repressed, just afraid. The same can happen to you if you become afraid too much of the crowd. The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate, so it is a question of your alertness. Don’t cooperate!

This is my observation: that whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible. Nobody else is doing it to you. You wanted it to be done, so it has been done. Somebody exploits you because you wanted to be exploited. Somebody has put you into a prison because you wanted to be imprisoned.

There must have been a certain search for it. Maybe you used to call it security. Your names may have been different, your labels may have been different, but you were hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison one is safe and there is no insecurity.

But don’t fight with the prison walls. Look inside. Find out that hankering for security and how the crowd can manipulate you. You must be asking for something from the crowd – recognition, honour, respect, respectability. If you ask them, you have to repay them. Then the crowd says, ’Okay, we give you respect, and you give us your freedom.’ It is a simple bargain. But the crowd has never done anything to you – it is basically you. So get out of your own way!

If you listen to me, I would like you to take a jump into sannyas. That will help. And let that moment be a dropping of the crowd: for, against – both! From that moment don’t think in terms of for and against. Just don’t think of the crowd – think of yourself. The time is short and life is so valuable.

Why waste it on foolish things – fighting with the crowd, escaping from the crowd? It is not worth it!

You are giving it too much importance.

But if you want to take time, you can take – that’s up to you. But the mind can go on postponing –

the mind cannot decide. It is impotent as far as decisions are concerned. It can brood, worry, but it cannot conclude – that is not the capacity of the mind. Always watch: your conclusions come from beyond the mind or below the mind. They never come from the mind.

If you fail in love with a woman and you ask the mind, the mind will say, ’Think, wait, postpone. There may be some other woman better than this, and who knows that you are not imagining things? She may not be so beautiful. Watch out! Take time and be clever, calculating.’

If you listen to the mind it will go on postponing ad infinitum. But you don’t listen to the mind – and it is good that you put it aside. There are moments when you put the mind aside. You say, ’No, I have fallen in love.’ The mind says, ’Are you a fool? You are becoming blind You say, ’Accept it. I am blind, but I am going.’ And it is good. . .this is courage.

Being with me cannot be a mind relationship. It is falling in love. . .in love with something impossible.

. .in love with something absurd.

Have you heard Tertullian’s dictum?

– ’I love God because God is absurd.

He cannot be

– impossible.’

That is his credo absurdum.

’I believe in God because God is unbelievable.’

Tremendously beautiful... that’s what a lover says.

I found that the aggressiveness I’ve had before in the form of intense energy, seems to be a cover-up for life. When it’s not there I feel a lot of fear. I feel fear sometimes when I see that I have no control over anything at all.]

But what is the need to control? And how can one control? Life is so vast that we can only be controlled; we cannot be the controllers.

The fear arises because you ask the impossible. The fear arises because you ask something which is not possible at all, which is not in harmony with the real. How can you control things? Just think of the immensity, the tremendous vastness of existence, and of how everything is so interconnected.

How can you control it?

These are the two attitudes.

The non-religious attitude is somehow to control, somehow to manipulate, somehow to dominate, somehow to boss. The religious attitude is understanding –

seeing the fact that the total is so vast and you are so tiny that even to say tiny seems to be too big...

almost a non-being.

Buddha has called the innermost core non-being, because he said that to call it ’being’ is too much; it is almost as if not. Even a drop is bigger. If you compare a drop with the ocean, and you compare a man with the totality, the drop is tremendously bigger than man – proportionately, relatively. Man is not even a drop in this totality. Just think of a drop of water trying to control the ocean. And we are not even that! So fear arises.

But you are creating the fear – it is your interpretation. A religious man is unafraid, fearless. Not that he is brave – no. He is unafraid because he has dropped that whole nonsense of controlling. He allows himself to be controlled. A religious man is possessed by the whole. He says, ’I am nobody, so take possession of me and lead me wheresoever you will. Thy will be done. Thy kingdom come.’

That ’thy’ is not a tiny god sitting somewhere, as christians think, with a crown on his head, on a golden throne with foolish angels all around (laughter).

That ’thy’ is this totality. There is no throne and no crown, no monarch, no king – nothing: no king and no kingdom. That ’thy’ is this vastness, this immenseness of existence ... this isness that surrounds you out and in, within and without. How can you try to control it? What are you asking?

Fear will arise... death will follow you like a shadow, because you know one day or other you will have to fall down and disappear.

But a religious man, in deep prayer, accepts even death. He says, ’I am just a wave. It was your play to have me. I am here, but when you are finished with the game I will retire. I will go back to sleep, deep sleep, into the ocean. Whenever you need me you can raise me again. I will be ready, but it is none of my business to bother about.’ That’s how one becomes fearless.

So just see the point – and float, flow, and a deep relaxation will come to you. will surround vou.

Your whole being will become graceful, because when there is no fear one is graceful. Then there is no dichotomy. There is no fight, no struggle... one simply accepts. One is in total acceptance. Just try to see that.

And if you want to be afraid, then it is okay. If you choose, then it is okay, otherwise there is no need.

You live in total relaxation. Not trying, you become so calm and quiet. But just a tiny part struggling, the old taste continues, haunts you. One has to resist that. The ego enjoys fighting very much –

struggling, conquering. Drop that ego! Drop fighting and the ego drops.

People come to me and they ask, ’How can we drop the ego?’ They are asking again for a new fight. They say, ’How can we drop the ego? How can we fight this ego? Then again another ego will arise – the ego of the humble man, the ego of the simple man, the ego of one who has renounced; religious, prayerful – but the ego will arise again. And the second ego is going to be more subtle than the first, more poisonous, because it is more pious. And when poison becomes pious, of course it becomes more dangerous.

So simply look at the fact and float... and accept, mm? Then see what happens.

[A sannyasin says: I can feel myself moving from anger into sadness. I don’t know whether I should try and get the anger out or just let it explode inside.]

Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger and anger is active sadness.

Because sadness comes easy, anger seems to be difficult. because you are too much in tune with the passive.

It is difficult for a sad person to be angry. If you can make a sad person angry, his sadness will disappear immediately. It will be very difficult for an angry person to be sad. If you can make him sad, his anger will disappear immediately.

In all our emotions the basic polarity continues – of man and woman, yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within won’t help much because again you are seeking some way of being passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense, then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.

If you can float between anger and sadness, both become, similarly easy.

You will have a

transcendence and then you will b able to watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and then you can go beyond both. But first you have to b moving easily between these two. otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is heavy, transcendence is difficult.

Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike, fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody’s grip.

Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent. then it is very difficult thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping out.

That forty percent will hang over.

So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies – to always let the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not worry, and you can escape.

Don’t bring the mind in. Just make it an exercise.

You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to come. Every day you have to be angry – that will be easier. So jump, jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?

Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples never to start by dropping anything. First start by bringing it in, because only a person who can create anger on demand can be capable of dropping it on demand

– simple mathematics. So Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to first learn how to be angry. Everybody would be sitting and suddenly he would ay, ’Number One, stand up and be angry!’ Looks so absurd.

But if you can bring it.... And it is always available, just by the comer, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody brings an excuse. Somebody insults you – it is there. So why wait for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can’t you bring it yourself? Bring it yourself!

In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable, because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody else whose insult has created the anger. That’s not true. Anger has always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come up. You can give yourself an excuse. imagine a situation in which you would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say things, and soon the wail will be talking to you. Just go completely crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where they are exactly proportionate to each other.

They will cancel each other out and you can slip away.

Gurdjieff used to cal this the way of the sly man – to bring inner energies to such a conflict that they are engaged together cancelling each other, and you have the opportunity to escape. Try it, mm?

[A sannyasin said that he was having difficulty sleeping. Osho said that sometimes people think they have not slept, but in fact they have slept most of the night. He recounted a story... ]

I know one man who used to say that he had not been sleeping for years. I was staying with him –

it was the beginning of the rains. In the night the roof fell in – and I had to wake him! He was fast asleep and snoring!

[The sannyasin said that when he went to bed at eleven, he was tired but he just couldn’t sleep, because he had a lot of energy.

Osho suggested he do several things. Firstly he should go for a long and brisk walk between ten and eleven o’clock each night. Osho said to breathe deeply with the emphasis on exhalation rather than inhalation. After the walk He should take a shower and then just simply sit on his bed, but not at any cost should he lie down till twelve o’clock when he should go to sleep.

Osho said that he should rise at seven in the morning to attend the discourse, and that he should have no rests on his bed during the day. He told him to try this for ten days and then to report back.]

[A therapist says: For the past few days I have been really happy and high, but it’s something I find hard to accept.]

Yes, it is difficult, because we create an image. Sad people create an image of sadness, and it looks so against yourself to be happy that one cannot believe it. But change the image, mm? There is no need to fulfill the old image – no need. Throw it away, but remain happy now. It will be difficult... I understand the difficulty. If you make a poor man rich, he will continue to live like a poor man.

I once used to live in a very rich man’s bungalow. A friend of mine came – a very poor man, a vagabond, a wanderer. I managed to get him the best room in the house, the best! It was really royal. Everything was the best it can be in India.

In the morning I went to see him and he was lying on the floor! I said, What are you doing?’

He said, ’I couldn’t sleep on such a beautiful bed! I tossed and turned and sleep wouldn’t come. It was too soft. I had to come down on the floor, and then I slept really beautifully.’

So we create habits, and habits follow us. So if you have been sad, unhappy, you have created a habit of being unhappy. Try to break out of it. Don’t listen to it. It will say many times, ’What are you doing? It is not like you. Be unhappy as you used to be. That was so good.’

[She then says: But I keep, thinking that I want a man to be with and not a lot of men.]

Wait a little. That may just be a trick of the mind to create unhappiness, because it is very difficult to be with a man and happy.

If you want to be more happy, remain alone. When your happiness is really settled, crystallised, when you feel that even living with someone is not going to disturb you, then it is okay. Live with any man you feel like. Otherwise it may be just a trick to fall into another trap so that you can find reasons to be unhappy.

To be with someone and happy is very rare.

[Osho went on to say that when you meet someone else, problems are not just doubled but multiplied. He said that when we are unhappy we tend to attract unhappy people, so it was better that she become happy, and then she would find happy people being drawn to her... ]

... and if you cannot manage to find someone who is happy, I will manage telepathically! (laughter)

[A visitor says: I don’t have any trust in myself or in anybody else... ]

If you don’t have any trust in yourself, you cannot have trust in anybody else, because the basic trust is lacking. The basic trust is trusting oneself – then you can trust others. If you love yourself, you can love others. If you don’t love yourself, you can’t love anybody else.

If you are avoiding – and this is an avoiding – if you are escaping and putting yourself at the back, opportunities will never come to you. They will just by-pass you. You have to be a little more courageous, more adventurous. One has to come in the front and take an opportunity – and jump into it. But it happens to many people from a wrong upbringing.

You must have been taught to be a back-seater. To go to the back, be humble, just efface yourself.

That may have been somehow fixed in your mind; any past situation may have caused it.

It will be good if you can go through a few groups. They will be helpful.

... I understand that that problem is there, but that can be solved.

You have to pass through primal-type experiences which will take you back into the past and uncondition the mind from there. It is not a problem right now. Somewhere in the past, in your memory, is the problem.

The memory is entangled; it has to be untangled there. So whatsoever you do will not be of much help. You will have to pass through an experience in which you go backwards and relive your life.

That’s why I suggest Primal Therapy.

If you can do Primal, it will cleanse your mind and you will be able to accept yourself, trust yourself.

Then everything grows out of that. One is not worried whether one is going to be rejected.

It is always fifty-fifty. If you make a move there is a fifty percent possibility of being rejected, and a fifty percent possibility of being welcomed and accepted. If you don’t make the move, you are rejected one hundred percent. So it is for you to choose: one hundred percent rejection or fifty percent rejection. And that is the risk, all the risk.

If you go and tell somebody that you love him, he can only say that he doesn’t love you. But there is no necessity that he will say no; he may say yes. But if you never go, nobody loves you.

So that is for you to decide. What is the point of choosing one hundred percent rejection? Choose the lesser evil, mm?

[The Vipassana group was present. Osho has said of Vipassana: It is the only ancient method which does not use imagination. It is very austere, pure. The whole emphasis is just on being alert, that’s all, so that nothing passes without your knowledge. You don’t do anything to the facticity of life: you don’t touch it, retouch it. You don’t project anything. Life is no more a screen and you no more a projector. You are simply witnessing, whatsoever it is, with no judgement on your part of good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

[A group member says: It was beautiful... and everything was like a celebration.]

Very good! Continue that celebration... don’t stop it. One day or other the group ends, but there is no need for the celebration to end. You can make it the very style of your life.

... help it to go on. Help it to go on... because the mind tends to fall into the old pattern. Whatsoever you have learned in the group – the silence, the celebration, the inner joy – continue.

The group is just a beginning, a triggering. Then you move on your own. Continue on your own for a few weeks. And if you feel that the light is getting dimmer, and you are not feeling so much energy, repeat the group once more after a few weeks or a few months. Then it will pay more, and it will go deeper. Vipassana is not a group that one can do once and then be finished. It is a life-long thing.

In buddhist countries, people will do Vipassana almost every year, for three weeks – all sorts of people. It is almost as people go for a holiday in the West to tour this country and that – which is foolish. In buddhist countries – Burma, Thailand, Ceylon – when people have time and they can have a holiday, they will go to a buddhist monastery to do Vipassana.

Every year they will come again and again. And this happens from the lowest, the poorest man, up to the prime minister. The burmese prime minister continued it the whole time he was prime minister; every year he would go. Then he resigned, and now he has become a buddhist monk. He is in India. Nobody would recognise him... he is just a buddhist beggar! The Vipassana experience was greater than his premiership, than all his politics.

So make it a point. When you feel that things are becoming dim, cloudy, and you cannot feel the same energy, the same vitality, then do it again. You can do it alone. Go to a retreat in the mountains and just be there for three weeks doing it on your own, whenever you feel the need.

[A group member says: I felt at times very sensual, very female. And something that is somewhat distressing is that thoughts of violence arise – against you and against myself.]

Just watch it, mm? Don’t get distressed by it, because if you get distressed by it, it will continue. It means you are being too impressed by it; you are paying too much attention to it, feeding it.

Just be aloof. Just a craziness of the mind. Watch it... don’t pay much attention. Whenever you love a person, you hate him also deep down. If you love me, you hate me also.

That’s what is coming up, surfacing. The hate says, ’Kill this man!’ and the love says, ’Rather, it will be better if you hit yourself.’ But there is nothing to worry about. Just take it as a normal thing; it happens to everybody. Sometime or other this dichotomy of the mind surfaces. Be indifferent.

And in Vipassana it can happen sometimes that one feels very very sensual, because you are so silent and energy is not dissipated. Ordinarily much energy is dissipated and you are exhausted.

When you simply sit, not doing anything, you become a silent pool of energy, and the pool goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. It almost comes to a point where it is overflowing... and then you feel sensuous. You feel a new sensitivity, sensualness, even sexuality... as if all the senses have become fresh, younger, alive... as if the dust has fallen from you and you have taken a bath, and are being cleansed with the shower. That happens.

That’s why people – particularly buddhist monks who have been doing Vipassana for centuries –

don’t eat much. They don’t need to. They eat once – and that too a very meagre meal, very small; you may call it at the most a breakfast... and once a day. They don’t sleep much but they are full of energy. And they are not escapists – they work hard. It is not that they are not working. They will chop wood and work in the garden, in the field, on the farm; they will work the whole day. But something has happened to them, and now the energy is no more being dissipated.

In the West you eat almost five times. The eastern mind cannot conceive of it. What are you doing –

five times? Two times is enough! Buddhists cannot believe it – five times? Once is enough! But the West is so active, so hectic, that the energy is being dissipated. Everybody is boiling and destroying their energy. There is so much worry and tension that everybody is almost always on the verge of breakdown.

Now psychologists say that out of four persons, three persons are somehow mentally ill. Three out of four is too much! Then the fourth also seems to be a little suspicious.

I was reading an anecdote about a great psychoanalyst who was teaching his disciples for months.

He was talking about abnormalities. One disciple said, ’You have been talking so much about the abnormal mind. Please tell us something about the normal.’

The man looked puzzled, and he said, ’If you can find somebody normal, bring him and I will treat him!’

Nobody is normal... normality is almost abnormal. Abnormal has become the norm.

So it happens, if you sit.... And the posture of sitting is very very energy-conserving. The lotus position in which buddhists sit is such that all the ends of the body are meeting – feet upon feet, hands upon hands. These are the points from where the energy moves and flows out, because for the energy to flow out, something pointed is needed. Hence the male sexual organ is a pointed thing because it has to leak much energy. It is almost a safety-valve. When the energy is too much inside you and you cannot do anything, you release it sexually.

In the sexual act a woman never releases any energy. So a woman can make love to many persons’

in one night but a man cannot. A woman can even conserve energy if she knows how; she can even get energy.

From your head no energy is released outside. It has been made by nature in a round shape. So the brain never loses any energy; it conserves – because that is the most important, the central management of your body. It has to be protected – so it is protected by a round skull.

Energy cannot leak out from any round thing. That’s why all the planets – earth and sun and moon and the stars – are all round. Otherwise they will leak energy and will die.

When you sit, you become rounded; hands touching hands. So if this hand releases energy, it moves into another hand. Feet touching feet... and the way you sit becomes almost a circle. Energy moves within you. It is not going out. One conserves it; one becomes by and by a pool. By and by you will feel almost a fullness in your belly. You may be empty, you may not have eaten, but you feel a certain fullness. And then the onrush of sensuality. But it is a good sign, a very very good sign.

So enjoy it.

For at least one hour every day, simply sit and let that feeling come to you. It will make you more vital, more alive.

... it is happening. And whenever it happens, you will feel an immediate shift. If you are male you will feel female; if you are female you will feel male. You will immediately feel something strange.

The moment your circle gets together somehow, the other, the denied part, erupts into consciousness. If you are man, then for the first time suddenly you feel woman spreading all over you and you will feel feminine. If you are a woman, then suddenly you will feel something happening as if you are changing. A denied part that has been in the basement and was not recognised....

Because all the societies in the world force a pattern on every child. They teach the boy that he is just a boy. ’Don’t be sissy, don’t be girlish.’

Every boy is both, and every girl is both. To girls they go on teaching, ’Don’t be a tomboy. Don’t do this, don’t do that. This is for boys – not for you.’

Biologically, the difference is only of emphasis. Man and woman are not two sexes. The division is not so clearcut; they are not water-tight compartments. They overlap... they penetrate into each other. Man and woman are one sex – emphasis is different. Man is more man and less woman.

Woman is more woman and less man, but the difference is of degrees, not of quality.

But the training is such that a boy is taught that he is not a girl at all, so he goes on denying. That goes into the unconscious and goes on accumulating – the other part, the denied part. Everybody has to prove his malehood – that he is a man. Men don’t cry, they don’t weep so easily because they have been taught that tears are only for women. They miss much.

So when it happens that you become a totality, when even if just for a single moment your circle fits, suddenly the emphasis will change – the denied, fresh part which has never been used, which is brand new.... Your man part is almost used; you have used that part for thirty, forty, fifty years. Your woman is completely fresh, young, virgin. When she erupts, the old man will be completely thrown off the throne; it will be so vital.

So there is no need to worry about it, no need to think about it. Just every day for one hour, sit and enjoy and get into it... let the feeling possess you.

[Another group member said that he had unpleasant sensations and wanted to control his breathing.

Osho said it was that need to control that created the unpleasant sensations of fear... ]

... because whenever you are controlling something which has to be natural – and in Vipassana particularly, it has to be natural; that is the very base – you are creating a contradiction in the energy. So there is nothing to worry about. Continue for at least one hour every day.

[Osho said that natural breathing was when the belly goes up and down and the chest is completely relaxed.... ]

But a wrong notion entered into the human mind, and that was to have a small belly and a very protruding chest. The idea came from the body of the lion. The lion has a very small belly and a very big chest.

Somehow the human ego got identified with the lion, and the lion has a very small belly because he eats only once in twenty-four hours, and he lives only on meat, so much food is not needed. A lion’s intestine is very small compared to that of a man; one fourth, not even one fourth. Man is a vegetarian, and if you eat vegetables they need to be longer in your intestines; only then they can be absorbed because they have much roughage.

If you eat meat it has no roughage; it is already digested food. The animal has already done the work for you. You are a sucker. You simply eat it and it is already eaten food, digested, completely digested. So a very small intestine is needed. But the foolishness of man is this – that he has tried to have a small belly like a lion.

Everybody has been taught to pull the belly in and not to breathe from the belly, but from the chest.

So chests have become bigger and bigger – just like Mr Universe’s. Then the belly goes in. But they are ill people; they are not natural. They are ugly really. In a better world, when man has become more natural, they will simply laugh. It will look ridiculous that people tried to be like animals.

So man destroyed his very system of breathing. And then women got the idea that they had to have big breasts and a small belly. That started their unnatural breathing. Whenever I say to somebody, if she is a woman, to breathe naturally, after just four or five days she comes back and says, This is difficult because it seems the belly is growing bigger.’ It grows bigger – but it is worth it.

CHAPTER 5

11 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said that she had been practising Yoga for about ten years. Osho said that it would be helpful for her if she did a few growth groups while she was here, as though there are many benefits in Yoga, it is slightly repressive... ]

The more you train your body, the more you are able to control it, the more repressive you become, unknowingly, because all sorts of control brings repression.

When Yoga first developed, people were very simple. They had nothing to repress really, so the system functioned perfectly well. The system is five thousand years old, and man was in a totally different world. Now the whole world has changed. The mind of man has changed, the body has changed, but the system continues to be the same. It has not evolved with man. A system cannot evolve on its own. It always clings to a particular time – and man goes on changing.

So now, because so much has been culturally repressed, religiously repressed, every person is already repressed. When he starts Yoga, he starts controlling, and then all that is repressed becomes part of him.

So Primal Therapy will be very very helpful; it will bring things out. And something like Yoga plus some cathartic method is needed so you become disciplined, and yet you are not repressing. Then there is a perfect combination. That’s what I am doing here.

All these methods, dynamic meditation and others, are all cathartic, so you become empty, and then you control yourself. When control happens in emptiness, it is tremendously beautiful. But when you have the whole marketplace inside and you control, you become almost imprisoned in it. Your own control becomes a great load on your being. It doesn’t give you weightlessness. It doesn’t allow you to fly into the sky. It makes you more and more rooted in the earth. You become heavier and heavier and heavier.

So every practitioner of Yoga, particularly in this modern world, needs to work simultaneously on catharsis. Both the works should go together, so you go on controlling and you go on throwing out all the rubbish. A day comes when discipline is there, but there is nothing to discipline it. One is innocent. Then discipline becomes spontaneous. There is no sting of control in it. One feels disciplined and yet free. And unless a discipline becomes freedom, it is dangerous.

[A visitor said that she had been attracted to Osho because she had heard that he spoke on Zen, in which she was interested, having read something about it.]

Do something about it!

... because reading won’t help, and reading can sometimes give a very wrong impression about it.

It is something which cannot be said, and the moment you say it, you falsify it.

It is not an ordinary religion. It is tremendously extraordinary. And it is so paradoxical that if you read it, it looks almost absurd. Only through feeling can you realise that it is not absurd... that it is the greatest sanity possible to humanity. If you read, it looks almost mad, crazy.

Maybe because of that craziness, many people become interested in it. In the West, people are burdened too much with reason. They are fed up with it. The whole logical effort has proved almost imprisoning – categories, divisions, clear cut definitions. The western mind seems to be fed up with all that, with the whole aristotelean attitude. So now the pendulum swings to the opposite, and Zen seems to be very appealing and interesting. But if it remains only that – interesting, amusing – then it may humour you a little, tickle you a little, but it is not going to be of any help.

Move into it. It will need effort... you will be put to task, your mettle will be put to test. And it is arduous. Many people go through books and they think it is going to be very easy. It almost seems like some type of hippiedom. It is not. It is one of the most arduous efforts ever made by human beings.

It talks about spontaneity, but to achieve that spontaneity, one has to pass through years of training and discipline. That spontaneity is not available right now. right now if you become spontaneous, you will just be a victim of the lower self, the instinctive. Then you will not be rising higher in your consciousness, and you will not become integrated. On the contrary, you may just become a driftwood.

Many people become interested in Zen, but when they go into the real Zen they become afraid. So if you are really interested, go before the interest wanes and disappears. And don’t make it just an intelectua amusement – it is not. It is a very great discipline. If one can pass through it, one achieves something which even death cannot destroy. And only that which death cannot destroy is to be called an achievement. All that death can destroy is just playing around, fooling around, because sooner or later death comes and takes everything that you were thinking you had achieved.

I was just reading about a great mohammedan calipha, a king, Harun-al-Rashid. He had a buffoon in the court, as was the custom in the old courts. He asked the buffoon, ’Don’t you sometimes think that it would be good if you could become an emperor yourself?’

The buffoon said, ’No, never. I have never even dreamt about it. Nobody can tell me that I have ever been greedy in that respect.’

Harun-al-Rashid said, ’Why? Everybody wants to be somebody.’

The buffoon said, ’Think of yourself in a desert, thirsty for one glass of water. How much will you be ready to give?’

Harun said, ’I will give half my kingdom.’

And the buffoon said, ’If you are not satisfied and another glass is needed, and the same price is asked, what are you going to do?’

Harun said, ’I will give the other half.’

The buffoon laughed and said, ’So your whole kingdom is worth nothing more than a glass of water!’

All that we achieve in life is dreamstuff, unless you come across something – something which is deathless and which death cannot destroy. But to come to that, one has to work hard. It is an uphill task. So don’t remain just interested – move into it.

Whenever a good interest is there, do something to materialise it. Otherwise things come and go like fashions. I have seen many people who have become interested in Zen; then by and by they become interested in other things. The mind goes on changing. You can go on changing like that every six months, two years, three years.

Then a new phase comes, a new thing becomes prevalent. People start talking, gossiping about it – sometimes about meditation, sometimes about this and that. Everybody becomes interested

– as if it is new movie on the TV and everybody is talking about it. One has to know about it to be respectable, to be part of the high-brow society. Just like that, Zen has become an interesting subject. It is not an interesting subject. It is one of the most arduous things.So go to Japan, mm? It is good.

[A sannyasin says: I really want to stay here... in your energy.]

That’s all there is to be done, and is needed to be done. Just to be near me is enough. If you don’t do anything else, that will do.

Just be near me – that is one of the doors to the divine.

Effort is needed because people don’t know how to be near someone who has disappeared. They don’t know how to be in the presence of one who is not. And it is difficult in a way, because if you come too close to me, you will be almost on the brink of an abyss. One feels afraid. So it is good to watch the step and remain a little far away. But come, by and by, as dose as you can gather courage to.

I cannot come close to you, because I am not there. You have to come dose to me. I’m available...

you can take as much as you want. But you will have to come.

There is a very famous sufi story. A sufi master was meditating, doing his evening prayer, in a small village on a hill-top. He was sitting by a wall and he saw another man sitting on the wall. Just by the side of the wall a small freshwater spring was flowing. The man was throwing bricks – taking them out of the wall, and throwing them into the spring.

The sufi master was watching, and he asked the man, ’What is the matter? What are you doing?’

The man said; ’I am very thirsty.’

The Sufi said, ’If you are thirsty, why don’t you come to the spring? You can come down from there

– it is just a few feet down. Why are you throwing these bricks?’

The man said, ’I am trying to bring the spring closer to me, brick by brick. By throwing the bricks, the spring is getting higher and higher, and sooner or later it will come. Moreover, when the brick falls and the water splashes, it gives me tremendous pleasure just to sit here and hear the sound of the water. And I am not going to remain thirsty forever – water is here.’

So if you are close to me, even the splash will make you happy – but it is not going to quench your thirst. And don’t throw bricks at me because that will not help (chuckling). I am not going to come closer to you... you have to come closer to me!

So that’s the only thing one has to do. Perfectly good! Do it with my blessings. Just be here –

nothing else is needed. All else is just an excuse for you to be here. I tell you to do meditations, I tell you to do the groups, this and that. That is just an excuse for you to be here, to be close to me, because it will be very difficult for you just to be here, not doing anything. Then you will find a thousand and one excuses to go away.

So I go on creating methods; they are toys so you can play with them, and can remain engaged.

But meanwhile, all the time, something very different is happening – you may be aware or not.

And that is, remaining dose to me, something is changing all the time. You are engaged with the meditations... I am engaged in something else. That’s your being open to me, just your being here.

By and by, when you will understand, there will be no need to do anything... just being here.

This is what is called satsang – to be in the presence of one who is not. By and by you become one with his being.

By and by you give space and you receive me. You get out and I come in. And this can happen any moment because no effort is needed, just a tacit understanding, mm? just a tacit love.

[A sannyasin says: When I’m making love I feel a small resistance... but I just keep going and then it goes away.]

That resistance will go, mm? It is always there, and particularly when you are in a love relationship.

When you are with a stranger there may not be any resistance because there is no need. He may be close physically, but he is far away.

The resistance starts the more you feel close to a person, because it seems he is coming so close you may lose yourself in him, or he may almost trespass your being. When the boundaries of two personalities start coming very very close, fear arises about what is happening. Are you going to be engulfed? Are you going to be completely eaten? dissolved? A certain resistance comes.

That’s why people make love but very few attain to orgasm. Particularly women... they very rarely attain to orgasm. Even if they attain, it is not total – just a fragmentary orgasm. If the resistance is there, orgasm cannot happen because your energy is divided. You want to go and meet the other person deeply, totally, and still you are holding yourself back. So you are doing two things together which are opposite, contradictory. And orgasm is possible only when you are one flow of energy, a total energy flow.

So by and by drop that resistance also. And this is going to help you finally with me. Because if you have resistance in love, you will have more resistance in trust. One has to learn how to drop resistance in love. Then one becomes capable of prayer.

You will be capable of understanding me, of being here and feeling my presence totally, when your love has become completely flawless. Prayer is a higher stage of love – when there is no physical, no mental thing about it... it is pure spirit.

So first sex has to become orgasmic. Then love has to become non-resistant – only then prayer arises. These are the steps.

Just remain alert and drop all resistance. Whenever you feel that resistance is there, just relax the body and exhale. Exhalation will help immediately, because whenever we resist something, we keep, we hold the breath in. That is the physical part of resistance. Whenever you are resisting somebody you will not allow a deep breath; you will hold the breath. If you relax the breath, the resistance will be relaxed immediately.

So whenever you feel the resistance is there, just exhale deeply and imagine that the whole resistance is being thrown out with the breath. Breathe it out.

And things are going really well. Just don’t create any problems, mm? Sometimes the mind wants to create problems – resist the temptation; don’t create the problem. If you can remain non-problematic for a little while, much will happen.

[A sannyasin says: ... it seems I have been dreaming all the time in this way.]

Everybody is dreaming. But once you understand that you have been dreaming, then the possibility is there for you to wake up. And you can awake – there is no problem. When you see that you have been dreaming, then just make yourself more alert; dreams will disappear.

But everybody is dreaming, and everybody has to come to a point where one understands that the whole life up to now has been just a dream.

... Just do one thing: whenever you feel that you are dreaming, just watch your dreams. Close your eyes and watch your dreams with total attention; don’t try to stop them. U you stop them, they again move into the dark comers of your being and they watch and wait there. Whenever they feel that you are again in a sleepy mood, they will bubble up.

So don’t in any way stop dreaming, otherwise the dreaming will continue, and will haunt you. Never stop a thing; let it complete its course. Just close your eyes and see your dream. It is a beautiful film. Just be a watcher, a witness. The problem arises when you become identified.

You can go to a movie and try. Go and sit there, and continuously for two or three hours as the movie goes on, you have to remember that it is just a movie, that nothing is there in the screen –

only shadows – and don’t get identified.

Somebody is getting killed on the screen. Don’t get identified in any way, don’t get shocked.

Something terrible is happening to somebody. Don’t start crying – because nothing is happening and there is nobody. Something else happens and the whole hall laughs and you also start laughing.

Catch yourself redhanded. What are you doing? Laughing? And there is nothing to laugh at! – just a projected film.

The same is the case with the mind... it is also a movie, and your mind functions as a screen. Your desires go on projecting onto it and you are a witness. Of course it is a very very close affair and it will be difficult in the beginning, but it can happen.

And when it happens, one simply awakes out of a great sleep of many lives. Then one simply laughs!

The whole thing was so absurd, simply ridiculous!

And watch your actions. If you are feeling angry, close your eyes and watch your anger. There is no need to do anything, because the moment you do, you are identified. Just catch hold again and again before a thought becomes a deed. Remember, either the thought will become a deed, or it will dissipate, disappear, evaporate.

If you become unconscious, the thought tries to become deed. If you become conscious, the thought disappears.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group was present. A group member said he had a sensation of fear in his left temple; he was trying to watch his mind and became frustrated with himself.]

Mm mm, I understand.... The group has been very good for you, but sometimes this happens, because this group is basically Zen. The whole function of this method is centred in the rightside brain.

The rightside brain is the receptive, the intuitive, the poetic The leftside brain is reason, logic, science, prose. When you move to the rightside brain it is a change of gear, because for your whole life you have lived from the left side.

Your leftside brain is the trained, disciplined brain. All the universities exist for the left side. All the churches, theologies, dogmas, exist for the left side. They are all afraid of the right side. The right side seems to be dangerous, because the right side knows no logic, no reason, no categories... it is wild.

So when the shift happens, the left side starts feeling very afraid. It rarely happens so physically as it has happened to you. You felt it exactly on that side – the fear, the anguish, the anxiety. This is a beautiful indication that the shift has happened, otherwise it won’t happen; this anxiety won’t come.

But don’t be worried – it is only in the beginning.

Every day for at least one hour, simply sit. Do something that you were doing in the group that took you the highest, and just move from the left brain to the right. Let the left feel a little deserted; it will feel a little deserted. Soon your whole being will become so enriched that the fear will disappear.

The leftsided brain is very logical. Once it sees that there has been no trouble, there has been no loss, that it is profitable and you are being enriched, the fear disappears. Even the logical mind starts helping the illogical mind.

Then the logical becomes the means and the illogical becomes the end. Your prose also becomes, by and by, more poetic. But it will take a little time, so don’t be worried. It has been very very good.

[A group member said she had tension but was not sure where in the body.]

.... sometimes it happens that the mind goes on avoiding the real place. The mind tries not to know it.

Whenever one is holding something, it is almost always in the stomach.

These may be the

consequences of it, the by-products, but these are not the places where you can hold. Holding is always in the stomach, and these places can show the tensions.

[Osho checked her energy and said that twice a day before she took a bath. she should take a rough, dry towel and massage her stomach firmly for three to five minutes. This should be done before the bath, and done firmly enough to make the area hot, and then she should take a cool shower.... ]

Once the stomach energy moves rightly, these symptoms will disappear. The problem is not there, but the mind is so cunning that it will not allow you to know the real cause. It tries to hide the real cause so you can go on struggling with the consequences, and nothing will happen.

[Another group member said he felt completely empty... and his vision seemed distorted.]

Good. Emptiness is tile goal of the whole effort. We are trying to make you empty. And when such a great thing happens inside you that you feel empty, everything will be affected; the vision will be affected. But that will settle, mm? Within a week the vision will be okay and everything will come back.

Continue to feel the emptiness... don’t let it go now. Whenever you feel that it is slipping out of the hands, dose the room and sit, and again dip into it. Catch hold of it and bring it back home. In the day, two or three times, relive that experience of emptiness, so that it remains fresh and flowing.

Soon you will see that when you really become in tune with emptiness, it is being filled by something unknown.

Emptiness is the first step. The second step follows itself if you fulfill the first. Something starts descending in you.

But when emptiness comes, things will happen.

Sometimes one loses the alignment of the

body, sometimes the vision. Sometimes the hearing is affected, sometimes the taste disappears, sometimes one cannot smell. It is such a critical moment that the whole body goes through a change, and the change is great.

And the mind is connected so deeply with the eyes, that eighty percent of the information the mind receives comes from the eyes – eighty percent – and twenty percent from the rest of the body. So from each of the other senses, there is only five percent.

So when the mind feels empty, the eyes lose alignment. Sometimes there is distortion. You will see double vision ... you can see things round shaped which are not round shaped. So just remain a little alert.

[Osho suggested to him that three or four times a day he should rub his eyes until they were hot and then splash them with cold water. He said that whenever something in the body is disturbed, the thing that brings it back to normality is a hot sensation followed by cold. When the eyes are made hot, they expand. When they are made cold, the fibres shrink. Through the action of expansion and contraction, flexibility is retained.]

CHAPTER 6

12 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said she had been having very frightening dreams, since childhood, in which she was being cut into.]

This will go... this will go. You have to do one thing – do it consciously. It will be difficult, but you have to do it consciously. Whatever one avoids in the day, comes in the night. The night is just a completion of something that has been left incomplete in the day. The mind tends to complete things

– it is a perfectionist.

Do one thing about this nightmare. Every day – the evening will be good – for half an hour sit in your room, close the door, and imagine all sorts of things that come into the nightmare. Create a nightmare consciously. And not just so-so; make it as intense as possible. Give it as much energy as possible and let the imagination have full play. Make it so real that you yourself almost forget that it is imagination. Only then will it disappear.

And don’t say that this is imagination, silly. Then again it will come back. If you can live it every day for half an hour, you will exhaust the source. It will soon disappear in the night and the nights will become calm and quiet. So continue it until it disappears in the night completely, then tell me. It may take two, three or four weeks, but still continue. Even if you feel that it is silly, you have to continue.

If it is not coming you have to force it to come.

If it has remained there since childhood it must have deep roots. They have to be pulled out. And do it well. If you cannot do it well, I will have to tell Pujari to bring the snake!

[The snake that Osho was referring to is used in the Tathata group as a tool to help people get into and overcome any phobia they may have about snakes. He is actually a rather harmless-looking snake (see ’Nothing To Lose But Your Head’).]

Then he will put it on you! So if you want to avoid this (chuckling), make it real! Otherwise, Pujari has a good snake. Have you seen it? And he does things!

[The Soma group, which was present tonight. A group assistant says that some problems came up which would be better dealt with in Encounter or other groups.]

They will be solved. And if they are not solved by the end of the group, you can suggest to the person to do Encounter or Primal or whatsoever you feel.

In fact this should be made a point to all the groupleaders – that if they feel the person needs some other group, after the group they should suggest that to the person. But there is no need to suggest it in the middle of the group because the problem may disappear.

This is going to be so because everything is so interlinked. The same will happen in the Encounter group; they will feel that a problem can be solved in the Soma group. Every group has its limitations, and no group can be total, because if it is total it will be too long. It will be almost as long as life (laughter). Only then it can be total; otherwise not. There are problems which can be solved only in life; no group can solve them.

So don’t expect the impossible. Whatsoever can be done under the limits, you have to do. And don’t be too worried about too many problems. Because this is my observation – that if you wait just a little, ninety-five percent of problems disappear on their own. Nothing is to be done; they disappear on their own. It is just as they say about the common cold. If you treat it, it takes seven days. If you don’t treat it, it goes in one week – but it goes! (laughter) More problems are like that. They are momentary.

It happens every day – somebody has a problem and he goes to the office for an appointment. After two days the appointment is given. By the time he comes, he says the problem is gone! Just time.

The mind is so momentary that whenever something arises, it takes it and becomes excited about it.

There is a very old sufi story. A king called his wise men and said, ’I would like some advice from you. In just one simple sentence, give me a sutra which can be used in all situations of life, and which is to solve all the problems of life – a masterkey.’

The wise men were very much afraid. What to do? They couldn’t begin to think about it. How to make just one small maxim which is going to solve everything? They asked for time. The king waited months and then said, ’What are you doing? Bring that advice!’

In this time they had been searching for somebody who could help, and they found a sufi master.

The sufi master told them, ’No need to say anything. This is the advice.’ He wrote it on a piece of paper, put it in a locket, and gave it to the wise men. He told them to give it to the king and to tell him not to open it unless he felt it was absolutely necessary. ’If it is not absolutely necessary, if he can tackle it by some other means, then don’t use it. This is a masterkey. It is very valuable. Don’t use it on ordinary locks which can be opened by other means.’

The king was very happy. He waited for an opportunity but it never came. He waited and waited, but whatsoever problems came, he would think, ’This is not absolutely necessary. I can tackle it.’ And as time passed, he could tackle it.

He became very curious about the locket. What advice was there? But he had made a promise. He had promised that he would not open it unless it was an almost life-and-death problem. Then came the time.

A neighbouring kingdom defeated him. He escaped into the forest, into the hills, with the enemy following. He could hear their footsteps of the horses coming closer and closer and closer. He came to a precipice – now there was no go. He could not go back and the enemy was coming. They would be there within seconds. And he would die if he jumped. Now was the moment.

He couldn’t find any solution, so he opened the locket. There was a simple sentence: ’This too will pass.’ Just this much was written on it.

He said, ’What type of person is that old man, befooling me? There is nothing in it, and I was thinking that it was a great secret – This too will pass.’ But it happened that while he was reading it, suddenly he became aware that the horses seemed to be going further away, not coming closer. They had missed the path – and they went away.

He folded the paper and put it back into the locket. After two days he was saved by his friends, and they recaptured their kingdom. There was great jubilation and ceremony and he was received in the capital. Flowers were being thrown and the whole path was decorated with flowers.

The king became so happy, so exalted – as if he would burst with happiness. Suddenly he felt again that he was in danger. The happiness was too much. He looked at the sutra again, the same sutra: This too will pass.

When he came to his palace he enquired who had given this advice. He went to the sufi master and became an initiate; he dropped his kingdom. He said, ’The man who has given such great advice is the. man to be followed. I surrender myself to you. I have understood. Everything is going to pass

– even this life is going to pass – so I have come in search of that which is not going to pass. Show me that.’

So this happens. Almost ninety-five percent of problems will pass; they just need a little time. Don’t be worried about them. Then five percent are left. Four percent can be solved by methods. They are like diseases which can be cured by allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy – anything. They just need the attention of the therapist.

So it doesn’t matter what type of medicine is being used. If the doctor knows how to tackle the patient, how to give attention to him, how to be caring about him, these four percent will be solved

– even by placebos, by false medicines. That’s why so many pseudo-gurus exist in the world. They cannot exist unless they are helping some way. How can pseudo-gurus exist so long? And so many of them! These pseudo-gurus are placebos.

Placebo is a medical term for a false medicine which is not medicine but sugar pills. You say that this is aspirin and the person believes that it is. It helps... the belief helps, not the aspirin. In fact many experiments have been done and sugar pills have been shown to help as much as aspirin; just the same percentage. If five percent of headaches are cured by aspirin, five percent are cured by sugar pills. Aspirin is a sugar pill.

That’s why whenever a new medicine is invented it cures many people. But by and by, as time passes, it doesn’t cure so many. By and by it relapses – and again a new medicine is needed.

Whenever a new medicine comes into existence, everybody is so hopeful – the panacea has been found. This hope helps so many people.

But then there are pessimists in the world, hopeless people. You give them any medicine and nothing works on them. Then they say, ’I have taken this panacea; this is nonsense.’ They create disbelief in others, and then the medicine by and by disappears.

Many times, millions of times, panaceas have been discovered and lost again and again. After each two years, something is invented – penicillin or something, erythromycin – and the whole world is agog, ready to receive it. Now the last thing has come! But those pessimists are dangerous people.

They will fail every medicine and every doctor! But they keep balance. They don’t allow you to go too far into your belief; they bring you back.

So four percent of problems will be solved by any method. Even by no-method, by Zen, they can be solved. It is not a method at all. If you just tell the person to sit facing a wall, they will be solved.

So ninety-five percent just need time – ’This too will pass.’ Four percent need the care of the therapist, of the doctor, of the guru, the nurse, the wife, the husband – some care, somebody to pay attention to you and sympathise and give you hope and confidence. Then they will go. And one percent never goes.

That one percent is the real problem. That’ goes only when understanding arises. Nobody can help that, nobody. That one percent goes only when you try to understand, when you rise in awareness, when you become so understanding that you don’t create that problem. Otherwise it remains, it continues. This has to be understood. So if you are a therapist, never be worried. You cannot do anything about that one percent, sq forget all about it.

So for ninety-five percent just give time, and for the four percent, pay attention, be careful. Be careful and loving – this is the whole science of medicine. But it is needed because people are not alert, aware, conscious. If they are conscious, then there is no problem, mm? Good.

[A group member said that she enjoyed the group, but since then she has felt out of touch with things; as if everything is a dream and she is very detached.]

Nothing is wrong... just a detached state of mind is arising – very very cool; and that’s good. But it is always shattering because it is cool – it is not hot. And the whole western training is for being hot.

You don’t know that emotions can exist in a cool state also. Then they are more beautiful than they ever are in a hot state, because when you are hot, you are feverish. When you are cool, you are collected... a tranquillity exists within you.

But it is difficult to conceive of a cool welcome. We say a ’warm welcome’. Somehow, all that is hot is thought to be alive; that’s not true. There is a love which is cool, absolutely cool. The love of a buddha... you will feel the coolness of it. It is like a great tree, and you are sitting under the shade of it, and a cool breeze is blowing. Or you are under a cool shower... or in a small pool of cool water in the hilly... everything silent. And the coolness is not only outside. It has entered you... you have become one with it.

When this happens for the first time, one feels very much afraid, as if life is going out of one’s hands, as if one will never be able to love again, never be able to be excited again. So one feels scared –

but there is no need to be.

And in this state everything will look like a dream, far away. Nothing will look real – nothing is real.

Only the seer is real – everything seen is dream.

This is the goal of all meditation – to come to a realisation that everything is made of dream. When everything is a dream you need not be excited about it. Everything is good; good and bad lose their distinctions. One goes inwards more and more. Because there is no reality outside, the inner becomes the real. If the outer is real, you move in the outer and you forget the inner. The inner becomes dream.

So people who are outgoing, extroverts, always think introverts are dreamers – closing their eyes and watching their navels, ’lotus-eaters’... just dreaming. But people who have gone deep inside themselves, think others are just stupid; victims of hallucinations, illusions. Nothing is real... only the seer. Everything is a projection.

So this will come. Allow it, and allow it happily; don’t get depressed. Otherwise you will start getting out of it; you will struggle against it. You will resist it as if you are slipping into death. Don’t be worried

– you are coming to terms with life as it is. Feel happy... feel coolly happy.

In the beginning it will be difficult. But soon when you have tasted it and you are drunk with it, you will not be ready to give it for anything whatsoever.

[One of the leaders said that they had prepared a meditation method during the course to show to Osho. The group made their way to the lower porch and knelt in a circular formation with their eyes closed.

The exercise, which is sufi-based, is set to music by Ravel, especially composed for this and other sufi exercises. The meditation begins by moving the arms upwards, heavenward, on the in breath, until one’s body is completely extended upwards, palms and face, upturned.

After a minute’s pause and holding of the breath, the body slowly comes down to the ground, foreheads making contact with the earth, and hands and arms outstretched – this with an exhalation of breath.]

It is a very good meditation – it can be done every day.

Just two or three things. When you bring your hands up, when you open them, let them be touched by everybody, they should not be separate. When they are spread, everybody touches. There is no need to hold – just touch. That will give tremendous energy.

And it should be done in a circle... in a closed circle, so that when you touch, the whole energy becomes a circle. Alone, you cannot go far, but together you can go any distance. The total is more than the total of the individuals. So touch hands.

When you come down on the earth, what do you do inside?

[The group assistant said: Just breathing right out.]

Breathing right out – nothing else? Because if you feel surrender, it will help. So breathe out and feel surrendered to God. Just like a wave rises and falls back to the ocean, so when you fall back into the earth, you are like a wave which is disappearing. Then again you rise as if a completely new wave arises. Feel new... totally new, fresh – then again, fall.

Soon you will have the feeling of a great oceanic energy surrounding you. You will become just waves coming up and falling down, coming up and falling down. You will almost hear the sound ...

and the feeling. And the last time when you fall, remain in that posture for at least five minutes. Don’t be in a hurry. At least for five minutes remain relaxed, gone... disappear.

It is a very good meditation. It will be helpful. Make it a point to do it every day. It will be best to make it the last meditation every day, mm? Good!

CHAPTER 7

13 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said she was uncertain whether she should be in a relationship or not and whether the man she was with was the right one for her.]

Ordinarily a relationship always disturbs. Unless you are capable of remaining alone, a relationship always disturbs.

It is almost like a banker. If you have money, the banker will give it to you. If you don’t have it, they won’t give it to you. When you have, everybody is ready to help; when you don’t have it, nobody is available! So the bank goes on giving to people who are rich.

It is exactly the same case with relationships. If you are happy, relationships will make you happier.

If you are happy alone – that means, if you are not in need of a relationship – then only a relationship gives you happiness. If you are in need of it, then you will become miserable – because all dependence brings misery.

The moment you feel dependent on someone for your happiness, you start feeling miserable, because slavery is the thing most hated by the being. Ordinarily all relationships turn into slaveries, sort of bondages, imprisonments.

I was worried that sooner or later you will get into trouble (chuckling),because when one is feeling good, one forgets what type of misery a relationship can bring. This is how the mind functions.

When you are alone, you have a fantasy about what happiness will come to you when you are in a relationship. When you are in a relationship, you start thinking that it is better to be alone.

My suggestion is that if you can remain without a relationship, it is going to be very helpful to you.

Basically there is no need, but in the western world a new thing has happened, just the polar opposite of the eastern mind.

The eastern world thinks that if you move in a love relationship, something is wrong. So the eastern mind has always appreciated the celibate. the one who lives alone and is not in any way moving into a relationship. If you move into a relationship, you are almost something special – which is foolishness. In the West just the opposite has arisen.

If you are not in a relationship, something is wrong. If you don’t move into a relationship you are committing some sin against nature, or at least against psychology.

So the western mind goes on thinking that whenever one is alone something is wrong, and that one should move into a relationship. In the East people go on thinking about how they can move out of a relationship. They are both wrong. One should live where one is happy. One should be selfish. I teach you absolute selfishness. One should just think, ’In what am I happy?’

What psychologists and theologicians say, and what the East says, is all mumbojumbo. Drop it!

Don’t be concerned. Nobody has considered you. They may have considered other people but nobody has considered you. No theory exists for you as yet. And all theories are averages, just analysations of particular phenomena.

You are rare – no theory exists for you. Don’t consult any psychologists or any priest. Simply look at yourself. In what you feel happy, blissful, tuneful, harmonious – that is your way. If you were feeling good – and you were, you were flowering.... Now suddenly this relationship and you are disturbed and the energy is flowing no more.

If you drop out of it, it will be good. You can leave it to me, and when I see that now you are so happy alone and there is no need for a relationship, I will tell you to move into a relationship. When you are lonely enough I will get you a man (laughter).

First get established in your being... grounded... so settled that now nobody can disturb you. Open the windows and let the wind blow, and enjoy it. First be grounded so deeply that nobody can pull you down.

[A sannyasin who is involved with a married sannyasin, expressed concern about returning to the West. She said she was usually in a triangle situation.... ]

People learn these roles. Once they learn them they become efficient. Then you cannot change the role because you have not been so efficient in other roles; that’s the problem. You must have learned how to become part of a triangle so you become like a buffer between two persons.

And you enjoy it also, because it gives a certain power. When somebody is interested in you and he has a wife, you feel more powerful. There is a competition; a subtle competition between you and the wife. Triangles are always dangerous. It is better not to get into them.

The basic urge to get into a triangle is not love, it is something else. It is power. You feel more powerful because you can pull [your boyfriend] from his wife towards you. And the wife is also feeling powerful – she pulls [her husband], and he is just a football between the two of you. When he is hit by her, he comes to you. When you hit him, he goes there.

It cannot become a very mature love; it is childish. But it is difficult to get out of any triangle. You were happy when he was not here, and you are again happy now he is gone. All those days in between were unhappy. But still you cannot drop out of it because you have learned the role. You know how to play this tape so you play it again and again. You can go on playing it unless you become courageous enough and you stop. Whatsoever brings misery, stop it immediately. Otherwise one becomes accustomed to misery, habituated to misery.

If something is miserable, get out of it – whatsoever the cost. In the end you will find it has not been costly. In the end you will feel thankful to God that you came out of it.

And this is not only with [your boyfriend]. For the whole life remember it... Let it be a deep tacit understanding. Whenever you feel that something is becoming miserable, then have enough courage to get out of it. You only know how to get in and you don’t know how to get out – as if your house has only an entrance and no exit.

But I’m not saying get out of it – because if I say that, you will cling more. I’m not saying anything.

I’m simply saying to become understanding and see the whole point. You cannot be happy in it. You cannot become very intimate because the third person will always be there. He is not ready to leave his wife, and he is not ready to leave you. And neither of you are ready to leave him – then what can be done?

Become a little more courageous. Tell him that either he decides or you decide. Tell him that if he loves you, to get out of it – because the wife must be suffering. She must be suffering more than you because she has more vested interest. You must be the enemy and she must be suffering because of that tension. And you are suffering.

I cannot see how a man can be happy between two suffering women. It is difficult enough even with one suffering woman. But by and by we become immune and we accept misery as our fate, as if it is a destiny. But enough! Go back and decide something.

The whole point of being with me is to be courageous enough to take your life in your own hands.

See what you have been doing to it. And don’t be destructive in it. Love yourself – and everything else follows.

[Another sannyasin said she was always fighting with her Indian boyfriend, but was afraid that if she topped she would be dead again.]

But why fight? Rather than getting out of the relationship, decide not to fight! What is the point of fighting?..

Don’t take a settled, harmonious life as being a dead one. A few people think that fighting and getting excited and shouting and getting angry is life. This is not life. It gives you a false illusion of being alive because you scream and shout and fight and then things settle. Then again you learn and you ask each other’s pardon – and the game goes on.

Again you fight. There is divorce – mini-divorce – and then you get married again. This is just sheer excitement, fever. It is not a healthy state; it is unhealthy.

When two persons feel harmonious, loving and caring about each other, helping each other to grow, and are creative, of course everything becomes silent. It is as if there are not two persons but one.

You can interpret it as deadness, but that is your wrong interpretation. It may be just stillness.

So change your interpretation and drop fighting. Sooner or later you will have to find somebody else, because you cannot be alone right now. And there are only two possibilities: casual relationships which never go very deep, and which destroy much. By and by one starts loving the casual thing because there is less responsibility. That is dangerous, because unless love grows very intimate, it will not come to fruition; it will not be fulfilled. You will not come to know what it really is. You touch the periphery... it is a hit-and-run affair.

[She answers: You spoke the other day about the indian mind and I thought I am also false and indirect and that is why I am attracted to Indians.]

That is not the point. Your attraction for an Indian is for a different reason. You would like to have a stable relationship, and that is more possible with an Indian than with a Westerner. You would like to have a more loving and an intimate and caring relationship, and that is more possible with an Indian.

Your attraction towards an Indian is not bad at all.

I understand the problem. You have been brought up in the West and you feel attracted towards Indians, but your own western ways will create trouble. If you find a Westerner, your western ways may not create trouble, but your inner desire which is seeking an Indian will not be fulfilled. So you have to think about it.

With an Indian you can settle and things will grow very deep. Indians have believed for centuries that love is only for once. It is not a casual thing, changing every day. It is not like a fashion – somebody comes along with a better face, a fairer colour, and everyone changes. They believe that love should be a very permanent thing, and it is very meaningful. If it can become permanent it is very beautiful.

Your desire is not wrong; it is absolutely in the right direction, but your western upbringing is a problem. No indian woman will hit her lover; impossible. But you hit! That comes very easy to the Westerner. You have to drop that, otherwise an Indian will simply feel puzzled at what is happening; what type of love this is.

So just try for a few more days, mm? And then I will see. Don’t be worried.

[A sannyasin says: I’m finding myself in emptiness a lot. I feel like I just want to die... I’ve tried to enjoy it... I’ve tried to just give in to it – and that doesn’t work either.]

Don’t do anything – there is nothing to do. When one wants to die, one dies! What is the point of doing? If the desire is there, it is there; there is nothing wrong in it. When you start doing something you have already taken the standpoint that something is wrong in it.

It may be simply that you have come to feel the illusoriness of life, and the desire for it has disappeared or is disappearing. You interpret it as a desire to die. It is not a desire to die. This is how the mind goes on giving wrong interpretations. When life seems illusory, when nothing seems worthwhile – and nothing is – then suddenly the mind says, ’What is the point of living? Die!’

– as if death is going to be more meaningful than life! When life is not meaningful how can death be meaningful? When even life is illusory, death is going to be more of an illusion. So what is the point in choosing?

One simply understands that life is illusory. Finished! No enlightened person has ever committed suicide. They should all commit suicide because they say life is meaningless; it is an illusion; there is nothing in it. So why should they go on living?

They go on living because they say in death also there is nothing left to be chosen. The whole of life is meaningless – death included! So there is nothing to do. When death comes they will accept. If it is not coming they will not do anything to bring it about. That would show that they are now clinging to death. First they were clinging to life, now they are clinging to death – but the clinging continues.

So drop that clinging. It is beautiful... just say that life is finished. But when death comes, it will come. Of course you will not try to avoid it. You will say, ’Come in, no need to wall at the door... no need to even knock. No need to even ask permission: ”May I come in, madam?” No need. Come in’ – that’s all.

Then one becomes absolutely serene and tranquil. One lives, but as if in a drama. Nothing to choose, nowhere to go. Whatsoever happens, happens. One simply floats with it. While it is life, one is alive. When it is death, one is dead.

Somebody asked Lin-Chi, ’What did you used to do before you became enlightened?’

He said, ’I used to chop wood and carry water.’

And then the man asked, ’What have you been doing since enlightenment?’ Lin-Chi said, ’I am doing the same – chopping wood, carrying water. But before I used to do it with great expectations.

Now I simply do it – there is nothing else to do! I chop wood because I know how to, and I know how to carry water. The activity remains the same – the quality of awareness changes.’

CHAPTER 8

14 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A couple were at darshan together. He said that he felt some frustration in their relationship – over just little things.]

Relationships bring up many things which are hidden in you. A relationship never creates anything.

It can only bring out something which is already there.

So never throw the responsibility on the other. The other is, at the most, a help to show the undercurrents of your mind. And that’s how a relationship helps. It is almost a mirror – but you see your face, and Geeta will be seeing her face. Whatsoever we do, we are the source. So whenever you feel angry, remember – it is you who is feeling angry. Never make the other feel guilty.

That’s the strategy of the mind. That’s how one goes on avoiding one’s own encounter.

When you feel angry just say, ’I am feeling angry.’ Don’t say; ’You have made me angry.’ And that is the same with all emotions. You are feeling sad. Say, ’I am feeling sad,’ but never say to the other,

’You have made me sad.’ Nobody can make you sad; nobody can make you happy. If you decide to be happy, you are. If you decide to be unhappy, you will become unhappy – it is your decision. So use the relationship as a mirror and become more and more aware and alert.

But always fall back on yourself; then it can become a very very great situation for growth. And if you love, love is capable enough of surviving everything: sadness, anger, unhappiness, a little conflict here and there. If love is there it will survive all. And through surviving all these situations it becomes intense... more understanding, more mature.

These things are not against love – if it is there. If it is not there, then there is no point. If you love the other person you are ready to pass through all these dark nights because you know the morning is coming... it is always there. If you love a person you can be patient. And love is so valuable that anything else is, at the most, a cost to be paid for it. But it is worth it.

The problem arises only when you don’t have love. Then there is only anger and sadness and unhappiness. If you see that in some relationship, drop out of it. To be miserable is not only bad for you, it is bad for the other. Just for the other’s sake, get out of it. Don’t cling, and don’t continue in it because that will be destructive.

And once a person learns how to cling to misery – that means once a person starts taking a morbid interest in misery, in fact has learned how to be happy in unhappiness – then it is very difficult. You may change the partner but with the other partner you will do the same. Or you may be alone, but with yourself you will be the same. So just watch, mm? Love and watch and be aware.

[The sannyasin says he is trying to find a reason for the conflict, and is frustrated by his girlfriend.]

No, nobody can frustrate you – that’s what I’m saying. Always remember that you are your world. If Geeta is there it is your choice. Basically you have chosen her, allowed her in your world. And if you feel frustrated, just look into it; somewhere deep down you are frustrating yourself. You don’t want to succeed in your analysis.

For example when a person is angry, he tries to analyse and go to the very root of it. It may be just a manoeuvre, just a superficial thing. He may not really want to go deep into it, because he may find something which he is not yet ready to face. Because behind every anger, you will find the ego.

So whenever there is anger, the mind doesn’t really want to go into it, because if you go into it you will find yourself the culprit. So you will learn a thousand and one things to avoid. You can go on playing the game that Geeta is not allowing you. How can she prevent you? Nobody can prevent you from your inner analysis, nobody. Go into your anger and find the root of it. You must be trying to find the root in her; then she will frustrate you because she will want to find the root in you. There can be no conclusion. When you are angry go into it alone, because it is your question; Geeta is not related to it at all. When she is angry, she has to go into her anger.

My emphasis is that the individual is wholly and solely responsible, and it is all his game that he is playing. If he allows others to participate, that too is part of the game. Always try to find out how you are helping to create the problem – because that’s all that you can do. Then drop your participation.

And the remainder is [your girlfriend’s]. If she wants to continue to be angry, she will continue. But if she sees that you are not getting angry, not participating, she will start thinking. If you are getting out of it, she will start thinking about how to get out of it. You will give an opportunity to her.

... The problem is not really in the relationship, it is in the related persons, and reflected in the relationship. For example if you are an egoistic person, and you are sitting alone, there is no problem.

How can you create a problem? You need the other to create it. Then somebody passes by you.

He may not pay any attention to you, may neglect you, but now you are angry. He has annoyed you, hurt you, irritated you.

Relationships can bring things out. A relationship is not creative; it is reflective. So just for three or four weeks, whatsoever the problem, immediately go in and find the cause within yourself, mm?

Then we will see....

[A sannyasin reports on a meditation Osho had given her (see April 4th, ’Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle’): I haven’t been happy like this for so long. It usually only lasts a day.]

More happiness will be coming, because once you have the opening for happiness, then there is no end to it. It goes on growing. Once you open yourself to unhappiness, that goes on growing. It is just a turning within you, a tuning within you... as if you tune the radio to a certain wave-length and it catches a certain station.

Exactly like that, if you try to tune yourself towards happiness, you will become receptive to all the happiness that the world makes available. And it is tremendous; nobody can exhaust it. It is oceanic... it goes on and on and on. It is wide... knows no beginning and no end. And the same is with unhappiness; that too is unending.

So the question is not how to change unhappiness into happiness; the question is how to turn your face. Ordinarily people are keeping their backs to the source of happiness, and focusing their eyes at the source of unhappiness. They become unhappy.

This I call the conversion, the turning; a complete turnabout, so you live in a totally different direction.

All meditations are nothing but just a help to turn you to something of which you have not been at all aware. It is just so close. You are unnecessarily thirsty, and just by your side a pure spring of water is flowing.

Once you know it you go deeper and deeper into that direction. A moment comes when you forget that unhappiness exists.

[A sannyasin says: I feel I can go deeper into myself when I do meditations at home, alone – not in the ashram.]

Very good... you continue them. There are people who find it difficult to do a meditation with a group, and there are people who find it easier to do it with a group. One has to find one’s inclination. If you feel it better alone, do that.

Nothing else matters... only meditation. Howsoever it happens, allow it to happen. If it happens in the day, then the day. If it happens in the night, then night. If it happens in the city, then the city. If it happens in the mountains, then the mountains.

Everything else is irrelevant. The only thing relevant is that it should happen. Techniques are also irrelevant. Whatsoever technique fits you, that is the technique for you. So don’t be obsessed that this technique has to fit. Basically, you are the end – the technique is just the means.

Be selfish and always find out in what situation, in what way, by what method, you are feeling better, calmer, more collected, centred – that’s all.

[The T’ai Chi group was at darshan tonight. They gave a demonstration.

A member of the group said that if she did the exercises dynamically with confidence, she experienced a lot of tension in her stomach.

Osho suggested that each night, for fifteen nights, she should make her stomach as tense as possible for two or three minutes, bringing the tension to such a climax that she felt like bursting, and then she should relax it.

He said she must also be breathing incorrectly; that she should breathe not from the chest but the belly.... ]

Watch a small child breathing... that’s the right and natural way of breathing. The stomach goes up and down and the chest remains completely unaffected by the passage of air. The child is in t’ai chi.

His whole chi, his whole energy, is concentrated near his navel.

By and by we lose contact with the navel. We become more and more hung up in the head and the breathing becomes shallow. So whenever you remember during the day, take the breath in as deeply as possible, but let the belly be used.

[Another sannyasin said that she had been trying to breathe in her belly, but that when she did she felt she wasn’t getting enough air.

Osho told her to not worry about its being not so deep. The main thing was that breathing should be natural. He said the breathing should not be forced in any way... there was no need to make any effort... ]

Everybody breathes rightly in sleep because the interfering mind is not there. The belly goes up and down and it automatically becomes deep; you need not force it to become deep. Simply remain natural and it becomes deep. Depth is a consequence of its being natural, and if you insist for depth, it will never come, and your breathing will remain unnatural.

[The group leader says now she is doing T’ai Chi most of the time her energy oscillates between being really chaotic and open, and feeling blank and dull.]

It is something that is very complicated... and the complication is that T’ai Chi, or methods like that, are taoist. And the whole tao attitude is that the mind has to be dropped. One has to become as mindless as an idiot. So dullness in fact is not bad on the path of Tao. The problem is arising because the very word dull is condemnatory in the western mind.

In Tao, to be dull is perfectly good ! Lao Tzu says that everybody is so intelligent; he is so muddle-headed. ’Everybody seems to be so clever and I am just a stupid man.’

I could see that you have the capacity... you can become as dull as Lao Tzu (chuckling). But your western upbringing is contrary. To be clever is a talent in the West. To be clever on the path of Tao is foolishness. To be intelligent, bright, sharp, is a sacred value in the western world.

Lao Tzu will laugh. He says, ’Just be like an idiot!’ The values are so different that when a western mind starts doing T’ai Chi or things like that, this trouble arises.

Whenever your energy is flowing, a certain dullness is bound to come; the sharpness is bound to be lost. You will look idiotic, but your upbringing comes into it. You are tom apart between two things.

So drop the western mind completely. Be dull, and be happily dull. The whole effort is to drop the mind so completely that you exist like trees, like clouds, like rocks, and you have no mind of your own; that’s the whole effort. That’s why the movements are so slow, because the mind is in such a hurry. These movements are against the mind. The mind wants speed. That’s why the western world has invented more and more speedy vehicles. All these movements are so slow that the mind cannot cope with them. By and by it gets fed up and drops – ’This is foolish. I cannot work with

[you]!’

You are going so slowly and the mind says, ’Be in a hurry! Run fast!’ If a taoist competition is to be made, the one who can walk the slowest will be the first. That’s what Jesus means when he says,

’In my kingdom of God the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ The idiots will be the geniuses and the talented will prove dull.

But the mind is speed, because the mind is afraid of death – and the fear of death creates speed.

The mind says, ’Time is short and you have to do so many things – do them fast! Run! Death is coming!’

If you slow down in your movements completely, your mental movements will also completely slow down. It is working through the body for a no-movement state. The body moves so slowly that the mind has to slow down with it. If for two, three hours every day one goes on doing T’ai Chi, then the mind cannot go on moving at such a mad speed; it will have to slow down. It will become more and more in tune with the body. Then worry will stop and you will be able to sleep deeply. But you will feel a certain dullness. That dullness is felt because of your comparison with the western mind.

The East looks dull, so lazy; nobody is trying to do anything. Somebody says to you, ’I will be coming at two,’ and he will not come even at six, and when he turns up at eight or even the next day, he is not worried at all that he was not in time. Nobody worries about time. Time is a western concept...

eternity is the eastern concept. The East says that life is so eternal, why be in a hurry? Move, don’t move – it makes no difference. In this vast eternity why be so worried about time? Where are you going? The East is simply sitting.

So these movements are a strategy to help the mind to calm down, lose its speed ... come back to earth. Become a perfect idiot! If you can become a perfect idiot, you have attained, and there is nothing more to attain. One simply enjoys! Logic is not needed, reason is not needed; mathematics is not needed, so why be bothered about intelligence?

And you will have those blanks. Those blanks are good. You call them blanks because of the conditioning. They are not blanks, they are deep restful spaces. They will be coming, so enjoy them, cherish them, nourish them, and help them to come more and more. Pray for them and be grateful for them. They will be coming more and more, and it will come one day that you simply become a long blank. Then they are not like intervals. They become your very life... a deep emptiness, abyss-like.

This is what Lao Tzu says is the peak. This is a totally different orientation. That’s the eastern way.

The West dominated the East for three, four hundred years. The East never even gave a good fight, never. Just think! India’s such a vast country, and it was ruled by England, such a small country.

Such a great mass of people and dominated by a small group of people. But India has its own ways. It will not give you a fight, but it will sabotage you. The fight will not be direct; it is indirect.

Now through meditation, through religion, through spiritual technique, the East is exploding over the West. Suddenly the West is feeling uprooted.

This is the way of the weak, the way of the feminine, the way of the child – the passive way. And the West is going to be in deep trouble. This infiltration of taoist and eastern attitudes in the West is going to create trouble because your whole training is for speed, intelligence, calculation, this and that. And these are totally, absolutely opposite values.

But they are becoming more and more attractive because the wheel is turning. The West is fed up with its speed, fed up with its material progress... fed up with its technology... fed up by this and that, and reaching nowhere. And that is what Tao has always been saying – ’Where are you going?

There is nowhere to reach. Just be here and enjoy.’

And what do you need intelligence for? All intelligence becomes exploitive. You want intelligence so that you can dominate others... you can dictate... you can own and possess. But if you don’t want to possess, and you don’t want to dominate anybody, if you are not in search of finding and creating slaves, life does not need any intelligence. Trees are perfectly happy, birds are perfectly happy, animals are perfectly happy.

Intelligence seems to be almost superfluous.

So these techniques will bring your sharpness, by and by, to a point where you will lose it. So allow it. Don’t try both ways, otherwise you will be in conflict and you will be divided.

Forget all about intelligence and this and that, and be a blank. I will help you so you become an absolute blank. In that absolute blankness everything is possible. It is not negative; it is the most positive thing in the world, because out of nothingness, everything manifests. That nothingness is God.

So when that blank comes, enjoy it. Dive deep into it... dissolve yourself in it... become one with it.

Then you will know much which is higher than intelligence. Be nothing, and then for the first time you will be.

Teach T’ai Chi and go on developing it on your own, because you have enough basic understanding.

Just go on moving further and further into it. For at least one hour practise on your own so you can go on developing higher and higher and deeper and deeper.

CHAPTER 9

15 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a sannyasin who said he was studying Yoga but had never done any groups, Osho recommended he do some groups, saying that otherwise Yoga could make one very repressed.... ]

Yoga is good, but something more is needed. Alone, it has crippled the whole country. This country has suffered too much.

It creates a very stiff, structured being. Very good as far as society is concerned. Society can rely on such people, trust them; they will never harm anybody. They will be innocent as far as the outside is concerned, but they will harm themselves; they will destroy themselves. Somehow they will become suicidal.

So these three things are necessary. Hatha Yoga is good in order to have a very disciplined being.

Encounter, marathon, and groups like that are good to cleanse your being. And then above those two a continuous awareness is needed so you don’t get into the same mud-holes again. Otherwise, howsoever you are cleaned, it makes no difference.

In India they call it the way of the elephant. The elephant goes and takes a bath in the river and then come out and throws dirt on himself. He simply forgets. But this is how the mind functions.

Sometimes you are tired and you meditate and feel good. Sometimes you join in a few groups, and many things are released and relaxed. And once out of it, you again start throwing dust on yourself.

[A visitor who had been involved in Arica and had studied Hatha Yoga, said that he felt he was stuck.

Osho checked his energy.]

Something has to be done with your love energy.

Love and meditation are just like two wings, and if love is stuck, meditation is stuck. If meditation is stuck, then love will be stuck. They go together. So one has to be very delicately balancing.

There are people who have moved in love but they don’t know anything about meditation – then love is going to be frustrating. One way or other they will feel that it has turned simply into a hell, or at the most, just a comfortable life, but nothing valuable: nothing one should live or die for. It has not given any meaning, any substance. One day one feels empty.

Love gives much turmoil, excitement, thrill – and in the end you have empty hands if it is not joined with meditation. This happens almost always – that when a person is frustrated with love, he becomes interested in meditation. Then he avoids love because he is fed up with it so much and he just wants to meditate. That too is not going to fulfill you. It may give you a silence, a stillness, but that stillness will be something dead. It will not throb with life... because without love, nothing throbs. Love is the very beat, the pulse; everything pulsates with it.

So my whole effort here is how to give you both. Otherwise both are lopsided and create a sort of imbalance. You have to sort out your love affair, otherwise that will work like a load and you will not be able to soar high in meditation. It is the same energy that has to soar high, and if it is loaded with anxiety, conflict, trouble, then it is not overflowing and it cannot soar high.

And the second thing – about your meditation. Arica is a very good technique but only a beginning.

I have never come across a man yet who has come to any fulfillment through it. It begins ... and the word arica is good – it means the door. But it is only the door. You can enter through it but you cannot reach anywhere. Good – it introduces a new world to you – but if you are caught by the door and you cling to the door, you will not be able to go deeper.

And it is very structured... too much technique. Maybe that’s why it is so appealing to the american mind. The american mind is now one of the most addicted to technology – material or spiritual, it makes no difference. But technology has a certain magnetic force for the american mind. Arica is just technique – and that too, not very synthetic – eclectic. One thing from one place, another from another place... hotch-potch.

It is good that you were in it... it has prepared you for something. And there are many schools in the world who simply prepare people for something else. Even the leaders who are working in those groups, leading those schools, may not be aware that they are simply preparing for somebody else.

So now you have to make a very unstructured life ... more spontaneous. And meditation should not be made a technique. I will give you a meditation that you can start doing. Have you heard about Subud?

[Osho described latihan meditation – which is part of the evening meditation done at the ashram, and which sannyasins also do as an individual meditation.

Osho told him to stand in a room with the light off, to close his eyes, and to imagine that energy was being poured into him from above and he was becoming possessed He said he would probably experience some bodyjerks – and he should allow them and not resist. The idea is to let oneself go, to not do anything... ]

... because once the doer enters, you will not be able to unstructure completely. It is as if God – if you have any trust in God – or life, or the whole... as if a drop of water is being caught by the ocean and churned... or a leaf in a strong wind. A godly wind blowing and you are just a leaf.

It will break many layers in you. Your body will feel loose, and much will loosen inside also. Do it for at least ten days, for twenty minutes. And just after feeling for two or three minutes, it starts. It is already; it is just that we have never left ourselves in the hands of the whole. We are always trying to go upstream. Just go with the river.

[A sannyasin said that he had always felt a negativity which was connected with his deep envy of people who could love. In reply to a query from Osho, he said he was envious of the babies and liked the idea of being at a mother’s breast.]

Something went wrong with your mother. The relationship with your mother somehow misfired.

Deep down you are hankering for a mother, and because the mother frustrated you, you have a hatred for women. Now this is an ambiguous situation: a desire to be mothered, and a hatred for women because the mother frustrated you. So there is a contradiction in your energy. You would like to come close to a woman but the fear that you may be frustrated again, closes you. This fear has to be dropped. It will be difficult for you to drop it, but through a group it will become easy. A group gives you a situation, a special situation which is not possible in ordinary life. So it may be difficult in the beginning; the first two, three days, may be very hard for you. But if you can pass through these two, three days, you will start flowering. By the end you will be able to make a few contacts with some women in the group. You will be able to find a mother in the group.

Once a woman can take you dose and you can feel again like a small baby and again secure, then the relationship with your own mother that has been broken will be erased. That wound will be healed. Once that wound is healed you will become available to women and women will become available to you, so there will be no problem.

Then you will not be seeking a mother. That’s why I insisted in asking how you feel about breasts, because if a man is attracted too much towards the breast, it simply shows that he has not yet become mature. And almost ninety percent of men are attracted too much.

Almost the whole of humanity is immature. If you are attracted too much by the breast, that shows you are seeking a mother; not a beloved but a mother. And to seek a mother is to a different than to seek a beloved. If you are seeking a mother you will be frustrated by every woman, because she is seeking a lover, not a son. She would like to have a son through you, but not you. She is seeking a lover and you are seeking a mother, so somewhere, sometime or other, the conflict is going to arise.

You would like her to mother you, to surround you, to give you her sympathy – that’s her milk. You are not asking for love, you are asking for sympathy, you are asking to be cared for, and no woman will be able to do that. Or if some woman is also seeking a child then maybe you will fit. But then too it is going to be frustrating because you are now mature. Your body is mature, and it is just that the wound from childhood has not allowed the mind to float with the body, to flow with the body. They are in different states; they are not together.

So if you can find a woman who can mother you,. then your body will feel frustrated. Your mind will feel very good, but the body will feel frustrated. Your mind has to be made contemporary to the body. The other way is not possible; your body cannot be forced back and made contemporary to the mind. But the mind can be brought up... it can grow. Sometimes it can grow in a single moment of awareness. In a single understanding, it can jump years. It is already ready.

So do a few groups, mm? And every night before you go to sleep, find a bottle, a milk bottle for children, and put it into your mouth. Curl up like a small child, and then start sucking the breast.

[Osho said he should do this each night and then again first thing in the morning just for four or five minutes, using warm milk... ]

Something deep down will be satisfied.

Psychologists say that people smoke because it is a substitute breast. The smoke goes in warm, like the milk, and the cigarette functions like a breast, a nipple. It is a very dangerous substitute – that’s why I say a bottle of milk will be better. Cigarettes will disappear from the world once the relationship between children and their mothers is transformed... becomes more of love and understanding.

But right now it cannot be helped. Nobody is responsible. The mothers are as much conditioned by their mothers and fathers, and so it goes on and on. But if you become alert, it can be changed.

CHAPTER 10

17 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said he was feeling a little apprehensive about going, saying that he hoped he would not lose that which he had gained while he was here.]

You can never lose that. Whatsoever is attained is attained forever. There is no way to fall back. If you fall back that simply shows that you were imagining that you had attained something. It was not an attainment.

If something real has happened, it has happened forever. It becomes a permanent part of your being. But if it disappears, that simply shows it was not worth much; it was just dreaming. So never be worried about it. If it disappears, good. You got rid of something which was not there. If it remains, perfectly okay.

So whatsoever happens is good. The opening is real – don’t be worried. It is going to become bigger and bigger. And the fear that I see in you is not that it may close someday but that it will become bigger. That’s the real fear.

It is difficult, but that’s the real fear. And it always comes, because it means that you have to change with it. When your vision changes you cannot remain the same. And when you have to change, a thousand and one things have to be changed. You have many investments in the past – many clingings, many attachments – and when suddenly you change, everything has to be dropped. That’s a little hard but nothing can be done. Once you start seeing things, the transformation follows as a natural phenomenon.

So the fear comes. The fear is of dying to the past and being born in a new future. But just go, and continue to meditate, mm? And at least if you cannot meditate or do anything, just for one hour –

and this will help – sit in the corner of the room facing the wall. Sit in the comer so that it is just in front of your eyes; very close, almost touching you.

Just look at the wall ... become quiet and go on looking. There is no need to stare, otherwise that will create tension. Simply look as if not looking at all. What can you do? – your eyes are there so you go on looking.

If you can sit every day just for forty minutes, the opening will grow. Then there is no need to feel any fear.

Something really good is happening!

[Osho recommended to a newcomer, that she combine her meditation with groups, saying... ]

If meditation and groups can be done together, then many things start happening very intensely and very fast.

Both the dimensions are, in a way, polar opposites, but they function like two wheels of a cart, or two wings. Meditation makes you more and more silent and groups make you more and more loving.

This is one of the most important things to remember: if love is alone, without silence, sooner or later you will lose track of it. In the beginning everything will be good but by and by everything will become bitter. A mind which is not silent can only hope but cannot love. It can desire but cannot love. It can dream, but when the actuality has to be faced, it flops. Only a silent mind can be loving and can move deep in love.

If a person simply meditates and love is not growing side by side, his silence can become a sort of insensitivity. He can become isolated; can move in an inner space so far away that all contact with the world is lost. That too is dangerous, because then silence will be there but there will always be a subtle feeling of sadness also. Make silence a celebration.

Silence has to become part of a loving personality and has to cooperate with love. In the East, people have tried much with meditations. That’s why the East became a little aloof, detached, indifferent to life, and love disappeared.

These growth groups are all western, and the West has been working hard to find some centring in love. They are beautiful. To me, to meditate and to go through a few group processes makes you a complete man. East and West meet and a synthesis is created.

[Osho talked to a therapist who is the mother of a sannyasin living here, saying that as she became more integrated, her work would become more and more intense and beautiful and she would be able to help people more... ]

And as a sannyasin you will become a tremendous help. It has happened to many groupleaders

– and almost half of the groupleaders are sannyasins now. The whole group is going to become sannyasins – they cannot avoid it. They can delay, that’s all.

And once they have become sannyasins, their whole work has taken on a very different quality. If you are confused, your work will remain a little hesitant, and knowingly, unknowingly, you will go on creating confusion in others also. Once you are settled.... And . a decision like sannyas settles tremendously because it is almost deathlike; it is moving into the unknown; it is trusting something and you don’t even know what it is. The very trust changes you. The very step into the dark and the uncharted, brings up all the courage that has always been there but was never used, was never given a situation to explode.

Go and do the work... and the work is perfectly good. You can help me also through your work. But if you go as a sannyasin I will be coming with you, and it will be better. Otherwise I will haunt you – I will be coming all the same!

CHAPTER 11

18 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[ A sannyasin says: When I am by myself I feel I can let go in some ways and love people but as soon as I come into their presence, the shutters go up.]

Mm... mm. It is difficult to love real people because a real person is not going to fulfil your expectations. He is not meant to. He is not here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations. He has to live his own life. And whenever he moves somewhere which goes against you or is not in tune with your feelings, emotions, your being, it becomes difficult.

It is very easy to think about love. It is very difficult to love. It is very easy to love the whole world.

The real difficulty is to love a single human being. It is very easy to love God or humanity. The real problem arises when you come across a real person and you encounter him. To encounter him is to go through a great change and a great challenge.

He is not going to be your slave and neither are you going to be a slave to him. That’s where the real problem arises. If you are going to be a slave or if he is going to be a slave, then there is no problem. The problem arises because nobody is here to play a slave – and nobody can be a slave.

Everybody is a free agent... the whole being consists of freedom. Man is freedom.

So remember – the problem is real. It has nothing to do with you personally. The problem has to do with the whole phenomenon of love. Don’t make it a personal problem, otherwise you will be in difficulty. Everybody has to face the same problem, more or less. I have never come across a person who has no difficulty in love. It has something to do with love, the very world of love.

The very relationship brings you to such situations where problems arise... and it is good to pass through them. In the East people have escaped just seeing the difficulty in it. They started denying their love, rejecting their love. They became loveless and they called it non-attachment. By and by they became deadened. Love almost disappeared from the East and only meditation remained.

Meditation means that you are feeling good in your loneliness. Meditation means that you are related only to yourself. Your circle is complete with yourself; you don’t go out of it. Of course ninety-nine percent of your problems are solved – but at a very great cost. You will be less troubled now. The eastern man is less anxious, less tense... almost lives in his own inner cave, protected, with eyes dosed. He does not allow his energy to move. He makes a short circuit... a small energy movement inside his being and he is happy. But his happiness is a little dead. His happiness is not a jubilation...

it is not a joy.

At the most you can say that it is not unhappiness. At the most you can say something of the negative about it, as if you say that you are healthy because you don’t have any illness. But that is not much of a health. Health should have something positive, a glow of its own – not just absence of disease. In that way even a dead body is healthy because it has no illnesses.

So in the East we have tried to live without love, to renounce the world – that means to renounce love – to renounce the woman, the man, and all possibilities where love can flower. Jain monks, hindu monks, buddhist monks, are not allowed to talk to a woman when they are alone; not allowed to touch a woman, not really allowed to even see face to face. When a woman comes to ask something they have to keep their eyes down. They have to look at the tip of their nose so they don’t see the woman even by mistake. Because who knows, something might click... and one is almost helpless in the hands of love.

They don’t stay in people’s homes and they don’t stay long in one place because attachment, love, becomes possible. So they go on moving, wandering, and avoiding – avoiding all relationships.

They have attained a certain quality of stillness. They are undisturbed people, undistracted by the world, but not happy, not celebrating.

In the West just the opposite has happened. People have tried to find happiness through love and they have created much trouble. They have lost all contact with themselves. They have moved so far away from themselves that they don’t know how to come back. They don’t know where the path is, where their home is. So they feel meaningless, homeless, and they go on making more and more love efforts with this woman, with that man – heterosexual, homosexual, autosexual. They go on trying every way and again they feel empty, because love alone can give you happiness but there will not be any silence in it. And when there is happiness and no silence, again something is missing.

When you are happy without silence your happiness will be like a fever – excitement... much ado about nothing. That feverish state will create much tension in you, and nothing will come out of it, just running, chasing. And one day one comes to realise that the whole effort has been baseless because you have been trying to find the other, and you have not yet found yourself.

Both these ways have failed. The East has failed because it tried meditation without love. The West has failed because it tried love without meditation. My whole effort is to give you a synthesis, the whole – which means meditation plus love. One should be able to be happy alone and one should also be able to be happy with people. One should be happy inside and one should also be happy in relationships. One should make a beautiful house inside and outside too. You should have a beautiful garden surrounding your house and a beautiful bedroom too. The garden is not against the bedroom; the bedroom is not against the garden.

So meditation should be an inner shelter, an inner shrine. Whenever you feel that the world is too much for you, you can move into your shrine. You can have a bath in your inner being. You can rejuvenate yourself. You can come out resurrected; again alive, fresh, young, renewed... to live, to be. But you should also be capable of loving people and facing problems, because a silence that is impotent and cannot face problems is not much of a silence, is not worth much.

Only a silence that can face problems and remain silent is something to be longed for, to be desired.

So these two things I would like to tell you: First start doing meditation ... because it is always good to start from the nearest centre of your being, and that is meditation. But never get stuck in it.

Meditation should move, flower, unfold and become love. So for the second thing, do a few groups here.

And don’t be worried... don’t make it a problem – it is not. It is simply human; it’s natural. Everybody is afraid – has to be. Life is such that one has to be. And people who become fearless, become fearless not by becoming brave – because a brave man has only repressed his fear; he’s not really fearless. A man becomes fearless by accepting his fears. It is not a question of bravery. It is simply seeing into the facts of life and realising that these fears are natural. One accepts them!

The problem arises because you want to reject them. You have been taught very egoistical ideals

– ’Be brave’. What nonsense! Foolish! How can an intelligent man avoid fears? If you are stupid you will not have any fears. Then the bus driver goes on honking, and you stand in the middle of the road unafraid. Or a bull comes charging at you and you stand there unafraid. But you are stupid! An intelligent man has to jump out of the way.

If you become an addict and start looking everywhere for the snake, then there is a problem. If there is nobody on the road and then too you are afraid and start running, there is a problem; otherwise, fear is natural.

So when I say that you will get rid of your fear, I don’t mean that there will be no fears in life. You will come to know that ninety percent of your fears are just imagination. Ten percent are real so one has to accept them. I don’t make people brave. I make them more responsive, sensitive, alert, and their alertness is enough. They become aware that they can use their fears also as stepping stones. So don’t be worried, mm?

Saurabh means a very great lake, a very silent lake, and deva means divine... a divine lake. And become one, mm? Become more and more silent, and always keep this image of a deep silent cool lake inside.

Remember it, and when you go to sleep at night just feel as if you are sitting by the side of a very great lake... you cannot see the other shore. It is so silent that there are no ripples on it. Just go on remembering it, feeling it – the coolness of it, the peace, the silence – and fall asleep. Do that every day, just for two or three minutes before you go to sleep, and much will happen through it.

[A sannyasin says: I feel I’m dying.]

Very good! Accept it, allow it.

Death is the door. If you can accept it and allow it, for the first time you will become alive through it Death can only destroy that which is not you. It can never destroy that which is you. It always purifies that which is you; the essential is purified. It is as if gold is passing through fire. It is difficult because one thinks oneself to be that which one is not. One clings.... Allow it.

If you can see death, death cannot see you. So see it, and enjoy it. Don’t be worried! And laugh at it – there is nothing serious about it.

[Osho touches his head. The sannyasin says that since a man died in front of him while he was working he cannot feel the fear that was in him.]

It has gone – very good.

When your energy starts moving upwards and it passes through the moon centre, one feels as if death is happening. The lowest centre is the sun centre and higher than that is the moon centre.

When you pass through the moon centre.... The japanese call it hara; that’s why they call suicide

’hara kiri’ – destroying the hara centre. So when the energy starts moving just below the navel, you feel as if death is coming. It is nothing.

Once it has passed the moon centre you will feel more alive than you have ever felt. You will feel as though you are being born for the first time... as if your whole life up to this moment has been a dream. That is going to happen.

So just feel my hand on your head, because that is the last centre, sahasrar. If you can feel my hand there, the energy will be sucked up more and more.

And there is no need to remember my form because my form is not me.

[A sannyasin, who is a film star, says: I see the futility of it all.]

I understand. It is futile. Understand that it is futile... but everything is futile. If you start dropping out of things, then by and by you will see that everything is futile. The wife is futile, the children are futile; the family is futile. Then one goes on shrinking, because wherever you go, everything is futile. One day one feels, ’What is the use of eating? Why get up every day in the morning?’ That will become a suicide.

Die – but don’t commit suicide because that will be a slow type of shrinking in. If you see that something is futile, understand it is futile and don’t get disturbed by it. Whether you succeed or fail you know it is futile, so success and failure become the same. But now you are no longer worried.

One goes on doing the same things; knowing it is a dream, one goes on enjoying it. What is the point of disturbing it? It is just a dream so why disturb it?

The very idea that something is meaningless is a deep desire for something meaningful – and there is nothing meaningful. Everything is meaningless except the witness. So the witness can be anywhere.

I don’t see that there can be any better profession for witnessing than acting. Actors can move into meditation better than other people because their whole art consists of just creating a dream and being someone, knowing you are not that person.

You are playing the role of Rama. You know you are not Rama; you are acting it. The witnessing remains there spontaneously. So whatsoever you are doing on stage, bring the same quality into the world also. When you come home, then too remember that this is acting. Be a husband and remember that this too is acting. Be a father and remember that this too is acting.

If the twenty-four hours of your day become an acting, your quality as an actor will become superb and your witnessing will increase.

Have you heard about one actor who looked like Abraham Lincoln? When they were celebrating the one hundredth year of Abraham Lincoln, this man was called to act as him. For one year he travelled continuously all over America acting as Abraham Lincoln. It got into his head. He started walking like Abraham Lincoln, stuttering like Abraham Lincoln... the dress and everything.

When after one year the job was finished, he continued to be Abraham Lincoln. People tried to persuade him, the family tried to persuade him that this was foolish and he was becoming the laughing stock of the country. But it got so deep in his head that he started saying, ’What do you mean? I am Abraham Lincoln!’ He almost went crazy! Everybody tried to persuade him. He was psychoanalysed, this and that; hospitalised – nothing happened.

Then one psychoanalyst tried the lie detector that they use in America in the courts. The person stands on the mechanism and if he says something untrue, the machine gives the hint. When you say something untrue, your breathing is different, your heartbeat is different. Your whole inner system changes and the machine catches the jerk.

A few questions have to be asked: What is the time? – and you say nine o’clock or ten o’clock or whatsoever and there is no need to lie. And then you are asked what colour the tree is and you say green; there is no need to lie. Many questions are asked in which you cannot lie and the detector goes on giving the rhythm. Then suddenly you are asked, ’Who are you? Abraham Lincoln?’ If you are Lying the detector will show that the rhythm has been broken; suddenly the graph has jumped and it is no more rhythmic.

This man had become so fed up with everybody trying to persuade him that he decided that today he would say he was not Abraham Lincoln. When he was standing on the machine, he was asked,

’Are you Abraham Lincoln?’ He said, ’No, I am not’ – and the detector said he was lying! (laughter) He had got so identified. That is what is happening to everybody. But an actor has to change roles.

A business man has to remain in the same role for his whole life; a doctor has to remain in the same role – but an actor has to change every day. Even in one day he changes twice, thrice. This is very good. One remains mobile, liquid, and one never gets an identity of who one is.

This is my observation from working with so many people – that a good actor can become very easily meditative. People are sometimes surprised that actors become so interested. The reason is their profession. Their very work by and by will give them the feeling that they are separate from their roles. One day or other they will see everything as a role.

So I would like you to remain there (in the film world). Don’t get disturbed – enjoy the whole thing. It is nonsense but why not enjoy it? It is futile but why ask for more? Why shouldn’t it be futile?

Whatsoever it is, enjoy it as a gift. The day I feel that now there is no growth for you there I will tell you to get out of it. But be there, because much is possible there which will not be so easily possible outside.

[A sannyasin says: I never thought that I was afraid of anything, but at home when I was meditating, I just couldn’t do it. I tried again and again and I failed three times.]

Fear is there with everybody, but ordinarily we live just on the surface of the mind and have repressed the fear deep down. If it is there on the surface one will not be able to function well, so one has forced this deep down. When you move in meditation you move deep, and then the fear which is suppressed, is stirred. It comes up, surfaces. Many more things that you have suppressed and of which you have become completely oblivious will all surface.

It is as if a house has remained uncleaned for many years. Nobody has moved and the dust has settled and gathered – layers of dust. Then you go in and just by your movement the dust is stirred.

Otherwise everything is okay. If nobody moves, everything seems to be silent; there is no dust, nothing.

Meditation is a movement into the unconscious, and the dust of this life and the dust of many lives is there, piled up, layer upon layer. So everything will come up but don’t be worried, and don’t brood on it. Accept it – it’s good... a good indication that you are moving in.

It is as if you are swimming just on the surface and everything is good. Then you dive deep and suddenly at the bottom, fear arises, and you want to come back again to the surface.

It is exactly the same with meditation. It is going into your unconscious... diving deep. One feels suffocated, perspiring, and then suddenly a trembling and you are back. That’s why you tried that day again and again and you could not get it, because once you are afraid, it is difficult These problems will come. Just go on reading my books and listening to my tapes, because I am talking about all these problems to everybody. Sometimes your problem will be there and it will be solved, and you will feel okay, mm? Good.

[A sannyasin says: When I sit before you my questions seem... ]

So always keep me before you! There is no need to be anywhere else – you can always keep me before you. I am available.

Whenever a question comes, immediately bring me, remember me, and the question will go.

You have found the key, so now there is no problem.

[She answers: My heart starts beating fast when ... ]

That’s good, very good. The problem is when you sit in front of me and the heart doesn’t beat at all (laughter).

... Just feel me – nothing more is needed. I am the answer – don’t worry about other answers.

CHAPTER 12

19 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin commented that he was very surprised to read in the Rajneesh newsletter that Osho had said that about half of the Westerners who come here are homosexual.

He seemed unclear as to whether he should try to change his own homosexual relationships or remain as he was.

Osho said that these kinds of issues are not serious problems. He told him to simply accept his homosexuality, and said that for him, it was perfectly okay. He said that this must be the way God wanted him to be, and that one should never distrust life by condemning or rejecting any aspect of oneself.

Osho went on to say that formerly homosexuals tried to have heterosexual relationships because of the pressure from society, but this has changed... ]

The coming century will have another problem to face, and that will be that people who are not really homosexuals will be trying to become homosexuals. They will be just trying to prove that they are avantgarde, progressive, liberated, uninhibited and they have no taboos; that they are more liquid and not fixed in one form of sexuality; that they are bisexual and this and that.

When I see that somebody is rationalising about his homosexuality, when I look into him and see that his being will flow easily, naturally, towards heterosexual relationships, then I say to him to drop his homosexuality. If sometimes I see a person whose heterosexuality is not. natural to him, then I am perfectly happy for him to be homosexual.

My statements are made to individuals in particular contexts, so never get worried about them, otherwise it will create problems.

For example, I am saying to you to accept it. Somebody else may read this and say ’perfectly okay’, and he may not be the right person. He may not be able to be helped by this attitude. This attitude may become poison to him.

But for you I feel it is perfectly good. Simply accept it and just float with it.

[A sannyasin says: I feel more alive now but my mind is still with me. And before I always used to have trouble with my body – I was afraid of falling, but now I don’t care. I like to go really mad in meditations.]

Don’t disturb your feelings because of the mind. The mind is going to remain there. All that can happen is that you start feeling separate from it by and by.

When you are separate from it, the mind continues its work but it is no more a distraction to you, no more a disturbance. It is just as if you are driving a car and the engine goes on making a certain noise. There is nothing to worry about; no need to be concerned.

Once the concern is dropped much of the trouble disappears. The trouble is not in the mind. The trouble is in the attitude towards the mind – that you want to put it right and change it: make it peaceful, this and that. There is no need. Just accept it. Enjoy the meditations more. The mind drops not by effort but by more enjoyment. It disappears if you become really celebrating.

If you have now become capable of being more and more available to your inner madness, the mind will drop because the mind cannot win against madness. That’s why I insist for mad methods. The mind can only be defeated if you are ready to go mad, because that is the last thing that the mind cannot conceive, cannot comprehend and cannot absorb. If you are ready to do that, the mind remains and goes on working in the comer. It is good as a slave... but a very bad master. So put him in his right place, that’s all.

If it creates trouble sometimes, that too is not a big problem. If you have a slave, sometimes the slave is bound to create a little trouble. Sometimes the slave is ill and not feeling good. Sometimes the slave goes on its own and does something; that’s natural.

[The sannyasin said he was unclear about whether to be with people or alone.

Osho said such an issue couldn’t be resolved by choosing one alternative, as both are valid needs.

It is like trying to decide between eating and sleeping – both have to be integrated. He said that to do either to excess is foolish and that one has to learn a balance – this is the art of living.... ]

I have heard about one sufi mystic, Byazid. He came back home one day and he was very hungry, so he asked for food. The friend and disciple who was looking after him said, ’There is nothing in the house, and I have no money sol couldn’t purchase anything.’

Byazid said nothing. He simply sat there, prayed to God and thanked him. The disciple couldn’t believe what he was doing, for what he was thanking God. That was his master’s usual habit – to thank God after he had eaten, but today he had not eaten and he was still hungry!

So the disciple asked, ’For what are you thanking God?’

Byazid said, I am thanking him that at least I have a good appetite! Food will be coming tomorrow, but I have a good appetite. Think of those people who have food and no appetite. Are they, or I, more miserable?’

So always remember: two valid needs are not to be chosen in opposition And life has many valid needs. They are not contradictory to each other, but if you try to fix them in one time, they are contradictory.

Spread them and make your life more rich. Move with people... love people. Friendship is good, love is good – but in proportion. Never take too much of anything. Be alone for a few hours and together with people for a few hours.

[A sannyasin says: I have been doing the camp, and there’s a lot of irritation and intolerance coming up. It comes when people are standing very close to me – I feel a wave of anger.

I have a boyfriend, but it’s very difficult for me to open myself.]

Basically it is not a question of people. If you can love one person, you will love all. If you cannot love one then you cannot love anybody. Loving one person opens a door. Seeing one person –

the mystery of his being, the grandeur, the depth – suddenly you become aware of the mystery of everybody else. Just a few days before, this person was also a very closed thing. Then you loved him and he opened. Now you can see how much depth and how much beauty he has... how much grace is hidden inside him.

Depth upon depth and doors upon doors go on opening, and you never come to an end. The discovery remains continuous. Then suddenly you become aware that every other person is the same. You don’t know that, that’s why the irritation. Because you don’t know, you felt anger. My suggestion is that you need a deep love relationship.

And the problem is that you can’t open or you can’t get too much involved. For that I will suggest a few groups here. You may have done them in Germany, but now you are in a totally different state, more fragile. When one is more fragile much can happen.

[Osho checks her energy and suggests some groups and Rolfing.]

When you have lived with a certain problem for too long, the problem is not only of the mind; it becomes part of the body. So you can change the mind – in a group you can feel a certain change coming – but out of the group again everything disappears and you are back. The body is very persistent and a group can only change your mind, not your body.

It can give you a new attitude with which to look at things, a new vision, a new glimpse. It can open a new window, but after the group it will be closed again unless your body also changes in the same way so there becomes a permanent base. If the body goes on behaving in the same way and the mind starts thinking something new, it is not going to last very long. The body always wins finally over the mind, because the body is very very strong. The mind is just a minute part of the body.

In Rolfing the work is done on the body, not on the mind. These two groups will work on your mind in a certain way. They will help you to be more aware of the block, and will make it more emphasised.

You will almost start feeling where it is in the body. Rolfing will relax the musculature, and once that is relaxed, problems are solved very easily.

It is almost as if you spill water here on the floor and it moves in a particular line and goes out into the garden. Then everything dries and nothing can be seen, but a dry line remains there. If you pour the water again, it will fall into that same dry line, and move along that path.

That’s how, if the mind has been moving in a certain way for many years, a dry line, a channel in the body, is created. Then whenever you have energy, the energy will move through that channel again and again and again. You can understand what is happening but you feel almost helpless.

So book for these groups and for Rolfing. You are going to change completely, mm? I will not send you back without your changing!

[Another sannyasin says that, like the previous sannyasin, he also feels irritation with people getting too close. I’ve never allowed myself any deep commitment... it’s intensified here because there’s such a loving atmosphere. That creates a kind of pressure. In the past I tended to run away to escape from these situations... ]

This time don’t escape!...

This time it has to be resolved.

And the case is different.... When people don’t like other people, there are two possibilities why.

One: they may not have loved anybody in their life, or may not have loved very deeply; their love has remained an almost superficial thing. Another possibility – which I see in you – is that you have not loved yourself.

If you have not loved yourself, how can you love others? Impossible. So your problem is deeper than hers. Her problem is a little on the surface; your problem is more at the centre. She loves herself but she has not been able to love somebody else. You have not loved yourself, so your problem is more deep-rooted. In a way it can be easier to solve because your problem is totally with yourself.

Her problem has something to do with others, so she will have to find somebody whom she can love and who can love her.

You need not go anywhere. You can become your own laboratory because your problem is confined to you. You have to learn how to love yourself. You have always been a disciplinarian... trying to discipline and control. You never allowed yourself freedom, never allowed yourself spontaneity.

Once you become controlled too much, deep down you hate yourself. How can you love anybody then? You hate everybody. Your hatred becomes a projection, and you go on projecting on others.

[Osho suggested that he do the Primal group because that would help the deep self-hatred come up to the surface... ]

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

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

If you hate yourself, then hate. Don’t avoid it, and don’t be polite. Accept that you hate... let it be there and function. Let it be active so that you can see how it functions, how it possesses you, how it manipulates you. The very understanding of how it functions, becomes a freedom.

Truth liberates, but the truth has to be brought up and out of the dark comers of your being.

Sannyas is not life-negative – my sannyas is not. It is a simple inner trust. It is a gesture of surrender

– that you love me and will allow me to love you... that if I shower my love on you, you will receive it in gratefulness.

Two piece robes divide the body into upper and lower. Below the belt is sex, above the belt is acceptable. When you wear a one piece robe, your body is one – nothing higher or lower. When your body flows as one, you will feel a certain aura of energy around you. The orange protects and seals this in.

One can meditate and can become enlightened in any colour. I am giving you something irrational just to test whether you are ready to go with me.

I put a mala around your neck just to make a fool of you. People laugh at you – they think you have gone crazy. That’s what I want because if you can go with me, even while I am making you almost mad, then I know that when the real crisis comes, you will have trust. These are crises artificially created around you. They are tremendously significant, with no reason. Their significance is deeper than reason.

My meditations are not just techniques. Joy is more basic. So while doing them, don’t carry any seriousness in the mind; don’t carry the idea that you are doing great religious work. No – you are enjoying them like a dance, a song.

CHAPTER 13

20 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Natyam means a drama, and anand means bliss – the drama of bliss. That is what life is meant to be – a game and play, a game and play of bliss.

From this very moment, start being blissful. Don’t wait for any reason – there is no need; just start being blissful.

[A sannyasin said that he experienced fear in the Enlightenment Intensive group he had done in the West.

Osho suggested he do some groups here, and then went on to say that there was no need to fear now... ]

I am here. You can go to the farthest end possible.

I know the fear is always there, but once you have gone to the farthest core of your being and come back, all fear disappears. The fear is of the darkness within you. There are dark corners inside and one is afraid to go into them because they look like black holes. One may completely disappear; one may not be able to come back – that’s the fear.

Because of the fear we go on following the travelled path, just the routine. We never go off to the side... we never move into the wilderness – and each human being is a wild phenomenon. These superhighways just pass through one. You can find towns and cities, people and marketplaces on them, but you will never find God. For that you have to get down from the superhighway. You have to find something of your own. One has to have the courage to be lost... then only one finds.

But don’t be worried. Just trust me and go in.

[A sannyasin describes some vivid dream experiences:... my tongue seemed to slip back into my mouth, and I had something like a cosmic orgasm.

And another time I was in a whirling vortex. It was as if I was in the middle of a chakra.

In another dream there was a very long snake, and it became very alive... ]

Nothing to be worried about – these are all good indications. The snake is very symbolic. On the lowest rung it is the symbol of sexual energy, and on the highest rung it is the symbol of kundalini.

It is the same energy, and that’s why kundalini is called serpent power. Kundalini means a snake sitting, coiled up... almost sleeping.

When it starts rising, it is a tremendous change in your life. If the energy remains at the sex centre you are just for the name’s sake a human being. If the energy starts going upwards.... They call it urdhwaretas – an upward journey of your energy. As it goes up it passes through many centres, and those centres are vortices of energy. When it passes one centre you will have certain types of experiences, visions, dreams. When it passes another you will have different types of experiences and visions. There are seven centres.

The first is the muladhar and the last is sahasrar, and there are five others. The sixth is just between the two eyebrows, and one is just in the throat. That throat centre functions when the tongue goes back. So you can continue practising this... it is one of the most meaningful processes. And if it happened to you easily in a dream or vision, it will come easily to you.

[The sannyasin asks if people cut the skin under the tongue.]

Yes, they cut it, but there is no need to if it happens so easily to you. It needs to be cut when the tongue does not move in naturally. By and by, little by little, they go on cutting it so it is easier.

The tongue moving in becomes a bridge between the throat chakra and the ajna chakra, between the two eyes. That always brings a very very deep orgasm. It almost feels like a cosmic orgasm.

Soon this will start happening while you are perfectly awake.

This throat centre is very very meaningful because it is the first centre that starts functioning in the child. The first contact of the child with the world is with the throat. He sucks the milk and the air, and both pass through this chakra first, so this chakra starts functioning first. That’s what Freudians call the oral stage of the development of the child’s mind. Then comes the anal stage in freudian psychology. Then comes the third stage, the erotic, the sexual stage. Freudian psychology remains confined to these three centres.

But the understanding is perfectly true. The first is oral, and that’s how the child comes in contact with the world. When Jesus says that you will not enter the kingdom of God until you become like babes again, he is meaning that you will have to fall back to the oral stage again. And that is the meaning of this chakra. You will have to become like a small babe again.

When the tongue goes inside, this chakra functions tremendously, and one feels very innocent – like a small child. One feels so blissful for no reason at all. So this chakra is very very important.

Just go on trying to bring that feeling that came to you in the dream. Soon it will start possessing you and your whole body will start shaking and go into an orgasm. Allow it and don’t get scared...

don’t feel afraid. Whenever this happens you will feel a sudden energy arising from the sex centre upwards. This is what comes in the dreams as a snake.

If a person is too attached to the sexual centre he will have sexual dreams. If you close your eyes –

and anybody can do this – and just concentrate near the sex centre, suddenly you will be filled with sexual fantasies – immediately. If you move upwards to what I call the hara, just two inches below the navel, and concentrate there, suddenly you will feel as if darkness and death is surrounding you.

That’s why many times in sexual orgasm people become afraid of death, because the two centres are very close and sometimes the sexual ripple is so much that it goes on touching the hara centre.

That’s why so many people are afraid of sex, afraid of women, afraid of men, afraid of getting into too much intimacy. When their sex centre functions perfectly well, its vibrations start moving towards the death centre – it is very dose. Once the death centre starts functioning, the fear arises.

That’s why in deep fear, animals defecate immediately, and sometimes human beings also. They urinate and defecate because once this hara centre moves fast, it needs space. If there is anything in the stomach, in the intestines, it has to be thrown out, otherwise there is no space for this centre.

In fact the word centre is not the right translation for chakra. Chakra means a wheel, and not a stationary wheel but a dynamic one. It is a vortex, like a whirlpool. The word chakra is a very very dynamic energy movement. Each chakra has its own colours, so when you concentrate on a certain chakra you will have certain colours in your dreams and visions. As you move upwards they change.

In fact in yoga psychology, a person’s dreams, fantasies, visions, can indicate where his energy is exactly, at what centre.

So go on working at it, and become more and more receptive towards dreams. Keep a diary, and with no interpretations simply note down the dreams, as factually as possible. Don’t delete anything, don’t add anything. Whatsoever has been, just note it down and forget about it. By and by your diary will become a great discovery because you will see changes happening continuously. Then you can determine exactly where your energy is moving right now.

In Yoga they give particular colours and emotions to each centre. And a few things happen to a particular centre that never happen to any other centre. Those happenings come to your mind only when the energy is moving through that centre and that centre is moving fast and creating great energy fields in you and around you.

So this is very good, mm?

[A sannyasin said she felt fear about returning to Poona for ever.]

Mm, mm (chuckling). Nothing to worry about... the mind always feels afraid of any change. And this is a drastic change – to leave your life there, your work and everything, and to come here. It is a drastic, radical change, and the mind is always afraid.

The mind is always afraid of any commitment. Playing around is one thing. You can come here for a few days and go – that’s one thing. You are just a tourist, a visitor... just curious. But when you are coming forever, dropping everything there, the mind starts feeling, ’What are you doing?’ Security, safety, the future, the past – everything arises, and everything creates fear.

But it is good that one goes in spite of the fear. If one listens to the fear, it becomes stronger and overpowers you, possesses you, and you become a slave. If you just watch the fear and still go on .

doing whatsoever you wanted to do, putting the fear aside, you soon emerge as master.

Many situations have to be encountered. They are good – howsoever painful it is when one is passing through them. Finally they are beautiful and good because this is how one grows. If there is no problem, no situation, no crisis, no challenges, you will never grow. Growth needs challenges, crises, problems to be faced, encountered, transcended. So the fear is natural.

Fear is not really the problem. When fear becomes so powerful that you cannot do anything against it, then it is a problem... then fear is a neurosis.

[She replies: I began to feel more suicidal than I’ve ever felt before.]

Everybody has that instinct. When too much fear arises, that instinct also arises in consciousness.

But it is there; it is part of your being, everybody’s being.

As we want life, and the lust for life – eros – is there, in the same quantity there is the death instinct, the instinct to die. Whenever there is such a problem which makes you very troubled, rather than facing it the mind says, ’Why not commit suicide so you will be out of fear? Why not destroy yourself?

Then there will be no need to face the situation.’ It is just fear persuading your death instinct.

Many times people commit suicide because they were not capable enough to cope with life so they copped out. It is natural... in deep fear the death instinct is stirred. I was thinking that the more you delay, the more problems you will have to face, but in a way it was good, mm?

But it is all over... the nightmare is over. Don’t be worried.

[A couple sit in front of Osho. She said that when her boyfriend was with another woman, she realised how little love she had left for him as she had thoughts of leaving him. She said she felt she was functioning from a different centre now; that she felt more independent, but also felt at times, alone.

Osho said that such situations had to be faced and were useful for growth as they brought about a crystallisation in one. For this reason he had not summoned her earlier though he knew she was going through pain, because he wanted her to go through the experience.

Osho said that she should take care not to carry any grudge, for all of us move so unconsciously and cannot help ourselves in our many changes of mind and passing desires. He said that she should be compassionate and help her man and bear in mind that just as she became unconscious in her anger towards him, she should appreciate that her boyfriend was also moving unconsciously in search of love.

If love happens between two people it is beautiful, but we should not take it for granted and think that because a person loved us one day, he will feel the same the next.]

There was a mohammedan mystic, Hassein, who had a very beautiful son – a very very intelligent and talented boy. Everybody loved the boy, but one day he suddenly died. He was just twenty and almost the whole town was in love with the boy.

Hassein looked at the corpse and never cried. Not even a single tear came to his eyes; rather, he started laughing. People could not believe it. They asked, What has happened? Have you gone mad? Has the shock been too much?’

He said, ’No, it is not the shock. I was feeling very very unhappy, miserable, and then suddenly I remembered that when this child was not there I was perfectly. happy. I was alone and this boy was not with me, and there was no problem. I never missed him when he was not there. Now he is gone again, and I am again in the same position. A dream is over, and the one who gave it to me has taken it back. Who am I to say it is not good?’

So always feel grateful. From wherever you find some source of happiness, feel grateful, but don’t expect that tomorrow that source will be available or should be available. Otherwise you will fight for it.

I know you have passed through pain. I knew what was happening every day, but I didn’t call you because I wanted you to pass through it. You have passed through it and you have survived – and in very good shape.

Good, now love from this different standpoint. This will be more of a friendship and less of a dependence. You will be sharing more without asking that it should be returned.

Love can exist in two ways. One is as a bargain: you give love so that love should be returned. Our eyes are on the return, on what comes back – whether it comes back as much as it should, or less.

It is a bargain.

Then there is another love. You simply give because giving is so exquisitely blissful, so tremendously blissful, that you give and forget about it. If it comes back, okay. If it never comes back, you never expected it in the first place.

[Her boyfriend said that he was feeling very confused. He said that sometimes lately he had felt very far away from Osho and that his body was upset and ill too.

Osho talked about the nature of the mind, saying it is a wanderer, that it is not a crystallised entity, but fragmentary, made up of many parts, so one should be aware of this and not be deceived by the mind.]

And when you feel sexuality arising, rather than just moving into another relationship, because that is not going to help.... This relationship has not helped so how can the other help? You can go into a thousand and one relationships, and you will get more and more confused and fragmented. You will fall apart all over the place, but it is not going to help.

Rather, when you are feeling sexuality, close your eyes and meditate on it: where is it coming from, why is it coming, how is it coming? See that somehow the relationship with the woman with whom you are living is not very deep, not very satisfying.

Make it more satisfying, make it deeper. Make it more open and vulnerable. It is almost as if you eat something and you are satisfied. Then more food can be brought to you but you will say, ’Thank you, I’m full.’ If you are satisfied with a woman and another woman passes by, you say, ’A beautiful person, but I am full. I’m completely satisfied.’

Somewhere discontent is there – so that has to be tackled. It is not going to be of any help to move into another relationship because with the same mind moving with you, the discontent will continue.

Discontent is within you. It is somewhere in your relationship. The way you relate is not total.

So make it total... make it more meditative. And don’t hide. Tell [her that this is how things are happening, so then she can be helpful and you can move into a deeper relationship; you can make everything as deep as possible. Rather than being attracted to every passerby – you will become a driftwood if you do that – tackle the problem where it is. It is somewhere deep inside you.

It can create many problems. It can create bodily, physiological problems. You will feel depleted.

dissipated.

And of course you will feel far away from me, because being close to me depends on your state of mind. If you are flowing, open, happy, you will feel close. If you are closed, unhappy, in conflict, misery, you will feel far away.

The distance between you and me will depend on your inner quality of mind.

So make it a point that whenever you feel anything arising, tell [your woman]. You are in a relationship, so tell everything; don’t hide it. And if you have this problem again, come together.

It can be resolved; there is no problem in it.

She loves you and you love her, mm? But the mind goes on. It is a wanderer, a vagabond, so don’t listen too much to it. Otherwise it will take you from here to there and never allow you to settle anywhere; never allow you to be at home anywhere. And your body will be disturbed. It looks disturbed. Your health has not been good – it cannot be in such a state of mind.

(turning to the woman) And... help. This happens – that when he is going through some crisis, you are fighting and doing things. They don’t help; they destroy. When he is moving in such a problem, you have to be more loving and you have to tell him to open his heart.

If you start fighting, the problems become more because the relationship becomes even more unsatisfactory. One wants to finish it and go away from it. But this is how the mind goes on in contradictions When there is a need of love, people start fighting. When more compassion was needed they start hitting each other, so whatsoever was left they destroy.

Open your heart, and next time things will be better. Make your love relationship more conscious.

Give more and ask less... and be alert, caring. If care does not arise with your love, these problems continue. If you care about the person you love, even if the mind starts thinking about somebody else you will drop that subject then and there because you care about the person. You would not like the person to feel hurt or to be miserable.

If love is just an indulgence and not a caring, just a self-gratifying thing and not a sharing, these problems continue. For three weeks, now move into the diametrically opposite dimension. Fall into love more and more and take care of each other, be alert. Don’t do anything that hurts... and see how things go. Then tell me.

It will be okay, mm? Nothing to worry about.

[A sannyasin said that she had dysentery and had fasted off and on in an effort to clean her system.]

Fasting is a total science and one should do it under proper guidance, otherwise it is always harmful.

When you fast, pressure is lost and much excreta remains in the intestine. That becomes dry.

Because there is no pressure on it to move, excreta clings to the intestines and becomes dry.

So if you do too much fasting, rather than cleaning it makes your whole system more toxic, and when you start eating there will be trouble. Because of that dry excreta in the intestine you will not be able to digest well, and the movement of the intestine will be hindered. As a hectic effort of the body you will have dysentery. That is an effort of the body to throw excreta out somehow; that’s a defence measure. Once you have that, your appetite will be disturbed. You will not be able to eat well and again the excreta will become dry. Again you will eat, and this circle will go on.

To do fasting, many other exercises should be done with it. Fasting should not be total. You can be on just fruits, just vegetables, or on juice, but there has to be something. And with fasting there should be something like an enema to clean the intestine, otherwise this problem arises.

But there is no need for fasting. In fact the body is made in such a way that you can go on eating and there will be no problem. Don’t eat too much or too little... just remain in the middle.

CHAPTER 14

21 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said that he had decided some time ago to dedicate his life to music. He went on to say that he played drums and had been part of a group in Australia.]

Really devote yourself to it... religiously devote yourself. Sacrifice your whole being.

Music is a very subtle meditation. The seven notes of music are concerned with the seven chakras of the body and each chakra has its own note. If you concentrate on that chakra, you will start hearing that note arising within your body. The second chakra has two notes, the third, three. One is important, the other two are just part of it but create a harmony. It goes on becoming a greater harmony, rising higher with each chakra. On the seventh chakra it is an orchestra.

Each chakra has its own form, its own music, its own taste, its own smell. The deeper you move inside yourself, the more you find the whole world, because if it is not within you, you cannot see it without either. Something is needed to correspond.

Your eyes can see things because your eyes correspond with the light outside. In fact they are part of the sun. That’s why you can see in the light and you cannot see in the dark. Your eyes are the most responsive part of your body for light; your ears, for sound.

We know only five things in the world because we have five senses. Not that there are only five things – there are millions – but we can know only that which is also within us; otherwise there is no way. to know it. If a man loses his capacity to smell, the whole world becomes smellless and all perfumes are alike; good or bad, the odour is alike.

If you lose the sense of taste, as it happens after a long fever, then everything is tasteless. If you become deaf, there is no sound in the world, and if you are blind there is no light. Whatsoever you know, you know through something that exists within you. Everything can become an inner growth and an inner discovery. Music can become tremendously helpful, but then one has to become completely lost in it.

So play the drums... and just remember one thing: by and by lose the player completely so that there are only drums and playing, and the player is no more. You will start hearing the drums within yourself. You will be playing outside on the drums and something corresponding to it will start happening within you. Then for the first time you will become a drummer. Then you are in tune.

Music was basically found out by meditators, by deep inner investigators, and they have used it for centuries. The quality of the mind determines what centre it will hit. Jazz, modern music, hits the sex centre immediately. It is sexual, pronouncedly sexual. It excites, thrills... almost massages the sex centre from within. It makes people more erotic. If this can happen, then the other thing is also possible.

There are a few compositions in the world which can hit the hara and a person can die immediately.

It makes people so silent that even life starts disappearing, because life is also a tension. Death is absolutely non-tense. Only death is absolute relaxation. Life cannot be absolute relaxation.

It can be, at the most, relative – more or less tense, but it will remain tense. So there is music that can create such a deep response that a person simply disappears.

In India there is a story of a great musician. He had become one hundred years old and there was great celebration. He had a thousand disciples from all over the country and they all came to pay their respects. Maybe this was going to be his last birthday and he would not be among them again.

They had brought many things. Even kings were among his disciples, emperors – very rich people

– and rich gifts were there. A beggar, who was one of his disciples, had also come.

Somebody asked, just jokingly, what he had brought as a present. He said, ’I have brought myself.’

Then he went to the master and played on his sitar. He died there playing. The master had even yelled just in the middle, ’Stop!’ but by that time he was gone.

So play deeply, meditate daily. Devote your whole life to music... devote it completely. Surrender to it. And don’t think of it as a hobby. Hobby is a profane word. Think of it as prayer, and go to your drums with deep respect. First bow down to them... they are the doors... and be respectful to them.

If you are not feeling good, if you are feeling angry, don’t play. If you are feeling sexual, don’t play. Choose the most silent, blissful moments to play, so as the playing becomes more and more associated with blissful moments, it will create more bliss.

If you play when you are in anger you may start hating the drums. Subtle anger, catharsis will be there. It may be good for catharsis, but not good for growth; not good for the inner growth of musical sensitivity.

In India, real musicians will play only in the morning, at three o’clock, when everything is absolutely silent and rested and the whole cosmos is full of energy and waiting for the sun to rise. Ordinarily musicians go on playing late into the night – almost a music marathon – but then that music is more or less sexual and erotic. Just early in the morning is best.

And when you get in tune with it then any moment is right, mm?

Anand means bliss and sudas means a very good servant... a good servant of bliss. Let that be your goal; nothing else is important. Whatsoever gives you bliss, serve it. And wherever you can find bliss just bow down, surrender.

Sudas means a deep surrendering... a deep surrendering to bliss.

[Sudas said there were many things in his life he felt he had been a servant to – for example, taste.

Osho said that there was no need to be concerned about that because these things would start disappearing of their own accord.]

Even the effort to drop them is not needed. Just a little understanding is enough; just a ray of understanding and Things start changing.

This is my observation, that one should never make an effort to change anything, because that effort is going to make things difficult rather than easy. It is the same mind that makes the effort.

For example your mind is attached to something, and now the same mind tries to detach itself. At the most it can repress, but it can never become a real detachment. For the real detachment to happen, the mind has to understand why the attachment is there. There is no need to be in a hurry to drop it; rather, see why it is there. Just look into the mechanism, how it works, how it has come in: what circumstances, what unawareness has helped it to be there. Just understand everything around it. Don’t be in a hurry to drop it, because people who are in a hurry to drop things don’t give enough time to understand them.

Once you understand, suddenly you see that it is slipping out of your hands; so there is no need to drop it. Nothing is there for any other reason than a misunderstanding. Something has been misunderstood, hence it is there. Understand it rightly – it disappears. All that is creating trouble is just like darkness. Bring light to it – and simply light, because with the very presence of light, darkness is no more there.

Just float with me, mm? If you can float with me a little longer, the mind goes away by itself.

[To another sannyasin Osho said to bear three things in mind on returning to the West.

First he said that when the fear of death came – and it was going to come soon – he should go into it and not be afraid, because this barrier had to be passed by every meditator... ]

And the second thing. I am always available to you wherever you are, so have a small room in the house – a very small room will do – and keep it just for me. Don’t do anything else in there.

You can listen to my talks and hang my picture there, and I am going to give you a box, so keep that there. Whenever you want to be with me there, listen, read, meditate, but let that small place be just for me. Soon you will feel that it has become tremendously charged. Whenever you need me, move into that room and I will be there.

And the third thing to remember is that many things happen through meditation, but you have to implement them in your life, otherwise they disappear. A certain experience flowers, you see something – try to implement it in your life.

If you feel very loving, then be loving; don’t keep it to yourself. Somehow relate it to people. If you relate, it will grow. If you keep it to yourself, it will disappear because it needs roots somewhere. If you feel like sharing, share; don’t just go on postponing it. Whatsoever happens inside, try, make every effort, to do the same outside also.

That’s how a religious style of life is created. But first it should happen on the inside, and the outer should follow like a shadow. One has to remember the outer. If you forget about it, you become lopsided. Many things go on happening inside and you never implement them so they disappear.

You have to give them roots in the earth.

So whatsoever experiences come, find out ways and means to bring them into your real life. If you are feeling a deep gratefulness during meditation... suddenly one day you feel God showering on you and you feel grateful... then remember that and feel grateful with whomsoever you come in contact – as if all the forms are of God. Remain grateful for as long as you can remember. If you forget, okay. When you remember again, feel grateful for small things.

Somebody just smiled at you – feel grateful. Somebody said hello – feel grateful, because there is no need and no necessity that somebody should say hello. If you can watch and hear and feel grateful, you will almost hear it as if it is coming from God. It is coming from Him. He uses many people as His vehicles.

So whatsoever experiences happen, you can always find a way to make it part of your ordinary life, the real life. Religion should not remain fictitious, and it should not become just part of your dreams.

It should be brought to actual reality.

Once it comes to the actual reality you can forget about it and it will continue. It will hover around you... it will become your aura and you will always be in contact with it.

CHAPTER 15

22 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and sadhu means two or three things. One is, being unattached to the world, a deep non-attachment, a renunciation. It also means goodness ... a very good man whose goodness is not just a discipline of morality but which has arisen through his being; whose goodness is simply his nature, spontaneity. Of course if goodness comes that way, one becomes unattached to things, to the world.

Prem Sadhu will mean love and spontaneous goodness.

Prem means love and gyan means knowledge – knowledge that comes through love.

There are two types of knowledge. One needs no love – the scientific knowledge. You need not love the object you are going to know. In fact if you love, scientific knowledge will not be possible. For scientific knowledge an absolutely non-emotional attitude is needed. You should not be loving. You should be completely aloof, indifferent – not for or against. So for scientific knowledge a detached attitude is needed.

Religious knowledge is totally different. If you are detached you will never be able to know what religion is. You have to be deeply in love with it because this is a knowledge that comes through deep participation. You cannot remain out of it. The knower becomes part of the known. In fact the more the knower dissolves into the unknown, the more he comes to know. A moment comes when the knower is completely lost. Only then knowledge is perfect.

This name – Prem Gyan – will mean knowledge that comes through love, personal knowledge; not objective but subjective knowledge. All that is beautiful comes through love and all that comes without love is dangerous. It will bring Nagasaki, Hiroshima. It is going to be destructive because in the first place it has not been through love.

If the seed has not been loving, the fruit is going to be poisonous. That’s why the whole scientific effort, and such a tremendous effort leads nowhere but to deeper and deeper misery – to war, to technology, to ecological destruction. In fact it is sabotaging the whole life rather than enhancing it.

Sooner or later ... the last part of the twenty-five years of this century is going to bring a revolution in the scientific attitude. It has to learn something from religion;p only then science can be a help to humanity, otherwise it is going to destroy everything.

[Osho recommended to a sannyasin who was returning to Germany that she continue at least one meditation a day.]

Just make meditation part of ordinary life. Don’t think in terms of your doing something religious.

Just as one takes a bath every day, takes food and goes to sleep, so meditation should become just an ordinary part of one’s life. Then it grows faster. When you make it something special, it becomes an ego-trip.

And there is no need to be serious. about it. Enjoy it, and if you enjoy it you will find it is going deeper every day. Let it be a fun. And anytime – but at least once in twenty-four hours. It will cleanse you, prepare you, cleanse you of the past and integrate you for the future. Every twenty-four hours we go on accumulating much dust, and meditation is just an inner shower; it cleans away the dust.

When you are feeling good, healthy, and a well-being is surrounding you, you gather less dust. When you are feeling very very good and somebody says something which otherwise might have irritated you, it will not irritate you so much. When you are feeling good you can forgive easily. When you are feeling bad it is difficult to forgive. In fact when you are feeling bad you try to find some excuse somewhere so you can be angry, irritated, and you can throw the responsibility on the other.

But when one is feeling good one is not worried. The same situation which ordinarily creates anger will not create anger. The same situation which ordinarily does not create much enjoyment, much joy, will create much joy.

If you continue meditation, by and by it cleans you every day of the past, and prepares you for the future. It gives you a deep rootedness in the present... it is therapeutic.

[An actor said he was now trying to work differently, presenting ideas from his unconscious spontaneously to the audience. He said he tended to be self-conscious and asked for Osho’s help.]

Much can be done... much can be done. But before you can do anything for others, you have to do it for yourself, otherwise you cannot be spontaneous.

Spontaneity is possible only when you have attained to a certain inner flow of energies, otherwise you can be spontaneous but it will not be impressive; it will not be a performance.

Two things have to be looked to when you are doing it for people. You have to be spontaneous, and at the same time it has to carry some meaning for people. Because it has to carry meaning, people have to plan, to rehearse beforehand, so that they can see and feel whether it is going to have any meaning for people or not.

If you are going to be absolutely spontaneous you will have to go deep in meditation – and not alone.

Your whole group will have to go into meditation and then a tremendous quality will arise in your work.

But for that, very great preparation will be needed – more than what you do in rehearsal because that is superficial preparation. Unless you are prepared very deeply, you cannot be spontaneous.

You can be spontaneous but it will not be a performance.

[Osho suggested that he do a few groups here which would open him up more. Osho said for him to participate in the group rather than being an observer; not to try to learn but to forget all about performance... ]

... so you can get into the feel of your own being.

If you are in touch with your own being, you will always be able to touch other people’s hearts.

In fact that is secondary. If you are deeply in touch with yourself, you will immediately become in touch with others’ hearts and being. If you can feel very happy in some spontaneous act, others will also feel happy. But the basic problem is you. Happiness is infectious... silence is also infectious.

Spontaneity is infectious, but it has to be there in the first place. And you cannot fake spontaneity.

In these groups forget about performance – just be a human being.

That is a problem with people who do acting, drama, dance, performance. The problem with them is that they remain manipulating. They go on watching out of the corner of their eyes – ’Yes this is good; this can be done. This is not good; it cannot be done. This will appeal to people; this won’t.’ If you continue that, you miss the whole point.

First be really spontaneously human. Get in touch with your feelings and let them explode. Once it has happened you can create a situation in which, with others also, it can happen.

The idea is very very good – but much effort will be needed for it. It is not ordinary; much effort will be needed, and you will really have to grow. Then it is not only performance – it is going to be an inner growth.

[A visitor said that though he had been in contact with thinkers and philosophers and had read extensively, he could not discover why he was, what he was doing here.]

Nobody can ever come to understanding through books. Books can only talk about and about. They cannot deliver you the real thing. But that is nothing to complain about because that is the very nature of words. Words cannot carry the meaning. If I say something to you, only that word reaches you, but the meaning that I wanted to give to you remains with me.

Unless you meditate deeply, understanding will not arise. Nobody else can give it to you; you have to earn it. Through arduous effort, struggle, sacrifice, you have to earn it, only then problems will disappear.

The basic problem of why you are here, which has come to your mind, will disappear only when you have reached to the very core of your being, never before it At the core you will know that you have always been here. It is not a question of why you are here. You have always been here in different forms.

The form has been changing but you have always been here. The form will go on changing but you will always remain here. You are part of this whole. The river falls into the ocean, and again the ocean rises and becomes clouds. Again it becomes a river and falls into the ocean, then becomes clouds again. It goes on... it is a wheel.

You have been here many times. You will be here many times. In fact you have been here for eternity, and you will be here for eternity. There is no beginning and no end to existence... it is eternal.

I can say that to you, but it will not bring understanding. When you come deep within yourself and you open the innermost shrine of your being, when you enter into that innermost shrine, suddenly you will realise that you have always been here – sometimes as a plant, a rosebush... sometimes like a bird, a cuckoo... sometimes like an animal, a tiger – in millions of forms... and now as a man.

Sometimes you may be a god... sometimes enlightened like a Buddha. This goes on and on. There is no question as to why you are because the question basically will mean why is existence at all? –

because you are existence.

This form that is surrounding you is not you – it is just your house. For the time being you are in it, but you are the formless abiding in the form. Just as you go on changing clothes, people go on changing bodies, changing minds. But something is absolutely eternal in you – that has to be searched for. That’s what meditations are about, so meditate more.

Reading is not going to help. Meditation is going to help... Aikido (which the visitor had said he was studying) is going to help. It is very meditative; you can go on working through it.

[A sannyasin said: It’s very difficult for me to surrender... I’m always alone and I don’t like it.]

Mm, mm.... Firstly, the problems are not separate. Because you are afraid of love, you are also afraid of surrender. Surrender is a deep love, a total love ... more total than any love.

If you are afraid of love you will also be afraid of surrender because that is dissolving yourself completely. That is the fear in love also, that makes you want to escape. You want to protect, secure yourself, and remain safe... and every love is an invitation to danger. It is an adventure and one never knows where it will end and what will come out of it.

Very clever people, very calculating people, never get into love. They become misers. That miserliness will bring only misery, because if you don’t love you won’t get it. You will remain alone, and that loneliness will not flower.

A person needs a relationship, because a relationship gives situations to flower and grow. There is sometimes pain also, but pain is part of growth. So don’t be afraid of pain. I’m not saying that all and everything will be just flowers and flowers. There are many thorns in love and one has to suffer

– but they are worth it.

Just gather courage... and don’t wait because time will be passing and you will become more and more addicted to your habit of escaping from people. Just dare a little. Next time somebody approaches, don’t escape; rather, you approach somebody. Why wait for somebody to approach you?

In the beginning you will feel very nervous and very afraid, but once you have the taste of it the fear will disappear. And if you can move into a loving relationship. that will help surrender most.

Always remember that the mind is naturally divided. It always says two things together: Surrender, don’t surrender. Love, don’t love. Do this, don’t do that. Now it is for you to choose. You are not these two minds. You are the awareness that is watching both. One mind is saying to surrender, another mind is saying don’t surrender. Now you have to judge. You have to look into these and to think of pros and cons. You have to meditate on it.

If you don’t surrender, what is going to happen? If you surrender, what is going to happen? Just think about it, meditate on it. If you feel that it is good to be on your own, then be on your own; don’t be worried. But you have been on your own and where have you reached?

If you have been on your own and you have not reached anywhere, then try surrender too. Give it a try. Who knows? maybe it will be helpful. And if it is not helpful, you are always free because nothing can be absolutely binding. You can be on your own again. You can come with me for a little while, you can be with me on the path for the time being and if you feel that no, you would like to be on your own, go on your own.

Particularly with me there is no problem because my whole effort is to make you so strong that you can be on your own. In fact I ask your surrender just to make you ready to be on your own. So there is no problem. I am not against you. My asking for surrender is just so that you don’t create any trouble and disturbance and so I can work faster.

But think about it, mm? First think about love and then about surrender.

[A sannyasin said she was having difficulty in her relationship with her parents – that they had virtually disowned her as she had become a sannyasin and was living with an Indian.

Osho first talked about what she felt was a problem in relating to people and being accepted. He then talked about her relationship with her parents.... ]

And about your parents, don’t be worried. Are they Catholics? Mm... so they must be troubled.

Send them my books on Jesus, mm? And tell them that I am a Catholic (laughter).Tell them that I am a little eccentric about orange but otherwise I am a Catholic. We will persuade them, don’t worry!

Don’t hurt them in any way. They are not understanding what is happening to you, what you are doing here. So write them good letters, quote the bible (chortles of mirth) so they will think, ’She is becoming a real Catholic!’ Persuade them.

One has to learn salesmanship, mm? Then we can sabotage them from within! (gales of mirth) CHAPTER 16

23 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[The divine healing group is present and gives a demonstration. Osho has spoken on healing recently, saying:]

The healer is not really a healer because he is not a doer. Healing happens through him; he has just to annihilate himself. To be a healer really means not to be. The less you are, the better healing will happen. The more you are, the more the passage is blocked. God, or the totality, or whatsoever you prefer to call it, is the healer. The whole is the healer.

An ill person is one who has simply developed blocks between himself and the whole, so something is disconnected. The function of the healer is to reconnect it. But when I say the function of the healer is to reconnect it, I don’t mean that the healer has to do something. The healer is just a function. The doer is God, the whole.

... Healing becomes almost an experience of prayer, an experience of God, of love, of the whole.

[A sannyasin says: I have trouble with a continuous internal dialogue which gets particularly heavy at night when I’m trying to sleep. It’s always been there, but since I’ve been in Poona I haven’t slept for more than an hour each night.]

It could be due to the meditations. If something is there, it is aggravated, and then it is suppressed.

Ordinarily whenever we want to stop something, we try to fight it – that’s wrong. When you want to stop a thing finish it. If something is there it must have a cause inside. Rather than repressing it, allow it.

Through allowing, it will disappear. It wants to communicate something to you. Your mind wants to talk to you. Something you have not been listening to, not caring about, have been indifferent to, wants to relate to you. You may not be aware of what it wants to relate because you have always been fighting and thinking it is crazy, trying to stop it or convert it into something else. All diversions are sorts of repressions.

Do one thing. Every night before you go to sleep, for forty minutes sit facing the wall and start talking

– talk loudly. Enjoy it... be with it. If you find that there are two voices, then talk from both of the sides. Give your support to this side, then answer from the other side, and see how you can create a beautiful dialogue.

Don’t try to manipulate it; because you are not saying it for anybody. If it is going to be crazy, let it be. Don’t try to cut anything or censor anything, because then the whole point is lost.

Do it for at least ten days and then tell me how you feel. For those forty minutes, in no way try to be against it. Just put your whole energy into it and within ten days something will surface which has been trying to tell you something but you have not listened; or which you were aware of but didn’t want to listen to. Listen to it and then it is finished. Why so much inner dialogue? It cannot be unnecessary; there must be something in it. There is.

The whole of psychoanalysis is nothing but a bringing up of your dialogue. The psychoanalyst in fact does nothing; he simply sits at the back. The analysing is simply Lying on the couch uttering whatsoever comes to him. Freud called it ’free association’ – whatsoever comes in the mind with no systematisation, no rationalisation. Even if one feels that it is almost insane, one has to say it. The psychoanalyst’s presence makes you feel that somebody is listening, that’s all. It is a very costly remedy – which you can do alone!

But there are people who will not be healed unless they pay for it, and pay tremendously. For years in and years out the patient goes on coming every week – twice, thrice a week – and for one hour goes on talking and talking and talking. When this whole inner talk is expressed, much is released; he feels good. He thinks he is feeling good because the psychoanalyst has done something. Nobody has done anything. The psychoanalyst has simply been a sympathetic ear. He has heard you, so you don’t feel that you are talking to a wall.

In your life it is a problem. If you want to talk to your father, he is not ready to listen. If you want to talk to your mother, she is not ready to listen. Or if they are ready they have conditions on what should be talked about and what should not be talked about. They go on saying, ’You are perfectly free – say whatsoever you want,’ but they have conditions that a few things are not to be told. In their eyes you can feel that they are insisting that you say only that which is allowed.

And even when they are listening, they are not listening. They have a thousand and one other things to do. You want to tell something to your wife and she is not listening. In fact if you start saying something a conflict arises. She starts reacting rather than listening She will not listen in the first place because she has her own things to say to you, and you are not ready to listen to her, because you have your own things. Both of you are boiling inside so much that nobody can just be a sympathetic listener.

I have heard a joke:

”The vacationing bartender’s replacement proved to be a friendly, talkative type who seemed to have an inexhaustible store of jokes and witty sayings. But his chatter didn’t seem to go over with the customers.

Finally the owner called the young bartender into his office. ’Kid,’ he said, ’the thing for you to do is listen. Let the customers do the talking. If they wanted to listen, they’d go home in the first place.”’

Nobody is ready to listen – that’s why we need professional listeners. A psychoanalyst is nothing but a professional listener. In fact you are healed by your own talking.

So start this talking to the wall – and be totally in it. Keep the lights either off or very dim, mm?

If sometimes you feel like shouting and becoming angry in your talk, become angry and shout, because it will go deep only when it is done with feeling. If you are just on a head-trip and you go on repeating words like a dead tape, that won’t help and the real thing won’t surface.

Talk with feeling, with gestures... as if the other is present there. After near about twenty-five minutes you will warm up. The last fifteen minutes will be tremendously beautiful; you will enjoy it. After ten days you will see that by and by the inner talk is disappearing and you have come to understand a few things you have never understood about yourself.

[A sannyasin says: You were talking in the lecture about floating and I was aware that there was something for me in this, that I must proceed with this living in insecurity.

I’m so attached to the basics – just eating and smoking... I couldn’t catch all that you were saying though.... ]

Soon you will understand... it is coming out. You have felt it – good. It is not clear but it will become clear. Just go on listening to me more attentively, mm? Things are going well.

When one has learned how to live in insecurity, insecurity disappears – and that is the only security in the world. In living through insecurity, insecurity disappears.

One cannot make life secure because that is not the nature of life. Insecurity is inbuilt in it, intrinsic to it, because life is change, continuous change. Security is possible if everything is permanent and nothing changes; everything is static. Life is dynamic, river-like. No other day is going to be the same again... no other moment is going to be the same. Everything will go on changing and changing and changing. If you try to become secure, the only way is to become almost dead. Life goes on changing but you remain static, almost frozen.

That’s what people have done with their money, their power, prestige, this and that; they have become frozen. Life goes on changing but they don’t change. That’s what they call their security –

but it is death, and a very ugly death at that.

The only way to find an attunement with life is to live life as it is without asking for any security. Soon you get in tune with insecurity without asking for any security. By and by you start enjoying it too...

you feel unburdened. Then suddenly you are secure because nobody can take your insecurity away from you! So just float. Whenever I feel that now you have lived insecurity enough, I will make you secure (chuckling). Don’t be worried, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I’ve got a lot of rubbish in my mind... just floating thoughts.]

Mm... watch them. There is no need to become serious about them, to get identified with them.

They don’t belong to you.

It happens sometimes that the thoughts of the person who is sitting by your side may be passing through you and you may have just caught them. Every mind is broadcasting and every mind is also receiving. The minds are both broadcasting and receiving stations simultaneously. So it is not your own rubbish; it is everybody else’s also. It is a great exchange that goes on continuously between heads.

If you try to get rid of it you will be in trouble. Just don’t pay much attention. Relax and accept it; it’s okay.

[Osho said that as naturally as blood circulates in the body, so thoughts circulate in the mind, and that one should simply remain a watcher. Suddenly moments will come when there is no thought –

and these gaps are tremendously blissful.

Fighting with a thought is useless; one needs just to let the mind do its thing... ]

Many times you will forget, but for that never repent. Laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

[The sannyasin replies: Yes, I always seem to be laughing but it still keeps coming.]

Then your laughter is not really laughter. You are serious. You say it is still coming – let it come!

Your laughter is also a sort of repression. In your laughter you are waiting for some sort of result:

’It should not come now – I am laughing; I am not serious. Now it should not come!’ But this expectation that it should not come, makes you serious. Your laughter will become serious. It won’t have that quality of laughter which I mean.

Laugh at the ridiculousness of it – that you know that it is useless and still you get into it! You know that it is almost mad, yet still you get into it. Don’t laugh at the mind – laugh at yourself.

Soon the gaps will come, but they never come by fight; they always come by one being relaxed, watchful. It will happen....

[A sannyasin says: I’m just drinking beer all the time, and resisting. But I enjoy resisting. But there is something wrong in the mind.

His girlfriend said that they had a problem because of this. She wanted to do the encounter group, but he did not.]

He has done much good for you. It is difficult to be with [him], but you have been. It was a great challenge but you faced it. He is even feeling a little tired and [you are] not. That’s something!

(laughter)

Never mention the Encounter group again. Whenever he says you can do it, you can, but that’s for him to decide, mm? His fear is just part of love. Whatsoever he is afraid of can happen in a group, because a group is an opening and a dropping of all taboos.

So what he is saying is possible. The whole point of the group is that you relax completely.

Whatsoever happens in the moment, you live it. You don’t follow some ideology, morality, immorality.

You just respond to the moment. You can say no, you can say yes, but the response has to come from the moment – not from your past ideas or future fears of what he will think or what others will say.

If you think that, an Encounter group will be useless because you are not part of the ongoing process of revealing yourself, becoming vulnerable. Try to understand his heart. Because he loves you he would not like you to be in a situation where something can happen that can destroy your relationship. But the fear is there because there is a possibility. He is aware that the relationship is not going very well. If it is going really well, there is no fear. So it shows love and fear both. He wants you to be with him, and he knows that the relationship is going in such a way that anything can become a divorce.

Doing a group is dangerous because you have to face the truth. If you are living in a relationship which is not happy and you are simply clinging to it, the group will bring you to the point where you realise that your relationship is an absolute burden, a load, and it is not helping your growth. It is killing you, poisoning your being, your whole system. If you understand that, it is possible that the relationship might drop; you may change your partner. Many relationships do drop after the group.

So his love is there and his fear is there. I am in support of his love but I am not in support of his fear.

[To the boyfriend] If you are afraid, do something.

... Firstly, there is no point in continuous fighting and conflict, because we are together with somebody to be happy, to share happiness, not to share misery and pain.

I am not saying that there are not moments of pain. In the best of relationships there are moments when there is pain, but those are rare moments and they don’t destroy the relationship. On the contrary they bring a little salt to it; .they make it more tasteful. They give variety to it.

But if it is a continuous fight and misery, then drop out of it. Take the courage and say, ’What is the point of being together? I make you unhappy; you make me unhappy. We are not in this world just to be unhappy.’...

[A sannyasin who is returning to the West said he felt he had had his fill of active meditation, and now he should simply be in a state of waiting. He also expressed doubt as to whether he should ask questions, or remain with them.]

It is a right understanding, absolutely right. It will happen in waiting. Doing is not a question. If you have been a doer, then doing has to be dropped absolutely... only waiting.

And there is no need to be worried about questions. They will disappear. They are never solved, but when your consciousness rises a little higher, they disappear. The basic thing is how to raise the consciousness a little higher from the plane it is on right now.

It is as if you see a dream, a nightmare in the night, that somebody is sitting on your chest or you are burdened with a rock or thrown into an abyss. You are worried, burdened with questions, and you scream.

Then you awake and your eyes are open... the dream is gone. With the dream, all the problems of the dream are also gone. It is not that now you have to solve them. Now it is a different consciousness. You are awake, so that the problems that were there when you were asleep are simply not there.

CHAPTER 17

24 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says she hasn’t the courage to take risks.]

But that may be your thing – not taking risks. There is no need to take risks. If that is your thing, it’s okay. If that is not your thing, there is no need. Always remember that when I say ’Do your thing’, I mean do it – whatsoever it is. It may be a surrender to me, but if it is your thing you have to do it.

You have to feel whatsoever is pleasurable to you. Whatsoever gives you joy, peace, that’s your thing. There is no other criterion. This is again taking a criterion from the outside – that one should take risks, that one should be courageous... but why? If you don’t feel like it, there is no need to be anything. If you feel good floating the way you are, perfectly okay. If you feel that something is wrong... and that has to be your feeling, not your idea, because listening to me may give you wrong notions, wrong ideas, wrong interpretations. That’s what has happened.

When I am talking to so many people I have to talk in a general way; it cannot be personal. It cannot fit you exactly. You have to understand this. I say ’Take risks’, but this may be your risk – not taking risks. That is a risk! But others are taking risks and moving into danger and you feel competitive.

You think you should do it too. Why? You see that others are very brave and courageous and you feel like a coward – then be a coward!

But even in the words, the condemnation is hidden. The moment we say, ’Be a coward,’ it seems that something is condemned. No, not at all. There is nothing like condemnation in it. That’s your way. If you want to take flight, then take flight.

Always remember that whatsoever feels pleasant to you, is you. So let that be the only criterion inside. Always go on moving and judging from the innermost criterion whether it is feeling good, if you are happy. The problem will arise many times because you will not be able to distinguish between your feelings and your thoughts. So there you have to be a little watchful and see.

A feeling is a total thing. A thought is a head thing. A feeling surrounds you, envelops you. A feeling is something that goes to your very guts... it moves in your blood... it breathes in your breathing. A feeling is a total thing.

For example right now sitting before me, a certain feeling is surrounding you. That is not a thought

– that’s a feeling. Later on you will remember it, and then it will be a thought. Later on you will start brooding about it; then it will be a thought. Thought is either of the past or of the future. Feeling is always of the present, so feeling knows no comparison. Feeling knows no planning. Either it is there or it is not there.

Be a feeling being.

And never compare with others because they may be doing their thing. Somebody is writing poetry and is becoming famous, and is applauded, appreciated. That may be his thing. Your thing may just be to remain unknown. So you come into the world, live in the world, and you leave the world as if you had never come. But that too has a beauty of its own. Who has said that only famous people are beautiful? Just come in like a small whisper. Nobody hears when one passes by... not even the dust is stirred. One leaves no footprint, nothing... as if one had never been. That has a beauty of its own.

Those also serve who stand and wait.

But these things should come to you from the inner core. Listening to me, the mind catches hold of certain ideas and then one starts thinking. Listen to me, understand it, and forget all about it. Digest it and forget all about it so that it becomes part of you. Then it will start functioning from your centre.

You are growing perfectly. If you have to listen to me, and you ask me, I will say that I am perfectly happy with you. I don’t see anything wrong... but the head goes on comparing: others are doing this and that and you have not yet proved yourself, your mettle; you have not shown the world who you are. What is the point? Why bother?

I don’t see that there is a real problem. If there is I will tell you. Simply be happy! That’s what I mean by being yourself. Be as if you are alone in the world. What will you do then? Everybody disappears and you are alone in the world. What will you do?

Just today I was reading a joke. A pilot of a spaceship landed back on earth, and suddenly he saw that there was nobody at the airport. He looked all around, went into the airport – nobody, not a single soul. He went into the city – not a single soul. Suddenly all souls had disappeared, the whole town empty! He took the airship to another airport. He went from New York to California, to England to the Continent, to India and to China – and everywhere the same thing. Suddenly all human beings had disappeared.

He became very miserable. He went home to his apartment on the thirtieth storey of a building and jumped out of it because there was nothing to do. Alone what can you do? He committed suicide.

But the moment he jumped he became more miserable, because suddenly the telephone started ringing (laughter). But it was too late – he had jumped!

So what will you do if you are alone in the world? Commit suicide? If that idea comes, you must be committing suicide right now, knowingly, unknowingly. If you think that if the whole world disappears you will meditate – so beautiful... nobody to disturb you – you must be meditating right now. Or if you think you will sing or dance, that’s what you are doing right now. If you are doing something for other people, then of course you will commit suicide.

I will not commit suicide. But people who are performing for others – what will they do? They will go mad immediately, because there is no audience; performance is not possible. They have been just actors, trying their whole life to prove something to people. Now those people have disappeared, so there is no point.

All your political leaders will commit suicide. What will they do? There is nobody to vote for them, and nobody to pay attention to them, nobody to garland them – nobody! Suddenly they are left alone. They will not feel any worth in their being.

That’s what I mean when I say listen to your own being as if you are alone In the world. People are there – good; so far, so good. If they are not there, you will be just like a river, flowing. The river will not bother whether people come to swim or not. And the sun will go on shining. It will not bother whether the beaches are full of people taking sunbaths or not. Flowers will go on flowering... birds will go on singing. Just mad people will be in difficulty; otherwise everything will be as it is.

So whenever you feel confused, always think whether you would be doing whatsoever you are doing alone. Then it is perfectly right – continue it. If you feel you will not be able to do it alone because you depend on others’ appreciation, certificates, this and that, then you are not doing your own thing.

You are doing something else which is expected of you.

[A visitor said she feels androgynous, and rebellious against female roles... and now she would like to be more positive.]

I understand (thoughtfully). Mm mm... but remember one thing – reaction is not revolt. I call what you have done a reaction, not a revolt.

In reaction you just go to the opposite extreme. In fact the same society that you are thinking you are revolting against goes on controlling you in a negative way. It decides what you should do. If the society expects this, you will not do this. You will do just the opposite – but the opposite is decided by the society. If the society says, ’Don’t do this,’ and you do it, then too, the society has been too important to you because it has decided your action by saying not to do it. This is reaction.

Reaction appears to be like a rebellion, but it is not. It is a pseudo-rebellion, a false coin, a counterfeit, and it can never be satisfying. Again and again you will feel that you have been against the society, but you have not been able to get rid of it.

It is said of Mulla Nasrudin, that from his very childhood he was thought to be a difficult child; they called him contrary. If you say to him ’Sit down’ he will not sit down. If you want him to sit down, tell him to stand – and immediately he will sit down. Contrary.

One day he was crossing a small stream with his father. On his donkey they had loaded bags of sugar, which were leaning too much to the right and there was fear that they might fall into the river.

The father wanted to say, ’Balance them – pull the bags to the left, but then the contrary mind of Mulla Nasrudin would do just the opposite; he would pull the bags to the right. Then they would fall into the river sooner than they would have done.

So the father said, ’Pull the bags to the right, Nasrudin. They are going to fall to the left side.’ He knew that he would pull from the left just to go against him. But this time something happened.

Nasrudin pulled to the right, and all the bags fell in!

The father said, ’What have you done? This is not like you!’

Nasrudin said, ’Am I just going to be a reactionary all my life? By telling me to pull to the right, you want me to pull to the left? Now I am an adult. You have forgotten that today I completed my twenty-one years!’

Become an adult now. You revolted – you thought you revolted, but it is not a real revolution, otherwise you would have been tremendously happy. A rebellious man is the most blissful man in the world, but a reactionary is not.

So don’t think in terms of what the society has been expecting of you. Think in terms of your inner being; what you would like to do. Now enough is enough! Why allow them to dominate forever and ever? Now become a real rebellious mind, and just do whatsoever makes you feel good. Even if society says, ’Do it, it is good,’ if you feel good, do it! That is what revolution is – to listen to the inner voice.

Don’t let society decide for you any more. Otherwise those who are obedient follow society, and those who are disobedient also follow the society – in the opposite way, but both are followers of the society.

A truly rebellious person does not bother what society says. He listens to his own heart and then decides. If it falls in line with the society, so far so good. If it doesn’t, there is no problem; he is ready to be alone and to walk alone. Many times you will be walking with the society, because all that society says is not wrong; many things are true.

If you think that whatsoever society says is wrong, you will be unhappy because you will miss many truths. If you think that whatsoever society says is right, you will be miserable because you will think many wrong things to be right and you will be in their grip.

Forget all about society... enough! Just listen to your heart and you will see that many things that society says are perfectly true, so go with it. Many things are perfect nonsense, so never go with them.

But my emphasis is not on following or not following the society. My emphasis is on following your own inner voice. Try to find out who you are, what your own feelings are.

[Osho went on to reiterate what he had said in a previous darshan – that because homosexuality is considered avantgarde, and bad people become homosexual. The reverse may also happen in the future. If homosexuality becomes the accepted form of sexuality, people will become heterosexual and consider themselves great revolutionaries.]

I am not saying whether homosexuality is good or bad, whether heterosexuality is good or bad –

these are foolish statements. Just listen to your own being. If you feel good, whatsoever it is, without any conditions, move with it. Be selfish. Let that be the deciding factor: be selfish. Always listen to your own self, its happiness, and wherever you can find it, find.

This is the beauty of it. If you are selfish you will become very altruistic because you will find that you can only be happy when you make people happy. You will find by experimentation that you can be peaceful only if you don’t make other people around you disturbed. Otherwise you cannot be peaceful. One who is really selfish becomes automatically altruistic. A really selfish person becomes a servant of the people.

So this is what I would like. Drop the society as if it doesn’t exist. It is not worth that much; you have given it too much attention.

[The sannyasin said that it was difficult to live in society. For example she likes to swim naked, and sit in cafes. But because she is female she gets hassled.]

But the problem is.... Just listen – somebody wants to expose his genital organs to you in the street.

He is an exhibitionist; he wants to undress before you. He says this is his life and he enjoys it. What will you say? Will you not feel offended?

Yes, then the question is, the moment the other enters, you have to think about him also. If there is nobody, swimming naked is perfectly good. But if there are other people there, you are exposing your naked body to them and they don’t want to see it. Because they are repressed, they are afraid they may do something.

They are not afraid of your naked body. They are afraid of their repressions! They are afraid that they may forget everything – they may rape you! They are afraid of their own desires, inhibitions, and they know if somebody provokes them too much they may forget all etiquette, all formality, all religion, all morality. They may forget that they are human beings; they may become just like animals. They may jump on you and rape you.

So they are afraid of themselves, but they don’t want to accept that so they say, ’Nobody can swim naked – it is obscene.’ They throw the responsibility on the naked person. It is not the responsibility of the naked person. But when you are in the world with people, you have to watch.

You would like to walk in the middle of the road because you feel like it, but then the whole traffic will be disturbed. If the policeman comes and tells you to walk to the right, you may say, ’It is not my liking. I want to walk in the middle.’

It happened that when Russia became independent of the Czar in 1917, an old woman started walking in the middle of a Moscow street. The policeman came and said, ’What are you doing lady?

You will be killed! Walk by the side of the road!’

She said, No more of that nonsense! I always wanted to walk in the middle. And now the country is free, revolution has happened, I am going to walk in the middle of the road!’

Then it is nonsense and you have to be stopped. You want to dance naked in the street, but you are not alone. There are other people and they are involved. This street is not only yours; it is common properly. This river is not yours.

So if you want to be naked, move to a lonely place. Go to the Himalayas somewhere, where there is nobody, and do whatsoever you want to do. I know you will not enjoy nakedness there.

That’s what I mean when I say you are a reactionary. You would like to be naked here where you can hurt people and say, ’I want to do my thing. Who are you to prevent me?’ Go – there is no problem.

Who is saying to you that you have to be in a city? There are still forests, there are still mountains.

Go before they disappear! Just go – and do there whatsoever is your heart’s desire.

But I know you will not enjoy it because what is the point of freedom when there is nobody to prohibit you?

... Then in order to be free, you will miss many other things of the society. Everybody has to decide about that. If you want all the benefits that society is giving you.... You will not have electricity there.

You cannot have air-conditioning there. You will have to seek and search for your food like a hunter.

It will not be available in restaurants, and you will not be able to sit in a restaurant and watch people.

So you will suffer there with no restaurant and nowhere to sit and no one to watch.

Life has to be an awareness – that if you live in a society there are a few benefits: a restaurant to sit in, a road to walk on, food, and other facilities. If you want to be alone and to enjoy swimming in the river... but that cannot be your whole life. You will feel hungry after one or two hours. Sooner or later you will feel hungry to see people, because that too is part of being human.

When you see people, something is satisfied deep down, because we are born in a society, we live in a society. Deep down we are connected with society... we live in an ocean of consciousness. You will feel impoverished in a forest. Sooner or later you will feel fed up with the trees because they don’t talk, they don’t answer; they don’t respond. Sooner or later you will become fed up with the birds because they go on singing the same thing again and again. Then you will start hankering for the society. So one has to decide. Benefits are there, and a few limitations are there. One needs to decide and choose.

Living in society is a responsibility. You are not alone so you have to look to others and they have to look to you. It is a relationship, a subtle relationship. So just decide.

If you feel that this is too much, that these limitations are too much and you are ready to forego all the benefits, then move. But if you think those benefits are worth something.... Talking to a human being is a great thing, a valuable thing; talking to somebody who can understand you. Talking to somebody who has understood life is a great benefit. Trees cannot give that to you.

Swimming in the river is a very very small thing. Life is very big. Just for swimming naked one cannot lose the whole life. And it is always a choice. You have to lose a few things to gain a few others. Don’t be too obsessed with small things.

You can close your room and move naked, and there is nobody to disturb you. You can be naked in your bathroom and enjoy it. But there must be something of an exhibitionist...

So you can go and lie down on the terrace in the sun. There is no need for anybody to be bothered that you are naked.

[She answers: I know it’s a question of compromise... ]

It is not a question of compromise! It is a question of understanding. Compromise is not the right word... it is a question of understanding.

For example you have come to me. If you are here for one hour, you are losing many more things. In that one hour you could have done many other things. You could have gone to the movie; you have missed the movie. You could have gone to see friends. You could have gone to a coffee-house; you have missed that. You could have danced; you have missed that. You could have read; you have missed that. You have missed a thousand and one things to come to me. You may not be aware, but you have missed – because there were millions of alternatives. This is how life is. You cannot do all the things together. It is not a question of compromise... it is a question of alertness.

If you become alert, things become very easy and one finds a way. One always finds a way. That’s what one should try to do – to live life as much as possible... to gain as much out of life as possible.

Out of everything, going on choosing the best – the best that is humanly possible so you become enriched. But the attitude of just being against society is not going to help. Society does not bother about it, and you will be crippled by it.

Forget about rules, forget about society. Just think about yourself, your possibilities, alternatives –

what can be chosen and what will be the best choice. If you feel that you have made a mistake, change it. Learn by trial and error. That’s how it has to be. Don’t get obsessed by small things; they are not that important. Life is a big thing. It is not equivalent to going naked in the sun or the river. It is a very big, very complicated thing.

[A therapist says that when she is with people she feels shrinking... and crazy. She has been doing bio-energetics.]

That’s why you have become aware of the energy; otherwise people are not really aware. It always happens to everybody, but people who are working on energy systems – bio-energetics, acupuncture, yoga – become more alert about certain phenomena which are happening to everybody, but about which people are not alert.

A certain space Is needed by. everybody. Whenever people encroach on that space your energy shrinks; it becomes almost panicky inside.

That space is becoming less and less every day. The world is becoming too crowded. Everywhere

– in the train, in the bus, in the theatre, on the street, in the shop, in the hotel, in colleges, in schools, the crowd is too much and the necessary space for the growth of the individual has disappeared. A deep stress has arisen in every human being. They call it the ’stress syndrome’. Now it has become almost normal.

Everybody is stressed, but because it has become normal, people are not aware of it. It creates many sorts of inner illnesses; particularly tenser types of diseases come out of this stress. For an uncivilised person, a primitive person, it is almost impossible to have tension. A person who lives in the wilderness cannot have tension.

[Osho said that scientists have found that it is inherent in all animals to protect a certain territory in which to preserve their well-being.]

Watch people in the train standing side by side, almost being crushed by each other – shrunken, hard, frozen, not moving, because they are afraid. If they move, the energy moves, so they remain frozen. as if they are dead, so they cannot feel the presence of the other. That’s how bodies have become more and more deadened, insensitive.

Because you have been working in bio-energetics, the passage has become clear and you can feel it. Now you have to do something about it, otherwise it will create problems.

There are two things you can do whenever people are close and you feel the first sign of panic, fear and strain. Exhale deeply and throw the air out. Just feel that the whole stress is being thrown out with the air. Then inhale deeply. Take in fresh air and feel that your chest, your inner passage is expanding. Just seven breaths will do, and suddenly you will see that there is no problem.

Do this for at least two weeks...

The most important thing is the idea that with the exhalation you are throwing out stress.

Breathing can be used to invite many things, to throw many things. It is the most vital part in you. It is you. So whatsoever you do to your breathing, you are doing to yourself, mm?

[The Enlightenment Intensive are present. A non-sannyasin group member said he had left after the first evening. Osho said this was all right.

A sannyasin participant says: I couldn’t find myself. I just had feelings of frustration and dislike for myself.]

Forget about it. I think some time later you will have to repeat it. It is a very very powerful method and its benefits are tremendous, but one has to be in right tuning with it.

For example he (the visitor) was feeling that it was not for him, so there is no point, and forcing yourself is not of much use; nothing will come out of it. But if one can do it without any effort of the will, if one can simply surrender to the process, much comes out of it.

The frustrations were there because there was some expectation in you that something was going to happen. That created the whole trouble. If you have some expectation you will be frustrated and nothing will come out of it. But one has to learn by doing it; there is no other way. So forget about it.

Whatsoever it could do it has done.

But always remember while doing the meditations or a group, never go with an expectation. Just go to see what happens, and allow it to happen. Don’t go on looking out of the corner of the eye and don’t go on waiting for something to happen, because that will become a constant barrier and it won’t allow you to be there totally. It won’t allow you to be herenow. That expectation will constantly hover around your head and you will say, ’It has still not happened. Up to now it has not happened and one day is gone. Another day has gone – what are you doing? Nothing has happened!’

That becomes an auto-hypnosis. Nothing has happened and the time is running out! You miss.

In the Tao group, simply do it. If the mind says that nothing is happening, tell the mind that nothing is going to happen! For what are you looking? Nothing is the goal! Once you cannot be frustrated by the process, you will be tremendously benefited by it. That’s the rule: if you cannot be frustrated by it, you will be benefited. The frustration. simply shows that you’ve a deep desire, a deep undercurrent of desire, that is frustrating you – not the group.

But it is nothing to worry about. It happens to almost everybody in the first group. And this is an intense group. One starts rationalising, in many ways, about what is the point and why are you wasting your time. Many times the idea will come to leave; that’s natural.

But one learns, mm? So in the Tao group, don’t carry any expectations and much is possible.

[Osho enquires of the visitor is he is doing another group, and he replies: the Tao group.]

That will be good. This time, even if a slight idea enters into the mind to leave, there is no need to fight with the idea. Just be indifferent to it.

You left this group. What did you do in these two days when you left? What have you attained in these two days? I am just asking you to ask yourself. Whenever we are leaving something, we should always think, ’What are we attaining by leaving?’ It is better to go through it.

Maybe you won’t gain anything, but maybe something will come out of it. Whenever it is a question between doing something and not doing, always choose doing. If you don’t gain anything, it is almost as if you have not done it; nothing is lost. But one never knows... there are surprises in life.

Sometimes something happens that one was never expecting. And sometimes something happens which is almost beyond intellect, or below intellect. Something simply takes possession of you, so non-intellectual, that later on you may not be able to even believe that it happened.

CHAPTER 18

25 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin leaving for Scotland said he was feeling apprehensive about going home.

Osho said it was good to pass through different situations, changes, otherwise one began to stagnate and to have a false sense of security. Life takes care of one, and though there may be change and upheaval, things always settle again, and slowly one begins to have a trust in life... ]

And once this happens, you are free of tomorrow. Tomorrow is the anxiety. If it is settled you feel there is no problem. If it is not settled there is anxiety. With the dropping of anxiety and fear, one is free of the future. In fact one is free of time itself; suddenly you are no more part of time.

A timelessness enters your being. Then whatsoever happens you are calm and quiet. And you accept... you know that life will protect you. Even in death you know it must be the way of life to drop unnecessary things, to drop rotten things; to drop that which is no more needed... to make you new.

Then death is resurrection.

[A Japanese sannyasin who does not speak English says through an interpreter: In your lectures I don’t understand anything so when I’m sitting there I try to receive things into my body, and then after the discourse I try to listen to my body.]

Absolutely right... that’s the real way. Words are not very important, but the vibrations that you feel from me. You have stumbled on the right thing.

The body absorbs those vibrations and you can listen to them later on. So while listening to me, drink me, and then later on you can feel your body and they will be there. Perfectly good.

[A sannyasin says: I’m just able to see only a little bit, that’s all.]

Right! But even a little bit is very good, mm? Because then more becomes possible. In the beginning it is always a little bit, but once you have the knack of it, it grows.

You are beginning to see... You will know more and more.... And you are getting in tune with me...

[The Encounter group was present at darshan tonight.... ]

The whole point of the group is that you relax completely. Whatsoever happens in the moment, you live it. You don’t follow any ideology, morality, immorality. You just respond to the moment – not from your past ideas or future fears.

[A visitor who is a group member said: I’m full of hate and anger, but I’ve not worked in the group yet... I don’t want to show myself to others.]

But you have to decide about it.

This is one of the most basic things to understand – that you are responsible for yourself, nobody else. You have to take the responsibility. If you want to grow, open. If you don’t want to grow then remain closed – but it is your responsibility.

When I use the word responsibility, I don’t use it in the ordinary sense, in the sense of duty – no. It is exactly the opposite of duty. Duty is always something that you don’t want to do and you do it.

The duty to your father, the duty to your mother, the duty to the country, the duty to this and that is that which you don’t want to do, but you do it because it has been forced on you, taught to you, and if you don’t do it you will feel guilty. If you do it you will not feel happy but at least you will not feel guilty. You will gain nothing out of it.

When I say responsible, I mean respond to the situation in which you find yourself. If you don’t respond, that is your decision. Remember always that if you don’t want to grow, there is no way to help you. It is nobody else’s business. The groupleader, the group, will help, but if you want to hide there is no way to enter you.

If you see that it is foolish to hide, foolish to hold on, then drop that nonsense. And don’t ask how to drop it. There is no how to it. You simply see the point – that it is useless – and you drop it. By dropping it one learns how to drop it.

Whatsoever you are trying to hide is not worth it. It is not a treasure to hide! It is your disease. And why be afraid of these people? They are not sitting there like judges. You will never find another opportunity in life where people are not judging you. That is the whole point of the group – that the people who are there are not judicial. They are not in any way condemning you.

If you show your anger and your hatred and your real face, they will not say that you are bad, that you are a criminal, a sinner. They are not popes and priests, and they will not judge. In fact they will say that you are true. They will appreciate that you are honest, sincere about yourself; that you are conscious and can open your heart with no fear. You are not a coward.

This is the beauty of a growth group – that it gives you an opportunity that is not available in the ordinary world. If the world would grow rightly, this opportunity would be available all over the world

– everywhere: in the marketplace, in the temple, in the church, in the school, in the college, in the university. Then there would be no need for groups and you would be accepted everywhere. Nobody would be judging you and everybody would be trying to help you. People will appreciate that you are sincere.

This is not possible in the outside world, hence groups have evolved; just twelve or twenty persons in a group, a closed family, in which everybody is ready to open. But when others are opening, it is easier to open; it becomes infectious. When you see that somebody has opened and nobody has condemned them, nobody has taken any judgement about it, and by opening the person has come to feel a freedom... you can see on the face, you can feel the vibe, you can see some changes happening around his space. He is no more the same constrained being. He is like an opening flower, and you can see the after-glow that comes after opening. You can see the relaxed grace, the dignity that comes to a person.

If you go on seeing this happening and you cannot open, where will you open? It has to function like a chain. One person opens and suddenly another starts feeling that something beautiful has happened and thinks, ’Why shouldn’t I take courage?’ He opens and then a third takes courage.

This is a chain-reaction.

That’s why person-to-person therapy has failed. People have been in psychotherapy for ten years, twelve years, even fifteen and twenty years, and nothing has happened. Within a ten-day group, that can happen which cannot happen in ten years of psychoanalysis, because there is no situation really – just the therapist and the person. It is not an environment in which somebody can flower, can take hints from others, can see what flowering is; can actually be a witness when somebody flowers and opens, and can see how beautiful one becomes. Suddenly the ugliness disappears from the face.

So don’t miss this opportunity. Just watch people... they are just like you; they also have the same problems. Nothing human is alien. Whatsoever problem you have, they are just the same; maybe degrees differ. When people are being angry and their hate is coming up, their sexuality is coming up, their greed is coming up – they are crying and weeping and laughing and things are opening, pent-up energies are finding release – watch! Get caught up in the flow! Ride on the wave! Take a jump!

It will happen. There is no technique in it, just courage! And if it is not going to happen in this group, then in the next – but be yourself. Don’t let it continue this way otherwise you will miss the whole of life. A person who is closed is almost dead. He lives just for the name’s sake. You will miss – and it is nobody else’s responsibility.

It is not my responsibility to open you. If you remain closed, you remain closed. If you open you have done something beautiful and good to yourself. It is absolutely selfish. So remember this, because we have been trained to have a certain idea which particularly psychology has given us. If you are not feeling good, you say, ’My mother was not good to me – it is her responsibility.’ Freud shifted the whole responsibility onto the mother. And poor mother! Now nothing can be done; the mother is no more there. You cannot become a child again, so it Is finished. You accept yourself whatsoever you are – doomed!

Freud says it is the parents, Marx says the society, and there are others. analysts, who find out something or other, but nobody says that you are responsible. That’s a very tricky and fishy affair.

And you are responsible – not your mother or your father or the society. I know that they have given you a certain environment, but still it is your choice. In the same environment somebody else has grown in a different way.

I have grown in the same atmosphere in a different way. Why can’t you? Your brother in the same family may grow in a different way to you. So it plays a part, but it is not very basic. The basic thing is your attitude.

There are people here who think that it is my responsibility to help them become enlightened. If they are not becoming enlightened, I am the culprit! What am I to do about it? And they create all sorts of barriers – and then I am responsible! They will go and say that they have been here for one or two years and nothing has happened.

Your responsibility is absolute. Once you understand that, suddenly now you will see that something has to be done, because there !s no point going on throwing responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders. It is foolish because you are wasting your life. So from tomorrow morning you start opening in the group.

(addressing the rest of the group) And help him, mm? Force him into the whirlpool... jump on him!

(laughter) And break his ice. He is such a good person... he will grow into a beautiful man. Just try, mm? It will happen.

[A group member says: I am starting to open myself, but I have much fear in doing it... just after one or two hours I lose that contact again.]

It is natural. It is so with everybody because we have not been in touch with ourselves for so long

– maybe for many lives – so we have forgotten the language of contact and of connectedness, of integrity, of being at home. We are continuously wandering here and there.

The fear is also natural. When you come in contact with yourself, you come in contact with a voidness; that’s the fear. Everybody has an emptiness at the very core of one’s being, just like the hub of a wheel. The wheel has spokes and they are all joined at the hub, but at the exact centre of the wheel, there is emptiness. That emptiness holds the wheel. In exactly the same way, your whole life-wheel is centred on emptiness, on non-being.

But these words are very very scarey – emptiness, non-being, nothingness, death – because we have misunderstood them. We have become afraid to go into the emptiness so we go on moving on the wheel and never come home. We go on finding new occupations, new engagements, new business; something to be engaged with. If you are alone and you start feeling that you are falling into the emptiness, you start reading the newspaper, cleaning the house; you start doing this and that – preparing tea, smoking cigarettes – something, so that you can hold onto the wheel. Action is on the wheel, Inaction is at the centre. But that inaction has to be lived.

That’s the whole effort here – to throw you into your emptiness. Once you enter into it, you will laugh at the whole absurdity of what you were doing up to now. You will see that this emptiness Is absolute fulfillment. It is absolute fulfillment.

It is exactly like when you make a house. What do you call a house – the walls or the emptiness inside? The walls are not the house... they simply protect the emptiness. You live in the empty house, you don’t live in the walls. You make a wall, but you cannot pass through it, so you make an empty space which we call a door, and you pass through that. We make a vase or a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that is used. This is the real significance of the pot – that inside it is empty and just has a mud wall around it. Exactly the same is the case with your body.

The body is just walled emptiness. Deep inside you are empty, pure sky where nothing ever stirs.

One has to taste it to know what it is. Once you have known it, it is deep rest. It is life ... it revives you, rejuvenates you. It is just as in the night you fall asleep. Where do you go? Have you ever thought about where you go when you fall asleep? You go to the emptiness.

If a man is going to live for sixty years, for twenty years he will be asleep. Twenty years of emptiness are needed for this life – to revive you again and again. Each morning you are again fresh and young; again moving, doing. By the evening, tired again, you fall into sleep. Sleep means falling to the hub.

It is the darkness of your inner being where you move and rest. You almost disappear. In deep sleep you forget your name. You forget who you are – man or woman. You forget black and white, your language, the society that you belong to, whether you are rich or poor, old or young; you forget everything. Suddenly, in the emptiness, there is no identity, and out of that identityless state, you gain life.

So just allow it and take courage. Enter into that emptiness. Fear will remain until you enter – so don’t ask me what to do with the fear. Fear will remain. In spite of the fear you have to enter.

Once you enter, fear disappears – once you have known that you can come out of it and go into it again; disappear and appear again; go into chaos and come back again into a system; move into disorder and then can become ordered... just as every night you go to sleep, arid in the morning you are back.

There are a few people who become afraid of sleep. In fact that’s my observation – that people who suffer from insomnia are really suffering from a deep fear of sleep. They don’t want to sleep, that’s why sleep has disappeared. They go on saying that they want to sleep and sleep is not coming, but that is not the case. Somehow they have become afraid of sleep. They are afraid to move into the darkness of their innermost core. Because of that fear they cling.

Drop that fear... disappear. I am here to bring you back.

[A groupmember said that she wanted to be near Osho in the ashram, but did not like the routine.]

It is... it is me. All that routine is also me (a chuckle).

You decide. Once you are in the ashram you have to follow everything absolutely. I don’t tolerate any nonsense at all. You have to follow absolutely – otherwise be outside. There is nothing to be worried about.

... Feel that for yourself, mm? Because if I say something, that will create a conflict in you. Just be patient and feel. If you feel good outside, it is good. If you don’t feel like falling into any routine, that too is good. But don’t come to the ashram half-heartedly. That will create trouble.

[She replies: I so much wish I could be total in one thing, but there are always so many voices.]

Just try to listen to the chief and main voice. It may not be total, but at least the chief voice! Tonight, sit on your bed and listen, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I’ve done a lot of groups in the West, and it seems like I’m right back at the beginning... For most of the time I feel dead in my body.... but I feel that this is more real.]

It has brought you to your real situation. And it happens that when you are doing groups for the first time, you are excited, full of so many expectations, as if enlightenment is going to happen through them, mm? (chuckling) One is excited and passionate and in fever. When you have done many, that expectation, that excitement, goes and you become more cool and calm. You see things more in their reality than through your expectations and projections.

This is the real thing. You are dead in many parts of the body, and the group has brought you to a deep understanding of this. So use this insight and do something to bring life to your body.

T’ai Chi will be very good... the music group and the ethiopian dance group will both be very good.

These three things will be very helpful to help more life flow into the body.

This is a simple mechanism. If you dance, first you have to make an effort, but by and by your energy takes it over. Then you don’t dance, the energy dances; you simply forget. If you sing, a moment comes when the shift occurs. You are no more singing – the song is singing in you. So, T’ai Chi will be very good to bring energy to the body.

Remember, the body is never dead. At the most it is frozen, so it can be melted. The right word for it is what you call hibernation. The frogs after the rains go into hibernation. They move into the earth and lie down there. Right now, in summer, they are in hibernation; they are almost dead. If you dug them out you would find them almost dead; but only almost dead – not really dead. If you put them in a pond they would become alive. They are simply waiting for the rains to come. When they hear the thunder they will come out of their sleep. It is a very deep sleep. The same happens to many animals.

In the siberian snow, animals go into hibernation. When everything freezes, they also freeze inside and they wait for the right moment to come back, to return.

The same happens to the human body. If you don’t use a certain limb, that limb goes into hibernation.

Not that it is really dead, because if it is really dead, then there is no way to bring it back. You have not used the hand for so long, the energy has not moved into those meridians, those passages, so the limb has frozen. Let energy flow again in that limb, and it will become alive again.

T’ai Chi is very good to bring the body back slowly, to fill the body again with chi, with energy. But there are very slow movements in T’ai Chi because the work is very very slow and very cautious.

You are working with a very dangerous thing, mm? your own life energy, so one has to be very respectful. You are moving on sacred ground. You have to take your shoes off with deep respect.

This is one way... the other is ethiopian dance. It is totally different.

T’ai Chi hits the very core of the small nerves, of which there are millions in the body. By and by it infuses life into those small nerves, the body cells, and makes them alive.

Ethiopian dance, or things like Karate, are very vigorous. There is a sudden onrush of energy, and it is so much that it by-passes the small cells, but for the bigger musculature it is perfectly good and very very helpful. Both are needed, so join both, and the music group.

Sound is very very helpful. If it is harmonious you Will start a soaring of energy within you. Music is very simple, but very deeply ecstatic. It is very sexual and very sensual.

Sex is ordinarily local, confined to the reproductive system, but music spreads it all over your body...

spreads it into every part of your body and gives it a very subtle glow.

So join these three groups, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I’m discovering a lot about myself. I seem to always be creating problems.]

But that is nothing to worry about, because if you can always create problems, the same energy can be used to destroy problems. If you are feeling happy, you can create sadness; the same skill can be used.

The mind cannot function when you are happy... it is not needed. The need is only when you are unhappy. Mind has a function, and the function is to help you to be happy, so it is needed only when you are unhappy. It is just like a doctor; he is needed only when you are ill. If you are not ill the doctor is not needed.

If you are rich the doctor will not allow you to be healthy because it is against his whole interest.

Once rich people get ill, they never get healthy again! Only poor people have the possibility of getting better again, because no doctor wants them to come again and again; every doctor wants to be finished with them.

The mind is needed when you are unhappy. Once the mind sees that you are feeling too happy, he immediately changes into unhappiness because the need for the mind is finished. A happy man becomes more like a no-mind.

So just try to understand this and don’t be worried.

[A group member said: I feel free, but lost and confused about myself. Does it have a lot to do with my own self or my being japanese, my conditioning and background?

No, it has nothing to do with your self. Everybody’s self is perfectly beautiful. No problem exists as far as the self is concerned. All problems are of conditioning. Your innermost core is completely beyond problems. It is absolutely innocent. It knows nothing of problems. But the wheel goes on moving around it, that’s the whole thing.

Every country has a different structure – every religion, every society – and it goes deep; so deep that you almost start feeling it as yourself. From the very beginning you become aware of it. And nobody teaches you how to go into yourself. The whole society teaches you that this is yourself. It is all conditioning.

The whole spiritual work consists of trying to decondition you. Once you can see yourself for even a few moments, absolutely unconditioned, in your true nature, you will never get trapped. Then you can use the conditioning – because it has to be used. When you speak you have to use a language, and that’s the conditioning. You will have to move in a society and follow the rules. But all the time you know that you are beyond it. Then nothing disturbs you. It is just a game, and every game has rules. One has to follow the rule, but one is not to get identified with it.

I was reading a joke just the other day. A man stayed in a haunted house. Of course he was trying to be brave, but fear was there. Just in the middle of the night, suddenly he saw out of the blue, a beautiful lady. He became scared!

When the beautiful lady came close, she took her head off and put it on his pillow (laughter). He ran! He jumped out of the bed and ran downstairs and there the whole family was gathered playing some card game.

He said to them, ’Look, I can’t believe my eyes!’ He was trembling and perspiring. He said, ’A lady came just out of the blue, and can you imagine what she did? She took her head off and put it on my pillow!’

They said, ’This is nothing – anybody can do it.’ And they all took their heads off!

So when you are in a ghost country, you have to know their rules. (chuckling) That was nothing for them! They were all ghosts – the whole company!

CHAPTER 19

26 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[An assistant groupleader says: I’m not feeling unhappy or happy.]

If you want to be happy then who is blocking the way?

... That can be an even bigger problem. If you feel unhappy, it is easier to feel happy, but if you are not feeling unhappy, it will be more difficult. This will create a sort of numbness.

Unhappiness is a very passionate thing – at least one is feeling something. It is easy to move from hell to heaven, because one gets fed up with hell. One wants to get away, to get out. But if you are not feeling unhappy there can be more trouble, because then there is no motivation to go beyond it.

One simply feels alive, so so, lukewarm... one can carry on. Then one starts living like a zombie.

Whatsoever happens is okay. If nothing happens, that too is okay. Then one simply loses contact with life.

This is a good insight – that you understand that there is nobody in the way, that it is only you. But this insight will not be of much help because there is actually something in the way, though it may not be somebody.

As I see it, I have never come across a neurotic person; there are none. People only have neurotic styles. Nobody is neurotic – just the style. And that style is in the way. We all learn some style of life. If you have learned something which makes you numb, you will have to unlearn it. If you don t unlearn it, it is in the way. If you have learned to be unhappy, you will create unhappiness again and again – and at the same time feeling resentful, because who wants to be unhappy? But a wrong style of life, a wrong attitude has entered somewhere into the makeup of the mind. It goes on influencing you.

If you feet that you are not unhappy, don’t settle for it. It is not happiness... certainly not happiness.

And it is not better than unhappiness, remember. It is worse! And one can settle in it. One can never settle in unhappiness; that is the problem.

So don t settle in it. And I will suggest a few things for you to start doing, because this numbness has to be broken. You have tremendous possibility in you. Once this numb style is broken you will start flowing. And to be with Veeresh is a great opportunity – you can use it. But sometimes it happens that if you are too close you start taking things for granted.

[Osho suggested that she take up some vigorous physical exercise – swimming, running, horse-riding – to get the body energy flowing. He said that whenever she felt the numbness she should immediately do something – sing, dance – to erode the habit. One has to have a substitute style –

one cannot simply break a style without replacing it, otherwise one will fall back into the old ways.

Osho suggested that She start doing a headstand every morning and evening; initially for two or three minutes, gradually increasing the time to ten minutes.... ]

You need to be put upside down. As I see, if you have become numb, by and by blood circulates less and less in the very subtle fibres of the brain. If you stand on your head it will become an on-rush of energy – not only of blood, but of sexual energy also, because then it is easier for gravitation to pull things towards the head.

At least become unhappy if you cannot become happy. Cry, weep, mm?

[The Aum marathon group is present. The leader says: This group is amazing... The first part was the positive, and as you said, and the negative came up. And in the second part, the negative, all of a sudden I started to fall in love with the people.]

Good. That’s how it happens. That’s the polarity and one of the very basic, fundamental laws of life.

If somebody is crying, help him to cry well, and soon he will laugh. If somebody is miserable don’t try to bring him out of it; help him to sink in. Soon he will come out of it completely freed. If somebody is dying, help him die. He will resurrect. Just let life work. Simply understand the law and don’t go against it, that’s all. This is the law: never enforce and don’t be bothered about the opposite. The opposite is coming on its own. It is just like a swinging pendulum.

And the circle has to be complete – both yin and yang – and then a person is at peace. One should be capable of being negative totally, of being positive totally.

Ordinarily the whole humanity has been taught to be positive and not to be negative. The result is that humanity has become negative. People don’t know what joy is. They have forgotten the very language. You talk about bliss, and they simply listen to the word; they don’t have any experience of it. And they have been taught continuously to be blissful, joyful. They only know what angerand sadness is. They have been taught to cling to just one polarity and have not been allowed to move to the other polarity. Life exists between these two poles... in the movement is life. And a real life implies both.

A real life is so comprehensive that day and night, summer and winter, god and devil, all are in it. A god who is without the devil is not much of a god; he will be a very poor god. And a devil who has no divinity in him will simply be worth nothing. The day is rich because you have rested deeply in the night... the darkness allowed you rest. There are joys of work, but if you have worked hard, only then is the night beautiful. Otherwise you just go on changing from side to side the whole night and there is no sleep.

This is what I mean when I say be a whole person. Nothing should be excluded... nothing should be excluded. Everything should be included, and in that inclusion of everything, you start soaring.

Otherwise every human being is crippled because something has been excluded. Somebody has excluded his anger, somebody has excluded his sex, somebody has excluded something else No human being seems to be whole, but wounded, cut, fragmented. Let this be your whole work in the West. Help people to become whole. Just tell them that whatsoever is in you has to be included in your higher synthesis... it has its role to play. In the higher orchestra of your being, nothing should be left behind. All notes have to fall in tune, in harmony. Then something arises which is more than the total of all – and that is the whole. The whole is more than the total. Whole and total do not mean the same thing.

Total is the way towards the whole, but the whole is more that the total. If all your parts are added together it will be total. If all your parts fall into a symphony, then it will be whole.

A room has furniture. You can throw the furniture in a chaotic fashion – everything topsy-turvy. Then it is total. It is difficult to live in such a room; chairs are upside down and everything is in chaos.

Then you arrange everything and the same room becomes liveable in. Now there arises a harmony, a new value, which is more than the total – because it was total before too.

A man can be total and may not be whole. That man will go mad. This is my observation – that there are two types of persons. One type is people who are too cultured and civilised; who are not mad, but are fragmentary; a few parts have been denied. They are not vital, because how can you be vital when one of your wings is cut, one leg is cut, one hand is cut, one eye is missing? You cannot be vital. These people live at the lowest, the minimum; afraid that if they live a little more, those parts which have been excluded will have to be included.

So this civilised person lives a life which is very superficial, non-vital. If you tell the civilised person to include all without giving him a harmony, he will go mad. That is what is happening in the West.

Christianity has made people adjusted to the lowest possibility and fragmented them. Now with the new ideology of licence, freedom, dropping of all the taboos, living. Life in its totality, here and now.

many people are going crazy. They become total but they don’t know how to become whole, so chaos is created instead of a cosmos. This cannot go on very long. Sooner or later they will again fall into the same trap; they will go to church. When you get fed up with madness, you again start cutting things to make yourself sane.

This is a vicious circle which has been going on for centuries; it is nothing new. Phases come: phases of discipline where people become fragmented, and phases of freedom when people become mad. This can go on and on; there is no end to it.

You get out of this wheel if you become whole. Then you are not just total, but something new, something more than the total, something higher than the total, superior to the total.

And I am going to help you continuously wherever you are – now space will not make any difference.

Just go on working as if you are working here. Go on calling me and I will be there. Much has to be done....

[The leader says: Last year when I was in Europe and working, I introduced a lot of people to you.

I find that people get turned on to me and think they’re related to me rather than you.]

Whenever people think that, just tell them that you are part of me. Drop the division. Somebody turned on to you is turned on to me. Drop the duality from the mind and then work becomes easier.

Allow me to work through you. And many more people will be coming through you, mm? I am not going anywhere, I will be sitting here, so you all have to go and work and spread me as far as you can.

[A group assistant said: I realized that I really like working more than any meditation.]

Very good. If you love some work, it is the most beautiful meditation... there is nothing else like it.

In fact meditation is a substitute when you don’t love your work. Then something has to be found which you can love.

If you love your work there is no need for meditation.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve decided to stay although there is a man in the States whom I love very much, and I feel a lot of sadness about not being with him.]

If he can come it will be good. ,If he cannot come, don’t be worried.

I can understand the sadness, but always remember that love is possible only if you become very very open. Otherwise one can only think about love, but it never becomes possible. A certain readiness, a ripeness is needed for love to happen. One can be in love and not ready. You go on beating the bush around and around, but you never hit the target. Then love brings more misery than happiness.

Ordinarily it is thought that everybody is born ready for love. That’s absolute nonsense. Even if one can become ready by the time one is going to die, then too one should be happy that it has happened early. People simply live without knowing what love is and then they die.

I have heard about a man who went to his doctor. He was very old, and when the doctor examined him he said, ’Your body is ageing too much, and you are almost eighty. I think you will have to cut your love life in half.’

The old man said, ’Okay; but which half? Thinking about it or talking about it?’ (laughter) But this is the whole of the love life! People think and talk about it. So even if you feel sad there is nothing to worry about.

Be here, meditate more... feel me more. Allow me to help you more. And dare! You have been hiding and trying to avoid a few things. That is at your own risk. Don’t avoid – it is very costly. Just plunge in, and take the danger that life is... accept it – and then you will become able to live. One can find lovers any day. The basic thing is to find love and that is a quality in you that has nothing to do with the other.

One should really be sad if one has not found love within one’s own heart. Lovers are always available; if one is not there, there is another. That’s not a big problem. First create the quality and then it will come.

It will come. It comes only when you become very meditative.

[An assistant leader of the Aum says: Sometimes in the group there are certain responses that you have to give the participants which is from the head. If I’m telling somebody, I can’t meet their eyes...

it’s not real I don’t know if that will disappear.]

It will disappear. One thing has to be remembered: even a thought can be real. All thoughts are not necessarily unreal – but this is how the human mind goes on creating unnecessary problems.

Now the emphasis in the West in growth groups, in the new trends in humanistic psychology, is that the feeling is true and the thought is not true. Just the opposite was the case a hundred years ago.

The thought was true and the feeling was not true. Now you have simply put things upside down.

The first attitude was wrong; the second is also wrong, because thought has also to be included.

Otherwise you will again create a part human being, not whole, because where will you put thought?

Thought as such is not phoney. So how to decide whether thought is phoney or not?

If thought is in cooperation with feeling it is not phoney. If thought is trying to dominate feeling, then it is phoney. All domination is wrong. If things are cooperating and nobody is trying to dominate anybody, then everything is true.

So remember, rhythm is true. To be non-rhythmic is untrue. So if thought is in rhythm there is no problem. Don’t think it is phoney, because thought is also yours as much as your feelings. The head is also yours. The problem is not the head. The problem is that your head has become your whole being and the whole body is excluded.

Don’t go to the other extreme; don’t exclude the head. Accept the totality: your head, your hands, your body, your feelings, your thinking – everything has to be included.

Man is such a rich possibility, and everything has to be helped to fall into a rhythm. Just think, if your legs want to go the West and your hands don’t, then you are in a dichotomy. You are in trouble...

your being is contradictory. One hand wants to do something and another hand doesn’t want to do it.

With one hand you give, with another hand you snatch away. Then you are divided. But if both your hands are ready to give, your legs and eyes and your whole body are ready to go in one direction, you are in a perfect harmony, a beautiful graceful phenomenon.

Here, don’t take any head-trip. Leave everything to me. Whenever you feel that you have become tense or anything, just relax, remember me, and leave it to me. I will be there to help

[A sannyasin says: I’m afraid of wanting and asking for love... and I’m afraid of men.]

You have only now become aware? But once you become aware, it can be dropped. The fear can continue if it is unconscious, but once you become aware that fear is there, then the choice is between love and fear.

Who is going to choose fear rather than love? It is impossible. Nobody can choose it. So just remain alert and see the absurdity of it. Fear cannot give you any happiness. Love can give you tremendous happiness... infinite possibilities to be happy. So there is no point in choosing fear. But it was in the unconscious; it is in everybody’s unconscious.

It is good that it has surfaced and you are alert. Watch it – there is no need to do anything against it. If you do something, it may go into the unconscious again. Just watch and wait, and within a few days you will feel it is becoming fainter and fainter and fainter without any sort of doing on your part.

Let it remain on the surface and evaporate, and remain with it for three weeks. There is no hurry for love – first we have to evaporate the fear. When I say evaporate, I mean let it evaporate by its own energy... you simply remain a watcher.

[A group member says: It was terrible... I just abandoned all hope and went in. And I’ve never experienced such love and such highs... ]

The group has made you aware of both possibilities – the highest and the lowest.

That is the success of a group – that it makes you aware of how deep you can fall and how high you can rise. It points to both the ends. If it is going to be beautiful, it is going to be terrible. It is good that you have become aware.

To abandon hope is the greatest thing in the world. If you can abandon hope, all misery is dropped that very moment, because U is hope that brings all the misery. It is hope that brings the misery, the desire. It is hope that destroys the present. It is hope that goes on postponing your life... always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, and life is herenow.

If one can abandon hope, one does not become hopeless, because hopelessness is part of hope.

You hope and it is not fulfilled – you feel hopeless. But if hope is abandoned, you simply go beyond hope and hopelessness both. Suddenly you are here because there is no future, because there is no hope. You are not in despair. You are simply free for the first time from the past and the future.

This moment is the only reality then. You live it... you live it without any thinking. You live it like an authentic animal... as a man should be.

Then there is no fear because there is nothing to lose. The hope is abandoned, and there is no greed because there is nothing to gain. Hope is abandoned. You are, and this moment. So one dances, one eats, one loves, one lives... and one lives without any hope. Life becomes tremendously beautiful. Look at the trees, the animals, the birds, the rivers, the rocks. They are uncontaminated by hope. Hope has not entered yet so they are beautiful. Man’s mind is polluted by hope It is difficult to understand because we live by hope. We cling to hope... that is our only pleasure. It is worth nothing, but only the pleasure of fantasy, of trying, of imagination – that tomorrow everything is going to be good, and this and that... and it never happens. But again you go on thinking and thinking and thinking. It is living a world through thoughts, ideas, in the head... not really connected with reality. Abandon hope – nothing is more beautiful than that.

It has been really good for you. That’s why you are feeling so terrified. It is terrifying. In christian theology they call God not only luminous, not only mysterious, but they have a word ’tremendum’ –

mysterium plus tremendum. God is terrifying. If you face God you will be reduced to ashes... He is fire. But that’s also how life is. That’s why we live with blinkers... we don’t face life.

You felt very good with the eye meditation because a certain encounter with reality came through it.

Continue that meditation.

... And never again hope... drop it! Howsoever hard it is, drop it and you will rise to a totally new plane of being. Hope is hell.

CHAPTER 20

27 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A small boy sannyasin asks what it means to be enlightened.]

(chuckling) Very good! I will make you enlightened and then you will know!

The word means when the inner light bums and you are full of light. It is just like a small lamp inside which is not burning yet, mm? It has to be kindled and then you will be full of light. You will become!

[The child’s mother is returning to Holland, and says: I wrote you a letter about feeling exhausted, and after I had written the letter it was better.]

Mm mm, it always happens. Just write to me and forget all about it. Whenever something is a problem, simply write it as clearly as possible.

... Yes, when you are also in Holland. If there is some problem, just write it down as clearly as possible. I insist for clarity so that the problem becomes clear to you. When you describe it perfectly, in that very description you start being aloof. It is no more your problem... it is as if it belongs to somebody else. Give that problem to me as a gift and forget all about it, and you will not find it haunting you anymore. !n fact all problems exist because we are not conscious of them. Just become conscious.

That’s what the whole psychoanalysis is. The psychoanalyst is not doing anything – just helping you to become conscious; bringing whatsoever is hidden in the unconscious to the surface. It comes to the surface and you see it. In that very seeing, ninety percent of the problem is almost gone. So whenever you have a problem, the first thing is to become clear about it. Never be vague.

... write to me – then you will be able to be clear. If you try to be clear inside yourself, it will be difficult in the beginning. If you have to say it to somebody else, immediately the mechanism functions, and the feeling is transformed into thought.

There are four levels of consciousness. In India we have particular names for them. The first we call para, the second pashyanti, the third madhyama, and the fourth vaikhari.

Vaikhari is like a flower... the word means flowering. When you express something in thought it is vaikhari. Just below it is madhyama. Madhyama means the medium, the bridge. The thing is clear to you as a feeling but it has not yet become a thought.

A feeling needs to become a thought only when you want to convey it to somebody, otherwise there is no need. So the fourth stage of flowering is when the fragrance starts spreading, moves away from the flower. The third stage is of madhyama. ,It is like a bud whose petals are closed. The flower is not yet available to others. The fragrance is inside, hidden. If you don’t express, it will remain like a bud.

That’s why expression is tremendously useful. If you are feeling very very angry, just express it on a pillow, but don’t just go on feeling. Beat the pillow... be angry. Let it come to a flower.

Suddenly the fragrance is gone and you will feel unburdened. The whole method of psychoanalysis is bringing a thing from madhyama to vaikharia, from the bud to the flower.

Below the madhyama, there is another space we call pashyanti. Feeling is still not clear. ,It has not even become a feeling yet; just a vagueness, mm? Sometimes it looks as if it is there; sometimes it is not there. It is like a plant whose buds have not yet come... they are hiding inside the plant. You know they will be coming. You feel the first footsteps, but very vague, far away. That is the state of no feeling – just sheer existence. Below even that is para.

Para means not even existence. A thing is still in non-existence. Pashyanti is like a seed... everything is closed, and the plant has not sprouted yet. When the plant has not sprouted, buds cannot be.

When buds are not there, the flower is not possible. Pashyanti is like the seed and para is the very source. In scientific terminology you can call it the black hole... the non-being. Even the seed has not come up.

Or think of it in this way. Somebody dies and the soul roams around, wanders around. This is para. Then the soul is conceived in a womb; this is pashyanti. Then the child grows and the mother starts feeling the existence of the child after a few days. That is madhyama. One day when the nine months are over, the child is born; this is vaikhari.

These four stages apply to everything: non-being, being, feeling, thought. If a person moves from the para to vaikhari, then only he feels fulfilled. Otherwise one feels very meaningless. So whatsoever the thing – anger, happiness, laughter, crying, sadness, whatsoever – bring it to vaikhari. Never leave it somewhere else, otherwise it will be a hangover. It will persist until it has been completed.

,If you can bring your madness to vaikhari, madness will disappear and you will be unburdened.

A madman needs nothing else but expression – and the expression is not allowed; the society is repressive. That’s why I insist so much for dynamic methods so that things are brought out; one is relaxed. One feels cleaned, bathed, pure... one feels spacious. That’s what happened to you.

You wrote the letter and the feeling became thought, the bud flowered. In that very flowering the problem disappeared, almost disappeared. And if it remains a little, that simply shows that a few petals could not flower; nothing else. You could not express it as totally as it needed to be expressed.

When you write to me, wait, don’t be in a hurry. Write one day, and then wait until tomorrow, and again look at the letter. You will see that many things have to be added, and that a few things are useless and can be deleted. Second day, third day, fourth day, fifth – do this for seven days – but don’t send the letter. Ninety percent of your letters will never be sent (a chuckle). Just by writing for seven days you will see that the problem has disappeared.

You will see the change in how dear you become every day. Many things which you were thinking are part of the problem are not part of the problem, and you will become aware of this. Many things that you were thinking were not important become important by the third day. By the fourth day you see it in a different perspective. By the seventh day, either the problem is solved completely, or the problem is such that it has to be accepted and there is no solution for it. Then too, it is solved.

There are only two types of problems: problems which can be solved, and problems which can only be accepted because they are not really problems but are part of life.

Somebody dies and you feel sad. It is not a problem because the person cannot be revived. One has to accept that death is part of life, and sadness by and by disappears. People remain sad for long if they cannot accept the fact of death, if they go on saying, ’No, how can he die? It was not the right time for him to die.’ They are trying to deny the facticity of death. In their minds they are still thinking as if the person is still alive, or at least should be alive. They cannot accept that death has happened. Then they have not accepted the problem.

So there are problems which can be solved; you will become aware of them within seven days. If the problem is such that it cannot be solved, then too you will become aware that this has to be accepted but the problem disappears.

[She also says that she feels sad at leaving.]

Don’t think about the future. Whatsoever happens is good and helps in a certain way. It was needed otherwise it would not have happened.

So never hope that this should happen and that should not happen – no. Always remember that whatsoever is bad never happens, and whatsoever is good happens, and will happen. Go happily, mm?

[A sannyasin said that at the end of Kundalini, her body starts really shaking and becomes more sensitive.]

This is one of the basic problems – that we have been taught to control everything, so a very subtle control mechanism exists.

You may not be consciously controlling, but a very subtle mechanism goes on controlling. One is always on guard and holding. Holding has become so habitual that there is no need to do anything; it simply goes on happening. You will have to consciously de-control, uncontrol.

Help the vibrations, and if the hand is shaking go into it and shake more. Even exaggerate it so that soon the de-control will settle in. Once the energy flows without any control, it purifies you, transmutes you. By and by it starts moving into higher places.

Right now it is moving at the sex centre. That’s why so much control has been taught in the world because people are afraid of sex. Left uncontrolled it may create chaos. So women have been taught not to even move while making love, but just to lie down like a corpse, to just remain passive.

Man became aware that if women move they can go wild, almost in that moment insane, and the man will not known what to do.

So just to be safe, man has taught woman not even to move. It has been taught that that is their grace and dignity, and all sorts of nonsense. Grace is energy. A corpse cannot be graceful. Howsoever graceful a state you are lying in, your corpse will not be graceful. Only an alive person, throbbing with energy, almost wild.... That wildness need not be insane. It can become insane if you go on controlling and then it bursts forth. But if you move with it, you remain the master.

Don’t be afraid – move with it. Any moment you want to stop it, stop it. You simply say stop and it stops. It cannot go on on its own, and that is a fear. So don’t be afraid.

[A visitor says I’m a bit confused about some of the things you say about Sai Baba.]

There is no need to be confused – you can believe in him.

... Wherever there is confusion, leave me immediately and believe in whatsoever you want to. If you can be with me whatsoever I say, if you can be here without any inner conflict, only then be here, otherwise there is no need.

I never try to solve your confusions – never. I create them – that’s my whole device. If you feel confused you have to decide this way or that. There is no necessity to be convinced with me... no necessity. If you feel that you have a better thing to be convinced with be with it. But if you come with me, come totally. If you want to disagree, disagree completely. There is nothing wrong in it –

at least you disagreed totally. That totalness will be with you and you will not be confused, but don’t agree half-way.

And I make no concessions... no compromises. I’m not a democratic man... almost dictatorial (laughter). So just feel what feels good for you because ultimately it is a question of your well-being.

If you feel good, good.

... Then just be here... and those confusions will disappear by and by. I will create so many that you will not be able to carry them all. You will have to drop them! (laughter)

[The visitor said he had been practising zazen for some time. Osho said that was very good and that he should continue but add some cathartic methods too. Osho said of zazen that it is one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened on earth but alone would not be helpful for the visitor...

]

Zazen will help you to not collect any more dust but the dust you have collected will not be thrown out by it. For that you need catharsis, acting out. So try to manage both together; then yin and yang, male and female both come together and you become a more whole person.

[Osho went on to say how the older methods were passive, and if one practised only them, one became more and more estranged from the world, relationship, etc.

The perfect balance is when you can be silent not only in a monastery, but in the marketplace.... ]

If you can remain silent while you are speaking, can run, and at the same time remain immobile within, you have a richness which the person who can only run will not have, nor the person who can only sit and not run. The richness comes out of polar opposites.

So add a few dynamic methods. Zen plus Sufi – that is exactly the right combination. If you can make a synthesis out of these two, you will be moving in the right direction. Then nobody – not even I – can confuse you!

[The visitor says he has trouble making a decision because his mind changes all the time.

Osho said this was quite natural and was the nature of the mind.]

My suggestion is always that whenever you have alternatives to choose, always choose the unknown, because the known you have already lived. The known is known, so you will be simply repeating.

Anand Parageet. Anand means bliss, para means transcendental, and geet means song – song of transcendental bliss, or song of transcendence.

[The ashram’s cook says: Every day I just start crying, even when there’s nothing wrong. I just have a lot of emotion there, and a whole spectrum of up and downs.]

There is nothing wrong in it – just enjoy it. It is good... just like a passing breeze.

If you feel like crying and you feel good afterwards, it is very therapeutic. In fact the best way is to cry for no reason at all. If there is some reason, it never flowers perfectly. The reason is there and it goes on nagging. It is never pure crying. But when there is no reason, you simply feel like it... you look at the moon and it is so beautiful that you feel like crying. Perfectly good.

You are just sitting doing nothing, and suddenly tears start filling the eyes...

beautiful!

We

continuously condemn everything. If tears are there we condemn. What is wrong in tears? It is good, an unburdening.

If you enjoy crying, soon you will see that laughter starts coming in the same way. That also is very difficult. If suddenly you laugh for no reason at all, people will think you are mad. If you are crying for no reason at all, nobody will think you are mad. They will think that there must be some reason inside. But for laughter some outside reason is needed... nobody laughs for inner reasons. Laughter needs somebody else to be there to make a situation; a reference is needed.

If you cannot allow crying without any reason, you will never be able to allow laughter without any reason. When laughter comes out of nowhere, out of the blue... simply flowers in you uncaused, it is tremendously beautiful. It is holy, sacred.

And it can happen that you shift: for two minutes you are crying and for two minutes you are laughing, and again for two minutes you are crying. You will be afraid of what is happening and will wonder if you are going mad. The wind can blow strong and then stop, and there is silence; then again it blows. Simply watch these things and become a witness... don’t be disturbed and distracted or worry about what others will think.

I was reading a story the other day.

A man walked into a bar, ordered a drink, and proceeded to laugh out loud for about two minutes.

When all eyes were upon him, he abruptly stopped laughing and started crying and sobbing. After about two minutes of this, a smile came into his face and he again broke into uncontrollable laughter.

This was followed with another bout of crying. And then more laughter.

After about twenty minutes of alternate laughing and crying, he looked up at all the enquiring faces and said, ’Please forgive me, but my mother-in-law has just driven over a cliff in my new car!’

[A sannyasin says he is so much in love with his new girlfriend he rarely comes to the ashram, but still wonders if he should participate more in ashram activities.]

If you are continuously together in your room, sooner or later you will get fed up with each other.

This growth will not go on for very long. Soon you will grow like separate branches.

If you want to be together for a long time, don’t be together too much. When people are in love, they are almost mad. They think this is sadhana and everything is perfect. Nonsense!

It is good but it cannot be a substitute for sadhana. It can be a help, it can be a hindrance, but it can never be a substitute for sadhana. And if you think it is a substitute, it will become a hindrance.

Soon you will feel lost in the desert.

Make it a help. It is good to be with the beloved – just enjoy being there but continue meditations, otherwise you will feel guilty. The guilt has a message. It is not wrong. It is simply saying that you also know what you are doing. It is a sort of infatuation, not a sadhana. Every man and woman fall into the trap, but sooner or later the honeymoon is over and the marriage starts, and then there are troubles.

This is not the first time you are feeling this. We go on committing the same error again and again.

With how many women have you felt this before?

[He answers: Osho, it never went this far. This is love... ]

It has always been this far. You may have forgotten, because the mind tends to forget situations.

That’s why you can repeat Just think again, relive those moments and what you were saying to other women, and you will find yourself saying the same things to this woman.

And remember this time, because next time you will say again, ’This time, Osho, it is really wonderful.

That time I may have been wrong, but this time I am not.’

I am not saying that there is something wrong in love, but in being so infatuated you will soon get frustrated. If you really want to remain in love, then too much infatuation is not good. Move on plain ground . .. be a little more practical. Look at the foolishness of the mind and the illusions it creates.

One day or other these illusions are shattered and then you are standing naked in the streets. Then everyone feels cheated, robbed, betrayed.

This is not only a question of you... it is everybody’s question. So your heart knows it. When you come to the ashram and see people growing, doing this and that, meditating and flowering, you feel a jealousy arising; a guilt arises that you are not doing the right thing. I am not saying don’t be in love. Be in love, but never make love an alternative to meditation; it is not.

Love and meditate – they are two different things. Some day a higher synthesis comes, but that day has not come yet. When love becomes meditation, meditation becomes love. That is very difficult to attain – only when all polarities dissolve.

This is a deep polarity – love and meditation. Meditation is happiness in your absolute aloneness; love is happiness with somebody else. In love, the other is important; in meditation, only you. Love is I and thou. Meditation is complete... getting out of the I-thou world. It is just being yourself – not even I.

Meditation is solitude, love is relationship. They are totally different; diametrically opposite. When people start moving into meditation, they start moving out of love. This I watch happening every day. When your love becomes a frustration, you come to me for meditation. Meditation is needed

– one is feeling very unhappy. And when you start a love relationship, you simply forget all about meditation. You think of love as meditation.

Be balanced – both wings are needed. Love, meditate, and don’t create a conflict between them.

When it is time to meditate, meditate. And there is enough time – twenty-four hours. I am not saying to meditate for twenty-four hours. Give just two hours for meditation; a few hours for love, and a few hours for other things in life.

Never make anything monotonous, otherwise sooner or later you will get fed up with it. That guilt has a message – don’t try to get rid of it. Try and listen to the message... and start meditating.

CHAPTER 21

28 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A newcomer, asked Osho what he should do in the time he was here.]

Start the meditations and do one group, Aum marathon. It will stir your energy, your bio-energy.

We have been taught to live at the minimum and the society is absolutely afraid to allow the maximum possibility, so we have been taught, somehow, to lower our energy. We live just at the minimum, the lowest. The Aum marathon is to stir your whole energy so that it moves in a circle.

Once the energy is moving in a wheel you can see what your problems really are, because with that moving energy, problems start moving. They are scarey in the beginning because you were never aware that they ever existed. Suddenly they surface... but they have been existing there in the basement. They are dangerous if they are in the basement because they go on manipulating you, and you don’t know from where you are being manipulated. They go on affecting your life tremendously, but they are just below the surface so you never know how, where your life is moving, or who is moving it and what the motivation is. Things simply seem to be coming out of the blue...

the whole thing seems to be accidental. It is not. These repressions go on manipulating you from the unconscious.

The Aum marathon is an energy experiment to bring your negative and positive, all sorts of energies, to the surface again. For the first time you can face yourself as an energy system and with it all the problems arise. Then we can solve them.

Once the disease is known, once it is diagnosed, then changing is not difficult. The most difficult part is the diagnosis: how exactly to know what the problem is. This is my observation, that the mind has become so cunning in hiding, that when there is a problem, it never allows the actual problem to come to you; it changes the problem.

If you want to kill your father, the mind dreams of killing your uncle, not your father. The uncle looks like the father, is a little fatherly, and yet he is not the father. The mind diverts your attention to something similar – but the problem is pseudo. You wanted to do something and this may not be the real desire. You may really have wanted to do something else, but the mind played a trick and distracted you.

Many people feel that their problem is religious and it is not. Sometimes it is sexual, sometimes it is some sort of obsession, neurosis, or something else. Many people think that they want to be silent, peaceful, and they think this is their problem. But the deeper you go, you find that that is not the problem. The problem is greed or ambition, or something else. They have become so afraid of facing reality that they go on deceiving themselves, because when the problem is falsified, treatment becomes impossible.

You have a headache and yoU say you have a stomach ache. All the treatment goes to the stomach and the head is saved, the headache continues. This treatment can be dangerous, because if there is no problem in the stomach and some medicine is given, problems will arise. If there is a problem, the medicine will solve it. If there is no problem, it will create a problem, an illness. It will become toxic, poisonous or something.

So the basic thing is to first face the real problem, naked. The Aum will help you do this, so do it as totally as possible. And don’t be afraid, because when things start bubbling up, one wants to escape, one wants to drop it. One feels, ’I was better before. What is happening?’

If you can pass through these five days.... It is almost a hell because the whole basement has to be opened and all the nightmares brought to your consciousness, but it is a great discipline. After five days you will feel so relieved, because once you understand where your problem is, you have almost solved it in a way.

[A sannyasin who has been to Goa says: I feel the same wherever I go. I change places but it doesn’t change me.]

This is a good insight – to understand that change of place does not help. No outward change can be of help.

You can change the clothes, your job, the town, everything outside, but nothing changes inside.

And in changing these things much energy and time is wasted. The deep urge is for inner change.

People go on changing their jobs, their house, their wife, their husband, but really they want to change themselves. But that seems almost impossible. They may not have felt directly what their desire is and they go on projecting. They say, ’If I change this then things will be better.’ They never are, because it is you, finally, who decides the mood, the climate of your being. The space in which you live is you and everything else is secondary.

I’m not saying to live in a horrible place. Live as comfortably as possible, but comfort is not a state of bliss. It is good as far as it goes but it is never satisfying. It is necessary but not enough.

... Nothing is wrong in seeing so many countries, but remember, this is not going to help. If you are in contact with yourself, go on travelling; there is no problem in it. But don’t hope that anything is going to come out of it. Enjoy it... it is fun... but don’t think that you are going to become centred, liberated through it. And remember always, it may be a way of distracting yourself.

You may be basically bored with yourself, so when you have been in a town for a few days or a few weeks, you feel finished and that you have seen everything. Now the desire arises to go somewhere else. This gives you a thrill, a sensation – a new town, new people, new food, new climate. After a few days the sensation dies and everything becomes old. Again you have to be on the move.

Remember it should not be an escape from yourself; otherwise it is okay. Go on searching your inner being, because unless you have found the inner country you will not feel satisfied. And once you have found that, wherever you are, you are surrounded in bliss. You carry your paradise around you... it is part of your being. By and by you will start feeling that there is no point in unnecessary wandering here and there because the real scene is inside.

There is a very famous sufi anecdote about a sufi mystic, Rabiya-el-Adavia, one of the rarest women in the whole history of human consciousness. Only a few women can be counted as high as Rabiya.

Another great mystic, Hassein, was staying with her. It was morning and the new sun was arising, the birds were singing... flowers were there, and it was tremendously beautiful. Hassein called from outside, in the garden, ’Rabiya, come out. It is beautiful! The day is beautiful.’

Rabiya said from inside the house, ’Hassein, rather than calling me out, you come in. I am seeing the one who has created the outer scene. You are seeing the beauty of creation – it is beautiful! But I am seeing the beauty of the creator.’

Hassein was hoping that this was not going to be so significant. He had just mentioned casually to Rabiya to come out. But when he went in, Rabiya was in a tremendous, graceful state. She was swaying with eyes closed, and tears of happiness were flowing. Hassein was simply hypnotised...

he closed his eyes....

He writes in a letter that for the first time he could see something of the inside communicated by Rabiya... something was transferred. Some grace fell over him also.

So always remember that the outside world is beautiful, but don’t be caught there, because the real beauty is waiting inside. Go on travelling if you enjoy it, but take it as fun. Continue travelling inwards... that is the real pilgrimage.

[A homosexual said that he wanted to be finished with his homosexuality, but had no desire for a woman.]

If the desire disappears completely, that is the best thing. There is no need to force, so just wait and be a witness. Much has happened, much is going to happen. Simply watch.

When these changes happen they are not to be interfered with, otherwise something will stop and the whole process will become a troublesome thing. Simply float with it, and after three weeks things will have settled and you will come out of it almost new.

[The sannyasin then asks about his relationship with another man.]

Watch that too... don’t do anything. If it is disappearing, it will disappear. If it continues, that too is okay. don’t try to do anything... don’t try to pretend. Simply accept it and become passive.

If anything happens on the full-moon day, that simply shows that your path is going to be the moon path. That means receptive, passive... just like the moon. The moon has no energy of its own. It is just a reflector – it receives and gives back. It has nothing of its own. The moon is non-aggressive.

So simply be. Nothing on your part is needed to be done.

[The Primal group leader says that in the group it is easy, but outside the group he is withdrawn especially sexually from women.]

Mm mm... sex is one of the most basic problems. To solve it, one has to solve many things because everything is interconnected. If you are afraid of death you will be afraid of sex. If you are afraid of darkness you will be afraid of women. And if you are afraid of sex, that simply shows that you are afraid of life.

So sex is just a focusing of many problems – afraid of life, afraid of death, afraid of darkness, afraid of surrender, afraid of let-go, and in short, afraid of leaving yourself in an uncontrolled state. But everybody has been taught to control. The whole society goes on teaching every child to control. A controlled and disciplined personality is the goal.

That is creating the trouble. Then you create a conflict; the mind becomes the controller and everything else becomes the controlled. A rift arises in your being. Of course the greatest attack of the mind is on sex because that is the most uncontrollable energy in you.

The mind feels impotent when the sexual urge arises, so the mind is the greatest enemy of sex.

That’s why all religions all over the world are so inimical towards sex. They are all head-oriented.

The mind says that somehow sex has to be controlled – as if everything is at stake there. Once you have controlled sex, you have controlled the body, you have controlled life; you have controlled death. Everything is controlled and you are the master. But this never happens. It cannot happen because the mind itself is nothing but an instrument of sex. This is the thing to be understood.

The mind exists for the sexual energy but not vice versa. It is an extension of sexual energy... to protect. It is exactly as Gurdjieff used to say – that you put a guard on your house to protect you, but he has a bayonet, and one day he suddenly jumps on your heart. You have given him a job to protect you, but he becomes more and more powerful and one day he jumps on the master. He wants not to protect but to control. This is what is happening.

The mind is just a guard on the outermost boundary of your being, just a guard’s post on the boundary to look out for any danger... a radar to look all around and see that everything is clear and to give the sign.

I will suggest a few things. Every day for one hour, simply sit and let God breathe you.

[Osho went on to describe this meditation to him, saying that his breathing should be absolutely passive, as if he was being breathed by God. rather than being the doer. His inhalation would be God’s exhalation; God’s inhalation, his exhalation. (Osho has recounted an old indian story about God’s nose being discovered by a seeker, and his being breathed by God. See darshan, March 31st, ’Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle’.)

Osho said that control comes through the way we breathe and that if one breathes deeply in love-making, one will go almost wild, because the sex centre is massaged internally by the breath. So everything – sex, anger, violence, crying – has been repressed.]

The second thing – whenever you can find time, go into the darkness. Go to the river bank alone, and just sit. If you feel afraid, feel afraid, but don’t escape.

Soon you will see when fear by and by settles down, that darkness is so cool... and so warm at the same time. It is a womb... it surrounds you. It enhances your life energy. Out of darkness you will come more relaxed, vital, rejuvenated. These two things you start, mm?

And if a chance arises and you are with a woman and you start feeling afraid, just immediately remember to let God breathe you. Nobody will be able to know – it will just be your inner feeling.

Suddenly you will see that the fear has disappeared. And next time when you make ,e to a woman, just think of her as the dark night – she is. Let her surround you, and you will be dissolved in her...

lost.

Things will change. These problems are created problems – a certain upbringing, conditioning, and a thousand and one things, but nothing very much.

[The Primal Therapy group was present. Osho, in talking about the particular function of Primal, says:]

A Primal Therapy group will take you back on an inner journey. It will help your unconscious pains to bubble up, to surface. Of course it is going to be painful, but once you are relieved of that pain, you will feel a certain cleaning; you will become bathed and cleaned. Your energy will be flowing more easily. Those wounds have disappeared, those blocks have been dropped. You will find fresh life coming to you.

[The co-leader said he was feeling very angry. Osho suggested it was because his girlfriend had returned to the ashram. The co-leader said he felt very good with her and cared for her a lot.]

I see many things connected. It happens many times that when you love a person, you show your loving side to her. The other side remains, but you don’t show it to her because she has been away for a few days, so of course you feel more warm and caring. But then you will take revenge somewhere with the people you work with.

Whenever there is love, there is also hate. When there is caring, there is anger also. When you take care of a person, somewhere or other you will balance the accounts. Either you have to balance with the same person; or you have to balance it somewhere else. Otherwise you feel lopsided.

So if you are feeling too loving and warm with her, you will throw your anger somewhere. You will carry it inside and whenever you find the opportunity, you will throw it. This has to be understood, because if you don’t understand it, it will be impossible to go beyond it. What I am trying to point out to you is that whenever you love a person, simultaneously you are creating a certain energy, a negative energy. That is part of it – be alert. Use that negative energy also in a positive way.

You can go into a garden and dig a hole or you can chop wood, or clean the floor. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples that if they are feeling angry, to chew their food as much as they can. That is violence, anger. Kill the food... destroy it completely. That is what chewing is – destroying.

Energy cannot be just positive. Side by side, the negative has to come up to the same point, the same level. If you don’t use it, either you will start fighting with Veena or somebody you love, or you will start finding some other ways somewhere else. This is what people are doing. This is the whole politics of emotions. If people are angry at home, they throw their anger at the office. A teacher comes angry from the house and beats his students.

If you are aware, that energy can be used. It is beautiful energy. Negative energy is also beautiful energy. It just has to be used in a creative way. Destruction is also needed for creation. Use it, otherwise it starts spreading all over your being, and whenever you find an opportunity, it will start flowing there. Of course to fight and be angry with the one you love creates too much inconvenience, but in a group you can be angry easily. There is no involvement, nothing. You can simply say, ’What can I do? I am simply being authentic. I have to throw my anger.’

If you feel angry, use it, but don’t be angry in the group because that is pointless. How can you help people if you are angry? It is not possible. You have to be very cool and collected, and only then you can help.

[Another groupleader says: I see that my way is through involvement, but...

I just became

disconnected.]

So get involved! Where can you find more opportunity to get involved? There are so many beautiful persons, so many problems that have to be solved, so many people drowning. You have to jump in and bring them out of the river. Get involved!

[Osho had previously told him to be a hedonist. He found it difficult to be a hedonist and stay involved.]

So, it is not a question of being disconnected or anything. You are simply lazy.

And you rationalise it. You are plain lazy. There isn’t much of a problem, because to get involved one simply has not to be lazy! Involvement makes you active. You simply avoid doing; somehow you pull out. Come out of your laziness, that’s all.

The mind never allows you to see the real problem. It goes on clouding it, mystifying it. It is a great mystifier.

Laziness can be destroyed only in one way: don’t be lazy. Whenever you catch yourself red-handed being ]azy, pull yourself out and move into action. If you cannot do anything else, jog for fifteen minutes, and just bring energy into a movement. Otherwise, by and by your wheels will get rusty and will stop moving. That is the cause, maybe, of why you feel a little disconnected.

The body is a very beautiful and complicated mechanism. Millions of wheels are moving in the body.

If they all move together in unison, the body works like a beautiful clock... it ticks beautifully. But if one wheel is clogged, somewhere else something else is stopped, and then the whole clock is affected and you feel disconnected.

And when I told you to be a hedonist, you must have thought I was telling you to be lazy. You must have misunderstood, but your mind interpreted it, because lazy people think they are being hedonistic. The lazy person can never be a hedonist.

To be a hedonist you need much work so that energy flows high and remains always flowing and is never frozen. To be a hedonist is a great effort; much work is needed.

It is not that you go and drink and sleep with girls and you think that you are a hedonist. That is not hedonism at all. What does drinking have to do with hedonism? A real hedonist cannot drink because drinking will make him insensitive and he will not be able to enjoy so much. It dulls the mind. Drink does not makes you more aware – it lessens your awareness.

Will you think that somebody in a coma is enjoying bliss? Or an alcoholic lying down on the street is in a blissful state? He is simply avoiding situations where pain was possible, pleasure was possible.

He is avoiding both. He is not a hedonist, because a hedonist is one who moves into situations where he chooses pleasure, makes all effort to choose pleasure, and all effort to drop pain. It is a constant struggle to remain happy.

It is a great balance... just like walking on a tightrope. Every moment one has to balance oneself against pain... in favour of heaven against hell. Hell is just there, yawning open by your side. If you mistake your step, you are gone.

It is not that one simply lies down in the bed, with wine and women, and one is a hedonist. One is simply a fool! The real hedonists are buddhas, because they become so conscious that each small experience brings tremendous joy. When Buddha looks at a flower, it is almost paradise. When you are drunk, somehow stumbling towards your home, who bothers about the rose that has flowered by the side of the road?

A hedonist is not a person who goes on sleeping with any woman, here and there. He’s just suicidal...

he is wasting his energy. He is not going into any deep intimacy, because joy comes out of intimacy.

He is just a hit and run affair. So you misunderstood me.

But I know that’s how things are here. I say something and you people misunderstand and start doing your own thing. But that’s how you will learn – there is no other way. I have to go on taking risks and saying things, knowing well that something is going to go wrong, but that’s the way you will learn.

When I say to be a hedonist, I say be joyful each moment and exploit every moment as joyfully, as intensely, as possible because it will never be coming again. It is gone forever. And learn the art of loving – only then can you be happy. Just indulging never makes anybody happy. Great art is needed.

To paint, one needs to learn the art of painting. To swim, one needs to learn the art of swimming.

People think that to be blissful there is no need to learn anything. It is the greatest art. Painting and music are nothing compared to it. They can become parts of its greater harmony, but they are nothing... just fragments.

So get out of your laziness. Don’t find excuses for being lazy – and don’t be foolish. I have not told you to be foolish, I have told you to be a hedonist.

A hedonist is the wisest man in the world. Meditate on it, mm? (chuckling)

[A group member says that he has been accustomed to discipline and control and it is difficult for him to suddenly become aware of his feelings in the group.]

No, there is no problem... and one cannot suddenly start feeling. It will melt by and by, mm? And don’t take it seriously.

Don’t be in a hurry, because you have been controlling for the whole of your life, and now to lose control is not easy because the musculature of control has become fixed. It is as if you have been holding your hand as a fist for many years and now suddenly you realise that it has to be opened.

But now the hand is almost paralysed; it has not been used, so treatment will be needed. Blood circulation has to move again. The muscles of the hand have shrunken inside because they have not been used and the energy has not moved in them. It will take time.

But once you have understood, much can be done. Don’t try to open it right now. Let this understanding be there – a tacit understanding – that the hand has to be opened. Now many things wi!l have to be done to open it.

And don’t feel that you are heavy on the therapist or anything. They are there to help... in fact you are a challenge! Whenever somebody very stubborn comes in the group, the groupleader has to be happy. Now there is a challenge... he has to work hard and find ways and means. He has to devise many things. If he succeeds he will feel tremendously happy.

So you are just a challenge – not a load or a problem. A real therapist will be happy seeing someone come who is going to be trouble. It is perfectly good. So don’t feel guilty.

Are you going to do a few more groups?... Then I am going to give you a few meditations to do on your own which will allow you, by and by, to de-control. This group has done something but more is needed.

And never feel a pessimist – there is no need. Within a month you will be flowing; there is nothing to worry about. Just give it a little time.

[A sannyasin says: My mind tells me one thing, my feelings tell me another, and the therapist is telling me something else. I’m going mad!]

So go mad – that’s the right thing to do.

I can understand where the problem is arising from. This is a situation in which you will have to choose. Your mind says one thing, your feelings say another, and the therapist says something else.

Now you will have to choose. If you don’t choose you will remain in confusion.

The therapist cannot be chosen because he is outside you; he cannot always be there to help you.

Feeling and the mind remain. If you choose reason you will feel less confused because reason is a great control, a great repression. It avoids all those things which can create trouble. It chooses only a few things and makes a very systematic whole out of them. So reason can give you a feeling, a false feeling, that of course you are sane and not mad. But just underneath lurks madness. So this has to be understood – a delicate point.

If you choose reason, you will immediately feel everything is okay; you are not going mad. But some day you will go mad because you are hiding madness... accumulating it. It will become a reservoir, and one day or other it will throw reason completely. It will explode.

If you choose feelings, right now you will feel you are choosing madness, but later on it is going to give you a great pay-off. If you choose feelings you will not suppress madness, and then there is no possibility of your going mad. That’s what I mean when I say go mad. Choose feelings because feelings are not repressive. In the beginning it will feel very very dangerous – but courage is needed.

Once you start moving with the feelings, soon we will see how mad you can go, because you will not be repressing anything.

And another thing, reason is a good slave but a bad master. Once you follow reasons, they become masters and they try to enslave feelings. If you follow feelings, they become the master, and by and by reason becomes the slave – which is the right place for it. Then things fall into harmony.

So the therapist has to help you. You are not to follow or to listen to him. Don’t listen to the therapist and don’t listen to your head – listen to your feelings. That is the whole work of therapy – to bring you to your own feelings. Once you know and can feel them, then go with them.

CHAPTER 22

29 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A couple ask Osho about their relationship. He wants more space amd freedom. She says her whole life revolves around him. At first she wanted to blame him or herself for the problem, but then she realised there was nothing wrong with them.]

There is nothing wrong. In fact there is never anything wrong with anybody. The problem arises because of a certain misunderstanding.

Nothing is wrong in his desire to be alone and nothing is wrong in your desire to be with him, but both desires cannot be fulfilled together, so the problem arises. My suggestion is to let him be alone. It will be hard in the beginning but by and by you will see the beauty of it. The more you force yourselves to be together, the more he will move away from you. He will even start hating you. Love can turn into hate very easily. Hate is just waiting by the corner.

If you insist too much and he feels imprisoned – because he wants his freedom and does not want to be responsible, answerable about where he has been, and with whom – the relationship will be destroyed completely. You do it unknowingly. It is natural to ask, ’Where have you been?’ but he starts feeling guilty that he should not have been out for so long. The more you try to possess him, the more he will be escaping.

Have separate rooms and just be friends. Whenever he wants to see you, he can come to your room. Whenever you want to see him, you can invite him, and if he is willing he can come; or sometimes he can invite you. In fact lovers should be friends – and that’s one of the most difficult things to learn in life. Lovers would like either to be lovers or to be enemies – but never friends.

Love turns into hatred more easily than into friendship, and it should be that it turns into friendship more easily.

Look at his problem and try to understand it. Nothing is wrong in wanting a small place for oneself in which to be alone. Space is needed – it is a very basic need. Because it is not understood, millions of people are separate. Nobody understands that space is needed. No husband and wife should live together in one room. Marriage will be smoother... life will be more joyful.

In fact nobody should take anybody for granted. If you want to make love to him, you have to start wooing and cooing as one does in the beginning. If you meet a stranger, you don’t ask him immediately to come to bed with you. That will be too much. It will be offending, and it will be against all dignity, all grace. You make friends, you talk, you persuade, you seduce.

If somebody, a stranger, comes up to you on the road and suddenly says that he would like to sleep with you, you will hit him on the face! He can ask the same thing but some preliminaries have to be fulfilled; then nothing is wrong. The same thing should be the case between a husband and wife, between a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Never take the other for granted because that creates the trouble.

Rabindranath has written a novel – one of the most beautiful novels. A young man has just come from Oxford and falls in love with a woman. The woman is a poet, an artist, and a little eccentric.

She insists that she will be his wife but that they must never live in the same house – that is the condition. They must not live in the same room, not even the same neighbourhood.

They have a lake and there are two small villages – one on this side, another on that. She insists that she will live in one village and he in the other and sometimes they can meet casually on a full-moon night – he on his boat, she in hers. Or sometimes he may be on an early morning walk and he finds her sitting under a tree. Sometimes she will invite him to her place, sometimes he can invite her to his, but otherwise they should live in separate worlds.

The boy cannot understand – the whole thing seems to be nonsense. One marries to be with someone and this seems absurd! But I can feel that the girl is right. Just think of the beauty of it –

that you continuously love the person as a stranger.

In fact that is the case – nobody knows anybody. You don’t even know yourself, how can you think you know [your boyfriend], or how can [your boyfriend] think that he knows [you]? Nobody knows anybody.

Just being together, encroaching on each other’s space, we start feeling bored. We start feeling unfree, imprisoned, and then the resistance starts. If resistance comes it kills love. That’s what

[your boyfriend is saying. He feels love for you. It is not that he does not love. If he does not love there is no problem – he is simply finished with you. He loves you – that’s the problem – and he still wants to be alone. These two things seem contradictory ... they are not.

In fact for a person to be loving he needs his own space. Otherwise he will not be loving. He can pretend, he can be a hypocrite, a liar; he can show whatsoever you expect and give it to you, but the gift never comes from his heart. Give him space, leave him alone. And let this be the rule – that whenever he wants to be with you he has to ask. That too he has not to take for granted – you may refuse. That doesn’t mean that you don’t love. You may not be in the right mood for love; you may not be feeling like being with anyone.

Let things remain free. When you need to meet sometimes, love is a spontaneous happening: two strangers meeting, two strange energies. When you are alone, you create a certain appetite for each other.

[Osho said that a balance should always be maintained in being with someone and alone, just as one keeps a balance between eating and fasting. One becomes lopsided because of the fear of being alone, and in that fear, one clings and tries to prevent the other from leaving. The more you cling, the more the other starts escaping.]

This is my observation, that I rarely come across a couple, one of whom is not trying to escape. If the woman tries to escape, the man clings. If the man starts to escape, the woman clings. You are never in a state of equilibrium – both just being together.

So be separate, and don’t take it as a sign that he does not love you. This is my understanding, that when a person loves you, only then can you overtake, trespass his space, otherwise not. If a stranger comes and sits by his side, [your boyfriend will not feel in any way trespassed upon because he is only physically dose and [your boyfriend is not in any way answerable to him, responsible. He may be even sitting too close, touching his body, but still there is no problem. People In trains sit so dose, stand so close together – in the marketplace, in the movie – with no problem.

The problem arises when somebody enters your inner space. If you are by his side he will not feel free. There is something inside being penetrated . . he feels hooked. So don’t do this to anybody.

Simply be separate And this is not separation... this is just living separately.

This is not an end of your love-affair. In fact it may be the beginning. So don’t take it in any negative way, ant don’t feel sad, otherwise that may destroy things. Separation cannot destroy. It will make more thirst, more hunger for each other.

Now he is fed up – whenever he comes and opens his door, you are there. Soon he will become fed up because when he opens his door, nobody will be there – just the colt bet and the furniture, and nobody even to ask, ’Where have you been?’ He will come in the middle of the night ant there is nobody to ask, Where have you been?’

So let him cry – he will cry! That’s what is going to happen. Let him feel what loneliness is and then he will run to your room!

Love is greater than these ordinary things, mm? These are human limitations ant love is not destroyed by them. Accept that he needs loneliness and give him it, mm?

[A sannyasin who is leaving says went deep into negativity in the Aum group and is afraid she is stuck in it.]

No, no ... I will take you out of it. The journey has started, but nobody can go too far in negativity –

even if you feel you have – because negativity is against life. Your deepest centre remains out of it.

Howsoever sad and unhappy and miserable you become, !t remains on the periphery, because the innermost nature is of bliss, of happiness, so there is no way really to be in hell. Hell remains just on the fringe, on the boundary, and once you understand it, things start changing.

[Osho went on to talk about relationships, as at her first darshan (see darshan, Friday April 9th) she had mentioned her husband, also a sannyasin, who had left her, and through whom she had heard of Osho.]

Move into a relationship, and don’t be afraid. It is as if you were eating a certain fruit and it has gone out of season. You don’t starve yourself, you change your fruit; you and something else which is available. The same should be the attitude about love.

One should always be loving. Lovers can change but one should never betray love itself. Don’t cling to unhappiness; don’t start pitying yourself – that’s very dangerous. Once you start pitying yourself, once you start hankering for sympathy and start investing more and more in your sorrow, you will not be able to come out of it. Drop it! All this is nonsense!

God gave you one person – he has taken that person away. Find another person, and remain available, open. If you are too much in sorrow and sadness, you will become closed. Then it will be difficult for another person to enter into your being, to become deeply intimate with you. And another danger: if you are too sad you may attract somebody who loves sadness.

Be an emperor, an empress. Never be less than that. Be happy, flowing, dancing, so that you attract another soul. The soul will be attracted because of your dance, because of your singing, because of your happiness.

Be happy, so somebody very ordinary who loves happiness, who is selfish and is interested in his own happiness rather than trying to help somebody, is attracted to you. Go from here happy, dancing, and ready for a new love-affair.

... It is there... you just have to allow it. That’s why you are feeling fragile. There is nothing wrong in it. Fragility is not weakness; it is being delicate. Misery makes people hard, happiness makes them fragile. Happiness makes them open and sensitive... vulnerable. They become like a lotus flower.

When you are unhappy you become like a rock.

You can kill somebody, but you cannot give life. And nobody can kill you... you become harder and harder and harder. Miserable people become so closed, so windowless, that they become hard.

Remember this mathematics – if you are miserable, you attract misery. So never for a moment settle in misery. Even if it comes, let it just be a momentary thing and get out of it as soon as you can.

Somebody is waiting, I know... somebody is always waiting. Come back soon. And whenever you need me, put this (a box) on your head and wait. Allow me to work inside you. And be loving, and open and fragile.

[A visitor said he was experiencing something like kundalini energy rising in his body, but his friends had thought him ill and had taken him to a doctor who gave him tranquillizers.

Osho checked his energy.]

Good... nothing is wrong, and there was no need for any medical treatment. The problem is not with you; it is with the people you are living with. Nothing is wrong.

The kundalini has started working. When these phenomena happen and you are in a certain sadhana, under someone’s guidance, then you know it is alright because he goes on saying to you that everything is okay. But it happened when you were on your own. Something which remained incomplete from your past life has started working. You have not done anything particular in this life, but something from your past life was waiting for the fight moment. When the right moment was there, it started. I feel that the friends’ presence may be a cause Of it, but it is good. It is perfectly good. One should be happy about it.

If you go to a doctor, he has a different philosophy about it. He does not believe in any kundalini. He simply looks into the physiology and he will see that something has gone wrong. You need a deep rest, tranquillizers, or something to make you completely unconscious so that a discontinuity can be created and you can forget all about these movements and things.

But that can be dangerous because that is creating a contradiction in your being. Your energy is rising and you are relaxing it. But don’t be worried about it. I will give you something to do and soon the movement of the head will stop. It is moving because the energy comes up to a certain point and does not go beyond it so it starts revolving there. The energy needs to become a circle. Then everything calms down and there is no strange phenomenon. Nobody can see anything strange from the outside.

[Osho suggested he do the forthcoming meditation camp, in which time the energy could be allowed to do as it wanted.... ]

... otherwise it will take many years and will create trouble again and again. People will not listen to you, and even if you say that everything is alright, they will think that you are mad. They will force you to go to a doctor.

[Osho said the Nadabrahma meditation would be particularly helpful and that he should allow himself an hour each day in which time he should give his energy permission to work. If he did this, it would not disturb him for the remaining twenty-three hours.

The visitor said he was not ready for sannyas because there would be objections from his family about the wearing of orange clothes.]

Sannyas will be helpful – and these clothes are meant for a particular thing in the body. The shades of red have been chosen for a particular reason.

When kundalini is rising, the red rays should not enter into the body, and the on4 way to protect the body is to wear red clothes. The red cloth reflects back the red rays and absorbs others. Only the red has to be avoided. And this will help the kundalini to Integrate. If red rays enter the body, the energy starts floating towards anger, sex, violence, and things like that. If the red ray b not entering the body, the energy floats upwards easily, very easily. So at least at home, start using orange.

Then I will make you a sannyasin... you are going to become one.

And tell your friends to choose – either you will become mad or you will become a sannyasin! And just start doing things in front of them. Even if the energy is not coming, just do things (laughter).

And they will bring you here (more laughter). Be a little playful... be a real actor!

[An Indian sannyasin said he was feeling more and more like a woman... and though his wife was having an affair, he did not feel jealous... he no longer felt like being active in love-making and wondered if he should give up sex. Finally he said that he would like a meditation to do just before going to sleep.]

The first thing, don’t force sex, because when your wife is not emotionally involved with you, it is a dull thing. For her also, it is just a duty to be fulfilled, and duty is a four-letter word, a dirty word. Your sexuality will disappear by and by.

I’m not saying to force celibacy – no. If it happens sometimes, it is okay, but there is no need to force it. And this understanding that the key is in sleep, is right, because samadhi is nothing but sleep with full awareness.

The fear is also very indicative, because sleep is also like death. When you put off the light and sleep, a little death happens every day. Because of that little death, every morning you are fresh and alive. You have been somewhere into the unknown. You have dropped into the abyss of your being and come back home again. So the fear is natural – nothing to worry about. When you put the light off, remember me – but don’t make it an obsession.

Once it happened that a professor came to me who was frightened of putting off the light. I told him to remember me... and he started enjoying it. It almost became a meditation. His wife came to me and said, ’He is going mad. At least fifty times a night he puts the light off and then on again!’

When I asked him, he laughed and said he enjoys it because when he puts the light off he remembers me, and with the darkness falling all around him, suddenly I surround him. He puts it on again to enjoy that!

So do it once, mm? Not even twice – and then go to bed.

CHAPTER 23

30 April 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said he had learnt a form of massage based on the acupuncture points which worked on the blood circulation and the nervous system. He said he would like to share this.]

Share whatsoever you know and want to share. It is always good to share, because the more you share, the more you know. By sharing, all that is beautiful grows... and it grows only by sharing.

Sharing is a method to help it grow. So never be a miser about what you know... just be a spendthrift.

The more you give, the more you will get.

It happens almost always that in worldly affairs the law is just the reverse: if you give too much you become poorer and poorer. In the ordinary world one has to hoard and be a little miserly, otherwise you never have anything. In the spiritual world just the reverse is the law: the more you hoard, the less you have. The more you share, the more you have.

Jesus says that those who have will be given more, and those who have nothing, even that which they had will be taken away. People who share have more, and they continuously get more and more. People who hoard, shrink... a subtle death happens inside them. They become like rocks, insensitive. They live just on the periphery. Nothing can be given to them because they don’t have any space to hoard it. Out of fear they have shrunken.

When you share, you open like a flower... all the petals open. When you don’t share, you are like a frozen bud, closed... caved into yourself.

Life is in relationships – it is not in being an island. It is being related in as many ways as possible.

You will have a greater life if you have a greater network of relationships all around you. If you can be related to infinite points around you – to trees, to rocks, to rivers, to stars, to men, to women, to children, animals, birds – the bigger is your relationship, the greater your life.

A person dies if he is alone. If he is related, he spreads into his relationships and never dies – never dies. He continues to live in millions of ways. So before one disappears one has to spread one’s being, so much so that it becomes part of existence.

You have learned so many things, you have been doing so many things. This is an opportunity, with so many people here, to share whatsoever you have learned.

Do one group that starts on the first – Soma. Nothing like it has ever existed before – not at least in the West. You have to do all the groups here because the quality is going to be totally different. You may have done many encounter groups, marathons, in Europe, but when you do groups here you will see the difference. You will be more appreciative and benefited more than people who have not done any because you will have a perspective and a comparison.

In the West, groups are working, but one basic and very essential thing is lacking, and that is the presence of a master. There are groupleaders – they may know a little more than you participate

– but the difference between you, the participants, and the leader, is not of quality. It may be of quantity. You may know ten things and he knows twenty things. If you make a little effort you also will know twenty things.’You have problems, he has problems. Technically he knows something, he can be helpful to you, but one thing remains – that he has his own problems yet unsolved. So he can help you a little bit, but that little bit is not going to transform you.

When I say that the master is missing, I mean a person who has no problems. He has a totally different quality to his being. He can see through and through. He can penetrate you to your very core of being. And because he has no problems he can share some space with you that nobody else can share.

And it is not a question of solving problems. They are never really solved. You solve one problem, another arises. Rather, the question is how to drop problem-making. The question is how to drop this continuous creation of problems; how to stop this whole mechanism which goes on creating new problems. You solve one, it creates another; it immediately substitutes another problem. It never leaves a single moment in between where you can be without a problem.

To share a space with somebody who has no problems will give you a taste of how it feels to be without a problem. Once you know that taste, something has started happening in you which is not a therapy, which is not in any way interested in making you adjusted to the society. In fact it is not concerned at all with improving you. When you share space with a master, you suddenly realise the thing – that there is nothing to be improved and there is no problem to be solved. In fact there has never been any problem from the very beginning. You have been creating and you have been solving – but your innermost core is still virgin. Not a single problem has entered there.

Just a glimpse of it, a far-away glimpse, as if you are seeing the Himalayas from thousands and thousands of miles away... just a far glimpse. And you are no more the same person. Something has got into your being, entered... you are pregnant. This insight will grow – not that it will help you to solve problems; it will help you to drop them. Suddenly you will understand that there is a way of living, totally different from the way of problems, of questions and enquiries... a way of simply being herenow, with no anxiety, with no interference from the past and no interference from the future.

This moment is all.

Much is going to happen in this time. Now the whole situation is ready – you have just to enter.

[A sannyasin said that she was feeling very lethargic, having recently been hospitalised with a variety of illnesses.]

Nothing is intrinsically wrong in weakness and nothing intrinsically good in strength. Sometimes strength can become a curse and weakness can become a blessing. It depends how you use them.

If you ask me, I will say use weakness when you are weak and use strength when you are strong.

[Osho said that all situations that seem positive can be misused and all seemingly negative situations can be used for growth – a theme that he enlarged on in a former darshan (see Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle’, March 24th).]

One great english philosopher. Joad, fell ill, very ill, and a follower of Gurdjieff visited him. Joad had never bothered about Gurdjieff, but he was weak and ill and Lying in bed with nothing to do.

The disciple said, ’Why not try self-remembering?’ Joad was not interested, but just to be polite he said, ’Okay, what do you mean by self-remembering?’

The disciple explained, and even while he was explaining this Joad was not thinking to do it, but he was listening just out of politeness, english politeness. When the friend left and he was alone and Lying down, out of curiosity he thought, ’Why not try it? There is going to be no harm in it.’

For twenty-one days while he was in bed he tried self-remembering. The more he tried it, the more he enjoyed it. The more he tried, the deeper he went into his own being. That illness became a blessing.

When he was able to leave his bed he told his friends, ’In my life nothing like this has ever happened.

I thank God I was ill otherwise I would never have listened to this man. Ill and lying in bed with nothing to do, I simply tried out of curiosity, but something clicked.’

Many times a person has to be ill – it is part of the body, part of life. Many times one is sad. There is nothing to worry about – use sadness. When you are sad, relax, because it is easier to relax in sadness than in happiness. When you are happy you are excited. So when you are happy, celebrate, dance, sing.

Use sadness... ride over it. And once you know that everything can be used, you are never unthankful to God. Whatsoever comes – poverty, richness, happiness, unhappiness, health, illness, life, death – one simply takes it as an opportunity and immediately starts using it and being creative about it.

[A sannyasin says: I still haven’t dropped my mind... And sometimes in the last stage of the meditation I just space out and when I come back I have the feeling I was somewhere deep, but I wasn’t completely there.]

Exactly... it has to be that way. When you space out for the first time, you don’t have the vocabulary to remember it. It is so unfamiliar that you cannot recognise it, because to recognise it you have to have had some experience of it. For the first time you are entering the space, so the thing is so novel, so unique, that you cannot put it into any category.

That’s why everybody who goes into depth for the first time, comes back dazed and wondering whether he has been asleep or unconscious. But one was not unconscious, one was not asleep –

that one can feel. One was alert, and yet there is nothing recognisable, nothing which one can catch hold of, can grasp and say, ’Yes, this was happening.’ Not even a dream was there... nothing. It was pure nothingness. You don’t yet have the right language and- grammar to catch hold of it with.

Sooner or later you will develop a language, and everyone has to develop his own. Then too it will never be possible for you to express it to somebody else, but you will become more and more alert and you will see what is happening. Going again in the same direction, travelling the same path again and again, you become aware of many things of which you were not aware the first time. So this is good....

And as I see it you are in difficulty with your mind because you are trying too hard to drop it. That is creating the tension.

There is no need to drop it... it drops on its own. You cannot drop it because even the idea of dropping it is a mind idea. Who wants to drop it? It is again the mind.

It is as if a dog is trying to catch its own tail. The more the dog jumps, the more the tail jumps.

The dog becomes almost crazy because he feels the tail is playing tricks with him. The tail is doing nothing! The mind is not doing anything. Just the idea to drop it is creating the trouble. Forget all about dropping and clinging.

Let it be as it is – you simply accept. One day you will see that it is not there. You will be surprised, you will be taken unawares. Suddenly you will look around and it will not be there – the mind has disappeared! But it always comes as a surprise. You cannot do it... it happens in some moment of inner tuning. So forget all about it.

First I tell people to drop their minds – that’s how they start on the path. Then when they become too obsessed with dropping it, I have to tell them to drop the idea of dropping the mind. These are all devices to bring you to a certain inner space.

Things happen on their own. The mind drops but nobody ever drops it. There is nobody else but the mind to drop it. All action is of the mind... the being is absolutely inactive. Being has no idea, nothing like that. All choices are of the mind. The being has no choice, it is choiceless.

To choose to cling or to choose to drop – you are in a trap, in the mind. Just see it and leave it there.

What harm is the mind doing to you? Nothing much; it creates just noise, an inner talk – okay. Just accept it and don’t pay much attention to it.

Go on doing your meditation – things are going well – and forget all about the mind. One day you will come running to me, mm? Then don’t tell me, ’Bring my head back!’ Once dropped, it goes forever! Then you can use it but it is never there. So don’t be worried about it.

[A sannyasin says: I feel that I take myself too seriously, that everything is so difficult, so important...

]

Just remember one thing – you can tell yourself to be very important, but everybody else is also as important. There is nothing wrong in it. Never put yourself higher than anybody and never put yourself lower than anybody – then whatsoever you do is right. If you feel like being a queen, be a queen. Walk importantly... think importantly. Write on your forehead: ’I am very important’.

... Just today I was reading about a Frenchman, Teilhard de Chardin. He writes a letter to someone in which he says:

To the full extent of my power

Because I am a priest

I wish from now on to be the

First to become conscious of all that the

World loves, pursues and suffers;

I want to be the first to seek

To sympathise and to suffer

The first to unfold and sacrifice myself

To become more widely human

And more nobly of this earth

Than any of the world’s servants.

The person who quotes this says, ’Look how humble this man is.’ But this is not being humble; it is not humility at all. The whole trip is an ego-trip! First you want to be the first in the world. Then you become humble but the idea remains. Now you want to be the first among the servants of God.

The whole thing is the same, nothing has changed. First you wanted to be the richest man, now you want to be the humblest. But you go on comparing with others, and you don’t want to be behind anybody.

This is a trick of the mind. Jesus says, ’Those who are the last will be the first in my kingdom of God.

And those who are the first shall be the last.’ Now listening to this, people like Chardin will ask God,

’Make me the last in the world, but let me be the utterly last. Nobody should be behind me.’ But what is the difference in it? You are asking to be the first in the kingdom of God. Here also, when you are asking to be the last you are asking something superb for yourself. Why not be in the middle... why not be anywhere God places you? Even if He places you in the first row, let it be so!

Relax, and whatsoever is happening, accept it. If you feel like being serious or important, be. Don’t take your seriousness very seriously! Be serious – there is nothing wrong in it, but always remember to never make it a comparison. Never compare. Don’t think in terms of who is behind you. who is ahead of you. Nobody is behind you and nobody is ahead of you. Everybody is single and unique.

We are not related in that way. In fact we are standing in a circle.

You will always find someone standing in front of you and someone at the back of you, but everybody is standing in a circle! Once you have a greater perspective, a bird’s-eye view, you will simply laugh at the whole thing, because people are standing in a circle.

There is a certain spider, an african spider, which is a very obedient follower; it always follows the leader. If there is a leader of the gang, all the other spiders will follow in a line.

A scientist was making some experiments and he put a group of spiders in a big round plate. The leader started walking and the others started to follow him... soon they fell into a circle. They went on walking and walking and walking because there was no end to the line. They walked for sixty-eight hours until they fell dead! When somebody is moving in front of you, you have to keep moving. They were all thinking the same thing so everyone kept moving.

The whole of humanity is moving like that. It is a circle – we are not standing in a line. Everybody is always placed in a situation; somebody is ahead, somebody behind. But never compare... just look at yourself. If you are tired, get out of the circle, rest. If you are feeling energy, enjoying movement, move, but go with your feeling.

The trouble with you is that you are thinking that you are serious, and if you start thinking against it you will become more serious. You will be doubly serious. You have to take your seriousness non-seriously – then you have cut the roots.

But enjoy it – there is nothing wrong in it. I also need a few serious people around, otherwise how will people laugh, and at whom? (laughter) A few people are needed to play the serious role also!

[The Vipassana group are present and the group leader says people seemed tranquilised, and asks if he should restructure the group to four days watching the belly and two days simply witnessing.]

Mm mm... those days will not be enough. For anything to start functioning, at least a seven-day period is a must – for anything whatsoever. If you divide the time into four and four and two, nothing will happen and it will be a mess.

The idea is good, but in the group simply continue and don’t be worried about a mantra... just continue as you were doing. Later on I am thinking to have a zazen group. In this group, nothing is to be done – just witnessing. So plan and think about zazen. There are a few sannyasins who have done zazen in Japan or America, so contact them and find out exactly what they have been doing.

This group is perfectly good. It goes only up to an extent, but it goes well. If you mix it, it will be disturbed.

[The group leader had emphasized disidentification in the group, with mixed results.]

No, so don’t do that – let them be identified with tranquillity, otherwise it will become a tension. It cannot go to the very core of being, but nobody can go to the very core of being so easily.

We will make it a point that after Vipassana, people will do zazen. Just continue like this, because the results have been very good.

[The assistant observed that the balance of sexes in the group did not affect it much, except men had more willpower and women were more passive.

Mm, that’s right. It is good if men and women are mixed but don’t be worried about it. In fact Vipassana was developed in absolutely male groups – a woman was not allowed. When women were doing Vipassana separately, men were not allowed.

There is something in it – your feeling is also true. When women are around, you feel stamina because men start trying to prove themselves, nothing else. Once women are there, men will overdo. That’s natural – something has to be proved with so many women around (laughter). If only men are there, they will be less bothered. Nobody to look at them... nobody to appreciate them (laughter). Whatsoever you do is okay... they will relax more.

If women are there, men will work hard. And when men are working hard, women follow and also work hard. If women have a separate group of their own they will be completely staminaless. Both the sexes create a challenge of energies. Whatsoever it is you are doing,. if male and female are mixed, the output will be better and more because everybody is in a certain competition. If there are five men and five women, every woman will try to be more graceful and beautiful and silent (giggling), and every male will try to prove that he is a real male; the other four are just so-so (chortles).

Even in meditation that competition continues. It is very subtle and is natural – that’s how the positive and negative energies function. So don’t be worried about it; that’s not a problem.

[A group participant said that at the end of the group he had a heavy pressure in the forehead.]

There is nothing to worry about. Energy hits on these centres, and when it hits hard for the first time, it is almost unbearable. It distracts everything.

Have you done any Yoga? A headstand, shirshasan, will be helpful. Just stand on your head for three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the evening. When you stand on your head, energy rushes down forcibly because of gravitation. It is going up right now but it is going against gravitation so the force is not very great. It is struggling against a block which it cannot break, so tension arises.

There are only two ways to relax: either the energy relapses back or the block is broken. It is not good if the energy goes. It has to come up and break the block. And there is nothing like a headstand – it is a block-buster. The whole energy moves towards the earth with such intensity that even if there are rocks there they will be broken.

[A group participant said he had been expecting a lot from the group, but felt discouraged with meditation.]

This is what I wanted – discouragement! (laughter) It is a great thing!

Whatsoever we do ordinarily, we do with deep hope and expectation. Our whole activity is hope-oriented. So now hope is disappearing; that’s what you are calling discouraged. But blessed are those who are hopeless, because when hope disappears,.all frustration disappears. When hope disappears you start living in the moment because there is nothing to hope. And that is the greatest meditation – to just live right now.

Even to meditate is a hope, a desire. If you are really discouraged, perfectly good. Just drop all meditations and live moment to moment.

If you feel like doing, do. When I say drop meditating, I don’t mean to repress. If you want to do the Dynamic meditation, you don’t have to repress; do it. But if you don’t feel like doing it, don’t.

This is something very beautiful if you can use it. And don’t get discouraged because hopelessness is not really discouraging. It simply says that up to now whatsoever you were hoping was wrong.

Hope as such is wrong because it throws you into the tomorrow, into the future. One just lives with expectations. Something is going to happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next year, next life.

Because of this you go on postponing.

Whatsoever can happen is happening right now and you are looking somewhere else. People always live somewhere else. Somewhere else is their abode.

But this is good... perfectly good. Simply live moment to moment, and enjoy the moment, because what else can a hopeless man do! Do this for three weeks and then tell me. Something beautiful can flower out of it.

[The sannyasin adds: When I hear your discourses all kinds of problems arise about sex, about this and that. Must I change or must I simply accept what I am?]

Accept totally what you are.

No, no need to force anything.

And don’t bother about what I say (laughter).

Don’t bother.

Whatsoever you feel is good, continue. Don’t allow me to distract you.

I try in many ways to distract people from their path – just go on, stubborn. Just go on feeling your own feelings. To accept oneself is absolutely good, mm? So no need to worry about it.

Just listen to me and remember,’Now this man is again distracting me.’ (a chuckle) And just get settled in your own centre!

[Another group member said:... the course was ten days of some kind of high-voltage tension.

Tonight I just feel like relaxing and doing and celebrating.]

Very good. That is one of the beauties of Vipassana. After ten days one is bound to feel good. It is just like climbing a mountain, and when you reach the top, you lie down and feel relaxed and thank God that somehow it is finished ! (laughter)

CHAPTER 24

1 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Dharma Deepam. It means light of religion, light of the law, light of the ultimate. Dharma means many things, but basically it means exactly what Tao means – the fundamental law of existence. It is used for religion because religion is also a fundamental law, life.

The english word ’religion’ has very wrong connotations with it – sectarian, moral, theological; less concerned with the spontaneity of existence.

[The new sannyasin says: I feel very honoured to be here listening to you.]

Mm, that’s very good. Much is going to happen.

Change to orange and completely forget the past – as if it never belonged to you. That is the meaning of changing the name. One gets identified with a name, and, dropping it, suddenly one feels free; the identity is no more there.

It is almost as if you are in a strange country where nobody knows that you are a very rich man, very educated, a doctor, a professor, or an engineer, a scientist; nobody knows that you are an artist or a painter. Nobody knows anything about you and suddenly you find yourself in a strange world. You are reduced to non-being. People don’t look at you. Nobody pays special attention to you because nobody knows who you are. Suddenly the whole identity that you have been carrying forever, collapses. For the first time you really start being the one you are – unlabelled, unnamed, unknown. Not only unknown to others but even to yourself.

The whole effort of changing your clothes and your name is just to give you a discontinuity with the past. Once the discontinuity is there, ninety percent of your problems disappear. Those problems belong to your identity, not really to you. You, simply put aside the memories and the loaded past.

You say, ’I am no more that. That man is dead.’

So this is a day of your rebirth, your death and your resurrection. Take it as deeply as you can so the break happens easily. Just forget and start from this moment looking at your past as if it belonged to somebody else, or as if you had read a novel or seen a movie, had been in a dream, and suddenly it has disappeared; you are no more in it.

When Buddha became enlightened, a very great and learned brahmin approached him. Buddha was looking so god-like, so tremendously beautiful and graceful, that the brahmin asked, ’Are you a god?’ Buddha said, ’No.’ The brahmin asked, ’Are you a great saint?’ Buddha said, ’No.’ Then the brahmin asked, ’Then who are you.?’

Buddha laughed and said, ’I am aware.’ Just this much – ’I am aware.’ He has said a tremendous thing.

He says, ’How can I be identified with any label – god, saint, sinner, this and that? I am aware – the dream is finished.’

All identities are dreams – sometimes beautiful, sometimes nightmarish, but all dreams.

So

whatsoever you have been up to now, get out of it as a snake gets out of the old skin. Don’t move in the old shoes anymore – get out of them – and suddenly you will see that ninety percent of the problems have disappeared. The ten percent which don’t disappear are real problems. They are blessings, because through them one grows.

The ninety percent of problems which are not real, are bogus, are simply distractions and cunning devices of the mind to avoid the real problems. Whenever there is a real problem, the mind creates many other problems which are false, pseudo, and you become engaged with the false problems.

Then you start working on them – and they can never be solved because in the first place they are not your problems. They are not problems.

This moment becomes your death and also your birth. Let it penetrate deeply.

And I can see that the energy is beautiful. Very few people are so blessed... whose energy is flowing really in harmony. Just become more and more tuned with me here, and with the milieu we are trying to create here, the ecology of human consciousness that we are working with here; become in tune with it. Just become part of it and much will happen.

[A visitor, said that the only meditation she had done prior to those happening here, was colour meditation, and that she had done some Encounter groups when she was younger, more as a gesture of breaking out of the institution than of anything else.]

Mm mm... because it is not a question of breaking out of an institution. The question is of breaking out of the mind. The mind is the real institution, and it is inside, not outside.

It is not a real problem to live in an institution, or to live in a certain society, in a certain tradition. The real problem is inside man. One has to live in one’s mind, and that is institutional and very orthodox That is the real imprisonment.

So it will be good if you can do a few groups here. There are a few groups which can bring you out of your mind. That’s why I think you were not enjoying these meditations, because these meditations can be enjoyed only...

[She answers: I enjoy the meditations. It’s more or less the feeling around the ashram and Poona.]

Mm mm, maybe. If you enjoy meditations, then continue. And these are irrelevant things – Poona or the ashram or the people. Never pay much attention to irrelevant things because sometimes they become so important, and one becomes so obsessed with them that one misses the essential.

Once a man came to me, a very learned man, a vice-chancellor of a university, and he said,

’Everything is good. I love your books, I love your talks, but your long skirt...’ What nonsense!

But it was a real problem. He said, ’I feel silly, but the moment I see your long skirt, rm disturbed.

Why this long skirt?’

So I told him, ’I can make it short, but then when somebody is disturbed by my short skirt, what am I going to do? Then someone may be even disturbed by my skirt! If I am to satisfy everybody, it will be impossible for me to live!’ He said he understood but still, somehow, it obsessed him.

I have seen many people getting too interested in unnecessary things. Poona is irrelevant. You are here to be with me. The ashram is also irrelevant, but sometimes these things become very very meaningful. There are people who say, ’We don’t like this organisation, the ashram and routine. We love you but we cannot stay because this is too much of a regimentation.’ Then they are paying too much attention to something which is not of any value.

Just be concerned with the essential in life, and always go to the root of the matter. Don’t be bothered by the non-essentials. They are always there and they cannot be satisfactory according to everybody’s heart’s desire; it is impossible. When there are so many people, it is almost impossible to drop all sorts of formalities because then it becomes a chaos.

[Osho said that he had tried to help people without the structure of an ashram, an organisation, but it because impossible to communicate in depth with individuals.]

If you try to manage things, then a certain organisation enters. If you drop all organisation, everything becomes chaotic, so that nothing can be done. Just try to understand things, and look at the essential.

I will suggest that if you do a few groups here, they will be very very helpful. Try at least one and we will see, mm? See what you can allow, and when you allow, see what happens. If you go totally into anything, you simply get out of the mind. The mind can never be total in anything. It is always divided, fragmentary; that’s the nature of the mind. So whatsoever you can do totally, immediately you get out of the mind. And those few moments of getting out of the mind are of real freedom.

Then you are out of the institution... the most subtle Institution of your own thoughts. We have many groups for different types of people, for different problems to be tackled, and different approaches to enter a certain person, to go into the very core of his or her being.

Just be here and don’t look for the non-essential. Just remember me. Right!

[The companion of the former visitor said that he also had done colour meditation in the past.]

Colour meditation is good, and it can help up to a certain point but not up to the very end, because it is in fact imagination.

Nothing is wrong in imagination.

It is the only creative faculty in you.

Colour meditation is

imagination, and you can imagine beautiful colours; you can have very very beautiful experiences through it; it is very poetic, romantic – but one has to go beyond it because reality can never be known through imagination.

You can come to love reality through imagination but you can never know it. You will have deeper experiences of reality, but those experiences will remain subjective. You will go on projecting something. If you look at a rose flower, and if you have a trained imagination you will see tremendous qualities in the rose, of which nobody else will be aware. You will almost see a dance of energy there, the aura of the rose and the subtle colours ... you can almost touch the fragrance of it. It becomes almost tangible and the roseness of the rose has a depth when you have imagination. It opens new doors, and one rose can become the door for the whole existence. But still it is imagination. In fact you are not knowing anything about the rose, you are knowing something about your imagination through the rose. The rose is just an excuse.

So, good – I am all in favour of imagination – but one has to learn one day to drop it so that you can see that which is, not that which you impose on something. Reality is something totally different from what we dream, imagine... than we can ever think about. It is totally different and it has nothing to do with the mind.

Something like Vipassana will be very helpful. We have a group for buddhist meditation because that is the only ancient method which does not use imagination. It is very austere, pure. The whole emphasis is just on being alert, that’s all, so that nothing passes without your knowledge. You don’t do anything to the facticity of life: you don’t touch it, retouch it, you don’t project anything. Life is no more a screen, and you are no more a projector. You are simply witnessing, whatsoever it is, with no judgement on your part of good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

But before you do Vipassana, do some very imaginative thing because you have been doing this colour meditation, so something on the same lines will bring your imagination to the very brink, beyond which it cannot go. And that is my emphasis always. If you are doing something, go to the very extreme of it. Never leave it in the middle, otherwise you will have a hangover. Go to the very extreme of it explore the whole possibility and potentiality of it. Only drop it when you see that now it is a used possibility, now there is nothing more in it and you have exploited it completely. You have taken all that was possible to take from it. Only then move somewhere else.

First go through the group we call Hypnotherapy – that is completely imagination, but it brings the imagination to a total focusing. Use your imagination as totally as possible so that you can enjoy the whole scenery of imagination. Once you have enjoyed the whole scenery, you can come out of it very easily.

[A visitor said that he had been working with Arica for four years and would continue in that work on his return to the States.]

Arica has a few very beautiful methods, but always remember that the method is not the ultimate thing, and one has to go beyond methodology.

Because the West is so technically minded, the techniques appeal very much. Arica has very beautiful techniques, eclectic, from many schools, from many esoteric groups, so work hard on them. But remember one thing, that no method can lead you to the point where you can become spontaneous. All methods can give you a certain glimpse, but never the truth.

Glimpses are good because that’s how one learns and reaches closer to the truth, that’s how one comes to feel what truth is. Then truth becomes a great desire, a burning desire in oneself. Methods can create thirst but they can never quench. So use all methods that you can learn but always remembering that truth is beyond methods. It cannot be within methods because it cannot be caused by anything. It is uncaused. You have not to do anything to achieve it. You have just to be...

it is already showering on you. Not for a single moment have you missed it. It is impossible to miss it because it is our very nature.

So don’t get too attached to methods otherwise they will become the barriers. Use them but with the awareness that this is just a device, is arbitrary. It is just like a staircase: you use it to go upstairs but the stair is not the goal. Use it – and leave it. When a person has become completely free of methods, he rests in his own being.

That thing has yet to penetrate the western consciousness. Transcendental meditation, Arica, Scientology, and a thousand and one methods are prevalent and people go on moving from one methodology to another, everybody thinking that through methods truth can be achieved. Through methods, at the most you can be prepared to receive it, but it comes on its own. It comes when it comes – it cannot be forced. And a forced truth will not be much of a truth.

I see many people who have not known any methods, and people who have known methods and have started clinging to them. Both are lost. The first group can be forgiven, but not the second. The first has not even started; nothing can be said about them. But the second has started, has moved a few steps, and now is clinging to the staircase.

So remember, one has to come to no-method and one has to come to no-effort. One has to come to no-will, because whatsoever you will, is going to create a certain ego. Whatsoever you do is going to create a certain tension. One has to come to total surrender, then God wills... then the whole works through you. You simply float, not even worried where the whole is taking you and leading you. Each moment is tremendously beautiful in itself.

[A sannyasin said she wanted to start a centre in Oxford, England, and also to introduce Osho to Ronnie Laing.]

That would be very good. He might be interested. Just let him feel me through you.

... He is one of the most beautiful people alive there, so he has to be interested. Just go and start working on him. And I will give you a name so that you can start a small centre in Oxford.

This will be the name: Shunyam.

It means the emptiness, the void, the nothingness. This is a buddhist word – shunyam – for the ultimate reality. Buddha says there is no god, there is no creator, that there is, in fact, nobody. The whole is a nobodyness.

In English there is no word to translate it because all english words that can give an indication about it are all negative. The word ’empty’ feels as if it is empty of something. It is not in itself a positive feeling.

When you say that the room is empty, you mean that the furniture has been removed. Shunyam is a positive emptiness. It is not empty of something. It is full of emptiness. The room is full of roominess. Maybe the furniture is not there, but that’s how it is full of roominess. When furniture is there, it occupies the room; the room is occupied and destroyed. When you remove everything from the room, roominess enters back into it; the room becomes full of emptiness.

So shunyam is a positive word. Because of this word, many in the West have misunderstood Buddha. They think he is a negative thinker, a pessimist, because in the West the word ’empty’ has always been used in a condemnatory sense. They say that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop.

In India we say that the empty mind is God’s workshop. But this emptiness is totally different, mm?

It is full of emptiness.

There is an anecdote in Buddha’s life about a great philosopher, not a disciple of Buddha, but a seeker, who said to Buddha, ’I have not come to listen to any words from you, and I have not come to listen to your silence either. So don’t tell me anything through words and don’t tell me anything through silence.’

Buddha kept quiet. A few moments passed – the man was thrilled, ecstatic. He touched Buddha’s feet and he said, ’Your compassion is great, and you have given me what I asked you for.’ In deep respect, gratitude, he left Buddha.

Buddha’s own disciples could not follow what had transpired between the two. In the first place the man had said not to say anything through silence – and Buddha had kept silent. The man had posed a very difficult dilemma – not to say anything through words and not to say anything through silence and yet to say something! What transpired between the two? Even the disciples could not understand.

When the man left, the chief disciple, Ananda, asked, ’We cannot understand what has happened.

The man asked you not to be silent and you remained silent – and still he received the answer!’

Buddha said, ’There are two types of silences. One is when you want to say something and you are not saying it.’ In English you have the expression ’a pregnant silence’. Something is there and maybe the quality of it is such that it cannot be said. It is inexpressible but it is there. Buddha said,’That man told me not to be in a pregnant silence, an eloquent silence, so I didn’t say anything through words and I didn’t say anything through silence.

’But there is another silence, which is simple. It is not absence of saying, not empty of saying, but simply full of silence. I remained in it and the man followed and understood.’

Ananda said, ’But we could not follow and we are your disciples. How did it happen?’

Buddha said, ’There are a few horses of good breeding for whom only the shadow of the whip is enough.’

So shunyam means, not empty of anything, but full of emptiness.

The East has always loved shunyam. A man is not made of body, but is the inner emptiness. When we say we live in a house, we live in emptiness. If the house is really full we will not be able to live in it. We pass through the door because it is empty. We cannot pass through the wall because it is full.

The whole emphasis in the East is for shunyam – emptiness, but full of its own nature. You wanted to say something else? One thing is still there.

[The sannyasin then asked: I used to go outside my body and I didn’t know anything about it until I heard you talking about it. It used to happen when I was frightened, and I wouldn’t have any control over it. I’d go about four feet away from my body.]

Yes, allow it – it is beautiful, very beautiful. Simply enjoy it so it happens more and more. By and by it will become more and more smooth and you will be able to go further and further away from the body. One can almost float in the sky.

You are separate from the body. The body is just an abode in which we are staying for a time being.

So enjoy it and whenever you have time slip into it. If it is happening naturally, it is beautiful. It is a great meditation and will help tremendous growth in you.

... We have a certain attitude about things. For example if you accept the idea that you are separate from the body, when the thing happens you will become aware of it. If you reject the very idea and think that it is foolish, the thing will happen but you will bypass it. You will not recognise it or take note of it, because it will go against your mind.

... Then you will lose it. If you understand it and allow it, you know the path and how it happened. It is a knack, and you slip into that knack again and again and again and it happens more and more.

People who have an idea that they have lived only once, are living only once, and that there are not many lives, also slip, sometimes, into their past lives, but they will interpret it in a certain way. They will say, ’This is just dream or fantasy, just nonsense, rubbish!’ In that way they will block the door.

There are people who sometimes move into deep meditation but they remain completely oblivious of the fact. If you ask them, they will say, ’Maybe I fell asleep,’ or, ’I don’t know what was happening!’

The mind only selects those things which it accepts. That’s why an open mind is needed with no dogma cluttering it. Then whatsoever happens, one is available to take note of it, to enjoy it, and if it is life-enhancing, to move into it. Then more and more things will happen.

It is a chain. If you go one step into it, another step becomes available. If you go two steps, a third step becomes available. And only one step becomes available at one time. If you don’t take the first step, the other steps are simply closed for you.

Whenever it happens, push it back a little further. You feel it is four feet, try to make it five or six. If you feel it is in the room, just try to get out of the room. By, and by you will feel that a freedom is coming and you are becoming attuned to the phenomenon. Sometimes try to go out of the town, and then to Poona (laughter). Come from Oxford, mm?... because time and space are not barriers for it.

[A sannyasin who is maintaining silence said that most of the time she felt marvellous, but sometimes around people anger arose. She asked: Is there something that is short-circuiting or something?]

No, no, nothing. Because you have been always very cultured, polite, controlled, disciplined, these wild pockets are there and you have bypassed them. You have controlled your life in a certain way, in a perfect way. But those pockets are there and now you are relaxing more, so those pockets are starting to get back into your system. There is nothing wrong in it, but just remember one thing –

never throw your anger on anybody.

If you get angry at persons, you will never get totally angry and guilt arises, because the person is not really the cause. You can see that; you are alert enough now. You can see that the person is not the cause and that you have your own anger inside. You are just seeking some excuse.

Use the anger in some activity. I would like these wild pockets which are being left outside your personality to be reabsorbed. You will become more whole. Nothing has to be left out, absolutely nothing. Everything has to be absorbed, reclaimed, and everything has to find a place in your totality.

But don’t be worried – everything is going well.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group are present.

[A group member said that at first he wanted to leave and then it got better and better and better.]

Very good! Now tell everybody this, because many people would have left. The idea comes to many people in the beginning when it is difficult. Westerners particularly have become much too addicted to convenience and comfort. Anything that looks hard, seems impossible, they try to get out of. But if you go into things, they become easier.

Always remember that things which are easier in the beginning always prove useless because they don’t give you any challenge. they don’t test your mettle or give you any opportunities. If you can work through things that are hard, the very thrill gives a challenge to your whole being. The very decision that you are going to stay, to stick at it, gives you a sudden upsurge of energy and growth.

After each hardship you will find that you have learned something. You will come out of it more integrated. Never choose the easy – it is dangerous. If you do, you can live and die conveniently, but you will not grow.

[Another group member said he also nearly left and then later something very special happened for him.]

It has been very good. Always remember that all that looks horrible is not necessarily horrible. They say that the path to hell is full of well-wishers. The opposite is also true: the path to heaven is full of hell.

This is my observation, that if you are seeking heaven you will fall into hell. If you are ready to face hell you will rise into heaven. That’s how the polarity of life functions.

So whenever you see that something is going hard, don’t be worried too much. It is a challenge to be faced, to be lived through. And all beautiful experiences happen only when you have passed through hardship,. through horrible experiences. Those horrible experiences prepare you... they cleanse you. Pain is a cleansing process and it prepares you for greater and higher and more refined pleasures.

[A sannyasin who left the group said: I sometimes get myself into situations where something just goes click! and then I walk away.]

Sometimes let it click and don’t go, don’t walk away. Break the habit, otherwise you will miss many things in life. Only you will be responsible, nobody else.

The same thing would have happened to you even better than to him if you had stayed. The moment comes to everybody when one feels to just walk out, to be finished, because it is too much and you ask yourself why you should unnecessarily torture yourself. That comes to everybody.

Everything is at a cost. If you want higher blessings, you have to earn them. Do another group, and next time when it comes, just watch and tell it to go away and that you are not coming. You will feel so happy if you don’t follow the urge because then you will have a certain mastery over your mind.

Suddenly you will feel that yes, you are a little higher than your mind, that something is beyond the mind.

So there is nothing wrong – whatsoever happened, happened, but next time, just tell the urge to go.

Go outside, spit it there, and come back. This group may have given you many beautiful experiences.

[A group member says: I feel a lot of aggression and I’m sometimes very afraid of the power inside me. I feel that I’m dangerous to myself and other people and so I’m holding back all the time.

Osho suggested that he do the Aum group and then said that all people are dangerous and it was good that Prakash had come to recognise it. Osho said that creativity and destructiveness were both aspects of the same energy. The key lay in being able to transform energy into creativity. Osho said he would give Prakash some creative meditations after he had completed the Aum marathon.]

[Another sannyasin said he had had a fever, and that his energy had changed from being aggressive to being passive. When he returned to the west he wanted to just sit in his treehouse, instead of working as a therapist.]

The fever was not just a fever. It is some change that is happening so you are feeling hot because of it. Don’t be worried about it – it will go. Then it is gone you will feel very very different.

For three weeks you rest, and then you will feel a great upsurge of energy. When the energy comes, move into work.

There has always to be a rhythm between work and play, action and no action, between sun and moon. If you get addicted to relaxation and silence, that will not be good and not very fulfilling to you. You will become more and more still, but you will also become a little dead. That is the problem with the moon centre. When the energy moves into the moon, one becomes silent, but if it is not also joined by the sun centre, by and by sensitivity is lost. Then a silence is attained which is more empty than full.

So move into energy, into the sun centre. Do things, but when you feel tired and spent, don’t go on forcing. When you are not feeling like doing, move into your treehouse and rest, and forget all about work and everything. Make it a rhythm. It will be better if you make it a small rhythm: work for five days, rest for two. If you have two months’ rest, rest will become a habit and it will be difficult to go into work. The mind will say, ’Leave all this nonsense. It is all maya.’ But look at me – I go on working on you (chuckling). And it is all maya!

Never become an escapist. Much work has to be done for me. That’s why I am sending you there, otherwise I would have told you not to go. I am sending you for a purpose.

A few times you can come and go and then finally you can settle here. You can have a tree and make a small house, and you can live with your snake there. [The sannyasin has a pet snake.]

Or you can even find an Eve – that will be complete.

CHAPTER 25

2 May 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Santan means silence and anand means bliss. These two things have to be remembered. Be as peaceful and silent as possible. Let it become a climate around you. Walking, feel as if you are surrounded by a deep silence.

In the beginning it will just be ’as if’, but every idea becomes a reality, and every reality was just an idea in the beginning. Sitting, feel as if you are surrounded by silence and peace. You will forget again and again. Just remember again, and don’t be worried about forgetting; it’s natural. Whenever you remember again, start feeling it. Relax... feel the silence surrounding you. Out of silence, by and by some moments of bliss will arise. When they arise, sway with them, let your energy flow with them.

[A visitor said that in the Encounter group there had been much violence directed at persons, instead of on a pillow. He himself had much violence and had hurt someone. He was very shocked and had decided to leave. He felt this structure could lead to someone getting killed. He had decided to leave the ashram.]

No, it has never happened, and it is a very rare possibility. There are a few things to be understood.

The society has conditioned you to repress violence not against pillows, not against the wall –

society has repressed your violence against persons, so pillows are a very poor substitute. The whole mechanism of the Encounter group is to relieve you of all the repressions that society has given to you.

I understand your problem because there can be so much violence repressed that it can become almost murderous. But there is another in-built mechanism in the human mind. If you go on repressing your violence, one day it can explode and can be murderous, but that will be unconscious.

If you allow this explosion consciously – and that is what an Encounter group is supposed to be for: to consciously allow it – you will go to a certain extent and suddenly compassion will arise. That is an in-built mechanism in all animals and in man also, but man has completely forgotten about it.

Have you ever seen any animal killing its own species? No animal kills its own kind – only man.

No dog will kill another dog. They fight, they can fight very violently, but they will never kill. They will go up to a certain extent. One dog may hold another dog’s throat in his mouth and you will be thinking that now he is going to kill the other dog, but at a certain moment the whole energy turns back; something stops the dog from within.

The same happens in human beings if repressions are allowed. And that’s the whole theory behind Encounter groups. If you are allowed your violence, you may feel that it is going to be too much, that you can murder. But you cannot murder because you are a human being and you also carry, howsoever repressed, an inner mechanism that will not allow you. You will go to a certain extent, almost to the brink, and suddenly a compassion will arise in you and you will see the whole absurdity of it. This person is completely innocent. You may be carrying violence against other persons –

maybe against your father, your mother, brother, enemies, friends, society – but not against this person who has accidentally met you in an Encounter group.

So you may go to a point and then suddenly – and it happens only when you are at the extreme point – the inner mechanism that has been non-functioning, starts functioning and you see the whole nonsense of it and a deep compassion arises. Many people become afraid, but nowhere, not even in the West, has any Encounter group come across a murder yet.

Just two or three days ago I was reading the memoirs of one of the very perceptive men in the West, Fritz Perls, who started Gestalt therapy. He was a very strong man; tall, well-built and very powerful.

One very tiny man in a group told him that he had an obsession that some day or other he would kill someone by suffocating them. He said this came to his mind so much that he was almost afraid to come near people because any provocation and he might suffocate and kill them.

So Perls said, ’I will lie down here and you suffocate me, kill me. Be finished with your obsession –

you have carried it too long!’ Perls lay down and the man started suffocating him, holding his throat and pressing it really hard. Even Fritz Perls says that there was a moment when he thought this man was really going to kill him! He went to the very extreme. But just on the verge, suddenly he relaxed and started crying. Compassion came to his mind.

The whole encounter philosophy believes in this compassion within you. It is a tremendous trust in you. The society does not trust you – that’s why it teaches you to repress. Society condemns you and kills you as a murderer, as a thief, an immoral man, a rapist, and a thousand and one things. It thinks only of the worst possibility and it goes on repressing you. The encounter philosophy believes and trusts in your deep humanity, in the divinity of your innermost grace, in the dignity of your being, so it allows.

Risk is there. Sometimes if somebody is really mad, maybe out of one million, there is a chance that somebody may commit a murder. But that risk has to be taken, otherwise the whole therapeutic work of Encounter is stopped. That risk has to be taken. It has not happened and I don’t see it ever happening. It is just a theoretical possibility. I have never seen a man go so completely mad.

Even the mad people in your mad asylums are not so mad. They have compassion, and even more compassion than your ordinary humanity which is outside the asylums.

You have repressed much and it came to be provoked, and you became afraid; that’s natural. But I feel that if you had continued, the compassion was bound to come. I will tell those people to be a little more alert, but too much caution cannot be used, otherwise the whole point is lost. Then the group becomes almost a part of your society. Then the group also represses you and is no more therapeutic.

Whatsoever the society has done to you, the group is trying to undo. It is risky certainly, but the risk is because of society and its repressions, not because of the group.

If the whole world functions on the philosophy of Encounter, there will be no murder, no violence, no war. But it is not, so there is murder, war, and every violence going on, and we are prepared for that violence.

Moving in an Encounter group, violence sometimes arises, but it is dearly faced. We have a given society with a given structure. It has corrupted your being and created such barriers that your inner functioning is stopped. Man has lost the touch and connectedness with his being.

[The visitor asks for advice to improve. He has done TM meditation in the past.]

TM is a repressive method. That may be one of the causes why the Encounter created trouble. It is a repressive method and it gives you a false type of silence. It gives you a certain peace, but it doesn’t change you. You remain in turmoil deep down, and just on the surface you have a painted side.

It will make you more efficient, but efficiency is not a value at all. If you are a murderer, you will become a more efficient murderer. If you are an exploiter, you will exploit more efficiently. In the West, efficiency is thought to be a great value.

TM can give you an efficiency, and of course a certain illusion of improvement because it is very ego-enhancing. You feel more controlled. Now I understand what the problem was in the group and how you could not manage to be in it or benefited by it.

[The visitor then said he has long training in Aikido, and that to express violence is against Aikido training and principles.]

But the training is not simply not to attack. The training is dropping the idea of attacking and this was the situation to know whether your training has worked or not. When nobody is beating you and you don’t attack, it is meaningless. When somebody is attacking you and you remain alert, you keep the flame of alertness and don’t attack, only then is the training and discipline worth something. Then you have learned something; otherwise it is useless. When nobody is attacking you, what is the point? The provocation is the test.

It will be difficult for me to suggest anything because all my methods are cathartic. You have to bring all that is inside, out, so that you are relieved and the tension is completely lost. You should not carry anything.

Both these trainings are in a way dangerous, because they both try to make you very disciplined and controlled, but you are sitting on a volcano. Both falsify your being because they don’t allow your natural spontaneity to function. If you are continuing in them, don’t ask my advice because that will create more contradictions in you.

But if you ask my advice, I’ll suggest you do Dynamic meditation. Only that will help. But you are going so soon. You needed to be here for at least a few days to do one camp. One camp would have given you much insight.

Some day or other you will be in great trouble because you look very repressed, controlled, disciplined. It gives a good feeling and people will appreciate you. It gives you a personality. That’s why control became so important all over the world and people have tried to control themselves.

The whole thing that I am doing here is showing a way to remain in uncontrol and yet disciplined, uncontrolled and yet aware. Then there is a beauty. If you are simply controlled and not aware, you are already dead and all your sensitivity will be lost. If you do Dynamic meditation for at least three months, you will see things disappearing and a totally different quality will happen to you. You will be silent, aware – with no control and yet in control because there is nothing to control.

There are two different types of control: a person who has many things to control and is controlled, and another person who has nothing to control, so is controlled. He is completely empty and void and quiet inside.

I will suggest you do few other groups in the West – Encounter, marathons, Gestalt, Bio-energetics.

TM is just useless, but if you are feeling good, continue.

[The previous visitor’s wife said she had also been doing TM but had not found it helpful.]

TM can help a certain type of peacefulness. It is not very deep and it is not worth much, but if you are not getting into anything, you can try it. You have misunderstood the whole point.

Boredom is part of it. The mantra is meant to create boredom, because when the mind is completely bored it stops the inner chattering. It is just as when a small boy is not going to sleep and the mother sings a lullaby so the child starts feeling bored; the same line is repeated again and again and again.

The child wants to escape from there, but where can he escape to? He escapes into sleep.

TM is nothing but a lullaby. You can use a certain mantra or word continuously and you create a lullaby within you. Now there is no escape from it because you yourself are doing it. It is not the radio that you can turn off, or the traffic noise against which you can dose the windows. You yourself are doing it so there is no escape. If you go on doing it, doing it, the mind starts feeling bored. The mind is always interested in something new. It is not interested in repetition. If you go on repeating you will slip into a sort of sleep – that’s what they call meditation.

That sort of sleep is artificial. It is basically a hypno-sleep. In Yoga we call it tandra: artificially created sleep. But it gives rest. Nothing is wrong in it. If you simply want sleep and rest, it will give it to you, but you have to try it for at least three months continuously, every day, twice a day.

If you cannot get into TM, you cannot get into anything else because it is the most superficial meditation there is. I will suggest that you get into it because if you cannot, it will be difficult for you to get into anything else.

Dynamic meditation is a totally different thing. It is not interested in making you silent. No. First it is interested in making you open. It may take many weeks for you to open, and then all the rubbish that you have been carrying has to be thrown out. It is dirty work, but if one really wants to be clean it has to be done. Cleaning is always dirty work, but if you want a clean and new being inside, you do it. If you cannot even do TM, then you will not be able to do Dynamic.

So try TM first and be finished with it. When a certain little silence comes to you, then only will you be able to do some harder method which will really relieve you of your tensions. He (indicating her husband) needs to go beyond TM; you need to go into it. But try, mm? It will come.

[A sannyasin says: I seem to like problems... I seem to always manage to create them.... but the trouble is I can’t stop it]

No, no, I’m not saying to stop it. Create problems and enjoy it, but know it is you who is creating them. It is your game, so play it.

Nothing is wrong in it if you play knowingly. Everything is a game. If you play it knowingly you are not affected by it. U you like creating problems and solving them, very good... very intelligent (laughter).

Create bigger problems and more complicated so that it becomes more and more difficult to solve them.

In English we translate the indian word ’maya’ as illusion. It comes from the latin root ’ludere’ which means to play with, a game. The english word ’illusion’ means playing a game. It does not mean the unreal, but simply to play a game. That is exactly the meaning of maya – to play a game.

So play it willingly. I am not saying to stop it. What will you do if you stop it? Even God cannot stop it! (laughter) But have good and beautiful games. You are the creator – why not have beautiful and more aesthetic games? Enjoy decorating them and making them more complicated. Make them so complicated that even you cannot solve them – and you have made them! Do it deliberately. The whole thing is how to do things deliberately.

For example somebody stutters. I tell him to do it deliberately, consciously, to stutter more, to exaggerate it. It happened once that a student was brought to me and I told him to do it deliberately and he couldn’t. He tried hard but he couldn’t.

Once you start enjoying a problem, you have already killed it because the whole thing was that the problem was heavy on you. It was creating trouble for you. Now you are enjoying it so the trouble is no more there. You have taken away the very ground and the problem will be dangling in a vacuum...

it will fall by itself.

[The Tathata group is present. One group member says: I had this terrible realization that I’ve been totally false and fake for as long as I can remember. I felt slightly suicidal about it.]

To realise that one’s whole life has been fake, false, is a very shattering experience. The whole life collapses and suddenly you are nowhere, the whole identity gone. You were clinging to it and thinking it a great treasure and it proved to be just rubbish. It is natural that the stomach feels nauseous, numb. You have been through death. So it is perfectly good – you are still alive!

(warmly) Come here... come here. Mm! The group has been really significant for you. Very few people go to that extent of realisation. People go a little bit, and that too almost intellectually. They say, ’Yes, I understand that I have been a fake,’ but this is not felt; it is still in the head. It is again a new fakeness. It has not been understood physiologically... not in depth. They have not felt the tremor. Once you feel the tremor, this sickness will come. This sickness is a sign that you have passed through death. Just take a little rest for two or three days and you will come out completely new and fresh.

Don’t get into the old pattern again because it is very tempting. You have practised it so long that it has almost become second nature and almost robot-like. You have put your whole life into it so it will tempt you again, because without it you will have to be more aware. Without it you will feel a little haphazard. Without it you feel less efficient and you will continuously feel the need to think and be aware of where you are going, what you are doing, what is happening. The mind will say, ’Why bother so much? Just take back the old cloak, and hide in it. Cover yourself under the old blanket and everything will be okay and as it always has been.’

Don’t listen to the mind.

It. has been a really shattering experience – that’s how it should be for everyone. This sickness is very healthy. It simply shows that the system is trying to throw out all that is toxic, poisonous. So don’t take any medicine, simply rest.

[A sannyasin said he realised he had been continuously depressed over the last two years; and lying to himself and his girlfriend. He would like to be able to ’rub out’ those two years.]

You have come to an insight but you have not been able to absorb it as he (the previous sannyasin) has. You have seen it but you still want to reject it, and that’s creating the trouble. You have not accepted it. If you don’t accept it, you want to erase it. If you accept it, what is the point of erasing it?

If it has been so, it has been. How can the past be erased? It can only be understood. Accept it, and once you accept through understanding it is erased because then it becomes just like a nightmare, nothing else. It was a dream that you saw.

Once you understand, you are out of it. But this very effort and the idea of how to erase it, shows that you have not accepted it. You are still rejecting it and still trying to somehow convince yourself that it has not existed, that it is not part of you – maybe just an accident, chance, coincidence, but it was not essential to you, it never belonged to you. You were carrying it but it was not essentially part of you. That’s what is creating your puzzle.

So don’t try to erase it and don’t try to reject it. Don’t try to say that it never existed. Don’t even wish it because now nothing can be done; it has happened. Whatsoever has happened cannot unhappen.

We cannot move time back. But there is a way to move ahead in time with such deep insight that whatsoever has happened in the past has been used and integratedly used.

For example you were sad for two years, and now you recognise the fact and accept the facticity of it. You understand it without any rejection, condemnation. That understanding will change your future. You will never be depressed again in the way you have been in the past. And if your future changes, that’s the real change.

And what will you do by changing the past? You can be hypnotised and given the suggestion that these two years never existed. The suggestion can be given so deeply that you will forget all about these two years and that they even existed. But that is not going to help. You will commit the same mistake again and again. Your future will be a repetition of the past that you have forgotten.

I would not like to erase them. I would like to focus on them. Bring your total awareness to the past. This has been your life. If it was wrong, one has to look at it deeply, very deeply, so it is never repeated. The past is meaningful only if you understand it; then you don’t repeat it. They say about history that it has to be learned so we don’t repeat it. Otherwise we will commit the same mistake again and again.

It has been good but you are still struggling. You don’t want to accept it.

[Another group member said he had imagined part of the group structure was not to sleep at night, and at the end of the group he was shattered.]

You overdo things... that too is a subtle ego. The ego is always overdoing because it is always trying to perform, to prove things – if not to others, then to oneself. You need a little relaxation.

Overdoing is not going to help. Your top-dog is too strong and it goes on torturing the under-dog.

The under-dog wanted to sleep but the top-dog was not willing. The top-dog always enjoys some type of domination. It feels good and ego-enhancing that you will not sleep, will not eat, you go on a fast, or you stand in the sun. The top-dog is always masochistic.

Always listen to the under-dog. That is the real oppressed human being. This top-dog is just a sucker, an exploiter. Whenever you run into any conflict, decide in favour of the under-dog. If you have to decide whether to go to the movie or to the meditation, if the under-dog wants to go to the movie, go to the movie and forget about meditation.

Never give any chance to that top-dog to become any stronger because the under-dog is your nature.

Try to become more ordinary. You are trying to become extraordinary – that is creating the trouble.

You are doing the Tao group next? That will be good because it will not be overdoing. Just really relax in it and float. And if you want to fall asleep, fall down then and there, but don’t overdo that!

[A assistant said he had given massage, and disappeared into it. However, afterwards much aggression came up.

Osho suggested that after he had completed his massage, He should immediately take a shower and while doing so, imagine that all anger and violence was being washed away. He should recommend that the people he works on do the same too, immediately the massage is over... ]

While you are doing massage, it is not one-way traffic. The energy is not only moving from you; it is also moving from the other person to you, because the contact is for both.

If the other person starts catharting, he will be releasing much energy and you will absorb it. You will feel violent or angry for no reason. Massage stirs many things inside and if it is really deep, and if you become possessed, it stirs many things. One has to be alert.

[Massage is available at the ashram through two sannyasins. Osho said, at the introduction of massage into the ashram:]

Massage is something that you can start learning but you never finish. It goes on and on, and the experience becomes continuously deeper and deeper, higher and higher.

Massage is one of the most subtle arts – and it is not only a question of expertise. It is more a question of love. Learn the technique and then forget it. Just feel, and move by feeling. When you learn deeply, ninety percent of the work is done by love, ten percent by the technique. By just the very touching, a loving touch, something relaxes in the body.

Massage is needed in the world because love has disappeared.

[Another group member said: Since the group I’ve been enjoying myself very much. Thank you!]

That’s very good. Enjoy – and don’t feel guilty about it, mm? People start feeling guilty when they enjoy because everybody has been taught that there is something wrong in enjoying life; something basically like sin when you enjoy something.

So don’t feel guilty. Just enjoy and be happy. Enjoyment is a virtue, and only virtuous people are able to enjoy. Those who enjoy I call virtuous.

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 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25