Nothing to Lose But Your Head

Talks given from 13/2/76 to 12/3/76

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

13 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor asked what the agreement of sannyas meant.]

That you are no more. It is a total surrender. No agreement – because in an agreement there are two parties. You simply surrender. Much courage is needed...

It is not an agreement because it is not a legal thing. It is just a love affair... you fall in love. It is not an agreement because it is not a marriage. So if you feel love for me you take the jump and of course it needs courage, the greatest courage. All other courages are nothing compared to it, because before you were moving on familiar ground. Even if something new was there, it was not absolutely new. You knew it somehow; it had a context in your past, with your mind, with your intellect. You simply move in deep trust.

Much happens through it – and there is no other way of happening – because once you put yourself aside, all barriers drop. Suddenly you are open, vulnerable. That is the meaning of courage – to remain vulnerable. Whatsoever happens, one remains open. Storms may come, but still one never closes the doors. Once you close the door, it is closed against the enemy. It is also dosed against the friend. A closed door makes no difference between the enemy and the friend.

In fear we close ourselves. Of course we close ourselves against death – but life is also left outside.

This is the risk: if you want to live, you have to live with death constantly.

So if you want in short what sannyas is, it is losing your head. And you have nothing else to lose except your head. So let me cut it, mm?

[A visitor says: I am looking for my master... I try to understand.]

That will be difficult.

The disciple can never choose the master – only the master can choose the disciple – because the disciple is almost asleep. In sleep, how can you choose who is going to wake you? At the most you can dream, dream about the master. But you cannot choose, because you are asleep. Only somebody who is awake can choose whether to wake you or not.

So if you leave it to me I can wake you, but if you are trying to choose, then it is for you...

[The visitor had previously found Yoga and Sufi techniques complicated when he expected to find them simple.]

They are very simple but because you are looking through a certain mind, because you are not looking directly and you have certain ideas in the mind, then things become complicated.

If you have certain ideas, then whatsoever I say has to fit with those ideas. If it doesn’t fit then there are complications; then there comes conflict and confusion.

[The visitor adds: What I mean is, for example, Jesus went to the lake in Israel and said to people to follow him.

And to come to this place I had to go to the secretary to arrange things, and had to wait to see you.]

I am not Jesus. I have my own ways. And I am not a follower of Jesus. He lived his life – I live mine.

That’s what I say – you have a certain idea so you are trying to figure it out; you are trying to compare with Jesus. If my followers go to Jesus they will be in trouble, because they will look for a secretary, and there will be none. (laughter) They will say this man is wrong. You understand me?

Each master lives his own way – there is no other way he can live. This is my way: to make myself as unapproachable as possible, to make it as difficult as possible for you to come to me. This is nothing, this is just the beginning. Wait a few more days and you will have a secretary to the secretary.

That’s my way, because this is my understanding – that the more easily available you are, the more useless your availability is. Make it difficult, and then people come with intense desire. Only then they come – otherwise crowds come. I have lived that way also. For many years I was available under a tree...

[The visitor asks: Is it not a natural right to be free, or to go one step after the other – just a natural right?]

There is no particular nature. Each has his own particular nature – there is nothing like a generalised nature, nothing like human nature. Jesus has his nature, I have mine, you have yours. And when you flower, you will flower in a different way.

Everybody has his own. Even Jesus’ master, John the Baptist, had a different quality. Jesus never followed him – he started moving in different ways. It has to be so. There is no problem in it.

I have to follow my nature. This is how I see that it is more helpful to you – if I am less available. If I give you one hour to talk to me, you will talk rubbish, because you only have rubbish. If I give you only three minutes, you have to choose from the rubbish; you have to choose whatsoever jewels you have. If you are allowed to live with me for twenty-four hours, you will completely forget me. That’s how all Jesus’ disciples missed him. But that was his way and nothing can be said about it, because there is no comparison, no criterion.

And there is nothing like human nature. Each individual human being has his own nature. So if you reach to a Buddha he will be totally different from Jesus. If you ask a Buddhist, he will say that Jesus must have been a little political, that he was not purely religious, otherwise why should he be crucified? Buddha was not crucified!

If you ask Jains, the followers of Mahavir, they will say that one is crucified only when he has committed many sins in a past life, otherwise not. So Jesus must have been a murderer in a past life, and he was crucified because of that karma – because a Mahavir cannot be crucified.

Mahavir lived naked, so his followers think that everybody who has attained has to live naked, because when you become innocent, what is the use of clothes? Jesus is not realised because he is still wearing clothes. Even a Buddha is not realised – he is still wearing clothes!

So these are different people, and they have all attained in their own ways; their expressions are unique.

And it is good that they are unique, otherwise life will be too monotonous. Think – a row of Jesuses standing in a queue. (laughter) It will look ugly. Alone Jesus is beautiful, a precious diamond, but if there are too many just like him, he will be a pebble on the shore – nothing of worth.

[The visitor then says: That’s what I found with the sannyasins – they all look too similar.]

You have not seen them yet. Become a sannyasin and see. You will find them each different.

Their clothes are similar – they are not. That is just appearance. No two individuals can be similar.

Approach them, be close to them, and you will see the difference.

So if you are ready, then I give you sannyas. Or if you want to think a little more...

[He answers:... show me something. If you can let me feel – I am prepared to feel.]

If you are prepared to feel, you will feel. I am not going to show anything to you. If you are prepared, you feel. Just by saying, no one is prepared. The very saying shows that you are not prepared.

You may be greedy, you may be looking for some miracle, but you are not prepared.... You are not prepared.

Those who are prepared simply relax and surrender, and then many things are shown to them. Not that I show them to them – they see. That’s also a difference – I am not a magician, and I am not here to show you miracles.

If you are ready, things will happen to you... but you wait.

Avinash means immortal, and anand means bliss – deathless bliss; immortal bliss. Forget the old completely. I will be working through you. (Avinash had said earlier that he was working as a psychologist in a clinic for people who were mentally troubled, in Switzerland.) You will become a vehicle. There is no block, nothing – the passage is completely clear. Very few people are so completely clean and clear.

[A sannyasin said he had been aware of a block in his chest, a sensation of pain and chaos, that came when he was lying down, and which happened after meditating but also at other times. Osho passed him one of his special initialled handkerchiefs that he gives to people who are leaving him, or to others to help clear blocks and discharge energy.]

This night, put the handkerchief where you feel the pressure. Press it there, and remember me.

The pain will become more and more intense... it will become hot, white-hot, and burning. But don’t be afraid... and keep the handkerchief there. This will last only a few minutes, and then you will feel a relaxation – it has disappeared.

Everything disappears at a given intensity, never before. It is just as when you put water on fire. It will evaporate only when the heat has reached one hundred degrees.

Lukewarm water cannot evaporate. It can remain lukewarm for centuries, but it will not evaporate. A single moment of one hundred degrees heat, and the water takes a jump and evaporates.

So it is going to be painful, but it will remain only a few minutes. Do it tonight, and continue doing it for seven days. You can use it anywhere you feel blocks. And when the pain has disappeared from everywhere, bum the handkerchief – don’t give it to anybody. Just try until you feel that everything has disappeared, because in many parts of the body that pain can be felt. It may disappear from here and start appearing somewhere else.

There are many blocks in the body, natural blocks, and when you don’t meditate you are not aware of them.

When you start meditating, the energy goes and hits the block, and you feel the intensity and the pressure. But they can be dissolved. There is nothing to worry about.

Rani means queen and devika means divine. And everybody is a divine king or queen – one has just to remember it!

[A sannyasin says: One thing I notice very much at night, and sometimes if I am trying to relax, is that the right side of my body always has some energy in it, so I have to move it.... ]

You do one thing: in the morning when you get up, always get up with the left nostril closed, and the right nostril functioning. The breathing should be running through the right nostril, mm?

It changes continuously. After each hour or forty minutes it changes. The left nostril gives activity to the right-side brain and the right side of the body, and the right nostril gives energy to the left-side brain and the left side of the body – just cross-wise.

So in the morning before you get up, just feel which nostril is functioning, which nostril is taking the breath. If you see that it is the left nostril working, then close the left nostril for a few minutes so that the breathing changes to the right nostril, and keep it closed. One has to breathe, so by and by the right nostril starts breathing. Always get up out of the bed with the right nostril functioning, and in the night also do the same when you go to sleep.

[The sannyasin replies: I find if I lean on my left side the left nostril will close automatically.]

Yes, automatically. You do that; you can lie down on that side. Whenever you go to sleep and whenever you get up, the same has to be done. If in the afternoon you go to sleep, again do the same – going and getting up.

Just watch it for one month and then tell me. It will change. Nothing to worry about. You must have got into the wrong habit of getting up from the very beginning.

In the West nobody is worried about the nostrils and their function. Western medical science has not come to discover the working of the left and right nostrils, and their inner mechanism. Many things can be changed very easily.

We have two brains, not one. And we have two sides – the whole body Is divided. Nobody has both the sides exactly similar, nobody. A little difference is bound to be there, because one side is active, another side Inactive. One side is male, another side female – yin and yang.

Difference are bound to be there, but sometimes they can be too much. That’s why you are feeling it, otherwise nobody feels it. And if it is too much, sometimes it can be dangerous, for the weaker side will start becoming more and more weak, and the bridge between the two will become difficult.

Then all the illnesses will happen on the one side.

So just do this for one month. Go on watching what is happening. It will be okay.

[A groupleader spoke about a group that would combine therapy and creative arts for Poona Ashram and Western Centres.

Osho said that it would involve much planning, and it would need a longer commitment than the current groups... ]

Don’t think right now about the West. First we should have a centre here working perfectly, then we will think of connecting it. That can be possible. But right now it must happen here first. Many people are going to come, and it can be a real course in creativity.

Don’t call it therapy at all. Let it be a discipline in creativity, but not therapy. In fact it is not for ill people. It is for people who are healthy, and would like to be more healthy. So the group can become a course after people have done all the other therapies. They must pass through all the other therapies so they are cleaned first.

For it, much will be needed. It may be possible for people to work and live together, not only being creative in the arts, but in their lives too. And in nine months’ togetherness, living together, eating together and working together, they can solve problems as they arise. It will be a group soul for nine months.

CHAPTER 2

14 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A seeker said that he had an experience following Kundalini meditation that had given him a great sense of joy. He had gazed at a tree and had become so filled with its beauty, so full of joy, that he felt he could not contain his feelings, and he became afraid.

Osho said that one’s capacity is limited in the beginning, but it increases as the joy increases. He said that just as the stomach gradually expands to accommodate more food as you increase the input, so the capacity to hold joy increases, and then the joy itself increases, and so on... they are interrelated.]

It is good to come to a point where your capacity is less than the joy. One should be grateful for it. If the capacity is more and the joy is not that much, you are poor, and you will always feel unfulfilled...

A small seed goes on holding a very big tree. A big oak is hidden in a very small seed. Only the seed needs to die, and then it becomes infinitely capable, and a big tree arises out of it.

Each person is potentially a god – nobody is less than that. The seed just has to dissolve into the earth – and by seed, I mean ego – and then you have no end to your capacities, no limitations. The whole universe comes within you. Stars, galaxies upon galaxies, are within you, and the sun rises within you – you can hold the whole universe. That is the possibility. Potentially everyone is entitled to claim it, but we never claim it. We remain hidden behind the hard shell of the seed, and we remain afraid, afraid to die.

Unless you die, you cannot hold the infinite within you. So learn to die. That is what I am teaching here how to be capable of dying. In the very moment of death, abundant life happens to you. Fear will come many times. It is natural, but don’t be afraid of it. Accept it and go on.

[A sannyasin says: Since I came back from Goa I’ve found my energy really drained. I find it difficult to do the meditations.]

First people want to go to Goa, and if I say don’t go, they feel I am preventing them. If I allow them, always something or other goes wrong. It is a constant problem. So, rest for a few days.

You don’t understand. Here you are moving into a certain atmosphere – so many meditators, so many sannyasins. A different quality of energy is released and it is very nourishing. When you go away from here, it is as though you have taken a plant out of the earth... an uprootedness happens.

And Goa can be a very dangerous place.

Once you are settled in your being you can go anywhere; there will be no trouble. But while you are just settling and roots are going deeper into the earth, at that moment it is dangerous. So you just rest for a few days. But when I say rest, I don’t mean don’t come to the meditations.

Come and let others meditate, and absorb the energy. Sit by the side and dose your eyes, and just feel that a cloud of meditative energy is surrounding you, showering on you. Feel as if every cell of your body is being bathed, nourished, mm? Within three or four days you will be completely healed.

And then start meditating.

And next time remember.... It is not good.

[A sannyasin reported back to Osho tonight after three days of wearing a sign around her neck which said: I AM SAD PLEASE REMIND ME Osho had suggested that this technique would help her to face her sadness which she said she was not in touch with. (see ’Above All, Don’t Wobble’) She said that it was very good.]

Sadness is also energy, and if you know how to transform it and to use it, it is a blessing. This has to be understood very deeply: that you can change energy from one mood to another mood.

For example you are feeling angry. Relax, and start smiling. Go deeper into smiling. Start laughing

– and just watch what is happening. You will immediately find that the anger is changing. It has come to a turning point from where it suddenly takes a jump and becomes laughter; it is the same energy. After a deep laughter, you will see that there is no need to be angry now; the anger has disappeared. Not only have you overcome the anger, but you have used it creatively. If you had been angry you would have been impoverished. It was a dissipation of energy.

When you feel sad, just feel that sadness, and start moving to the opposite polarity of laughing, enjoying, dancing, swaying. And soon you will see – click! – something changes suddenly. And you will be able to hear the sound of it – it is almost like a click – and you will see that the climate has changed. It is no more night.

And once you come to know the knack of it, you have come to know the meaning of inner alchemy.

Then you are the master, and whatsoever happens, you can transform it into whatsoever else you want. Then there is no need to be in sadness when you don’t want to be. If you want to be in sadness that is perfectly okay. Sometimes one wants to be sad; it is very relaxing – but then it is not negative at all. It is your choice. If you don’t want it, you can come out of it.

The problem arises when you don’t want it, and you cannot come out of it. The problem is not sadness. The problem is that you cannot come out of it. The problem is not anger. The problem is that when it takes possession of you, you become helpless. You understand me?

The problem is to do with your incapacity to come out of these moods. Then one feels a slave, in bondage, imprisoned, and that imprisonment hurts. One feels walled in from everywhere... so helpless. The whole of life seems to lose meaning.

If you can come out of your imprisonment, it becomes a home. And there is no problem – you have the key in your hands. You can open the door and come out. That is the only difference between a home and a prison. The prison is a house, the home is a house, but the keys of the prison are not in your hands. You are not there of your own will; you are forced to be there.

The same place becomes your home if the keys are delivered to you. Then you may not even want to go out. It may be too hot outside, too noisy, and you would like to relax inside. Just a moment before, you wanted to go out, and now the keys have been given to you and you are in no hurry.

The problem is not the prison. The problem is that the keys are not with you. Sadness becomes a prison if you cannot transform it. Once you know the knack of how to transform it, then it is for you to decide. If you want to enjoy it as sadness, you enjoy. If you want to change it, you change it.

And energy is neutral. The same energy can move into a different mould. Have you watched sometimes a small child laughing, madly laughing? – and then suddenly he starts crying; the laughter becomes crying. The opposite is also possible – the crying can become laughter.

In India, in villages, mothers say to their children, ’Don’t laugh too much, otherwise you will cry.’ It has much wisdom in it. If you come to the very end of laughter, what will you do? You start crying.

If you cry to the very end, you will start laughing. It is a circle, and once you know it, you can relax.

So let this become a very great insight for you, and use it. Always play with your moods. Change the climate, and by and by one becomes the master.

Good. It has been good.

[A sannyasin says: I just wanted to come closer. Osho gives her energy darshan.]

Good! This is the way to come closer. Not by coming closer does one come closer to me, but by going into oneself. The more in you go, the more close you are to me – wherever you are. Time and distance does not matter.

Whenever you want to be close to me, first have a picture of me, look at it for one minute, and then close your eyes and allow the movement – whatsoever happens. This will happen again and again, and deeper and deeper you will go. If somebody is around, tell him to rub the third eye, or you can rub it yourself, mm?

[A sannyasin asks about shaving his head.]

Shaving of the hair won’t help... cutting off of the head! (laughter from the group) If you really want, then tell me. Cutting of the head is worth doing. Shaving of the hair is useless and won’t help much!

[A sannyasin who is doing all the meditations in the camp says it is so much energy it is almost painful.]

It can become painful when it is too much and you don’t know what to do with it. When do you feel the energy most in the day?...

And with the energy, enjoy it, delight in it. Just sitting, sway, sing, dance a little, jog, or run around the house. Do it not as a work but as a fun. When there is too much energy it has to be used as fun.

Just a playing around, almost fooling around – just as small children do.

If meditation goes well, much energy is created. One is always at a loss as to what to do with it because our whole mind has been conditioned for centuries for utility, because the world has lived in scarcity, scarcity of everything.

Now for the first time many parts of the world are getting out of that poverty. A greater problem has arisen now – of what to do with that energy. All the old values are useless now. Humanity will have to learn to play. They will have to drop all utilitarian ideas, and will have to use energy as fun – a simple delight in it. Not that something comes out of it – no result should be sought in it. You just release energy, and the very release is a tremendously beautiful experience.

Then you are going beyond economics. Then you are no longer living in scarcity. Otherwise they have been teaching people in the old days that work is worship. Sooner or later we will have to change it, because ’work is worship’ will become a very dangerous thing.

Fun is worship – just enjoying. This is a moment of affluence in your inner economy. The same can happen to the whole society, to the whole nation. If you have too much energy and you don’t know what to do, where to use it, and your mind is old fashioned, it will tell you to use it rightly.

No, when energy is too much, one has to be a spendthrift; miserliness won’t help. So now please, don’t be a miser. Just enjoy throwing the energy, and it will become such a deep orgasmic experience. In fact if energy is too much and you can simply delight in it, by and by you will see that you have become capable of an orgasm that is non-sexual.

Sexual orgasm is one orgasm of many – and not the greatest. And in a way sexual orgasm is local, it is not total; only part of your being is involved in it. But if you can delight like a child, jump and move and dance for no particular reason – just like a madman – then you will have a different type of orgasm spreading all over the body. Each cell will become involved in it.

And you will come out of it so relaxed and quiet and calm, that you cannot even dream about it, cannot imagine. It is a sacred bath – in your own energy. So try this, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I keep feeling as though I’ve reached the point where it’s time to jump, but then fear comes...

He asks Osho to push him.]

I will not allow you to go in so soon! Many other things have to be done first. And this is also a temptation, a desire – to go in. This temptation has also to be dropped, and suddenly one day you will find that you are in – because in you are. How can you go more in?

You are in. Your very being is what we call ’in’. So this very effort to go in is a barrier. Just accept it and relax. Just leave it to itself. You are not to do anything. Up to this moment everything else can be done, but when this moment comes, nothing can be done. You have to accept this. You can delay it – this acceptance can be a delayed acceptance, that’s all – but one day or other you have to accept that nothing can be done.

And once this penetrates deeply, suddenly it happens; not that you do it – suddenly you find that you are in. Not only that – you find you have never been out. So please forget about it. Do other things; I have many things for you to do! And when it happens there is no need to even watch. That too becomes a tension. Simply laugh at the whole thing, enjoy it. It seems ridiculous, a nightmare.

Let this settle down so deeply that it reaches your very core of being – that there comes a boundary beyond which doing cannot be of any help. And do other things that can be done: meditate, enjoy life, eat, walk, run, dance, sing. Whatsoever you feel like doing, do. Do everything else that can be done, but remember, the ultimate cannot be done. There, one is totally helpless; there, one is totally impotent.

If you can do something, you will feel happy. Whether something happens out of it or not, is not the question. You will feel better because the mind will still be manipulating, it will still be doing something. The mind drops only where it cannot do anything, where doing becomes absolutely impossible. The very nature of the thing does not allow any doing. Then the mind falls flat.

That is where you are. It is a very rare situation and comes only to a few fortunate people. But then one feels very miserable and frustrated because again and again it comes, and is so close that you could have got it. It was just within your reach. When you miss it, again you start thinking that it was so close. Just a jump, a knock on the door and you would have entered.

I know it is very close, but you cannot do anything about it. It will be repeated many times. Many times you will perspire, will feel frustrated almost to the point of death. But by and by a new understanding will arise. The frustration is not coming from the experience that comes so close; the frustration is coming because you are. The frustration is coming because you cannot do anything whatsoever. If you do something – chant a mantra – the illusion is prolonged that you can do something. But that illusion is the ego.

So I am not going to say to you that anything has to be done. And even I cannot push, because any push and you will go further away from the experience. You will have to live this moment, this critical moment of predicament, this dilemma that is so close, and yet so far away. Just a single step and the journey is over – and you cannot move your foot. When the goal recedes again, you do everything you can, and then the moment it comes again, you cannot move a single step. It is tremendously frustrating.

But this frustration is needed. When you have become completely soaked in it, one day the experience will be there just by the comer, and you will not be bothered. You will not even be trying to get it. You will simply say okay, I’m not worried.

In Maharashtra, this province of India, there is a temple which is one of the most holy places in India.

The temple is called Vithoba temple. Vithoba is one of Krishna’s names. The story is that a devotee of Krishna became so deeply meditative that Krishna had to come to him.

When he arrived, the devotee was massaging the feet of his mother. Krishna came and knocked on the door. As it was open, he came in and sat just behind the devotee, who for many lives had been crying and begging Krishna to come to him. Just by turning his head the devotee would be fulfilled; his long effort would come to a fulfillment.

Krishna said ’Look, I am here. Look at me.’ And the devotee said to him to wait, because he had not come at the right moment – he was massaging his mother’s feet. He was sitting on a small earthen brick, so he took it out and pushed it back telling Krishna to sit on it. He never turned to look at him, to welcome and thank him.

Krishna stood on that brick and waited the whole night, because the mother could not go to sleep, she was dying, and the devotee could not leave her. God could wait. The morning came and the town became awake. Krishna became afraid in case others saw him, so he became a statue.

And that statue is there in that temple. Krishna is standing on that brick waiting for the devotee who never turned around!

The story is... something. Only in such deep moments of renunciation – not even the desire to see God – and the devotee attained.

Many times this experience will come, but allow it, and don’t even try to catch hold of it.

[The sannyasin replies: Well I don’t do meditations any more because I see that it is just more effort.

And quite frankly, to me enlightenment is just nonsense, because it’s a concept. All my beliefs about it have fallen flat.]

Enlightenment is nonsense, but not in the sense you think. It is nonsense because it is beyond sense. It is higher than sense, superior to sense.

One can call it nonsense, but that attitude can only be of the intellect, can only be an intellectual understanding that all concepts are mere concepts. But to call it nonsense – that too, is a concept; it is nothing more than a concept. This too I call nonsense – to call enlightenment nonsense.

I also call it nonsense because it is transcendental to sense; it is more than sense can understand.

It is an experience, existential. So when I call it nonsense, it is not a condemnation. It is a great appreciation. I am praising it when I call it nonsense. You may start condemning it when you call it nonsense, and then you will miss the whole point.

Let things be as they are. It is not because of you that you cannot do anything. The experience is such that nothing can be done. It is not because of you; nobody can do anything. One day when it has reached to the very core of your being – that nothing can be done – not in frustration but in understanding – then suddenly it happens. It can happen any moment; just the doer has to go. It will go, but it gives a good fight before it goes!

CHAPTER 3

15 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and praghosha means a declaration – a declaration of bliss.

Become a declaration of bliss. Don’t hide It – manifest it as much as you can. The more you manifest bliss, the more it will be coming to you. Remember a very basic law: that if bliss is expressed, shared, it grows. If you hide it, it shrinks and dies. And people go on doing just the opposite. They express their miseries and then that grows, and they go on hiding their bliss as if afraid of the world. People smile in a very miserly way. They have forgotten the very language of bliss.

So be a manifestation, a declaration – each moment. Don’t miss an opportunity where you can become blissful and where you can express your bliss, for small reasons – for no reason at all.

Let this become your very style of life and you will be enriched tremendously.

[The new sannyasin says: I don’t know what I am going to do from here... ]

No need. We think about the future when something is missing from the present. Only a miserable mind thinks about the future. It is a creation, a projection, and consolation of a miserable mind – that today is not good but tomorrow will be. It is a hope. If today is good, who bothers about tomorrow?

It will take care of itself.

This moment is the only moment there is. When the future comes, it always comes in the present, so there is no need to think about it. Just the present is enough. This day is enough unto itself. This moment is going to be the mother of the next moment, so if you have lived it totally, the next moment is bound to be more beautiful than this, because things go on growing. So if this moment has been lived in total celebration, the next moment is bound to be of more celebration, more rejoicing. And once you learn this, you stop thinking about the future, but you start creating it.

My insistence is to create future – not to think about it. And the way to create it is to forget it completely. Just look in the present, just live it, and through it you are constantly creating the next moment. If you don’t live this moment, and you go on thinking about the future, you will not be able to create it, because the next moment will come out of this one, not out of your thinking. It has nothing to do with your thoughts, nothing to do with your desires and hopes. It comes out of the lived experience.

... This moment is the only moment available. The past is gone, the future has not yet come. Just between the two there is a small passage, very small. If you are very very alert, only then you can live it; otherwise you will miss it. Just a little unawareness and it is gone. The moment you think that this is the present moment, it is already passed. One has not a single split second to lose.

That’s what meditation is all about – living in life without bringing thinking in too much. Once you know the knack of it, you have found the key.

[The new sannyasin, who is a doctor and acupuncturist, says: ... all my life I’ve wanted to know God, and to be of better service to people.]

Both will happen together. They are not two separate things. Service is nothing but a way of prayer

– a very substantial way, a very potential way of prayer. If you seNe, you are doing prayer. And if you pray, in a subtle way you are doing service. Both are complementaries; never divide them.

Humanity has divided them and has suffered much for it.

If you serve without prayer, then service remains just on the periphery. If you pray without service, your prayer becomes isolated from life. You become like an island. If you pray and serve, and you serve in such a way that it is a way of prayer, and you pray in such a way that it is a way of service, then you are not isolated, and you are not on the periphery. You remain on the centre, and yet one with the whole.

Service means feeling one with the whole, feeling one with the other. It means a point where I and thou disappears. And when you are no more there. the whole starts functioning through you. And that’s the real therapy. You can know techniques – of acupuncture and acupressure – but if you are not prayerful you can miss the whole thing.

Acupressure and acupuncture were born out of very deep meditation. Five thousand years ago there was no way to know the energy points, the meridians and the bridges, except through meditating.

People meditated and went so deeply inside themselves that they became aware of certain energy phenomena inside themselves. By and by these points became so dear that they started working on other people.

Working with deep love, the quality changes. You can touch a person with hate; then rather than helping him you will harm. You can touch a person with indifference; then whatever can happen, only that much will happen.

But if you love a person, your touch is with love and deep concern. It is as if it is you who is suffering there. Suddenly the technique is no more a technique. And healing is a function of love.

[A sannyasin said that he felt tension in his back and in the sex organs when meditating.]

When energy arises, it has to make a passage, and the passage is blocked because the energy has never used it. So the energy hits hard against the block – that is the only way it can make a channel.

So the whole body will tremble and you will feel severe pain, but there is nothing to be worried about.

It will make the way clear, and once it does, you will feel such a relaxation as you have never felt before. So don’t be worried. Just continue, and be happy about it.

[The sannyasin adds: My whole being feels in need of love.]

I understand. That too is good. That too is part of the same energy, because when the energy moves upwards, the sex energy is transformed and changes its quality. Then the sex need will become less and less, and the love need will become more and more. Energy going downwards becomes sex, and energy going upwards becomes love.

But don’t wait. You start becoming more and more loving towards people. Just become a spendthrift about love. Just be loving even towards strangers, towards friends. Even to trees and rocks just be loving.

You are sitting on a rock, and just as one touches one’s beloved, you will see that if you touch a rock with deep love, there is a response from the rock. You can almost feel it immediately – that the rock has responded. The rock is no more a rock. Touch a tree with deep love, and suddenly you will see that it is not one way. It is not that you only are loving to the tree; the tree is responding, resonating.

So just be loving in whatsoever you do. Even if you are eating food, eat very lovingly, chew the food very lovingly. Taking a shower, receive the water falling on you with deep love and gratitude, and in deep respect – because God is everywhere and everything is divine. Once you start feeling that everything is divine and sacred, you will not feel the thirst for love because from everywhere it will be fulfilled.

Everything is going well. Feel blessed.

[A sannyasin said that she needed help to break what she felt was a pattern she had formed of making relationships with people who needed her as a mother, to whom she would give shelter and food and money... but that her friends said she was simply buying love... ]

You are wasting your time and energy and everything. And not only that, but you are creating a pattern by repeating it again and again.

A few things have to be understood. First, love is not compassion. You think compassion is love.

And love needs no rationalisation. It is simply there. It is its own proof, self-evidently there. It is enough unto itself. Compassion can become part of it, but they are not synonymous. Love is more than compassion.

You always become interested in people who need your sympathy – and there is nothing wrong in it. Give them food and shelter – but don’t pretend that you are in love. If you see a beggar on the street, you can help him, but help him and forget him – no need to make it a love affair. The beggar will feel obliged to you, and he cannot escape from you because he has become dependent on you.

You have become his mother, and you enjoy being mother, you enjoy being superior. It becomes an ego trip. He is an inferior person because he is dependent on you, and he has to go on pretending he loves you. Deep down he will know that love has been purchased, and he will cheat you. He will do everything that he can to harm you, because he feels hurt. You have become superior because you have money and he has none. So he goes on pretending he loves you.

Love is not that cheap. And you want it very safe. If love is not happening, don’t force it.

... I know you are in need of a lover – so you imagine anything is love. Someone shows their gratefulness and you immediately think it is love because you are in need.

It is as if someone is hungry, and even bread on the rubbish heap looks like beautiful food. You are hungry, that I know. You need love, that I know. Everybody needs love.

But this is not going to help you at all. By and by it will become a dead routine, and you will continuously repeat the vicious circle. Get out of it.

Love happens when two persons meet on the same ground, are equal. Between a superior and an inferior person sympathy is possible, not love. So don’t go on fooling around. Stop all this nonsense.

Be loving, be available, be open, and then someday with somebody on equal terms it can happen.

When you love somebody, you do whatsoever you can, you give all you can, but you feel grateful that he has accepted. You don’t expect even a thankyou from him – that will look too superficial. So somehow you have to destroy this association between sympathy and love.

[She answers: At this point I can’t discriminate.]

Then you just do one thing: for six months no love affair – so at least the vicious circle is broken.

You can be as sympathetic as you want, but no love affair.

In these six months somebody will happen, otherwise not. A real lover will not like you to be a mother no. He is in search of a beloved. A mother he has already – enough! He is trying to escape from the mother really. He is in search of a woman who can save him from the mother – and again here is a woman who wants to be a mother. That’s why you always seek persons who want a mother.

You don’t look for people who are not interested in your money and your help. You go on finding beggars, this and that.

So for six months you stop completely – no love affair.

[She asks: You mean no sex or... ]

Yes, no sex or love affair. It may not be that long, but just become as hungry as possible for love. It will be hard, but to break any vicious circle is always hard.

And there are so many beautiful people here that you can’t find anywhere else.

... It may not be six months, I may allow you after six weeks. But let it be six months in the mind, so that an appetite arises and you go almost mad, and this circle is broken.

If you go on making love to strangers, this and that, you are simply not respectful towards yourself.

You are harming yourself. Just wait for six months. If is not too long – it can save your whole life.

The way you are going, you are wasting your whole life.

Remain available, make friends, and if one day you feel that some equal person comes, who is not inferior in any way, then come to me and tell me. If I feel it is right, I will allow vou – but let me be there. Left to yourself you will not be able to come out of the vicious circle. But if I am there I will not allow you to continue in it.

It is hard, but there is nothing that can be done about it.

[A sannyasin says: All your lectures are making me so high, and I’m enjoying the meditations but I’m experiencing a lot of physical agitation. It’s very hard to sleep and there are lots of heavy nightmares.]

That is a part of the process. The body and the mind are releasing things, deep repressed things which meditation brings up, but it is very good. You will feel so fresh and so weightless – as if you can fly. Things are going perfectly well.

[The sannyasin then asks: I’ve always understood that all realms of consciousness are always and continuously available to us... I would never mindfully put myself into a place that was not pleasant and good for the others around me.

These groups seem to take people to very very sensitive places, and sometimes places that are not necessarily seeming to make them happy, and sometimes make it difficult for the people around them.

I’m interested in them and I’m just wondering if they’re necessary to... ]

No, for you they are not. And that is exactly the right attitude. It is a question of where you put yourself, it is your choice, and all realms are always available.

These groups help people because people have become addicted to particular moods; for example, sadness. Once energy is available, a certain person simply moves into sadness. It has become a routine, and he does not know any other way. All other ways are blocked. He has forgotten about them.

It is as if you live in a big house and you know only about one room. You have lost the keys and you have completely forgotten that the house has many other rooms. These groups help to make living in the one room so impossible that they have to escape from there – that is the whole point.

If somebody is angry, they allow them to go deeper into it – so deep that the very experience becomes such a hell that one runs anywhere and stumbles into another room of the same house, about which one has become unaware. Once one enters, one knows that there is no need to go to the same room again and again; that there are other rooms available.

But for you there is no need. If you have this understanding, then there is no need.

CHAPTER 4

16 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: Now I know I am not... and this comes to me all the time. Not only when I’m meditating, but when I’m alone in the hotel room, it takes over. Can I let go of it?]

Let go of it. Don’t resist it, don’t fight it. That is the whole effort we are making here – so that you disappear and something bigger than you takes possession. The host has to go before the guest can enter, because it is the same space in which the host exists. When the host disappears, the space is ready and the guest can enter. So don’t be afraid.

It is natural to get afraid because one is falling into an abyss. Allow it, and if you become too much afraid take the locket in the hand and relax – and I will be helping you.

... Never be afraid of nothingness, because that is the nature of the innermost being. It looks paradoxical, but the innermost being is just like non-being. That is the meaning of the buddhist concept of anatta – no-self.

One is empty within, and the deeper you go, the more empty you become. At the very core there is infinite emptiness. Out of that nothingness everything has evolved, and back into that nothingness everything disappears. So it is a great death, and fear is natural. But by and by you will become acquainted with the beauty of it, the blessing and the benediction of it.

Then one takes courage, and every day one goes a little deeper, a little deeper. One day you leave all fears and simply drown yourself in it. Here you disappear, and there is God. Man never meets God; when man disappears, God is, and while man remains, God is not. God is nothingness.

It has been good. Feel grateful, tremendously grateful – and go into it.

[A sannyasin says: I feel very much depressed when I come to the ashram – I don’t know why. But I come because I feel very much love for you and I want to do all the meditations.

It seems all the people around here are very jealous. ... There are rules and regulations everywhere.]

Rules and regulations are imposed by me. Nobody else is imposing them. If you love me, you love my rules and regulations also. You don’t understand. Without rules and regulations, you won’t be able to even see me.

For fifteen years I lived without rules and regulations, and there was always a crowd of thousands of people around me. I saw it was not possible to help anyone this way. I had become a marketplace.

Even one afternoon when I was asleep, I opened my eyes and saw somebody on the roof – he had removed a tile. I said, What are you doing?’ And he said, ’I was curious, and because I couldn’t reach you, I came this way.’

Without rules and regulations it will be just as if there are no rules and regulations for the traffic. You are a driver – you will understand what will happen. There will be no possibility to go anywhere; all the roads will be blocked. This much is possible – that here you can talk with me. You can have your problems solved, I can suggest something to you. It is possible because of rules and regulations, otherwise not.

So don’t take it the wrong way. It is to help you. The day I decide I am not interested in you now, not interested in helping people, I will remove all rules and regulations – and then you will repent. I will be happy with this – because this is a big problem, and then there will be no problem for me – but then I will not be of any help to you. So don’t take it wrongly. This is your misunderstanding.

[A visitor says he is enjoying all the meditation except Gourishankar.]

Drop it – because if one out of five suits, that’s enough. If two suit, then that’s more than enough.

There is no need to do all.

Those five meditations are made in such a way that at least one out of those five will suit every person. There are types, five types, so if one suits, that’s perfectly okay...

... The problem arises if the heart is closed. But conditioning never reaches to the heart, never. the heart remains unconditioned. and we can by-pass that head – that is not such a big thing. I can go on hammering on it – don’t be worried.

[A visitor says he has been practicing Vipassana and likes the Nadabrahma meditation. He asks if he should try other meditations.]

If Vipassana suits you there is no need to go on trying.

Vipassana goes to the very core.

Nadabrahma will be very helpful, because between it and Vipassana there is no contradiction. So you can do two sittings of Vipassana and one of Nadabrahma... Once Vipassana suits – and it is a perfect method – there is no need to go on seeking and searching, unless you come to a plateau and you feel that you are stuck and that growth is going no further.

[The visitor asks if Vipassana will open the heart. Osho says: It will. The visitor adds: I feel just.... ]

Emptiness is the goal of Vipassana. But if you go on being empty and being empty, and you disappear in the emptiness, suddenly that emptiness becomes a fulfillment, a positive state.

In the beginning it will feel like emptiness because the ego disappears, the mind disappears, thinking disappears. All the constituents of the ego disappear by and by. So you are taking the furniture out of the room by and by, and the room feels empty. But simultaneously the room is becoming more roomful. You remove a chair. That chair was occupying a certain room – now the room is free.

So furniture is going out, but the room is becoming more and more roomful. Once everything is removed and only roominess is there, emptiness, there comes a transformation, a transfiguration.

The gestalt changes. Suddenly you see that the loom is not empty, it is only full of room.

You are emptying your ego, and something greater than you is entering you, but you will become aware only when you have completely emptied it. So continue. Nothing is a problem.

And Nadabrahma will help. Otherwise, doing Vipassana one can become a little sad, a little morose and depressed, because nothing comes and everything is going... the whole method is negative.

So the Nadabrahma will be good because it will fill you with sound. Your emptiness will vibrate with the inner sound, and it will give good exercise to the inner emptiness.

CHAPTER 5

17 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and sushma means harmony – harmony that comes through love.

In fact there is no other harmony – only love gives harmony. Through love you are no more a separate part. You become one with the main, the continent. You are no more an island. And everything that was not in harmony falls into harmony....

Arupa means formless and anand means bliss – bliss formless.

Bliss is formless. Happiness has a form, unhappiness also but bliss has no form.

[A new sannyasin said she couldn’t get into the Dynamic meditation mainly because she was lazy....

]

If it is just laziness, then it is good to continue meditating. It is good if laziness disappears – laziness makes one toneless. The sharpness of consciousness is lost, and one becomes blurred. Nothing else is wrong in being lazy. It is just that one becomes a little blurred, and a little muddle-headedness by and by is created. One cannot remain alert, aware. One tends to become unconscious, sleepy.

And sharpness of consciousness is one of the most important things in life. It should be like a sword, so that it can cut all roots of all complexes.

Just make a little more effort. If you are going two steps, go three, that’s all. When you have settled with three steps, go four.

[She asks about expressing her emotions to her boyfriend: ... because when I feel a great deal of anger, it manifests itself at that moment – I can’t contain it. And when I feel a great deal of love, it is directed towards that person. Only when I think about it, my mind goes on doubting.]

First thing: Stop thinking about it. That is basic – because the more you think about it, the more the whole trip becomes of the head. Then even when you love, you think you love. Even when you feel, you think you feel. Thinking is always in between, and feeling becomes a secondary thing – and that’s not good.

In a love. relationship, thinking should not come in. It is a crazy thing to be in love. It has nothing to do with the head. One should move through the heart. It is a sort of insanity. It is good, and higher than the so-called sanity, but don’t bring your mind and reasoning into it, otherwise you will destroy it.

Mind is a destructive force. All creativity comes out of the heart, and all that is beautiful is born of the heart. Mind is very violent. The violence may be very subtle, but it is there. It wants to manipulate, to conquer, to possess, and in a love relationship all these things are poisons.

In a love relationship you should be possessed – you should not try to possess. In a love relationship you should surrender; and you should not go on watching who has the upper hand. So stop thinking.

And whenever you find yourself thinking, catch hold of yourself, and give a good jerk to the head –

a real jerk so that everything inside goes upside down. Make it a constant habit, and within a few weeks you will see that that jerk helps. Suddenly you become more aware.

In Zen monasteries, the master moves around with a staff, and whenever he sees some disciple dozing, thinking, and with dreams floating on the face, he will immediately hit him hard on the head.

It goes like a shock through the spine, and in a split second, thinking stops, and suddenly awareness arises.

So I cannot follow you with a staff. You give yourself a jerk, a good one, and even if people think you are a little mad don’t be worried. There is only one madness, and that is of the mind. Too much thinking is the only madness. Everything else is beautiful. Mind is the disease.

And the second thing: In a love relationship there are moments when you would like to be angry, you would like to be sad, when you would like to be loving and happy, but the other person is with you to be happy, just as you are with him to be happy.

[Osho went on to say that in those moments when you are feeling sad or angry, it is better to be alone; when sad to sit alone in your room, and when angry to beat a pillow.

If you throw your anger onto the other person, he will want to throw it back on you sooner or later, and then a vicious circle is created. And because he is another person, like you, you will never really be total. Part of you will be held back and you will feel a little guilt at what you are doing.

And the anger, Osho said, has nothing to do with whether you throw it onto a person or onto a pillow... ]

In Japan they have a very ancient tradition. In big factories and offices they have an effigy of the manager or the boss. Whenever somebody feels angry, he goes and hits the effigy of the boss and he feels very good. Then he feels compassion, feels that he went too far.

So the pillow is just representative of whoever you are feeling angry with. After the anger has been thrown, you will feel very relaxed, and you will feel deep compassion for the person.

You will see every day that your love relationship is going deeper and deeper. Otherwise love takes you deep, and anger brings you back. Then again you go a little deep, and anger brings you back. It never becomes so deep that the innermost core of your being can be touched through it. The house of love is never built, because you go on destroying it every day. So this is to be remembered.

And the third thing: When you love, be total in it. Just go wild and don’t withhold anything, because if you withhold something then the other will too. If you go wild and are totally in it, the other is also forced, pulled to it, attracted. Only when two energies go completely wild, when there is no man and no woman, no this person and that person; when all boundaries, all names disappear, and there are just two energies meeting and merging like wild waves of the sea, then you realise what love is.

Then even one moment of that love is enough, because it will give you the taste of eternity.

[A sannyasin said he had a hangup of wanting to possess an enormous penis and had felt this desire almost since he was ten. Having said this, he said he felt much better for having done so.]

It is good to say, because sometimes a few things simply disappear by saying them.

And nothing is wrong in it. It is one of the most deep-rooted human desires. The sex organ is a symbolic thing. It is the symbol of all creativity, of all life, of all potentiality. Because of the symbol you have completely forgotten the meaning of it.

That is why all over the world the phallus has been worshipped for centuries – the shivalinga. People who started worshipping it were of the same desire, but they did well – they made the desire divine.

If you go and worship the shivalinga, you never feel guilty. But if you think of an enormous phallus, you do feel guilty; you cannot even tell anybody.

God cannot be symbolised better than by the shivalinga. It is the perfect symbol. God is the enormous penis. Once you understand it, the whole problem disappears.

So if you ask me what is the meaning of it, it is that you would like to become a very creative person; that you would like to give birth to something enormous, something bigger than you. And the desire is religious, and very creative, very artistic.

But the word penis disturbs one because of our repressions and taboos and a thousand and one things that have surrounded that word. It is almost impossible to utter the word without feeling guilty.

But there is nothing wrong in it. You can have a shivalinga in your room, and whenever the desire arises, you can hold it, and get in tune with it. Suddenly you will see yourself full of light and energy.

Once you condemn a desire it becomes a problem. And my whole idea is never to condemn anything. Find a way to appreciate and praise it. The problem is created by others’ attitudes.

You can drop the desire, you can suppress it and forget it, but if you are a creative person it will go on asserting itself again and again. And you are a creative person. Once you accept this desire, much creativity will come to you. You will feel completely relaxed.

So find a good shivalinga and bring it to me. I will charge it, and then you keep it. It is perfectly beautiful. There is nothing to be worried about.

[A visitor says that he has been living in his imagination a lot and it seems to separate him from the real world.]

It separates. The screen is very subtle and transparent, but it separates – and one day it has to be dropped. Once you drop it, then for the first time you are no more playing with shadows, and reality penetrates you.

Mind is just a reflecting system, just like a mirror. You stand before the mirror and it reflects you, but the person who is reflected in the mirror is just a shadow, and howsoever beautiful, is not there.

And if you start chasing that reflection, you go on infinitely chasing mirror upon mirror, and you completely forget that you are chasing reflections.

It is as if you see the moon in the lake, and you dive into the lake to catch the moon. It is not there.

And the more you miss, the more desperate becomes the search. The moon is somewhere else – it is only reflected in the lake. Nothing is wrong with the lake, nothing is wrong with the reflection, but the reflection should not be taken for reality. Then you can use the mind, and you will not be used by it.

There is nothing wrong with the mind. It is one of the most beautiful things in existence, the most complex, the most subtle thing. The universe has taken so long to evolve mind – so it is valuable, tremendously valuable – but one should not get identified with reflections. Use the mind and don’t be used by it.

And the second thing that you ask is that you would like to create the heart. In fact there is no need.

The heart is always there, only you are cut off. The bridge is broken or blocked because the whole energy moves in the mind, so the heart is left by the side, is no more...

[The visitor says: ... the mind will corrupt something that is given from the heart.]

No, mind cannot corrupt anything, because mind cannot create anything. Mind only goes on reflecting. The mirror cannot corrupt anything. What can it corrupt? If you are already corrupt, then the mirror can reflect that, it can show the corruption.

Lord Acton has said, ’Power corrupts, and corrupts absolutely.’ It looks absolutely right, but it is not.

Power never corrupts – it only reveals corrupted people. In the first place, corrupted people are attracted to power. An innocent person is not worried about power. He is not interested in whether he is going to be a president or a prime minister – the whole thing seems futile.

But a corrupted person needs more power – to hide the corruption; to do it and not to be caught.

Only power can corrupt him and his corruption. The less powerful he is, the less prone to corruption.

Corrupt people are attracted to power, and once they achieve it, of course they start all sorts of corruptions. Then it looks as through power corrupts, but it simply reveals, it is a mirror.

Money reveals; it never corrupts anybody. If you don’t have any money you cannot be corrupted, because even for corruption you will need a little money. Once you get the money then the whole trip starts.

Mind cannot corrupt you, but it can show – and it is a good indicator of where you are going. It is a good thermometer. Once you understand how to use it, it becomes such a great instrument. In the right hands, mind becomes the very process of reaching to God and reality.

If you really want to be in your heart, a few things will have to be done. A totally new orientation will be needed, because you have been thinking too much, and you enjoy thinking. And nothing is wrong in it. It is a subtle play of consciousness, and beautiful sweet dreams, but still, dreams. A totally new orientation will be needed.

A few meditations will be very very helpful because they give you a breakthrough. Choose one or two of these meditations and just go on doing them for three or four months, without bothering about the results – just go on doing them. If you can go on without bothering about results, results will start coming. They come, they have to come. One just has to create a passage in the body for the energy to move. And an active process will be very very helpful, because people who are active types need to move to the opposite pole of activity.

Do something physical – swimming, dancing, running, anything physical – in which the mind is not needed at all. Anything where the mind is not needed will be very helpful. And once you can be without the mind, even for a few moments, the mind stops.

Dancing a wild dance, a moment comes when there is only whirling. The energy whirls, and the mind cannot think, because the whole thing is moving so fast. And there is no need for the mind to think, because the body is doing everything. The mind stops. And in those gaps for the First time you will have a taste of reality, something of the beyond. And it is so catching, so magic and miraculous, that once you have those gaps, you desire them more and more. They rejuvenate you.

they revitalise you. They give you a new elan, a new life.

By and by a comparison arises in you. You see that mind can give you a few glimpses but cannot give you reality. But this is possible only when reality has been tasted – then only comparison is possible.

Once you see the moon in the sky, then you see that the lake and the mirrored moons are just beautiful reflections. You can go on enjoying them, but now the illusion is broken.

[A sannyasin asks about going up and down. Sometimes I don’t know what is mind, what is feeling...

where I am.]

Good, let it go up and down. You remain separate and just watch it. It is not you who is going up and down – it is the mind. You are separate.

... Feeling, thinking, everything, is mind. You are just the witness who is seeing all these things.

For example you see that the mind is going up, or that it is going down – the seer is you. That which is seen is not you. You follow me? The object – that which you see – is not you. The one who is seeing the object – the subject – is you.

You are looking at me. You are the seer, I am the seen – I am not you. You look at the hand. The hand is the object, and you are the seer – you are not the hand. You look inside and a thought arises, a feeling comes – that is not you.

Go on remembering that you are the pure seer, and by and by all these ups and downs will disappear, and you will be left alone. Just don’t be identified.

[A visitor said his meditation is interrupted because he travels a lot.]

Something can be found . . . because any meditation that is disturbed again and again is not good.

Something is needed that can be done in spite of your travelling, as a continuity...

[The visitor adds: I understand the idea of meditating all the time, but... ]

No, not all the time – no need to do it all the time. A few times in the day, just a few minutes will do.

There are a few things which, if done too much, can be harmful.

For example. the latest results say that if you do some body exercises for twenty minutes, then do the same exercise for forty minutes, the benefit will not be doubled. You can do it for sixty minutes and now the wheel will be turning – the benefit will become harmful. It is exactly as when you eat something which is beneficial. Then you eat more, and it is no more beneficial; it has become harmful. So ordinary mathematics won’t do.

Whenever you find time, just for a few minutes relax the breathing system, nothing else – there is no need to relax the whole body. Sitting in the train or plane, or in the car, nobody will become aware that you are doing something. Just relax the breathing system. Let it be as when it is functioning naturally. Then close your eyes and watch the breathing going in, coming out, going in....

[The visitor asks: And forget everything else completely, just concentrate?]

No no, not concentrate. If you concentrate, you create trouble, because then everything becomes a disturbance. If you try to concentrate sitting in the car, then the noise of the car becomes a disturbance, the person sitting beside you becomes a disturbance.

Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing.

In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming – perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing – that’s okay, part of life. The fellow passenger snoring by your side, accept it. Nothing is rejected. You are not to narrow down your consciousness.

Concentration is a narrowing down of your consciousness so you become one-pointed, but everything else becomes a competition. You are fighting everything else because you are afraid that the point may be lost. You may be distracted, and that becomes disturbing. Then you need seclusion, the Himalayas. You need India, and a room where you can sit silently, nobody disturbing you at all.

No, that is not right – that cannot become a life process. It is isolating yourself. It does have some good results – you will feel more tranquil, more calm – but those results are temporary. That’s why you feel again and again that tone is lost. Once you don’t have the conditions in which it can happen, it is lost.

A meditation in which you need certain prerequisites, in which certain conditions need to be fulfilled, is not meditation at all – because you will not be able to do it when you are dying. Death will be such a distraction. If life distracts you, just think about death. You will not be able to die meditatively, and then the whole thing is futile, lost. You will die again tense, anxious, in misery, in suffering, and you create immediately your next birth of the same type.

Let death be the criterion. Anything that can be done even while you are dying is real – and that can be done anywhere; anywhere, and with no condition as a necessity. If sometimes good conditions are there, good, you enjoy them. If not, it makes no difference. Even in the marketplace you do it.

[Osho went on to describe this breathing meditation in more detail. (See ’Above All, Don’t Wobble’

– Jan 18th)

The visitor asked if there should be any attempt to control the breath.]

No, no attempt to control it, because all control is from the mind, so meditation can never be a controlled thing.

Mind cannot meditate. Meditation is something beyond the mind, or below the mind, but never within the mind. So if the mind remains watching and controlling, it is not meditation; it is concentration.

Concentration is a mind effort.

It brings the qualities of the mind to their peak.

A scientist

concentrates, a soldier concentrates; a hunter, a research worker, a mathematician, all concentrate.

These are mind activities.

[The visitor asks: How many times a day would you suggest?]

Any time. There is no need to make a fixed time. Use whatsoever time is available. In the bathroom when you have ten minutes, just sit under the shower and meditate. In the morning, in the afternoon, just four or five times, for small intervals – just five minutes – meditate, and you will see that it becomes a constant nourishment.

There is no need to do it for twenty-four hours.

Just a cup of meditation will do. (laughter) No need to drink the whole river. Just a cup of tea will do.

And make it as easy as possible. Easy is right. Make it as natural as possible. And don’t be after it

– just do it whenever you find time. Don’t make a habit of it, because all habits are of the mind, and a real person in fact has no habits.

[A 70-year old group participant said that during meditation she began to see beautiful pictures of places she didn’t know.]

Very good. That’s a good symbol. When the mind by and by becomes silent, first words are lost, then pictures arise; because pictures are the language of childhood, and are the language of the primitive man.

So the first layer is of words and the second layer is of pictures. First words disappear and then pictures arise. They are very colourful and tremendously beautiful – enchanting, majestic. Don’t be too much attached to them. Just watch, and remain far away. They will become more and more beautiful, more and more golden, and more luminous, because as you go back towards your childhood everything becomes more beautiful – it was – and you will relive it in memory again. You will become a child again, running after butterflies, and everything will become absolutely new. One tends to get caught. One tends to remain with it and enjoy it. That has to be remembered. Just remain a spectator – unconcerned, indifferent. Go on remembering that this too has to pass.

Once pictures disappear, the mind is not. Suddenly there will be gaps, just empty gaps – no words, no pictures. You are left alone. Those gaps will give you the first glimpse of what meditation is. It is going well.

And it is natural that sometimes you will feel very happy, sometimes very unhappy. It is just like a wheel turning. Remain unattached. When you are happy, don’t be too excited about it. Know that this too will pass. And when you become unhappy, know that this too will pass. Both will pass, and by and by you will be able to see the wheel of the mind, and you will be separate from it.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve fulfilled all my fantasies... but there is just that something missing.]

This is good... because whenever people desire something and it is immediately fulfilled, they will start feeling that something is missing. Whatsoever you have been fantasising was filling you, and because it was not fulfilled there was hope. Now you will be feeling hopeless. You will see that you have what you wanted, and still nothing has happened.

But this is a good point. Let it sink in as deeply as possible so that you never fantasise again. Be in it, and don’t be in a hurry, otherwise something will remain and it will sprout again. Be finished with this fantasy. Do whatsoever you want to do, go in all directions. You will fool yourself, but that has to be done, mm? because there is no other way. So be finished, be really tired of all the nonsense, and only out of that experience, maturity arises.

By and by you will feel more and more frustrated, hopeless. All your dreams will be realised, and still nothing will happen. If even a little hope remains, again you will become a victim. So I will give you a little rope more!

CHAPTER 6

18 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor said that she had been practising Vipassana for some time, and had found it helpful. She said that she enjoyed the active meditations, enjoyed the dancing, but found that it did not go as deep for her as being silent.

Osho said that Vipassana was good, but that as one became more silent, one tended to become a little sad.... ]

Silence is good, but it must be positive – it must be bubbling with pleasure and happiness and joy. It should not become negative and escapist.

Vipassana goes very deep, but it is one-sided. One becomes more and more introvert. With one’s eyes closed so much, one forgets the world. That is half the journey. It is good as far as it goes, but one should come back to the marketplace. One should be able to dance and still be silent. One should be able to be in the world and still not be of it. My whole effort is to make you completely balanced. Doing Vipassana alone makes people sad, and by and by they become disinterested in life. If you become disinterested, many things will happen. Many pains will disappear – but pleasures also disappear. If you become disinterested, unconcerned, a deep renunciation happens and you will feel very calm and collected. But after a time you will begin to feel bored with that calmness and collectedness.

Only if that becomes ecstatic, only if you sing it and dance it, is it balancing. You move in, you move out, and you are free of the out and the in too. You are not confined to the outside or to the inside world. You are totally free to move in and out as you wish. Sometimes one wants to be silent – then be silent. Sometimes one wants to relate, to love, to dance – then relate, love, dance.

Vipassana is anti-love. If you go deeply into it, by and by you will see that love becomes impossible.

You will start feeling that love becomes a disturbance. My whole effort is that life should not become lop-sided. The East has suffered very much because of Vipassana-type meditations, because they are one-sided. They are good, and there is nothing wrong in them, but you can eat even too much of a good thing, and then the balance is lost.

So my suggestion is that you continue Vipassana, and at least one active meditation, whatsoever makes you feel good. I know you are not the active type – you are the inactive type – so it will be a little difficult for you. passana will fit you completely, but that is not the point. The point is to remain balanced, to remain on both feet. You can stand on one foot, but not for long. A bird needs two wings. With one wing, life loses all dynamism.

So, good, continue Vipassana, and do one course here – because here it is as I would like it to be. Then you tell me about your old experiences and the new experiences and you will be able to compare them too.

[She says that she has decided not to take sannyas.]

Then you wait, mm? But wait at your own risk. (in his ’stern’ voice) Then when you tell me, I will decide whether I want to give you sannyas or not, because it is not a one-sided question.

Right now I am ready to give it to you, but if you think about it, you will have to be clever and calculating. I may refuse.... So you think about it, mm?

[A sannyasin says he feels good now he has committed himself to Osho.]

Commitment brings tremendous happiness – because it brings tremendous freedom.

People are completely unaware that only through commitment is there freedom. Because you don’t carry the burden on your head any more, suddenly you relax. People think commitment becomes a bondage – it is just the opposite. Uncommitted, you remain burdened, and each step has to be decided. Each moment becomes a tremendous anxiety – deciding to be or not to be, to do this or to do that; one moves in darkness.

In the East we have learned a great secret, and that secret is that if you can find a man who has attained then simply surrender to him, and suddenly all your anxieties and troubles disappear. A clarity arises in which you see things as they are. Suddenly you are unburdened.

[A sannyasin said that she was enjoying meditations, though nothing dramatic was happening.]

It is good that things should go very slowly. Dramatic changes never become permanent. They come like flashes, and when they are there, one feels on top of the world, but then suddenly one falls to the very bottom. A dramatic change is not something to be desired, because it is not going to remain with you.

Slow growth is good. It is hard and not very exciting, but it is good because it is going to stick. You are moving so slowly that everything that is happening is going to be absorbed by the system. I always feel good when someone is growing very very slowly.

People who have dramatic experiences are one day suddenly in heaven; another day they are suddenly in hell. When they are in heaven, they are really in heaven. When they are in hell, they are really in hell. Then they become very confused. They are going up and down so much that it becomes a disturbance. It looks as if an earthquake has happened within them, and everything goes into a chaos.

It is always good to go very slowly, so you can chew and digest every experience. Before another experience happens, it has become part of your being and your system. Very good.

[A sannyasins says she is feeling sad, to which Osho replies ”Good!” and she answers: I knew you’d say that!]

I always say that (chuckling) – irrespective of what you say. You can depend on it! Because everything is good – it does not matter what it is.

One has to learn acceptance. If today you feel sad, you feel sad – accept it. Not only accept it, enjoy it. Sadness has its own qualities. It can give you gifts that nothing else can. Happiness never goes as deep as sadness. When you are sad, try to go deep into yourself, because sadness can take you deeper than anything else.

Happiness moves towards the heights. Sadness moves towards the depths. When you are happy, soar high, because nothing can take you as high as happiness. Then leave the earth completely, and take a jump towards the height – fly. Use happiness. Use happiness to touch the height of your consciousness.

And when sadness comes, dive deep. Use sadness to touch the very depth of your being. Then you will see that both are part of the same ladder. Because the height is yours, the depth is also yours.

A man who knows only his height and has not known his depth, will remain shallow. A man who has known only his depth and has not known his height, will remain sombre, sad, burdened. He will not be able to fly. He will have roots, but he will not have wings, and both are needed. A great tree goes high in the sky and its roots penetrate deep into the earth, into the dark earth. Sadness leads you there, and happiness leads you into the sky, into the sunlight.

So use everything that becomes available. Then there is no need to be sad when sadness is there.

You can use it, and you can be happy because of sadness. And when there is happiness, there is no need to be excited. Use it, and you will not go crazy because of it. Once you know how to use all your moods, you have become a master. And that is what the whole of spiritual growth, of meditation, is all about – to use all methods, all windows of your being.

So accept it – it is perfectly good – and enjoy it. Once you understand your sadness, it disappears.

[A sannyasin said that through meditating she was beginning to notice more of the simpler things around her – the trees, and just simple things that happened.]

Life consists of little things, and all big things are false; they are ego trips. They occupy you and give you a sense of bigness, make you feel you are doing something very important. But real life is simple and does not give you any sense of bigness. It is not on an ego trip.

On the contrary, real life makes you humble, because by and by you realize that you are just like the trees, or just like the animals or the birds. They are doing the same things as you. About the big things, man is different. About the small things, man is just like animals. When you feel hungry, you eat – the birds are doing the same. When you feel tired, you sleep – the animals are doing the same. When you are in love, you love – the whole of nature is doing the same thing. One feels humble.

But of course no animal is a prime minister. No tree wants to become a president, or a king or a queen. They are not so stupid, and they will simply laugh if you propose the idea.

It happened once that the emperor of Japan went to see a zen master, who lived in a forest on a hilltop. He brought many presents with him, and a precious gown with many diamonds that was given only to the master of the king. The emperor gave it to the master who started laughing, saying,

’I accept your love, but please take this gown back. If I use it here where I have only the trees and the animals as my friends, they will all laugh at me and say that I have become an old fool, and stupid! They will say that now at this age I have fallen a victim of foolish things!’

All special things are human, and all ordinary things are natural. The very urge to be extraordinary is insane. Just to be ordinary is sanity.

That is the trouble – you have been in many trips. I would like you to relax, and just to enjoy simple things. Again allow the taste of food to be experienced. Drink water at ease so you can feel the coolness that comes slowly to the body. Touch the tree, feel the earth, look at the stars, and just be ordinary and humble. There is nothing special to be done.

Be an animal if someday you want to become divine. Be natural if someday you want to transcend nature.

Anatta means no self, no ego, and prem means love – a loving no-self. It means become love, but don’t be a lover. Just be the quality of love. There is no centre of self who loves, mm? just love flows through you. One becomes a vehicle, a passage, a medium.

Anatta is a buddhist term. Buddha says that there is no soul – this no-soulness is your reality. This egolessness is your reality...

CHAPTER 7

19 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, and siddhanta means principle – principle of love. And that’s the principle of life also.

Love is life, and there is no life except love, mm? So become more and more loving, trusting – without any conditions. If one loses everything in love, nothing is lost. And if one can save everything and love is lost, then everything is lost.

[A new sannyasin said he did not know how to let go. He has been practicing Vipassana. Osho said that this might be the cause of his not being in touch with his feelings; that all eastern methods were in a way repressive... ]

... they tell you to become more unmoving, more controlled. Vipassana is good if first you do some cathartic methods, so that all that is boiling inside in the unconscious is thrown away. Then a settling happens of its own accord, and there is no need to control anything.

[Osho said it is just as when a small child who is very restless is told to run around the house several times. Then he has used up his excess energy and can sit perfectly still with no tension. Otherwise he will force his energy to be still, and a gap will arise between him and his energy... ]

... that is what has happened. There is just a small interval, a gap between your energy and you.

You cannot feel. You can think – but you cannot feel. The body-sense is lost – and it has to be regained, because the body is your earth, and if you lose your sense of your body, it is as if a tree loses its roots in the earth.

No tree can exist just in the sky. The sky is needed to grow, but the tree needs the support of the earth to stand. Both are needed – the earth and the sky, the sun and the darkness.

It will be good if you do a few groups here, so they can bring you back to your feeling. When it comes you will simply be surprised that you had completely lost the feeling of the body. The energy is not moving in your body. Once it is, it is a beautiful inner dance. One can feel it, almost touch it. It is a sheer delight. But it will come ....

Arihanta means one who has arrived. It is a buddhist term, one of the most beautiful, and means one who has attained. And anand means bliss... one who has attained bliss.

[A sannyasin involved in the indian film industry asked Osho what kind of films he should make.

Osho replied he should start working for him, and that... ]

... if you really make a good film, it is going to fail. Anything good cannot succeed, because the world is such that only the bad succeeds and the good fails. So you have to be a little more alert about it.

If you make five films, make four to succeed and one to fail. Make four just ordinary films for the audience. Don’t be worried about them – just make whatsoever they want; their demand has .to be supplied. And one film you make for yourself, for me, in which you proceed with the idea that it is going to fail. Then you don’t think that it is going to succeed. If you try to make it a success it will be a mistake and a compromise.

So let this be the proportion. If you earn money in one, put it into the other, and let it be a failure.

And when you are making that film, be conscious that it is going to be a failure. You understand me?

Advertise that it is going to be a failure, and that it is only for chosen people. (laughter) Say that you have not made it as a commodity, and then if nobody comes, if the house is empty, that will be its success.

You will enjoy it tremendously, and it will not be a compromise. You will succeed in your failures too, because they are not failures if you have made them consciously. So work it out this way: one for me, four for the market. (laughter) I am going to work in the fifth with you. In the other four you can succeed alone. In the fifth, to fail you will need me!

[A Vipassana group participant asked if he should continue Vipassana or take on the challenge of every-day life.]

No, take the challenge to stay with the every-day activity. Vipassana should not become a style of life. These are just techniques to be learned and immediately forgotten, so only the quality is carried with you. The flavour, the fragrance, not the flower, has to be carried into day-to-day activity. so by and by you don’t know what is meditation and what is ordinary activity – they become one.

Learn the technique – and for learning, of course, one needs to be in a particular place. Once you have known the technique, then unlearn it. Then just move into ordinary life – eat, drink, sleep.

Just be ordinary, and carry the sense of silence that has come to you. Again and again remember it, again and again remind yourself. Again and again move into that feeling and catch hold of it in ordinary life.

Just suddenly in the marketplace catch hold of the thread, and enjoy it there just for a moment.

That is more valuable than one month’s Vipassana. For just a moment the marketplace disappears, becomes a dream with only phantoms moving. You are detached, aloof, far far away in a totally different space. Just eating – remember it; cleaning the house – remember it. And the moment you remember it, you are not... you simply disappear.

In deep self-remembering the self disappears. A self-remembrance is a no-self remembrance. The deepest moment of being is a moment of no-being, non-being, of anatta. So just remember it.

Suddenly there is a flash, an upsurge of energy, a lightning, and you continue the same activity –

but you are not the same. Just for a moment everything has changed. A different energy, a different quality of energy has entered. Then again move into your day-to-day activity.

And don’t make this remembrance a strain too. There iS no need to remember it too much – just a few times on and off is good. If in twenty-four hours you remember four or five times, four or five seconds of self-remembering are enough, because again and again you move to the centre. You touch it or rejuvenate it, and then are thrown back to the periphery, and you start working again.

Whenever you feel tired and exhausted again, just take a dip inside, and again you are fresh and moving on the periphery. Life is on the periphery. One should not try to become an escapist.

So I will not suggest that you continue Vipassana any more, because if you do it longer you start clinging to the technique. It is beautiful and very peace-giving – and that’s how many thousands of monks in buddhist monasteries are almost rotten. They have got into a a very pleasant technique, and now they are not capable of leaving it. It has become a gratification, a greed.

Any experience, even a spiritual experience, can become a desire, a greed. One can start clinging to it, can become miserly about it. You would like to eat more and more of it, but then by and by you break away from life. Sooner or later you will become paralysed, you can live only that way – and that’s not good.

Life should be all ways, of every way possible – it should move in all directions. It should be an overflow. So you have learned something; now let it become a part of your ordinary life.

[Another indian sannyasin who is involved in film-making, said that he always felt like escaping from whatsoever he was doing to meditate, and when he was meditating he wanted to lie down instead.

Osho said that this urge should be resisted, and that the resistance itself could become a meditation.

Osho said it was natural to want to escape into meditation as one began to experience more and more silence and peace, but that the way was to bring a meditative quality to one’s work; to work passionately and lovingly.]

When you really do your work it will help you meditate more deeply, because ordinarily the mind goes on overlapping. When you are meditating it will feel guilty about work, and when you are working it will think to go and meditate, and so it goes on. This overlapping has to be stopped. When you meditate, meditate. When you work, work.

Don’t try to escape in any way from anything – work or family. One is to escape from nowhere –

because the escapist mind can become peaceful, but it cannot become blissful; that’s the trouble.

An escapist mind can become peaceful, because if you don’t work, if you avoid every situation where trouble can arise, where there is challenge, conflict, competition, then of course, naturally you become peaceful. But that peace is bogus and not worth having. The slightest disturbance, and it will be disturbed.

I would like a peace that is attained amidst flames, a peace which is attained in the marketplace; a peace that is attained where there is no possibility of attaining it. Then you attain to an integration; a crystallisation comes to you. Of course the way is long and hard, but the short-cut is just an escape.

Sol would like you to remain wherever you are. Go on working as you are working. Fix a time for meditation, and then the remaining time is for work; work and meditate. Enjoy it, be more meditative, and soon – it will take at least three months – soon you will become settled, and then you will see that a harmony has risen between work and meditation.

[A sannyasin says: I’m sometimes doubting... I’m always changing in my attitude towards you.

Sometimes I doubt, sometimes I feel a lot of love... ]

Allow it, both are good. There is nothing to worry about. Just remain aloof from both.

The trust that is with doubt is not trust. It is simply anti-doubt. Sometimes you feel tired of doubting, and so you start trusting. It is not trust. Sometimes you feel tired of trusting so you start doubting.

This is the duality of the mind. You work hard, you need rest. After you have rested long, you need work.

This is doubt and anti-doubt – don’t call it trust. Then both disappear, trust will arise. Trust has no opposite to it. But this is natural, and it is so with everybody, more or less; only degrees differ.

So remain aloof, watching both. Neither think that you are doubtful or trusting. Just be a witness, mm? Then report to me after ten or twelve days, and for these days simply witness.

You get disturbed by doubt, and that is only possible if you get identified with your no-doubt, your anti-doubt. Don’t get identified with anything. They are two aspects of the same coin, and both are the same. One is not more valuable than another. You are valuable. The one who is watching is valuable. If you don’t get identified they are bound to drop, and then trust will arise.

Then you will love me and trust me, and in that trust there will be no doubt. In that trust there will be no opposite. It will be simply trust – and that has its own beauty.

[A sannyasin, who has been preparing food for sannyasins in the ashram’s canteen, said that she seemed to be angry all the time, and that she didn’t seem able to laugh.]

There are two ways to laugh. One way is to get a little fatter. (She is quite plump) If you really get fat you start laughing – but that is not a good laugh; that is a defence.

All fat people smile and laugh and look jolly, because that is their way of defending themselves.

They cannot run if there is some fight, so they go on creating an atmosphere of friendliness around them so no enmity arises. Their laughter is false. And whenever a fat person reduces his weight, his laughter disappears.

There is another laughter that is not a defence measure, but comes from the very centre of your being. That laughter is possible only if you reduce your weight, so reduce your weight, otherwise sooner or later you will get into trouble.

Somehow you hate yourself... because this is destructive, it is a way of committing suicide. So get your weight reduced, mm? Run, walk, swim, meditate, and get into a love relationship. You do get into them, but you get out very quickly. A love relationship is very very needful, otherwise you will go on getting fatter and fatter.

[Osho went on to say that eating is a substitute for love and that a happy person does not eat much because he is so full of love that he has no room left for much food. (See ’Above All, Don’t Wobble, where Osho talks about this in detail)

The sannyasin replied that she had been and still was in a relationship where everything seemed perfect, but she still remained unhappy.]

Then you must be having some ideas about happiness, some wrong conceptions. If everything is perfect, is going well and smoothly, that is happiness. You must be thinking it is something miraculous, magical, dramatic. It never happens. It only happens in stories, in these peoples (indicating the sannyasins from the film world) films. (much laughter) In real life nothing is dramatic. One just sleeps well, eats well, loves well. One goes for a morning walk, watches the rising sun, listens to the birds, enjoys being. That’s what happiness is. You must be having some very dramatic concept – that angels will come and dance around you or something.

They used to come in the past, but they don’t come now.

So you just become more realistic, mm? If you have a wrong notion, then whatsoever happens you will always be missing, because you will have the idea that this is not happiness.

If you are not feeling misery, it is happiness. Happiness is nothing but your being functioning in perfect order. When your body and your mind are humming perfectly well, in harmony, you are happy. Happiness is harmony. So you just have another look, mm?

And feeling good is good – don’t expect too much.

[A sannyasin says. I’m always very nervous when I come to you... On full moon night it’s very heavy... I have a lot of energy and I don’t know what to do with it.]

It is not nervousness – you are really too full, overflowing...

A few women become very very full of energy on the full moon, and almost crazy. That’s why mad people are called moonstruck, lunatics. Lunatic comes from lunar – the moon. A madman is a lunatic – influenced too much by the moon.

The moon has certain vibrations. It affects the whole earth and particularly the water element.

That’s why the ocean moves with the moon. The human body is ninety percent water, and not just ordinary water. It is exactly the same as seawater, with the same saltiness and the same chemicals.

Scientists say that man started his life from the sea as a fish, and then by and by he grew.

So though it has been a long long affair with the moon, a few people still feel very very sensitive to it. During the full moon they feel much energy. That has to be used, and if it can be, you will feel very very happy.

Just do one thing: the next time the full moon is due, start this three days before. Go outside in the open sky, look at the moon and start swaying. Just feel as if you have left everything to the moon –

become possessed. Look at the moon, relax and say to it that you are available, and ask the moon to do whatsoever it wants. Then whatsoever happens, allow it.

If you feel like swaying, sway, or if you feel like dancing or singing, do that. But the whole thing should be as if you are possessed – you are not the doer – it is just happening You are just an instrument being played upon.

Do this for the three days before the full moon, and as the moon becomes fuller and fuller you will start feeling more and more energy. You will feel more and more possessed. By the full moon night vou will be completely mad. With just one hour’s dancing and madness, you will feel relaxed as you have never been before, mm?

CHAPTER 8

20 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Daya means compassion, and anand means bliss – compassion and bliss. Let compassion be your goal. Feel as compassionate as possible. Just have a feeling of compassion surrounding you all the time.

Look at the trees, but with compassion. Or look at a passing dog, but with compassion, mm? By and by you will get into the feeling.... it will become very soon a deep compassion, and that will give you a very very blissful state of mind.

Anand means bliss, and maneeshi means one who contemplates very deeply, meditates very deeply

– a deep meditator.

[A sannyasin says she has been feeling so full and so empty at the same time.]

That is precisely what happens – fullness and happiness come together. If they don’t come together, then something has gone wrong. You are empty of yourself and full of the beyond. Something disappears leaving a space, and immediately something else enters and fills it.

Nothing can remain empty. If there is real emptiness, there will be fullness immediately, not even a single moment is lost. If one feels empty and not full, then something is wrong – that emptiness is not true. Deep down somewhere the ego is still hiding. So the emptiness is not true... the temple is not really empty. Maybe it looks empty, but the ego, the desire, the hope, is hiding somewhere. You will feel very very negative, sad, morose, depressed. That type of emptiness will look like hell, and one would like to escape from it, because it is false.

Hell is the greatest untruth there is. It does not exist and that is the misery of it.

A real emptiness is always full, because when the ego disappears, your being flowers The ego is blocking the flowering of the being. It cannot flower unless the ego disappears. Even for a single moment if the ego is not there, the flower starts blooming, and you can feel the fragrance. That fragrance is happiness.

It is nothing that you can attain. When you are not, it is there. Happiness is a simple shadow of the being; unhappiness a shadow of the ego. The ego remains eternally unhappy, and the being is eternally happy. The being cannot be unhappy – that is not its nature. The ego cannot be happy –

that is not its nature.

The whole human dilemma is that we go on trying to make our ego happy, and that is not possible.

The more we fail, the more unhappy we become. And of course when we feel too unhappy, we try too hard to become happy. And this goes on in a vicious circle.

[The sannyasin says she is scared of getting identified with her happiness and hanging on to it.]

Don’t be worried. I am here to cut your head completely if you get identified or anything! Just be happy... because that very worry can create a disturbance.

There is no need to be worried. This moment you are not identified – finished! The next moment will take care of itself. Otherwise if you start thinking this moment that maybe you will become identified with happiness in the next moment, that will destroy everything; you have already destroyed it.

Worrying about the worry, you have already destroyed it.

Just this moment is so beautiful – enjoy it. When the next moment comes, we will see. Never jump ahead of yourself – there is no need. And once you know the knack of it, all worries disappear, because they belong to the future.

In this moment there is no worry, and cannot be. This moment is absolutely silent. All worries are future-oriented, so don’t become a victim. Just enjoy this moment – and there is no other moment.

This one exists eternally. Now is eternal.

[A sannyasin says: I just feel your words... they’re just pouring into me. I forget what you say. I hear you one day and it’s gone the next.]

Very good, that’s how it should be. If you carry it to the next day it has become knowledge, and you will not be able to hear me that day. That knowledge will be standing there in between. Hear me, hear me totally, and allow me to pour myself into your being, and then just forget all about it, as if it has never happened. And whatsoever is needed will bubble up when it is needed.

It will not be like knowledge rattling in the mind and continually creating noise. It will be like a digested food that becomes your blood, your bone. If you look for the food that you have been eating for so many years, you will not find it anywhere; it is no more there. It has already become your flesh, your skin, your bones, your blood – but you will not find bread.

So whatsoever I am saying you can either accumulate as bread – then it becomes knowledge – or you can digest it and let it circulate in your being. Then it will not be knowledge. It will become your very consciousness.

Suddenly in some situation where it is needed it will bubble up – not as knowledge but as a response.

This has to be understood – we need to remember things because we have not digested them. In a school, a university, a student has to memorise, because whatsoever is given is undigestible – as if one is eating stones, not bread. At the most you can vomit it in the examination papers, and then you will be relieved. Ninety-eight percent of your education is completely useless – it is of use only for the examination – and one has to throw it.

What I am saying to you is not an education in that way, but rather education in the original sense of the word. The word educate means to bring out, to bring out something that is within you. All the colleges and universities are forcing something into you, stuffing you with something, and the exact opposite is the real process of education.

Something is hidden behind you at your centre. A part has to be broken so it can become available.

It is exactly as when you dig a hole in the earth and water becomes available. It is there; just a few layers of earth have to be removed, then you draw water. And that is what education means –

drawing things out.

Whatsoever I am trying to do is not to make you more knowledgeable, but to make you more understanding, and understanding is hidden in you like layers of water.

So be completely at ease – that is the perfectly right way to listen to me.

[The sannyasin adds: My hopes and expectations and fantasies have controlled me for so long. And they keep coming and coming and coming... I feel like I’m going mad when I watch them.]

You just watch them – they will go. They come only because we have been inviting them, because so many times in the past we have entertained them as guests.

By and by they will understand that the host has changed; he no more entertains guests like that.

In fact he is indifferent. They go on knocking on the door, but the host does not open it. Even if they come and sit in the drawing room, the host goes on doing his work – indifferent, unconcerned, aloof.

By and by these guests will disappear.

They have been coming because you have been calling them. Nobody comes uncalled, uninvited.

You may have invited them a long time ago and completely forgotten when you wrote the letter of invitation, and suddenly today the guest comes. You must have sown the seeds some day. Having found the right season, they are now sprouting.

But don’t be worried, just remain aloof. Let the word aloof penetrate your being as deeply as possible. The very sound of the word is meaningful – just unconcerned, watching. Not even watching exactly – because when you are watching you are a little concerned.

[A sannyasin said he was unable to open up in meditation or in a relationship. He said he just felt nothing.

Osho asked him what the problem in meditating was, to which he replied that he couldn’t keep his eyes shut. Osho said that if he were able to close them during sleep – as he had said he was – then there was no problem. He said that if he were unable to do a simple thing like keeping his eyes shut then he would find it very difficult to shut off his mind... ]

Just try, otherwise the whole meditation will be missed. By the time you come to the silent period when the eyes have to be closed, and you don’t close them, all the energy that you have gathered will be thrown out.

Eighty percent of one’s energy goes out through the eyes. That’s why if you remain looking at things continuously, you become tired. On a journey, in a train or a car, one feels very tired if one goes on looking outside the window – because you are throwing energy out.

Blind people are always very silent, relaxed. And they are always very nice people, loving. Because they are blind and they cannot throw out energy, their eyes become silent pools. Blind people become good singers, because their whole energy starts moving through the ears. They become so sensitive to sound that they can recognise a person by his footsteps.

So you have to do it. Nobody else can close your eyes. From tomorrow morning you try.

And first take care of meditation, then we will take care of relationships. Because if you are not in meditation, no relationship is going to be good. Before one moves into love, one must be.

[A sannyasin says: I want to control the unknown with my mind... and I accumulate hatred. And it is terrible because I see it – I am not totally ignorant of what I am doing.]

Confusion is not your problem, but cleverness. Ignorance is not the problem. You think you know

– that is your problem. I can help ignorant people, but I cannot help knowledgeable people – they won’t allow me. You resist me, you resist meditation, you resist everything. How can things be done?

And you want things to be done.

It is as if you want the sun to come in but you don’t open the door. You will not allow the doors or windows to be open – and the sun cannot be aggressive, it cannot rape. If you allow and invite it, only then the sun comes in.

My energy is available to you only if you allow it. It is for you to take it or not to take it. If you decide not to take it, then nothing can be done. It is better you return home. Either decide to be here with me and drop this resistance, or you simply go back. Why waste time? Think about it for three days and decide wither way. If you decide to be here, then drop all this nonsense.

And you know nothing. You just go on thinking that you know. So better be ignorant please. Or if you think that you know, and that everything is perfectly known to you, drop this ignorant man. Why be bothered with me?

CHAPTER 9

22 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who has just returned from the West said that she felt that she wanted to open up as much as possible... ]

... if one wants to open, one opens – there is no barrier, nobody hindering you. If the wanting is really there, the opening is just a by-product of it – nothing else is needed. Once you desire something intensely, it has to happen. Happening follows it like a shadow. And this is particularly so of inner opening because it is not something to be achieved outside. It is already there – one has just to claim it. Once you desire it, it is there.

So the whole point is whether one really desires to be open. People say they would like to be because they see that there are many possibilities with being open, but deep down they have many investments that won’t allow them to really open. For example, a mind that is continuously thinking of security cannot allow you to open. Openness means vulnerability, an opening to all possibilities –

both good and bad, helpful and harmful. When you open the door, it is open not only for friends but for enemies also, because the door makes no distinctions – once it is open, it is open for all.

Hence people go on living behind closed doors to avoid the enemy. But when you avoid the enemy, you avoid the friend too. So this is the dilemma: if you remain closed you will be able to avoid enemies, whosoever they are – but you will miss the friends. If you open the door you will not miss the friend, but you will be open to the enemy too. This is the risk. But I say it is still worth taking, because if you miss friends, you miss everything. One can remain safe and out of all danger and risk, but then one is already dead.

If you want it it is going to happen. So think first about it.

[She answers: I tried the other way and it didn’t work so... ]

Now give it a try this way. People only come to this way when the other way fails. They try all the ways of the mind and only when they fail and feel frustrated and hopeless do they try something of the no-mind. Opening means no-mind. Opening means living a life without a head. Opening means taking the risk, becoming a gambler and not a business man.

To live dangerously is to live openly. To live secure is to live closed. So try it!

[A sannyasin says that after visiting his parents he got sick.]

It happens – that to go back to the old associations is sometimes very anxiety-creating and tense, because they are expecting you to be someone whom you are not anymore. They see that you are not, and you feel a little hesitant because you would like to pretend that you are the old person – just to satisfy them – and that pretension becomes very heavy.

Because you are no longer identified with it, you have to carry it consciously, and it is like a load on the head. Then it disturbs your stomach and by and by the whole body is disturbed. You cannot relax in a situation where people are expecting you to be something that you cannot be and you are trying not to hurt them.

But this is a good experience. Next time if it happens at all, remain the new and don’t pretend; don’t try to pose. Just tell them beforehand that the old man is dead, and to excuse you if you cannot fulfill their expectations. Tell them that you love and respect them more than ever – because the old person could not love or respect, the old person was just a pretender. But it will be a little difficult

– so say it will be difficult. Once they understand, you will give them something – a new ray of light may enter their lives.

I was afraid you would be in difficulties – it happens to everybody who has really changed a lot.

Going back is very very difficult. You don’t fit and you try to.

But good – you are back home, so it is good!

[A sannyasin asks about his relationship: I wonder if we should live separately, but then I tell myself that maybe the friction is good for me.]

You do one thing – rather than living completely separately, just meet for two or three hours every day, and the remaining time be alone. You can use the friction and the situations that come up in your relationship, and be alone too.

In fact whenever two people are in love, they should not be together for twenty-four hours. It is very very harmful to them, and more than that, it is harmful to the love itself. People kill and destroy their love by being together too much, because something deep down is violated. Each is in need of a certain space, and lovers become too interfering in each other’s lives, unknowingly of course.

They love, so they want to cling and interfere in each and every thing – and that’s how every love is destroyed.

Love can be tremendously beautiful if it is not destroyed. If it is destroyed, it can become the greatest hell there is.

[Osho went on to say that when they were both feeling high it was good to be together, but as soon as anger or irritation or a desire to be alone arose, they should immediately separate for a time. He said each person needs a physical and psychological space to himself and that just the presence of the other could act as a repressant.

He said that lovers should only meet again when they were really wanting to be together very much, when it had become a really intense desire.]

If you live alone too much you get bored. There is no excitement – simply you and you and you. It is monotonous, a single note. You want a change, a little spice. The other brings the change, brings another world into your world, and that is helpful.

So when you feel the need of the other, seek her. And when you feel that the need has been fulfilled, move back into your own world. If lovers can know this rhythm of being alone and together, and constantly move between the two; if you suddenly feel like being alone and you move – that’s what I mean by love.

If the other person loves you, she will respect your need, and if you love her you will respect her need. (addressing the girlfriend) The alternative is between love and no love. If you don’t allow the other person space, by and by he becomes miserable and he will escape completely. So give him a little space, don’t cling, and the love affair can become a permanent thing. It can go on and on if the rope is long enough. If the rope is very short, sooner or later one feels imprisoned, and once that feeling comes, suddenly freedom becomes more important than love.

Freedom is not more important than love, but it feels so if love itself becomes an imprisonment. If the love keeps overflowing into freedom, then there is no problem – the relationship goes on enriching every day. The greater the freedom in love, the greater the possibility of it remaining forever and forever.

(to the boyfriend) She will understand, don’t be worried about that. Once women understand that this is the way that love can remain for a longer period of time, that the flower can go on blooming, there is no problem. The problem arises because they think that you are trying to escape and that the love will be destroyed, so they become afraid and they cling more. The more they cling, the more you start escaping – so a vicious circle settles.

Once understanding flows between you, there is not much of a problem. We are here to make each other happy, not unhappy. If you make the other happy, your own happiness grows and the other returns it, and there is no end to it. It can go on reflecting in a thousand and one ways.

So try it and then we will see.

[People who had done the Tathata group were at darshan. The groupleader says: I feel like I’m being moulded into something... the knack of having the role of leader, and also being a participant.]

Right. You are being moulded – just go on allowing. Only your cooperation is needed. You need not do anything in particular except to allow me to go on moulding you. Every day you will be taking a form, and as the form becomes clearer to you, your consciousness will become sharper in the same proportion. If you don’t have a mould, you can’t have a sharp consciousness. It is as if the pot is broken and the water spills all over the floor.

Ordinarily people are like spilled water. The whole effort is to pour them into a certain mould so they have a form. In that form many things become possible. You can become a vehicle of many forces.

It is as if you put many seeds in the ground. Each has a blueprint to develop into a certain type of tree. Just a blueprint; there is nothing else – all the seeds are the same. You put them into the ground; the ground is the same. You water them, and the watering is the same. But each seed will grow into a certain tree. will take a different form by and by. Each seed will bloom in different flowers.

Each seed has an intrinsic, a hidden and unmanifested form in it. Because of that form it goes on taking and using energy in a certain way. The rose flower takes the colour of red from the same earth that the dewy flower takes white. From the same earth they will take different perfumes. From the same sun they will take different life forms.

Each person has a seed form that is his destiny. Once the form starts becoming clear, your destiny is clear. When you go astray less and less, when there are less and less alternatives, possibilities disappear, only potentialities appear. One becomes almost choiceless. Then the river flows direct to the ocean. There is no hesitation, nowhere else to go. One simply moves in a straight line.

So a mould is being given. You just cooperate. You can do two things – you can fight with it, and then it will take a longer time. Or you can not fight with it, and then it will happen sooner.

And each group is going to be a repetition in a way, and yet not a repetition. Each group will consist of different individuals, of different potentialities, different destinies, so it cannot be exactly the same.

And each group will give you different opportunities. But it is very subtle. Ordinarily you will be following the same techniques, you will be doing the same things more or less, but don’t pay too much attention to the technique. Pay more attention to the people who make up the group.

Each group is different. Not only each group is different, each group is different every day. Yesterday it was the same group, but twenty-four hours have passed so it is not the same. In twenty-four hours they have lived, had many experiences, dreamed, thought, meditated. They are no more the same people. Their whole is continually changing; it is never static.

So different groups will be different opportunities for you to come back again and again to the same knack. And by and by the knack almost becomes a perfect art. then one forgets all technique, all art. Art is perfect when you forget it completely and you respond spontaneously, when you don’t plan at all. That will come – you will simply wait for the group and things will start happening.

So just allow more and more. Just be in a let-go. You are not expected to do anything, but just be in a let-go so that I can function through you.

[The assistant leader says: I don’t know how to relate to people anymore. I feel like I’ve lost my power. A lot of my confidence just all seems to be fading away.]

It is just that your ego is dying – these are just the symptoms. When the ego dies you feel that you are losing power, because all the power that you have known was of the ego. When the ego starts dying you feel that you are losing self-confidence because all the confidence was of the ego. You start feeling that you are no more certain of anything, because all the certainty was of the ego. But all that is from the ego is just deception. Power, certainty, self-confidence, will – all nonsense.

If you can be courageous enough to pass through this period, soon the ego will disappear with all its power, and the power trip and the confidence, and the certainties – all of which were nothing but facades to hide doubts, and clever tricks to try to deceive yourself with. When all that has gone the whole circus, you will feel very clean, purified, serene and silent. Not powerful, not certain, not self-confident – but very serene and very quiet, with no certainty and no uncertainty, with no power and no impotence, with no self-confidence or with no lack of self-confidence. In fact with no self.

So this is a beautiful moment if you can pass through it. It is difficult – understand – arduous, hard.

But it is a birth pain, and everybody has to pass through it. Everybody has to die a death, and only then a new life is released.

[Osho checks her energy.]

Good. But you are holding continuously – and that will delay the whole process. You will suffer unnecessarily.

It is as if a child is to be born, and the mother is holding on hard. She is not relaxed so the birth canal is narrow and the child cannot come out of it. The more the child tries to come out, the more the mother feels the pain. The pain is not because of the child but because the mother is strained, is not relaxed. The mother needs to help the child come out. She needs to relax the whole birth canal so that the child and the birth canal start throbbing in the same rhythm. That’s what you are doing

– holding it. You are trying hard not to lose self-confidence, not to lose power, so you will simply prolong the process.

For seven days simply cooperate. Try as much as possible to relax. There is no need for self-confidence because it is a disease, it is a shadow of the self. In the West there are foolish people who go on teaching that one should be self-confident. I am not saying be unself-confident. I am saying that both are useless... simply be. There is no need for confidence or no confidence.

So for seven days simply relax, because if you don’t allow what is happening, you will have it for the rest of your life – the struggle can remain. So the ego has to be dropped, mm? Don’t think about it, simply drop it...

[A pet snake had been introduced into the group, and one sannyasin said she felt a great revulsion for it, but eventually had been able to hold it. After the group she was afraid of finding it in her bed.]

The feeling of revulsion is a relationship. You feel repulsed only because somewhere deep down in the unconscious, you feel attracted. Repulsion in the conscious simply shows attraction in the unconscious. So this is good because it has brought up something from the unconscious to the conscious.

And it is good that you touched it. Deep down you really wanted it to crawl over your body.

That’s why you started thinking that there might be a snake in your bed – something was incomplete... You can borrow the snake... And once you have done it, you will be finished with snakes forever. Then the attraction and repulsion will disappear... they are both aspects of the same coin. [The groupleader who owns the snake] can give you a special session, and then you will be free forever.

Always remember that wherever you fear, it is better to go in and be finished with it, otherwise it goes on hanging. That’s why we create problems unnecessarily.

In India people are not so afraid of snakes, because they worship them, and when the worship a snake it becomes a god, and you have no fear for it.

It has been good, but deep down you are still holding. Be finished with it. It will be good therapy.

[A sannyasin asked Osho to tell him about his past lives. Osho said that sometimes it could be helpful but not in this instance. It would be more helpful for him to be in the present, to forget all past lives; that one day he would have to forget this present one too!

Another sannyasin asks about the different faces she sees when she does Tratak.]

It is good. Continue it but don’t think about it. Whatsoever happens is good, so don’t brood about it.

... It has something to do with you. Something from your past life is surfacing. It is very good and will relax your unconscious deeply. But don’t think about it – otherwise a certain repression starts...

... Almost always it is something to do with you – unless your mind has disappeared. Then it has to do with the other person, because you are just a pure mirror. Ordinarily it is to do with you; it is your own mind coming up.

[The sannyas then said: I gave somebody a massage on their face and I felt as though it was my face, and when I put my fingers in her ear I heard the eternal sound. Afterwards she said she heard it too. I’m afraid that I’m getting too identified.]

No, not identified – that’s how it should be. The energies meet and the experience can be shared.

Massage is true only when your energy and the energy of the other person merge into each other –

you will feel almost similar experiences.

It is nothing to do with identification. It is just the energies merging, because the deeper experience is of energy, not of the body. The body is just a vehicle of a subtle energy. When you massage, that subtle energy functions.

It has been good don’t be worried. It will give you deeper and deeper experiences. While massaging, forget that you are separate. Be as if you are part of the body of the other, as if you are massaging your own leg – then your massage will go very deep.

CHAPTER 10

23 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said he found life easier in the West, and it was difficult for him to be totally here.

Osho said he should go and live out the fantasies he had been having, but that the moment he reached the States he would start thinking about Poona. He said it was good to go and be finished with those things he felt incomplete, and that he would find that there was a vast difference between reality and fantasy.

Osho said he should make it a meditation to bear in mind what his fantasies were while he was with the reality of a situation, otherwise he would continue to chase fantasies for the rest of his life.

Osho said that life and one’s experience of it was the same, basically, wherever one was... ]

Your response is your reality, your world. You are your world, and you carry your world with you.

It will go with you on the plane. When you land, it will land with you. When you reach Miami, the world that surrounds you will reach with you. It is always there, invisible. It is your atmosphere, your climate that you go on creating continuously, peddling continuously.

So wherever you are, you are in the same world. Once this experience becomes clear, then there is no need to change the outer reality. Then one changes the inner reality, the inner space.

[To another sannyasin with desires, Osho said that the nature of the mind is to be always somewhere else, because in fact wherever we are, we are never there totally. We don’t live any experience totally... ]

... that’s why you are constantly thinking of London. You have lived in London for eight years, and if you still think about it, it means you have not really lived there. Otherwise London is co horrible (much laughter) that eight years is enough – one should escape forever and never go back. So this time live really there.

And always make it a point that wherever you are, live the experience. Either it is a worthwhile experience and you can live it again tomorrow, or if it is not worth much you can choose something else. But live it totally, so either way a decision arises.

[The Aum marathon group were present. The group leader said: I’ve always worked with extreme negativity hoping that that will bring about love, but I began to question the whole thing.... I got confused.]

Don’t get confused. Your group is not meant to bring love. If you try that, not only will you be confused; you will confuse everybody who participates in the group.

Your group’s whole meaning is cathartic, to bring up all the negativity – that is your work. For example the group ’Soma’ that we are starting will be a positive group. The whole effort will be totally different. It can be useful only when you have done the negative work – and within forty-eight hours you cannot do both. Later on I can introduce a new group for you. We can have two Aum marathons – one negative, one positive.

In the negative one you simply work on negativity. The whole point is to bring it out, because people carry negativity their whole life. It has to be brought out, otherwise they are blocked. If you force love it will be just an enforcement, and of no use. They have to be cleaned completely.

Then the positive group will have a totally different orientation. It will have nothing to do with anger, sadness, hatred – no catharsis at all. Here they will do the opposite – float in love, compassion, tranquillity, calmness. But this is possible only after the first group. So you plan a different group –

but with the same methods.

In fact the human mind is neither angry nor loving, is neither happy nor sad. Try to visualise that you are sitting in a room and there are many windows. One window is sadness – you open it and you become sad. You are not sadness – the scene just opens on sadness. You can open the window of anger, and you become angry. You can open the window of love, and you become loving. You can close all the windows and just sit there.

This is what eastern meditation is – to close all the windows and sit there. And whatever window you open, of course you get identified with it; that is the only way to open it. Identification is the key.

If you want to open the window of anything, you have to get identified. In fact anger is no more there

– you are anger. Only then it comes totally... you are totally possessed.

But negative windows have to be opened first because society has closed them, and people have completely forgotten how to be angry. And if you don’t know how to be angry, how can you know how to be in compassion? It is impossible. Compassion is a higher state, and you have not even fulfilled the preliminary. The first step has not even been taken, so how can you take the last?

So you move to anger. You open the window and go as far as you can so that you are finished with it. When you are finished with it you are ready to open the door of compassion. It is exactly the opposite window. So once all that society has repressed, surfaces, is relieved, you are cleaned.

And once a person is cleaned, he will automatically start moving towards the positive windows. Take his hand and lead him towards the window and he will move – because nobody really wants to hate.

Nobody wants to be angry, because one suffers through it. Everybody wants to love and to be loved.

Everybody wants to live as beautiful a life as possible. One lives an ugly life because one does not know how to live a beautiful life. One dreams about the beautiful and lives the ugly. And the ugly has been repressed and that repression has culminated and corrupted the whole being, so that it becomes almost impossible to reach the higher dimension.

Anything about you?

[The groupleader answers: I just feel sober.]

That’s very good. One should be very sober, because ups and downs are very destructive. One should move on the plain ground. No need to go high, no need to go low. Just being oneself –

happy, but not excited.

Real happiness is not an excitement. It has a silence in it, a sadness in it. It will be very difficult to comprehend, but real happiness has a flavour of sadness in it – that’s why it is called sober. You are peaceful. Nothing extraordinary is happening – but there is no need. All extraordinary ideas are ego trips.

One lives an ordinary life, not hankering for anything. Then there are no valleys and no peaks – one simply moves on the plain ground. Then your smile will have something of the depth of tears also, because the opposites meet in the middle. When you move on the plain ground it has something of the peak and of the valley. It is just in the middle, and opposites meet there; it is the boundary of both. So it is very very essential to understand, otherwise one can feel soberness as sadness.

It does have a sadness in it. Happiness is there, but without any turmoil or excitement, without any fever. One is simply happy, so happy that one even forgets about happiness. Just sitting with your wife or your beloved by the fire – nothing special happening, but just a silent happiness... everything at-home, peaceful. Not the excitement that you have won an award and have become a millionaire.

One is neither laughing nor crying.

And this is the right state to be in, because if you achieve a peak, sooner or later the valley will come. You cannot avoid the valley, and the more you try, the sooner you will fall into it. The higher the peak, the deeper is going to be the valley.

That’s why love affairs fail. They have such a peak of excitement, of romance, and then suddenly everything falls down – after the honeymoon, the valley. And it becomes intolerable, because you have seen the peak and now you have to live in the valley. That’s why many people have settled for the valley. In the East, people live with arranged marriage. It never fails, because it cannot; you cannot go lower.

If you seek peaks, valleys will follow. If you seek tranquillity, serenity, silence, peaks will disappear, and happiness too; all feverishness will disappear. One will feel a little sad because one has become accustomed to excitement.

So allow it to settle. Move easily from moment to moment, catching hold of the silence that has come to you. Nourish it, protect it, and be happy in it. That is the meaning of contentment – whatsoever is, is good. Wherever one is, one feels grateful. If you understand, then this is the greatest peak without any valley following it.

[A group member said he expected to be able to cathart more than in Primal group but: I got very angry and I couldn’t let it out. I was so fed up that I just left – and I felt good afterwards.]

Your expectation created trouble. Expectations always create trouble.

[The participant answered that another expectation of being able to undress in front of people went well.]

That is a very simple thing. It worked because it is a very simple thing. The other thing is real nakedness – when you can bring out your inner stupidities: your anger, your foolishness, your sadness, neurosis. Just taking off your clothes is nothing. So you chose a very poor substitute. You played a trick.

There were the two alternatives before you; these were the two things you thought at least you could do – so you felt good. That’s how the mind goes on playing clever tricks. Just being naked has no intrinsic value. Whatsoever value it has is because society has created a taboo. When everybody else is naked, in fact to be dressed is more difficult. If you move dressed in a nudist camp that will be very awkward and you will look foolish.

The real difficulty is to bring out the second – to bring out your inner nakedness, to be exposed and to look like a fool and an idiot, yelling and jumping and crying. That is the real thing. This is just a beginning. It is good as far as it goes, at least you have taken the first step, but because of your expectations, trouble was created.

But at least you did twenty-four hours, you did half the group – you could have escaped earlier.

Sometime you will have to do it completely and then go without any expectations. Just move into it and allow whatsoever happens. And when everybody is exposing themselves, it is easier to ride on the wave and expose yourself. Don’t miss that opportunity. And nobody is thinking that you are wrong – everybody is worried about himself.

You will feel clean, because whatsoever you are hiding is a burden. Even by being naked you felt good – and that was just a physical nakedness. Think of spiritual nakedness. The significance is tremendous. Then one has nothing to hide and no burden to carry. One is again innocent and pure and virgin.

So next time don’t go with expectations, don’t plan. Simply be there.

[The assistant groupleader said: I started to feel ’What am I doing this for?’... Every time it changes, seems to be different. I can’t find a clear train or something to watch. It’s very crazy.]

You just let it happen. There is no need to be worried about what you are doing, or for what you are there. Just let it happen.

[Osho went on to say that each group would be different, because it would be made up of different people each time. He said groupleading was a knack, an art, not a science, and that if you make dead rules, the whole game is lost... ]

When you say crazy things happen, it simply means that you have a certain idea of how things should happen, and when they don’t happen like that, you think it is crazy.

... If you have a certain idea of how things should happen and they don’t happen that way, it is crazy.

All the societies throughout the world have done that. Whenever somebody is different from the society, they call him mad. He is not necessarily mad – just the opposite may be true. The whole society may be mad and this man not at all, but because he behaves differently he is mad.

In Soviet Russia now, whosoever is against the communist party is sent to a psychiatric ward – he is crazy. To be against Communism is to be crazy, and he has to be treated, has to be given electric shock and drugs, and things like that – because he has gone mad.

Whenever a person doesn’t fit with the society, he is crazy. The same person may not be crazy in another society. For example, those people who are in russian hospitals being treated as schizophrenic, split, this and that – if they are in America they will not be crazy at all; they will be perfectly well. To be against Communism in America is perfectly sane. In fact to be a Communist in America is a little crazy.

Crazy people will remain in the world unless we create a society where nothing is expected. You follow...? Because crazy people are created by your expectations. Once you say that this is what is expected and somebody doesn’t fulfill that, he is mad. Madness is a condemnation from the society.

The person becomes a victim, and the society is the majority and is powerful of course, so they can force their will on him.

A society is needed which has no expectations of anybody; where there is freedom for everybody to be himself and to do his thing. Then madness will simply disappear from the world. Madness is not a disease. It is an outcome of a particular structure. Those mad people are victims because they cannot follow the ideal, the track of the society, because they go astray. They go astray because we have a super-highway. If there is no super-highway – and there is none – then everything is perfectly right, and nobody is crazy.

So if you have an idea about other people – that if they behave like this they are sane and if they don’t, they are crazy – the same is applicable to yourself. If you have a certain idea that [the assistant groupleader] should behave like this, or be like that, or that [her] life should fulfill such an idea, then whenever you are not fulfilling it you will feel crazy.

Drop that idea. The problem is not craziness – the problem is the idea. Move moment to moment.

Who knows who [you are], or for what purpose she is? And it is good that nobody knows. If somebody knows then you are just a puppet. But nobody knows. Your destiny is open-ended. One should be happy – this is dignity. Freedom is dignity.

B. F. Skinner has written a book ’Beyond Freedom and Dignity’. In it he says that man is just an automaton, a machine, and that there is no freedom and no dignity. He has chosen the name well –

’Beyond Freedom and Dignity’.

Our whole work is just the opposite. Freedom is the essential being of man, and dignity is natural to him. It is nothing to be achieved. Everybody is born with freedom and dignity.

So just don’t enforce any ideals on yourself. Just move moment to moment and you will never feel crazy.

[She adds: I feel myself judging what I say or do in the group.]

Next group do whatsoever you want to do, say whatsoever you want to say. That too you are hindering because you are afraid of being crazy. Continuously the whole problem is the same: you want to say something, but immediately your mind says this will not be good, that people will think you are crazy – so you don’t say it. When you don’t say it, the stomach feels suppressed – of course.

Say it and be finished.

CHAPTER 11

24 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Ramteerth was an indian mystic – one of the most beautiful of this century. So read something about him... you can find the books. Just go through them, that’s all – they will be helpful.

[A sannyasin says she is going up and down, and she feels that when she is down she should do something about it]

There is no need to do anything, and there is no way to do anything. Once you understand it, you accept it. All doing is a form of rejection. All doing is a way of escaping.

When you feel happy, the valley part of it, the unhappiness, is bound to come – it is just the other aspect of the same phenomenon. You cannot avoid the unhappiness part. And the more you try to avoid it, the more unhappy it will look. You try to escape it by being occupied. But nothing is going to help, because anything that you do while you are unhappy is going to create more unhappiness

– because the mind creates itself.

And this is the dilemma: when people are happy, they don’t bother to do anything. They will not meditate, they will not pray, they will not even bother about love – because one is perfectly okay, so why bother? And when people are unhappy, they want to do a thousand and one things, but whatsoever they do they will create more unhappiness. They are sowing wrong seeds.

So one thing to be understood – while unhappy, relax, rest. There is nothing to be done, nothing at all. Don’t make any relationships, because an unhappy person seeks someone who will sympathise with her unhappiness, and sympathy is not a good thing... it is not love. One who has sympathised with you when you were unhappy will feel you are obliged to him and will expect something in return.

So you don’t do anything. Keep as quiet and immobile as possible. If you can sit quietly for one hour only, just gazing at the wall and not doing anything, you will see that the unhappiness is disappearing.

And not only this unhappiness will disappear, but future seeds too. You will not be creating any more unhappiness.

When you are happy, do something – make a relationship, meditate, pray, dance, share. If you do something when you are happy, you are sowing seeds of happiness. More happiness will be coming. This is one thing....

The second thing is that because you hanker for happiness, unhappiness cannot be totally avoided.

It can be lessened, minimised, and the way to do that is not to do anything. Simply watch it, with not even a judgement that this is bad. It is there – what can you do? One simply watches, indifferent, aloof.

But still a few moments of unhappiness will come, and they will go only when your hankering for happiness goes. That is the second step: when you are happy, forget all about happiness and don’t cling to it. It comes or goes – perfectly okay. Its going is also needed, otherwise it will tire you too much. When happiness leaves you it simply says that now you should retire from doing.

Unhappiness is the night part; happiness, the day part.

If you don’t cling to happiness, if you just enjoy and share it and forget about it when it comes, by and by you will see that those moments of unhappiness have disappeared. But they disappear only when the desire to be happy disappears. Then one simply lives. There is no happiness or unhappiness. One is calm and quiet and collected.... Everything is peaceful, silent.

So just do these two things, and don’t be worried. It is good.

[A sannyasin asks: Would show me your divine form?]

All forms are divine. There is no form which is not divine. The very idea to think of a divine form different from other forms is wrong. The form that you are seeing is divine. Your own form is also divine – otherwise is not possible.

God is not a separate entity. k is the very quality of existence. The very is-ness is divine. But if you are seeking some divine form, from the very beginning you have taken a wrong route. You will never come across it, and you will live a very frustrated life.

Show me any form which is not divine. How is it possible – that something can be without being divine? That’s why in the eastern countries even the devil is thought to be divine, because if he is, he is bound to be divine. Once you understand this, the whole of life becomes holy.

This is true religion – when the whole of life is sacred. Wherever you look is God, whatsoever you touch is God. You eat God, you drink God, you breathe God. You are God.

Be a good god, that’s all. As people say ’Be a good guy’, I say ’Be a good god’. (laughter)

[The Enlightenment Intensive group were present at darshan.

[A group member says: I saw that whatever I am, I choose to be. I have absolute freedom... ]

Absolutely. That is the greatest insight that can happen to a man.

[The groupmember continues: ... but I also felt that insight only goes so far, you know... But I saw for me to actually be this energy, to be this freedom... there is still in me a little bit of resistance to the flow. And that’s me, that’s what I am – the resistance. That’s terrifying, that’s really frightening to me; that’s to die.]

That too is your choice – that you go to a point and then you are stuck. That too is your choice – not to go beyond that. Not that freedom is stuck. You choose not to go beyond it. You see the point?

Freedom is total, unconditionally, absolutely.

And you feel frightened. That too is your choice. These are all games that you choose. You also choose to deceive yourself, otherwise the game will be very futile. First you choose a certain game

– of hide-and-seek – and then you choose to deceive yourself, so that you never come to know that this is a game. If you come to know that this is a game, the whole point is lost.

Wherever you move, and whatsoever you find, finally it is your choice. So never create a duality –

that this is me, or this is the ego that is holding me back. No, that too is your freedom. You have chosen that way – and there is nothing wrong in it if you have chosen it. The only thing is, choose with full awareness.

Basically freedom is what one enjoys. If you are forced into heaven then it will be a hell for you.

Man is born just as a possibility – nothing is certain. Existentialists say that man is born without any essence. He is born just as an existence. When a seed is born, it has some essence in it, a blueprint. The seed cannot choose – it is in bondage. It is going to be in a certain way, and it cannot do anything about it. The seed cannot say that now I will be a lotus seed, I don’t want to be a rose.

The seed has brought its whole existence, unmanifested, in it – that is its whole essence. The seed is a slave.

A dog is born. He will never be anything else but a dog. His doggishness is already fixed; he has a pattern. You cannot say to a dog to be a true dog – he always is. You can say to a man that he is not enough of a man, but you cannot say it to a dog – it will be ridiculous. A dog is always perfectly a dog. He is never incomplete.

A man can be almost an animal or almost an angel. There are millions of possibilities. When a child is born, nothing is certain – whether he is going to be an Adolf Hitler or a Jesus Christ. It will depend on his choice. He is born as pure existence. The essence will be created by him. Through millions of choices, by and by he will create himself. Everybody basically fathers and mothers themselves.

You create yourself continuously – and that creation is never a bondage.

If you want to change, you can immediately, this moment. A saint can become a sinner, and a sinner can become a saint – this moment. The past cannot hold you. That is the dignity of man – nothing holds. If you decide to remain with your past, that’s your choice. If you decide to break from it, nobody can prevent you. In a single moment all the past can disappear. You can become almost new. The slate can be cleaned completely, and you can start again from ABC.

This is one of the greatest insights, and on it much depends. So look at it, watch it. Try to find out exactly how it functions; how this freedom that you are, functions.

This freedom is creative. Out of nothing this freedom goes on creating millions of forms, but everything is basically your choice. Nobody is pushing or pulling you. If you allow somebody to force you, that’s your choice. If you allow somebody to push you, that is your invitation. But finally it lies in your hands.

People come to me and say they would like to surrender – but that is their choice. The freedom remains intact. It is never corrupted. Whatsoever you do – you become a murderer, a thief – your freedom remains uncorrupted. It was your choice. You can move beyond it, you can undo it. No act can become a bondage, and no act can force you into another act.

Once you understand this freedom, you simply feel tremendously blissful. This freedom is God.

That’s what I mean when I say that you are all gods. You are creating yourselves out of nothing, just as God created the world out of nothing.

You came into the world with no being, just a possibility. You played around with many possibilities and settled for a few things, but those few things are not your destiny. You can detach yourself again.

You can move in a new direction, towards a new destiny. By and by as more understanding arises, you will come to know that finally freedom is your nature, your destiny.

That’s why in India we call the ultimate state ’moksha’ – total freedom, just total freedom.

Allow that insight to penetrate you as deeply as possible, mm? It has been very good.

[Another groupmember says: I’m just really aware and appreciative of what a fabulous space I’ll be leaving in.]

It is fabulous. Go on living in it, and when you go back, take that space with you. And wherever you are, you can live in that space. So don’t forget and leave it here. Take it with you. Let it be in your luggage. It is weightless, so there is no trouble. Good!

[A group member says: ... it was painful... I had diarrhoea... I had some good moments... knowing much more about who I am. But I shall don’t know who I am in my totality.]

Sometimes it can be very painful because it re-opens many wounds about which you have become completely oblivious, which you have completely forgotten. One really suffers.

And diarrhoea and dysentery can come out of it, because those wounds are near the stomach. They are not in the physical body, but the subtle body corresponding and close to the stomach. When the subtle body is stirred and its wounds opened, they affect the physical body, and the stomach is the first victim.

But in a way it is good. In a few days you will feel that you are becoming very healthy – more than you have ever felt before. A sense of tremendous well-being will come in a few days – as if you are cleaned and some burden has disappeared from the body. You will feel so beautiful. You may not be aware yet what has happened in the group. It happens many times that only later one becomes aware of what has happened.

Soon you will feel a sense of well-being surrounding you. You will feel as if the body has disappeared, that you are weightless. You will feel that everything is good; that you are blessed and you can bless the whole of existence. Immediately that happens, you have to come and tell me, because that day you will understand what happened in the group.

CHAPTER 12

25 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asked about watching ’a lot of shit going through his head]

It is natural, so don’t feel in any way depressed by it. If you do, it is impossible to get rid of it because you lose all energy in it. People who become interested in meditation, sooner or later start feeling hopeless, because the chatter of the mind seems non-ending; it goes on and on, and the more you try to finish with it, the more it bubbles up. Don’t be in a hurry, and don’t take any negative attitude about it.

Even shit can be used – it can become good manure. So don’t be negative about it. We are going to use it. There is no better fertiliser than it, and when you see a rose flower coming, it is out of a fertiliser. Meditation arises out of the mind. It is no-mind but it is based in the mind. It is just like a lotus born out of mud, just ordinary mud.

And the second thing: don’t try to stop it. Be loose. Tell the mind to just go on and to finish its trip.

Remain unconcerned, as if it is none of your business, as if it is just a traffic noise – and it is. It is an engine that goes on continuously from the time of your birth to your death. It goes on making noises, chattering, rehearsing, projecting, remembering the past, desiring the future. Accept it in aloofness.

By and by you will see that there arises a distance and the distance between you and the noise of the mind goes on becoming bigger and bigger and wider and wider. One day suddenly you realise that it is not there. There is a tremendous silence. For moments you will realise that everything stops, and then starts again, but you remain aloof. Remain aloof even to the slopping, because if you rejoice too much in it you are immediately distracted. The mind will come in again and the whole functioning will start. If it stops that is okay. If it starts again, that too is okay.

But this is how the distance is created – and this distance is meditation. As I see it, nothing is needed. Simply be unconcerned and watch. That word ’watch’ is a little too positive – watchfulness plus aloofness. Then the danger of that positive watching is avoided – a passive watchfulness.

Much is going to happen. Change to orange and forget the old identity. Now you are part of my family.

This word himalaya is very meaningful. Him means cool, ice-cool, and laya means a house – a house of coolness. That’s why we call the mountain Himalaya – the house, the very abode of ice-coolness. And anand means bliss.

Bliss and coolness go together. If you attain to bliss you will become cool, and if you attain to coolness you will attain to bliss. Bliss has no excitement in it. It is simple coolness, silence. It has no fever, no passion in it. So remember these two things – they are going to help you.

Remain cool – whatsoever the situation, whatsoever the excitement, suddenly remember that you have to be cool, and relax, and catch hold of your inner coolness. If somebody is insulting you, remember that you have to be cool, and this man is giving you an opportunity. Be thankful to him and don’t be distracted by him. If you can remain cool and indifferent where ordinarily you get easily excited and passion is aroused, when anger comes and distracts you and you become feverish, suddenly you will see that bliss is showering all around you.

You manage coolness, God manages bliss. You take one step, and he takes one step towards you immediately. It is fifty/fifty.

This coolness is your meditation.

... It is flowing... it is not deadness. Just remain cool like a cool breeze. The moment that you see that your flowing is becoming feverish, stop, because then you are going out of your being. Flow to the extent that you can retain your coolness, and then there is no problem.

Prem means love and dhyana means meditation, and love is going to be your meditation – love meditation.

Be loving as much as you can. Just go on remembering that you have to be loving – to the trees, to the rocks. Even if you are sitting in an empty room, be loving to the empty room. But whatsoever you do and wherever you move, carry a climate of love around you, and by and by you will start feeling it working.

It is everybody’s capacity. Nothing is to be learned about it. Everybody is born with it, just as we are born with the capacity to breathe. But somehow society has destroyed the capacity to love, because love is very dangerous for the society. It is the greatest rebellion there is. Society cannot exist, or this society cannot exist, if people are really loving. Wars and exploitation and all nonsense will be impossible if people are loving, so society does not want anybody to be loving. But unless you love, God remains unavailable, and unless you move deep in love, you cannot move in God.

So let this be your constant remembrance. Even when you touch things, even a chair, touch them as if they are your beloved. In the beginning it will look crazy, but by and by you will get the knack of it, and everything else will become crazy.

[A sannyasin said she had just recently recommenced meditating and that she was feeling an emptiness.]

Emptiness is good, it is a benediction.

But particularly for the western mind, the very word

’emptiness’ puts you off – it is as if something has gone wrong. It has a negative connotation.

It feels as if something has to be done – that one has to stuff oneself with something. Emptiness looks like a vacuum. It has become an unconscious thing in the western mind, so you have to be aware of it.

Emptiness is not necessarily negative. If it comes through meditation, it is positive, the most positive thing in the world. Even God is not more positive than emptiness. If it comes through meditation, it is silence. Then it is more like space than vacuum. It is more like infinity, with no beginning and no end, with no limitations around it... just the open sky. It is full of something which you don’t yet know.

It is full of God.

But first everybody encounters emptiness... and the more you become one with it, the more you nourish it, cherish it, the more you delight in it... by and by you will start feeling the flavour of it.

You will start feeling that it is not just a vacuum. Something tremendously positive is there, but one needs a little acquaintance with it.

So feel happy. Whenever you feel empty, close your eyes and drop into that emptiness. Drown yourself in it as if it is a river. Don’t swim – drown. Your whole mind will tell you to get out. It will feel as if it is going to be a death. It is going to be a death for the mind – not for you. The death of the mind is your life, and the life of the mind is your death. So the mind will say that this is going to be a death. Tell the mind that that is okay, that you have decided to commit suicide – and then relax and drown... sink into it.

The moment the mind feels suffocated is the moment when something is going to happen. Don’t get out of it and don’t start doing something to occupy yourself. The temptation will be there – it comes to everybody who feels emptiness. But if you are doing something and you feel the emptiness is coming, drop doing so that it can totally take possession of you. Close your eyes and blissfully drown in it. It is going to be a great experience soon. It shows on your face too – something is getting ready but you will have to relax into it.

[A sannyasin, who is a textile designer, expresses doubts about wearing orange, especially when he returns to the West.]

Don’t be afraid about your sannyas, orange. This fear comes to everybody, it is natural, but once you go back home, within three days everything will settle. It is only a question of three days. All that you are thinking is ninety-nine percent imagination. Not even one percent is going to happen that way; it never happens like that.

One thing is certain – that people will ask, and they will think that you have gone a little crazy. If you can accept this much, there is no problem. Rather than allowing people to say that you have gone a little crazy, you yourself say it.... And it is really crazy. You have gone a little crazy, otherwise why should you take sannyas? But this craziness is good... and this is just the beginning of something really great.

This is just the beginning of dropping the fear of public opinion. The more you think about what people think about you, the less you are concerned about your own well-being. That’s how we create false images. We go on smiling so that people will think we are happy, rather than really being happy – we choose a very poor substitute. But just by people thinking you are happy, can you be happy? Forget about what people think happiness is. You be happy, and if they think it is good, good. If they don’t think, that too is good.

Everybody has to live his own life. People go on thinking whether others think them intelligent or not.

In the same time and with the same amount of energy they can become intelligent. But people are not worried about that – they are worried about what others think. That’s a very cheap substitute.

If you are hungry and everybody thinks that you are well-fed, is it going to help? And if you are well-fed and everybody thinks that you are hungry, then who bothers?

So don’t be worried, I will take care. I will be coming with you!

[A sannyasin said that he became very afraid while doing the Gourishankar meditation, because once when he was doing it, he saw his father dying – and his father did die two days later.]

You should be happy about it because it is very good. It is good that the son is meditating and the father dies. In fact the whole family should be meditating.

In the East, and particularly in Tibet where people have been meditating for centuries, this has been the rule. When somebody is dying, the whole family gathers – friends and relatives and the whole clan – and meditates. And while they are meditating they say that they drop all attachments towards the dying person. And they encourage him to drop his attachments towards them, so that he can be free and can move easily into another world without clinging to this one. It helps tremendously.

So don’t be worried about it.

[The Encounter group was at darshan tonight. The groupleader said that many participants had done groups before and he had difficulty pushing people beyond the deeper blocks.]

This is possible. It is possible that in a similar situation people react differently. If somebody has done many groups, one possibility is that he may have learned all the tricks, so he can remain superficial, just doing the things that are expected, and he will never move deeper. This will become a defence measure. This type of person has to be told, and he has to be pushed. Hard work will be needed on him.

Another person may have done so many groups that now there is no question of gross layers, they are finished, and he uses techniques to move deeper and deeper and deeper. Help that person too. The first needs forceful pushing, and the second needs very delicate helping, very delicate.

No pushing is needed because he himself is ready to go – just give him an indication. If you force this type too much he will again become gross. He just needs your help and confidence that he is moving rightly. Encouragement is enough.

So forceful energy is needed for those people who are stuck. And for those who are floating on their own, just very subtle help and encouragement, that’s all. They need just the shadow of the whip –

the first need the real whip.

But it is going to be so, and it has to be faced in every group as more people do more groups.

[A participant said he felt very stuck. The groupleader commented that he was very elusive.]

Elusive, mm? Surround him from everywhere, and hit him hard! And (to the participant) don’t give them an easy job. You resist as much as you can. (laughter) Let it be a challenge... otherwise if you allow them too easily then you will again be moving on the surface.

So give a good fight. If you really fight, they will be able to force you, mm? If you simply say okay, I will come, you will not go far.

[Osho told the participant to join forces with the next sannyasin who said she was feeling very resistant. Osho told her to be as resistant as possible, because only through the tension of resistance would a peak come, and then a relaxation ]

[Another group member says: I discovered a lot but I would also forget a lot by the next moment. Is it important to remember everything?]

Don’t be worried about forgetting. The mind needs to forget as much as it needs to remember. If you remember everything you will go mad.

You have to forget many things each moment, because only then you can learn new things. The mind has a certain focus, and if the past continues to surround it, you will not be able to learn anything new. There are millions of things happening every day, and if you remember them all you will not be able to remain sane.

And in fact whatsoever is not important is forgotten naturally. You may think that it was important but your total being knows better. Whatsoever is important is always remembered. In fact the definition of ’important’ is that which is not forgotten.

Whenever something is needed it will come back to the memory. What you forget is never thrown out. It simply goes into the reservoir, your memory pool. It remains there, and has tremendous capacity. One man’s brain can have all the libraries of the world in it. That much information can be stored in the brain. Whenever the need arises, the information will bubble up to the surface. It is as natural as blood circulation.

So don’t be worried about it... just relax.

[A group member says: I’ve been feeling a fear of breaking out of my role, my image.]

Mm, fear is natural, but still allow it. Go through the breakdown, because if you go through it properly, The breakdown becomes a breakthrough. So help the process – accept the fact that the fear is there, but also remember that in spite of the fear, the image has to be broken. Only then will you be able to know what is your reality, your truth.

The false has to be dropped for the true to be found. Fear is natural because you have lived with the false for so long. It is familiar, convenient, and one feels good about it. Even though it creates many miseries, still one feels good because it is such an old thing.

Every divorce is difficult, and this is the greatest divorce – when one is divorced from one’s old identity and image. It is not like taking your clothes off. It is like peeling your skin. But accept it.

Once the old skin is gone, the new will start coming.

CHAPTER 13

26 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[An ashram yoga teacher wanted to teach a synthesis of what he had learnt from several teachers.

He asked Osho if he should ’do my own thing’.]

You do your own thing. Absorb whatsoever you can get from anywhere, and always create a synthesis out of your own experience. Otherwise what you teach is borrowed, and the borrowed cannot be taught – because it is an art, not a science. Unless you have experienced something within you you cannot transfer that experience to anybody else. You can teach the techniques, but they are not the basic thing – they are just the outer shell. The content is something totally different

– that is your experience.

So always remain open to learn from wherever you can.

Never become closed.

Life is so

tremendous that one can never come to a point where one can say ’Now I have learned’. It never happens. Even God is learning – hence He goes on creating. If He has learnt the art, there is no need to create anymore. He still goes on innovating, creating, experimenting. The whole existence is an experiment.

Knowledge should never become a dead thing. It should be a constant learning. So learn from everywhere, and then always listen to your own inner synthesis. If you are teaching something which you have not experienced, which is not your own, in which your own heart is not beating, you are transferring stale knowledge – and that is dangerous. All stale knowledge becomes poisonous to the person to whom you are transferring it. So learn from everywhere, and learn with total humbleness, but remain open to transfer your own experience.

I am not in favour of too much strain. The whole point is that people are already too strained. They are almost on the verge of breakdown. Don’t put any more strain on them. Rather, teach them how to relax – so relaxation remains the background. Even if they are doing yoga exercises, the goal remains relaxation. Sometimes in certain postures they have to strain, but the goal remains relaxation. For example, I can close my fist as hard as I can, I can put all my energies into closing it. A point will come where it is no more possible to force it, and it will open on its own and become relaxed – more relaxed than it was before.

After every deep exercise you can relax more. Tension can be used only as a step towards relaxation; it is not a goal in itself. Many Hatha Yoga exercises are designed as if tension is the goal, and many yoga teachers think tension is the goal – it is not.

Just the other day I was reading a book of Lenza Del Vasto. He is Italian and a disciple of Gandhi.

He says never allow yourself any unoccupied moment: constantly do something. Even if you have nothing to do, walk, dig a hole in the garden, run – but do something. Don’t just sit without doing anything, because then the mind will start working. If you are tired, the mind cannot think – but this is not a state of meditation. This is simply a state of exhaustion – it is not rest.

I also say work hard – but the goal remains relaxation. Work so hard that you can relax deeply. If you don’t work hard you cannot relax deeply.

Work is not worship. Worship is always relaxation. Work is just a means to reach that relaxation where worship is possible, where deep gratefulness, prayer, meditation, is possible. But rest is the goal, not work. Love is the goal, not labour. Celebration is the goal, not duty. So this emphasis has to be remembered.

Whatsoever you are doing here is to help people to become more happy, more loose, more easy-going. It is to help them towards a deep let-go. That remains the goal of whatsoever is happening around me – that people should become capable of deep sleep, of deep meditation, of deep relaxation. They should become capable of enjoying fun. They should be able to fool around.

They should not be serious. Seriousness is a disease.

So while you are teaching Yoga, don’t be serious. When one is teaching people, one tends to become serious – because if you are not, people will think that the thing that you are teaching is not serious. Teachers become serious, longfaced, and they destroy young children.

Be laughing, ke relaxed – because the whole goal is how to be able to play; how to be able to play without any motivation. There is no motivation, but the energy is there. The thing is now to delight in it. So remember, mm?

[The sannyasin then asks about giving space to his girlfriend when she is involved with someone else.]

If you can relax and give [your girlfriend] that much space, it is going to do something tremendous for you. For her it may not be much, but for you it is going to be a tremendous thing, and very meaningful.

When you give freedom, it has to be unconditional. Sex, no sex, is not the question. When you give the other person his or her own space, you give it totally, with no strings attached to it. It is not a long rope – there is no rope. If you mean by freedom a long rope, it is not freedom. It is just cleverness and being cunning – and it is not going to help you. You give space and freedom, but you go on hoping that it will never be taken for granted.

That’s the confusion; that’s why you feel off-balance. We give freedom to the other with the idea that the other is not going to use it. Deep down we go on hoping that the other will feel obliged to us. will become more in love with us. We give freedom but with the deep unconscious hope that the other is not going to use it. If the other uses it, then the problem arises. Give total freedom.

You should feel good that she is not feeling guilty. To make anybody feel guilty is a sin; there is no other sin like it. It cripples people, paralyses them. So tell her to be completely free and not to feel any guilt.

Once you have accepted this, you will have a very very deep freedom within yourself, because this is a basic law: if you can give freedom to others, you have it. And there is nothing like freedom. If you don’t give freedom to others, you don’t have it, you can’t have it. The more you give it, the more you have of it. The less you give, the less you have of it. It is a double-edged sword – it cuts both ways. You give freedom to the other and immediately you are free. You try to make a bondage, a possessiveness around the other, and you are bound, you are a slave; it is mutual.

So just accept it. If you do, very soon a deep tranquillity will come to you, suddenly a freedom. It can come right now. It is not a question of thinking about it. It is just a flash of understanding.

And if she feels attracted to somebody else, what can she do? Nothing can be done about it. One is a victim of so many desires. So feel compassion for her, and just tell her to not be disturbed in any way about it.

Soon you will see that as you give her more freedom, her guilt will disappear, and then by and by the desire for others will disappear too. It is a vicious circle. You feel attracted towards somebody and you feel guilty because you have promised to somebody else to be with him forever. You are going against your own promise, your own ego, your own image. The more guilty you feel, the more attracted you feel. The more you try to repress a desire, the more powerful it becomes. The more you resist it, the more the mind fantasises about it.

When the guilt disappears, it is a good sign; a sign that [your girlfriend] is coming out of the vicious circle. Soon she will see that nobody is preventing her, and all the charm will be gone. She will see that somebody is there who loves her so much that he is even ready to love her lovers. She will feel a new and even deeper relationship to you. Freedom will bring you closer and closer.

And this is something to be understood: you can be close to somebody in two ways. You can be forced by the law, by conscience, guilt, religion, the police – then you are close, but you are not close. You are just physically close.

There is another closeness that comes out of freedom. Both partners are free to be as far away as they want, but still they choose to be close. It is a choice out of total freedom. It has a different fragrance. It is nothing of this world... it is almost something of another world.

So just accept it, and accept it with joy. Feel happy that you could give her such freedom.

[The sannyasin replies: I don’t know whether I’m suppressing my feeling... I’m confused about what I feel.]

No, if you have understood me, things will change immediately, from tomorrow.

And it is not a question of what she says. It is for you to look inside and see whether you are real or not. She may say that you are not being real because she cannot understand that a man who loves her will allow her to move with somebody else. That is her problem, not yours. Now she will try to throw the whole responsibility on you – as if you are trying to be higher than her, holier than her.

That too is good, that too is a situation for you, mm? First she will wait for you to make her feel guilty.

If that doesn’t happen, then somewhere something is wrong. So she will immediately say that you are being unreal. She may even say that you don’t love her, and that is why you are allowing her to move with someone else. She will say that if you had loved her you would have fought for her, and that it is not that you are not jealous – you don’t love her. She will say all these things – it is natural.

She will have to cope with this problem, and it is a great problem, because the vicious circle has been broken.

By and by the clouds will disappear from her eyes and she will be able to see what is happening.

But it is good, it is very good. It is going to be a great blessing to you... This is the real Yoga!

[A sannyasin in the yoga class said she wanted to scream in one of the postures and asked if she should do so.]

You can do it in your own room whenever you feel like it – and it will come again. It is good to allow it – but not in the class, because then everybody will start.

And this is going to happen, remember.... This is going to happen with our people because they are doing other meditations, and the meditations are hitting their repressed things deeply. In doing a certain posture they may touch the same centre. Many people will feel that they want to scream, so tell them they will have to do it at home.

Soon we will have a small room here, and whenever somebody feels, he can go and scream there.

Underground rooms will be ready soon. But allow it in your room. It will be very good and will relax many things.

[A sannyasin said that he was hard of hearing in his right ear since he had been blown up in the second world war....

Osho checked his energy, and then said that much could be done, and suggested that he should take a very very hot shower, so hot that he perspired, then follow this with a very cold shower. This would give exercise to the tissues of the right hemisphere, helping them to expand and contract... ]

... within three months you will be able to hear almost sixty percent. And this exercise will help your consciousness also, because the mind will start functioning.

The second thing: when you do the Nadabrahma meditation, use ear plugs so that no outer sound can be heard. Then just hum so that you can just feel the inner sound. That inner sound will hit the ear from inside and it will become an inner massage. That also will help.

[The ashram yoga teacher] can teach you two yoga exercises. One is sarvangasan, if shirshasan is not possible. These two exercises will do – just three minutes in the morning before you take your bath. It is just standing on your head so that the blood circulates deep down into the head. The whole thing is how to make the inner brain moving, functioning. Ordinarily it is very difficult for blood to reach the brain, because it is against gravitation and the heart has to pump continuously.

If you feel that these positions are difficult, use a slanting bed – just for five to ten minutes. Dead tissues have collected in your head, and this blood will carry them away.

If you continue these things for three months, you will have almost sixty percent hearing in your right ear. If you can continue them for a year, you can have almost ninety percent hearing.

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes when I go to sleep and I lie on my back, I can feel something moving in my body. It’s not my body... it feels like energy.]

Mm mm, it is energy – so help it to move, and don’t stop it. Wherever it goes, you simply follow.

Simply become the shadow and let it become the real; it is your real energy. So just help it to move.

You may be scared in the beginning because it can go away from the body, and that is very scaring.

Once you become attuned to it, it has a beauty of its own. Nothing can be compared to it – sexual orgasm is nothing. It gives you such a deep orgasm... the whole body thrills with bliss.

If you follow it silently, without resistance, it will move away, and you may be able to see your own body lying on the bed – and you are standing near the door. You may be able to hover over your bed like a cloud. Don’t be afraid. Enjoy it... it is perfectly good.

When you come back to the body you will have a thrill. Leaving the body and coming back again, you Will have a thrill, and the thrill is deeper than any sexual orgasm.

In fact in sexual orgasm the same thing happens. Because of the female energy, your male energy is attracted so deeply that it leaves your body for a few seconds. It is not only an ejaculation of semen – it is an ejaculation of you. Your whole energy is ejaculated just for a second, and then you are again back in the body. And that is the whole thrill of it.

Once you know how to do it without any partner, without any sex being involved, then sex becomes meaningless because now you know a higher way to attain to a deeper orgasm more easily, and at no risk, no cost.

So allow this... it is very good. For fifteen days cooperate....

[A visitor says: I don’t know... to get in touch with my creativity, with some warmth inside me. I have low energy a lot, and I don’t have good relationships with women... I came to ask you the answer...

I admit want something from you.]

I know – and you will have it.

All these things are interconnected. If you feel something is missing, some key is missing, then you will not be able to move in a deep relationship. You can move deeply into another being only if you have moved into your own depth, otherwise not. A superficial relationship is possible, but it satisfies nobody. On the contrary, it makes you even more disconnected.

So the first relationship is with oneself. Meditation is more primary than love. Without meditation, your love will be a failure. You may try with many different people, but again and again something will come in and the affair will be destroyed. That something comes from within your depth. You move so unconsciously – as if almost in a sleep – that somewhere or other you are bound to stumble and everything will be destroyed. Love is very fragile. Unless you have a perfect light in you, it will be difficult to move in love.

And the work that you have been doing – Encounter groups, Psychoanalysis, Marathons – is all negative. They bring out your negative things but they don’t give you something positive. They help to clean you, but they don’t replace anything. Nobody can live in an emptiness, so again one fills oneself with the same things.

So you go on cleaning every day – and you will feel good. It is just as when you have taken a bath and for half an hour you feel good. Then again dirt gathers and you perspire, and the feeling from the bath is lost. That’s why people go on living from one Encounter group to another. It gives a thrill, and one feels good, but again the same life and the same things happen. These are good cleaning processes, but that is not enough. Necessary, but not enough.

It is as if you have cleaned the ground and you think that that is the garden. Cleaning is good – the weeds and stones have to be removed. The ground has to be prepared, seeds have to be planted, and watering and work and much patience is needed – and then the garden will come.

What you have been doing is just a half of it. The other half is missing, and that is the key that you feel you would like to have.

Sannyas can be very helpful if you take courage. It becomes the first positive step. It is a commitment, and it is getting hooked with me on an unknown journey. For you it is almost dark, and you are moving in the unknown. Of course fear comes and a thousand and one questions and doubts arise, but they all belong to your negative mind.

If you decide to go towards some positivity, you have to become indifferent to all those doubts and questions. It is a risk. All positivity is a risk, all growth is a risk. Every birth is going to be very painful.

Whenever a child is born, there exist two possibilities: he may live, he may not live. When he was in the mother’s womb, she was breathing for him – he was not even breathing for himself. Out of the womb he will have to breathe for himself. The first two or three minutes after the child is born are the most dangerous. Everybody is in suspense, wondering whether the child will breathe or not.

And if the child does not cry the doctor has to hit him so he starts breathing. And the child has never breathed before, so it is unknown.

Sannyas is like a new birth.

You have lived a way, a certain style of life, and you have worked – and still you go on missing something. Try something new, something absolutely new.

And this is the thing – when I say take sannyas, I mean give the responsibility to me. You drop it.

Start living as if there is no problem. From this moment, simply relax. And that relaxation comes through sannyas.

So if you can take courage – and it is a question of courage, it is an adventure – it can be tremendously helpful. Would you like to take the jump?

[The visitor answers: I have to think about it... I’ve worked too hard and I don’t want to think about myself anymore. But what I really want to do is to go in the other direction... to be wild and you know, not holy in the least bit.]

That’s what my sannyas is! (laughter) Not holy in the least bit... and it is wild. And if you are really fed up with working on yourself – that’s what I am saying – give the responsibility to me. After that there is no work. There is only trust.

Work you have been doing – and if you think about sannyas, that also will be work. You lose nothing by it – just your past, which is meaningless. You get rid of something that has been of no worth to you. But if you think about sannyas, you will ask that same past. It is as if you ask the disease if you should take the medicine or not. That is absolutely stupid! Whom are you going to ask? You will ask yourself – and you are in a mess.

That’s what I mean when I say not to think about it. This is moving from reason to irreason... so come closer, (much laughter ) and close your eyes.

... and the only thing I would like to say to you in this moment is to start living as if there is no problem. In the beginning it is only ’as if’ but by and by you will feel that there is no problem. In fact there is no problem. The mind just goes on creating them – it is a problem-creating machine.

Life as such has no problems. One can simply live it. Even trees are living it. Even birds and animals are living it. Only man is somehow missing it, because man has a mind, and the mind goes on creating problems.

So start living from this moment as if there is no problem. Move completely freely. The past is gone.

And I start working immediately from this moment.

[A sannyasin said that he was reluctant to leave Poona he was nearing a point of surrendering on another level... ]

You will be afraid whenever you go, because once you are here, you are so different, that going back to the old world creates fear. But that has to be faced, and it is going to be a deep experience. It will not disturb anything. It is going to be beautiful and you are going to be strengthened by it. And the next surrender will happen there, so don’t be worried about it.

Many surrenders happen – because the first surrender can rarely be total. The mind won’t allow it.

It even seems total, but it is not. The mind goes on holding something – just as a safety measure.

Many times you will feel you are surrendered, and many times you will feel that you have gone far away; this will happen many times.

By and by you will be able to watch both. Then the real surrender will happen – and that surrender is not surrender at all. The real is so different from what you call surrender that there is no need even to call it surrender – because there is nothing opposite to it. In the beginning it is going to be a duality – just a part of the mind surrenders.

Try to understand the mechanism. Maybe sixty percent of the mind, seventy percent, sometimes only fifty-one percent of the mind surrenders, and forty-nine percent doesn’t surrender. Then too it is good, because it is the major part and you surrender. The fifty-one percent of the mind that surrenders may lose its majority any day. It is almost parliamentary, mm? The other part of the mind will remain there hiding, watching for the right moment when it can persuade a few members of the major party towards it – and there will be many moments.

Many times you will be angry with me and suddenly forty percent will be surrendered and sixty percent not. Many times you will expect something and it will not be fulfilled.... Because it is not always good to fulfill your expectations; sometimes they have to be completely destroyed... because unless you love me even with frustrations, you cannot love me. Your love has to come to such a point where anger, frustrations... nothing matters. The love remains uncorrupted by all these things.

They come and they go – at the most they become momentary things, flashes. But they are no more meaningful in any meaningful sense.

So many times it will happen. You have simply to watch the game of the mind. Watching both sides, by and by you will become separate from both. Then a surrender happens which is not of the mind.

You cannot even call it surrender... there is no word for it. It has a taste but it is non-verbal. When it comes you will recognise it immediately.

[The sannyasin’s wife was present. He said that though they had been married for ten years, they would have fights between them, but why, they could not say.

The wife said: We don’t believe each other... ]

What is the need to believe?

[She asks: Surrender?]

There is no need. You are asking unnecessary things. What is the need to believe and to surrender?

You think you should surrender to him and he should surrender to you? That is impossible. No wife and husband can ever do that.

The fight is clear – you are both trying to force the other to surrender. It is an ego trip and very dangerous. If he surrenders you will not be able to forgive him – because no woman can love a man who surrenders to her. And every woman tries to have the man surrender to her.

So this is not a problem at all... just foolishness. If you want, I can tell him to surrender to you –

and he will do it because he is my disciple. I can tell him, and every day he will touch your feet and surrender completely. (laughter) Whatsoever you say, he will do – he will become obedient.

[She asks: But the fighting will go on?]

There is no need – if you understand that there is no need to surrender. There is some need to share... share your love with each other. But this is not a master and disciple relationship – sharing is enough. Two people loving each other are equal – there is no question of surrender. Drop that idea and the conflict will drop.

One woman came to me a few years ago – she was on the same trip. I told her husband to touch her feet at least three times a day, and that whatsoever the wife says, he has to say yes. Just after a few days she said to me, ’What are you doing? My husband has gone almost mad! He says yes to everything. I cannot love such a man... he looks like a dog!’

Share and love – and then sometimes fighting is not bad. But then it should be out of love, and not for each other’s surrender, and things like that. Two persons live together and sometimes a quarrel arises. It is good. It simply shows that the two are alive. If you are both dead and you live in the same room, no quarrel will arise. (laughter) Alive – a little quarrel, a little conflict.

And then – he is a German. (more laughter) Take care of him... and you love each other, so there is no need to surrender. Simply share – and things will be good.

CHAPTER 14

27 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, who is a sculptor, says: I want it to flow here. And I want to give myself to you.]

You are accepted. And I looked at your album of sculpture. It is beautiful... but it seems to me that you are working with a very limited idea again and again.

[He replies: Now I have no idea.]

Mm, that’s very good. From no idea, tremendous possibilities open. With ideas, there is always a limitation. The idea itself is the limitation; it becomes the boundary. One goes on and on in a circle, again and again repeating the same thing. Mind is just like a stuck gramophone record, and the needle goes on moving in the same groove again and again. Maybe one can modify. can change things a little, but things remain the same.

It happens to almost all people – unless they come to know that there is a possibility of a totally different kind of creativity. That creativity is not of the mind. It is of no-mind. In the West, mind still remains the source of all creativity. In the East, we have worked totally differently. That’s why you will always see a difference in a zen painting, or a zen poem. It is a totally different world, because the person who was making it was not motivated by any idea. It simply came – out of the blue. He was not more than a vehicle, a passage.

So from today you allow me to work through you. Simply drop everything – and then much is possible. All the techniques that you have known, all the skills that you have gathered will be used, but they will be used by somebody who is bigger than you, greater than you, higher than you. The part has to be used by the whole – that is the meaning of being possessed by God. Then even you are surprised by whatsoever you create. If you are not surprised, then it is a repetition. When a real creation happens, you are simply surprised. You cannot believe that this has happened through you. You will hesitate to sign it.

Yoga Sahajo.

It means spontaneous, and it is also the name of an indian woman mystic, a very rare woman.

So sometime if you can find something, read something about Sahajo. She has not been translated yet, but I am thinking to talk about her in English.

[A sannyasin admits she enjoys her negativity.]

So for two or three months, forget about feeling good. Feel bad, and enjoy it. If you want to come and describe it to me, you can come. I will help you to be in the negative space. Be in it!

The whole of the time you have been trying to be positive, you have been clinging to the positive.

Now drop out of it. What is wrong in it? Be negative...

This time you remain in it. Your whole life you have been trying to get out of it – and you don’t want to get out of it. So nothing can be done about it.

This time decide to live in it and enjoy it. be negative and be knowingly negative. Let this be your way of life, mm? You are going to reach God via negativity. So be negative – there is nothing wrong in it.

Prem means love and leena means absorption – absorbed in love, lost in love.

[The ashram kids’ school is present. A teacher says: I find it’s very much chaos.]

They are my children – they have to be chaotic! And you have to help them to be chaotic....

The basic thing to remember is their freedom. Help them to grow but never curb their freedom.

Discipline them but always remember that all discipline is a means – freedom is the end.

So freedom should not be sacrificed for anything whatsoever. Discipline can be sacrificed... so just allow them to be more and more themselves. Don’t try to create types. Individuals are the goal.

Each child should be so individual, so unique and different from everybody else, that you cannot categorise them.

So help them. It is difficult, I know. It is simple for the teacher to force them into pigeon-holes, into categories; to make rules and regulations. Then you are not disturbed by their individuality ....

Individuality is chaotic.

[The teacher says: I find that so often I do things without any awareness. Like, something happens and I just react.]

By and by you will become aware.

And also remember that not only you are the teacher – they are also teachers. So teach them and also learn from them... Let it be a sharing.

You can give them knowledge – they can give you a more valuable thing, and that is learning. You can give them information, and they can give you something of the chaotic life – which is more valuable. You can help them adjust to society. They can help you to adjust to God... they are closer to God. By and by they will drift away....

So also learn from them, and feel humble. There is a danger that the teacher can become a dictator, and it is very easy to dictate to small children because they are so helpless, so fragile. You can force them, and it can become an ego trip. So always remember it – let it be your meditation that you are not going to force anything.

Don’t be worried about making them very useful – that is not the point. I am not interested in much usefulness and efficiency. If they can learn how to communicate, a little language, a little mathematics, that will do. We are not in a hurry to teach them many things – geography, history...

almost ninety percent is rubbish. If they don’t know it, nothing is lost.

And we are not interested in making them fit with a rotten society. They don’t have to become clerks, or a master or a professor – we are not interested in that. If they can become human beings – even if they don’t become rich – that’s okay.

So remember these things, and by and by you will learn much, and by learning, things will evolve.

It is just the beginning – many more children will be coming soon – so from the very beginning be alert so that a trend is set. Then others who will join you by and by, will follow the trend. So much responsibility is on you both. It is just a beginning... it is going to become a big thing soon. And they are lovely children....

You will have to learn a little German and Italian. These two will be needed, because it is going to be really an international school. Small, but international.

[She says: right now it’s more like a play centre than a school.]

Let it always be a play centre. Learning is secondary. Just teach in between... let there be some learning gaps – otherwise it is a play centre. And it has to be that way. Play is life, and everything else is to help life.

So let them enjoy – be playful... don’t let them be serious. (to the children) Create as much trouble as you can!... never allow the teachers any rest!

[A sannyasin says he feels hurt because the person he loved rejected him.... ]

I understand; it is natural to feel hurt, but there is no necessity for someone to respond to your love.

If it was necessary then the whole charm would be lost.

So accept it. And if you feel hurt, it will make you incapable of falling in love again. So never be bothered about it. You loved, and the other was not willing – there is no necessity for them to.

Who knows, a better person may be coming.

[He answers: I’ve lost all my aggressiveness. I’m very passive now.]

Then some aggressive woman may be coming. (laughter) Life has surprises... just wait! But never feel hurt.

[Osho went on to say that one has to learn to accept these things that are unpalatable; that is part of maturity. He said that when one door closes, another opens, but if you are too concerned with the closed door, you miss the opening one. He said to him to be open to the future and not to repent and pine for the past... ]

Once rejected, one feels as if one has to conquer the situation – one has to come again and again to fight. Don’t make it an ego thing. The ego is feeling hurt – and love is not an ego thing.

Now another thing I would like to say to you – just as a suggestion to keep in mind. It may be that because of the ego you were rejected. Whenever you approach somebody with an egoistic mind, the other starts feeling resistance – rejection comes easy. It seems as if you are interfering, trespassing, and the other wants to reject. When she does, your ego feels hurt.

Drop the ego and look – a door has opened. It always does.

[A visitor said to Osho that though he had everything in life that he could wish for, every two or three months he seemed to have outbursts of anger and feelings of violence.

Osho said that it would be better to allow the anger out in small doses, ’homeopathic doses’, rather than allowing it to accumulate. He suggested that each evening, for ten minutes he should take out his anger on a pillow, or alternatively, do the Dynamic meditation each morning.

The man said he just couldn’t understand why he had this anger as everything was so perfect for him materially.... ]

There is no reason. If you go on looking for a reason, you will never come to an end. It is just part of natural life. You eat, and part of that is absorbed, but the remainder has to be thrown out of the body – you have to defecate. The whole day you are accumulating energy from people, all of which cannot be absorbed. Much of it is not useful – it is harmful, toxic. That toxic energy has to be released. That becomes anger. So don’t look for reasons.

In fact people who are not contented are less angry, because their anger is released. A woodchopper will never be angry because chopping wood is such a great meditation – all anger is thrown. That’s why poor people look more happy – and they have nothing to be happy about. Richer people look more unhappy – because there is nothing to be unhappy about, and so there is no way to release the energy. It accumulates, and drives you crazy – it becomes aggression.

So simply throw it out. If you play some game, it is good – football or volleyball. People who are absorbed in their games are less angry. Soldiers are less angry than businessmen. It should be otherwise. The whole parade in the morning, the throwing of energy – turn left, right – relaxes them.

They are more silent people. You will find them more friendly, more loving, more gentlemanly than businessmen, who are just sitting at their desks doing nothing. They become more and more angry and aggressive. Their aggression comes out as exploitation, in accumulating money.

So simply release it, and don’t be bothered about the reasons.

[The music group plays for Osho while people at darshan dance around. To the leader of the group Osho says... ]

Now the group is very good. But now make a permanent group... a few people should remain permanent... A few people can come and go, but at least six or eight people should remain permanent.

[A musician said that sannyasins were joining in the music group with their own instruments and not in key with the group.]

New people can join in, can participate in singing, but if somebody wants to play an instrument, he has to ask the permission of the group – and you give permission only when he can play in tune.

Just tell them that they are allowed, but they have to be in tune. Everybody can participate in singing, but they have to be told that this is not a catharsis, that they have to be in rhythm. A few people can dance around, but they should not go in catharsis. By and by manage it...

I should like it to be a permanent thing so it continues every day, every night, with at least thirty or forty people, and by and by, more. But by and by – so the tune, the harmony, is not lost. It is necessary because if it becomes discordant it is meaningless and even harmful.

[Osho turned to the teachers of the children and said that dancing should become part of the children’s daily play; that it was ’more essential than anything else’.]

CHAPTER 15

28 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[The Tao group is present. A group member says she feels like a child, and should she continue with this. Osho checks her energy.]

It is good, mm? It is very good to go back to your childhood, because that is the point at which your life bifurcated – at five years old. That is where you missed the real life and you started becoming phoney. That is where you went wrong. So once you start being real and authentic, you will go back to the point of bifurcation. But one is not to remain there – one has to grow from there again.

It is good to go back – but that is only half the journey. The other half still remains. You follow me? A child is born. Up to four years, five years, he grows authentically. Then social pressure, conditioning, and a thousand and one things begin to work. He is put off the track along which he was going naturally and spontaneously. He is taught what should be done – so now he loses contact with his own spontaneity. He feels to do something but the ’should’ says something else.

He wants to do something, but the society does not accept it. Parents don’t appreciate it, and he is condemned for it.

So now the natural becomes the repressed, and the artificial becomes the accepted. So for a few days the child struggles, tries to be natural, but again and again is punished for being natural. So one learns the trick of being unnatural. From that point an unnatural structure goes on evolving.

It is tremendously significant that you have fallen back to the bifurcation point... it is very difficult Ordinarily people don’t reach so easily – because their whole life is invested in the false now. If you are thirty, then twenty-five years are invested in the false. Now with so much invested in the false, one feels unable and afraid of moving back. It is a rare blessing that it happens – that a person zooms back to the point of bifurcation.

On that point another journey starts. It is as if you are again five years old – and there is no ’should’.

There is no society, and no parents who are telling you to be like this and that. It is as if you are driving and you miss the road. Suddenly you become aware that this is not the way. You come back to the main road, and again you follow the right route.

So don’t remain there. If you do, and you are stuck at that age, you will be true, but you will be true like a five-year old. and your growth will suffer. So you start growing again with no ’shoulds’, no goals. Allow your destiny to take possession of you. Move naturally now, spontaneously.

Naturally a five-year-old likes to be related to somebody as a father, a mother – but those were the people that diverted you. If you become dependent again on some relationship of that type, you are again falling in the old trap. Now this time move without parents – without a father or mother. Don’t make a daddy or a mum – otherwise the very idea will start crippling you. This time move alone with no parental hold on you. You are your mum and your dad.

Of course it will be difficult, and you will stumble, but it is good to stumble. It is good to make trials, fall, rise up again. This time move as if you are an orphan. There will be nobody to look to, nobody to guide you – but all guides are false. Any people who can tell you to do this and that, will again force you towards something which is not your destiny.

So this time listen to the heart. What else can you do? Your parents are dead, you are orphaned

– left alone in this vast world – wandering, crying, staggering, not knowing where to go – but still you go on. Soon you will find that you are growing on your own. That is real growth. It is difficult, arduous, but reality is difficult and arduous – one has to pay for it.

And there is no harm in making mistakes – because one learns that way. There is no other way.

Trial and error is the only human way. Because we have been avoiding learning through trial and error, authorities have become so important. Parents, politicians, priests, have become important –

and they are distracting everybody.

I am here to help you to move alone. I am here to help you to get rid of all authorities. Sol am doing something like suicidal work. I guide you to become guideless.

[She asks: Can I accept your authority?]

No no, don’t accept my authority. Try to understand whatsoever I am saying. The same thing can be taken as authoritative or as an understanding – and both are different.

I say something. If you accept it without understanding, if you say that you have to do it because Osho said – then again I am your daddy. Again I will put you off-track. It is not a question of who is the daddy. Once you accept somebody’s authority without your own understanding, you are put off the right track. Now you will not make mistakes, you will not be searching on your own path. Now you want to get rid of all groping. You want something easy, ready-made.

Whatever I say, try to understand. If you understand, and you follow it because now it has become your understanding, then it is totally different.

Listen, even if you follow me because it is your understanding to follow me, it is totally different. You understand me? Your understanding has to be the ultimate decisive factor. Understanding is the only authority.

Whatsoever I am saying is not theoretical, it is simply factual, so I need not impose any authority.

I know that if you try to understand, you will. Authority is needed when something is said which is not factual. If I say to you to do this because God has commanded it be done that way, then there is trouble. You don’t know God, you don’t know if God has commanded it that way – and it cannot be explained in any way. Whatsoever I am saying is a simple truth without any theoretical jargon around it.

You were distracted when you were five. Now don’t allow any authority – I am included in it – to distract you. Move on your own. If you feel while moving on your own that this man can be helpful and you take my help, take it through your understanding. It is not that whatsoever this man says is true – your understanding makes it true. Your understanding is the only proof. So no need to make any daddy or mum.

Everybody has to come to a point where he can be completely free from his parents. They are helpful, tremendously helpful, but beyond a certain point they become a hindrance. One has also to drop them – with deep respect, with love – but one has to be free. And if parents are very understanding, they will help the child. That will be real love. They will see that this is the only way that the child can reach his or her own destiny. So they will help the child to drop them, to go far away – that will be their love. And if the child respects them he will go far away, because by fulfilling his own destiny, he is fulfilling his parents’ destiny too. Parents go on living in you, mm? It is a continuity.

So use that insight, and be on your own. And it need not be that it will take many years to grow again. You have the whole mechanism of a grown-up, the experience, the knowledge. Physically you are grown up; psychologically you are five years old. So this child is not going to take many years. Within weeks you will see that the child is growing.

Suddenly one day you will see that your psychological age has come parallel with your physical age.

It can happen even in seconds. It depends on how intensely you understand the whole thing. It can happen right now, here. It is just a question of understanding. A sudden lightning, and within seconds a bridge can be crossed, the past can be bridged with the present. But there is no need to be in a hurry. Even if it takes weeks, there is no need to be in a hurry.

[A group member said that he was aware of much guilt connected with his leaving his wife and young son.

The groupleader commented that the man used the guilt to avoid situations.

Osho said that to feel guilty had nothing to do with being religious, and that guilt was nothing but an ego trip He said that priests have exploited guilt, and that they are cunning people. He said that the guilt presupposes that you are in control of what happens, but that you are not the doer if you do not have a crystallized self... ]

You are like driftwood. The wind blows that way, you drift that way. The wind blows this way, you go this way. The driftwood cannot say that it wanted to go south but it is going north, and it feels guilty.

This is exactly the case.

Whatsoever is being done is not because of you – circumstances have done it. Feel humble... Let tears come – but not in guilt, but in humbleness. I’m not saying feel happy – but feel helpless. That crying and those tears will wash, cleanse your heart. So drop the ego – and this can become a let-go.

If you become aware, things can change. In awareness you can never do things for which you can ever feel guilty. And in unawareness, how can you do anything for which you will not feel guilty? So the whole point hinges on awareness and unawareness .So become more aware and more humble.

If something happens that you cannot avoid, accept it in humbleness. Ask to be forgiven – pray and cry and weep – but don’t feel guilty. Guilt is the way of the ego, and this is the way the ego replaces itself.

For example, everybody has an image, a golden image of themselves as great saints, very beautiful people. Then suddenly you find yourself doing something that goes against the image. Now what to do? You feel guilty. You are saying that you don’t want it right now. You are saying that if it were.

in your capacity you would change it. Your image has toppled down in front of your own eyes. By feeling guilty, you are replacing it. You are saying that you may have been angry but you feel guilty, so look – you are not that bad. You are coming back to your old image, repolishing it. Again you will be in the same situation, with the ego enthroned, and you will do the same thing again and again.

People become angry, repent, become angry and again repent, become angry again – it is a vicious circle. Don’t repent, don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel pity for yourself. Just feel humble. Do you feel the difference? Otherwise, people start exaggerating their guilt. If you read Saint Augustine’s confessions you will see. He has not committed many sins but he exaggerates, because only a great sinner can become a great saint.

Rousseau has written his autobiography, and in it you can see that he creates his saintliness by creating sin and guilt. If you have never committed a sin, how can you become a saint? Sin has to be committed first – and not ordinary sin, great sin. Then you feel guilty, and then you feel good –

that makes you a great saint.

There is no need to be a saint, no need to be a sinner. I am here to make you something ordinary. I am not interested in making you saints. Enough of that nonsense. You would like to become a saint, but I am not interested at all.

If you go to a catholic priest, he will be very happy that you are becoming religious. Feeling guilty?

Perfectly good – confess! And you will come home feeling very good. Drop it!

[A group member says: I feel lonely in the group... I want to commit myself more, but I cannot...

there are walls or barriers.]

You try Encounter, and if it doesn’t work, book for Vipassana – the buddhist meditation method.

These are the only two possibilities.

Either one goes totally out and nothing remains inside – and that is liberating; or one keeps to the centre so totally that nothing goes out. That too is liberating. These two extremes are both liberating.

Being just in the middle is the problem because it is half/half. You put one step forward, one you pull back. You remain confused, in a limbo.

The whole point is to be total. It is not a question of whether you move with the group or alone. The relevant question is whether you do whatsoever you do totally.

So first do Encounter – that is moving with others in the group, coming out of the shell. Give it a total try, mm? Whatsoever you can do, do. Make all possible effort. If that doesn’t work, then try Vipassana. It is just the opposite – you have to be alone, there is no question of moving anywhere.

[A groupmember says: I’m really getting fed up with my head.]

Really? No! (laughter) If you are really fed up, nobody is telling you to keep it. Throw it!

... there is no need to even try. If you are really fed up, it drops on its own. But you are not really fed up yet. People go on making secret love affairs with their heads from the back door.

The whole meaning of all these groups is that you get fed up. Then suddenly, in a single moment, one drops the head. The head is not holding you. You are holding the head. You are clinging to the head. The head is not clinging to you.

So if you are fed up, there is no problem, no problem at all. Just see into it more and more. Have more and more clarity about this fed upness. Let it become more and more like a flame, and then in a sudden lightning, you are separated from the head, and the contact is lost.

It is going to happen...

[A sannyasin said that she was concerned about her relationship with her thirteen-year-old son...

Osho reassured her, saying that when she returned to Germany she would find the relationship changed, because she had herself changed... ]

Don’t try to hold, to possess any child. Just give your love, and don’t ask that it be returned –

particularly with a son or daughter. It is not like a relationship between a husband and wife or between lovers.

When a child is born, the mother loves him unconditionally. You cannot expect a child to love you, because he does not know what love is, he does not know who you are. He is just empty. If you love him, through your love he will learn what love is. He will learn through your love what a mother is.

But he will also learn one thing – that when love is given by the mother, there is no need to return it.

The child is so helpless, because he has nothing to give back. That becomes the basic thing between a mother and child. The child goes on expecting things from you, but the moment you expect something from him, he is angry. So never expect. Just give. If he returns love, that s good.

If he doesn’t – that too is good.

And this time, things will be different...

[A group participant says: I was feeling childish and feeling bad about it, but [the groupleader] told me to feel good.]

Mm, feel good about it. It is really beautiful to be a child again. If you understand the beauty of it, you would like to come back to it again and again every day.

Whenever there is time, move back into it. If you are alone in your room and your grown-upness and your efficiency and your knowledge are not needed, become a child again. It will be very very refreshing and rejuvenating.

That is the meaning of play – to become a child again. A person who is capable of play, keeps some type of freshness with him always. People who are incapable of play become almost dead, stiff, frozen, structured. So let it become a relaxation. Sitting in your room, become like a child again.

Sitting in the garden, start running like a child after butterflies. On the seashore collect pebbles, make houses of sand. Just be a child and you will feel refreshed. Your skin will be more glowing, your eyes clearer, your mind younger. You will feel as if you have been to the mountains. And this is simple, because this is your territory.

Remember one basic principle: that nothing ever disappears from you. Your child is still within you, as much alive as it ever was. Of course you have grown many layers upon it. It is just like an onion

– behind this layer is another layer, behind that layer, another. And the deeper you go, the fresher and more tender the layers. Your first layer is as you think yourself right now. Just behind it is your second layer – your yesterday. Behind that is your yesteryear. They are all available simultaneously, herenow.

So when you become a child, it does not mean that you are moving to the past. You are simply moving within yourself to a deeper layer. If you can cross all the layers and can reach to the centre, then there is no layer. Just simple emptiness – that is yourself, your reality. It is how you were when you were not born, before your birth.

So every day move back for some time. Whenever the world needs you as a grown-up, you can become grown-up again.

Become more flexible and fluid. Good... it has been good.

[A participant says: The group was wonderful, really incredible. I feel I’m getting in contact with the woman in me. I’m beginning to feel so much energy here, (indicating belly) and feeling.]

Many times you can make contact with something, and again and again you forget about it, and the contact is lost.

This time you have contacted your woman, your innermost core. Now make it a point that you remember it. Whenever you are alone, move to the same space. Touch your woman, play with her.

Cherish the very contact, the very bridge. Feel the energy in your belly, and feel yourself the woman.

Walking, talking, sitting – in many ways, in different situations, make the contact again and again.

By and by it will become a natural thing, and you need not remember.

Otherwise people come in contact with themselves, and then again forget, mm? – the world is too much. They move into ordinary things again, and the contact is lost. So you will remember that the contact was there, but you will not know how to renew it – you have lost the knack.

So before you lose the knack again, go again and again along the same way, so that the path is perfectly dean and clear-cut. After each group, whenever a group feels wonderful, the real work starts. The group cannot go on forever, but the feeling of wonder has to be kept alive, has to be kept burning.

[A group member who has been crippled since birth says that she is experiencing great changes with the release of energy. The group leader called it ’raw’ energy. The intensity of it is frightening her.]

It looks raw! Raw! Good – getting wild! (laughter from the group) That is the only way to be really alive.

Raw energy is pure energy. Raw energy means unmotivated energy – a sheer delight in energy.

Not that it has to be put to use – just children running around in sheer delight. You cannot ask why they are running – and if you do, it will look foolish. They are simply running and enjoying.

You may get a little afraid about it, mm? because society enforces patterns. It does not allow raw energy. It is afraid of it because raw energy can be very rebellious. But don’t be afraid. If you are afraid here, in this ashram, then....

[She answers: I just feel so uncomfortable.]

It is not uncomfortable. It is because you are trying to hold it that the discomfort arises. If you allow it and move with it, there is no discomfort. You will feel so beautiful and happy.

Energy only becomes uncomfortable if something is working against it. So you are in a dilemma, a duality. You want to do something, but you don’t do it because you have considerations – drop the considerations. And there is nothing to lose – so why be afraid? Cooperate with it. simply enjoy it!

CHAPTER 16

29 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asks about studying Tai Chi and acupunture.

Osho said they were both very

meditative.]

... both are joined together deep down. So if you learn both it will be good. If you know your own energy and its centring, it is very easy to feel another’s energy.

And in fact it is a knack – it is not a science. If you don’t have an inner feeling for it, you can learn the technique and you can be helpful, but it is just going to be so so... you are groping in the dark.

If you have felt some centring in yourself, have become aware of your own energy movements, your own meridians of energy, then Tai Chi will be of help. Then it will be very easy to feel another’s energy moving, to feel where the energy is blocked. Once you can feel that, it is very easy to help unblock it. There is no need to even go as far as acupuncture. Acupressure can help, mm? – just a small amount of pressure on a certain point. The exact point at where the meridian is broken and the pressure is discontinuous needs to be known. The whole phenomenon is of energy.

So it is good. You go!

[A member of the Encounter group says: I’ve always been out, and losing myself out there... for the first time I am beginning to go inside. It was amazing, an incredible group.]

Very good. Now continue to have that feeling of going in.

Make it a point to remember every day. Whenever you can find a place and a space to be silent, sit, relax the body, and just start going in. Come closer and closer to yourself, and go on forgetting the world... it is falling away. It has moved onto some other star and you are moving in a totally different dimension. The noise of the road will be there, but it will be on the periphery, and the distance between you and it will be tremendous.

Each day you have to catch the feeling again and again. Then it will become stronger and stronger, and any day the breakthrough is possible. The feeling is just hovering around trying to find the way to your interior, to your very core.... And feel it rather than thinking about it.

The posture of your body will be a certain way when you do it... your head will start falling forward.

A point may come when your head is touching the earth, you will be kneeling down. So allow it –

because that is the posture of the child in the womb. That is the posture of the innermost state of energy, mm? When you are touching your centre again, you will again take the posture of being in a womb. So put a pillow there and help it. You will be again like a small child, and all the learning and all the knowledge and experience will have been left behind. It has been good.

[A sannyasin says he feels alone, because he is very loving and other people are not.]

If you feel loving in your heart, you will never feel alone. Whether others love you or not is not the point. If you are full of love you will never feel alone, because love needs no response. If your love is not returned it’s okay – you are not waiting for it. You simply love, and you are happy in loving.

You ask that love be returned only when you are not loving. This is one of the basic things to understand. If others are not loving, that is their problem. Why make it yours?...

[The sannyasin describes a situation where he someone became angry with him because he had taken potato chips from him.]

Then something is wrong with you. Whosoever brings the problem has something wrong with him.

You interfered with the person – and if it was your authentic feeling to take a chip, it was his authentic feeling to beat you. He was responding authentically. He would have been a hypocrite if he had been feeling like hurting you, hitting you, but smiled at you. That would have been wrong....

[The sannyasin then says: It’s not that I knew I should ask permission. I was not aware.]

Then become more aware... and don’t try to teach people. Nobody is so humble that he can learn from you. Nor are you ready to learn from anybody. Everybody is a teacher....

If it is difficult for you, then you go away. But if you want to be here, you have to learn a few things.

Don’t interfere with people – and even love can become an interference. If somebody is passing and you go and hug him, he may not want to hug you, so then he will have to throw you off. It is not your decision only. He has to be asked whether he wants to be hugged or not.

You go and kiss a woman because you are very loving – and the woman will call the police. (laughter) You may say ’What is the point of asking permission?’ – you were not taking anything, but rather giving a kiss, so the woman should be grateful to you.

Never interfere in anybody else’s life. Move on your own. And if you feel loving, be loving. But love always thinks of the other, is always considerate of the other.

[The sannyasin says: When I see somebody dressed in orange I feel connected to him, because I think that he’s changed.]

No, but you have not changed – and you are dressed in orange. Have you changed?

[He answers: I’m trying.]

The other will also say that he is trying. Trying is not the point. Always remember that whenever you bring a complaint, it is you who is always somewhere in the wrong. The complainer is always wrong....

[The sannyasins says: I believe that there might be somebody good who sees that somebody else is bad – this is a fact.]

A good person never sees that way. And if you are interested in seeing people’s faults and this and that, then please go away. Don’t be worried about them, and don’t interfere with them. They will not tolerate you. You are taking a very wrong attitude.

If you want to be here you will have to learn many things. And drop teaching. Rather, start learning.

These are all tricks of the ego. These ’shoulds’ – that people who are in orange should be loving –

should be dropped by you. Who are you to decide for anybody?

... You are wasting time. Don’t interfere, and don’t take anybody’s things.

And you need many groups. That too – that you don’t have any problems and you don’t need groups

– is your ego. You need them because right now you have problems. But I am not saying to do them.

You decide for yourself.

If you can be happy here, then be here – and drop all these things. .

[The Vipassana group are present. The groupleader says: What should one do when people are getting very very tense?]

Just leave them. Nothing is to be done, because if you do anything it will become a repression. They have to watch and witness it, and not to suppress it, or be occupied in something else to avoid it.

[The assistant groupleader says: I’m amazed at human nature!]

Human nature is absurd. People go on somehow managing, and deep down much turmoil and neuroses of many sorts continue. People somehow manage a facade, a face – but deep down the madness continues.

But in such an intensive group – fifteen days of just sitting down and doing nothing – they cannot manage it. Their tricks drop, their structure doesn’t function. Their old routine is of no use. They simply fall out of their patterned ways of hiding. So things start surfacing – eccentricities will come up.

And if you watch, you will see that to think that man a rational being is patent nonsense... man is not. He is absolutely irrational. Other animals seem to be more rational. Though they don’t have any reason, they live a very rational life. You cannot find a buffalo eccentric. They are always following a certain natural way. Only man is irrational because he has to hide many things.

Once the structures don’t function, the eccentricities surface, bubble up – and the man himself is worried about what to do. He has not been aware of these things, so he tries to rationalise, to convince himself that this is nothing, just fun, and he is enjoying himself. But watch... and while you are watching, remember that the same is hidden behind you.

[A trainee leader asked: how to watch the breath, and yet be totally relaxed at the same time.... In the literature I’ve been reading on Vipassana, they use the word concentrate all the time, and I feel that’s thrown me off a bit.]

Don’t bother much about what books say. Books are almost always written by people who have not been meditating themselves. So they may be informative, but they don’t come from knowing.

Always remember that you are the decisive factor. Whatsoever you feel is good, is good. And finally you have to decide, finally you are the authority, because it is a question of feel. Listen to the feeling, and not too much to the reason. And feeling is almost always right. I say almost always, because sometimes you misunderstand thinking for feeling – otherwise it is absolutely right. Sometimes you think that you feel, and you become confused and deceived by the thinking.

So just think of these three things: if you feel relaxed with any method, then it is good. If you feel tense, then it is not good. If you feel happy with anything, then it is good. If you feel unhappy with it, then it is not good. If you feel silent, if you feel a calm, a coolness in you, then it is good. If you become heated, feverish, disturbed, then it is not good. So let these be the deciding factors.

Everybody has to come to his own meditation. All methods are just to help you to find your method.

And remember this – that your path is going to be a little different from everybody else’s path. You are different, and nobody else can decide what is good for you. That has been done, and it has corrupted the whole human mind.

So whatsoever you feel is good, is good. Be a hedonist!

[A groupmember says: I’ve just been sitting on tons of energy. I haven’t felt happy about it at all.]

... whenever you feel that tension is there, become as tense as possible. You have been trying to relax, and that is creating the whole trouble.

When a certain energy is blocked and you are trying to relax, you are going against it. Move with yourself.

[To the assistant leader with the zen stick] watch, and whenever he is becoming tense, go to him, and leave it to your heart – not your head – and wait. When he comes to a climax, then hit. But the hit has to happen – don’t decide when. Just keep your hand there – just as you do in automatic writing. You keep the pen in your hand, then the hand has a jerk and suddenly starts moving, writing.

Then you can watch your own hand writing – and you are not doing it.

The staff has to function exactly that way. Then you are not hitting. [You are] no more there. Then it is just an energy phenomenon. His energy is asking your energy, and the energy has a communication of its own.

[Another groupmember says he felt feverish.

The groupleader explains that the first group

concentrated on the breathing, but in this recent group the instructions were: to watch the rise and fall of the abdomen, and as soon as anything else starts happening to watch that until it stops, and then to go back to the breathing. And to be very relaxed.]

No, I think this way won’t work. You will have to go back to the first.

... because this way can work if it is a longer period, but ten days is not enough.

... Do exactly as you did the first group, because only that way will the intensity come in ten days.

... If something happens, then nobody feels tired, because that happening gives delight. Then one is not bothered about being tired, or the backbone being painful. If something has happened then these things are worthless. But if nothing happens, these are the only happenings, and it becomes too much.

So from tomorrow, follow as you did in the first group.

[Another sannyasin who did the group said that both pleasant and not so pleasant things happened for her.]

It has been good. Negative moments are there, mm? but even if you can achieve just a few peaks rarely, that’s very good.

Whatever peak experiences you have had in this group, try to catch hold of them from tomorrow.

The peaks that we touch are not outside. They are your inner treasures, so they are always available

– you just have to grope for them.

And always remember, don’t pay much attention to the negative. Always pay attention to the positive.

Even if you can get hold of one rose flower – enough. No need to count the thorns around it. Just think of the one rose flower, and let it become so intimate that it colours your whole being. Its fragrance surrounds you completely and totally. In that fragrance, thorns are forgotten.

So just find something... anything that turns you on. Looking at the sky or at the stars, suddenly you get to that space. Try it, and after fifteen days, tell me.

[A participant said at one point he felt a little click which happened a few times in the past for him: I feel that’s the closest that I’ve ever come to really going into something. Just suddenly the body feels different, and the mind doesn’t slow, but it’s a little freer to look at things.]

Continue sitting for at least one hour each day – just waiting for that moment. When I say waiting, I don’t mean expecting – no. If you expect, you become tense.

Just sit relaxedly, with a very slight idea around you that it might come. Let it be ’may’ – don’t make it a should, or that it has to come, or it must come. It may come. It is an unknown guest. Nobody can force it, nobody can command or demand. When it comes, it comes, but one can be ready for the guest. You can clean and decorate the house. Sometimes you can go to the door to see whether the guest has come or not. There is nothing else to do.

So make it a point just to sit and wait – doing nothing. Once it starts coming, your waiting, and you, will become more and more confident. Any moment it can be released. And that energy is always within you. Only a right tuning is needed. Up to now it has always happened as an accident.

Meditation always happens as an accident for the first time. The whole science of meditation has been developed out of accidental phenomena. Nobody can force it – but by and by you can start feeling the knack of it.

By and by you can start to even prepare for it, because you start feeling when it is going to happen.

You can watch what climate precedes it, what you were doing in that moment, what thoughts were passing, in what situation it happened. By and by you become acquainted with that situation. And it can be managed, but still you cannot force it. You sow the seeds and wait.

In the right season it will come. In the right season the sun will knock at the door of the seeds. In the right season the seeds will disappear, and the sprouts will come. So you can prepare the ground, you can do many things. But you cannot force the plant to come up, you cannot force it to have flowers.

You can wait, you can hope. You can care, you can love. You can pray – but when it happens, it happens. By and by it will become more and more of a certainty. A moment comes when you can just close your eyes, take a certain breath in a certain rhythm, and it is there. You have found the key.

It has been good.

CHAPTER 17

1 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Paravritti means turning in, moving towards oneself.

[The new sannyasin says she has been travelling through many countries and experiencing things.]

It is good. There is a time to experience many things. When one is young, one has to experience many things – both good and bad, the dark and the light.

But the real travelling starts when you start turning in. We can go on moving outside from one country to another, from one place to another, but finally one gets tired. One comes to know that everything is almost the same everywhere. And this constant travelling is not going to lead anywhere. It is good, it has something to give – a certain enrichment – and everybody needs it, but one should not be stuck there, mm? But soon you become aware that changing places outside is not going to help. Rather, the only thing that will help is to change the inner space.

There are two ways of wandering. One is moving from one town to another, one person to another, one food to another, one house to another. This is one way of travelling – very superficial. One can go on moving in the world and one will never come to a point where one can say that now, this is the goal and I have arrived. One never arrives. In the outside world there are only departures. You simply depart from one place – but you never arrive.

There is another way of travelling – from one state of mind to another, from one space to another –

inside. If you go on changing from one state of mind to another – deeper, more far out, more silent, more blissful – then one day suddenly one settles to one’s own centre of being – and that is the whole point of wandering

But it is good... one starts from the outside – there is no other way. But by and by one should go on making the circle smaller and smaller and smaller. So one day suddenly, the traveller himself is the destination... Now turn in... enough travelling outside!

And once you are in a new space within, the whole outside world changes. Then in the same places, you will see things that have never been seen before. In the same people you will have glimpses of the unknown. In the same food you will taste something of the divine. Once you change inside, everything outside also changes. Then very ordinary things – an ordinary flower – become tremendously valuable. Just an ordinary tree becomes almost sacred. And wherever you move, you bring your inner silence with you, and your blissfulness.

So now be here as long as you can, and move inwards.

[Previously Osho had spoken to a sannyasin about the need to be centred before venturing out into the world. Tonight he enlarged on that, saying that it was good to keep some sort of direction in mind...

Always remain open – but openness can be of two types. One can be open to all possibilities but is aware of one’s inner direction. The direction is known. For example, you have a feel for music – that direction is known. You are open to all possibilities but you know that your sense of inner direction is there. You feel where your fulfillment lies. Remain open, but remain perfectly aware of the inner sense of direction. Then many things will fall in line with you, and you will not be disturbed. You will be able to use all the opportunities available to help your inner direction. And the inner direction will become more and more clear, integrated This is one way of being open.

Another way of being open is this – that you don’t have any sense of inner direction, but you simply drift. Then something catches your attention and you go that way. Then something else, and you go that way. Then you become accidental – and that is not going to be fulfilling. An accidental man is the worst possible, mm? because he gathers bits and pieces from here and there. He has no inner direction, he is never integrated.

You go home, and on the plane you meet somebody who starts talking about poetry, and you start thinking of becoming a poet. By the time you have reached London, the man is gone – and the idea has gone. The taxi driver is interested in Sufism and you become interested in Sufism. Then you are staying in a hotel, and you meet a girl and fall in love. She is going to China, so you go to China.

(laughter) Then your whole life becomes zig-zag. You do many things; many things happen to you, but you are not there to be benefited.

Drifting is not being open. People have become afraid of drifting – that’s why they plan their future.

They plan their future and then they become closed. Both are wrong, because both are extremes.

One has a fixed idea and he doesn’t bother about whether the opportunities allow it or not, whether the time is right or not. He goes on insisting on his own idea, and then he is frustrated. He is constantly in fight because he has some idea that he has to fulfill. That creates tension. And he is not open, because he is afraid that then he would be vulnerable. Many things may happen, and his idea will be lost in the crowd. So he remains clenched, closed. He does not look here and there, because anything may become a distraction. So he just looks at his own idea and moves like an arrow – not looking anywhere, otherwise the target will be missed.

This type of person is not a person at all. He is almost like a thing, a mechanism, a zombie. He goes on planning for the future and missing the present. And the future is nothing but an outcome of the present. If you miss the present, you are going to miss the future also, because where is the future going to come from? This is the robot type of man that all the old societies have created, who is in fear of drifting.

Now the new generation all over the world have moved to the other extreme. They say that they want to remain open. That is a reaction. They don’t plan anything. In fact they are avoiding the responsibility of any direction. They say that they will live in the moment – so they become driftwood, not knowing where they are going, what they are doing. Today they are learning music. Next day they have forgotten all about it.

And music or poetry or dancing or meditation, are such deep subjects that they require your whole life. So a drifter can never be of any depth in anything. He will play the guitar for a few days, then forget all about it. Then the guitar is just a toy.

These two extremes have to be avoided. The old robot type is wrong. It makes you like a thing, dead, with no windows, closed completely, an imprisonment. The other type, the new type, makes you a drifter. You go on avoiding responsibilities and you call it openness. It is not openness; it is just trying not to take any responsibility for tomorrow. If you cannot take any commitment for tomorrow, you will again miss your today.

For example if you fall in love, and you tell the woman that this is just momentary, that this moment you love her, but you don’t know about tomorrow – immediately the love will lose depth. It will be a casual thing, superficial. There is no need to plan for lives together. There is no need to get married and become closed, no need. But if you love the woman this moment, out of this moment a sense of involvement arises. You would like to risk your whole life for it. Eventually it may not prove so, but that is not the point. It is not a planning for the future. It is part of the feeling of love that arises. You feel you want to be committed, to take responsibility. One remains humble, one knows that it may change. Knowing that, one is still committed. Then there is a sense of direction, and love can flow around this sense of direction. Around this commitment, love can become a home.

So remain open, but always keep alert about a sense of direction. Otherwise you will be in the marketplace – so many people selling so many things, and life is so short. If you don’t have a sense of direction you will simply become a wastage.

So don’t become a drifter and don’t become a zombie. Somewhere just in the middle is the balance.

Remain alert about what you would like to be finally, where you feel your fulfillment is going to come from. If you feel for music or meditation or anything whatsoever, then keep it as a centring point in you. Then whatsoever you learn through your openness goes on collecting around this centre, and you go on becoming more and more integrated, mm? Otherwise one becomes fragmentary.

Intensity is lost, and intensity is all.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve always had this fear of being touched. And all over my body there is pain. I can’t dance because of the pain. Osho suggests Rolfing will be helpful.]

Body and mind move together, but sometimes it happens that the mind gets ahead, is better than the body. Or sometimes it is otherwise – the mind is in a worse state than the body. When alignment breaks between the body and the mind, there is pain.

When people come to me their body and mind are functioning together – whatsoever their state.

If they are miserable, then the body is adjusted to that misery. If they are happy, then the body is adjusted to that happiness. When they start meditating, that adjustment becomes loose because the mind starts growing.

So your mind is getting better every day. In fact you have never been so well in the mind as you are now. But the body is adjusted to the old mind, and that mind is going, almost gone, so the body is at a loss. And the body has not much intelligence, mm? It is a mechanism and it is very slow. But by and by it follows. Rolfing will be helpful at this moment.

Rolfing is nothing but making the tissues loose. On a few points on the body the musculature takes a certain shape. If somebody has been worrying continuously, then the body takes a certain musculature which is adjusted to worrying. Then worries may disappear but the musculature remains and it will feel heavy, painful. Its function is no more there, and the body does not know how to dissolve it. If you don’t do anything about it, it will dissolve by and by but it will take a long time.

But why wait?

Through Rolfing it can be dissolved by pressure. The musculature disappears, and you will feel almost as new in the body as you are feeling in the mind. Then a new adjustment arises again – at a higher stage.

It is going to be painful, that’s certain. It will be really painful, mm? because the whole of the past is accumulated in the body, and the musculature has to be melted, reabsorbed in the body. That reabsorption is painful, but it pays. And after Rolfing you will feel very very good. So you just do it...

nothing to worry about.

[The Tathata group is present at darshan. The groupleader said that, following Osho’s advice, he had given his girlfriend more freedom, and consequently felt more free and relaxed himself – and this helped in the group.]

Each group will give you something, and the most basic thing is confidence.

When you start helping people, it is a delicate affair, because each man is such a mystery, an almost bottomless abyss. And there exists no map about man, and whatsoever you think about the other remains at the most an inference. One gropes in the dark.

But the more you work with people, the more you gather confidence that your hunches are working.

Once you become more confident, your functioning becomes more free.

This has to be understood – and it is one of the most basic things – that when you are totally confident, you are completely in a flow. Whenever you feel a certain hesitancy, the flow is abruptly broken. Or whenever you feel something contradictory in you, you are again frozen.

For example if you are talking, and you are only saying the truth, then there will be a flow. Then suddenly you lie. That lie becomes an interference. Now you are in a contradiction, because you know that the truth is something else and at the same time you are going against it, so you are moving in opposite directions together. Your flow is broken. Suddenly you will feel that you are not free.

Only a true person can be free. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying: Truth liberates. It makes you a flow of energy. And this is so on all layers and at all spheres. If you are helping somebody, and at the same time you are thinking that maybe you are wrong, immediately the flow is broken. Your hand is hesitant. A tremble has entered in you.

Once you feel confident, then there is no fear and no doubt. You simply move in a flow. And the more you move in a flow, the more the other is helped. The other is not helped by your techniques really. Techniques are just excuses. The other is helped by your alive flow. Your flow surrounds the other. It overwhelms the other. In your warmth, the other melts. With you, he becomes a flow. And that is the real thing. But it is going to be so – that in the beginning one hesitates.

By and by, the more helpful you are, the more you see the glow in the other’s eyes, the more you relax, the more you become one. Never do anything contradictory – that is the meaning of being authentic. And authenticity is a liberation.

[Osho went on to reiterate what he had said to the groupleader at his last darshan – that by giving others freedom, you yourself become free; that a free person liberates all he comes in contact with...

]

So remember this, because the old pattern does not go so soon. You can understand, but the old pattern is there and will go on watching from the comer. Whenever you are not aware, it can jump on you. So whenever you catch yourself in the pattern, immediately relax. Immediately do something to undo the effect of the old pattern. If one wants to be free, one has to make everybody free.

[A sannyasin says that she feels caught between old patterns and new – she is not so clinging...

and not yet centred in her aloneness.]

The problem is a very natural one – of mind moving from one extreme to another.

First you were thinking that fulfillment was in the other. Now you are thinking that fulfillment is in yourself. Both are wrong attitudes. Fulfillment is somewhere between you and the other. It is neither in you nor in the other. So you have become free of the other – now become free of yourself also.

Otherwise you will carry a loneliness. It is just the opposite extreme to the first.

One goes on clinging, and that clinging brings misery and frustration. One is fed up with it, so one moves in the opposite direction completely – to avoid it. Then one tries to remain alone, strictly alone, and then one carries a loneliness. Sooner or later that loneliness will force you to move to the opposite extreme again, because one cannot live alone.

One cannot live in clinging, and one cannot live in loneliness. But don’t be afraid, because there is a way in which you can relate to the other but you don’t cling, in which you remain yourself. That’s the whole art of love. These are easy alternatives that you have chosen – and everybody chooses them.

The way out is to remain alone but available to relations. Be in a relationship but never be clinging

– then for the first time one starts living. Clingingness brings misery, and loneliness brings misery, because if you are not relating, you shrink.

It is as if you have decided not to breathe because the air is polluted – but then you will die. The air is polluted but you have to find ways to continue breathing. If you are simply afraid because the air is polluted, you will die. So you have to find ways to breathe pure air, but breathing has to be continued.

Love is like breathing. If you stop it, something in you starts dying. Your warmth will disappear.

You will become like a closed house, and you will become afraid of opening the windows because someone may come in, and the clinging will start.

So there is no need to cling – that you have understood. There is no need to cling to the other, there is no need to cling to oneself.

Now understand the second step also. Breathe well, remain available, but from the very beginning remain alert that relationships are beautiful, but only up to the point where you can go on feeling your aloneness. You remain alone. You relate, but you remain alone. This becomes a rhythm –

relating and aloneness – inbreathing, outbreathing.

Every relationship is beautiful if clinging doesn’t start. If you don’t start clinging, you won’t help the other to cling to you. These things go together. So relax, and don’t shrink – remain available. And if somebody knocks at the door, don’t hide.

Drop the old mind. And don’t move to the opposite, because in the opposite, the old mind continues.

The opposite is the trick of the same mind. If you drop one thing, always remember to drop the opposite with it, otherwise from the back door the same mind enters.

But I know you will be able to do it.

[A sannyasin says that since her husband became a sannyasin he has been beating her physically, which she hates. She admits that this happens when she is being bitchy.]

No, but if you really hate this hitting, then don’t create the situation in which he becomes physical.

That’s the difference between a man and a woman. Every woman wants to have the freedom of being bitchy, but of not being beaten. But a man is very physical that way. When things get beyond him, he has to beat. I can say to him not to beat you, but then he will become false. And if anger is not allowed and you have to become false, then love also becomes false.

Say something about his love since he has become a sannyasin and beats you. Has his love changed in any way? Has it a wild quality in it, has it become deeper, anything?

[She answers: Yes, yes I think so. More open in his capacity to give love to me.]

Mm mm, it is bound to be so. Because those things – anger, love – they all grow together. If you stop one, the other stops also.

There are two ways of being related. One is being authentic – then one has to accept anger also, until it disappears on its own. If you don’t like that, then the whole relationship becomes false, phoney. Sooner or later, the other will become interested in another woman. All phoney relationships are unsatisfying because you cannot be free in them.

But this is the dilemma – if love is going to be real, then anger and everything comes in. If he loves you, then where, with whom, is he going to be angry? He cannot find a woman just to be angry with.

If he loves you, he will be angry with you also.

So these are the alternatives. Many people choose the convenient one – they become phoney.

They become aloof from each other, controlled. But then one suffers because love disappears.

Convenient, but at a great cost.

The other way is to allow everything – and be true and real. There will be passion – in love, and in passion also. Getting a fracture is better than being phoney. It is worth choosing. And by and by understanding will arise if you are real. His anger will disappear, your bitchiness will disappear, because you will be able to see that it is simply foolish.

If you are together to be happy, why create so many obstacles? But only when you are real, and you suffer reality, does understanding arise.

So I don’t see that anything is wrong. It is good – your relationship is becoming real. And the real is always dangerous and risky. Don’t try in any way to make it comfortable. Make it wild. If you feel like beating him, beat. And afterwards you will feel very good.

[Osho went on to say that deep down, each partner realises that they love, and are loved, otherwise they would not bother to beat each other.

The husband said that he felt, as Osho had suggested, that his wife liked being beaten. He said he felt much better after beating her, felt things were cleared between them... ]

Beating can be beautiful, if it is done in deep love. Nothing is wrong in it. The only thing is that love should be there.

If you hit somebody in deep love, that hit is a blessing. And if without love you hug somebody, that is a curse. So remember that love makes everything holy – everything unconditionally. If you love the woman, you are entitled sometimes to beat her. And if you love her, allow her sometimes to beat you.

If you don’t love, then it is a trespassing, then don’t hit her. You follow me? Because the hit has to be earned by love. If you don’t love her, then who are you to hit her? Simply leave her alone.

By and by quarrelling will disappear. You will understand that this same energy can be used in love.

You can dance together rather than hitting each other. With the same calories (laughter) you can dance and sing.

So when energy can be gold, why waste it in mud? Transform it into gold. And love is alchemical...

it transforms everything into a precious metal.

So after one month you both come. And for this one month be true and authentic.

[A sannyasin says: The group was very beautiful... some very. new experiences. But today I’m feeling more closed and more tense than before.]

No, it will go. It happens sometimes, because the group is in a way a very extraordinary situation.

When you come out of the group, that opportunity is gone and you are suddenly in the world – which won’t allow that type of opportunity. In fact it is against it. Suddenly one feels afraid and closed, but relax, and within two or three days you will be open again. Not as much as in the group – but you will become open.

And just remember that the openness has nothing to do with the group. It is your interior quality. It has nothing to do with the society. One can remain open wherever one is. One just has to learn how to remain open in a world which doesn’t allow openness.

It happens to many people – that they become open in the group and then they immediately close.

But if they become just very very slightly open, then the closing will not happen, because that much openness can be carried into the society, and there is no fear, mm?

You had become too open – and that’s why you immediately felt closed. But relax, and within two or three days, you will be open again.

CHAPTER 18

8 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

There was no darshan on March 8th.

Chapter 18 contains interviews with people about how they experienced groups.

CHAPTER 19

9 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, or blissful, and Subhuti is the name of one the chief disciples of Buddha. The literal meaning is, one who is well-known, world famous, mm?

[A sannyasin who is involved in a clothes design business in the West, said that she was afraid it would be a distraction now she was back in Poona.]

The distraction is not in anything outside you. It is in the mind. So if you avoid one situation, it will bubble up in some other situation. It is in you – so where can you go? So rather than escaping from situations, face them. Facing them, by and by, the fear of them dissolves.

Make it a rule: wherever you fear, go into it. Whenever you feel there is fear, then that is exactly the place to go – then fear drops. So don’t be worried.

[Another returning sannyasin said that while he was in the West he was not hanging on to Osho or meditation or anything: I felt a distinct change in me. In that way it was really wonderful.]

Mm mm, it has been so. Good.

If you cling, only then you lose. If you don’t cling, there is nothing to lose, there is nobody who can disturb you. Whatsoever happens, you remain unscratched, untouched.

That’s the whole secret, the very key. If you cling, you are getting into misery by yourself, and sooner or later you will be in trouble. You are sowing the seeds of trouble. No clinging and no trouble –

because nothing can be taken away from you. You don’t have anything in the first place.

That’s what sannyas is – remaining in such a state where there is nothing to lose, and one is not clinging to anything. So one cannot be frustrated because there is no expectation.

One cannot be forced to think about the past – there is no past. And one is not projecting for the future – there is none. One remains herenow.

It has been a good experience... continue floating in the same way, mm? If you feel in some moments like doing meditation, do it. But let that be your inner feeling – it is nothing to be enforced; don’t make it a discipline. If you have the urge, do it. But if even in the middle you feel the urge has gone, stop immediately, then and there. Not even for a single moment go against yourself. If you feel like being aware, be aware. If you feel that it is becoming a tension, drop it immediately. Float this way – just moment to moment, and let the decision come from your innermost core.

I know it is difficult not to do anything, but once you have known how not to do anything, you have known all. There is nothing else then. Doing is childish. Non-doing is great.

Meditation which comes by doing is nothing compared to the meditation which comes by non-doing.

Awareness that you can create is just superficial compared to the awareness that will come to you, happen to you, that will surface in your being.

[A sannyas couple were present. The wife said she was pregnant and wished to keep the child but her husband did not. She asked what was the best thing to do for both of them and the child.... ]

You meditate for six days, mm? and the evening of the sixteenth, see me. Then we will decide...

because the body may be ready for a child, and you may also like to have it, but whether you are really ready is another thing.

To be a mother is a totally different thing from giving birth to a child. To be a mother is a great responsibility and a great commitment. One should not be... hasty about it, mm?

It is very natural for the woman to want a child, very natural. Because the woman feels that only when she becomes a mother she has become creative. The desire is very deep-rooted in the mind.

For the man it is just the opposite. He would like to avoid the responsibility. Because to be a father is just a social institution... to be a mother is a natural phenomenon. So a man always thinks of responsibility, of the burden, economy, and this and that. The woman never thinks of these things.

Naturally, instinctively, she wants to be a mother. But the decision has to be taken very very carefully.

The moment you give birth to a child, you are giving birth to a world – of unknown potentialities, possibilities. You are, in a way, taking a great responsibility. It should be taken very meditatively, mm?

So for six days, you meditate. Drop your decision right now – because if you have a decision, meditation won’t help much. Just remain open and meditate – and whatsoever happens will be good, mm?

[A sannyasin said she didn’t like wearing her mala when it felt horrible to her.]

Let it feel horrible... because the whole effort is how to help the mind to drop. If you go on deciding by your mind, then it is never going to drop. The mala and orange are nothing but to help the mind to drop.

You leave it to me – I say wear the mala so you wear it. Listen more to me than to your own mind.

and your mind is more horrible than the mala.

[She says that she tried to drop her mind.]

I’m not saying to try. If you try you will be a failure. Be here a few days, and whatsoever I say, you do. You leave the decision to me – I make it so simple. Meditate, listen to me, be a sannyasin, move in orange and wear a mala.

The mind will continue for a few days, but don’t listen to it. Just say that it can go to Osho, and not to come to you.

... this moment it can happen. It has happened to so many people, why not to you? You don’t have the most horrible mind – I know many more people... You cannot be proud of your horrible mind –

there are many people who have greater horrible minds.

Just take it easy. There is no need to drop anything, no need to fight. The mind is going to be dropped, mm? I take it out. (Osho leant forward and put his right hand to her head as if to draw her mind out. The sannyasin laughs.)

You just forget all about it!

[A sannyasin said that Ma Vipassana who is seriously ill is his friend; he would like to do something but feels helpless.]

It is good to feel helpless... prayer arises out of helplessness. And that helplessness will help your ego to drop.

If you can do something in every situation then the ego never drops. You have to come to face certain situations where you are absolutely impotent. You would like to do something but you cannot do anything... it is simply impossible to do anything. Vipassana’s situation may be very very helpful to you.

Just see the helplessness of man... and all the nonsense that ego goes on thinking. Neither birth nor death are in our hands. Nothing is in our hands. Once you realise this, prayer arises.

Prayer is a cry, a deep cry, of helplessness. And prayer makes a person religious.

... it is not a question of Vipassana suffering for you... she is not suffering for you. But she has given you a chance, mm?

This is how things are... but man has created a facade of power. We try in many ways – our doctors, our medicine, our this and that... this is all a power trip. It gives a feeling that everything is in control

– and nothing is in control. It is just a mask. It is not only that you are feeling helpless – the doctor who is watching her, the doctor who is going to operate – he is also feeling helpless. He will not say, mm? because it is not good to say so. He will try to pretend that he is in power, in control, that he is doing whatsoever is needed. He will create a deception around himself. He is also helpless, he is also trembling inside.

Science has created a pretension, and it has helped the human ego so that man feels less helpless.

Prayer by and by has disappeared. And God feels very very far away.

In these moments when you suddenly become helpless and you cannot do anything, in that impotence, two possibilities open: either you become suicidal, or you can become prayerful.

So use this opportunity for prayer. Go and sit beside Vipassana and pray.

[The sannyasin answers: I don’t really know if I know how to pray, Osho.]

No, no, there is no need to know how. Helplessness will give you.... It is not a question of words.

Just sit helplessly by her side. And just feel your helplessness. Something will start arising. You may start bowing down to the earth, or you may start looking up at the sky. You may start saying something which you will be surprised that you can say. You will become like a small child – and what can a child do when he feels helpless, unhappy, suffers, and finds no way? The child cries for the father or mother. And that cry is tremendously meaningful. It will be tremendously meaningful for you, and for Vipassana too.

I am not saying that you have to use certain cliches, or you have to repeat some christian prayer or this and that. No, nothing – just what you can do when you feel helpless and lost. Let this opportunity be a great experience for you. Let prayer happen... let communication be there.

[The sannyasin says: I feel that I communicate with her on an astral level... but I think that this is just my imagination.]

Don’t be worried. Don’t doubt it – let it be imagination.

Imagination is a faculty, and it is more potent than reason. There are many things which can happen through imagination which can never happen through reason. But in the modern mind, the moment we say something is imagination it is already condemned. We think of it as if it is unreal.

Imagination is as real as anything else. It is more real than reason, because it is more primal.

Reason is just the latest arrival... just a child. Imagination is ancient. We share imagination with animals, with trees, with rocks. Reason we share with nobody. It is just a local thing – human.

So don’t be worried about it – let it be imagination. Imagination simply means that you are not thinking in language, but in pictures, that’s all. It is as real, more real in fact, than the verbal mind

– because it is more deep-rooted in your being than the verbal mind. The verbal mind is just a superficial layer. So don’t interfere with the imagination.

And it is not much of a question whether somebody survives or not. Because how long can one survive? We are fighting a losing battle. One day, one year, ten years – it doesn’t matter much.

These few months she has been here she has changed tremendously. If she dies there is not much of a problem. She has used this life. If she lives – good. If she dies I will not feel unhappy for her.

She has earned something – a certain integration – and she will be able to use it in her next life.

For me it is not a question of whether she lives or not. The whole question is whether she has earned some integration, some centring – and she has. She has been going well... she has grown much. I am happy, mm? I can say goodbye to her with happiness. There is no repentance that she missed something.

So you just be prayerful by her side... it has helped you.

CHAPTER 20

10 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says that sometimes she feels fear, and when she sees Osho during the lectures, her body begins trembling.]

That’s very good, mm? Fear is natural – because you are moving somewhere you have never moved before... a territory completely unknown to you. Not only unknown, but unconnected with all that you have known... uncharted, with no map. You have to depend only on my trust.

And the whole training of the mind is for doubt. Particularly the modern training, is basically of doubt.

The whole scientific structure depends on doubt, and the whole world-mind is being trained to be scientific. So everybody is ready to doubt – that comes easy because the training is there. Trust has become almost impossible. Once it was as easy as doubt is today. But a totally different mind was in existence, because the whole world-mind was trained for trust. Then doubt was impossible, and science was impossible.

So your whole training, your whole past, is unconnected with what you are doing – so fear is natural.

And there will be trembling whenever you come to me. And it is a good symbol, a good indication. If you are not trembling when you are with me, that means you are not sensitive. That means you are not feeling me. If you feel me you are going to be shaken. The more you will feel, the more you will become afraid. But in spite of the fear you have to come with me.

Nothing can be done about the fear. One has to go knowing it is here. You are afraid of the dark –

but what to do? One has to pass through the dark because the morning is possible only if you pass through the night. So in spite of the fear and the doubt and everything, in spite of all that, one loves and trusts and goes on.

Soon you will get accustomed to the new that is arising in you. Soon you will become more and more accustomed to me and my energy. I hen the trembling will start changing... it will have a rhythm.

Then you will not call it trembling. You will call it a vibration. It will not be just a trembling... it will have a music of its own. You will be thrilled by it.

It is as if somebody, unknown to the instrument, comes and starts playing on it – only vibrations, only sounds, but by and by one becomes accustomed to it – one learns how to play with it. One learns the art – and then music arises out of the same noise, the same sound. Now it is no more a discord; accord arises, a harmony.

In the beginning it is just a trembling. By and by you will learn how to play with it... how to enjoy it and delight in it. And it will become an inner music, an inner dance, mm?

So feel blessed... and feel happy. Everything is going well. Just go on meditating, and these things drop by themselves. Nothing to worry about, or pay much attention to – because if you pay attention and start fighting, you give them energy. Attention is food. So never pay attention to anything which is not worth anything. Even if you are against it, you feed it. Just by-pass it... indifferent, aloof.

Things are going well.

[A sannyasin says: I see nothing positive at the moment, but I want to be on the positive side. There are a lot of no’s in me.]

You do one thing – say yes to all those no’s.

You are creating a fight. Your mind is accustomed to saying no, and you desire that it should say yes

– so you are creating a conflict, mm? And you are becoming divided – and this division is not going to help.

Just desiring positivity is not of much use. Because the desire is coming out of no. The desire, the very desire to say yes, is rooted in the no.

So do one thing – at least don’t say no to no. Say yes. Accept the no-saying. Start your yea-saying from this. Let this be the beginning. The mind says no, you say yes – to whatsoever it says. It says Osho is wrong, you say yes.

And this is the way you will pull the very earth out from underneath the no. Don’t fight with the no.

What to do? The mind says no – and the mind is you. And you have trained it. These are the seeds you have sown, so you have to crop them. Accept them.

For seven days, accept all that the mind says, all its noise. Don’t try to be calm. Accept the noise...

and through that acceptance you will see a calmness arising, which will .not be opposite to your no.

If it is opposite it is going to create trouble for you.

Yes is needed – but not as opposite to no. Yes is needed in an absence of no... when there is no no, and yes arises. Then you are one, mm? So let the mind lead and you follow. And after seven days, you come back and tell me.

[The Vipassana group is present. The groupleader says: But the problem starts when you say

’relax’... they get restless.]

No, no, don’t say anything about relaxation. In fact relaxation is a by-product. The moment you say to people to relax, you are saying something that is impossible for them to do, and they cannot understand what you mean. They understand the word, but relaxation is not an action they can do It is just as if you say to somebody, ’Go to sleep!’ Now what is he going to do? He can close the eyes, he can pretend to go to sleep. But you say, ’Don’t pretend, really go to sleep!’ What do you suppose he can do?

So if you want him to go into sleep, just the opposite thing is to be done – tell him to go and have a run around the house. Let him get tired, and then come and lie down on the bed. Don’t talk about sleep – he will fall asleep!

Sleep is a by-product... it is not an activity. Language gives a wrong impression, because to sleep means to do something.

So concentration they can do because it is a tension. Tell them to concentrate and bring as much effort as they can – their whole energy. Then suddenly they will find that they are moving in the opposite dimension – of relaxation. Relaxation comes – tension has to be created. So you insist on tension.

They have to be told to make whatsoever effort they can... no stone is to be left unturned.

... because their restlessness is concentrated. They know what to do. Once you tell them to relax, they don’t know what to do. All their energy is there, and it makes them restless.

In the military they are doing all sorts of stupid things, mm? Just a parade every day for three hours

– and it is useless! (laughter) It is useless – but it helps. This is my experience – that people who are in the army are more relaxed, more calm than anyone else. Every day, a three, four hour parade and they are finished.

[A sannyasin said he felt very tranquil, but on the fourteenth day developed gastro-enteritis.

Osho suggested he continue one hour’s Vipassana meditation every day.... ]

Just sitting, try to catch the feeling that came to you on the twelfth day... the tranquillity... the silence.

Catch hold of it again and again so that soon, within a few days, you will be able to catch the thread of it.

Because all the experiences that happen are not really happenings – they are part of your mind.

You never lose them... they are always there. Touch the same spot again, and again the same experience.

It is not a question of gaining and losing something, mm? All the spaces that you have been in, and that you will be in, are always available. The tranquillity that you felt is not something that you had attained through the practice. No, the space has always been there. Through the practice you stumble upon it. Once you have known that it is there, things become easy.

All these methods are just... a groping. You grope, and sometimes you open a window.

Move in that space again, and within a few days you will have the knack of it. It is just a hunch, a knack. One day suddenly you will see that again the window is open. And without doing anything, more and more it will become available to you. It becomes so easy that with just the decision that you would like to open it, you close your eyes – and it is open.

It is not a question of twenty days or twenty years. If you have had one glimpse, that glimpse should be made a key. Use that key again and again. Bigger and better doors will be opening.

This is why in the East we call these spaces remembrances... you have simply forgotten, that’s all.

They are not new achievements, just remembrances. You have forgotten – and so much so that you cannot recognise them. But it is always a remembrance. God is a remembrance.

So from tomorrow morning, choose a time. And choose the peak time of your mind – because twenty-four hours are not the same. Everybody has a peak hour. So just watch... whenever you are feeling good, really good, and healthy and whole, these are the moments. It is almost a wheel.

There are people who are always feeling good in the morning, and by the afternoon they are not so good. And there are people who feel good in the evening, but for the whole day they are dull. And there are people who will become alive only at midnight.

So just watch for your peakest hour – and use that for this remembrance. That will be the easiest time to flow... ride on that and immediately move into that space. Never use the low hour – because there are low hours. Because then you will be moving against the current.

So every day you move in that space...

[A group member said: The breathing was just happening by itself, and there was no sort of fighting with it. And watching thoughts... just being on a different level to them.]

Very good. That’s the thing to remember now. That is the moment when a shift of consciousness happens. You suddenly realise that the breathing is happening on its own... you are not breathing –

you are being breathed.

That is the moment when suddenly you are no more the same person. You have become passive...

you are no more active. Then you function as a female energy, not as a male energy... the change from yang to yin.

Suddenly one realises that everything is happening. Because once you see that breathing is happening – you are not doing anything, you are nobody to do it, you are not needed at all, breathing is going on on its own – then your total attitude towards life is different in that moment. It is no more egoistic... that’s what surrender is. You function as a non-ego – and that is the only function that is worth remembering.

So you remember it again and again. Just sit silently and leave the breathing, as if you are not the doer. After a few moments you will suddenly have the glimpse again – and the breathing will take possession. And once you are possessed and you are breathed, then you are cleansed completely.

It has been good, tremendously good, mm? but don’t lose the track of it.

... You become a witness in that moment. Then one becomes just a watcher. The mind is doing both the things – it is talking to itself. Both the parties are part of the mind. Suddenly you are out of it... you are not involved. It is as if two people are talking and you are just there, unconcerned... that gives you a strange feeling – everything seems to be unreal, mm?

[A group member said: The vipassana made me aware of the chattering in my mind... and accepting myself more easily.]

Good... it has been good.

Accept yourself so deeply that even the feeling of acceptance disappears. Because the very feeling that you are accepting, has an inner rejection in U, mm? Some effort, some sort of subtle effort....

But it is natural in the beginning.

First one is trained to condemn oneself, to hate in fact.

The whole society lives on your

condemnation. The individual has to be condemned – only then he can be exploited. He has to be filled with so much guilt that he cannot become rebellious. He is to be almost crushed by his own guilt, so that he cannot assert his individuality... cannot become a soul. At the most he becomes an efficient mechanism in the society. That’s the trick, the conspiracy of the society against the individual.

So it is great to come to an understanding that you can accept. But this is not the end – this is just the middle of the process.

By and by accept yourself so deeply that the feeling of acceptance also evaporates. Then there is nobody to accept, and nobody to be accepted. Only you are. You understand? Even the division that you accept is no more there.

It will come...

CHAPTER 21

11 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said that during after the meditations she was shaking very much, and she felt really shattered.]

You must be trying to control it – that is wrong.

Fever can come because you create a contradiction in your being. The energy is arising, and you start controlling it. You are doing two opposite things together. You meditate and that creates energy

– and then you want to control it. That friction between these two opposite directions can crete fever.

So drop controlling it... rather move with it. Enjoy it, delight in it... it is something beautiful. People hanker for it, but whenever it starts working they become scared.

[She said it was like taking acid... ]

It will look like that – because every meditation creates an inner LSD. It is alchemical.

... Right now you simply move with the energy. You are changing but you are not allowing the change to happen – so how can you see the change?

You are afraid... you are scared of the change. That’s why you feel... you feel shattered. You are going to be demolished completely – only then the new will arise; only on your death. You as you are will disappear. So you will have to pass through a very shattering experience.

That is the death, the cross, and then is the resurrection of the new being. The new being is completely discontinuous with you... you simply give space for it.

[She asks: Does it happen little by little then?]

No, it will happen in a sudden moment. But you will get ready for it by and by.

It can happen right now, but if you get scared you won’t allow it. Your permission is needed – only then it can happen. God never interferes – remember that. When you invite, He comes. When you dose the door, He waits outside. He will not even knock because that may be an interference, a trespass.

The energy is arising – cooperate with it. Feel happy and grateful and move with it... don’t go in the opposite direction. Be completely mad with it. Then suddenly... it is gone. And you will feel after it quiet, calm, collected.

[A sannyasin refers to Ma Vipassana who is dying in hospital: I didn’t know if it was really any better to die like that here, or as a housewife in England somewhere... But when something happens – a shock, a crisis – there’s just doubt and fear inside.]

Mm mm... the only problem is that you go on expecting too much from yourself. You have dropped other expectations... now there is this new expectation of being understanding.

Why can’t one simply be as one is? If you are not understanding, you are not understanding. Why this constant effort to make something, become something, be something, which you are not?

The only understanding there is, is this: that one accepts oneself as one is. What else can you do?

This whole effort in the name of growth is nothing but an ego trip. You will get frustrated again and again. And in every crisis you will come to a point where you feel that nothing has happened. But why should anything happen in the first place?

The expectation that something has to happen is creating the whole trouble. Why should it happen?

And what is the point of expecting it? You will go on trying to make it happen, planning how to –

then you will be tense. And when it will not happen, you will create a false pretension that it has happened – because one cannot live in continuous misery. To hide that misery, one creates a mask of understanding. But again and again this mask is to be broken. Whenever a real problem arises, again you will see that you are standing naked, and the mask is not functioning.

So what I am insisting is – accept the situation you find that you are in. There is no way out of it.

That’s what understanding is – accepting the way you are. Not that you grow. Suddenly you see that there is no need for anything. Then all these situations can be helpful... they bring you back down to reality. A crisis is a blessing; it brings you back to earth again and again. Otherwise you start moving in your fantasy.

So it is not a question of Vipassana – it has nothing to do with her; it is your problem. Why do you think that a housewife in England is in some way inferior to you, mm?’

[She answers:... everybody says how incredible and how beautiful Vipassana must be feeling. I can say that too – but I don’t know it.]

No, there is no need to say anything. If others are saying, maybe they are right – maybe they are feeling that way. But there is no need for you to feel that way too. You are not like them. And there is no need for them to feel like you – so don’t think that they are pretending. They may be true. It is not a problem for them – it is a problem for you.

Just one thing has to be understood: that this is the way you are, and that you don’t understand.

Accept this non-understanding. You are fighting with it – that’s why you feel depressed. [That you are] ignorant, non-understanding, stupid, idiotic – accept it! Why do you want to be a wise woman or something like that?

Then the problem disappears – because it is created by a deep non-acceptance. Somehow you go on rejecting yourself in subtle ways. If I tell you, then you drop one way, but you create the same problem in some other way. Someday you will see.... You were saying that you don’t like your body – somehow you dropped it. Now from another angle you say that you don’t like your non-understanding. But somehow you want to become something, somebody. And whenever you feel your nobodiness, you feel frustrated. A nobodiness is... natural.

It is not a question of what you say about Vipassana – that is not the point at all. Everything you say about everybody is basically about you... and every situation is your situation. Whether Vipassana is in a beautiful space or not is not a problem to you – you have nothing to do with that. And how can you decide whether she is in a beautiful space or not? Only one thing is certain – that whatsoever space you are in, you go on creating trouble for yourself. You don t accept it... you don’t allow it to be beautiful. Somehow you condemn it – a suicidal tendency.

So wherever you are, you are going to be yourself – whether a housewife in England or a sannyasin in Poona makes no difference. Wherever you are, you are going to be yourself. Places cannot make any difference – they are irrelevant factors.

My whole effort is, that wherever you are, if you accept yourself, you will be happy. If you reject yourself, then wherever you are you will be in misery... and misery is your creation.

So stop fighting with yourself. Just see that it is pointless. If you don’t understand, you don’t. What can be done? Accept it – and then the problem disappears.

That is the point where growth starts – through acceptance, not struggle. It is not an effort to become something. It is a relaxation into whatever you are. Then you will not feel depressed; you may feel helpless, but not depressed. And helplessness is a beautiful feeling, because all prayer arises out of helplessness.

Helplessness is a beautiful feeling, because it is a non-ego state. You will feel helpless... you cannot do anything. Somebody is dying, and you loved the person – and you cannot do anything.

Tremendously helpless, impotent – yet this is beautiful. You understand that the whole ego is nonsense – it is of no use. You cannot make anything out of it... you cannot even help a person who is dying. So what else can you do?

It becomes a depression if you think in terms of ego. Then you would like to become strong, more understanding, more powerful, so that next time anybody is in trouble and you feel hurt, you can help him. That’s what you are doing. Then you feel depressed that you have not grown yet.

If you feel helpless, simply bow down in that deep helplessness. You sit by the side of Vipassana and pray that ’I am helpless, and nothing can be done’. And in that helplessness, you will see not only yourself as helpless, but that the whole of humanity is helpless. In that helplessness you will see that all egos are false. Suddenly the ego becomes absolutely irrelevant. And in that humbleness, you disappear. Something else arises – a prayer. Nothing more can be done. Whenever somebody is in trouble, you pray – that’s all. But people like to do something rather than pray, because prayer means helplessness.

[She replies: I’ve always prayed... but now I don’t know who’s there to pray to.]

Again, mm? your prayer must be a trick to do something. You pray – for some end. You pray and you will see whether it is working or not. Then it is not prayer... it is again a method. If everything is failing, one prays to God, and thinks that now prayer should do something. And when too it does nothing, you become even more depressed. You don’t know who to pray to, and what to say, and what not to say. That is not the point.

Prayer is an end in itself. It is just a cry of humbleness, a deep cry of helplessness. Not that you pray to somebody – there may be nobody – but you simply feel helpless like a child. The child starts calling for the mummy or the dad. They may not be anywhere... they may not exist. But that is not the point. The child starts crying – and that crying is cleansing.

It is not that Vipassana is going to be helped. My whole point is totally different. You are going to be helped. And not as an end result of it, but just by praying you will feel cleansed. You will again feel settled, undisturbed. You will be able to accept more, you will become more open. Even death becomes okay.

People pray – that too is a technique for them; part of their egoistic effort. I’m not talking about that kind of prayer – but the prayer that arises out of a situation where you feel you cannot do anything.

Not that something will happen out of it – but you will be transformed. You will not feel that something is lacking. You will feel a fulfillment. You will feel a certain new calmness that has never been there.

And it always happens near death, because death is the most crucial moment.

Whenever you love somebody – a friend – and he is dying, a great opportunity opens for you...

because this moment will throw you into complete helplessness. And if you can pray – I don’t mean that you verbalise, or say something – if you can simply cry in helplessness and tears come, you will be cleansed. It will be a purification. You will come out of it younger, fresher, new.

So don’t make it a depression, because that is not going to do anything. If you can enjoy it, you enjoy it, mm? and there is no problem. But if you are depressed, it will not be of any use.... It is just a sheer wastage. Death should not be wasted that way.

There will be so many sannyasins who will be going by and by... they have to go. (a gentle laugh) So it is a training. Vipassana is a door – now other sannyasins will also follow. So this crisis will be coming again and again – because nobody is going to be here forever. So learn from it. It is a great discipline to watch death.

And she is really dying in a very very meaningful way, mm? She is dying the way I would like her to die. She is giving time to everybody to think; to go again and again, and find death is there. She will be hanging between death and life and... you will all be hanging between death and life with her.

She is really doing her very best. What more can she do for you? So use this opportunity.

And the day she dies – she will die some day – make it a celebration. First be purified by her death.

In fact in her death, try to learn how to die. In her death let your death also happen. Make it an opportunity to move and see what death is... so you have some taste of it... some flavour of it. And when she dies, all the sannyasins should make it a celebration... dance, sing... be ecstatic.

Death should be welcomed... it is one of the greatest events in life. There are only three great events in life: birth, love, and death. So birth has already happened – cannot do anything about it. Love is very exceptional... happens to very few people, and you cannot know anything about it. Death happens to all, and you cannot avoid it, mm? – that is the only certainty. So accept it, rejoice in it, delight in it.

But before she dies, Vipassana is giving you an opportunity to be cleansed and pure and meditative.

So when she leaves the body, you can all delight in that phenomenon, mm? I would like you all to go dancing around her body on the fire, mm? till she is reduced to ashes. Go on dancing ecstatically!

You may never attain to that deep meditation again.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group are present. One group member says: I am understanding more and more things, but every time I understand something, it doesn’t do any good. I don’t understand what point understanding has.]

First thing to be understood is that understanding is not a static thing... it is a dynamic energy.

People think in terms of understanding being a static thing – that once you have attained it, you have attained for always.

Understanding is not like that. It is a constantly flowing river. It is not that you attain it once and forever and then you are finished with it; then there is no need to worry about it, and whenever you want to use it you can, because it is always there. No. It has to be attained every moment again and again. It is just like breathing.

It is not that you have taken one breath, so now there is no need to breathe again. You have to breathe again and again every moment. It is a life-process – a process, not a thing. Understanding cannot be possessed. You have to create it every moment – it is a creative process.

So this happens in a group – you attain to some insight, and then you are very happy that you have understood, mm? Then you go into the market, and again you have lost it, again you are miserable. If you really want to be a man of understanding, you have to go on creating it continuously – otherwise it will be a dead thing.

[The sannyasin says: It seems like I keep getting the message, but I don’t see it clearly.]

That’s what understanding means – to see clearly, (a chuckle) whatsoever is the message. If you feel that you need not understand each moment – perfectly good. Who else should decide it?

Then this is your understanding – that sometimes you need it, and sometimes you don’t. It is your understanding that there are moments that it becomes heavy on you – then no need to be heavy; put it aside. There are moments when you want to be foolish – be foolish.

But what I am saying is that if you become foolish because of the understanding that wisdom becomes a burden for you, then you are following understanding. Understand me? Understanding continues. Now you are understandingly foolish, now you are understandingly on a holiday. Now you know that understanding becomes a tension, so you go into the marketplace and you get lost ut this is your understanding. Understanding is such a vast phenomenon that it can comprehend its opposite.

So there is no problem. But if you enjoy problems, you can create them. And I am not condemning it – that there is something wrong. I am the last person to condemn anything.

[The sannyasin says: I get the feeling that I use my understanding to hold on to things.]

It is not in fact understanding. What you are doing is, you are afraid of the unknown – so you want it to be made, reduced, known. If you encounter anything that you feel is unknown, you feel insecure with it, afraid, scared. You want to figure it out so that it becomes familiar. Once it is familiar and known, you are not worried – then you can tackle it. You want to categorise, label things... this is this and that is that, mm? Once you have labelled things you are at home. You feel now there is no danger, no stranger. You know everybody’s name, everybody’s religion, everybody’s country –

finished! You have a complete file. But this file is not reality.

And if you know somebody’s name, that does not mean that you know him. If you know somebody’s religion and country, that does not mean that you know him. You may know that he is English, speaks English... is a doctor, or this and that – but this is not knowing him.

In fact this is trying to avoid the unknown in that person. You are creating a front from where you can relate. You don’t want to relate to a man who is unknown, so you call him a doctor or an engineer.

Now it is manageable... you know what an engineer is. But a man... nobody knows what a man is.

This is not understanding. In fact this is a trick of the fear.

Whenever he comes across a man who says that he is an Englishman, is a doctor, that his name is this and that, that he is a Christian or whatever, a man of understanding will put aside all these labels. Labels are useless. How can a man be labelled? And how can reality be confined to words?

It is so vast... so immense.

So you put aside all the labels, and you look inside the man. You forget that he is English, you forget that he is German; you forget that he is a doctor or an engineer. You simply look into the reality of that which is there. You look into the fact... and that penetration into the fact is understanding.

And that will never burden you – because to come to such a contact with a person is a non-ending contact. The person will always remain new.

Reality is so vast, so multifaceted, that the more you know, the more remains to be known.

Understanding is non-ending. It is not knowledge. Knowledge is limited, of the mind. Understanding is of the heart. Then you feel the reality... you touch the reality. You forget all words about it, all theories. Then you are never burdened. You cannot say that now I have it in my hands like an alive thing, crystal-clear. No.

Lao Tzu says that ’Everybody seems to be clear.

Only I am muddle-headed’.

A man of

understanding is muddle-headed because he looks so deeply that he cannot figure out, mm?

People always manage to find out immediately who is who. Otherwise everybody is such a strange phenomenon – how can you figure it out?

So live according to your own feelings. And sometimes if you feel that understanding.... I have not known that understanding can become a burden – knowledge becomes a burden... so you must be misunderstanding somewhere. But if this is your understanding I say perfectly good, mm? Follow your understanding.

[Another sannyasin says: I’ve a lot to say but it’s all stuff that I’ve said before. And when I say it, nothing seems to happen to it.]

This time keep quiet, and let us see if something happens! Who knows – maybe it will happen.

That’s good... that’s understanding, mm? If you can see that you go on repeating your questions, the same questions.... Even if you can understand this – that you go on repeating your habits and the same questions – then something is on the way. Something is happening... you are no more the same.

Through intellect, nothing ever happens. But once you understand this, then by and by you shift from intellect and intellectual questions, and this and that, and you start. Living a more ordinary reality. Things start happening – they are always happening there.

It is the head which goes on functioning as a buffer. It doesn’t allow you to come in contact with reality. Everything is happening, but hidden behind your head, cushioned, comfortable, it seems nothing has happened.

Good! This time be quiet, mm?

[A sannyasin said that much energy was arising through the groups and the meditations, and that his skin had begun to erupt.]

It is nothing to worry about. When the mind starts throwing something out, particularly negative emotions, the body also correspondingly releases its negativities – because body and mind exist parallel, exactly parallel.

If you are suppressing anger, the body is also suppressing some energy parallel to it. So every emotion has some counterpart in the body. So when mind catharsis goes through the process, the body will also go through catharsis, and it will release many things, and something painful also. But it is good.

CHAPTER 22

12 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Vipassana’s body died this afternoon. Most of this chapter contains a description of the death and sannyasin’s reactions to it. Then follows a description of the celebration and Osho’s discourse about her death.]

I would like to read you a few lines from Huub Oosterhuis...

The man who wants to live the life of a god on earth must go the way of every seed and die before he has rebirth.

For he must understand what going this way implies – to share the life and destiny of everything that lives and dies.

And like the smallest seed exposed to the sun and rain he has to die in wind and storm before he comes to life again.

I know your hearts are heavy, sad... that’s natural. But I would like also to help you to go a little beyond the natural. Because these moments are rare. In these moments you can sink very deep.

You can also soar very high. The same energy that can become a sinking phenomenon, can become a soaring phenomenon also. The energy is the same. It depends on how you use it, how you transform it. A few basic things I would like to tell you.

First – happiness and sadness are not two things, but two aspects of the same energy. Hence happiness can become sadness; sadness can become happiness. In fact every day you come across times when you suddenly find that your happiness is turning into unhappiness. If you watch, you will be able to see that the wheel goes on moving from one polarity to another.

Whenever somebody dies – somebody you have known, loved, lived with, somebody who has become a part of your being – something in you also dies.

Vipassana had become a part of this commune, of this family. She was totally surrendered to me.

Her devotion was complete. Of course you will miss her. A vacuum will be felt. That’s natural. But the same vacuum can be converted into a door. And death is a door to God.

Death is the only phenomenon left which is not yet corrupted by man. Otherwise man has corrupted everything, polluted everything. Only death still remains virgin, uncorrupted... untouched by the hands of man. Man would like to corrupt it also, but he cannot hold it, cannot possess it. It is so elusive. It remains unknowable – and man remains at a loss as to what to do with death. He cannot understand it. He cannot make a science out of it. That’s why death is still uncorrupted. And that is the only thing left now in the world.

Use these moments.

When suddenly death enters into your consciousness, your whole life feels meaningless. It is meaningless. Death reveals a truth. When suddenly you come across death, the very earth underneath you slips away. Suddenly you become aware that this death also implies your death.

Every death is everybody’s death.

Never send a man to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

In death we are all equal. In life we may be different, separate. individuals. In death, all individuality, all separation disappears. Death reveals a fact about your life – that whatsoever you have been thinking as very concrete, real, is very filmy. It is dream stuff. It can be taken away from you any moment. So don’t be too much concerned with it... remain a little aloof.

This is not your home – at the most an overnight stay. As Vipassana is gone, everybody has to leave. A caravanserai – you stay for the night, and by the morning you are gone. Everybody is standing in the same line, in the same queue. So don’t feel sorry for Vipassana. Don’t feel sad for her If you at all want to be alert, aware, then be aware that your life – whatsoever you mean by it –

is just a dream. Any moment it will be broken.

The life that you have been thinking of as true life is not true life. Death brings this truth home. It hammers deeply into your heart. That’s why it hurts. It is not Vipassana’s death that hurts you. It is something else... it is your own death. It is the awareness that life is not worthwhile. And how much we get involved in it, how much we get identified with it. And how much we are ready to pay for it –

and it is not more than a dream.

Remember this... then you are using this situation for a tremendous awareness. Your whole life can be transformed – and then you will be grateful to Vipassana. And that will be a true respect for her.

And when I say don’t feel sorry for Vipassana, I mean it. She has done well, tremendously well. She has died as one should die.

She accepted death. That is one of the most difficult things to do. Only if you are in deep meditation is that possible, otherwise not. Because the whole mind, the whole human mind, has been trained against death. We have been taught for centuries that death is against life... that death is the enemy of life... that death is the end of life.

Of course we are scared and cannot relax; cannot be in a let go. And if you cannot be in a let-go with death, you will remain tense in your life – because death is not separate from life. It is not the end of life. Rather, on the contrary, it is the very crescendo... it is the very climax.

And if you are afraid of the climax, naturally you will be unable, you will not be able in any way, to relax in life also, because everywhere in life, death will be felt to be hidden. You will be frightened.

People who are afraid of death cannot relax in sleep, because sleep is also a very small death that comes every day. People who are afraid of death are afraid of love also, because love is a death.

People who are afraid of death become afraid of all orgasmic experiences, because in each orgasm the ego dies. One who is afraid of death will be afraid of everything. He will miss everything.

She relaxed. She died as I wanted her to die... in a deep let-go. She accepted death. She was not in any conflict... she was not struggling. And this is the criterion – that you have come to know something tremendously beautiful within yourself which is beyond death. One can relax in death only when one has come to feel something which is deathless.

Those few days she was in hospital were days of suffering and sadness for you, but not for her.

I have been continuously watching her. I have been in contact with her continuously. She was relaxing.

She has gone into death without any struggle, without any fight on her part. Once you die that way then only one more birth is possible – not more than that. She will be born once more, that’s all.

And then the wheel of life and death is finished for her.

You be happy for her – don’t feel sorry for her. She has attained to something very beautiful... you should feel jealous. (laughter) And then you will be able to give her a good farewell.

Remember, not only you are here – she is also here. I would like to tell a joke for her. It is not for you. (laughter)

”During a seance the medium was offering to bring people back from the other world. Among those present was a nine-year-old boy. ’I want to talk to Grandpa,’ he said.

’You be quiet,’ said the medium, annoyed.

’But I want to talk to Grandpa,’ the boy insisted.

’Alright, little boy,’ the medium said, and made a few hocus-pocus passes. ’Here he is.’

’Grandpa,’ said the little boy, ’what are you doing here? You ain’t dead yet?”’

That I would like to say to Vipassana – ’What are you doing here, Vipassana? You aren’t dead yet!’

In a way, nobody ever dies. In a way, every moment everybody is dying. So when you go to give her the send-off, give the send-off as one gives to somebody who is departing on a long journey. Not to a dead person – to an alive person. Let this be a send-off of dancing, celebration, festivity. She was a musician and a dancer – and she would love it.

Dance when you go to give her the send-off this night. When fire starts consuming her body, dance as much as you can around her funeral pyre. Let your whole energy become a dance. Dance to orgasm... forget yourself completely. And give this send-off for her as if she is alive. She is alive .

and if you really dance, many of you will feel her alive presence. A few of you, if you really celebrate the moment, will be able to see, actually be able to see her.

So don’t be sad – otherwise you will miss. Because when you are sad and gloomy and depressed, your eyes lose perceptivity. When you are happy and bubbling with some unknown joy, then your eyes are clear; then they have a clarity. And for this moment, deep clarity is needed, so that you can see the body burning on the funeral pyre, and you can also see the spirit moving away... farther away... to the other shore.

If you dance, and happily, gracefully, sing .... It will be difficult I know – but not as difficult as you think. Once you do it, by and by you will feel that it comes easy. The same energy that becomes gloom starts moving, starts flowing, and becomes a dance. In the beginning you may feel a little hard, because you have completely forgotten how to dance. You have forgotten how to dance in life, so how to dance in death? I understand.

But once you start, the energy starts melting, and soon you will see you are dancing. And the sadness has disappeared, and your eyes are glistening with a new light... and you will be able to realise something. I am giving you a particular meditation for this night.

Vipassana has left – but don’t miss this opportunity. Death opens a door of the unknown. She will be moving into the unknown. You can also have a glimpse. The door will open for her, but you can have a glimpse of the door, and her movement into the unknown. So don’t be sorry there. Don’t be sad. If you want to be sad, then don’t go there, because your sadness will be a disturbance.

Go there dancing, happy, singing! And dance so totally that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. All of my sannyasins – dance round the fire, and your orange, your fire colour, will become flames. And you are going to have a tremendous experience, a royal feast.

This is the way to give a send-off to a friend. And if you are happy, you help the other person to move easily into the unknown. If you are sad, it becomes difficult for the other to move away. Your sadness becomes heavy on the other person. It becomes like a rock, and hangs around the neck of the other.

Be happy! And let the other person also feel that she is remembered, that she is loved, that she is accepted... and that she is leaving a happiness behind her, a gladness behind her. In that moment it is easier for the other to move; very easy to move. Then there is no repentance, and one doesn’t want to cling.

All have to go – man, woman, all. In India, women are not allowed, but I would like everybody to go.

Why should women be prohibited from a beautiful and great experience? Death is for all.

Even small sannyasins, kids, if they want to go, take them with you. Let them also face the truths.

Let them also experience. Let them also start thinking along the line that even death is not bad, that even death is beautiful – so that they can accept.

Unless you accept death, you remain half, you remain part, you remain lopsided. When you accept death also, you become balanced. Then all is accepted – the day and the night, the summer and the winter, both the light and darkness.

When both are accepted, both the polarities of life, you gain balance. You become tranquil...

you become whole. And remember always, my teaching is not for perfection. My teaching is for wholeness. And let me tell you the difference.

A man who is after perfection always remains partial. He wants to become a good man – at the cost of whatsoever he calls bad. Then he wants to choose light against darkness. Then he has a choice – he is not choiceless. He divides life, and naturally he is divided by his own division. Then he becomes a part... never the whole. He is never total. He can attain a few moments of happiness, but his happiness will never become blissfulness. His happiness will always carry sadness around it.

That which is not accepted always goes on hanging around you. That which is not accepted becomes part of your unconscious. If you say that you are going to be a good man, only a saint, a holy man – then all that you are denying will become part of the basement of your unconscious.

And it will be there, ready to take revenge.

Hence the division of the conscious and the unconscious. If man is whole, there is no division of conscious and unconscious – no division at all. He is simply one – one piece. He has not denied anything. He has not rejected anything. He has not chosen anything. He has remained choiceless.

He has accepted whatsoever life has given – the day as much as the night... and both are needed.

Wholeness is holiness for me. All other sorts of holiness are sorts of illnesses, neurotic, because they are lopsided. One part goes on living at the cost of another. It is as if one of your hands becomes very powerful, and the other hand becomes very weak – you cannot be healthy. It is as if the upper part of the body becomes very big and the lower remains very small. You cannot be beautiful. You lose harmony. You lose accord. You become a constant discord, an anxiety, in anguish. Wholeness....

And if you think of wholeness, then death has to be given its due. Life is beautiful; death is as beautiful as life. Life has its blessings; death has its own blessings. Much flowers in life; but much flowers in death also... and something of that has flowered in Vipassana.

Go there all – men, women, children – and let death also be a festivity, a celebration. I would like you to not only teach how to live – I would like you to also teach how to die. If you can give a beautiful farewell to Vipassana, something deep within yourself about death will settle. You will start accepting it. And you will know deep down in your heart that death is also beautiful.

Remember, all that God gives you has to be taken in deep gratefulness – even death. Only then you become religious. A grateful acceptance of all, unconditional acceptance of all. So this night I send you on a pilgrimage. Death is one of the holiest of holies. And uncorrupted by man, yet virgin. Don’t miss this opportunity.

And Vipassana’s death has been a blessing to her. Very few people die that way today. People have completely forgotten how to live, and they have completely forgotten how to die. They don’t know anything. Their life is ugly – their death is ugly.

She has died very meditatively. Just before she entered the hospital she had completed a Vipassana course – a course in deep buddhist meditation. She had come to see me just before she entered hospital. I had asked her how she had been feeling after the Vipassana meditation. She wanted to say something, but could not. Something deep has happened to her – and it is difficult to say anything when something deep happens to you.

Just the other day the Vipassana leader, Paritosh, told me that she had come twice to him also, while doing the meditation course. She wanted to say something. Twice she tried, but she couldn’t say anything – and then she left. Something was happening that was beyond words. She has chosen a right moment to die... she was very clever. (a ripple of quiet laughter) One has to die. But she has chosen a very right moment – immediately after she completed her Vipassana course; actually after she had earned the right to be called Vipassana. I had given her the name knowing that this is going to be her path. She has chosen a right moment to leave the world.

Go happily... with deep prayer. If you cry, cry – but cry with happiness. If tears come, let them, but let them be tears of prayer, love, gratitude. Let them be tears of celebration.

Tears are not necessarily of sadness, remember. Tears have nothing to do with sadness. They come only when something overpowers you, overwhelms you. Maybe it is happiness, maybe it is sadness. Whenever something is so much that you cannot contain it, it starts flowing through the tears. Tears are just symbolic of something overflowing. So if you want to cry, cry, but let them have the quality of a song. If tears come, let them flow, but let them have the quality of a dance.

The hindu way of burning the body is very significant. It is significant for the soul that has departed, because the soul can see the body being burned, reduced to ashes. It helps detachment. It gives a last shattering, a last hammering shock – because when a person dies, it takes a few hours for him to recognise that he is dead. And if the body is buried underground – as for Christians and Mohammedans – then it takes many days for the person to recognise that he is dead. With the hindu way of burning, immediately it becomes a realisation that the body has been left.

Vipassana is going to be there. It is good for her that she can see her body being burned, and turned dust unto dust. It is good for her. It is good for-you because the same is going to happen to your body also. Let it be a great meditation.

Now I will not delay you any more. She has to go long... beyond the stars. For ten minutes sit in silence with me, and then you go ....

Life is beautiful... has its own blessings. Death has its blessings too. Much flowers in life, but much flowers in death also... and something of that has flowered in Vipassana.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22