The Passion for the Impossible

Talks given from 21/8/76 to 18/9/76

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

21 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: When I’m in London working, I am very involved in my work and I feel how could I possibly leave it? So I’m really finding things difficult.]

Your work is good. You are doing good work there, but your own growth is far more important than your work. It is good work; if you continue, there is nothing wrong in it. But for your own growth, if you can stay a little longer, it will be helpful. And it will be helpful for the work also in the end, because you can help people only to the extent you yourself can go – never beyond it. You can take people only so far. How can you take them beyond you? That’s impossible.

So if you grow, your work also grows with you. Your help becomes deeper, goes to the very root of problems, and does not only solve other people’s problems, but gives them a new direction, a new meaning. It is one thing to solve people’s problems. Then you help them to become adjusted again.

You make them normal again. You make them capable of being in the work.

But to help them to grow is totally different. In fact to help them to grow is to make them abnormal.

To help them to grow means to make them rebellious. To help them means to take them beyond the society, beyond the rotten structure. To help them means to give them the hope for the impossible.

They live surrounded by the impossible. They never think of the impossible.

God is the impossible. Religion itself is nothing but a passion for the impossible, the passion for the impossible.

So if a person only lives with the possible, he lives lukewarm. He lives only for the name’s sake. Yes, he may be a good citizen, a healthy person, doing his job, not creating any trouble for his family or the society; he may not be a mischief-maker, may not be a troublesome individual, may be perfectly adjusted – but what is the point? One simply lives and dies and never knows anything beyond that which goes beyond death.

So unless you can help a person to have a glimpse of the impossible, and you create a desire in him to long for the impossible, to desire the impossible, to be passionately, intensely in love with the impossible, you have not helped. If you can create this desire, he has a meaning. He starts growing. Then his growth is neither economic nor political nor social. His growth is religious. His growth is real. He is neither a Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan. For the first time he has taken possession of his whole being. He is himself, and nobody else..

And now he has a direction... some meaning that he has to uncover, some destiny that he has to fulfill. You can see that passion glowing around him. Only that passion brings real health, otherwise everything in the world is just ordinary. It simply bores one. The more intelligent you are, the more you will feel bored with the world. Only stupid people are not bored, because to be bored one needs to be a little intelligent. Buffaloes are not bored, donkeys are not bored; stupid people are not bored.

Stupid people never search for anything. They simply vegetate.

The impossible never opens its doors to them, and they never knock, never knock at the door of the impossible. If you talk about God, they will laugh. They will say that it is impossible; it can’t be.

God is dead, they will say. It never existed. They are simply trying to defend themselves. They are saying, ’Nothing like that happens, so why bother? Just be as you are. Just live a good life. Go to the movies, to the club, see the TV, have a few children, a so-called happy family, and just wait for death... or sometimes go to the church, have a sunday visit. Maybe there is a God, so keep some account open there also; keep some bank balance in the other world also. Maybe – who knows?’

They go to the church as part of their calculating mind, as part of their cunningness, but not through any passion to search, to seek, to desire to know the truth, with no desire to know themselves. How can they be happy? And how can they be healthy? How can they be whole?

So if you really want to help them, it will be good to be here a little longer. If you can be here for one or two years, tremendous possibilities will open. Then you can go and help them.

[The sannyasin said she could not leave her patients immediately, but she could come back later.

Osho suggested when she returned she should stay longer.]

I say one or two years because then you will be completely at home and at ease here. If you are here for three months, again the mind continuously works, thinking that after three months you have to go and do this and that. If you can drop that, there is no point in planning for two years. Just be here for as long as you like, but then don’t go on planning inside the mind that after two months you will go. Then those two months are wasted. You should drop the idea of going.

There is no bondage that you have to be here for two years. I say two years because two years seems to be exactly the time beyond which people don’t ordinarily plan.

[A sannyasin asked Osho about her father who is an artist, and had been diagnosed as schizophrenic.]

I don’t think it is schizophrenia, and I don’t think it is an illness. This type of thing happens many times to talented people. A talented person is almost always in trouble. His very talent is a struggle.

A talented person is almost always somehow abnormal, not normal. The more talent you have, the more difficulties there will be in your life, because the mind has a certain capacity, but the talent can be more than the capacity of the mind. Then you cannot contain the talent in your mind; the strain is too much.

It is as if a two hundred watt current is running in a one hundred watt bulb. Everything starts going crazy. Meditation can be of tremendous help to him.

[The sannyasin answered: He jokes about it!]

Nothing to be worried about. People almost always joke about something to which they feel a certain attraction. Write to him about the Nadabrahma meditation. It will be very very helpful. It will be very soothing to his mind.

... he can do it lying down. And when you go home, you can just sit by his side and do it. Tell him to participate.

The very sound, the humming sound, is very relaxing, very soothing to the inner brain. It will be very helpful. When you go, remind me again, and I will give a special meditation tor him too. We will do something... don’t be worried.

[A sannyasin who is leaving said: Two months ago, you said you might give me a special healing meditation. I’ve been going to all the divine healings (that happen at each monthly camp) and they did much.]

You would like to become a healer?

... You will be able. It will be good for you. It will be good for others. Healing is a beautiful communication, deeper than any other communication. You can talk verbally, you can say to somebody, ’I love you,’ but words are just words empty. If you can simply shower your energy on the other person, you say in a very much deeper way ’I love you’. That really heals. That’s what I mean when I say that compassion is therapeutic.

So just start... and there is no need to be worried about technique. Whenever vou feel that you have the energy to share, just share. A few things to remember.... The person should be lying down whenever you heal, because when a person is in a lying posture there is more possibility of entering his deepest core. When a person is lying down, he is more like a child. When he is sitting, he is less like a child; when he is standing, even less like a child. When he is lying down he feels relaxed automatically, because lying down is associated with sleep and with childhood when he was not capable of sitting, not capable of standing. So sleep and childhood – these two things are deeply associated with lying.

So let the person lie down and tell him to relax. The best way to help him to relax is to tell him to first do the opposite – to become as tense as possible, to tense all over the body so that he deliberately becomes tense and every fibre of the body is stretched. Tell him to come to almost a mad climax of tension, and then when he cannot go any more, tell him suddenly to relax. Then he will fall into deep relaxation.

Ordinarily if you say to somebody to relax, he listens to the word, he tries, but nothing happens, because how to relax? In fact if you say to a person to relax he becomes more tense than he was before because now he tries to relax. He does not know what to do – because you cannot relax. You can become tense, but you cannot relax. Relaxation is a by-product, is an after-effect, a consequence of utmost tension.

So tell him to tense; that he knows how to do. That is not a problem – everybody knows how to become tense. Tell him that he is facing his enemy or facing death and he has to escape, so become tense. Tell him to let his whole body become tense, vibrating with tension, and then suddenly tell him to relax. With this created tension, he can relax now. He will fall into deep relaxation. Just two, three minutes of great tension will help him to relax. And when he is relaxing, start pouring your energy on him.

It is good not to touch the body. In the beginning it is good not to. Just keep at least two inches away from the body, because if you touch the body suddenly, the modern mind has become afraid of touch so much that it becomes tense. People are very touchy about touch. If you touch them they become tense. The modern mind knows only one touch, and that is sexual. All touch has disappeared. We don’t touch people ordinarily.

If you see two men holding hands, you think they are gay, queer or that something is wrong with them. Foolish! They may be just friends. Nothing is wrong in touching each other’s body, but two men touching each other become afraid. You feel embarrassed if somebody embraces you. If he is a man you feel embarrassed. If she is a woman you feel sexually aroused. But in both the ways touch loses security, innocence.

Even fathers and mothers don’t touch and cuddle and hug their children. The only touch that children have come to know and associate with is when the father becomes angry and hits and slaps. That is the only touch. So when you touch somebody, you touch wrong associations – sexual, homosexual, or somebody slapping and the other becoming afraid, scared, defensive, tense. So in the beginning, never touch.

When you are healing a person, so much energy is pouring out that if you touch, it will be almost as if you are touching him with a live wire, a live electric wire He will become so afraid that his doors will close – and if the doors are closed, you can go on showering and nothing will happen. Healing is possible not only because of your energy – it is possible only when your energy enters the other person and becomes his energy. If it comes up to the door and returns, no healing happens.

That’s why if a person does not trust you, never try healing – never try, because it is not possible. If a person has doubts about you, forget about him. It is possible only in deep trust, and if you try on persons who won’t trust you, you will become unconfident about your own energy. If you fail many times, then by and by you will think ’Nothing is happening. I don’t have the energy.’

In fact every person has the energy to heal. It is something natural. It is not that a few people are healers and others are not, no. Every person born is a healer but has forgotten the capacity, or has never used it, or has used it in wrong associations and has come to feel that it never works.

So in the beginning never try on just anyone. It is a very tempting thing, because people who don’t believe say, ’Okay, now try on us. We are ready. You can show us how you can heal.’ Never make it an argument, because that will be very destructive to you, and when the person is not receptive, you will feel very tired. When the energy comes back, unwelcomed, unreceived, and falls back on you, you will feel very tired because you have exhausted your energy with no result, with no fulfillment.

You have exhausted the energy but it has not been creative.

So never try it on somebody who challenges you. It is not a challenge. If somebody is ready to participate, to go with you, then it is a beautiful experience.

So in the beginning never touch. When the person is relaxing more and more and you feel... and I am saying feel – not that you think. If you feel an urge arises to touch the person – for example he has a stomach ache or a headache or something and you feel that just touching the head will be helpful – then touch, but first let him get in tune with you. First just give an energy massage, not touching the body.

Keep about two inches distance, because the person’s body aura is about six inches away from his body. Keep about two, three inches away, so in a way you are touching his energy aura. You are not touching his or her physical body, but you are touching his subtle body – and that’s enough. For the energy to penetrate, that’s enough. You have really touched him, but he will not be afraid about that. When you feel that the person is participating tremendously, when his trust is immense and you can see that he is flowing with you, and you can feel that your energy is being absorbed – it is not rejected; he has become like a sponge and is soaking it up – then you can touch. Then the touch becomes very very helpful; then it becomes a pinpoint. On that point the whole energy showers and enters deepest.

After each healing it is better that if you can take a shower, do so. If it is not possible, then at least wash your hands immediately and shake them. It always happens that when you are passing your energy into the other person, his or her energy also sometimes passes into you; they overlap.

Sometimes the person can be very very strong, even stronger than you. Sometimes the person may not be strong, but his illness may be very strong, so those vibrations of illness can enter you and can be destructive. They can make you m, tense. Healing is good but not at your own cost, because then it is foolish and you cannot heal much. Sooner or later you will become ill, badly ill, and your body will be confused very much.

So it you can take a shower, good. If it is not possible, then just wash your hands immediately.

Cold water is very good – it helps your energy to shrink back, and then the contact is lost from any influences, impressions, vibrations, that could get into it. Then shake your hands. If you feel sometimes that you are really too full of the energy of the other person, jog, jump. Two or three minutes jogging will do. Then all the impressions and vibrations will fall away from you.

Only this much... and you will be able, mm? Good.

[A sannyasin who is returning to the west says she is afraid about meeting her old friend who is a marxist: He is in search of truth and I too. He has found something and I have found something. He has known me for so long and has given me so much love... ]

I know .... A few things you have to remember if you want to help anybody: the help can only be indirect; it can never be direct. If you try to convince him, you will simply create much argument; that will not help. He will become more defensive and egos are very argumentative.

When a person is involved too much in something like marxism, he simply lives through the intellect.

His whole training is of the mind. From the very beginning he has a negative belief that nothing else exists; he is already prejudiced. It is very difficult to bring news to him that something that he has always believed does not exist, exists. It is easier for him to think that you have gone mad rather than to think that he has always been wrong. That is not easy.

But if you try to convince him intellectually on his own grounds, you will not be able. First he will become defensive. He will become very argumentative – and when somebody is argumen-tative, then there are many barriers and communication is lost.

And the second thing: whatsoever you have attained, whatsoever you have glimpsed is something beyond the mind. It is something of the heart, something concerned with love, and you cannot propose it like a syllogism. It is not a process that can be analysed. It is an event which cannot be analysed... a simple event. It is not a continuity. When there is a process, you can analyse it.

And marxists are very efficient in analysing processes. Their whole methodology is of dialectics; to analyse a process into divisions – thesis, antithesis, synthesis – very simple.

But this is something not part of any process, because the innermost being is not a process at all.

It is already perfect. It is not moving towards perfection – it has already arrived. It has never been away. It has never gone on any journey. The innermost being is absolutely perfect, and when it is, it is felt as an event, a simple event; nothing behind it, nothing ahead of it – an atomic event. You cannot divide it; it is indivisible. You cannot argue about it. You cannot manage proofs for it; you cannot collect evidence for it. You can be a witness but in a very indirect way.

So remember it, otherwise you will mess up the whole thing and you will not be able to help him. It is very possible that he may be able to harm you, rather than you being helpful to him. So be alert, because you carry something very fragile. A marxist is like a stone a rock, and you are flowering like a flower. The clash between a rock and a flower is never going to destroy the rock. The flower may be destroyed.

So it is good not to be a victim of any clash. Avoid clash. The flower can win, but the ways of the flower are very different. The way is not a direct clash. It is an indirect persuasion. What I mean is this – go there and love him more than you have ever loved him before. Don’t talk about what has happened to you. Even if he provokes you, avoid it, laugh about it. Say it is all nonsense, madness, and that he will not be interested so why waste his time.

But be loving, be meditative, move in grace. Let him feel it. That is your responsibility. Be very very alert so he can feel that something has happened to you, that you are no more the same. Bring a new breeze with you. Open some new window. Don’t argue about the window; simply open it and leave it there. He will become curious. You just have to be very alert. If you really want to help him, you have to be very watchful not to be argumentative.

In fact one should never argue about religion. And certainly never argue with a communist, because it is useless, it is pointless. And once you accept his categories, you will be defeated – not that you are wrong, but your experience is more fragile. Your experience is higher. Your experience is deeper. When you bring it to the surface, much of it is lost. It can never be brought to the surface whole and total because it is part of your inner depth. It is an organic part to your inner depth. The moment you bring it out, much is lost. And when you make it an argument, again much more is lost.

When the other tries to comprehend it through his logical structures, then it is almost murdered. This is the way to butcher a truth of experience.

So laugh more; that will be helpful. That will be the argument. Smile more... dance. Invite him to dance, and dance as lovingly as you can. Go in trance and let him watch. Meditate and let him watch. Meditate in your room and leave the door open so he becomes curious and wants to see what is happening.

He is in search so there is every possibility of his coming towards me, but all depends on you. You will be my messenger so you have to be very careful.

CHAPTER 2

22 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[The Tathata group was present.

A group member says: People tell me that their first impression of me is that I’m angry or aggressive or detached, and usually I’m feeling the opposite.

It seems that usually I’m saying one thing and my body and face are saying something else.]

How do you yourself feel? Don’t be bothered much by what others say. How do you feel? If you don’t feel that there is any problem, then there is no problem. So watch yourself for at least two weeks.

When you are feeling sympathetic, just pay attention to your face, your facial tensions, your eyes, your hands, your posture, your tone, the way you are talking, how you are standing, how you are looking at the person. Just watch; an inner observation for two weeks. If you feel after this observation that yes, there is something contradictory .... You feel loving but in your body you are withdrawn; you wanted to show your happiness, but you simply showed your sadness. You were feeling very very sympathetic, but your total style was very detached, far away, as if you don’t care.

You have to watch. You cannot depend on others. They may be right, they may not be. So I’m not deciding anything right now.

Be absolutely objective about it, because there is no question of defending. If it is there, one has to know it is there and then something can be done. It can be dropped. If it is not there, there is no need to be worried about it. Simply go on your way, and what others say is irrelevant. But don’t reject them outright.

So note if you feel any dichotomy; if when you feel something, the body is saying something and you are saying something else. If you feel this split, then just note it down – in many types of moods.

You are feeling happy but you give the impression to the other person that you are very unhappy or bored. You are listening very attentively to the person, but you give the feeling that you want him to stop, you are simply bored.

The body sometimes goes on giving indications which can be against your inner feelings. Your body can behave separately. It can become an automaton. autonomous. Then the link is broken, but that link can be created again. So for two weeks just watch... and it is not difficult. When you are showing love or saying that you love a person, your eyes should become radiant. Your eyes should show the light that comes when you feel love for somebody. If your eyes go on looking dead, stone-dead and you say ’I love you’, then something inside is not in contact. Then you are speaking two languages together.

And remember always that the bodily language is more important than what you say. The other person will not listen to what you say. The other person will listen to what you are. So you will always be in difficulty because you will think that you were loving, so loving, and nobody returns your love. You were listening intently, but others feel that you were feeling bored. If there is such a situation, it has to be mended. But first watch, and then tell me, mm? Good.

[Another group member said that someone had told him he was difficult to contact and communicate with: I’m always trying to be kind and open to people. I thought I was open to personal relationships.

So it shocked me and has been a good lesson. I just don’t know what to do.]

Just wait. Keep in mind what she said. In the next group also, ask people their impressions of you, and afterwards, remind me again.

Sometimes it happens that a person who always tries to be kind, loving, loses contact, because the very effort to be always loving is unnatural. Sometimes you have to be angry also. That may be the cause. People who are always good become a little closed because they are always trying to do something which may be there, which may not be there. Sometimes it is there – then it is okay – but sometimes it is not there and you still force it; then you lose contact.

So one just has to be real – then there is communication. Being real means sometimes you will be cruel too, not Kind; sometimes you will hurt and sometimes you will heal too. Then you are both summer and winter, both good and bad; you are open. But if you try to be just good always, always a catholic Christian, then it is difficult.

But watch in the next group also and then tell me. It can be very significant and can change your whole mode of life.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been a diplomat, and then lately I’ve been teaching – but I’ve resigned from that.

I’ve been thinking I might study something like massage because I like working with my hands, and I know it’s a job where you can be open and receptive.]

It’s very good. To do something with the hands is always good. Rather than to be a head, it is always good to be hands. It will make you more alive and more in contact with life. It will make you more grounded.

Massage is perfectly good. It is better than to be a diplomat. It is very very good to forget all about that nonsense. Get more into your body. Make your senses more alive. See more lovingly, taste more lovingly, touch more lovingly, smell more lovingly. Let your senses function more and more.

Then suddenly you will see the energy that was. moving too much in the head is now well-divided in the body.

The head is very dictatorial. It goes on taking energy from everywhere and is a monopolist. It has killed the senses. The head is taking almost eighty percent of the energy, and only twenty percent is left for the whole body. Of course the whole body suffers, and when the whole body suffers, you suffer, because you can only be happy when you are functioning as a whole, as an organic unity, and every part of your body and being is getting its proportion; not more than that, not less than that. Then you function in a rhythm. You have a harmony.

Harmony, happiness, health – they are all part of one phenomenon, and that is wholeness. If you are whole, you are happy, healthy, harmonious.

The head is creating a disturbance. People have lost many things. People cannot smell. They have lost the capacity to smell.

They have lost the capacity to taste. They can only hear a few things. They have lost their ears.

People don’t know what touch really is. Their skin has become dead. It has lost the softness and receptivity. So the head thrives like an Adolf Hitler, crushing the whole body. The head becomes bigger and bigger. It is very ridiculous. Man is almost like a caricature – a very big head and just very small limbs, hanging.

So bring back your senses. Do anything with the hands, with the earth, with the trees, with the rocks, with bodies, with people. Do anything that needs not much thinking, not much intellectualisation.

And enjoy. Then your head will by and by be unburdened. It will be good for the head too, because when the head is burdened too much, it thinks – but it cannot think. How can a worrying mind think?

For thinking you need clarity. For thinking you need a non-tense mind.

It will look like a paradox, but for thinking you need a thoughtless mind. Then you can think very easily, very directly, intensely. Just put any problem before yourself and your non-thinking mind starts solving it. Then you have intuition. It is not worry – just insight.

When the mind is burdened too much with thoughts, you think too much but to no purpose. It comes to nothing; there is nothing in the head. You go round about, round about; you make much noise, but the end result is zero.

So it is not against the head to disperse the energy into all the senses. It is in favour of it, because when the head is balanced, in its right place, it functions better; otherwise it is jammed. It is such great traffic. It is almost a rush hour; for twenty-four hours a rush hour.

So start doing something – whatsoever you feel. Massage is very good. The body is beautiful.

Anything to do with the body is beautiful.

CHAPTER 3

23 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Kalpana means imagination and deva means divine – divine imagination. And that you have to remember: that your path will go through imagination. You have a tremendous capacity to imagine.

If you can use it, it can be an immense help. If you don’t use it, it can become a barrier. If one has some capacity, one has to use it, otherwise it becomes like a rock on the path. One has to step over it and transform it into a stepping stone. You have a very deep potentiality for imagination.

So use it. Start three things. One is – imagine yourself as happy as possible. Within a week you will start feeling that you are becoming very happy – for no reason at all. That will be proof of your dormant capacity. So the first thing to do in the morning is to imagine yourself tremendously happy.

Get out of bed in a very happy mood – radiant, bubbling, expectant – as if something perfect, of infinite value, is going to open, happen, today. Get out of the bed in a very positive and hopeful mood, with the feeling that this day is not going to be an ordinary day – that something exceptional, extraordinary, is waiting for you; something is very dose by. Try and remember it again and again for the whole day. Within seven days you will see that your whole pattern, your whole style, your whole vibration, has changed.

The second thing – when you go to sleep in the night, just imagine that you are falling into the divine hands... as if God is supporting you, that you are in His lap, falling asleep. Just visualise it and fall asleep. The one thing to carry is that you should go on imagining and let sleep come, so that the imagination enters into sleep; they are overlapping. This is the second thing.

And the third thing – don’t imagine any negative thing, because if people who have an imaginative capacity imagine negative things, they start happening. If you think that you are going to get ill, you will get in. If you think that somebody is coming and he is going to be rude to you, he will be. Your very imagination will create the situation.

[She asks: How does it work?]

That I will explain to you later on. First start the morning and night imagination, and remember not to imagine anything negative for the whole day. If the idea comes, immediately change it by a positive thing. Say no to it. Drop it immediately; throw it away. Then I will explain how it functions. First experience that it functions; then it is very easy to understand how it functions.

[A sannyasin says: I have recently been going back into Primal experiences, but my imagination is so big, I don’t know what is real.

She describes and experience before she was born and another as a baby. Osho checks her energy.]

It has nothing to do with imagination. You have come across some actual experiences, so go deeper into it.

Don’t think that they are imaginary. If you think that, the mind starts repressing them. The very idea that they are imaginary is condemnatory, because we have been taught that imagination is something wrong; that it is not real, it is unreal. Imagination has its own reality.

But don’t be bothered to label what it is. Simply go into it. It is going to reconcile many things in you.

There are a few conflicts hanging. Once you go into those experiences more deeply, they will be resolved. Nothing else is needed but just going into them, resolving them, reliving them as totally as possible. So forget whether they are real or imaginary. They are going to have a real effect on you

– that is the most important thing.

Buddha has a very different definition of reality. He says that whatsoever has a real effect is real. If in the night you have a dream, a nightmare, and then you are awakened by the nightmare it is too much and you cannot bear it; you see your hands are trembling, your body is perspiring, you are tense – then Buddha says the nightmare was real, because this was a real effect. How is a real effect possible from an unreal thing?

If the fruit decides what type of tree this is, then the result decides whether the thing and the situation was real or not. If the result is real, the situation is real. So don’t be bothered. The result is going to show immediately; then you will be completely satisfied that it was a real experience.

[A sannyasin visitor, who had travelled in India visiting many gurus, and had written two books on his experiences, said through an interpreter that now he was sitting in front of Osho all his questions had fallen away; he wanted just to sit and listen.]

That’s very good. That will do much. If you can just listen and just be here in my presence, much will start happening on its own accord. Much is possible just by listening.

It is a tremendous meditation – just to listen. And nothing else is needed. If you can listen totally, then two hearts start meeting and merging. Many times boundaries are lost. Many times you don’t know whether you are the listener or the speaker. Those are the rare moments when something really happens.

In the East we have valued satsang very much. In the West nothing like it has ever existed. Satsang is an absolutely eastern concept. It says that just being with the master, not doing anything, is all that is needed. If he speaks, listening to his words. If he keeps quiet, listening to his silence. If he laughs, then listening to his laughter. Just being there – available, open, vulnerable... just being a sponge, soaking up his energy, his vibes... just allowing him to pour himself into you. People have attained to the very ultimate even just by sitting by the side of the master.

It is said about a sufi master that when he was asked how he attained, he said, ’For three years I was just sitting by the side of my master, and he would not even look at me. It was difficult to know whether he had ever seen me, because he would not look. He would come and go and would not look at mc for three years. But I persisted, and then one day he looked at me. That was a great gift

– a grace.

’Then for three years again he’d forget me. After six years, one day he smiled. For three years again, nothing. Then one day he took my hand in his own. Again for three years, nothing.

’Twelve years passed this way. Then one day he embraced me and told me, ”Now what are you doing here? Go and do the same to others as I have done to you.”

’He would sit and say ”Just sit by my side” – that’s what I have learned.’

If one can just listen and be, nothing else is needed. So, good. Be here.

CHAPTER 4

24 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I feel I have a legacy of laziness and escapism. Either I don’t feel energy, or if I do, I find it difficult to just completely let go. I feel a control.]

I feel it is somewhere and has become part of your bio-computer. The mind functions as a computer, and we go on feeding it attitudes. They go on accumulating there and by and by they become deeply ingrained. Personalities can be divided into two categories – one psychologists call the T personality, toxic, and the other they call the N personality, nourishing.

A toxic personality is always looking at things in a negative way. The whole world view of the toxic personality is depressing, sad. The toxic personality hides in beautiful faces. A perfectionist is a toxic personality. You cannot say that something is wrong in a perfectionist, but the whole idea of being a perfectionist is to find errors, mistakes, loopholes. It is a trick. You cannot find any fault with a man who looks for perfection, but in fact that is not his goal; perfection is a device. He wants to look at loopholes, mistakes, errors, anything that is missing, and this is the best way – to keep a goal of perfection so that he can compare them with the ideal and always condemn.

This toxic personality always thinks of that which is not and never looks at that which is, so discontent becomes natural. A toxic personality poisons his own being; not only that – he drips poison.

It can be a heritage. If you have lived with people in your childhood who had a negative attitude towards life .... It may be hiding in glowing terms, beautiful language, ideals, heaven, God, religion, the soul; they can use beautiful words, but they are simply trying ... and they talk about the other world just to condemn this one. They are not concerned with the other world. They have no interests in saints, but just to prove that others are sinners, they will talk about saints.

It is a very morbid attitude. They will say, ’Become like Jesus.’ They are not interested in Jesus at all. If Jesus were there they would be the last person to go to him, but just to condemn you, this is their device. You cannot become Jesus, so you become a victim. They always condemn you. They create values, moralities, puritan attitudes. They are the moralists, the moralisers; they are the great poisoners of the world.

And they are everywhere. These people tend to become teachers, educationalists, professors, vice-chancellors, saints, bishops, popes; they tend to become these things because then they can condemn. They are even ready to sacrifice everything if they are just allowed the joy of condemning others. They are everywhere, hiding in many ways. And they are always doing things for your good, for your own good, so you are defenceless against them. Their heritage is real, big. They have dominated the whole history.

These people immediately become dominators.

Their very ideology helps them to dominate

because they can become condemnators. And they talk in rational terms. Rationalism is also part of the T personality. They are very argumentative . . . very difficult to defeat them in argumentation.

They are never reasonable, but they are always rational.

And one must know the distinction between a reasonable man and a rational man. A reasonable man is never only rational, because a reasonable man knows by experience that life has both – the rational and the irrational; that life has both – reason and feeling, the mind and the heart.

A reasonable man is reasonable. A rational man is never reasonable. He forces logic on life – and logic can be perfect; life can never be. He always looks to the ideal, and he tries to force life to follow the ideal. He never looks into life and the reality of life. His ideals are against life.

The second personality, the N personality, the nourishing personality, is totally different. It has no ideals, really. It just looks into life and the reality decides its ideal. It is very reasonable. It is never perfectionistic; it is wholistic but never a perfectionist. And it always looks on the good side of things.

The N personality is always hopeful, radiant, adventurous, trusting, not condemnatory. These are the people who become poets, painters, musicians.

If an N type person becomes a saint, then there is a real saint. If a T type person becomes a saint, there is a false saint, a pseudo-saint. If an N type person becomes a father, then there is a real father. If an N type person becomes a mother, there is real mothering. A T type is a pseudo father and a pseudo mother. That is just a trick to exploit the child, to torture, to dominate, possess and to crush the child, to feel powerful by crushing the child. The T type is in the majority, so you may be right that you are carrying a heritage everybody is. But once you become a,ware, there is not much of a problem. You can travel from T to N very easily.

A few things to remember. If you feel lazy, don’t call it laziness. Listen to your nature; maybe that’s what fits you. That’s what I call a reasonable man. What can you do? If laziness comes to you, then that’s what you have to do. Who are you to decide against it? And how can you win against it? Even in your fight you will be lazy. Who is going to win? You will be constantly defeated, and then you will feel unnecessarily miserable.

Be realistic. Listen to your own being. Everybody has his own pace. A few people are very active, rushing; nothing is wrong in it. If they feel good in it, it is good for them.

Just a few nights ago one person was saying that he is always rushing. If he has a chance, he likes to run rather than walk. He jumps up stairs, two, three steps together. His wife goes on telling him to drop his restlessness, so his wife has created a guilt in him – that he is doing something wrong.

But I saw that the man is perfectly healthy and happy, so I said, ’Don’t listen to your wife. If you are feeling good, then run; nothing is wrong in it. It is your natural pace.’

He said, ’There is my daughter who is very lazy. She is just the opposite to me, and my wife is against her also because she takes so much time in just doing small things.’ Now this wife must be a T personality.

[Osho went on to say, as he had some nights previously (see Dance Your Way to God, August 18th), that in the coming century it will be the lazy people who will be revered, not the active ones.

As machines take over more and more, the lazy man who is not demanding work will be much appreciated.]

And don’t create any ideals that you have to do this. Don’t have any ’shoulds’. The ’should’creates a sort of neurosis. Then one is obsessed. The ’should’ is always there, standing and condemning you, and you cannot enjoy anything. Enjoy! Kill the ’should’ completely and be herenow. Whatsoever you can do, do; whatsoever you cannot do, accept. That is the way you are – and you are here to be yourself, nobody else. By and by you will see that your T is turning into N. You will become nourishing and you will enjoy more, you will love more, and you will become more meditative.

In fact, for a lazy person to become meditative is easier than for an active person. That’s why the whole East became lazy – they meditated too much. Meditation is a sort of passivity. An active person feels very restless. Just to sit silent is the most difficult thing. Not to do anything is the most difficult thing to do for an active person.

Just enjoy and move as fits your being – no shoulds, no ideals, otherwise they will poison you. Look at life with deep hope. It is really beautiful. Just look at it, and don’t wait for perfection. Don’t think in terms of your enjoying things only when they are perfect; then you will never enjoy.

If a T type person encounters God, he will immediately find some faults in Him. That’s why God is hiding – because of T type people. He reveals Himself to the N type, never to T types. He reveals only to those who can take nourishment from Him – not only that, but to those who can nourish Him.

So just relax, enjoy, accept, and the problems will disappear.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: I’m feeling loving towards people, feeling warmth, but I don’t feel very sexual. I don’t know if it’s slightly repressed or if it’s okay.]

There’s no need to feel sexual – and there is no need to be worried about it. Just feel loving and warm. That one has to remember – that one should not become cold. If one starts feeling cold, then it is a problem. And if sex disappears completely, there is no problem; warmth should not disappear.

It almost always happens together. When people’s sex disappears, their warmth disappears. When their warmth comes, their sexuality comes. That’s why people think that sexuality and warmth are two aspects of the same energy. They are not.

It is a good experience to be warm and non-sexual. Then you are growing; then you are really growing. Just to grow older is not real growth. To be grown is not to be a grown up. Growing up means exactly what it says – growing up, growing upwards. And this is a beautiful step – that one retains the warmth, and sex by and by disappears. Sex is beautiful because of its warmth; there is nothing else. So if you can retain the warmth when sex disappears, perfectly good; as it should be.

Then the goal is preserved, and only the non-essential is gone. Never lose sight of warmth. Sex is not an essential thing – warmth is essential.

So everything is going well. Don’t force sexuality on yourself, otherwise that will be a destructive step. Be more and more warm. There is no need to become anti-sexual. There is no need to repress sexuality. If sometimes just your warmth takes you into sex, it’s okay, it’s beautiful. But if you go into it because of the warmth, then the motive is warmth, not sex. It happens, but it is the periphery. The centre remains your loving heart, your warmth.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group is present. The leader asks whether she should work harder or just sit back and let it happen. Osho asks her which she prefers and she answers that she likes being active.]

Then be active... because you can help people only if you are feeling very happy. So whatsoever you feel happy in is the way to help people. If you yourself are not feeling happy, then the help is not possible. So there is no problem.

Always remember this – happiness is the criterion. The whole effort in the group is to make people happy, to help them to come home. But if the leader is not happy, then it is impossible. So your happiness is a basic requirement. If you feel happy with being active, then be madly active. There is no question of any alternative.

You can force yourself to sit by the side, but you will become dull and sad, you won’t feel good, and then the whole group will drop to that low energy level. You have high energy, so just rush, mm?

and somehow they will drag themselves [chuckling] with you. That is their problem. Mm? Good.

[A group member says: I’ve always spent my life seeking out challenges – dealing with them, usually mastering them, and going on to something else, another challenge.

I’m hearing two things from you. One is, that perhaps I’m just feeding my ego. On the other hand, in the past week you’ve been talking about life as a challenge, as a difficult challenge, and that we must really go into it. I do want to continue to seek out challenges. Can you help me to understand this?]

Both are the possibilities. One can just go on seeking challenges because it enhances the ego. Then the motive is wrong. What you are doing is right, but the reason you are doing it is wrong. If you simply love challenges and it is not in any way an effort to enhance the ego, then it is tremendously beautiful. Then whatsoever you are doing is right, and the motive is also right. Then you are one thousand percent right. So just watch that – that’s what I am saying.

Don’t gather the ego. Go on finding new challenges, enjoy, but there is no need to collect the ego, to feed an ego, because if you are feeding an ego, then in fact you will not be able to enjoy the challenges; they become secondary. The purity is lost then; you are always hankering for the ego.

You are not interested in challenges – you are interested in the ego. If the ego can be purchased at a cheaper cost, you would like to purchase it. If the ego is possible without the challenges, you will drop the challenges and you will choose the ego. Because it is impossible to become egoistic without challenges, you have to go into the challenges, but you are not enjoying them. Then you are missing the whole point of it. Otherwise it is tremendously beautiful.

Every moment there are new challenges. If we seek we will find them. And it is thrilling to live continuously from challenge to challenge, from one peak to another. The higher you rise, the higher the peaks that become available, and you don’t carry any burden of the ego. Then even if you fail in a challenge, you are not miserable. You are still happy that you accepted it. You are still happy that the opportunity was there. You are still happy that you went into it. If you succeed, there is no ego in it. You are simply thrilled, and you are ready to move ahead.

For a real lover of challenges, success and failure mean nothing. The whole value is in the challenge and the response, and the thrill that comes between crucial moments when on this side is death and on that side is life. The bridge is so narrow, just like a razor’s edge. One false step and you fall into an infinite abyss. Then one lives at the peak of consciousness.

That’s the beauty in mountaineering. Nothing is going to be achieved but the very thrill. That is the enjoyment in surfing; nothing is going to be achieved but the very thrill. That is the enjoyment when you go on driving your car faster and faster and faster. A moment comes when each moment is a risk... as if time stops, thinking stops. You are just going one hundred miles per hour. A slight this way and that [Osho makes a movement with his hand, of a car veering to one side] and you are gone. Then you cannot afford to be sleepy. You are fully awake every fibre of the body fully awake, all the nerves of the mind fully awake. That’s why one feels so beautiful in speed. But it has nothing to do with the ego. So enjoy.

The whole life is an adventure – it should be an adventure. But there is no need to gather the ego, because that becomes the burden. It won’t allow you to go to very high peaks, because for the high peaks you have to leave all the burden behind, below you. You have to go almost naked, without clothes. The higher the peak, the greater is the requirement to leave everything down below. You cannot carry much load – and the ego is the greatest load one can carry, and for no reason at all. It is as if you are carrying a mountain on your head. That crushes you. Life never crushes anybody –

only the ego. And then when you succeed, you don’t enjoy.

If an egoist succeeds he never enjoys. If he fails he fails very miserably, because the ego always goes on goading. It says ’What is this? You have to achieve more. You have to show more to the world. This is nothing.’ The ego never allows you rest. It says ’It’s okay, but go ahead, do something bigger.’ So when you achieve, it is not happy. If you fail, it is terribly unhappy. And an egoless person, when he succeeds, he’s happy, he dances. When he fails, still he dances – because it is not a question of achievement or failure. It is a question of trying, it is a question of living in critical moments, in dangerous moments. It is the thrill that is valuable.

So there is nothing to be worried about. Just go on accepting challenges. And I am nothing but a challenge to you. I am creating something in you which will become your very life’s challenge. And this mountain is such that you cannot exhaust it. By the time you reach the peak, you are no more, because the only way to reach this peak is to disappear. That’s why I call religion the passion for the impossible. It is a passion for the impossible. The impossible happens – that too is true – but it happens only when you have disappeared.

So go into the world. Try whatsoever has happened to you. It will be deepened. Because this is my observation – that if something has really happened, then it goes on deepening by all life experiences. If it has not happened, then only it disappears. Good.

CHAPTER 5

25 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[An indian visitor says: With so many ideas before me, and having to make a decision, I feel that by making a choice I’m locking myself within a definition. By making a choice, I think I define myself, and in a sense imprison myself.]

Mm, I understand. But whether you choose or not, you choose. Even if you don’t choose, that becomes your definition. If you don’t decide, then indecisiveness becomes your definition. It is difficult to escape from definition. Life does not allow it. If you choose, you choose. If you don’t choose, still you have chosen; you have chosen in a negative way.

The very nature of life is such that one has to define oneself, so it is better to define oneself positively rather than negatively, because in a negative state one can never be happy. One cannot live in negativity. One can live in positivity; one can feel nourished. One can be and grow.

So if this is the problem – that by choosing something you become defined, you become committed, you feel a limitation enclosing you – if this is the only question, then you cannot solve it by choosing.

That too defines you. Somebody chooses to be inactive; that is a definition. Somebody chooses to be active; that too is a definition. Even if you close your room and you don’t go anywhere, you have chosen. That will define you. Even a monk who moves to a monastery deep in the Himalayas or in Tibet and chooses nothing, has chosen. He has chosen escape. So choice is in-built.

What Sartre says is, ’Man is condemned to choose.’ There is no other way. So one has to simply see it – that there is no other way. By being alive you are continuously choosing. Each moment of life is a moment of choice. My suggestion is always choose something positively. Even if you choose inactivity choose it positively, not as a negative to action. Make it your activity, then nothing is wrong in it. But choose it knowingly, fully aware, knowing its limitations, its narrowing. Knowing everything, choose it. One has to commit oneself. Life consists of commitments.

And don’t feel that you are being confined, because every choice brings two things: it confines you in one way, it makes you capable in another. For example you are sitting here. You have chosen to come and see me this evening. You could have gone to the movie, you could have been in the restaurant, you could have gone to a concert. A thousand and one alternatives were there. But choosing to see me, you are confined. You have cancelled those one thousand alternatives; you have chosen one alternative. Now this is a choice, but if you have done it positively, knowingly, fully aware about all the alternatives, all the possibilities, then by choosing it you are growing in awareness.

It confines you, it defines you, but it gives you an intensity also. Otherwise a person will be spread too much, and his whole life will become too thin. A committed person has an intensity. He has a passion. A non-committed person is just spread too much; his layer is very thin. He is all over the place and nowhere. That’s a bad shape. A committed person is not all over the place. He is somewhere, but he is somewhere. You can rely on him. He has an address. If you want to find him you can. You can provoke him, invoke him. You can call him.

An uncommitted person simply goes this way, that way, in a thousand directions together... becomes by and by more and more thin, more and more thin. An uncommitted person is like a river lost in a desert. A committed person is also like a river, but not lost in a desert. He is rushing towards the ocean, and of course is defined because the two banks are there. The river in the desert has no bank. It is spreading all over the desert, all over the Sahara. It has freedom, but to what end? It will never reach any fulfillment.

So the first thing to be understood – life is a commitment. We are already committed. It is not a question for you to decide now. By being alive, you are already committed. It is not a question for you to decide. You are in the middle of the commitment. Nobody is asking you to be committed or not to be committed.

That’s what existentialists say – that it is as if one is thrown into life. Nobody asks whether you would like to go into the world or not. Suddenly one day you are here! And you are always in the middle.

The beginning is not known, the end is not known. We are only in the middle.

Now the only possible way for a man who thinks well is to make something beautiful out of this small time that is at his disposal... to make it creative. Do something that gives you a sense of growth, and do it knowingly, positively. Of course it will give you a definition, but it will also give you fulfillment. If you become a poet, that will be a definition. You are not a scientist, you are not a painter, you are not a dancer – you are a poet! But that will be your fulfillment also. You are somebody. Something has flowered in you.

You can play around with things. You can paint one day and become a poet another day, and a third day you can dance, a fourth day you become an actor and on the fifth day something else. You can go on doing this. You will be simply crazy, and in the end you will feel very frustrated.

A committed life comes to a fulfillment, a fruition... it flowers. Maybe it is only one flower, but why hanker for many? One flower is enough. If it has really bloomed and your being is satisfied, one flower is enough. One need not have millions of flowers. In fact if you ask the gardener, he will tell you that if you want a big flower on any plant, you have to cut other buds, leave only one bud so the whole shape, the whole juice, the whole life rushes towards one flower, and then that flower will be something.

So decide to do something .... Some day decide to become a sannyasin, mm? It will give you a direction.

[A sannyasin who had been asked to leave the ashram asked if he were really to leave or if this was a message to indicate that he should apply himself more to the work.]

Apply yourself more to the work... become a help to Laxmi. There is no need to go, but apply yourself more to the work – and don’t avoid it. Because that is detrimental to your growth also. Once you become accustomed to not working, you will stop growing. I allowed you enough time... for years you were not doing anything. I allowed you into the ashram only because now you should start doing. A point has come in your growth where you need to move into the work. But if you just somehow manage to do it, it won’t help.

Work is not the only consideration. You should do it happily, lovingly, because if you just do it somehow, like a duty, that will not help. The work will be done, but that will not help you. Work is not the only consideration. You are also – and you are more important than the work. Become part of the family. Don’t remain an outsider.

[The sannyasin says:... the best jobs were actually taken away from me before I had a chance to do anything with them.

Now I’m left with... doing security guarding for the therapy bathrooms... there isn’t much scope in it.]

No, don’t think in those terms. Whatsoever work is given to you, do it as lovingly as possible. The point is not whether the work is very important or not. If you do it lovingly, it becomes important, whatsoever it is even if it is cleaning. The question is not what work – the question is that you surrender to the ashram all your energies; and whatsoever is available, or whatsoever Laxmi thinks is right, you do.

Simply surrender to Laxmi. That is going to help very much. Just listen to her, and whatsoever she says, do. This is a meditation for you – surrendering to Laxmi.

[The sannyasin said:... a lot of fear was coming up about the prospect of going back to the West.]

There is no need to go, unless you yourself want to. But if you don’t become a part, an organic part of the ashram, and you remain aloof.... Because Laxmi feels that whatsoever she gives you, there are a few problems. And the basic problem that I have understood is that you would like it to be done your way. That creates trouble. Simply relax and say, ’Show me the way and I will do it.’ Simply execute it and don’t try to dominate it.

Sometimes you may know better, and your plan may be better, but still, drop it, because you will have to fit with many people and they all feel it is difficult to work with [you] because you have your fixed ideas. I’m not saying that those ideas are wrong. They may be better, but the problem is that you have to fit with everybody. If everybody feels that it is difficult to work with [you], then it becomes difficult for Laxmi to arrange.

So simply drop your ideas. Tell Laxmi that whatsoever she feels like, just to tell you and you will do it. You will put your whole energy into it and will not put forward your ideas, your plans, because Laxmi knows the whole situation better.

For three months simply relax, then we will see. And she is bound to listen to you. If you have some good ideas, she is bound to listen to you. But first become a part. And whatsoever she says, be a yes-sayer. And unless you want to, there is no need to go. Good.

[A sannyasin asks: Today I was reading a german newspaper and there was written in it that in many parts of the world there are earthquakes. I should like to know what is going on.]

Mm... nothing much. It is just that the earth is burdened too much with human beings and wants to get rid of them. We have overproduced ourselves and created too much tension. The earth is really burdened. So it is nothing much. Nothing to be worried about.

[A sannyasin says: I have a voice inside me that keeps me from being happy. I listen to it and have a difficult time staying outside it... It says I’m not good enough... ]

[Osho had talked in the discourse this morning about the three layers of one’s being as described in Transactional Analysis – the child, the parent, the adult – P, A, C – saying that finally one had to transcend all and attain to one’s own being, free of any of these voices.]

[The sannyasin said the voices were from ninth grade.]

Mm mm, it is just an old record – absolutely irrelevant. But it goes on playing. You have to put it off. You cannot erase it; there is no need to erase it. You just have to understand that this is foolish.

Who are these school friends? How do they know that you cannot make it? Who are they? And how can they decide? How can anybody else decide that you cannot make it? Except for you, nobody can decide it.

And you also cannot decide it beforehand. First you have to try it and see whether you make it or not, because if you decide beforehand that you cannot make it, you will not be able to. Your decision will affect your life. If will become an auto-suggestion. It will become a seed. It will sabotage your whole life. Even you cannot decide what you can make an,d what you cannot make. You have to do it, you have to see it. Only life decides. So it is simply foolish, childish – but many childish things continue. The tape goes on playing itself, and if you play it too much, it becomes habitual.

And it is a trick of the mind – it is a trick to avoid. Once you decide that you cannot make it, then why bother? Why struggle? Why so much conflict, effort? You know already that you cannot make it. It is the mind finding a rationalisation so that you can avoid struggle. And of course, if you avoid effort, you will not make it, so you fall back upon your decision. You say it was right, it was always right; you knew it beforehand. These are self-perpetuating things in the mind; they perpetuate themselves.

They fulfill themselves, and the circle goes on moving, the wheel goes on moving.

I don’t see why you can’t make it. You are alive – why can’t you make it? Life is trying in every way within you to make it – otherwise you would not be here. You cannot be purposelessly here. Life has not yet become hopeless in you, otherwise you would die.

The very thing is enough evidence that life is still alive within you, thriving, kicking, still striving. You are Still breathing and you are still there. Once it is really settled that you cannot make it – that you are doomed, nothing is going to happen to you – you will die immediately, you cannot live a single moment, because then life has nothing to be there for. The destiny is closed. But you are breathing... you are aware.

Life has not become hopeless about you. God still goes on hoping about you, hence He goes on giving you life. Every morning you are awake again. He again tries. He has not become hopeless, otherwise you would disappear. Man exists because God hopes. Man is a hope... a divine hope, a dream in God’s mind. The moment God becomes hopeless about you, you will be there no more; you simply disappear.

You can make it. You are here to make it. But these foolish noises that you have gathered – put them off! Just tell the mind, ’Enough of this nonsense.’ Let them shout – you go on your way. By and by they will stop bothering you, and by and by you will start achieving things. That will be a proof –

and only that proof will make them shut their mouths; otherwise they will continue.

Nobody has the right to condemn you, but everybody carries these voices within, and everybody has to come to understand, otherwise one never grows. So whenever it happens again, just say to them, ’Shut up!’ and don’t pay much attention. Become indifferent and go on your way. Whatsoever you want to do, do. Only by doing it you will prove them wrong; otherwise there is no way.

Once glimpses start coming to you, and you are on the right track, and you feel that yes, you are arriving, they will disappear by themselves. They will not be able to show their face to you. In fact use them as a challenge that you have to prove them false. This is your life’s work.

Do Vipassana now – and in Vipassana the voices will be com-ing more strongly. Just become a Buddha and tell them, ’I have already arrived – now it is futile.’ And they will go. Don’t take them very seriously. They are ridiculous – and laughter is the greatest medicine to cure such things.

[A sannyasin comes forward laughing and crying simultaneously. Whenever she comes to darshan, she invariably collapses in front of Osho, overwhelmed by his presence.

She says: I don’t know! [laughter] What’s happening to me?]

Much has happened. Great things are happening to you. I am happening to you [laughter]. The medical name for it is Rajneeshitis [much laughter].

It is a sort of madness [a chuckle] – infectious, but happening only to very courageous people! Mm?

Good!

CHAPTER 6

26 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I’m just getting ready to leave. I had many questions when I arrived, but I don’t remember them.]

That’s very good. That’s how it should be. When you come, you come with many questions. When you go, go without any questions. I’m not saying you will be going with answers, but if you can go without questions, that’s enough.

In fact there is no answer. There are only two states of mind – a mind full of questions and a mind empty of questions.

So the whole growth is to come to a point where you can live without answers; that is what maturity is – and to live without answers is the greatest and most courageous act. Then you are no more a child. A child goes on asking questions, and he wants answers for everything. A child believes that if he can formulate a question, then there must be an answer. If he can put a question, then there must be somebody to supply the answer.

That childishness continues even into old age. That has continued down the centuries. Even your so-called great philosophers remain immature. Because I call this immaturity – that you think that because you can formulate a question, there is bound to be an answer; maybe you know it or not, but somebody must be knowing, or some day you will be able to discover it. That’s not so. All questions are man-created, manufactured by man.

Existence has no answer. Existence is there, with no answers, completely silent.

If you can drop all questions, a communication happens between you and existence. A non-questioning mind is the universal mind. In the West it is thought that a wise man is one who knows all the answers to all the questions. At least a wise man is supposed to know all the answers. He is supposed to be omniscient. But in the East we have a totally different attitude. The eastern attitude about a Buddha is that all his questions have disappeared, and now he is not hankering for any answers whatsoever. Not even a slight desire is there for any answer. He has simply dropped that whole trip.

The moment you drop questions, you drop philosophy, you drop theology, you drop logic, and you start living. You become existential. When there are no questions, that state itself is the answer.

[The sannyasin asks for a name for the groups which he runs in the west]

I will give you a name which covers everything and a little more. This will be the name [leaning forward to explain the name written on paper] : Shunyam. It means the zero experience. It means the point where you are nowhere, nobody, nameless, identity-less, formless; neither positive nor negative, but just exactly in the middle – the zero experience.

That’s what samadhi is – the ultimate goal of all meditations. Buddha calls his ultimate reality shunyam. One simply dissolves into it. It is, in a way, ultimate death, but that’s also an ultimate birth.

On the one hand it is crucifixion, on another it is resurrection.

And now associate me with it also. So, ’Shunyam Rajneesh Enlightenment Process’. You call it this.

And now work for me.

CHAPTER 7

27 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and navaneet means essence, essential. Divinity is our essence. We may have forgotten it, but we cannot lose it. We may have become completely oblivious of it, but there is no way to get away from it. It is not accidental, it is essential. Anything accidental can be taken away from you. You may have it, you may not have it – it depends. But the essential is that which cannot be taken away from you. You have to have it. At the most you can become forgetful about it, or you can remember it. And that is the only difference between an enlightened person and an unenlightened person.

The difference is not in their nature. The difference is in their remembrance. One remembers, recognises oneself and who one is – and the other is in a stupor. Of course he is also that because there is no other way to be. God is the commonmost thing, the universal essence of everybody and everything. Not only persons but things are also divine. That is the meaning of Deva Navaneet.

Navaneet has another meaning also.

It means as out of milk you can ,create curd, out of curd you can create butter, and out of butter, in India we create ghee, but out of ghee you cannot create anything – that is the last flowering – so navaneet means also ghee, the last flowering of being. There is no beyond to it. It is the beyond.

And there is nowhere to fall back. Out of milk you can create curd, but out of curd you cannot create milk. Out of curd you can create butter, but out of butter you cannot create curd. There is no way to fall back. You are always going ahead. Whatsoever is learned, is learned.

There is no way to unlearn it. And whatsoever you have become, you have become.

Only evolution exists. There is nothing like devolution. That too is also the meaning, and both the meanings are beautiful.

[The new sannyasin says he is a doctor but trailing for group-leading bio-energetics.]

Bio-energetics? Very good. That’s a good combination. You can bring all your understanding about the human body and physiology into your bio-energetic training, and it will be a beautiful combination.

It is always good to bring two branches of knowledge together; then something new happens. It is like cross-breeding. Original insights come only when two branches of knowledge come together.

For example, if a poet becomes a mathematician, something new is going to happen. Or if a mathematician becomes a physicist, then something new is going to happen. If a chemist becomes a poet, it is bound to impress his poetry, and there will be something new which no other poet can do. If you know two branches of knowledge, then deep in your heart, a synthesis arises. There is no need to work it out. It happens on its own.

In the beginning sometimes it may look like chaos, because when you are moving in two directions, they have very different gestalts. Their working patterns are different, their structure is different, their world views are different. So sometimes it is very chaotic – that’s why people don’t want to jump from one line to another. They stick to one line – that is convenient. But if you can take the chaos with ease, something new will be born in you.

All new insights have happened down the ages only because a few people moved into different branches for which they were not really trained. All pioneers are amateurs. They were trained for something else; they were meant to be something else. Then they entered into something for which they had no training, so their old training and their new direction combined together makes something beautiful flower. So, very good.

But I would suggest that you don’t stop practising medicine. Continue. Practise medicine also by the side, otherwise you will lose contact. Medical science is such a growing science that if you lose contact, you lose contact. It is not something very static, very stable. Each six months things are going so fast. Keep in contact and go on learning bio-energetics, and something beautiful will come out of it.

And I’m going to be there also, inside you. You have invited danger from now on!

[An eight-year-old sannyasin asks through the translator: He would like to know what you are doing here... what thing in particular.]

Destroying people! – because that is the only way to create them. I am a murderer – I kill people!

But then one has to revive them.

Would you like to become a murderer? Next time you come I will teach you some tricks!

[A sannyasin newly-arrived back from the States to live here permanently says: I’m glad to be here.]

Mm, this is your home. You were searching for it, and you have found it. Forget the whole world –

now this is going to be your world. It is a small world, but very deep. If you allow, it will transform you. Just be at home... relax and become part of the ashram.

[A visitor says: I just came to see you and now I am afraid.]

Afraid? That I can see. Come a little closer!

Fear is natural...

You are ready, that’s why you are afraid. People become afraid only when they are ready, when they feel that something can happen – that they can be transformed. Ordinarily people don’t become afraid. So take the jump – become a sannyasin. Why are you...? It will help.

Whenever you are afraid of something, do it [laughter]. That’s the only way to get rid of it. Otherwise I will haunt you in Germany, and you will be in trouble! Close your eyes and become a sannyasin.

You don’t have to be afraid. Now you are going to become mad, so...

Now there will be no fear – I will be with you.

This will be your name: Ma Prem Kadambari.

Prem means love and kadambari means wine – wine of love. It is one of the most beautiful names in India, and that’s what is your potentiality. Right now you are just grapes, but soon you will become wine. And love is going to transform you.

People who are afraid are the people who are capable of tremendous love. Fear is a negative aspect of love. If love is not allowed to flow, it becomes fear. If love is allowed to flow, fear disappears.

That’s why only in moments of love there is no fear. If you love a person, suddenly fear disappears.

Lovers are the only people who are fearless. Even death makes no problem. Only lovers can die in tremendous silence and fearlessness.

But it always happens that the more you love, the more you feel fear. That’s why women feel more fear than men, because they have more potentiality for love. In this world there are very few possibilities to actualise your love, so it remains hanging around you. And if any potentiality remains hanging, it turns to its opposite. It can become jealousy; that too is part of fear. It can become possessiveness; that too is part of fear. It can become even hatred; that too is part of fear. So be more and more loving. Love unconditionally, and love in as many ways as possible. One can love in millions of ways.

One can just love a stranger passing on the road. One can just feel love for him, and go on one s way. There is no need to even talk. There is no need to communicate it. One can simply feel and go on one’s own way. One can love a rock. One can love the trees, one can love the sky, the stars.

One can love the friend, the husband, the children, the father, the mother. One can love in millions of ways.

Once your whole energy is functioning as a love, the wine will start dripping out of it. And when love is flowing, prayer arises. Prayer is the wine. Love is like grapes.

[The new sannyasin says she is a doctor.]

You will become capable. You just need a little more love flowing. It works more than any medicine.

Up to now medical science has not been able to find anything more potent than love. If you can be loving to the patient, you will be tremendously successful, because medicines are secondary. They are still not primary. Therapy is a function of love. Love is therapeutic.

You can even sometimes just give water to the patient with deep love, deep compassion, and it will function. There have been many experiments in which the proportion is almost the same. You give the medicine; it works. You give water; it works the same way – what you call a placebo. But if it is given with love and the patient trusts, it functions. When you love, you create trust.

And it is one of the most beautiful professions to choose because it allows you to be loving. It becomes ugly, it has become ugly, because it has become a sort of exploitation. You are exploiting people’s diseases, illnesses. That’s why one feels it is a little heavy. Otherwise it is one of the most beautiful professions – if you love. You may not become very rich if you love, but you will feel tremendously enriched inside.

So if you don’t bother about money too much, there is no problem. Then you can help many people to be healthy and whole. Their prayers will be for you,. and their hearts will be for you and you will be tremendously fulfilled. But if you make money the consideration, then it is one of the worst professions. In a better world, money should not be a relationship at all between the doctor and the patient because it destroys love. Money is the most anti-love thing in the world. And when you are treating a patient for money, of course the patient becomes irrelevant. He is just a number; he has no being in him. Because he pays you, you treat him, but you become impersonal, indifferent.

In fact, deep down, if the patient is very rich, in your unconscious you want him to remain ill a little longer. It creates guilt also, because if a rich patient is cured easily, he will not be paying too much.

So if the patient is rich, the unconscious desire remains in the doctor to let him linger a little. This is very dangerous, but it is so.

So make it more meditative, make it more loving. Whatsoever time you are here for, meditate as deeply as possible. Your meditation has started. I have started working on you. Forget everything, and let your love grow. By the time you go back, you will be able to have a totally different outlook about your profession. I cannot guarantee that that will help you to earn much money, but money is not a consideration. You can always get enough for your needs, but that’s all... more than enough.

But make it a function of your loving heart. Let it be a service, and then you will see that it is helping you. It will help you to grow.

What more can you expect? If you are serving human beings, you are doing one of the best things that can be done. Somebody is painting on the canvas, somebody is writing a poem, and somebody is playing on a musical instrument – you are playing on human beings, you are painting on a human canvas. You are doing something with the most evolved phenomenon in the world. One should be happy. But a different vision is needed, that’s all. It will come....

[A sannyasin, said through an interpreter that she was concerned that by having relationships with women, she was running away from men. She asked for Osho’s help.

Osho checked her energy.]

Nothing is wrong. You can continue. Don’t have any condemnatory attitude about it. You are not trying to escape from men – your energy simply fits with women. And if any day you are going to make any relationship with a man, it will be possible only when you have passed through and grown up from this relationship. So it is not against men. It is just a growth situation for you. Simply go into it as deeply as possible and drop all negative attitudes; they are very ingrained.

Love is always beautiful, whatsoever the form. And don’t bother too much about what the society says. Your energy fits completely with the feminine energy, so continue. Later on I can see that you may grow out of it, and then you will be able to be related to a man; not before it. But there is no hurry. Don’t be worried about it.

[The Encounter group was present tonight. The group leader says: It hasn’t come together as a group. They are more like many individuals – but it’s working. It’s going well.]

Mm, mm, that too happens sometimes, but that has its own beauty. Sometimes a group becomes an orchestra and gathers a collective soul. That has its own beauty. Sometimes the group remains very individualistic, all solo players. Each may be doing perfectly well on his own, but there is no group soul. That too is good. And one should never try to force anything. If it is growing into a group soul, good. If it is going separate ways, everybody is growing separately, that too is good. That’s what their need is.

Two types of people can fall into a group unity. One, very childish people, who don’t have much of the ego in them, who don’t have much intellectual scepticism in them... simple, innocent people, a little childish. They immediately form a group soul. There are people who have got completely fed up with their intellect, with their egos – super-intellectuals. Then too they drop their egos and become part of a group soul. And all who are in between will remain individuals. They are not childish, they are not yet so fed up with their intellect and their ego. They will remain individuals. But that’s what their need is at the moment. So your work is just to help them be whatsoever they can be. Whatsoever is there, you have to help it to come up. Mm? Good.

[A group member said she felt she was holding on to something but she did not know what it was.

Osho checked her energy.]

You continue to play games – that is the real problem. But it comes only when something really penetrates and touches the problem. You can go on playing games of being open, flowing. You can act – and you have been doing that. You enjoyed doing that, but this time you failed in acting – and that’s very good.

Now you have become aware of something, a stagnant energy, but now something can be done.

Once we know where the problem is, things become easy.

[Osho then gives her sannyas.]

Anand means bliss, blissful, and alka in indian mythology is the city of gods. In heaven where the gods live, that city is called alka. The name will mean blissful city of gods.

So forget the old and become blissful. There is no problem – just a small something blocking the way. It will go. By tomorrow morning you will feel totally different....

[A group member says he feels stuck: In my head. I think before I do.]

So start doing a few things without thinking. That is the only way to break the habit. Just anything will be helpful! You may be sitting – just give yourself a jerk, and then think later. Let the jerk happen first and then see afterwards. You are going somewhere; turn around. Do a few crazy things, because nothing puts the mind into its place like crazy things. You will enjoy it very much, because if the mind gets into the habit of always thinking before doing, then you miss life. Then nothing is spontaneous because the mind always comes before you can act. It gives you a rehearsal.

You think pro and con, and by the time you decide, the moment is lost, the moment is gone. Then you are never spontaneous. You always miss the real time for anything to happen. You will always be late. You will decide, ’Now I should do it,’ but then it is too late. Life is going so fast – thinkers never accomplish anything; they only think. I am not against thinking, but doing is more primary.

When you have a luxurious moment and nothing to do, sit in a chair and enjoy thinking; nothing is wrong in it. But life should not be decided by thinking.

If you come across a beautiful woman and you start thinking about whether to fall in love or not, you will miss. By the time you will be able to decide, you will be old and the woman will be gone, dead, or may have four children. Life needs decisiveness each moment.

So just try. Anything will do just to get out of the habit. Otherwise you will get more and more into thinking. And getting more and more into the head is like getting more and more into the grave. But nothing to be worried about – the head will disappear.

[To a sannyasin who had returned from the West.]

Just be here – and to be here without any questions is more helpful. The questioning mind is concerned too much with its questions, and goes on missing many things. When there is no questioning in the mind, you cannot miss anything; you are simply okay.

A question closes you, allows you a small slit of opening through the question, but otherwise it closes you. It is like a keyhole. Without any question, you are just under the sky. And that is the difference between philosophical enquiry and religious enquiry.

A philosophical enquiry is with questions. It is based on curiosity. Some questions are haunting you.

You are restless because of them; you want some answer so you can rest. And those questions won’t allow you to rest unless you find the answer. Of course answers are never found. Whatsoever we call an answer is only a temporary thing. Again out of one answer, ten questions arise. And it goes on that way. So each answer simply proves that there are more questions to be asked, nothing else. It never solves any question – it only creates more questions. This is the difference between religious enquiry and philosophical enquiry.

A religious enquiry is a non-questioning attitude. In India we call it satsang – just being in the presence of the master... nothing to ask. Just being in the presence... just drinking and soaking in the presence. Then one starts growing towards the answer.

If you ask questions you will get many answers, but never the answer. And unless the answer is arrived at, everything is futile. When you don’t ask, in that non-questioning attitude, in that trust, in that non-doubting, something starts happening which by and by becomes the answer.

So this is the paradox. If you ask the questions, you will never come to the answer. If you don’t ask the questions, you are certain to come to the answer.

So this is very good. Just be here... be as you are. Just enjoy me, delight in me. Celebrate me and be happy for no reason at all.

Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.

CHAPTER 8

28 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor said she had trouble becoming involved in the meditations here, adding that she could not stay much longer as she was a psychiatrist and had patients to see.]

A psychiatrist needs to be meditative more than anybody else – because your whole work is dangerous in a way. Unless you are very calm and quiet, unless you can remain unaffected by things that happen around you, it is very dangerous.

More psychiatrists go mad than any other professional people and more psychiatrists commit suicide than any other professional people. This is something to be pondered over. The proportion is really too much. Twice as many people commit suicide. That simply shows that the profession is full of dangers. It is – because whenever you are treating a person who is psychologically disturbed, in a mess, he is constantly broadcasting his vibes. He is constantly throwing out his own energy, his negative waves upon you, and you have to listen to him. You have to be very attentive. You have to care, you have to love and be compassionate towards him; only then you can help him.

He is constantly throwing negatively charged energy – and you are absorbing it. In fact the more attentively you listen, the more you absorb it.

Living continuously with neurotic and psychotic people, you start thinking, in an unconscious way, that this is what humanity is. We become by and by like the people we live with, because nobody is an island. So if you are working with sad people, you will become sad. If you are working with happy people, you will become happy, because everything is infectious. Neurosis is infectious; suicide also is infectious.

If you live around people who are enlightened, very aware, then something in you starts responding to this higher possibility. When you live with people who are very low, abnormally low, in a perverted state, in a morbid state, then something morbid in you starts corresponding and relating to them. So to be continuously surrounded by in people, is in a way dangerous, unless you protect yourself.

And there is nothing like meditation to give you protection. Then you can give more than you are giving and yet you will remain unaffected. You can help more than you are helping, because the higher your energy, the more is the possibility to help. Otherwise the psychiatrist, the healer and the healee are almost on the same ground; maybe a little difference of degrees, but the difference is so small that it is not worth considering.

The psychiatrist can go into madness very easily – just a slight push, some accidental thing, and he can move into the condemned territory. People who are neurotic were not always neurotic. Just two days before they were normal people, and again they can become normal. So normality and abnormality are not qualitative distinctions – just quantitative: ninety-nine degrees, one hundred degrees, one hundred and one degrees – that type of difference.

In fact in a better world, every psychiatrist should be trained deeply in meditation, otherwise he should not be allowed to practise. That is the only way that you can protect yourself and not be vulnerable – and you can really help. Otherwise even great psychiatrists, great psychoanalysts, even they become in a way very hopeless about humanity... even Freud. After a whole life’s experience he finally said that he could not hope for man; he felt hopeless. And it is natural – forty years of being with people who are in a mess, the only experience of humanity being of people who are mad. By and by it started to look to him as if abnormality is normal... as if man is bound to remain neurotic, as if there is something natural in man which drives him towards neurosis.

So at the most the healthy person is one who is a little more adjusted to the world, that’s all.

Adjustment becomes the standard of health, but it cannot be. If the whole society is mad you can be adjusted to it and you will Still be mad. In fact in a mad society, a person who is not mad will be maladjusted. And that’s what is really the case.

When a Jesus walks in this world he is maladjusted. We have to crucify him. He is such a stranger

– we cannot tolerate him. His very presence becomes unbearable. We have to kill him. We are not concerned with him, we are simply concerned with ourselves. Because of his presence, only two things are possible either he is mad or we are mad. Both cannot be healthy. We are many and he is alone. Of course we kill him; he cannot kill us.

When a Buddha walks, he looks strange a healthy man, a really natural, normal man, moving in an abnormal society. So Freud came to conclude that there is no future for humanity. At the most we can hope that man can be adjusted with the social pattern, that’s all. But there is no possibility for man to be blissful. It cannot be by the very nature of things. Why such a pessimistic conclusion? –

because of his whole experience.

Freud’s whole life is a long nightmare of mad people, of working with them. And by and by he himself became abnormal. He was not really healthy. He was not a blissful person. He had never known what wholeness is. He was afraid of small things – so much so that it looks absurd. He was afraid of death. If somebody talked about ghosts, he would start perspiring. Twice he fainted because somebody started talking about death! This seems to be a very unbalanced mind, but in a way it can be accounted for. Even this is a miracle – that he remained sane for his whole life.

One of the most penetrating psychiatrists, Wilhelm Reich, went mad. And the only reason that he went mad and others have not, was because he was really penetrating. He had a really deep talent to go into the roots of things – but it is dangerous. Freud or Reich or others’ whole life shows one thing – that had they been trained in deep meditation, the whole world would have been different.

Then these neurotic people would not become the standard.

Maybe it is very difficult to become a Buddha, but he is the norm. And a normal person is one who comes closer to the norm. It has nothing to do with adjustment. One comes closer to the idea of wholeness, happiness, health.

Start a little meditation. And whenever you can come, for at least six, seven weeks, be here. It will be helpful in your work.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been feeling very dissociated lately from people and just from the world –

and feeling good inside.]

That’s the only thing to care for. If you are feeling good inside, then there is nothing to be worried about. And soon you will start feeling good with people and with the world also, because a person who is at ease with himself cannot remain in any way out of the world and far away from the world.

That at-easement starts overflowing. It needs just a certain amount to collect. Then you will be overflowing because you cannot contain it any more. When you overflow, you connect with people

– and that’s beautiful.

So never enforce. Just wait for the right moment. It happens on its own. If you are not feeling good with yourself, then there is a problem. You may be feeling good with others and not feeling good with yourself. Then the problem is there, because it is impossible to feel really good with others if you are not feeling good with yourself; then it may just be an escape. Because you don’t feel good with yourself, you go and mix and mingle with people – to forget. Then it is just a trick, a game, a gimmick – and dangerous.

You don’t want to face yourself and you don’t want to face your emptiness; you don’t want to face your inner uneasiness. So the easiest and cheapest way is to forget yourself somewhere in some activity, some occupation, society, friends, this and that, so by the time you come home you are ready to fall asleep. In the morning you again rush into the world, into the marketplace, so again you need not look into your own self. A person who is not feeling good with himself is always escaping from himself, avoiding colliding with himself; avoiding his own company. That man is always afraid of being left alone.

If you leave him alone, he will do something. He will turn on the radio or the TV or he will start reading the newspaper. Maybe the same newspaper which he has read twice, thrice, he will start reading again, knowing that he has read it, but unable to remain without activity. He will start doing something or other because that is his only way to avoid his inner emptiness. So people go on being engaged in a thousand and one things. They are all ill people.

The basic thing is to be at ease with oneself. Then everything will follow on its own accord. So just feel good and don’t bother to enforce anything; don’t try to go and mix with people. This must be a seed time. So just become a seed and remain in yourself, happy, alive. The seed cannot remain in itself for long – it has to sprout. When you are too full of at-easeness, you will start sharing it.

One has to share, otherwise one’s own energy becomes a burden. But then it is beautiful when you have to share. Then you are not avoiding and you are not obliging anybody. You are simply so full of energy that you would like somebody to share it. You feel grateful when somebody accepts you in any way; you feel grateful because you had so much that it was throbbing, and it has to be released.

So just wait. The first step has happened. The second will happen of its own accord; you need not be worried about it.

[A sannyasin says:... when I talk to people, I feel my eyes drawn upwards.

Osho checks her energy.]

Good. Allow it. The energy is pulling your eyes upwards towards the third eye, and it is a very good indication. It will feel a little strange and sometimes even embarrassing because when you are talking to somebody and suddenly your eyes go up, it feels difficult, it looks awkward. But you have to allow it. I think it will be there for not more than three weeks. But if you don’t allow it, it will linger on for a longer period.

So for three weeks, simply allow it. When you are simply sitting, just close your eyes and try to look inside in the third eye, just between the two eyebrows. I have marked the place exactly where it is.

Do that twice, thrice a day, and within three weeks it will calm down. Then you will feel suddenly as if a great tension has disappeared from your eyes. You will start feeling some trembling in the third eye – which is tremendously beautiful.

And have you tried that meditation I gave you – moving like a dog and panting? [see Beloved of my Heart, May 24th, 1976]

[She answers: Yes, sometimes. If I built up a lot of energy I would do it.]

This has happened because of that. Animals have more energy moving into their third eye because their whole body is horizontal. Man is standing vertically. The energy moves against gravitation and it is very difficult for it to go higher. It even goes up to the eyes only with great difficulty. For the third eye to open, a tremendous rush is needed. That’s why many yoga schools use shirshasan –

standing on the head – to create a rush of energy. But I don’t like that very much, because the rush can be too much. It has to be suggested only in rare cases, otherwise it can destroy many very subtle nerves. And once they are destroyed, it is very difficult to reproduce them; they are gone forever. A person can attain to the third eye insight but he becomes dull as far as other kinds of intelligences are concerned.

But moving like an animal is very beautiful. Then there is not too much of a rush of energy – neither too much nor too little. It is exactly proportionate. And when you are moving like a dog and panting, panting helps the throat centre. The throat centre is just near the third eye centre; the third eye centre is just above the throat centre. So once the throat centre starts functioning, energy starts moving from the throat centre to the third eye centre. So whenever you feel like it, continue. It is very very significant. It will bring many changes of which you may not even be aware, but they will come by and by.

Animals live in a totally different world, and the whole reason that they live in a totally different world is because of their horizontal spine. Man has become separate from the animal world because of his vertical spine. It is good sometimes to become an animal again. It again gives you a deep contact with the whole past, with the whole heritage. Then you are no more something apart. You are part of the whole animal kingdom.

It releases many spontaneous energies in you, and you will start being less worried. You will think less, you will be more just like animals. They are just there – not thinking of the past, not thinking of the present, not thinking of the future. They are just there, right now... perfectly alert, ready to respond, but with no idea.

So don’t be worried. Continue the dog exercise, and once that centre has got enough energy, then the eyes will come back. Good.

[A sannyasin says: I’m losing my expectations. I expected to be very different here. I expected great progress to be made... to be more meditative. I thought great things would happen to me, but I feel, if anything, that I have more bad habits, more problems. In fact bad habits I haven’t had for three, four years, have come again.

I feel those expectations are going to go if I can drop them – and maybe I can.]

This is the great thing that has happened – that you are ready to drop the expectation. That is the greatest thing that can happen to a person, the greatest progress that can be made.

The human mind is so stupid, it goes on expecting. It exists through expectations. It is a great moment if you can really drop all expectations. And when all expectations are dropped, then anything that you have repressed in the past will come back. You call them bad habits. Your very word, the choice of the word, says that you must have repressed them. You may not have been able to accept them, so you rejected them.

Now when expectations are falling and you are becoming natural, all those rejected, disclaimed parts will again claim. They would like to be absorbed in your being. They are yours. You have been trying to forget them. You have been throwing them into the basement But now, when you are becoming natural, they will say ’Let us also come back home.’ So please don’t call them bad any more, otherwise you will again repress them.

I’m not saying that they are going to remain with you. If they are really bad, they will disappear. You need not call them bad. A man who has no expectations cannot be bad. He can only be natural

– and whatsoever is natural, is good. To be natural is to be good. They are synonymous to me. I don’t have any other idea of good beyond being natural. If your goodness goes against nature, it is bad. If your badness goes with nature, it is good. That’s what my morality is. That’s what my whole standpoint is.

Somewhere you have been wrong in your interpretations – calling something bad. If it goes with your nature, it is good – whatsoever it is. If it does not go with your nature, there is no need to repress it; it will drop on its own accord. Just be natural. By and by you will see that it is disappearing. Maybe it was there because you were repressing it.

This is the greatest thing that can happen to a person. It has happened. Your expectations are fulfilled. Now drop them! And just be natural. Love and enjoy life. There is no need to fight. And nothing is bad – maybe small human weaknesses, but nothing is bad.

This is my observation – that people who have a few human weaknesses are very good people. If you live with them, you will enjoy them. People who are inhumanly good are unbearable. You cannot live with them – they will crush you. Their very presence is ugly, heavy. They will turn you into a thing. Their very gaze will reduce you, and you will feel like a worm because their whole mind will be condemnatory.

It is very difficult to live with saints. It is very good to remain far away and pay your respects and say goodbye, but never come too close. And if you cannot live with a saint, what type of sainthood is this?

The real saint is one with whom you can be, and not for a single moment are you reminded of your weaknesses. In fact you tend to forget that he is a saint. He is so human, so accepting, so non-condemning, that you think that he is just a friend, a brother at the most a companion, but not a saint sitting high in the heavens and looking at you, trying to reduce you to something condemned.

I would not like you to become a saint. Be human – with all the human weaknesses. And love it!

You will be more relaxed and God will love you more because He will enjoy you more. I have been trying very hard but I cannot think how God can enjoy all those so-called saints. He must be bored to death! [laughter] Just think of your saints all surrounding God. If He is not dead, then He must have committed suicide. He would like to love with human beings.

So just be human. That’s a great enough goal. And accept small things. Nothing’s wrong. And this is very good that expectations are disappearing. So you are coming home.

CHAPTER 9

29 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says she is confused because she sometimes feels lower than ever before: It begins with the fact that I don’t feel anybody loves me or that I’m worthy of being loved. This happened last night, and I’m very frightened of having that experience for a long time when I’m alone.]

Sometimes it happens that you can be more confused here than anywhere else because a possibility for fusion exists here. If you absorb me rightly, if you understand me and what I am saying and what I am being here, if you digest it, it becomes a fusion in you. It becomes an integral part of you. It becomes your insight. Then it has nothing to do with me.

It is just as if you take fruit from the tree and you eat it. It is absorbed, circulates in your blood, moves in your muscles, has become part of your body. Just a few hours before, it was part of the tree. Just a few hours before, it was the other. Now it is no more the other – it is you. It has entered your boundary. It is fused in you. This is what I mean by fusion.

If you don’t understand me, if you are not rightly digesting me, then there will be confusion.

Confusion simply shows that so many things are bombarding you and you are not able to digest them. It creates an indigestion – indigestion in the head, indigestion in your psyche... a psychic disturbance. So there is more possibility here than anywhere else, because the more possibility there is for fusion, simultaneously the more possibility there is of confusion.

If you don’t eat anything, there cannot be indigestion. Or if you eat just the minimum – that which is enough for survival – there will be no indigestion. But if rich food is available, very vital food is available and you eat too much of it.... And that happens. If a person has been starving for many days and then rich food becomes available, he simply cannot stop himself. He goes on eating.

When you come to me, you come in a starved state – not of the body but of the mind. Then I am available here. It creates indigestion and one feels confused, but nothing to be worried about. It simply shows that you will have to find a way to absorb me.

Another problem is also there and you know it; you have rightly pinpointed it – that you have a certain wrong notion that for love one first has to be worthy. That is absolutely absurd. Then nobody will be able to love, and nobody will ever feel worthy.

Love is nothing like that. Nothing more is required but you. Worth is not significant. Whether you are worthy or not is not a question for love. As you are, you can become a love object, but from your childhood you have been wrongly conditioned. Every child is wrongly conditioned because parents go on using this need of the child – the need to be loved, the need to be hugged, the need to be cuddled. They use it as a technique to educate him. They exploit this need. They are in trouble as to what else they can do and how to educate the child, so they make a bargain with him.

They say, ’If you do things we like you to do, then we will love you. You have to deserve it. If you are good in the school, if you are good in the house, if you are good with the neighbours, with the guests, with your mother, with your father, then you will receive love. If you are not good, if you are not worthy, then you will starve. We will not love you; we will withdraw ourselves.’

And the need of the child is so much. It is just like food. He cannot survive without food, and he cannot survive without love. In fact the need for love is even deeper than food, because without food, only his body will wither away; without love, his very soul.

So the child has to compromise. He cannot say, ’Just love me as I am.’ He cannot demand that –

and even if he demands, nobody is going to supply it. So by and by he has to force himself to do things which he never wanted to do, which he does not like to do. But there is a bait – that he can get love; mother’s love, father’s love, brother’s love. They will approve of him, they will make him worthy. So he works hard in the school, he tries to be dutiful. He tries to fetch a little more love from you, and then he learns something which is very dangerous. He learns that unless you are worthy, you will never be loved.

Now this is absurd. It is as if somebody is saying ’Unless you are worthy, you will never breathe.’ It is just as irrelevant. You are breathing whether you are worthy or not. Whether you are a saint or a sinner, you breathe the same. Can’t you see that life goes on giving itself to everybody without any conditions? The sun shines on the sinner and the saint alike. There is no distinction. The clouds come and shower on each and every body with no distinction.

Life is available. You are not to earn it. You are not to make yourself in some way capable of having it; it is already available. It is available as grace, as a gift. Love is a gift. But parents down the centuries have corrupted it. But they are not at fault – their parents corrupted them. So it is such a vicious chain that you cannot find out who the culprit is. And if you go down and down, finally you will find God as the culprit, because He was the first parent. He told Adam and Eve, ’Unless you obey me, I am going to throw you out of your happiness. I am going to throw you out of this heaven, this paradise. Be obedient! Be worthy! Only then can you live here.’ Since then every parent has been doing that. And every child is afraid – his paradise may be lost.

But now you are a grown-up. You can look back at the whole thing. You can contemplate upon it.

There is no need to remain confined by this conditioning. Just by being aware of it, you will be free of it. Nothing else is needed because it is an absolutely false idea. It is as if somebody has taught you that two plus two is five, so whenever you put two with two, you make five. Then suddenly today I tell you that it is not five. How can it be five? You understand then that yes, two plus two cannot be five; they can only be four. The moment you become aware that some wrong notion has been there, the very awareness helps you to drop it. Next time you will make four, not five. It is just that easy.

All these unconscious conditionings exist only because you are not aware of them. So whatsoever the problem is, try to become aware of it, of the whole process from the very beginning up to now.

There is no need to be worthy of love. In fact exactly the reverse is true. The more you love, the more you are loved, the more worthy you become. Love makes you worthy. The moment somebody loves you, he has started transforming you. Just the very look of two loving eyes on you, and suddenly you are no more the same. You start opening, you start flowing... you are exhilarated, you are ecstatic.

For the first time you feel the thrill of being alive and you start doing things that you had never done before. Love makes people worthy – that’s my attitude. So I am not going to tell you to first become worthy. It is not a business. Just love!

And the second thing to be understood – never think in terms of others having to love you. That again is a wrong attitude; that again is rooted in your wrong childhood. A child simply waits to be loved. And of course it is natural for a child, because how can the child-love? A one-day-old child

– how can he love? He cannot even hold the mother’s hand. He cannot even fix his eyes on the mother; everything is blurred. He does not know who the mother is and who is who. How can you expect him to love? He simply gets love.

By and by he learns one thing – that others have to love him. This is wrong; good in childhood, but one has to go beyond it – then only you become an adult. A man becomes adult the day he starts feeling that now he has to love. It is not a question of somebody loving him.

So why be a beggar? You are no more a child. You are behaving in a childish pattern. Start loving.

Go out of the way to love. And the more you love, the more you will see that more people are coming to you to love you, because love attracts love just as hatred attracts hatred. If you hate, people will hate you. If you love, people will love you. But don’t be bothered about whether others are loving you or not. Just love. Love is such a joyous activity – who bothers whether something returns or not? It is just like singing. You sing and enjoy. If somebody claps, good. If nobody claps, that is their business. You enjoyed it all the same.

So start loving, and love will be coming. By loving and being loved, you will become worthy; that’s my arithmetic. You have tried your arithmetic; it has failed. Give me a chance.

And the fusion will come. I don’t see any problem. Your whole confusion is with your childhood and here it becomes very very focused. Listening to me your desire becomes aflame. Then you start longing for the stars – and good; that’s good! Because I say that religion is the passion for the impossible.

A person becomes religious only when he starts longing for the impossible – that which never seems possible but still happens. With intense passion it becomes Possible. So when you are close to me, you start becoming aflame. You become very ambitious for the unknown, for love, for prayer, for meditation, for God, and then suddenly all your limitations.... You feel all your boundaries. You feel, for the first time, imprisoned – hence the confusion. It is as if somebody has lived in a prison and has completely forgotten what freedom is. Then somebody sings a song about freedom, and his fast asleep desire, almost oblivious, again surges up, surfaces, comes to the conscious mind, and he realises that he is a prisoner.

Up to now he was completely oblivious of the fact. He was thinking that this prison was his home.

He had been decorating it. He had made a beautiful thing out of it. He had learned to live in it. He was thinking the guard is his protector and the gaoler is his friend. He had started feeling that this gaol was a security and that he was absolutely protected against the enemy world... or something like this. And he was at ease.

Now suddenly someone comes – a bard who can sing about freedom, who can dance freedom...

whose eyes have a glow of freedom, whose every movement brings a taste of the open sky. His very breath is fragrant with freedom. He has brought the contrast – and the confusion. Now this prisoner can never be at ease again. But good! – because that is the only way for him to get out of the prison.

So something has become very very clear to you. Now do something about it. If you don’t do anything, the confusion will remain and it will become a chaotic mess. By doing something you will be able to absorb whatsoever you have felt here and whatsoever you have heard here. So the three things...

One – start loving, and don’t ask for love. Love will be coming as a natural consequence; one can forget all about it. Don’t think in terms of first being worthy. Nobody is. If love has to be earned, nobody is worthy. It is a grace. It is a gift. It comes to you because the whole existence is full of love. It is not because you are capable of it, not because you have some worth that it has come to you. No, it comes to you because the whole existence is full of it.

It is not the worthy earth on which the clouds are raining just now. They are raining because they have too much. What to do with it? Yes, after raining the earth will become more worthy. It will become alive with new life. New trees will come up... new flowers will bloom – but that is a consequence. It is not that this earth has in any way earned these clouds. The clouds were there and were too burdened. They have to release themselves.

The whole existence is full of love. Existence is made of the stuff we call love. It is just like air surrounding you. You just breathe in and it goes on. So forget about worthiness. Start loving, and you will see that love is coming, flowing. It comes one thousand fold. Just share, and continue to meditate. Whatsoever you have heard and felt with me will soon come to a fusion. The confusion will disappear....

[A sannyas couple came about their relationship. The woman was unsure about their relationship, as sometimes she felt very much in love, other times she felt bored. She added that she also felt attracted to other men.

Her partner said for his part that he was very much in love. Some moments were better than others, but he felt that was just normal.]

[to the woman] Mm ... a few things to be understood. First – because you are divided, your love cannot be the same and constantly the same. It has nothing to do with your love object, with your boyfriend. It has something to do with you.

Sometimes you feel very loving and sometimes you feel bored. That simply shows your two aspects, because if he is boring, then he is boring for twenty-four hours; he is himself for twenty-four hours. If he is not boring and he is very beautiful, then he is beautiful, because he is always the same person.

Something inside you changes, just like day and night. So when you feel bored with him, look deep inside – you must be feeling bored with yourself. When you feel beautiful with him, look inside –

you must be feeling beautiful with yourself. In fact we go on projecting on ,the other’. Whatsoever happens, happens on the inside. The other functions as a screen, and we project. When you are feeling beautiful, then he looks beautiful. It is your eyes which are full of beauty and they reflect in his being. When you are bored, he looks boring.

You can watch a full moon. If you are bored, the full moon will look boring. If you are sad, the full moon will look sad. If you are happy and ecstatic, you will find the moon so beautiful, so ecstatic.

And of course it reflects the most in the person you love, because he is closer to you. He functions like a mirror.

So make it a point to meditate. And look inside. You can change your lover from A to B, from B

to C, but the same will happen again and again with everybody. So the problem has to be tackled from within you. By changing the lover it is not going to be changed. It is just like changing the screen when the projector and the screen are the same. So you can change the screen – maybe a better screen, a bigger screen, a wider screen, but it is not going to make any substantial difference, because the projector is the same and the film is the same.

You are the projector and you are the film, so again you will project the same things on a different screen. The screen is almost irrelevant. Once you understand this, then you can see the whole life as maya, as a magic show. Then everything is inside; the problem is not outside. Nothing has to be done there. So first one has to realise that it is oneself; then the whole problem shifts and comes to the right place from where it can be tackled and solved. Otherwise you can go on looking in wrong directions; there is no possibility for any change.

[Osho said that many people keep changing their partners but time and again they choose a similar type of person, because they have certain criterions of beauty and what is attractive and they look for them in each potential lover. The West is caught up in the illusion that if the external is changed, so will be the problem, hence the changing of partners, cars, houses.]

The second thing: when you are feeling bored, don’t relate to him, because that is destructive.

When one is feeling bored, one should drop out of all relationship, otherwise those moments are going to be destructive. When you are feeling bored, just close your room, sit silently, meditate.

Use those moments with yourself. If you are feeling bored, then feel bored with yourself; that is your right. To feel bored with somebody is violent because you will show in every way that you are bored. Somehow deep down you will go on condemning him, thinking it is he who is boring you. You may say so, you may not, but in every way you will show ’You are boring me’. And that becomes poisoning. Don’t’ poison any relationship, never. Only beautiful moments are to be shared. Then a relationship goes deeper and deeper, higher and higher.

[Osho said that whenever one is feeling bored it is good to tell the other that you are not feeling good, and just to be alone.]

The human animal is the only animal who feels bored. It is a very very intelligent thing. It is not ordinary. Buffaloes are not bored, donkeys are not bored. They are never bored, because for boredom a certain level of intelligence is needed. Only man is bored. In man also, only people who are really intelligent are bored, rather than people who are stupid. That’s why very intelligent people sometimes commit suicide – very intelligent people. Stupid people don’t commit suicide. They don’t have any boredom. They live happily in a way. Their happiness is shallow, but they are happy in a way. In ordinary things they are happy. Smoking cigarettes, they are happy. Sitting in a movie, they are happy. Reading the newspaper – the same news every day – they are happy. ether,ing love, going to the office, they are happy. So nothing is wrong in it. It is simply an indication that the repetition makes you bored. So go into it. Use moments of boredom, sadness, depression, for meditation, to be with yourself, and soon you will see that you become capable of getting out of them.

And when you are feeling beautiful, happy, when you are full of euphoria, bubbling, only then relate, because then you have something to share. Then love him, call him. Sit together, sing together, dance together, love each other. Go for a morning walk. Sit under the stars or on the beach, because now you are overflowing and you need somebody to share it with.

When you are happy, that means you want somebody else also to be with you. That’s the meaning of happiness. It has an intrinsic flow of sharing. So when you are feeling good, share. When you are feeling bad, withdraw. Keep this up for six months and go on noting what is happening. Within six months you will become very very aware.

Don’t be worried about the other thing – that you become interested in other men. That is natural; that is simply natural. If he becomes interested in other women, don’t feel hurt. That too is natural.

In fact lovers who love each other deeply don’t become disinterested in other human beings. For the first time they become really interested, but in spite of their interest they would like to share with each other only. That’s a different thing.

[Osho said that if your lover is attracted to another woman, it is because he sees you reflected in her. There is nothing wrong in feeling attraction for others. If love is there, it is good.]

Humanity has been taught very wrong things. They have been taught that if you love a woman, then you cannot be attracted to any other woman. If you are attracted to another woman, your love is false; you are betraying. This is foolish. This creates g ult, unnecessary guilt. It creates jealousy and a thousand and one sorts of conflicts and naggings. The whole beauty of love is lost. It becomes almost hell-fire. It becomes dirty and ugly.

So if you are feeling loving towards him, work it out; don’t be in a hurry. Love likes time to grow. And on his side there are no problems. It is very difficult to find a man who has no problems on his side.

So half the problems are solved.

[A sannyasin says: When I write for myself I have no difficulty, but as soon as I write to someone, I start trembling.]

It is simple then. You have no problem in the body; the problem is just in the mind. The problem arises when you become self-conscious. When you are writing to yourself, there is no question of being self-conscious. When you are writing to somebody else, you become conscious about what to write, what not to write, whether this will be good or not; whether you will be impressing the other in the right way or not. Then you become puzzled and you become too self-conscious, and that creates the trouble.

[Osho recounted the story of the centipede who, with his hundred legs, impressed a passing hare, who asked him how he could possibly cope with so many legs, trying to work out which should come first, etc. The centipede, who had never given it any thought before, began to study the way he walked, but found the whole process so confusing that he fell down, unable to walk a step!]

Self-consciousness creates many problems. So do one thing now – just a small exercise before you write. For five minutes sit silently and feel that everybody is you, the whole existence is one; the other is not the other. You are the other, the other is in you. Don’t feel as if you are an island; become part of the continent.

Address the letter to ’Myself – in the form of such and such’, and then write. For five minutes simply meditate on your being one with the whole. There is no one else, so there is no question of being self-conscious. All letters are written to oneself.

[Osho said that as soon as one felt self-conscious, one began to feel awkward, ill at ease. y someone is watching you painting, you start to lose the feeling of unity with your work.

Osho recounted Winston Churchill’s reply as to how he managed to speak so eloquently in front of audiences. He said he simply told himself that he was addressing an audience of donkeys, idiots, and then was able to proceed quite smoothly.

Another famous public speaker, Mark Twain, was asked by his wife how his lecture had gone. He asked if she was referring to the one he had prepared, the one he gave, or the one he wanted to deliver.

Osho said Churchill’s was the western way; his method, the eastern.... ]

Do the eastern way – all are one. And there is no need to count the legs – they are functioning well.

Everything is going so well spontaneously. The moment you start thinking about it, things go wrong.

You are too much of a thinker, that’s all!

Just write a letter tonight, and don’t even read it twice. You can write a good letter to me. Try it. At least I will not judge you. Whatsoever you write will be good. I approve a priori!

[A sannyasin says: I’m so confused. You say sometimes to think of the whole and being one – and it helps sometimes. But sometimes when I feel angry then I can’t see that. When I’m blocked I just don’t feel like that, and I don’t know whether I’m deceiving myself or... ]

I understand. No, you are not deceiving yourself. Only when one is blocked,when one is angry or sad or depressed and energy is not flowing is it very difficult to conceive that there is only one. When you are flowing, happy, silent, in a certain celebrating mood, it comes easily. You can feel that you and the whole existence are one. Both are true, but in angry, depressed moments, sad moments, you will start being suspicious about whether those moments when you were thinking everything is one, were illusory, because now they are lost.

They were real. They are now lost; that too is real. Both are realities – two different planes of reality.

There is no need to be confused about them. So when you are feeling angry, don’t try that, because that is not the right moment. It is as if one is sowing seeds on a rock. When nothing comes you will wonder whether these are real seeds or just stones because nothing is coming up Seeds need the right soil.

So when you are happy, the Vedanta is true. It is applicable only to happy minds. God exists only for happy minds. You can conceive of what I am saying only in a happy mood because in that mood you have wings and you will fly into the sky. Then the sky is true. But when your wings are cut and you have fallen on the ground, it is almost impossible to fly. Even to move is difficult, even to crawl is difficult. What to think about the sky? What about those wings? That all looks unreal.

And in this moment it is unreal. Not that it was unreal. So don’t try. In these moments, something else has to be done. When you are feeling angry, when you are feeling sad, then to try this feeling of cosmic unity is absurd. It is as if somebody is paralysed and he wants to swim or run, or to take part in a race. These are paralysed moments.

[Osho said that in such moments one should be alone in one’s room with a pillow and release the anger and negative feelings onto the pillow until the energy is flowing once again. He said we expect that we should be happy for twenty-four hours, and for us right now that is not possible.... ]

Even if in twenty-four hours there is a single moment where you can feel the truth that everything is one, enough; that will do. By and by these moments will grow.

There are millions of people who cannot imagine for a single moment that only one exists. Think of those. They think God is dead. They think prayer is nonsense. They think meditation is stupid. They call it navel-gazing, they call it lotus-eating. They call all these things names. For them it’s okay, because they don’t have the wings, so what to say to them? They don’t know anything of the sky.

So I don’t see the problem. You are creating the problem by trying to fly in wrong moments. These are right moments to take off. All moments are not right to take off. When the sky is clear and you are in a happy mood, a radiant mood, when you are feeling weightless and gravitation doesn’t matter

– in those moments, pray, in those moments think of God. In those moments think of me, and you will be immediately related to me. Your hand will be in my hand.

[The sannyasin then said that she and her husband did not always move together, and said that she sometimes felt hurt because he said she did not love him. This made her try to prove her love, which meant she found herself doing things she didn’t want to. Still, she felt it necessary if she were to prove her love.]

No, there is no need to do that. Love is such an impossible thing that nobody believes in it anyway. It is very easy to believe that somebody does not love you. It is very difficult to believe that somebody loves you, because love is not of this world; that is the trouble. Love is immaterial.

It is very difficult to believe that somebody loves you. You can only believe that you love somebody because that you know from the inside. But how to trust that the other loves you? It remains always a vague thing. And when somebody feels suspicious, doubtful, not certain whether you love him or not, you try to prove that you do, but your every effort is suicidal. The more you try to prove it, the more suspicious the other will become, because if you really love, why are you trying to prove it?

[Osho said that she should stop trying to prove her love; just to love was enough. If her husband did not believe her, that was his problem, but as he grew in love, he would come to feel her love. Trying to prove oneself could bring more complications.]

So drop the effort of proving. Many people do it. They go out of the way to prove it. Husbands do it. They will bring ice-cream and flowers. In fact if the husband brings flowers, brings ice-cream and sweets and this and that – a new sari for you – you feel suspicious. He must have done something, otherwise why? He must have done something against you. He must have looked at another woman, or he must have laughed and talked with some other woman and is feeling guilty, otherwise why these things?

And that too has a point. Husbands only bring ice-creams when they feel guilty, otherwise who bothers? I’m not saying stop loving him; I’m not saying stop doing things for him. You love him, so continue to do things for him – but not to prove anything... just out of your love.

And there is no need to move with him for twenty-four hours. Lovers should never be together for twenty-four hours, otherwise they destroy the whole beauty of it. They become heavy on each other.

It is good to have every day a few hours divorce and a few minutes honeymoon. Good.

CHAPTER 10

30 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin had said at his last darshan (see Dance Your Way to God, August 16th, 1976) that he was too much of an egoist, so Osho had told him to give his ego full play for one week – to set himself up as a guru and adopt some followers etc.

Tonight, the sannyasin reported back : I enjoyed it, but I also felt guilty. All that you say is against the ego. If someone says something against my ego, I take it that he’s saying it to me. I didn’t see it as being towards something separate from me, but you said to see it as a separate thing.]

I am against the ego – and the thing that I told you to do is the best way to get rid of the ego, so there is no contradiction. If you really want to drop the ego, first be a perfect egoist. Just as ripe fruit fan on their own accord, a ripe ego falls on its own accord. An unripe ego cannot fall; it clings. So if you try to be humble, if you make efforts against the ego, it will remain unripe, immature. It will cling to you and it will poison your being.

So the best way to get rid of it from your system is to first be with it. Go the whole way with it.

Be a really perfect egoist. Enjoy its pleasure and pain; they are both there. There is pleasure –

otherwise why should people be egoists? There is a certain gratification. You feel at the top of the world. But again and again you also feel hurt because nobody is there to support your ego. They are supporting their own. Why should they bother about you?

So when they see that here comes an egoist, they start destroying your ego, because that is the only way that they can support their own. So it is a continuous competition between the egos. They have to keep their flag high. Just to keep their flag high, they force your flag low; they have to put you down. Then it hurts. The ego gives pleasure – that’s why so many people, almost all people, are egoists. And it hurts – that’s why every egoist thinks, in some moments of contemplation, about how to get rid of it. These things both go on in the mind because it is a very ambiguous thing.

It is pleasant... it is painful. It gives you glimpses of both heaven and hell – and to get rid of it, you have to pass through both. You have to see its pleasures and you have to see its pain. Then by and by you will become capable of seeing that it is the same thing giving you pleasure, and the same thing giving you pain. Your ego means hurting others’ egos. It is that that is giving you pleasure. But the same is being done to you by others, because their ego means hurting you. Then one becomes aware of the whole game. With that very awareness, one starts laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it.

Then one does not become egoless, one does not become humble. One simply drops the ego. One is simply aware – neither egoistic nor egoless. One is out of the game; one is no more part of that trip. The humble person is also on the same trip. He is trying to be the most humble man in the world. Now the trip is the same. If you tell a humble person that you have come across a person who is more humble than him, he will immediately feel hurt. He cannot believe that anyone can be more humble than he. Impossible! He is the last. But in saying that he is the last, he is putting himself first. The ego is very tricky. Even in being last you can become competitive.

In India we have many stories about the city Lucknow. It is one of the most cultured cities of the world; in fact cultured too much. People are so polite, so nice, that the whole thing is sickening. So this is part of Lucknow’s etiquette – that if two persons are entering a room, for half an hour they will just say ’You first’, and the other will say ’No, you first’. Even on a railway station, waiting to enter the train, you will see people saying to each other ’You first. How can I be first? I am just nobody’.

It is said that once a woman was pregnant with twins. They were never born – ’You first’! The woman died. They were so polite and such nice guys! So even the last person can be on an ego trip.

So I tell you to be fully egoistic; deliberately be egoistic. Enjoy both the pleasure and the pain. That will give you a ripeness. That will give you the experience of what the ego really is. Through that very experience one day it will suddenly explode. Then you will not try to be a humble person; you will simply be humble. You will not even be aware that you are humble. Then humility is true. When the person is not even aware that he is humble... and a humble person is not aware that he is humble, because only an egoistic person can be aware that he is humble.

Because of the ego, a true life cannot function, cannot reveal its mysteries to you. The ego goes on covering your eyes. But you are too young. That’s why I say just play the game first. For ten months play the game and suffer – and don’t feel guilty. Even if you feel guilty, do it. That is your meditation.

One day you will become aware. You are very sensitive; you can become aware.

[Members of the Tao group were present tonight. One group member sat with eyes closed in front of Osho and then slowly fell back with arms raised.]

Open your eyes and look at me! Good! [a chuckle] Very good. Your energy is flowing really well –

as it should flow. Just go with it.

This is what the Chinese call the energy of chi. Once it starts working, you are in a very deep harmony with the existence. Just go with it, whatsoever happens even if sometimes you feel strange, weird. Our whole pattern of life is to fight, and this is relaxing all fight.

In the West only Pythagoras had an insight about this energy, nobody else. He called it a really beautiful name; he called it ’harmonium’. It is a harmony... a harmony with existence. Everything is already going on its way; we are just to go with it. The river is flowing – we have just to relax and stop fighting.

There are only two ways of being; one is competition and another is cooperation. The West knows only competition. It has forgotten the style of cooperation. Now you can learn the style of cooperation. The energy is available. Just cooperate with it. Wherever it leads go with it. It will lead you to new spaces – far out spaces. Just surrender. It will suck you to the deepest core of your being. Don’t be afraid. And each day, the more you go with it, the more and more harmony will be felt in your being. Soon you will start hearing the celestial music which comes automatically when one falls in harmony.

[A group member says: Right now I feel sad.

So you started feeling sad just now? Just close your eyes and raise both your hands towards me, and if something happens in the energy, allow it... as if your energy is meeting my energy and I am surrounding you, as if I am just a whirlpool and you are being carried with me.

... You are holding – that may be the whole problem. You don’t trust life. Somewhere deep down there is a mistrust of life, as if if you don’t control, things will go wrong and that if you remain in control only then things can go right, that you have to always deliberately manage things. Maybe your childhood conditioning has helped in that way. That has done much damage, because when a person starts managing everything, his life is lived at the minimum.

Life is such a vast phenomenon; it is impossible to manage it. And if you really want to manage it, you have to cut it to the minimum; then you can manage. Otherwise life is wild. It is as wild as these clouds, and this rain and this breeze and these trees and the sky. It is wild – and you have cut your wild part completely. You are afraid of it – that’s why you don’t open as much as you can, and that is creating your sadness also.

Sadness is nothing but the same energy that could have been happiness. When you don’t see that your happiness is flowering, you become sad. Whenever you see somebody happy, you become sad; why is it not happening to you? It can happen to you! There is no problem in it. You just have to uncondition your past. You will have to go a little out of the way for it to happen, so just make a few efforts to open yourself. Even if it feels a little painful in the beginning.... In the beginning it will feel painful.

Start one meditation in the night, from tonight. Just feel as if you are not a human being at all. You can choose any animal that you like. If you like a cat, good. If you like a dog, good... or a tiger; male, female, anything you like. Just choose, but then stick to it. Become that animal. Move on all fours in the room and become that animal.

For fifteen minutes enjoy the fantasy as much as you can. Bark if you are a dog and do things a dog is expected to do – and really do! Enjoy it. And don’t control, because a dog cannot control.

A dog means absolute freedom, so whatsoever happens in that moment, do. In that moment don’t bring in the human element of control. Be really doggedly a dog. For fifteen minutes roam around the room... bark, jump. Continue this for seven days and then tell me.

It will help. You need a little more animal energy. You are too sophisticated, too civilised, and that is crippling you. Too much civilisation is a paralysing thing. It is good in a small dose but too much of it is very dangerous. One should always remain capable of being an animal. Your animal has to be freed; that is the problem as I see it. If you can learn to be a little wild, all your problems will disappear. So start from tonight – and enjoy it!

[A group member said that he seemed stuck in his throat, as if he wanted to vomit. Osho checks his energy and suggested that for three mornings in a row, he drink as much of a bucket of warm salted water as he could, until he was on the point of vomiting, whereupon he should induce a retching action so that all the water would be as if siphoned out again.]

It is something to do with the throat centre. It happens to people who are not very extrovert.

[The group member replies: I am an extrovert.]

You have remained alone. An extrovert is one wo extroverts. You may think you are – you are not.

As far as your deepest emotions are concerned, you have never been able to express them. Deep down you have remained alone. You have never been in any relationship in which you were totally lost. You have never been in any occupation in which you were totally lost. You have remained separate. Deep down somewhere you have remained alone.

An extrovert is one who is very easily lost in anything. An introvert is one who, whatsoever he does, remains alone. Somewhere he is separate, aloof, distant. He tries You may have been trying. And if you try, you can become a good citizen, a good husband, a good lover, a good friend, but that is effort. If you relax, that will disappear. By effort you have become an extrovert, but by your intrinsic nature you are not.

This centre – the throat centre – is the centre of expression, so whenever something starts arising in you and comes to the throat, you will always feel this difficulty, because you will not be able to find ways and means of expressing it. That’s what is choking you. Something really beautiful has happened and the energy is moving, but it cannot pass through the throat centre. So the throat centre needs a cleansing.

This hot water will clean the throat centre. The very process of vomiting is helpful. If it is not working, then on the third day, write a letter [to Osho]. Otherwise it will be gone. Don’t be worried.

[Osho gives another sannyasin an ’energy darshan’]

Good... come back. You have started the whole thing beautifully. Now if you would like to say something, you can.

... Your energy is flowing very well. Just do one thing before you go to sleep at night. Sit in your room and keep this box in your left hand. Whatsoever happens, don’t leave the box. You can tie it to your hand with a handkerchief because sometimes you may be in such an energy flow that it may be thrown. For fifteen minutes, whatsoever happens, go with it. Go very gracefully, smoothly... as if you are being taken into a different world. And I will be holding your hand, so don’t be worried.

Something very significant is close by. If your energy starts moving in the right rhythm.... It is only a question of rhythm. If you can vibrate in the right rhythm, you will be able to touch it. It is always a question of vibrancy.

Existence is vibrating in a certain rhythm. If we can also vibrate in the same rhythm, there is a meeting immediately, a fusion, melting. We go on missing because we don’t know what rhythm is and how to vibrate in the same rhythm. So close your eyes and start vibrating. You need not worry about what to do. Simply let go. By and by you will see a certain pattern, a certain field of energy arising around you. Do it for ten days every night and every day it will become more and more clear.

And some day, something will happen....

[Another group member had a problem in the group where he felt angry but was unable to express it.]

Nothing to be disturbed about. You have learned a mechanism, and that mechanism has become very ingrained. The mechanism is that you go only so far and then you simply withdraw. You become angry only so far and then you withdraw because you are afraid that if you go beyond that, you may not be able to withdraw. You may go mad or you may do something which should not be done, So that fear has become ingrained, and that functions like an automatic thing. It is not you. You try; you do whatsoever you can. If they say, ’Be angry’, you try, but by the moment the anger comes to the point where the mechanism exists, immediately something goes flop and you withdraw.

[Osho said that Rolfing would be helpful, because the mechanism had gone into the body, so groups alone could not help... ]

... because the group works only with the mind energy. You must have learned it your whole life.

It has really gone into the body structure. Even your musculature has become repressive. It is not streaming. It is not vibrating. It has become a little stoney.

You have controlled too much. But that happens to many people because all the cultures, societies, religions – they all teach you to be dead. You have been trying to be a very very good man, a gentleman. You have succeeded in that – that’s your trouble. You have succeeded in your effort and the thing has gone into the body armour. So it has to be broken there, in the musculature.

[Osho said that apart from Rolfing (which is available here in the ashram), he should begin some kind of physical exercise – like going for a long walk, but briskly, almost running. He said the emphasis should be on exhalation rather than inhalation, which the body would do automatically .

Secondly, he should make a habit of doing something absurd whenever he was alone in the bathroom – pulling a face, making a nonsensical sound.... ]

That will relax many things in you. You have managed too well, so some spaces are needed to create some holes in your personality. You have a well-guarded personality, well polished. So this is my way of sabotaging it. Do these three things and after ten days, tell me. It will go. There is nothing to be worried about.... And continue meditating.

[A group member said: This group was really the most incredible experience I ever had... energy just flowing over... ]

Mm, you are still vibrating with the energy. Very good.

People don’t know how to live with vibrating energy, otherwise the whole world would be fun of love.

People have so much to give, and it is rotting inside them. They have so much music and it is just lying there. And death will take everything away. People are misers. They have completely forgotten their treasures of energies. So remember it. People are unnecessarily living in poverty. They can live like emperors because that much energy is already there. It just needs a little stirring, a little challenge, a provocation and a little courage.

You can stir so much energy around you that you can create a whirlwind of love, and wherever you go, people will suddenly feel that a new breeze has passed. Everybody can do that; everybody has the potential. But people live at the minimum; they live poor – they have decided to live that way.

A religious person is one who is trying to live at the optimum. Why live at the minimum when one can live at the optimum? Why live in the dark valley when you can live on the Himalayan peak?

So learn that. And always remember to vibrate. If one vibrates, the others start responding. It is a chain. That’s how it happens sometimes in groups. If one person is really vibrating, he will start a chain. Then another starts vibrating, then the third; then everybody is overflooded. Then people who are very very dull and dead, even they start feeling that something is stirring them.

That is the beauty of a group experience. Alone it may be difficult for you. In a group it becomes very easy. Even one alive person can make the whole group alive. And once you know it is there, you can create your own.

Just try it. Sitting in your bed in the night, just fill the whole room with your energy and you will feel a throbbing, a beating. You can almost feel it filling the whole room, and the whole room will feel it.

It will have a different quality of radiance. You can sit in a dark room and create it and soon you will see a bluish glow surrounding you in the darkness.lt is exactly like electricity.

Try. It has been a beautiful experience.

[A group member said: I couldn’t become angry, but I got in touch with some very soft things, and I feel very happy about that.]

Good, very good. You did well.

For you, one thing has to be remembered. This soft space can become a permanent thing with you, but you have to learn one small thing to make it permanent – and that is to develop a soft eye.

We can look at things in two ways – hard and soft. When you look at something with a hard eye, you look at it directly; you focus on it. Then every line is clear and you see it as separate from other things. For example, if you focus on one tree, then it is separate from other trees, separate from the house, separate from the people passing by, separate from the clouds roaming around. You focus on it and all its separateness, its indifference, its individuality.

When you look at a thing in a soft way, with a soft eye, you look unfocused, not at it exactly but through it. Then you don’t pay much attention to its distinctiveness. On the contrary, you see the tree as part of the whole scene – many trees, the clouds, the sun, the birds, the people passing –

and you also included. Then the tree is not focused and taken apart from the whole gestalt. It is just part of it.

So try to develop a soft eye. Look, but in a soft way. It will be a little vague, dim, not so clear-cut... as if you have taken a photograph from the camera and it was not rightly focused. It will be unfocused, but it will help your soft space. People who look with a hard eye become hard. People who look with a soft eye become soft. Poets look with soft eyes, mathematicians with hard eyes. Painters look with soft eyes, scientists with hard eyes. If you look with a hard eye, life is like prose. If you look with a soft eye, life is more like poetry – everything meeting and merging into each other.

So just try to be soft. Move softly, look softly, talk softly. Just try to grow softness all around you.

That will become a support for the inner space that you have just glimpsed, and that soft space will become more and more available to you. By and by it will become your abode. It has been really good....

CHAPTER 11

31 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

The first thing is to fall in line with me. Just dose your eyes and feel yourself surrounded by me –

as if you have entered me, as if I am only a door. Relax, and if something starts happening in your body energy, allow it. Just go with it ....

Geet means song and Govind means God – God’s song. It is also the name of a very great poem –

Geet Govind. It is one of the most beautiful devotional books.

So now forget the old completely and start anew. It helps tremendously. Once you can get the idea that you are reborn, then you are really reborn. It is just a question of getting the idea. Whatsoever we are is nothing but our idea about ourselves. If we get into the idea of being miserable, we are miserable. If we get into the idea of being blessed, blissful, we are blissful.

This is the only thing worth understanding – that we live out of our ideas, that we create our world around us; that the world is not there really, the world is not given – it is projected. It is we who create it, and hence we don’t live in the same world; we cannot. There are as many worlds as there are people. We only appear to be together. We cannot be because we live poles apart. Everybody creates around himself his own projection which follows him like a shadow and goes on creating things for him. So just the very idea that the old is dropped from this moment and hence forward you will be a new person ....

In all religions some sort of ritual exists to give you the idea. That is just a suggestion. In Christianity, baptism exists. That’s nothing but something to just give you an idea that you are no more in continuity with your past. A discontinuity has happened, a gap has arisen. That very understanding helps tremendously, because old problems now look ridiculous because they don’t belong to you.

Just watch it: sometimes if you think a problem belongs to you – even if it doesn’t – you start getting anxious about it. Just sit silently and think that someone is insulting you. What to do now? You start feeling anger arising in you. Nobody has insulted you! Or when somebody has insulted you, just relax and think that he has insulted somebody else. How can he insult you? You don’t even know yourself – how can he know you? Maybe he has insulted your name, your form, but that is not you.

Suddenly you see that something subsides. The very idea becomes our identity.

So from this moment, feel completely discontinuous with your past. And start anew, with a new nucleus, so new integration can arise. It is always easier to demolish the old structure and make a new start than to renovate the old. Howsoever you renovate, somehow it remains old. Modified, changed a little here and there, plastered again, decorated a little – but deep down it remains the old structure; the pattern, the gestalt remains the old.

Sannyas simply means getting rooted in the idea that you renounce your past. I don’t say renounce the world. I say renounce the past because that has really been your world. I don’t say renounce your relationships. I say renounce yourself. I don’t say renounce money; I don’t say renounce anything outwardly. I simply say have deep renunciation inside so that you simply wipe out the whole past and you start creating a new world.

For a few days you will have to remember it... only for a few days. For at least three weeks you will have to remember again and again that you are not the old. Then things settle, a new centre arises and you start feeling grounded in the new.

And I give you a beautiful name just to remind you that one has to become a song, the Lord’s song.

That’s everybody’s destiny, and unless we become that, we suffer.

The whole human suffering consists of our not finding that which we are meant to be. If we are meant to be a rose flower, we don’t know how to become a rose flower. Or if we are meant to be a lotus, we don’t know how to become a lotus. The whole suffering consists in our somehow going on missing our destiny. The song remains unsung. That’s exactly what misery is; everything else is accidental This is real misery – that you cannot sing the song you have come to sing... that you cannot bloom into the flower that you have been carrying in your heart for so many lives. And unless the song is sung, one is not freed. Freedom comes at the exact moment when you flower. The moment of fulfillment and the moment of freedom are just two aspects of the same phenomenon.

And much is possible. Just allow it to happen!

Deva means divine, asawa means wine, divine wine. And I give you this for a particular reason.

From this very moment be drunk with me. Become a drunkard – sing, dance, celebrate. Let joy be your path. And if one can be really joyful, there is no need for any other prayer.

Joy is the greatest prayer, and when we are delighted, when we are in simple delight, we are in tune with God.

So never be serious and never be sad, because to be sad is a complaint against God. To be serious in fact is a rejection of God’s world. Remain joyous. Make it your very style of life – and you can; it is simple. I can see it in your energy. It is so good. If you just allow it, the dance will arise.

[A visitor says: I don’t know what love is. I feel very closed... The more I’m here, the more I feel it.]

And the more you become aware – that’s right. In the ordinary world everybody is closed just like you, so you don’t have any comparison. And ordinary life is so loveless that everybody can think that he loves very much. Whenever you come in contact with real love, then the problem will arise.

Whenever you come close to people who are open, more open than you, flowing, then you will feel that you are closed, because then comparison arises.

But you have felt something which is there. It is good that you have become aware of it; now do something about it. If you remain closed, you remain dead. It is as if when the whole sky was available, you were just looking from the keyhole. Of course you can see a little sky from the keyhole also, and sometimes a ray of sun passes by; sometimes you can see a flickering star. But this is unnecessarily hard and you remain poor unnecessarily.

Come out of it – and you can come out of it. Just try one small experiment back home. Every night before you go to sleep, just stand in the middle of the room and look at the wall. Concentrate on the wall; not the door, the wall. Think of yourself as just a wall with no door in you; completely closed.

Nobody can enter you and you cannot get out – imprisoned. Almost become a wall, psychologically.

Let your whole energy become a wall, a china wall.

For ten minutes become the wall and become tense, as tense as you can become. Drop all openings and become absolutely dosed – what Leibnitz calls a monad, a windowless atom; completely closed within yourself. You will start perspiring, you will start trembling; anxiety will arise. You will feel as if you are dying, as if you are entering your grave. Don’t be worried – enter it. Bring it to a climax –

this tension, this contraction, this shrinking.

Then turn, look at the door, keep the door open and become a door. Start feeling that you are becoming a door; you are not a wall. Anybody can come in you – there is no need even to knock.

And you can go out; there is no barrier. Relax... relax the whole body and the whole feeling. Expand.

Remain standing there, but expand. Feel that you are filling the whole room. Feel that your energy is streaming out of the door into the garden. Just let the energy go out, and feel that the outer world is entering you. For ten minutes become a wall, and for twenty minutes become a door. Then go to sleep. Continue this for at least three months. After the third week you will start feeling so open, but continue. I am giving you both so you can feel the contrast more easily.

Once you can understand your own energy – that it becomes a wall, it becomes a door – then you will become aware of a very beautiful dimension. Then you can feel others’ energies. You pass a man on the street; you can feel whether this man is a wall or a door. Now you have an inner understanding about it. Then if you want to relate with this man, don’t relate when you feel he is a wall, because then nothing will succeed. Only relate when you feel that he is a door.

Many times this can become such a deep experience in relationships, that you cannot imagine it.

You fall in love with a woman without knowing whether she is a wall or a door. If she is a wall, maybe she looks beautiful but that is meaningless. She has a beautiful nose, a long nose, very shapely, beautiful eyes, but what to do with eyes and nose? If she is a wall, you will be in misery.

So the basic thing to be felt is whether she is a door, whether she is an opening, and if you go into her, whether she will allow you in or will obstruct the path. If people become more aware of their own energy phenomena their whole life will be totally different. Then they will fall in love with a personis a door, not a wall. Then they will find moments when people are doors – because people change. In the morning somebody may be a door; by the evening he may become a wall – because the whole day has been of struggle, fight, tension, anxiety, and one tends to close.

So approach a person when he is a door, and the same person will be totally different. Approach your child when he is a door. Then he will listen, then he is ready to absorb what you say. Otherwise you go on shouting. He is deaf; he is a wall. Talk to your wife when she is a door. Make love to her when she is a door. When she is a wall, it is better not to disturb her. But once you know it as your inner feeling, then you can feel it everywhere.

Then you can find who is your master – not before it. Unless you can see a gateless gate .... You can be attracted to someone’s teachings; that won’t help. You can be attracted by his persona; that won’t help. He may be a very charming person, he may have a charisma, a sort of magnetism. That is not going to help unless he is a door – a door to the divine. Many people live a miserable life because they miss this very basic perception, perceptivity; and one should start it from the inner.

[A sannyasin says she is not ready for sannyas. Osho tells her her energy is ready.]

Go with it. Your energy is simply flowing beautifully. Go with it... be possessed by it.

That is one of the basic human problems – we try to possess the energy, we try to control the beauty of it. We never do anything which is beyond our control. We always want to remain in control. That makes you very limited. That makes you very small, because your control cannot be for the infinite, and your control cannot be for the whole. You choose by your own choice to remain miserable and small and tiny and confined to a very small prison cell.

Now this energy is coming like a tidal wave; go with it. Why be afraid? Why cling to the small?

Always choose the big, the vast. I don’t see the point of why you should lag behind.

[She answers: I don’t want to jump. I want to feel the ground.]

There is no ground! It is an abyss. The jump means a jump into the abyss. I’m not saying that there is any ground: there is none. I am saying that all ground is false imagination. Because we are not ready to jump, we imagine a ground underneath. We think we are safe. But there is no ground –

just look! The floor does not exist; it is just imaginary. Because of our fear, we go on thinking that we are moving well-grounded. But where are you grounded?

Life is an abyss. There is no beginning and no end, so there cannot be any ground. Sannyas is nothing but to recognise the fact that we are in the abyss, that there exists no ground. And we are not trying for any ground. We are ready to enjoy this abysmal beauty.

No, I am not saying that I will give you any ground. People who have ground – I take it away. I lead them into that emptiness. In the beginning it is very scary – naturally. One feels very frightened because one has become accustomed so much to living on the ground. But by and by you feel a certain freedom arising in you. When there is no ground, suddenly you see that your wings are opening. Then you start flying.

And when there is no ground, by and by you feel that your freedom is unlimited. Then the very insecurity becomes your security. Then there is no death, because death happens only because you cling to the ground. The ground is illusory. One day or other it will be taken away; hence death exists.

When you accept that there is no ground, immediately all death disappears, because nothing can be taken away from you. You don’t have anything.

[A sannyasin says: I feel dizzy. It’s not physical, but every day has been so meaningful – I just wonder, ’What next?’ I feel that something has opened in me.]

Mm, it has opened – that’s why the excitement. Excitement is life. One should always live in tremendous excitement and readiness to be surprised, never taking things for granted. One can never take anything for granted. The moment you take anything for granted, a part of you dies. If you start taking your whole life for granted, you are dead. That’s how people die before their death.

In fact if you have the eyes to see, you will see dead bodies walking on the road, going from here to there, in the offices, in the factories, in the shops, coming back home; but dead bodies, automatic, robots. They have died long ago. They died the day they thought that life is just something which has happened. They lost excitement. You cannot surprise them. They know everything.

So remain in a state of unknowing. Remain in a state of subtle excitement and you will remain alive.

Your life will grow more and more every day. Expect nothing, but be ready for everything. Anything can happen – even God. Expect nothing, because expectation kills excitement, and expectation creates frustration. Expect nothing and be ready for everything. Then small things will be so beautiful. Ordinary pebbles on the shore are like precious diamonds and the whole world is so beautiful then.

If you have the eyes which are open and ready to be surprised, eyes which are ready to wonder, a heart which is ready to be in the state of awe, then everything is beautiful. It is a great epic, this life.

It is a great dance, this life, and each moment is unique; it is not a repetition. Nothing every repeats.

So be thrilled, and live more and more in a thrilling, streaming way. Don’t get accustomed, don’t make your life a routine, a mechanical thing, and much more will become possible every day.

[A sannyasin says: I just keep creating the same problems – the same melancholia, thinking about things that aren’t necessarily negative in a negative way. Things that don’t fit into my usual pattern, I take in a negative way.]

You have a negative shadow which hangs around you, and in your moments of unawareness, it overpowers you. Then you become completely identified with it, and you are no more yourself.

Then you say and do things for which you will repent afterwards – and you do repent.

So this has to be understood: don’t get identified with your negative shadow. Remain aloof, otherwise it can be very destructive. You do something, create something, and then you get identified with the negative; then all that is created is destroyed again. The positive is really fragile and the negative is very strong. The positive is like a rose flower and the negative is like a rock.

It is dead but it is very strong, and if you throw the rock on the rose flower, the rose flower will be crushed.

The higher is always fragile, the lower is always strong. The higher is delicate, soft; the lower is rough and rude. The negative is the lower part. So whenever you get identified, you wash away many things that you were creating. Something beautiful was going to be there. Again the rock falls and crushes it. Again you have to start from ABC. This I have been watching. Now you have to be alert about it.

When you feel in a negative mood, make one point certain. Don’t say anything in that mood, and don’t do anything in that mood. In that mood, simply remain closed with yourself... become completely withdrawn. Lie down on the bed. Eat, go to sleep. Lie down in your bath, relax, but don’t do anything. Don’t relate, don’t make any decisions, because those decisions will be wrong and they will undo the work of many days and then you suffer.

[The sannyasin answers: That’s what’s happening now, but I didn’t feel it was because of me; it was a matter of what was happening in the world.]

No, no, that is another thing. I’m not talking about that. The world goes on changing and you have to change many times. That’s not the thing. I’m talking about your inner growth. Many times you create something beautiful, and you destroy it – you destroy it within a few moments.

So you have to be alert about this from now on. Decide to do things only when you are positive; when you are happy, flowing, loving, trusting. Don’t do anything when you are not positive – and that will save much energy. Soon you will realise its benefits.

CHAPTER 12

1 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is going back to the West said she ran groups in a mental hospital and also privately, but she worries about being too serious.]

No, don’t do it, because then it becomes almost impossible to live. As humanity is, it needs many lies, many pretensions, many pretexts. If you are talking to a child, you talk in a language that the child understands. Maybe it is not the right thing to say, maybe you can explain it in a more scientific way, but then the child won’t understand. When you are talking to a child, you talk in his language, knowing well that whatsoever you are saying is arbitrary and when the child grows he will know that those things were just ways of saying things. He will understand.

So what I suggest is, one has to go on playing many games. One should play non-seriously, and one should remember that they are games. One should not forget that – but there is no need to become serious about it.

[The sannyasin said:I carry in me also, somewhere, a fear of going crazy.]

Everybody carries it. And unless you enter that fear, you will always remain afraid of it. To dissolve fear, the only way is to get into it. If you feel that you have a fear of going crazy, make it a point that at least once in twenty-four hours, for one hour, go crazy. Don’t go on accumulating it.

Nothing is wrong in being crazy. That is also a game; a few people decide to play it. And there is nothing valuable in what you call sanity. It is just a question of choice, what you decide to play, what game you want to play. Then you have to follow the rules. Crazy people follow their rules.

For one hour in the night, when the day is finished, close your doors, sit in your bed and go crazy.

Do crazy things and enjoy it. Be a child again, a madman and a mystic. Don’t judge it and don’t condemn it. That too is a dimension.

There are a few things only crazy people know; nobody else can know them. They live in a totally different sort of relationship with existence. They know a certain door to reality which the so-called sane people have completely forgotten. They have a certain access to their unconscious. They dive deep into their own being and they bring up beautiful pearls. They live in a different rhythm, in a different vibration. I am not saying become crazy. I am saying remain available.

To me the perfect man is one who is available to all dimensions, who is able to move contradictorily, who is able to allow paradox. That is my definition of a perfect man. When he wants to play the game of sanity, he is as sane as anybody can be. Then he can defeat Aristotle. He can be as logical as possible. Then he follows the whole game and the rules. But if he wants to play the game of being crazy, then he is a paramahansa. He does not care a bit about logic. He can be as absurd as Bodhidharma.

When Bodhidharma entered China, he had one shoe on his foot and one on his head. When the Emperor came to receive him, he was embarrassed because he had heard so many stories about this man – and here comes this man who looks like a clown!

[Osho said that the Emperor had travelled far to meet Bodhidharma, and had spent much time in preparing to receive him. Being a Confucian, the Emperor managed to contain himself until he was alone with what appeared to be this madman, and asked him why he was carrying a shoe on his head.

Bodhidharma said that he wanted the Emperor to have no illusions, no expectations about him.

Sometimes he was a philosopher, sometimes a madman. He was not fixed in any role, in any pattern. He said this was a device to shock, so that from the very beginning no one should be deluded about him.]

A perfect man is paradoxical. A perfect man has no character; he is characterless. That’s his holiness, because he’s whole. He has no limitation; he has everything in him. If a person is fixed too much in his sanity and cannot relax even for a few moments and become non-serious, then that man is really mad – if you follow my understanding. A man who is so sane that even when he is with his wife in bed he remains sane, is insane. That man is not alive. That man is just a structure. That man is just a skeleton, just a shadow.

If he cannot play with his children and become a child, that man has no liquidity. His juice has dried up. And if that man cannot shake hands with a madman, cannot hold the hand of a madman, cannot fall into rapport with him; if it is impossible for him, he is very limited and confined. One should be available to all dimensions.

And that is my definition of a really sane man – one who is even so capable, so fluid, that sometimes if it is needed he can become a madman; nothing holds him. If you throw me into a madhouse, I will become a madman, because what is the point of being sane there? What is the point? I will become mad! I will prove myself even madder than the mad! Why lag behind when everybody is mad? [laughter] You have to participate. While in Rome, be a Roman. That is one of the most wise adages. When with a madman, be mad. When with a sane man, be sane. When with a child, be a child. When with an old man, be old.

[The sannyasin then says: Many of the people who are called insane, where I work, I like them better than a lot of the people who run the place.]

They are, because they have never done any harm to the world. In fact because they are better, they have decided to drop out. This world is not for them; hence they have gone mad. They have.

started to play the game of being mad. They are simple people, innocent people, and sometimes more intelligent than the ordinary run of the mill. Love them and never judge them. While you are with them, be just like them. Then they will understand you and you will understand them.

And drop this attitude of being serious. Life is a game – play it! Serious people tend to become what you call ’spoil-sports’. Wherever you put them, they will spoil the whole thing by their seriousness.

Your so-called saints are all spoil-sports.

[The sannyasin says: My tendency is to always be serious when it comes to the business of enlightenment.]

Not even there! If you are serious anywhere else, it is not so dangerous. But if you are serious when it comes to enlightenment, then it is absolutely wrong. Anywhere you can be forgiven, but not there, because enlightenment is only for non-serious people.

Nobody has ever heard that any serious person became enlightened. It doesn’t happen in the nature of things, because a serious person remains serious, closed, calculating. He is never available to the wilderness that life is. He is never available to God. Even if he encounters God, he will have his own conditions.

Even God is afraid of serious people. He.still comes and plays with children, and He still comes and talks with madmen. He has stopped communicating with serious people long ago. So don’t make the idea of enlightenment a nightmare. Take it easy.

In fact, if you can take all that life makes available non-seriously, you are enlightened. If you can understand that life is a game, a leela, a play, you are enlightened.

Enlightenment is not something that one has to achieve. It is just a vision that happens to a liquid person. It comes to a relaxed person. It is not that you go to enlightenment. If you are relaxed, collecting seashells on the beach, splashing in the river or just fooling around, it comes to you.

And sometimes it is needed to pretend. If you feel it is going to help somebody, pretend. I allow you even to lie if you feel that yes, this is going to help – because people are in such a state, even lies help them. If you feel that this lie is going to be creative, don’t be worried. This is what I call the whole-hearted readiness to live.

And take life as being more like poetry than like a syllogism. In poetry you have much more freedom than in prose, and you can play around with language too. In fact the greater the poetry, the lesser is the impact of language on it. In real poetry, language becomes almost irrelevant, and the rules of grammar and linguistics become absolutely useless. The higher a poetry rises, the higher it rises beyond rules, regulations, forms, formalities and the same happens in life. The more you understand it, the higher you rise. But when I say ’the higher you rise’ I don’t mean that you escape from this ordinary mundane life. No – you remain there, but now you don’t take it seriously.

Then you enjoy whatsoever is. You enjoy your failure and you enjoy your success. You enjoy both so tremendously that you cannot figure out which is which. Then it is perfect; everything is going perfect then.

Enlightenment will come seeking you – don’t be worried about it. It never comes to people who are waiting for it, never. It comes only to those people who have completely forgotten about it. One day suddenly they find one morning that they are enlightened.

It is just like lightning. A shudder goes through your being because you have nothing to bar the way, no hindrance now. It can happen in any situation. It can happen in odd postures; it can happen in strange ways. It can happen anywhere. It is not that it happens only under a bodhi tree, or it happens only in temples or in the Himalayas. It has nothing to do with anything outside you. You just have to remain open so that the inside becomes more and more available – and flexible, so whatsoever happens can vibrate in the same frequency, with the same rhythm.

Go happily, relaxed, looking at life as a beautiful game. It is a beautiful game.

[The sannyasin therapist says: But between groups it seems that I don’t seem to be able to find a comfortable space to be in. I don’t have the same relationship with myself that I have in the groups.]

It is very indicative and has to be understood. When you are working with people, you are so much involved in the work that you forget the sense of self. That happens to many creative people. They forget their work. A painter painting, a singer singing, a dancer dancing... there come moments when their whole energy suddenly is flowing into the work, has become a creative rush, and the self is no more there, because the self exists only when the energy is stagnant.

The stagnant energy becomes the self. When the energy is like a river, you have no self. So self is a sort of a block. Whenever there is no flow, energy is not going anywhere, suddenly the block is there; one feels confined. Then you will feel negative. You will feel a little restless because this self is like a rock on the chest. But this happens only to creative people. For uncreative people just the reverse is the rule.

If an uncreative person forces himself into any creativity, he becomes very self-conscious. He becomes very anxious, worried and tense, restless. When he is out of the work he is okay; he is at home.

So the difference between a creative and a non-creative person has to be understood. And it is good that one is a creative person. Your meditation, your growth is through creativity. These groups are not just groups – these are your canvases on which you are painting. These are your poems that you are composing. When you see somebody flowering, somebody radiant, a poem is born and you feel fulfilled. You suddenly feel enhanced. You recognise, you realise your worth, mm? – this man has flowered, this woman is smiling so beautifully. Then you are happy. This is the happiness of a creative person.

A creative person is happy only when something beautiful is created. A creative person’s heaven is in creativity. If you throw Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci into heaven – the heaven of the uncreative people, who are just sitting there doing nothing – they will run out of it! They will say, ’What is this?

This is hell!’ They may even like to go to hell if some creativity is possible – somewhere where their energies can stream, flow, can create new patterns of life; where something can be invented, discovered; where something can be added to existence as it is. Maybe it is a very small thing, it doesn’t matter. A creative person feels good, fulfilled, arrived, when he can make this world a little more beautiful... just a small touch somewhere.

So that simply shows your state of energy and your type. So whenever you are not creative, you will feel a little restless, because the same energy that was moving into creativity will not find anywhere to move or anything to do. Your rest will become restless. In fact, when you will be tremendously deep in your work – howsoever hard – you will be resting. So rest is not always rest for everybody.

For a creative person, his creativity is his rest. Maybe sometimes he can change. He has been painting for the whole week. For one day he simply writes poems, or just goes into the garden and starts working there. A change of activity is his rest. His rest is not no-activity. So if you really want to be rested, change the activity. Rush from one activity to another, and let your river tumble from one place into another. When you are alone write poems, paint, sing, play the guitar, dance – any crazy thing will do – but something; just don’t sit there. Sitting there won’t be of much help to you.

You will come out of it more tired than rested. Change of activity – that’s your rest – and losing yourself in creativity is your meditation.

This is something very complicated. In the East meditation has existed for thousands of years, but it seems that only non-creative people became interested in it because it doesn’t give one any creative channel. So science never arose. Everything creative lagged behind. Only people who could sit silently and could lose themselves in non-activity moved into this meditative dimension.

And because of them the whole East became a little uncreative.

In the West creative people have never tried meditation because they think it is not for them. Their instinct says to them ’This is not for you. You have to be creative. This will be an escape.’ So they become more and more tense, more and more worried.

Now it is possible that East and West can meet. The human consciousness has come to a point where vision is more clear, where we can look at the past as a total perspective. For the creative person, meditation has to become a part of his creativity, then only can it be meditative. And for a non-creative person, his silence is his only creativity; his inactivity is his only creativity. He creates himself in that inactivity. Both come to a realisation, but their paths are very different.

So simply go on working, and now work knowing more that this is your meditation. While working don’t simply think that you are helping the group, and that after the group you will rest and meditate for one week. That’s a wrong idea. While working, remember that this is your meditation. And you are not only working on the group and on other people; simultaneously, side by side, you are working on yourself. This is your way of working on yourself. This is just a technique for you to work on yourself.

[Osho said that if he used his work for meditation, then there would be no conflict in the mind about when he would have time to work on himself or to meditate. Without any conflict, his work would move to even higher peaks.

Osho said that in the days that there was no group, he should simply change his activity, because the mind has many centres for many different activities, and when one centre is functioning, others can rest (see Hammer On The Rock, December 13th, 1975, where Osho talks about this in more detail).]

[A newly arrived sannyasin says: I’ll be here when hindi lectures are on so I won’t be able to understand the discourses.]

Sometimes it is good to understand without language, so one month you understand me through language and one month you understand me without language. And sometimes without language, things go deeper. You just have to sit and feel me, and that will do everything.

There is a deeper language than language, and there is a more direct communication than verbal.

There is a possibility to commune without any symbology in between. The communion can be immediate. And in fact that is the real communion.

Sol speak only to persuade you to be available for the other communion. But the other remains the goal. Once you start enjoying my presence, once you start moving with my presence and you start falling in tune with me, then there is no point.

Much is going to happen – you are ready. Good.

[A sannyasin came to darshan with his partner, as she was upset and jealous of his demonstrative behaviour and affection for members of the music group of which he is a member. He added that his partner recognised that her feelings were stupid.]

Saying so is not the point. She does not understand it. She says it is stupid because she hears me and reads me and tries to understand. She thinks that it is stupid but her whole being is feeling miserable. So just calling names won’t help. If you care for her, stop these things. Or if you feel that they are more valuable than her relationship, then drop out of the relationship – but decide something.

(turning to the woman) And you have to understand that your jealousy is not only stupid – because just by saying it is stupid, it doesn’t.... It is destructive. It is not only wrong – it is harmful. It is killing your whole relationship. If you can be happy only when he is completely in bondage and a slave, and he cannot even embrace a person, then he will never be able to forgive you, because he is doing it for your love.

He may stop it but he will have a deep grudge against you. His love will become poisonous. He will never feel really happy. You may not feel jealous, but he will lose something tremendously valuable.

He may do it for you. That’s what so many people who have a little understanding go on doing. If the woman is too much of a trouble, then the man thinks ’Okay’. But the woman is losing something very valuable, because you are forcing him by your jealousy; you are destroying his freedom. And he is not doing anything wrong. Nothing is wrong in it. What is wrong in somebody embracing him, whether it is a man or a woman?

It is harmful. You have a very poisonous attitude. And rather than forcing him, you should drop your jealousy. If you love the man, you should drop it, because if you love the man you love his freedom and you would like him to be free. Any woman who loves her man would like the man to be absolutely free. If you really love him you would like every woman to love him. This is your man and every woman appreciates him. If no woman looks at him, then what have you chosen? If [your man] goes around and nobody, no woman looks at him, no woman says ’Hello’... just think about it.

You will commit suicide. What type of a man will you have chosen?

He is a beautiful person. Everybody feels love for a beautiful person; nothing is wrong in it. So what I have said to him I have not said to you.(to the man) And what I have said to her, I am not saying to you (laughter). Otherwise the greater possibility is that you will hear what I am saying to her and she will hear what I am saying to you. Make it absolutely clear.

(to the woman) Drop it! And it is just that a little understanding is needed. Why should you feel jealous? If you have a beautiful car and somebody appreciates it, you don’t feel jealous. If somebody comes and touches your car and says, ’Beautiful,’ you feel very good because you were waiting for someone to come and say this. In a better world this will be so. Some woman passes by and she sees that you have such a beautiful man and she comes and touches him – ’You have such a beautiful man’ – you will feel happy. In a better world this is going to be so, should be so.

But we have been brought up with very wrong, absurd attitudes – harmful, destructive, suicidal.

[The woman says: Also part of it is feeling inferior about myself.]

That’s nothing to do with you. It simply proves your superiority – that you have chosen such a beautiful man, and the beautiful man has chosen you. It simply proves your superiority, nothing else. Nothing inferior in it. That’s your wrong notion about it. He has chosen you. He can find another woman easily, but out of all the women, he has chosen you! What else do you want?

In the world there are so many women and he has chosen Mandala. Just think about it. But you are destroying the whole thing. Something is wrong in your attitude. He is not doing anything wrong.

Start dropping it, and tell him that he is completely free, that he can do whatsoever he likes.

Possessiveness is not love. I have given you both different methods to work on. I hope you will not misunderstand me but will settle things. After three weeks, both come. (to the woman) And you are not to be worried about whether he is doing what I have said or not. He is responsible to me, not to you. (to the woman) And she is responsible to me, not you. So you need not say to her to drop her jealousy.

[A sannyasin said she felt faint many times, and: I also feel something strange in my head – as if it is empty, as if there is nothing inside.]

That’s perfectly good – there is nothing inside!

Nothing is wrong with you. In fact something very good is happening, but it happens so suddenly that you cannot understand it.

That blankness is just a part of meditation. The feeling of fainting is not fainting – it is just moving into another dimension. Then one becomes so light that one can feel that the floor is going up and down. It is almost a feeling of levitation, but it is very disorienting. So start doing a small exercise.

Every night before you go to sleep, sit and just feel that your spine is joined with the earth and energy is running into your spine and into the earth like electricity. Just as we earth a wire, so your spine is joined with the earth, and the earth and your bodys energies are meeting. Then feel that your spine is becoming bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger; it is becoming solid steel. You will feel within three or four days that the spine has become a very solidish thing. This you have to do for ten minutes in the night, but sit on the floor so that you are closer to the earth. And sit absolutely still – no shaking, no trembling. Just sit like a statue, earthed, grounded.

In Aikido training they have a few exercises for grounding like this. If a person is sitting there doing this exercise, you cannot push him over. Even a stronger person or four or five people cannot push him. You can push the same person over very easily when he is not doing this exercise, but when he is doing this exercise and once he knows how to do it, his spine becomes a steel-like energy.

Then it is impossible to push him or pull him. Even very fragile people can prove so strong.

There have been many experiments done on it. It cannot be measured on ordinary scales – the weight remains the same, so it is a miracle. If you are one hundred pounds, you remain one hundred pounds, but just before the exercise anybody can push you over, and just ten minutes after the exercise you are so grounded – as if the whole earth is pulling you and you are joined with it, rooted.

So now they have started experimenting with body energy and electricity, bio-electricity. Now they have come to a point where it is possible that the spine becomes joined, really joined, with electricity.

In Yoga, people are trained for many years to sit with a straight spine, unmoving, statue-like. That makes the spine like steel, a very strong force. These things that are happening to you will not happen to that type of person who has practised the lotus posture or others. This is arising only because your spine is not strong enough and gets shaky. When the energy comes in it, it gets shaky and you don’t know how to ground it so it disorients you and you feel like fainting.

Whenever it happens – and it will continue for a few days – immediately sit there and just for two minutes feel grounded. The feeling is that your spine is as if almost rooted like a tree in the earth.

The earth is giving you energy and your energy is moving into the earth. You are no more separate; you are a part of the earth. When you get up from this posture, don’t get up suddenly. Very slowly disconnect yourself, otherwise you will go into a very great faint. First feel that you are grounded and are getting your energy back. Then take your energy back slowly, very slowly and move slowly.

Do it for ten days and then tell me. But it is good – there is nothing wrong.

CHAPTER 13

2 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says: I’ve come here hoping with my heart to be captured by something and I’m still waiting.

I have this idea that I won’t be able to have the drive to follow a path until my heart is captured, so I’m just waiting.]

Mm, I understand. You don’t know your own strength – nobody knows, hence the problem. You don’t know what you can do and what you can be. And I can understand. It is difficult to know unless you have done it. By doing it you come to know what you can do. The potentiality in itself cannot be known unless it becomes actual.

Everybody is so infinitely potential, but if you are simply waiting for somebody to do it for you, it will never happen, because there are things which cannot be done for you by anybody else. If you want to move in love, nobody can do it for you. You will have to fall in love. If you want to grow, nobody can grow for you. You will have to grow. Yes, others can help, they can show the path, but you cannot be dragged. That’s what you are waiting for.

You are waiting for some father figure who comes and takes hold of you, and even against you, takes you. Nobody is going to come. You are waiting for Godot. That waiting can be eternal, and it will be a sheer wastage. You have to catch hold of your own potentiality, and you will have to start working on it.

Jesus has a beautiful saying, precisely for you: Those who have, more will be given to them. Those who don’t have, even that will be taken away from them. So if you really want to be caught by some force bigger than you, you will have to earn it. It cannot just happen as you are. At least you have to throw the net into the river. If you simply sit on the bank, nothing is going to happen. The river abounds in fish, but you have to throw your net. Then waiting will be meaningful.

Yes, after throwing the net one has to wait, but then waiting is meaningful because one has done something for it; one has earned it. But if you simply sit on the bank, asleep, then your waiting is pointless. Take a jump into sannyas and wait. Start doing meditations, do a few groups here...

and have a little courage. Because if you have, I can give you more. If you don’t have, nothing is possible.

The maxim looks a little absurd and anti-communistic, because ordinarily we think that those who don’t have, they should be given more; the poor should be given more. And the saying says, ’Those who are rich, they shall get more. Those who are poor will lose even that which they have.’ But it is really of a very fundamental nature. It is so.

If you start singing, more and more songs will be coming to you. If you start dancing, your body will start melting into dance and your body will start growing wings. Your body will become more fluid and you will be thrilled with new dreams and new dances. You will become a receptor for more. If you paint, more paintings will start floating in your mind. Your dreams will become more colourful, more psychedelic. Visions will start following you like shadows – but the basic step has to be taken by you.

They have a saying in Egypt that if you walk one step towards God, He walks a thousand and one steps towards you – but only when you walk one step. If you don’t walk one step, nothing happens.

So waiting is not bad, but you have not chosen a right time for it. Waiting is beautiful, but take the first step. That first step simply shows, ’I am available.’ The first step simply indicates, ’If something is given to me, I will appreciate it. If something is transferred to me, I will welcome it. I am ready. I will drink and absorb it. I will keep it in my heart as a treasure.’ Your first step is a gesture.

So if you are really in search, become a sannyasin, because then you will need a life of commitment, involvement. Just standing by the side of the road, just being a spectator, is not going to help. You will have to move into the very centre where the action is. So don’t be a spectator – that is something that is happening to the western mind. It is almost like a disease spreading. [See Above All, Don’t Wobble, Tuesday jan. 27th 1976 where Osho talks further on this . ]

To know dancing, you will have to become a dancer, because the knowing happens only from withinward. When you participate, then you know.

So that is happening in the spiritual world also. People come from the West. They go from this ashram to that ashram, and they watch what is happening. They have forgotten how to participate.

Hence my insistence for sannyas. It simply means don’t be a spectator. Commit yourself. Go into it.

Know it by participation – and there is no other way to know it.

So would you like to become a sannyasin or will you think about it?

[The visitor adds: One last thing to clarify. I felt that to become a sannyasin I should already know that this is it, that I should feel some calling, feel something in my guts before I become a sannyasin.

The way you talk it’s more like becoming a sannyasin is the beginning of finding out.]

It is the beginning... it is the beginning. Only then can you find. If you are waiting to find first, it will never happen.

This will be your new name: Swami Anand Nigama.

Anand means bliss and nigama means scripture – scripture of bliss, a bible of bliss. That has something to do with your future. You have to make it a point of continuous remembrance to be blissful. Don’t ask for any reasons to be blissful... just for no reason at all. Make it your very style of life.

[Osho said that ordinarily we think that only if certain conditions are fulfilled can we be happy, but bliss, happiness, actually has nothing to do with anything outside one.]

Misery is a way of life. Bliss is a way of life. To be miserable, one has to practise it. And that’s why people are miserable – because they have practised it. And there are others who are miserable....

A child is born. He starts imitating and practising misery. Through imitation he learns. You don’t have many blissful people around you so it is very difficult to see. All these miserable people have one logic – that something is miserable, and that’s why they are miserable. They will become happy one day – if not in this life then another, in some paradise far away.

These are the majority, the mass. They are very weighty. They function like a gravitation on every soul. By becoming a sannyasin you change your pattern of life from misery to bliss. That is the real conversion.

My insistence is that it is just your attitude that makes you miserable or happy. You can see the same thing with miserable eyes and it will give you misery. You can see the same thing with blissful eyes; then it gives you bliss. The thing remains the same. The life is almost the same. A Buddha passes in the same life, a Jesus passes in the same life, but they have some other attitude, so their.every movement becomes a dance, a pulsation, a throbbing of life.

So this is the meaning of your name – Anand Nigama. It means that now you have become a blissful scripture. Everyone is – you just have to learn the new language so that you can open your inner book and can read it. It contains tremendous insights, it contains great poetry, but one has to learn the language.

The first thing to remember is that whatsoever you are doing, bring the quality of blissfulness to it; whatsoever – small things. You are polishing your shoes or washing your clothes. Why waste time?

You will have to use the same time in washing them anyway. You can do it in a miserable way – why not do it in a blissful way? Why not feel happy? Why not do it in a prayerful way? Why not enjoy it?

[The new sannyasin said he had done Primal therapy and Encounter groups:I felt good. It seemed that they opened me up to a lot of misery and made me pretty uptight for a while.]

They can open you, but go on remembering to be blissful and then the same opening will open you towards more bliss. They simply open – these groups open you – but if your style of life is not blissful, they will open you towards hell. They are simply an opening. What you do with that opening will come from your whole pattern of living.

I can give you some plain paper but what you write on it will belong to your mind. You can write beautiful poetry or you can write rubbish. That plain paper is simply plain paper; it contains nothing.

So the same group can open a person towards very very happy experiences, and the same group can open one to very unhappy experiences. It depends. The same happens with drugs too.

There are people who feel that the drug opens a paradise, and there are people who the drug leads into a nightmare, into hell.

The drug simply opens you chemically. What you put in that opening comes from you. It has nothing to do with the drug.

And the same is done by groups – of course in a more human way. The drug is doing something by changing your chemistry. That can be dangerous because you are not changing, only your chemistry is being played with. The groups – Encounter, Primal, Gestalt – function on a better human level.

They don’t touch your chemistry. They try to change your mind.

Meditation works on an even higher level. It doesn’t even touch your mind. It tries to transform your heart.

But the openings can be used in a very beneficial way. Do a few groups here. Change to orange and the journey starts!

[A sannyasin said he is repeating the same ’bullshit’ habits every day, like smoking, and then adds: You say to me to stop all meditations but I come here and do the Kundalini because I love the music, and when I listen to the music I cry.... ]

That’s very good. Do one thing....

Habits like smoking cannot be dropped in this way – the way you are trying. They become even stronger. The more you fight, the more energy you give to them, because by your very fight you recognize that they’ are powerful. Again and again you are defeated, so again and again you become less and less confident. You know beforehand that you will be defeated. You are in a self-defeating game.

... Forget about it. When you feel like smoking, smoke. When you don’t feel like smoking, don’t.

But don’t make it a point that you will smoke or will not. Don’t make so much fuss about it. You are simply doing a stupid thing, not a sin. Taking smoke in and throwing it out is just stupid, nothing else. So don’t make it so important. Don’t be obsessed by it. There are greater things in life to think about, to meditate upon.

There are millions of people who don’t smoke – so what? They have not reached heaven or anything, they have not attained to nirvana. Nirvana is not so cheap. By dropping beedies you cannot reach nirvana. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. Don’t call it bullshit, because that word is very loaded with emotion. You are angry so you will be defeated. You are already afraid – that’s why you call it bullshit. You are fighting it, continuously condemning it, but the whole condemnation will come upon yourself. Next day when you smoke you will become bullshit, because now you are doing something which you condemn, so now you condemn yourself. You feel like an ugly thing. If self-condemnation enters you, it is very difficult to achieve higher peaks of being, because you are so condemnatory that you cannot even believe that anything higher can happen to you.

It has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with any spirituality. When you don’t feel like it, good. Don’t think then that you are doing something great, obliging the whole world or something, or obliging God – ’Look, I’m not smoking.’ Both ways it is irrelevant. That’s what I mean when I say forget it.

One day suddenly you will see that it is gone, because once importance is then out of it, it starts dying. You are giving it too much importance; you go on feeding it. It is not the bidi that is clinging to you. It is you who is clinging to the bidi. So just relax.

And music is good. Enjoy it. Move with the music and allow the vibration of it. Don’t hold in any way.

Let your whole being vibrate. In fact the whole existence consists of nothing but vibrations – millions of forms, but all the forms consist of different types of vibrations. Even physicists say that the deeper you go into the atom, the more you find that nothing is left but only a pulsating energy, vibrations.

We are made of vibrations, so the more you vibrate, the more alive you are. Hence music is tremendously meaningful, because it can vibrate you. It can bring pulsation to many layers of your being which have become stale, stagnant. It can create ripples in your innermost core. If you allow and you are not afraid, those ripples will go on deeper and deeper and deeper. They will touch your very core, your very centre.

So allow music to enter you. Just become a receptivity, an openness. Go all the way and don’t hold, because holding will create trouble; your energy starts being divided. When music influences you, when you are under its impact, then completely forget yourself. Be oblivious of yourself. Just become part of it, and then you are nothing but a vibration. Then the music will start playing upon you and you will be just like an instrument.

It is going to give you the greatest meditation that is possible. No other meditation is needed.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve never really dared to let myself be as happy as I know I can be, because it hasn’t been allowed me somehow. The idea of actually staying here is too wonderful to believe. I’m not deserving of it.]

You deserve it!

People have very strange ideas. These ideas have been put into everybody’s heads. Somehow one starts feeling guilty if one feels happy – as if happiness is something one should not enjoy. The whole world is so miserable that being happy feels almost as if it is against the world. People are living in such misery that the very idea that you can be happy looks almost inhuman. And we have been trained not to be happy. Happiness has always been postponed for somewhere else in the future, in another world, in heaven – not here. Here is misery. Heaven is somewhere else. And we have been taught that everybody has to earn happiness. That is one of the most foolish notions that can happen – and it has happened.

There is a reason why it has happened. Children are naturally happy and parents cannot allow it –

their natural happiness – because they have only one way to teach them, and that is by reward and punishment. If they are already happy, you cannot reward them. If they are already happy, the whole system of reward collapses. So you have to make them unhappy and you have to force them to earn their happiness. If they behave, if they are good, then you can allow them to be happy. If they don’t behave well, if they don’t follow you, you force them to be unhappy. You punish them. That is the only trick that humanity has come to know, to condition.

So from the very first day to the very last, we go on being rewarded and punished by parents, by society, by the state, by this and that, but everywhere we are being pulled and pushed between reward and punishment. Then naturally the idea arises that one has to earn happiness. Unearned happiness creates guilt – and my whole approach is that happiness cannot be earned. You can be just happy or not – it is your choice, take it or not – but there is no question of earning it.

Happiness is natural. It has nothing to do with what you do, but the parents cannot allow it. The priests cannot allow it because the whole kingdom of the priests exists on this – that if you are good and moral and righteous, you will be happy in heaven, otherwise you will be thrown into hell.

I am saying that there exists no hell – only heaven exists. And wherever you are, you can be in heaven, because being is heavenly. Just to be is to be happy. These are synonymous. As we need not earn our breathing, as we have not earned our being, we need not earn our happiness. Once this false notion of earned drops, you will feel such joy arising in you.

Of course in the beginning you will feel very guilty because what are you doing? – You have not earned it. You are not worthy of it. Your parents will go on saying inside, deep in your mind, ’Have you earned it or not? Are you worthy of it or not?’ I am saying that everybody – just by being here –

is worthy.

I give you happiness not as an award. I simply make you alert that you are happy. All the time while you were thinking that you were not happy, you have been happy. It was just a nightmare of being miserable. Deep down the current has always remained happy.

So I can understand your constant search for being worthy. One.then feels ’Okay, I have earned it.

So it belongs to me.’ But happiness is you.

[She answers: I supposed it always seemed as if there were a quantity of happiness in life – that there was a limited amount, and if I had more.... ]

That too is there. But it is just like air. There is a certain amount of air. You breathe in but you cannot keep it in; you have to breathe it out. The same breath that was your breath a moment before is my breath now. Happiness is certainly like an atmosphere. You breathe in and you breathe out. You cannot keep it in; nobody can keep happiness in.

So nobody is taking it away from anybody else, because it is continuously moving. Nobody can be miserly about happiness. That is something to be understood. You can be miserly about misery, but you cannot be miserly about happiness. Happiness tends to express itself. It goes on exhaling.

It goes on merging with the atmosphere again and again. So nobody possesses it really. It is Like breathing. But that too has been put in the mind – that there is a certain amount of happiness in the world so you can only take this much. If you take more of it, others will suffer. This is foolish, but the idea has grown so deep that even parallel ideas exist.

Gurdjieff used to say that knowledge exists only in a certain amount. He was joking, but there are foolish people who believed that too, because they have always believed that happiness exists in a certain amount. Now to think that knowledge exists in a certain amount is parallel logic. Gurdjieff used also to say that only a certain amount of people can become wise in a certain time. All people cannot become wise because only a certain amount of wisdom exists.

When a Buddha is there, many people cannot become Buddhas, because he holds all the amount, so you can only have a certain amount. People thought that Gurdjieff was talking sense. He was simply joking, he was playing tricks; he was deceiving. He was just looking at their absurd minds

– that they can believe in this also! There are now Gurdjieff followers who go on propounding the theory that knowledge exists in a certain amount so only a chosen few can have it. Only people who work hard and earn it, who become worthy, can have it. This is not so.

Neither knowledge nor happiness exists in any amount.

This whole existence consists of

intelligence, consists of happiness. We only have to know how to vibrate with this whole existence.

If we can dance with this whole existence, then suddenly all that is there becomes available to us.

It is only a question of right tuning. In tune, you are an emperor. Out of tune, you are a beggar. It is not a question of amount, not of quantity, not even of worthiness. It is just a question of getting in tune... Learning how to fall into accord, how to be in harmony.

The day is dancing with the night. There is an accord. They are polar opposites but they balance.

Life is dancing with death. There is an accord. And if you can also start feeling a balance between the opposites, the positive and the negative, summer and winter, good and bad, then you are falling in tune. Then in a deeper way within you life dances with death, Eros with Thanatos. And when Eros dances with Thanatos, you become a cosmos. A subtle order arises in you. Then there is no conflict within you. That state of no conflict is happiness.

And one thing more. By being happy, you increase the amount of happiness in the world, because when one person falls in tune, he creates subtle vibrations around him, and whomsoever comes in contact with those vibrations also starts falling in tune They are infectious. So if you are really happy, it is just the opposite to feeling guilty. In fact you have become a great servant to humanity, to life at large. Just by becoming happy, a person becomes helpful, tremendously helpful, beneficial, because whomsoever will come under his influence, in his territory, will be affected.

That’s what I am doing here. My whole effort is to help you throb with me, to be in a subtle love with me so you can become flooded. Once it happens in you, you have a vision of your own. Then you can go on your own. You know how to fall in line with existence.

That’s what Buddha called this morning’s sutra – one who is in accord is great. But to be in accord is happiness.

[Osho said that with money and political power, the more you have, the less is available for others, but that this is not so with happiness.]

That is the difference between worldly riches and other-worldly riches. In the worldly riches you have to grab and rob others. You have to exploit others. In other-worldly riches, by becoming rich, you make everybody rich. The whole economics is totally different. By becoming beautiful, you make everybody beautiful. By becoming wise, you make everybody wise. When one person becomes happy, the whole world is benefited, the whole world is blessed.

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I had so much happiness here, but I also know that I have a lot of blackness in me. I’m very frightened that I won’t... that I will lose you.]

No, no, you cannot lose me. There is no way. If you have me, you have me forever! If you don’t have me, that’s another thing.

You are not going to lose me. The contact has happened. It will be growing more and more.

... When you start feeling too starved of me and too much appetite arises, come back!

[A participant of the Enlightenment group said: I kept struggling with the fact that I’m too hard on myself. I’m not happy most of the time. I put myself down.]

Nothing to be worried about. Why be afraid? If you can be happy today, you can be happy tomorrow.

You can be more happy tomorrow because tomorrow will be coming out of today. It will be growing out of this moment.

Never be afraid of the future, because the future is not coming out of the blue. It is growing right now. It is growing in the womb of the present. If you are happy, tomorrow is going to be more happy.

One can be absolutely certain about that.

Just be happy today, and I will take care of your tomorrow.

[Another group member said: I feel energized by the group. I also feel a little bit afraid of all the energy.

When I was in the group, before it ended I was thinking, ’I must be careful not to dissipate the energy.’

When I came out of the group I was so frightened by the energy that I dissipated it as fast as I could, because I couldn’t hold onto it.]

Yes, it is still there. There is nothing to be worried about. The thing to do is, if you feel too worried that it should be dissipated, you will throw it through the very worry. When you feel too much energy, deliberately throw it. Let it become a dance. Go on throwing it, go on giving it to people. Shake hands and give it to them. Hold them and give it to them. Just make it a gift and you will feel very centred and settled. This is how it will work for you. If you try to hold it, you will lose it. In the very fear of losing it, you will lose it.

[Osho said that this was the law of reverse effect – that whatsoever you want to do, the opposite happens, and that energy is like a well from which you need to continuously draw if the well is to function. (See Hammer On The Rock, Jan. 3, 1976, where Osho talks at length about this.)]

Sing and dance and celebrate. Go and give to people. Let them also have a little experience of what energy is, and you will never be at a loss.

Give, and more will be given to you.

CHAPTER 14

3 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says: I don’t know whether I want to take sannyas or not. I’m troubled about the concept of surrender, because I feel for a long time that I’ve surrendered to a lot of people, and only recently I’ve begun to feel centred.]

You must have a wrong notion about surrender, because whatsoever you have been calling surrender was not surrender. If it were surrender you would have grown tremendously. It was not surrender. You may have forced yourself into a certain obedience. You may have become dependent on people, you may have been imitating people, you may have been waiting for somebody to order you to do certain things, you may have been in a sort of a bondage, but not surrender. After bondage, one feels very centred if one becomes free. But if you know surrender, surrender is freedom.

Once somebody has known what surrender is, there is no way to go out, because surrender never takes anything from you – it simply gives you something. It does not make you dependent – it makes you independent. It does not take away your freedom, it does not force you to become somebody else. It simply helps you to be yourself. You must have a wrong notion, but that notion is prevalent.

Surrender, to you, may mean something like imprisonment – as if you are defeated by somebody; as if somebody has possessed you, overpowered you, dominated you. In the West particularly, surrender has only one meaning, and that is the meaning defined by the army. When one country surrenders to another, when one army surrenders to another – that is the only meaning that the West knows.

But here in the East we have a totally different notion about it. It is not that somebody starts dominating you. It is simply that you start trusting somebody. It is simply that you are in love with somebody and you would like to move with them. And love never destroys freedom. In fact without love, you cannot have freedom. Only love can give you wings to be free. Only love can give you the courage to be free.

You may be feeling a sort of centring because you dropped out of your so-called surrenders, but what I am trying to give you is totally different. By becoming a sannyasin, you are not becoming a slave. You are simply giving a hint that you are ready to learn, that you are ready to receive. It is just a gesture of sensitivity, of receptivity, of vulnerability; a gesture of your being open, that’s all.

So if you feel, you can take the jump. But if you feel afraid, wait. It should come from you.

Prem means love and yuthika means a jasmine flower; a jasmine flower of love. It is one of the most beautiful names....

[A sannyasin said that she had been doing pottery in Germany but did not care for it very much.

Osho said something must be wrong about her attitude because pottery is beautiful work .... ]

. . . it is very meditative work and can help centring. You may not have looked at it that way, but anything to do with hands is good. Anything like pottery can become an inner source of centring.

outside you go on centring the pot, shaping the pot, and inside you go on centring with It. It depends.... You may not have understood it. Just be here and meditate and I will make you a real potter.

It is one of the most beautiful things a man can do. Farming, pottery, are very basic. In India we conceive of God as a potter. In all the indian scriptures, they say that the world is like a pot and God is the potter. You must have heard the word ’brahma’. Brahma means the potter, the creator of the world.

It is a meditative process, but one has to understand it, otherwise it can be boring; one may not enjoy it. Unless one understands what it is exactly, it can become just ordinary work. It can be transformed into almost a ritual. You can move into prayer and meditation through it.

[A sannyasin says: Whenever I get close to anybody, I get a horrible tension in my legs, in the thighs.

It happens whenever I want to be near somebody – just the upper part becomes full of tension.]

Do one thing. Every night before you go to sleep, stand in the middle of the room – exactly in the middle – and make your body as stiff and as tense as possible – almost as if you will burst. Do this for two minutes and then relax for two minutes, standing up. Do this – tensing and relaxing two or three times and then just go to sleep.

It has nothing to do with the thighs, really. It has something to do with the brain, the mind. Whenever you come close, you become afraid of really being close to somebody. Maybe your past experiences bring the tension. But it has to do with the mind, and the part that has to do with the thighs is getting affected. So the whole thing has to be made as tense as possible. After it, don’t do anything else, so the whole night that relaxation goes deeper and deeper in you.

One meditation that I would like you to follow .... The first step: just relax in a chair, make the whole body comfortable. The second step, close the eyes. The third step, relax the breathing. Make it as natural as possible. With each breath going out, say ’One’. As the breath goes out, say ’One’; breathe in and don’t say anything. Breathe out and say ’One’; breathe in and don’t say anything. So with each outgoing breath you simply say ’One... one... one’. And not only say it but also feel that the whole existence is one, it is a unity. Don’t repeat that... just have that feeling – and saying ’One’

will help. Do this for twenty minutes every day.

Make it a point that nobody disturbs you while you are doing it. You can open your eyes and look at the clock but don’t put any alarm on. Anything that can give you a jerk will be bad, so don’t keep the phone in the room where you are doing it, and nobody should knock. For those twenty minutes you have to be absolutely relaxed. If there is too much noise around, use earplugs.

Saying ’One’ with each exhalation will make you so calm and quiet and collected; you cannot imagine. Do this in the daytime, never at night, otherwise your sleep will be disturbed, because.

this will be so relaxing that you will not feel sleepy. You will feel fresh. The best time is the morning, otherwise the afternoon, but never at night time.

So these two things you continue. There is nothing to be worried about.

[To a sannyasin, who had received word that his former wife, had died, after a sudden illness while in Germany.]

... so [she] has left? Very good. She left in a good state. She was not fighting at all. She accepted and surrendered – and the greatest surrender is the surrender to death. So she has died as a srotapanna. Don’t be worried about it. She has entered the stream.

[Osho has been talking on Buddha recently in the morning discourses. Buddha describes the various stages of a man’s consciousness, beginning with the worldly man and then the religious man. The third stage is of the srotapanna – the man who has left the bank, his security, and taken the plunge into the river that moves towards the ocean.]

But one thing – meditate, because this moment will be of significance for you. Whenever somebody dies, somebody you have been deeply related to, someone with whom you have been very intimate, somebody with whom you have been happy and unhappy, sad and angry, somebody with whom you have known all the seasons of life and somebody who has somehow become a part of you and you have become a part of him or her – when somebody like that dies, it is not only a death that occurs outside, it is a death that occurs inside also. [She] was holding a part of your being, so when she dies, that part in your being also dies. She was fulfilling something in you. She disappears and wounds are left.

We have many holes in our being. Because of those holes we seek the company of the other, the love of the other. By the other’s presence we somehow manage to fill those holes. When the other disappears, those holes are again there – yawning abysses opening. You may have forgotten about them, but you will feel them and the pain. So use these moments for a deep meditation because sooner or later those holes will be filled again. These holes will again disappear. Before it happens it is good to enter those holes, to enter that emptiness that [she] will leave behind her.

So use these moments. Sit silently, close your eyes, go inside. And just see what has happened.

Don’t think about the future, don’t think about the past. Don’t go into the memories because that is futile. Just go in. What has happened to you? [She] is dead – now what has happened to you?

What is happening to you? Just go into that process. That will reveal many things in you. You will be completely transformed if you can penetrate those holes. You will not try to fill them again, but still you can love.

One can love without in any way taking the other inside and fulfilling some deep need there. One can love as a luxury – because one has to share and one wants to share. Then love is no more a need. You are not hiding your wounds behind it.

So go into these wounds, go into this emptiness, go into this absence, and watch – that’s one thing.

The second thing: remember that life is really fleeting, slipping by... so momentary. We live in a magic world. We go on deluding ourselves. Again and again the delusion drops. Again and again reality erupts. Again and again somebody dies and you are reminded that life is not reliable, that one should not depend too much on life. One moment it is there, another moment it is gone. It is a soap bubble – just a small prick and it is gone. In fact the more you understand life, the more full of wonder you are about how it exists. Then death is not the problem; life becomes the problem. Death seems natural.

It is a miracle that life exists – such a temporary thing, such a momentary thing. And not only does it exist – people trust it. People depend on it, people rely on it. They put their whole being at its feet

– and it is just an illusion, a dream. Any moment it is gone and one is left crying. With it is gone the whole effort, the whole sacrifice that you had made for it. Suddenly everything disappears. So watch this... this momentary, dream-like illusory life.

And death is coming to everybody. We are all standing in the queue, and the queue is continuously coming closer to death. [She] disappears; the queue is a little less. She had made space for one person more. Every person dying brings you closer to your own death, so every death is basically your death. In every death one is dying and coming closer to the full stop. Before it happens, one has to become as much aware as possible.

If we trust life too much, we tend to become unconscious. If we start doubting life – this so-called life which always ends in death – then we become more aware. And in that awareness, a new sort of life starts; its doors open. The life which is deathless, the life which is eternal, the life which is beyond time.

CHAPTER 15

4 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and shubha means goodness – divine goodness. Human beings are good, but their goodness is also part of their policy. They say that honesty is the best policy. Even through goodness they want to earn something. It is a bargain. To be good is beneficial, hence they are good. Their goodness is not unconditional; it is conditional. They want you to be good to them, that’s why they are good to you. When I call it divine goodness, it means unconditional.

And let this become your very style of life. Be unconditionally good – not that because some person is good to you, you have to be good. Even if some person is bad towards you, you have to be good. That’s the meaning when Jesus says to love your enemy. It is very simple to love your friend; everybody loves their friend. That love cannot take you very far. When one starts loving the enemy also, one has wings. One can fly to the uttermost, to the ultimate.

So just be good, and don’t bother whether people are good to you or not. Make it your nature that you cannot be otherwise, and by and by you will start enjoying it tremendously. A good which is conditional is very poor; it has no richness in it. When you are simply good – even to those who are not good to you, even to those who are antagonistic, even to those who are indifferent to you – then you start feeling so rich, so fulfilled, that flowers start blooming.

[A visitor says: I don’t really understand what you’re doing here with sannyas. I don’t really know what it means. It seems a little bit meaningless to me.]

It is meaningless.

But not in the sense that you understand it, but in the sense that life is meaningless, in the sense that flowers are meaningless, in the sense that stars are meaningless.

What is the meaning of the flower? There is no explanation. And what is the meaning of a star?

There is no explanation. What is the meaning of love? If you love a person, can you say what the meaning of the love is? Or will you wait for the meaning to be revealed to you, then you will fall in love? Will you say that first you have to decide the meaning, then you will love?

It is just falling in love with me. It is meaningless. It is a love affair. If you can enjoy it, it is beautiful.

Meaning there is none. The very desire towards meaning is meaningless, because life is not going towards any end. It is simply there without any explanation, without any reason, without any why.

It’s simply there.

Do you know the meaning of your life? – but you are here and alive, and you want to be alive. If somebody says, ’If you don’t know the meaning of life, why don’t you commit suicide?’ you would like to say, ’I would still like to live. Meaning there is none, but I love to be alive.’ It is meaningless.

In fact the whole of life is more like a flower than like a logical proposition. It is not a syllogism. It is not a scientific hypothesis. It is just poetic overflowing.

So sannyas is meaningless. It is only for those people who are ready to move into the dimension of the meaningless, the absurd, the paradoxical. Yes, it cannot be given and yet I give it to you. And yes, you cannot take it and yet you can take it. That is a paradoxical thing. But by and by if you enter into it, you will start delighting in it. Meaning there will be none, but there will be much dance and much celebration. I can promise there will be much joy – meaning there will be none.

So if you have the courage to move in a meaningless gesture, close your eyes!

... If something happens in your body, allow it, and don’t think about meaning. Let it happen. In this moment with me, be completely meaningless. Just feel me as if I am surrounding you like a warm bath, and you are just relaxing in it....

Good! Come here. [Osho places the mala over her head] Just feel my energy. You are ready for a meaningless journey.

Never ask about meaning. Ask for joy, ask for delight. Asking for meaning is asking a wrong question.

You will miss much. There are many people who, seeing a full moon, will ask, ’What is the meaning of it?’ Once when Picasso was painting, a friend asked him, ’What is the meaning of it?’

Picasso said, ’I am simply puzzled. Nobody goes to the waterfall and asks, ”What is the meaning of your noise?” Nobody goes to the rosebush and asks, ”What is the meaning of your flowering?”

Nobody goes to the ocean and asks the wild waves roaring and crashing against the shore. Why do only I have to answer it? Can’t I just paint? Can’t I be allowed the same freedom that is allowed a rosebush, the ocean, the river?’

Have that freedom. Meaning is a confinement. It is the greatest bondage. Once you start looking for meaning, you will start missing life, because everywhere the question will arise, ’What is the meaning of it?’

All that is beautiful is meaningless. All that is great is meaningless because it comes from the beyond. All that is true is meaningless. You can only find meaning in human productions. A car is meaningful, a flower not, because the car has been made for a certain purpose. A train is meaningful, but a cloud is not. Only human manufactured goods are meaningful; only economics has meaning. Life has none.

So if you start looking for meaning you will be searching in a wrong way, and by and by you will lose all that is significant. I don’t say it is meaningful – significant. A thing can be significant without having meaning. Now this mala I have given to you will have a significance, but no meaning. Meaning is something which is objective. Significance is something which is subjective.

A lover gives you a small handkerchief; it has significance – no meaning. If you go into the market they will say you can only get four annas for it. But you will not want to sell it at any price. It has a significance. That significance exists only for you; it is not in the handkerchief. It is in the love gesture. It is a gift from a loving heart. To sell it – even to think of selling it – is impossible, would be a betrayal. You would like to die with the handkerchief on your heart. You could lose everything, but you would like to save this handkerchief – sometimes even at the cost of life – because love is higher than life. But it only has significance.

Meaning is economical. Significance is poetic. Things have meaning. Persons don’t have meanings.

And if a world is simply of meanings, it will be a dead world. It will be the most dead world that one can imagine. We are still a little happy because significance is Still not completely gone. Even people who live continuously in a logical world, in a logical framework, they also have some moments of significance.

You hold the hand of your beloved.... What is the meaning of it? Significance is tremendous, but you cannot prove it to anybody. They will say, ’You are just holding hands. What is the point of it? – just two skins touching each other. It is so hot and you are perspiring. What is the point of it?’ But when you love a person, you know that there is something else which is ineffable, illusive, mysterious. It is not only hands touching each other. It is souls touching each other. Hands are just the vehicles of something invisible passing through, being transferred.

Sannyas will have tremendous significance – and it will have more significance the deeper you go into it. But you are ready. This will be your name for this journey of meaningless significance: Ma Anand Samagra.

Anand means bliss and samagra means whole. In being whole is bliss, in being total is bliss. In being fragmented is misery, in being divided is hell. So become more and more one, integrated, whole – and sannyas will help you.

At least now one thing will exist in you which is beyond you. This moment something has entered in you which you cannot comprehend. You cannot figure out what it is. You are dumb before it. You will not be able to argue about it. If somebody asks you why you have taken sannyas, you will not have any way to argue. You can laugh. You can say something, but that won’t make sense logically, rationally. You will not even be able to say to yourself why you have taken sannyas.

So something now a little higher than you will exist there. Try to reach it. It will be like a horizon – the more you try to reach it, the further back it will recede. But by trying to reach it you will be, growing.

This is how one surpasses oneself.

One has always to strive for something bigger than oneself, bigger than all that you can figure out, higher than your mind, greater than your knowledge... something which you feel that you know and yet you cannot reduce it to knowledge, you cannot reduce it to words, to theories, dogmas.

So I send you on this journey of meaningless. Enjoy it, and more and more significance will come out of it. It will transform you...

[A sannyasin says: I feel I can teach Hatha Yoga in a different way – a surren-dering way, a way of accepting your body and surrendering to what is. I feel that you’re against Hatha Yoga, so I don’t know whether I should drop it or not.]

No, I am not really against Hatha Yoga. If you can teach in a surrendering way, then there is nothing wrong in it. I am against any violent, aggressive methodology. So if you can develop this quality – like Aikido or T’ai Chi – that you go with the body energy rather than forcing it, rather than manipulating the body .... One should listen to the body and one should allow the body to have its say, because the body has its own wisdom.

Hatha Yoga has deteriorated very much down the centuries. It has become almost a mind over the body thing – manipulating, controlling, forcing. It has become a violent method. The very word ’hath’

means resistance, stubbornness, fight. The attitude is as if the body has to be conquered, as if the body has to be made a slave. If you can drop that pattern, it will be tremendously beauti-ful to work.

You can work, but you will have to imbibe a totally new spirit.

In fact, that is the real spirit of Hatha Yoga. It is a deep respect for the body, a deep love for the body. It is not really forcing anything on the body; it is persuading the body. It is a great art, but it has disappeared, because in the indian mind for centuries there has been a dualism between the body and the mind. They have been trying to overpower the body, and deep down there is a current that the body is the enemy. So this anti-body attitude has corrupted the whole indian thinking.

So if you can work on these lines of Aikido – relaxing, making the body more flexible, more liquid, and enjoying it and going with it.... It is just as when a big storm comes, a big tree resists it. It does not bend. It is ready to die, but it is not ready to bend. Then it is uprooted; it is thrown. The storm goes but the tree cannot come back – it is dead. It cannot stand again. But small bushes, grass, fall on the earth when a big storm comes, with no resistance at all. It has no idea of fight. It simply enjoys the game. The storm is gone, the grass is back – more alive, greener, fresher. The storm has taken only its dust, that’s all. It has not destroyed it.

Now the big tree is more powerful, but it is destroyed. Soft grass is just humble. You cannot find a more weak, a more meek thing, but it survives. The biggest storm cannot do anything to it. The way of the grass is the way of Aikido. Bring the same thing to Hatha Yoga and it will be a great contribution – but you will have to work hard at it.

So choose postures which are more in tune with surrender. Teach people not to force anything on the body, but to relax and let the body flow in that pattern. It should be more passive and less active, more feminine and less masculine. The indian Yoga was developed basically by man, so it is too masculine; the feminine element is missing from it. The feminine element is what I mean by Aikido, T’ai Chi. It is the passive element. Male is aggression, female is reception, welcome.

So you can start. It will be good for you; it will be good for other sannyasins to learn it. But remember, I am against all sorts of aggressive things. I am for the watercourse way. I am against the attitude of the rock. I am for the attitude of the water – and finally it wins. The soft always wins over the hard.

The feminine always wins over the masculine. Blessed are the meek – they shall inherit the earth.

So start working on these lines. Think, plan... experiment. And whenever you need anything, you can just come to me and tell me.

[A visitor says: I’m just here to see you.]

But to see me is difficult! You will need different eyes to see me. These eyes won’t help. With these eyes you can see something, but not me. You will need eyes of love, of meditation, of surrender, trust, otherwise you will be deceived. You will think that you have seen.

In fact, to see me you will have to first see yourself. That is the only way. You can see only that much which has already happened in you.

For example, a small child cannot visualise sex. It has not happened to him. He can see two persons making love, but he cannot figure out what is happening. He will be simply puzzled and he will miss many things. He will be just seeing the outer periphery of the whole act. Even that he may not see, because we see only that which we can see. He may just pass by. He may think that these two people are fighting with each other or something. One day, when sex arises in his own being, then suddenly the meaning is revealed; then he knows what it was.

In the same way meditation also happens. Sex happens natur-ally. For meditation, one has to work hard. Sex is part of an evolutionary process. Meditation is a revolution. If you enter into it, you enter, otherwise you miss.

So if you really want to see me, I am ready – but you will need courage. You have asked a dangerous question! And remain avail-able to sannyas. Just think about it. Any day the madness will come to you – don’t resist it!

CHAPTER 16

5 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and bhairava means god – god of bliss. Bhairava is a name of the god Shiva.

He is a totally different god to other gods in the world – life-affirmative, celebrating, not in any way life-negating; not in any way against life, but for it. So he is the god of bliss.

Whatsoever you can find out about Shiva, read; that will help you. And make it a continuous remembrance to not deny anything, to not fight with anything. Don’t carry any condemnatory attitude.

All is good and everything has to be affirmed.

Love is affirmation. When you say yes to life, you are loving, you are flowing. When you say no to life, you are stuck, frozen. That’s how people have become stuck – by saying no to many things.

There are people who cannot say yes. No comes very easy to them. Their whole attitude is based on negativity. No helps the ego to be very strong; it is an ego-enhancer. The more you say yes, the less the ego can exist. And the less the ego, of course the more the bliss.

So start feeling more of a yes attitude. Even sometimes when you feel it is difficult to say yes, then too, try. And if you can manage to say yes, you will suddenly see a release of energy – as if one obstacle has been transcended, one negation has been dropped. You will feel more freedom with yes. That’s what I see in your energy – you are carrying a few no’s, negatives. They have to be dropped. That’s why I’m giving you the name Bhairava.

This god Shiva is a non-aryan god. Before the Aryans came to India he was the god of the pre-Aryans... very life-enhancing. All his statues are of dancing, of love. He is symbolized by the sexual phallic symbol, the shivalinga. People have become almost oblivious of the fact of why the god Shiva is symbolised by the phallic symbol. He is so life-affirmative that even sex has to be absorbed. That is life energy. That too has to be worshipped.

So with the name Bhairava, remember it – become more of a yea-sayer and drop nay-saying. One day you will come to a point where you can say yes to all. That moment is of total release. One is free so nothing confines one, nothing holds one down.

So just remain watchful. Whenever your old mind tends to say no, make an effort to say yes. By and by you will become more and more efficient in saying yes. And the more you say yes, the more you will see how beautiful it is, how much you were missing unnecessarily.

A person who says no all his life goes on crippling himself, goes on denying many parts of his being, disowning them and becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. In the end a no-sayer simply remains a no – doors closed, all contact with life lost. That is actually what spiritual death is – a person just living inside a no.

Spiritual life is living with yes – flying, flowing with yes. So Bhairava is the god of yes, affirmation, love, life. Remember it....

[A sannyasin says that since Primal Therapy, when he looks into the mirror he sees his father’s face.

In response to questions from Osho he answers that he loved his father, but has not relationship with him since seventeen years.]

... The Primal therapy must have brought something from your unconscious to the conscious – but it is still hanging. If it had been brought up completely, it would have disap-peared. The process has not been completed. It is incomplete – and incomplete processes are heavy. It is better not to start them. If you start them, then finish them. Many people in the West are suffering from many sorts of methods that are becoming prevalent. They are not complete methods, so they start something and then you are in a limbo. You don’t know what to do with it.

... You will have to come to a reconciliation, because to be conflicting in some way with your own father is very dangerous, because half of your being belongs to him. Unless you are reconciled to your father, you will never be reconciled with yourself – that’s the trouble.

... So a reconciliation with your father is a must for your own growth.

Your face is bound to reflect your father’s face. It comes from him. It is natural; it is how it should be. And as you grow older, more and more your father’s face will resemble yours, and your face will resemble your father’s face.

[The sannyasin answers: I don’t like that you say that.]

That is not the question. Liking and disliking is not the question. One has to come to a reconciliation.

You don’t like it – that’s why the problem is there. That means you will not be able to like yourself. It is your face, and of course it is your father’s face, your grandfather’s face, your great-grandfather’s face. It is the face of the whole history that has preceded you.

You are not alone. You are part of a great chain; you are linked with it. You could not be here if your father were not. You are here because of him, and there is no way to deny that. All denial is dangerous, is at your own risk. That’s what you have been doing.

And more and more you will see that your father’s face resembles your face, because as you grow in age, more and more your face will reflect his. It will become impossible for you to look in the mirror.

But even if you don’t look in the mirror, that makes no difference. You will see it in many ways – in your hands, in your body, in your behaviour, in your talking, in your tone, in your sound. He will be everywhere because you come as part of him. So all the old traditions have it that one should find a reconciliation, otherwise one will never be reconciled with oneself.

So I know that you don’t like it, but that dislike can be dropped. Do one thing. It will be hard in the beginning, but you will have to pass through the pain. Make it a point every night, for at least twenty minutes, to meditate on the face of your father in the mirror. Help it to be there and just watch all the resemblances in your own face. Create the whole fantasy in the mirror. Howsoever much you want to recoil back, you want not to look, you want to close your eyes – nothing doing; go into it. Meditate on it every night for twenty minutes and don’t avoid it.

If you can do it, within three months many things will happen. First the face will resemble your father’s face. Then some day suddenly you will see that your father’s face has disappeared and it is somebody else’s face – maybe your grandfather’s face. Because that too is there, I can see right now – faces behind faces. You carry the whole history of a chain, of a heritage. In your eyes, in your colour, in your face, in your hair, in everything. You are not alone here and there is no way to be alone here. The only way is to be connected with a link.

Every cell of your body has come out of a heritage, a long tradition. So just watch. One day you will see suddenly that even the father’s face has disappeared; there is somebody else. If you know your grandfather, maybe you will recognise him; if you don’t, you will see some unknown face. If you recognise that it is your grandfather then one day that too will disappear – some other face...

You will be able to go deeper into those faces, and one day suddenly you will see that all faces have disappeared. The mirror is empty and you are looking into it.

This can happen any day between three weeks to three months – but it happens. It is bound to happen if you continue. The day all faces disappear, your problem will be dissolved. Then there is no need to do it. When all faces disappear, you have come to your own being, and that has no face

– or call it your face, but it is not a face. Zen people call it the original face. The Bauls call it the essential man, but it is formless.

Hidden behind all these faces is your being. Go on peeling. You peel it – another layer appears; another layer – you peel that and another appears. One moment comes when all the layers are gone and just emptiness is left in your hands. That emptiness will resolve everything. Then you will feel so much love and compassion for your father, for your grandfather, for all those unknown people that made it possible for you to be. You will feel a tremendous compassion, respect, love. And when it comes, go to your father and for the first time you will be able to relate to him.

But this method will be very painful at first because when you start looking into your father’s face, it will become so real that there will be many moments when you will forget whether you are looking in the mirror or it is your father looking in the mirror. Who is real – you or the image in the mirror?

And it is going to be painful because you have a dislike – and I understand your dislike. Whenever love is not fulfilled, hate results. You wanted to love him. You loved him but it was never responded to. It never bounced back to you; nothing came in return, your love was frustrated. That frustration has become a revengeful thing; it has become a revenge. When love is not returned, it turns sour.

It turns bitter, it turns into hate. But your dislike simply shows that you still love the man, otherwise dislike would not be there. Your hate simply shows that you are still waiting – some day he will come and will love you again the way you always wanted him to love you.

But think about his problem. He may not have understood what you wanted, because people have their own problems. He may not yet be reconciled with his own father. For example if you give birth to a child, there will be trouble. Either you will repeat your father’s pattern or you will overcompensate.

In both ways there will be trouble, because you can do only to your child the same as your father had done to you It is a repetition.

And two are the possibilities: either you do too much – overcompensation.... You love the child too much because you were never loved and you are still feeling hurt. But that too is not good because too much love can be dangerous for the child. He starts feeling that everybody has to love him.

Then he expects too much from the world, and he will be frustrated everywhere. The world is not his father and mother.

So if a father and mother love the child too much, he expects the whole world to love that way. By and by he will become more and more frustrated and angry at you: ’Why did you love me so much in the first place?’

This is such a problem – to have the right relationship between the child and the parent. Up to now thousands of ways have been tried – all have failed. It seems impossible to find the right way of relating. If you love too much, the child will be angry with you. If you had not loved too much, he would have had a better, a more realistic attitude towards life. He would not have expected too much and there would have been no frustration. He could have avoided much anxiety and anguish.

If you don’t love him too much – as your father did – you are angry. You are still angry – you cannot grow out of it – and you think that he has betrayed you. And when your own father has betrayed you, how to expect that anybody else is going to love you? So you are always suspicious of love. You will always suspect that something else must be there. If I say I love you, you will suspect, because your own father never loved you, so how can you believe this strange man? You cannot believe in God because your own father deceived you, so how to believe in a god who is the father of the whole existence? Maybe He is also the same type. Fathers are fathers. Your concept of your father will be your concept of God also.

So there is a problem, and up to now human understanding has not come to a point where we can find a golden mean. Whatsoever you do goes wrong. If you make it too balancing, that too is frustrating. Then everything looks very calculated. You love – but only so far to keep balance

– and then you don’t love; so there is neither more nor less. But then one looks very calculating, mathematical, and the child feels frustrated – because a relationship is not mathematics. It should not be arithmetical, it should not be so calculated. It should be a flowing thing. It cannot be flowing if the father follows certain rules that you have to love fifty percent, and fifty percent you have to give a chance to the child to understand that reality is pain, suffering, competition, struggle and everything else that is implied.

Then the child starts feeling that the father is just a legal father. Of course he is doing everything rightly, but he is doing it so well that the relationship becomes legal, formal. It lacks the informal beauty. Again there is a problem. As I see it, problems are going to be there and everybody has to come to a reconciliation, to an understanding. This will help you tremendously, so start meditating on the mirror.

Always remember that whatsoever you dislike, face it, and whatsoever you would like to avoid, never avoid. Whatsoever you are afraid of, go into it – that’s the only way to finish it, otherwise it will haunt you like a shadow. And your father is still alive so there is still some possibility. Once he is gone

– even if you are reconciled within yourself – you will cry that now you cannot go to him and say,

’Father, I forgive you. You also forgive me. My demands were irrational. I was just a child and I was unaware of the whole world and the complexity of it. Now I understand that whatsoever you did was the only thing you could do, because you were also conditioned by your father, by your mother, by your society. We were poles apart; there was an abyss and no bridge. But for whatsoever you did, I feel grateful.’

The reconciliation with your father will bring a new vision of life to you. You will become more relaxed, more at home, more at ease, and your life style will change. Otherwise, as I see you, you are in a continuous tension, deep tension, because to fight with one’s father is to fight with half one’s self.

So start this mirror meditation as from tonight, then do the Intensive, the camp and then Primal.

That will be perfect. Much is going to happen....

[A visitor says: I really feel that I’m already a sannyasin. I mean, I’m surrendered to you, to the nature, to everybody.]

Then close your eyes and become a sannyasin. Close your eyes. If you really mean that you are already a sannyasin, then be a sannyasin.

... This may be just a trick – it is a trick. By saying that you are already a sannyasin, you think that now there is no need to become a sannyasin. You are not. If you were, I would never say to you to become one. But you are not; this is a clever trick.

[The visitor replies:... then I’m not a sannyasin.]

Then there is no problem. But then know that you are not a sannyasin. You may be something else; I’m not talking about anything else.

But these are clever tricks of the mind. people go on playing games with themselves. They say ’I am already a sannyasin, so what is the need?’ If you are already a sannyasin, then why not accept it? What is the fear? If you say ’I am surrendered – surrendered to you as I am to everybody ....’

You are not surrendered to anybody, because even to be surrendered to one person is so difficult.

To be surrendered to everybody is impossible. It happens only when one becomes enlightened, not before.

But it is easy to say, ’I am surrendered to everybody so there is no need to surrender to you.’ It is better to be dear that you don’t want to be surrendered. Perfectly good – but at least you are true.

Why play an indirect trick upon your own mind? Whom do you think you are kidding?

If you are not surrendered, perfectly good. I am not saying to be surrendered. It is not easy for me when you surrender. I am taking a responsibility on. You are not doing anything when you surrender to me. What are you doing in surrendering? What have you got to surrender? I am taking on responsibility. I am taking somebody’s life in my hands, and I have to be careful about it. It is a delicate phenomenon.

For you it may be just a curiosity; for you it may just be because you see so many people surrendered, so you say ’Let us try’. It may even be just an imitation. But for me it is not so simple. When you surrender to me, I am taking your responsibility. Now if you fail, I am failing with you. If you go to hell, a part of me will be dragged to hell with you. If you are miserable, I will be miserable. Now your life will be my life.

You don’t know what surrender means. You have just learned the word and you think you are surrendered to me as you are to everybody. What does it mean to be surrendered to everybody?

Better to say ’I’m not surrendered and I don’t want to surrender’. At least we are on clear ground.

... If you feel that you are already surrendered, then why worry? Finished! I am not saying that you are not surrendered. But why be worried? Why even think about sannyas? Why ever raise the question? If you are really surrendered, there is nothing to be done about it. There is no point in even talking about it. Why did you start talking about sannyas? You must have read these things in books, you may have heard about them – you don’t know.

Everybody is born surrendered, but you are not the person who was born. The society has corrupted you absolutely. You are no more the person that was born. You are something else, somebody else.

Now this somebody else needs surrender so that you can again become the person that was born and that was really surrendered to nature.

That is the whole effort. Sannyas is a rebirth. Recognising the fact that you have fallen apart from nature, that you have gone astray, that you don’t know where nature is, what it is, that you have become artificial and arbitrary – recognising this fact, you come to a man who lives in nature, who lives as every man should, who is absolutely in harmony. You surrender just to learn the ways of harmony. If you walk with the man a few miles, you may get the infection of harmony.

That’s what surrender is – walking with me for a few miles – just to be with me for a few miles... just to know what it is when a man is in harmony. What does it mean when a man is natural? What does it mean when a man is a no-self? Surrender is just to have a taste of it, that’s all.

Once you have the taste of it, that will start working. You will be pulled. Then you have a new vision of life and that will start pulling you inwards. Right now you are not surrendered and you are not natural; you are not in harmony. Think about it. Just remember one thing – never deceive yourself by good rationalisations.

You were born in harmony but you are not in harmony. By becoming a sannyasin you will be making an effort to move towards that harmony. You don’t know what it is. You have forgotten the very language. Just being with people who know something of that world, who live in that world, your own energy starts rising again in a new way, starts flowing in a new way, that’s all. It is just like an infection.

If many people are laughing – you may have been sad, but their laughter catches you; you start laughing. That is the meaning of these orange people. They are mad, they are surrendered. They are living a very crazy way of life. Just looking at them, feeling them, their ways, their music, you also feel it would be good to be with these people for a little while. And one never knows – that ’little while’ can become your whole life. You may never leave. It may be not just for a few miles – it may become your very destiny. But in the beginning it is just to have a taste of it.

Think about it. If you feel like .... But be clear about it. Don’t talk hocus-pocus rationalisations. If you feel you are in harmony, perfectly good. Be in harmony with my blessings. I’m not going to disturb you. But if you are not, learn the ways of harmony. Sannyas is just a way. Think about it for a few days, then come back.

Or are you ready right now? If you are ready, then close your eyes, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I wrote you a letter about having recently finished a relationship with somebody, and since then I’ve been feeling very negative towards him.

I don’t understand why I feel so antagonistic to someone I once cared about. My understanding is that perhaps I didn’t express enough negativity during the relationship, but I don’t know if that’s true.]

It can be many things. It can be that you didn’t express your negativity – that happens. When people are in love they avoid many things which look ugly. They go on being collected inside. When the love continues it is okay; you can go on repressing them. But when the love is finished and the person is gone, then there is no point in repressing them. They all explode and one feels very negative.

So if in a relationship you allow both feelings, good and bad, this will never happen. Your insight may be true. This is ninety percent the possibility; there is more possibility of it being this than anything else. But life is never simple. It is very complicated.

Sometimes it happens that when you love a person, your whole energies are involved. When suddenly the love is broken, you don’t know what to do. Suddenly you are stuck – as if somebody was running and suddenly he is paralysed. Now he wants to run but the paralysis won’t allow him. Then everything becomes negative. The same energy that was helping you to run will create restlessness when you cannot run. So maybe you loved the person too much. Your energies were active, flowing, dynamic. Now suddenly everything is broken and you don’t know what to do. Those energies are there, throbbing, but there is nobody to shower them upon, nobody to receive them.

So those throbbing energies can turn into negativity, because positive and negative are both poles of the same energy. If the positive pole is missing, the energy will go on accumulating on the negative pole. If the positive pole is available, that energy will flow and become creative, otherwise it will become destructive.

So if this is the case, find another lover. Why wait? Don’t wait, because that waiting will be negative.

Either find some lover or find something that you love so deeply that your energy starts flowing again. Then that negativity will disappear immediately.

So ninety percent is the first possibility, nine percent the second, and there is one percent possibility that you never loved the person very much; you were pretending. Maybe it was a play, a game that you were enjoying. Now you are feeling negative – not against the person; that may be a projection

– you are feeling guilty about why you did it in the first place. That guilt can be projected on the person, so that person looks like the culprit.

It always happens – if you are guilty you will find a scapegoat somewhere on whom to throw your guilt, to put your guilt. Now he seems to be the most vulnerable. The love is broken – there is nothing to protect him.

These are the possibilities, but don’t be too worried about them.

[Osho said that one should not be too concerned with lovers, but should be true to love itself, and it would be helpful if Arti found someone else to love.

He reiterated that she should channelize her negative energy into some activity so that the energy would not become stale.

Osho said that next time she was in a relationship, (she) should make it a point to be absolutely true, expressing both negativity and positivity. A relationship will not be eternal and one should be in it as totally as possible so that there is no lingering grudge and unfinished, unexpressed feelings.

Finally Osho said that women tended to make love their only creative outlet while a man tended to have other things on the periphery... ]

Let the person of your love be the centre, but on the periphery have many more things. Let them all be reflected, enhanced, illuminated by your love, so you are never left feeling empty.

CHAPTER 17

6 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor who had done the Tathata group said he found it easy. Osho suggested he do the Enlightenment Intensive, saying that that would be more intense.]

When you take the challenge of a certain difficult method, you grow. Something easy is not necessarily good. Something may look easy but it does not force any change in you. It allows you as you are, but then it is pointless. The whole point is to create something in you higher than you are, something in you deeper than you are. The whole effort is to help you to go a little beyond yourself.

A thing is easy if it fits you. A thing is difficult if you have to fit with it. So always remember that the way is hard. There is no short cut; short cuts exist not. Everybody comes by the hard way. When something becomes too easy, find something hard again. Otherwise you will live conveniently, you will die conveniently, but nothing will have happened. Go on searching for some new challenge. Go on looking higher. Even if it feels impossible to reach, it will help you to grow. Even the very vision of something great immediately starts transforming you. Even with a dream of something great, you start becoming great.

So never settle with the easy. People tend to settle too easily, and of course then growth stops. As psychologists say, if you look at people’s mental age, the average mental age never goes beyond thirteen. A man may be seventy; his average mental age remains near twelve, thirteen, at the most, fourteen. Physically he is seventy, mentally he remains hanging somewhere near thirteen – and that too, on an average. In that average, geniuses are included, very talented people are included. So if you find an actual person and forget the average, you will find him hanging somewhere near seven to nine. Since that age they have never taken any challenge: they are stuck there. Everybody is retarded in that sense.

So never miss any challenge, and if there is no challenge, create one. Even create hurdles and obstacles; they will help you. They will make you stronger.

[A sannyasin says: I see my craving and trying to fill up my spaces with other people. The love between Somendra and me is so beautiful. The pain is not the love.]

It is a sad situation but can be of tremendous import. Happiness makes people shallow, sadness gives depth – and sometimes it is needed. In fact you never get anything which is not needed.

Remember it is a very fundamental law. You may not get something that you want, but you always get that which you need. Somehow the universe goes on fulfilling your needs; you may understand, you may not understand. The more aware you become, the more you see that in that moment, sadness was needed. It is a necessary ingredient in growth.

Love is good. To be together is good, but to be alone is also needed – to be so alone that one feels absolutely hopeless and there seems to be no possibility that one will be able to be together again; the darkness seems to be infinite. One seems to be absolutely lost, with no hope. One shouts and shouts ... no response. One screams and cries, and there is nobody to even listen to you.

In these moments, the mind tends to fill itself up with anything, whatever it is – sometimes eating too much, sometimes meeting and mixing with people, sometimes even pretending to fall in love, because the loneliness is so terrible. But if you really want to be benefited by it, blessed by it, then don’t fill this gap – live it.

Go the whole way in it. If it is lonely, be lonely. That is a part of life to be learned, and a very basic lesson – that one is alone. Then everything else is a game. You can hide your loneliness from yourself in a thousand and one ways, but it never goes; it is always there. Layer upon layer of.deception you can create – we call it maya, illusion – but deep down, wherever you go, you will again find that emptiness, the loneliness there.

Somehow one has to stop fighting with it. Somehow one has to accept it. It is painful, terribly painful to accept, but what to do? That’s how life is. So my suggestion is, don’t escape this time. Somendra has put you in a real growth situation. It is your own fault – you found a groupleader, so what to do!

And this is more real a situation than any group can create.

A group situation is always artificial, arbitrary. It has nothing to compare with a life situation. This is a life situation. Be alone. Let it hurt... Let it hurt the whole way. Go with it; cry and weep but don’t try to escape. There comes a moment when you have touched the very extreme and suddenly you swing back – but that happens only when you have touched the other extreme. It is just like the pendulum of a clock. It goes to the left, to the very extreme, then it turns. The same happens in the mind.

If you can be really sad to the very end of it and you are not resisting it, in fact you are riding on it and are going into it .... You want to see exactly what it is and how far it can go. You are not in any way against it. You are simply going with it. You are really in a very deep enquiry to know how much sadness is possible, how lonely one can be and how much it can hurt.

Nobody has ever been killed by sadness. Nobody has ever been killed by loneliness, otherwise the world would have disappeared long ago. If you can go to the very end of it, all the way, rushing towards the very peak of it, suddenly one moment will come when you can see the swing happening.

And that is a tremendously beautiful moment – to see energies changing. It is the same energy that becomes sadness, that becomes happiness, that becomes joy, that becomes pain. It is the same energy.

We don’t have many energies – we have only one. That same energy becomes anger, that same energy becomes compassion. That same energy becomes love, that same energy becomes hatred.

It has multi-potentialities. It is multi-dimensional. And one has to know all its ways because it is us!

We have to know ourselves. That’s what self-knowledge is.

When Socrates says ’Know thyself,’ what does he mean? He simply means know all the possibilities of your being. Sadness is a possibility. If you don’t know it, you will never become aware of yourself.

Self-knowledge will never happen because a part of you will remain in ignorance. So never lose any opportunity. These are God-given opportunities.

Go into sadness so deeply that you know the whole path, you know the whole pain. And pain transforms. Pain is like fire. It melts the gold but it purifies it. Whatsoever is accidental will be burned in it, but whatsoever is essential will come out of it purer. Out of each sadness – if one goes to the very end – one will come out stronger, more grounded, centred. You will not be able to recognise your own face. You will have such a grace if you can go to the very end of it. And when it changes, you see that moment when suddenly you are on the threshold of change – the night turning into the morning. The stars disappear and the sun is rising on the horizon. The very darkness becomes light and dawn. It is one of the most beautiful experiences that man can ever have.

But we miss because we never go to the very end. We fight. We somehow manage and manipulate ourselves to be with somebody, to create some sort of happiness, just to avoid it. Of course then that happiness is also bogus. It is not true, it cannot be true, because your inner being was ready to go to the very end of sadness and you created a contradiction. You enforce some false happiness.

The energy was going in one direction and you are forcing it into another. You can force it – it is your energy – but whatsoever the outcome is, it will be unnatural.

Happiness will be there but it will not be real. Real happiness comes out of real unhappiness, because only the real can be transformed into the real. This is the base of all alchemical work. The real can be changed only into the real. Even the baser metal can be changed into gold, but it should be real.

So go with it. Have a real trip to hell. Visit hell – and go deliberately. The faster you go and the more whole-heartedly you go, the sooner will you reach to the end. It can be reached in a single moment.

It depends on the intensity and how fast you go into it. If you don’t fight, the energy will take you. In a single moment you can reach to the very boundary of sadness and you can see the dawn, the sun rising, and the energy changing of its own accord. And you are not making any effort to change.

[Osho said that as one became capable of witnessing this phenomenon, by and by there was no need to suffer the anguish and confusion. Everything is leading towards ’satchitanand’ – truth, consciousness, bliss.

Once one has experienced aloneness, love has a totally different quality. It is not a need but just a sharing, a luxury.]

And I am here, don’t be worried. I am there in your loneliness, waiting and watching for you, so be courageous and don’t escape this time, mm? Good!

[The Primal therapy group were present. Osho asked one of the leaders, how he felt about the new method in which the three therapists worked with three or four participants each, and then all met and worked as a group.

The leader replies: It took a long time for the group to gel, to become a group and to work.

[A group member said: A lot of good things happened in the group, but I feel really strange. I don’t feel happy right now, and sometimes I feel frightened.

Osho checked her energy and said that he could see a block was there.]

Just do one thing in the night before you go to sleep. You can sit in a chair or in your bed, but be comfortable. Close your eyes and relax the whole body. Be limp and loose. If you body starts to slump forwards, allow it. Allow it any posture it takes. My feeling is that it will slump forwards and take a womb posture – just as the child remains in the mother’s womb. So keep a pillow in front of you and relax in that way. But let the body move as it wants; I’m not saying to do it.

When you feel that the body has settled, enter into your being and go to your stomach as if you have become very small and are going into your own stomach. It is not difficult; you will be able to do it.

In the stomach you will feel very empty and dark. Accept that emptiness and darkness. If sometimes you forget about it, go in again. For ten minutes you have to make all efforts to go there and just to be there. Within seven days your block will disappear. You just have to bring your conscious again and again to that block.

Consciousness functions like heat, and any block can be dissolved through consciousness; you just have to take the consciousness to it. It is just like a torch you take inside yourself. In the beginning you will feel dark and empty. By the time seven days are complete, you will start feeling very cosy –

not cold, warm, and not dark... a very small, soothing light, as if it is early morning and the sun has not risen, a full moon night.

If you feel that you enjoy it and it is going well, you can continue it after seven days. But if you feel that the block has disappeared and there is no need, you can stop it. There is nothing to be worried about.

[A group member said: I dry-sobbed my way through all the events I was going through, and I wonder now why I couldn’t cry.... I used to cry a lot.]

Then there will be nothing to cry – that’s the trouble. If you have cried a lot, there is nothing left!

... nothing to be worried about. If a child is allowed to cry and he enjoys it, there is no problem. If you do the same group with Indians, nobody will cry because they were all allowed to cry and scream.

Nobody forces them not to cry or anything. It is taken for granted that children do that. So the primal scream will not come to them. They have screamed a lot already. The primal scream comes only because children have not been allowed to scream. So it is repressed there, waiting, struggling to come up.

That’s why you went so easily through the whole thing and there was no crying. I don’t see that there is any cry within you. If someday anything comes, it will be like laughter, not like crying. So pay more attention to laughter!

[A group member says: I didn’t like being pushed and often I wished to leave, but I didn’t. I had a lot of difficulty in getting in touch with deep feelings through these exercises.]

No, the problem was with you, not with the group. If you don’t like being pushed, then the whole group is missed; there was no point in it. You should have left. Always remember that there is no point in doing a thing which you don’t want to do. There is no point because nothing will come out of it, only frustration. You will never really do it. You will be just playing around, thinking maybe something will happen; let us see. But you resent it. You don’t like being told to do this, you don’t like being disciplined. Then nothing can happen, because a group has a discipline.

[The sannyasin asks: Yes, but how to get out of my stupid resistance?]

I will give you a few stupid things to do, and you will get out by and by. Many people have this attitude – particularly the new generation all over the world – that there is something wrong in being disciplined, in being told to do something. They think their freedom is denied. But only a disciplined man can have freedom; nobody else can have freedom. You can have licence but that is a totally different thing – not freedom. Freedom is a very responsible thing. It needs great alertness and alertness needs great discipline. They depend on each other.

It is a hierarchy. If you discipline your life in a certain way, you become more centred. With a more centred being, you have more light inside, more awareness. Otherwise, everything becomes diffused. Everything becomes topsy-turvy and you become a mess, a chaos. Then you don’t have any inner order.

So there is no need to become a slave. Discipline is not slavery. If some discipline is forced on you against yourself, then it is a slavery. But if you choose it, it is not. For example, somebody comes and starts operating on your stomach; then he is trespassing. But if you go to a surgeon and you pay him a fee and he operates on you, it is freedom. It is out of your own voluntary will that you have come to him. It is you who has decided to be operated on. So he is not a butcher or a murderer or anything. You can say any moment, ’Stop! I don’t want it. I am finished with it,’ and he has to stop.

When you go into a group, it is on your own will that you have decided to participate in it; nobody is forcing you. You decided to play the game, so you have to follow the rules. That’s what I am suggesting. If you were feeling that it was not for you, that you don’t want to be disciplined, then leave immediately. What is the point of being there? Being there will just be futile.

You participate in another two groups after the camp. First, in the camp, try to do what I am saying.

It is according to your will. If you don’t want to participate, then follow the rules of the game. In the camp do an the meditations as hard as possible, as totally as possible. Particularly the Dynamic meditation will be helpful to break this, because getting up early in the morning, the mind starts thinking ’Why bother? Why force anything upon yourself? Why not be spontaneous? Why not sleep a little more?’

To enter into some discipline is so beautiful, and it gives so many new visions and insights, that once you know it .... People have wrong associations about discipline – parents saying to them, ’Do this, don’t do that’; their orders are almost foolish. The child sees the foolishness of it, but he has to yield to it because the parents are powerful. Then teachers and all sorts of stupid people teach and force things on the child which the child knows are meaningless, but still he knows he has to do them.

Then the whole society does the same. It is a stupid society and it goes on forcing stupid things on people, so wrong associations arise. But that wrong association is dangerous. You will miss a few beautiful things.

It is bad to follow a stupid man and his discipline, but if you can find somebody who is more alert than you, follow him. Follow blindly, because he will introduce you to something new. If you can find somebody who knows better than you, who knows more than you, who loves more than you, listen to him. His discipline is going to help you.

CHAPTER 18

7 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To two resident sannyasins returning for a brief visit to the States to see their parents, Osho spoke about how one could introduce one’s parents to sannyas, meditation, and Osho, in a way that would be acceptable. He said one should not try to argue, but simply let one’s being, one’s happiness, be evidence of one’s new life.

He said to meditate and let their parents watch, without enforcing anything on them. Meditation is the greatest gift one can give to one’s parents... ]

... and in fact everybody is in need of meditation. Everybody is starved of it. Particularly as one grows older in life, more and more is the necessity felt. Of course people have completely forgotten the language of it. They cannot even form the right question about what is missing. They simply feel that something is missing; they don’t know what. They are bewildered by it. They may have everything. One may have arrived in worldly ways, succeeded, but by the time that one reaches the age of forty-two, one starts feeling that something is missing.

Forty-two is just like the age of fourteen. At the age of fourteen you start feeling that something is missing. The sexual partner is missing; the man or the woman is missing. Suddenly you feel that you are alone, incomplete. You need somebody to complement and complete you. A great desire arises to move into love.

Exactly the same happens at the age of forty-two. Again one has matured – deeper than the maturity that comes at fourteen. That was physical maturity; one was ready to make love physically. Forty-two is the age when one is psychologically mature, and is ready to make love psychologically.

That’s what meditation is all about. Because in the West people have completely forgotten – and Christianity has never talked about meditation, but at the most about prayer, which is a very diluted form, which doesn’t work much – when people become older, when they come to the middle of their life, suddenly they feel a haunting, that something is missing; what is it? They cannot even pinpoint it. They cannot put their finger on it: ’This is what is missing.’

People start drifting at the age of forty-two. They think this wife is not fulfilling because they know only one experience. At the age of fourteen there was a haunting of sexuality. Maybe again this wife is not satisfying, this man is not satisfying. So they swap wives, swap husbands, make group sex.

There is only one language, and that is of sex. Or they start thinking that they need more money, a bigger house, bigger cars, because that is the whole logic they have been living by and they cannot find any satisfaction through it. They go on and on and on until they simply fall down dead and die.

But meditation is as natural an urge as sex. It has its own time. So when you go back home, go with this mission. Then you are taking something from me for them. And if they criticise, listen to it very attentively. Don’t try to reply, rather let your whole being respond. If they say what nonsense you have done by taking sannyas – which is a natural thing to say – laugh about it. Don’t take it negatively. Enjoy the idea and tell them it is nonsense.

Very slowly you can make the impact. One has to be very soft, not hard. Don’t forget what has happened to you, and don’t fall into the old pattern. That too is very possible. When one goes to one’s parents, it is very difficult to remain new. Their expectation, your fear, and the difficulty in communication, tends to help one fall into the old pattern. If you fall into the old pattern they will not be able to see what has happened; they will think you have simply changed your clothes. Then it is foolish.

Unless the rainbow has happened inside, just changing the colour of the clothes is absolutely absurd. So remember it. In the beginning it is difficult; one tends to fall into the old pattern and one starts talking to the mother, to the father, in the old way. One starts making old gestures; old body language again erupts. You have got your body from them, you have learned all your body gestures from them. Their very presence is provocative. You have lived in your mother’s womb. You are part of their being – extensions.

When you are close to a parent, suddenly you start vibrating in his tune, and of course he is more powerful and he is going to remain more powerful. He is more experienced, more settled, more authoritative. You immediately start following his rhythm. That is very unconscious. You start vibrating in his rhythm. That’s why children feel very awkward and embarrassed. The more something new happens to a child, the more he finds it difficult to approach the parent, because on becoming closer, he starts vibrating in some past rhythm. His own rhythm is lost.

So for seven days you have to remember it and then you will not be in any difficulty after that. In fact they will start feeling that a new rhythm has arisen in you. They will start feeling the attraction of you, the grace, the beauty, the grandeur. Then you are more powerful. Then they can fall into your rhythm and can have a new taste of life.

[To a sannyasin returning to Germany, Osho suggested that it would be very helpful to make meditation a regular part of her routine. He said sometimes it was permissible to miss a meal –

could even be beneficial – but to miss meditation meant to undo months of work.]

It is very delicate work. In months some energy is created, and within days it can disappear – unless you have come to a point which is known as the point of no return. It comes one day.

It is exactly the same as when you heat water to ninety degrees. It is still water; then to ninety-five degrees – it is still water. At ninety-nine degrees it is still water and if you stop heating it, it will cool down; the heat will be dissipated. You will have to reheat it again. But if it comes to one hundred degrees, then it jumps; it evaporates. It has come to a point from where a very radical change has happened.

The same happens with meditation. You go on accumulating it; it is cumulative. You do it every day

– you go on accumulating a subtle energy in your being. It comes higher and higher and higher: ninety degrees, ninety-nine degrees. If you stop even then, it will disappear. It will be dissipated, because the whole life is non-meditative and it is easily destroyed.

The whole world is non-meditative. The people you will be meeting, working with, talking to, are all non-meditative. When you carry a high energy, people who are not that high simply suck you

– unknowingly. It is just as if there is water – it will start flowing downwards. All energies move downward. People are just like valleys. It is natural that your energy starts flowing towards them.

Their level is lower than yours.

Hence regularity is very very significant. Otherwise you create something and if you think ’Now I have created enough; I am feeling very good’, for a few days you will feel good, but then again the energy will be lost.

If you continue regularly, by and by your level goes higher and higher and higher. One day it suddenly happens that you evaporate. Then meditation is just a natural thing. Whether you do it or not does not matter. Non-doing, you are still in it. WaLking, you are in it; eating, you are in it; working, you are in it; sleeping, you are in it. Then meditation becomes your whole life. Before that happens, regularity has to be maintained.

[A sannyasin says: I was doing buddhist meditation for two years.... I kept falling asleep!]

Mm, that’s possible in a buddhist meditation... very possible. That’s why zen masters have to keep a staff continuously to hit the disciples, because they are always dozing. The whole method is so silent, so relaxing, that the natural possibility is to fall into sleep. Whenever we relax, whenever we are silent, we fall asleep, so with relaxation there is a deep association with sleep.

That’s what we have been doing for our whole life – and the buddhist meditation depends on relaxation. So once you relax, the mind gets the hint that now you are ready to sleep, because that is the only way it has come to know sleep. It has no other way, no other experience. It cannot figure it out – if you are relaxed, why aren’t you going to sleep?

[Osho said it is a oonditioning – just like the conditioned response of Pavlov’s dogs who were trained to respond to the ring of a bell by the subsequent reward of meat. After a time the meat could be withheld, but the dogs would still continue to salivate at the sound of the bell.]

To fall asleep, relaxation is a must, but relaxation is not necessarily a step towards sleep. It can become a step towards meditation too. But then a great change of your past associations is needed, otherwise you will fall asleep. But it is good that you tried. With my meditations it will never happen because they are so active. They create a turmoil in your energy, a chaos; you cannot fall asleep.

And for the modern mind, that seems to be the best possibility.

In the old days when Buddha was here and when he invented his meditations, people were absolutely relaxed. In India in those days – all over the world in those days – people were sleeping almost twelve hours because there was no electricity, no kerosene, no light or anything. Even now in indian villages, that is the case. Thousands of villages have no light, so the sunset is the end of the day. Then what to do? You gossip a little or sing a little, or dance a little and then go to sleep.

By the time it is eight, the whole village is fast asleep – and there is no point in getting up too early.

So people have been sleeping deeply. When a person has slept absolutely, then even if relaxation happens, sleep will not come, because the sleep need is fulfilled. And people were working hard.

They were working the whole day as they still do in the East. Technology had not yet replaced their work. So when you work hard and you sleep well, your need is completely el relaxed, the seou sit silently, relaxation will come, sleep will not follow, and your energy will start moving in a new direction.

Relaxation is a step towards both sleep and samadhi. After relaxation there is a bifurcation. Either you go into sleep or you go into samadhi; these are the two possibilities.

It is very difficult for the modern mind to feel relaxed in the first place. But if you feel relaxed, the second problem is not to fall asleep. People are not sleeping as much as they should, as much as the body needs biologically, and they are not working hard either. Without hard work, sleep is impossible. You have to do hard work, then the body creates the need to relax. So people are not working – hard work has disappeared – and they are not sleeping well.

So whenever they start meditating – any meditation like a buddhist meditation – they start falling asleep. Hence my insistence on active and dynamic methods. Once you start tasting – once that opening has started functioning and a few glimpses of satori have come to you through active methods – then you can again start buddhist methods, and they will be tremendously meaningful.

So do a few groups here – and simply do what I say. It is easier that way!

[The Soma group was present tonight. The group leader said: There were three points felt almost unanimously in the group, so I decided to bring them up for myself.

The first is that we used some Kundalini Yoga in the morning, which was very powerful, but almost everybody was suffering from a tremendous amount of heat in the base of the spine and at the top of the head.

The second thing was that there were several people who didn’t speak English so I had to speak three different languages which was a distraction for the rest of the group.

The third thing was the food. They want purer food. If you think it’s important I could investigate more and plan some menus.]

Mm, the first thing.... Kundalini Yoga methods can create heat. Then the body can also feel uncomfortable, and pains in many parts of the body can come. But it is very good and helpful.

So when you do these breathing exercises, tell everybody to imagine simultaneously that the body is getting cool. That will balance – otherwise it can become very very hot. The whole body energy starts moving in Kundalini. It becomes so concentrated there that it is almost fire.

In Tibet they do miracles through it. The tibetan lama can sit under the open sky in falling snow naked – and perspire. Just a certain breathing throws the whole energy into the spine; so it can become too much.

They have to feel that by breathing they are cooling the whole system. Just the idea of coolness should be imbibed with each breath. And if a few people still feel it, then after the breathing exercises just give a sponge massage with a wet towel. Do it seven times and from the top of the spine to the root. When you touch them with the towel, they have to think that the energy is moving into the whole body and that the body is getting its quota. That will relax the energy in the body again.

When the body energy moves into the spine too much, then the other parts of the body miss that energy. That creates discomfort and pain. So if a person goes on doing it for years, there is no problem – the body adjusts – but in a small group for ten or fifteen days, it cannot adjust. So you have to do something. With this massage, both problems will disappear. But continue – it will help the whole group go deeper.

[Osho said that it would be good if she made recordings of instructions in different languages as soon more and more people would be coming from places like Japan and Korea and other countries, and they would need to be able to participate in groups.

He said that within a month the food situation would be changed, and the food would be more pure, which was necessary to help people go deeply into the processes.]

[A sannyasin said he had trouble in astral travelling: I have a little problem. When I’m leaving the body I feel anguish and fear, so I pull back into my body.]

It is natural. It is the fear of death. That is what happens in death. And it has happened many times to you in your past lives, so your mind knows about it. It is actually the process of death, so fear is natural and nothing to be worried about. It will go by and by. The more you go into it, the more courageous you will become.

The only way to learn swimming is to throw yourself into the water. First you move your hands haphazardly. By and by you start moving them more skilfully. And nobody is drowned because buoyancy is natural to the body. People are drowned because of fear, not because of water. That’s why dead bodies float on the water and are not drowned. If you can simply trust the water, you will float.

So simply go into it... try it. Every night before you go to sleep, have a ten-minute trip out of the body. Just practice will make you courageous. And you can do it very easily – that’s why you are so afraid. People who cannot do it are not so afraid. People who cannot do it, who simply imagine that they are going out of the body, will not get afraid because they are simply imagining; they know that they are imagining. But you really go, so that’s why you become so scared. It is natural.

An out-of-the-body experience is such a drastic one. Coming out of the body is disorienting for the whole system of your body. It happens only in death or in such methods. But these methods can bring you to a great realisation. Once you become skilful in going out and coming in, then you know that there is no death. Then you have come to know your own deathlessness. So it is worth it; whatsoever the cost, it is worth it.

CHAPTER 19

8 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, nirvesha means enjoyment, joy, bliss, happiness, divine joy.

And to me, all joy is divine. Joy as such is divine. If one can be joyful, one is in prayer. Then there is no need to do any other prayer. Then you are constantly offering yourself to God. We cannot offer anything else.

In misery we are cut off from God closed, separated, isolated. In joy we are overflowing, relinked, reconnected. In joy we are offering our being. So joy is divine. Not to be joyful is to be irreligious.

So if you can do one thing, everything will follow. Just be ecstatically joyful, and for it, no condition is needed. You need not be rich to be joyful.

For instance, there are people who are very rich and absolutely joyless. And there are beggars who are full of joy. You need not be very famous to be joyful. In fact, you need nothing to be joyful. It is just a different attitude. No physical condition is needed for it. No social status is needed for it.

Nobody else is needed for it. It is just your attitude, your decision, your commitment, that now you decide to be joyful. If you decide, you will be – because you become, finally, your decision.

So I give you the name to make it a constant remembrance. And start being joyful for no reason at aU. Even when you have no reason, just be joyful. Joyfulness should be like breathing. You go on breathing while walking, sitting, eating, sleeping; it does not depend on anything else. If you are alive you go on breathing. With joy, there is only one difference: even if you are dead, you can be joyful, though you cannot breathe. So they are absolutely similar, except for one thing. Breathing continues while you are alive. Ill, healthy, successful, a failure, frustrated, young, old, respected, condemned, breathing continues. Sinner or saint, breathing continues.

Joy is just like breathing. It goes a little deeper than breathing, because it continues even when you are dead. If you can learn how to remain joyful, you are learning something which is deathless. Or let me say it this way – breathing is a must for the body, joy is a must for the soul. Breathing is the elan vital for the body, joy is the elan vital for your soul. When breathing stops, you say ’This man is a corpse now.’ When joy stops this man has no soul. And that’s why you see so many corpses –

joyless people, dry... not even an oasis but just deserts and deserts.

Our cities are full of dead people. The whole earth is full of dead people. Be a light among these dead. Be joyful among these people who are joyless – and don’t feel guilty. That is the problem: because so many people are joyless, one starts feeling guilty that one is so joyful... that one is having something that others are

missing.

This is something to be understood. Whenever people start feeling happy, they immediately start feeling guilt arising by the side, because how can they feel joyful when the whole world is so miserable? I’m not saying don’t consider others. I am saying that you have to be joyful even when the whole world is in misery. By being joyful you can help other people to come out of their misery.

By being joyful you can become an example. The world needs a few joyful people, a few dancing energies, so that others can feel that there is a possibility. Death is not the only way to live. One can live tremendously alive also.

Hence I am creating these sannyasins. Hence I am giving you sannyas. This is just to make you a joyful example. So wherever you go, let this message be spread – that man need not be misera-ble, that joy is our birthright. If we don’t claim it, nobody else is responsible except ourselves. It has to be claimed. By creating sannyasins I am hoping to create a few dancing people. Through their dance, their festivity, their joy and their feasting, they will celebrate God on earth.

Enough of the church and enough of seriousness, of long faces. They have killed God. Theologians, missionaries, priests – these people with long faces – are the real criminals. They have all killed joy.

They have made everybody guilty. They have postponed joy for the future life.They say ’Joy is not possible here. You have to earn it. Be virtuous and joy will come about as a result.’

It is all nonsense, rot. Joy is a simple quality of life. You need not be virtuous. On the contrary, joy will make you virtuous, because I cannot see a person who is really happy doing anything wrong.

Only miserable people do wrong things. Miserable people become destructive. They are angry people. They are in much frustration. They cannot respect life. What has life done to them? Why should they respect it? They live in such misery that they take revenge.

To be miserable is to sow the seeds of sin. To be joyful is to become virtuous. Joy is the only virtue.

So I teach joy. Be happy, and you will see many virtues arising that were not there before. You become more truthful, you become more honest. You become more loving. You become more intense in every thing you do. A passion arises. And whatsoever you touch with your joy becomes gold. You become alchemical. Not only does your life change from baser metals to higher ones, but whomsoever comes in contact with you immediately feels a thrill. So be thrilled and thrill others.

Becoming a sannyasin is a commitment for joy. Becoming a sannyasin is a discipline to be joyful.

So, misery I call sin, and joy I call virtue. So I insist for joy. I don’t insist for virtue because virtue is an outcome, a natural by-product.

[To a new sannyasin.]

Much is going to happen – you are ready for many things. Just relax and surrender, because there are things which cannot be done by willpower. There are things which cannot be willed at all. The more you will them, the further away they are.

And these are the real things in life – love, beauty, truth, bliss, God. You have to give way... you have to just relax and allow. You have to become passive and receptive. They happen only in a feminine state of mind.

Whenever you are doing something, there is bound to be a tension, and that tension does not allow you to melt. When you are doing something, there is bound to be expectation, and that expectation does not allow you to relax. When you are doing something there is bound to be some conflict, a struggle with the whole, as if you have some private idea of your own. So here, just allow things to happen. Meditate – and that too has to be done in such a way that you don’t will it. Simply be there and let it happen.

Learn by and by how to allow things to happen. Don’t be aggressive – be receptive. Don’t try to grab anything – just wait for your time to come. And existence is very just; there is no injustice. You get whatsoever you deserve; it never happens otherwise. So one can make much fuss but nothing will happen. One can simply sit and wait – and everything is possible. For the right moment, for the right ripening, one has to wait. And one never knows.... It is unpredictable. God is absolutely unpredictable. There is no way to know His ways. His ways are mysterious.

So one can simply trust. Just meditate, be here patiently, and more than listening, be, feel.

And your energy is really flowing. You are not frozen in any way – your energy is streaming. Things will come to you very easily. Your path is easy; it is not going to be hard. When people are very frozen, the path is very hard, because they are like rocks and the melting is very difficult. To melt a rock, a very high temperature is needed. But you are like a river – there is no problem. So just flow with me. Good.

[The Encounter group, present tonight.

A group member said: I had a lot of good experiences, especially with sex. But now I’m stuck.

Yesterday I felt a lot of negative energy, and a lot of hate and destructiveness. I feel that I want to destroy and I don’t allow myself to do it.]

Destructiveness is itself not bad. It can be used in a very creative way. In fact nobody can drop destructiveness. The only difference between a creative person and a destructive person is of emphasis.

The destructive person is only interested in destruction. Sometimes even if he creates something, he creates it to destroy it. If he makes a friendship, deep down he only makes it to destroy it. His pleasure is in destruction. Destruction is his goal. If he falls in love, he knows deep down that it is just to destroy something. How can you destroy love if it is not there? First you have to create it to destroy it.

The creative person has as much destructiveness as the destructive person, but the emphasis is around the other way. He destroys things to create. You have to demolish the old if you want to create the new. You have to destroy many things if you are really creative because there is no creativity without destruction. So a creative person is not without destructiveness. He uses destructiveness as a means towards creation, that is the only difference. Both have both the qualities.

So don’t think that destructiveness is something wrong. You have to learn how to use it. It is a beautiful thing. The greater the creativity, the greater will be the destructiveness, because how can you create the new if you don’t destroy the old? But you have to find ways how to use it in creative ways.

It is a great force. Channelized, it can become beautiful. Allow it to remain in chaos and it can become suicidal, because the ultimate result is to destroy oneself. How long can you go on destroying other things? One day the final result will come – you will destroy yourself. In fact you are getting ready for it. You destroy this and that – this relationship, that friendship, that person, this love

– and one day you are simply fed up with all this. Now you want to destroy the final thing – yourself.

That’s why people become suicidal.

So I am not against destructiveness, but I am certainly for creativity. You have to harness all your destructiveness into some creative activity. You have many things which are needed to be destroyed.

There is jealousy – destroy it. There is hatred – destroy it. There is aggression – destroy it. There is anger – destroy it. There is possessiveness – destroy it. These are all there. And you will become a Buddha if you destroy all these things.

You have enough to destroy. If the fire is there, use it; burn all these things. And out of each destruction, you will find a new release of energy... a tremendous upsurge of energy. If you can destroy jealousy, kill it, and you will see such beautiful energies arising in you. Love becomes so easy if you can destroy jealousy; otherwise jealousy destroys love. If you destroy hate, suddenly you have so much love that you become unconditional. You don’t bother about whether the person is worthy of love or not. Who bothers when you have too much to give? You simply give and you feel grateful that he accepted.

As I see, you have much responsibility to be creative. Maybe that is the reason that you are feeling so destructive. Use it before it drives you mad. And don’t be against it. Remember it is just energy.

The same fire which can bum the house, goes on cooking for you. The fire that becomes light and warmth, can kill you; it is the same fire. You have energy – you just need direction. And your sannyas is going to be creative, so don’t be worried.

[The group leader comments: She has been more contented when negative things are happening in the group. Sometimes she allows her energy to flow, but generally if things are positive she gets very uncomfortable.]

Mm, it is because she does not know how to live in a positive energy field. So help her to release the negativity. When she is enjoying the negativity, help her to release it. Take her to the very end of it, because that is the only way to change. One should go to the very end of it, then the pendulum swings back.

[to the participant] You cannot return from half way. If you do, there will be a hangover; you will feel very uncomfortable. You may have been feeling angry, and somehow you manage not to go into it.

You may not express anger, but it will spread all over your being. It will circulate in your blood. It will move in your breathing. It will poison you and it will poison everything that you touch. It is better to go into it wholeheartedly, to finish it. Then it is finished sooner and you come out of it purer than before.

[to the leader] So just lead her deep into negativity. These two days, help her to go as far as she can; don’t try to bring her back. Push her to the very end, to the very extreme, to the very precipice, so she herself sees where she is going and what the outcome can be if she goes on moving. Then her own mind will recoil. When you see that she herself is moving back, then give her a positive experience. She will enjoy it.

In fact, she has been carrying negativity for many days and she wants to release it, so whenever there is a negative situation, she feels good. It fits her, and then she can also be negative. It happens .... If you are carrying some violence and you cannot do anything with it, just seeing a murder on the TV, something is released in you. That’s why people see so many murder films, read so many detective novels. It is their violence. They wanted to do such things but they have prevented themselves; they were too dangerous, too risky. So they identify with a movie or the TV or a story.

Or moving in the road and two people are fighting, a crowd gathers. The crowd is not interested in any way in the people – the crowd is interested in violence. You may have seen that if somehow the fight subsides, then the crowd moves away very frustrated. They wanted to see something happen, and nothing did.

When you look at the newspaper in the morning, you are very eager to see whether something has happened or not, whether people have been killed or war has broken out. If nothing has happened, you feel a little frustrated – there is no news. Otherwise people feel thrilled.

So when there is negativity in the group, The participant must be feeling thrilled; she will feel very enhanced. She wanted to do these things and she has not been able. But don’t let her be a spectator; that is not going to help. She has been doing that for her whole life. Force her to be a participant.

[to the group member] And you remember it too. Participate. If you enjoy anger, participate in it.

What is wrong in it? That is the whole point of the group – to bring out whatsoever is there. If you want to beat, then beat the pillow.

... Do something destructive. It can be done; there is no problem. Ways and means can be found.

You can have a knife and kill the pillow – really kill it. Get into the passion of killing – it will help. That’s the whole process of Encounter – that whatsoever is there has to be brought out. Once something comes to the conscious mind, its poison will not affect you any more. Unconscious, it is dangerous.

Conscious, the danger is over.

Otherwise you are like a puppet being pulled by the strings of the unconscious. Bring these things to light. Then even the puppet starts laughing and seeing that it is ridiculous: ’I have been under the influence, under the slavery of my own repressed emotions.’ Then enough is enough. So bring it totally to the conscious. It is going to go. You have come to me – you cannot remain destructive for long.

[A group member says: I feel like I have a huge collection of masks.

The group leader comments: When nobody’s looking at him, he melts a little, but as soon as he gets any attention, he fights. Whatsoever is said to him he sees as a judgement against him.

Osho checks the group member’s energy.]

There is not a very big problem. You don’t have many masks.

[to the leader] He has only one mask – that’s why he’s so protective. He has a very thin mask, so the moment you give attention to him, he holds on to it because he only has one. It is a poor man’s mask. If one has many masks, one does not bother – if one falls, another is there. Even if that goes, another is there. There are layers upon layers, so who bothers? But he has a very thin mask. If it is gone, it is gone, so he clings with it tremendously. But there is nothing to be worried about.

For these two days, put him in the centre and give him as much attention as possible. He has not got much attention in his childhood. He has not been loved. He has not felt warmth in the world. He has felt neglected, rejected. He has felt as if he is a burden. He has felt as if he has to make his own life and nobody is going to help him. He feels helpless, so he’s continuously afraid. If his face is gone, he will be nowhere. He will be just empty.

So just be more loving towards him and he will become so easily nude, he will drop it so easily that he will be surprised. But pay him attention and be more loving towards him. He needs attention, he needs warmth. And he will explode. Within these two days you will see a transformation happening in him.

[to the participant] You don’t have much to lose – that’s why you are so afraid. So don’t be worried.

Just do these two days, mm?

[A sannyasin says: It’s just hard to crack open, to let go... to let anything out.

The leader comments: There seems to be a lot of softness inside. My guess is that he is really afraid of that softness.]

[The leader] may be right. The problem does not seem to be that you are hard inside – but you are clever; that’s why you are not cracking. You are not hard; [the leader] is right. You are soft inside, but you are very clever, so your cleverness is functioning as a hardness. It does not allow anything to enter. You rationalise. You are more of a thinker. The heart is very soft but nothing reaches it.

The soil is very soft but the seed has to reach it, otherwise it will not sprout. The cleverness simply does not allow it. It is working like a guard on the gate; it does not allow it to enter. You are very calculating, clever, intelligent – that is your problem. Hardness of the heart is not the problem.

So just do one thing – start doing a few foolish things. [to the leader] Give him a few foolish things to do... ridiculous things.

[The group member said: He’s already done that.]

But you must have been rationalising it. You need really foolish things; that will relax you. Your head needs to be forced into such foolishness that it stops cleverness. When it sees that there is no point in being clever, that this whole thing is just mad, then it will allow it.

But it will happen. The basic foolishness has already happened – that you have become a sannyasin

[laughter]. Now it is just a question of time. Once the mind is not on guard, the thing will happen. It is only a question of it happening once.

Once you have a glimpse of your soft heart, you will never listen to the mind because then it is just unnecessarily wasting a precious life. All that is beautiful happens through the heart. The mind is a servant pretending to be the master. The heart is the master, but such a humble master that it never claims it... such a good master that even if he feels that the servant is sitting on the throne, he says ’Okay – let him enjoy. There is nothing wrong in it.’ So the servant has become more and more confident. By and by it has usurped that throne. It does not bother about the real master. In fact, it had completely forgotten the real master. It thinks it is the master.

Once you can have a glimpse, the whole thing will change. Then the passage will be open. But I am here – don’t be worried. Whenever there is a moment of foolishness in these two days, try to get into it. In these two days, just get out of the categories of the mind. Do a few foolish things – anything that comes on the spur of the moment; anything, I am saying. If you suddenly feel like standing naked and dancing, do it and see what happens – just on the spur of the moment. Let people think that you have gone a little crazy.

If you can enjoy a little craziness, everything will be put right. A little craziness is medicinal for you.

That’s my prescription for the time being. Then we will see! [laughter]

CHAPTER 20

9 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a sannyasin, whose son had just been initiated into sannyas, Osho said that one should respect one’s child, and that now her son was a sannyasin, she should regard him as a brother...

A child is born to you, but he does not belong to you. Always remember that he has come through you. He has chosen you as a passage, but he has his own destiny.

So giving him sannyas does not mean that you have to structure him. You are not to force anything on him. Sannyas is freedom, so give him freedom to be himself, and be alert not to impose anything.

Love him as much as you can, but don’t give your thoughts to him. When you meditate, just persuade him to be with you. Sometimes dance with him.

And children can go into meditation very easily – one just has to know how to help them towards it.

They cannot be coerced; that’s impossible. Nobody can ever be coerced into meditation, because coercion is violence. How can one coerce meditation? It comes when it comes. But you can persuade.

You can just invite him with tremendous respect. Dance with him, sing with him, sit in silence with him. By and by he will start imbibing it. By and by he will start enjoying the play of it. It cannot be a work for him. It cannot be a serious thing for him – it should not be for anybody. It can only be a play.

So help him to play meditation... Let it be a game. Make it a game with him, and by and by he will start loving it. He will start asking you ’When are we going to play meditation?’ And once he starts learning some ways of silence, then meditation has started working on him, and one day you will see that he is deeper in meditation than you had ever expected. So you have to make a meditative atmosphere.

To make somebody a Christian is easy. You have just to impose a certain ideology, a catechism.

You have to teach him that God is a trinity, and that Jesus is God’s son and things like that, which can be learnt very easily, and which are very destructive, because the person will never be free to explore. These prejudices will always be there.

So when I give sannyas to a child, it is not that you have to impose an ideology on him. You have just to persuade him towards meditativeness. It has nothing to do with any ideology – christian, hindu, mohammedan; they are all irrelevant. It is more like love... it is a feeling. And if he can learn something of it, then it starts growing on its own. One day he will be grateful for it – that you helped him. Right now he cannot understand, so the whole responsibility is yours.

And this is my observation – that if grownups are a little more meditative, children imbibe the spirit very easily. They are so sensitive. They learn whatsoever is there in the atmosphere; they learn the vibe of it. They never bother about what you say. What you are – they always respect that.

And they have a very deep perceptivity, a clarity, an intuitiveness. You may be smiling but they will immediately know that it is false, because your eyes will be saying something else – and even more than that, your whole body will be saying something else, your gesture will be saying something else

– that you are angry, that you are just pretending, that it is just a policy.

They may not be able to formulate it in so many words, but they immediately feel it. So never be untrue with children because they will immediately know it. And once a child comes to know that his parents are untrue, his whole trust is lost. That is his first trust in life, his very base, and if that is lost he will become a sceptic. Then he cannot trust anybody. He cannot trust life, he cannot trust God, because those are very far away things. Even the father deceived, even the mother deceived; even they were not reliable, so what to say of anything else now?

Once a child learns... and every child is going to learn; it is impossible to deceive a child. There is no method discovered up to now on how to deceive a child. He simply knows where you are, who you are. It is intuitive – it has nothing to do with his intellect. In fact, the more intellectual he will become, the more he will lose this intuitiveness, and he will not be able to see things as they are.

Right now a child is immediate. He simply looks through and through. He looks at you and you are transparent. So never be deceptive.

[Osho went on to reiterate what he had said to a sannyasin at a previous darshan (see Dance Your Way to God, August 29th, 1976) – that one should not pretend to be a god, but should express anger if that’s what one was feeling; even to hit if necessary, but to hit warmly.]

Love him and allow him to be a little meditative, and much is possible.

That’s why I say it is a great responsibility you have taken upon yourself. I cannot give him sannyas directly. It is through you, via you. So now you have to take care of two sannyasins – yourself and him.

Deva means divine and koorvita means skill – divine skill. And that’s how I see every human being

– as having a deep skill to be divine. One may refine it or not: one may become a great artist in it, or one may leave it undeveloped and crude. It is like a rock, but a little work and it can become a beautiful statue. That skill is everybodys potentiality, but very few people develop it, and it cannot be developed on its own.

Everybody is born with it, but millions of people never use it, so the faculty goes on shrinking; it remains a seed and never sprouts. Just a little work towards it and much is the payoff, tremendous is the benefit. And there is no greater skill than that. One may be a poet, but then there are only a few seconds in the life of a poet which are beautiful, otherwise he crawls on the earth like everybody else. One can be a painter, but only a few moments are there – rare and far apart – where there are glimpses of the un-known. They come and go; they don’t last. The painter is back on the earth again – and more miserable than ever.

That is the misery of great artists, because they have something to compare. They have known a few moments when they were no more of this earth. They have known a few moments when they were part of the stars. They have known a few moments when there was depth and height and they were expansive... when everything was totally different, was a benediction. Then they are thrown back again and again. They don’t know what to do. Back on earth they are more miserable, and the darkness is far darker.

When you know a few moments of happiness, your unhappiness becomes very very penetrating; you can compare. So all great artists have a few moments of what I call the divine. They live in misery, they live in a nightmare; they are almost on the verge of becoming mad.

So all other talents are just partial talents. There is only one talent which is total and whole – and that is the talent to become divine. And if you develop it a little, it remains with you. Then whatsoever you do it is there, silently, like a shadow surrounding you, engulfing you... like a glow following you.

It becomes your golden aura.

And I can see that you can develop it very easily. The effort is not going to be arduous. But daring and courage will be needed because it is like death. To be in the divine, one has to die – die to the past, die to all that you have been. Become as empty as possible, because only in emptiness is that benediction. Only when you are empty, suddenly you become full. On one side you are empty, on another side something is penetrating you and filling you. It is a death and a resurrection.

Much is possible, but one has to be an adventurer.

[A visitor says: The meditations are going very deep.]

Very good! You have been getting ready for many lives. This will be your name .... Forget the past as if it were never there, and begin anew from ABC as if you are born today. It is a rebirth. You don’t have any history from now onwards. And count your life as from today. Next year you will be only one year. Move that way, and also feel like a small child. Soon you will start feeling a tremendous blessing.

Your energy is just vibrating, ready to explode. It can explode any moment, so get ready for it. When it explodes, for the first time you will know what life is. People ordinarily cannot even dream what life is. They cannot even imagine it, because they live in dead shells – windowless, dosed, monads.

When one starts living in innocence... and that’s what sannyas is – to live innocently, to live non-cleverly, to live non-calculatingly, to live without mathematics, without logic. Sannyas means saying goodbye to Aristotle... to live like a madman, and to live intensely and passionately. And the first step is to drop out of the past.

People drop out of the society – that is not much of a help, because even if you drop out of the society, you carry your past which has been made, cultivated, conditioned by the society. You can go against the society but you are part of the society, sol don’t say drop out of the society – I say drop out of your past. That is the real dropping out of the society.

And the change of your name is just indicative that you disown your past – that now you are no more continuous with the past. Of course you cannot erase it. It is there, but more and more you will see that it belonged to somebody else, that it is as if you had dreamt about it or you had seen a movie or read a novel. But you are totally separate from it.

This new name will help – Swami Prem Shreyas.

Prem means love and shreyas means blessedness – blessedness that comes through love, the blessing that comes through love.

[Shreyas said he would be leaving for a time to undertake a course in Vipassana. Osho encouraged him to do the course – either here in the ashram or elsewhere as Shreyas had planned, saying it was a beautiful form of meditation.]

Doing Vipassana there, do it as totally as possible. Put your whole energy into it. Don’t do it lukewarm, because then it is meaningless; you are wasting time. Whatsoever you want to do, do it totally. If you don’t want to do it, or if you want to do it half-heartedly, never do it. It is better not to do a thing than to do it half-heartedly, because half-hearted, it is useless. One starts feeling that one has done it and one has not done it at all.

So do it totally. And your sannyas is going to help – half of the work is done already. Go into it headlong. Even if you feel very uncomfortable sometimes .... It will be in the beginning, because our minds have been conditioned not to relax. We have been trained to be tense. Our whole education is nothing but a training in tension. We have been cultivated to be sceptical, doubtful, suspicious –

and all deep meditation needs trust. So just be trusting and go into it.

Don’t leave any stone unturned; put your whole energy into it. Don’t hold anything. The more energy you put, the more energy will be coming. Man is an infinite source of energy; you cannot exhaust it. You will be given as much energy as you need. Just give a challenge to your life and you will be given energy. It is not there already given. It comes only when you accept a challenge.

If you want to become a runner, you will have enough energy to run. You can become the greatest runner in the world, because the potentiality is there. You may never try it – that’s another thing.

Whatsoever one wants to do, never think about it in terms of whether one has enough energy to do it or not; never bother about it. If you want to do it, your very passion will create energy.

Passion is creative; it creates energy. So man can do whatsoever he wants to do, is authentically passionate about. If you feel an urgency, the energy will be there and you will not be tired. You will not feel spent, bored. You will not feel ’What am I doing here – sitting the whole day? Is it intelligent to do this or am I just a fool?’

Many times in Vipassana that idea comes to people, and thoughts rush around as they have never rushed before, and the mind becomes very muddled. All the dust of the ages is stirred. The more you try to be silent, the more you feel you are distracted. The more effort you make to keep the mind silent, the more mad and crazier it seems to become – rushing in all directions. But don’t be worried; go on making your effort.

[Osho said, as he has said before to sannyasins doing Vipassana here, that after seven days the turmoil will pass. The second week will be beautiful, and in the third week problems will rise again because by now one will have become greedy for more.... ]

So in the third week you have to remember not to ask, not to expect. Don’t carry the experience that has happened. Live through whatsoever happens, and then drop it. Don’t accumulate it.

Ordinarily the mind tends to accumulate. The mind is additive; it goes on adding and adding.

Whatsoever comes, it goes on collecting, and then whatsoever is beautiful it wants again and again and again; it wants to repeat it. Remember that after the second week, you will want many things to be repeated. And the more you want them, the more distant they will be. The more you hanker, the more you will feel that you are in a wasteland; no sign of any oasis anywhere.

So don’t expect. Whatsoever has happened, enjoy it and then say goodbye. When it happens, good.

When it is not happening, that too is good. When it happens, move with it, dance with it, delight in it.

When it is not happening, don’t think about it. Don’t look back, don’t look ahead. Wait... wait without hope, because whatsoever the mind can hope, is going to be wrong.’

And come back. I will be with you ....

[To a sannyasin who is leaving.]

Very good. This time has been beautiful. Now start working for me there. Now you are caught completely, catch others!

Jesus says to the fishermen, ’What are you doing here? How Long are you going to catch fish?

Come with me, follow me. I will make you catchers of man.’ And that’s exactly what I am trying to do. First I catch you and then I make you catchers of man. Now you have the net, so and throw it as wide as possible.

Italy needs much work. And people there are very sensitive – Italy is one of the most sensitive countries to me. So you have to work there.

This time your work will have a magic touch – just start working!

[The girlfriend of the above sannyasin, who is also leaving said she is too small to contain so much happiness.]

That’s right! I will make you big! I’m just afraid of [your boyfriend]. If you become too big, he will be crushed [laughter]. But good... very good.

In fact it is so. When happiness comes, it is so big – one cannot contain it. There is no way to contain it. It is always extravagant. It is so much it hurts. One cannot contain it – that’s why it becomes a celebration. One has to dance, otherwise one will die!

Happiness can be so much that it can kill. Love can be so much that it kills. And when it comes, it comes as a tidal wave. It is wild, and you cannot prevent it – it does not listen. You have simply to go with it. It takes you away from yourself. It uproots you from yourself. It is very shattering, but it is tremendously blissful also. It is destructive and creative. It destroys you and it creates you again.

When happiness is there, God is around you. It is like an arrow which goes into the heart and penetrates deeper and deeper and deeper. It is painful, but that pain is sweet. So allow it – don’t try to escape from it. People are afraid of being happy, because of this – that it is so much and they cannot manage it, they cannot control it; it is uncontrollable. It is immeasurable; you cannot measure it. All measurements are of the mind – and it is not of the mind. All measurements are in time and space, and it is beyond time and space. Your body is in space, your mind is in time, and happiness is beyond both. That’s why you cannot contain it and you feel, ’What to do? It is too much.’

Dance it, sing it... go mad with it! Mm? Good,

[A sannyasin, who had done the Hypnotherapy group which was present tonight, said she was feeling confused – one moment feeling very good, another feeling that she hadn’t opened up at all during the group.]

You may be expecting too much. Nothing is going to happen – that is my promise. Be certain about it [she laughs] and then everything will be good. Hope for the best and expect the worst. Nothing is going to happen, because why should anything happen? What is wrong with things as they are?

It is perfectly good. There is no need for anything to happen at all. All that has to happen has happened. It is a perfect world – every moment of it. It is so tremendously perfect that there is no way to improve it. And as I see you all, you are just unnecessarily chasing your tails.

Enjoy rather than waiting for the result. The very process is beautiful – not the goal. The way is beautiful. Who bothers about the goal? The way is so lovely.... Look at the trees by the side of the road and the birds singing and the sunrays, and the hills and the rivers. The road is so beautiful who bothers about the result and the goal, and whether it comes or not? The journey is so beautiful that one would like it to be eternally so – journeying and journeying and journeying.

Because people are not daring, they start thinking about the goal. A goal means that they want to stop. That’s exactly what the goal means – that they want to stop. They are fed up with the journey.

They want to sit somewhere in darkness – that’s what their goal is.

The process is beautiful. God is not a goal. God is the way, the very journey, the very process. God is not the creator – He is the creativity, the very process of it.

So remember this, otherwise you will be frustrated again and again. That’s what is happening. One moment you feel good, beautiful, flowing. Suddenly the mind comes in, the achiever’s mind that says, ’Much more should happen – this is nothing.’ It immediately judges, condemns it, compares and says, ’Much more should happen. You are not putting your whole heart into it. Go deeper, go higher. Do something. Much more is possible.’ Again frustration settles in. Sometimes you forget your achiever’s mind. You relax, and then you have moments of joy. Then again the mind jumps in and crushes the beauty of that moment.

The mind is poisonous. The mind is ambition. The mind is jealousy, envy, comparison. The mind is a constant source of misery. So whenever some flower is there, it jumps on it, crushes and destroys it. It tears apart the petals and starts analysing it. It says ’This is nothing. A bigger flower was needed.’ It is all nonsense! A flower is a flower. Big or small, enjoy it. The bigger will come out of the enjoyment of the smaller – not by analysing it, destroying it. Then even the smaller will disappear.

The next moment is going to be born out of this moment. Live this moment as beautifully as possible, and then the next moment is going to be automatically more beautiful. It will be based on this moment. From where is it going to come? It is going to come out of this moment. The tomorrow will be born out of today. Today is going to parent tomorrow, so why bother about tomorrow?

But you must have a very deeply ambitious mind, an achiever’s mind, a result-oriented mind. You cannot love the process – you are always thinking about the result. While painting, you cannot enjoy the painting. You are thinking whether art critics are going to enjoy it or not, whether you are going to sell it at a high price or not, whether it is going to become famous like Picasso’s, Van Gogh’s, or not. While writing a poem you are not enjoying the process of it, the birth of it, the beauty of it, the benediction of it. You are thinking whether you are going to get a nobel prize or not. The result makes everything ugly.

Drop this and allow more and more moments where you simply enjoy the very process of life. It is a dynamic phenomenon, always flowing – always reaching but never arriving. That is the whole beauty of it.

CHAPTER 21

10 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin says: I’m a nursery school teacher, I teach children of four-and-a-half to five years old.]

Very good work. To be with children is one of the most beautiful things. But one has to learn it, otherwise it can be the most tedious thing in the world. One has to love it, otherwise it is one of the most boring things. It can drive you crazy. It can bring a nervous breakdown, because children are so noisy, so uncivilized, uncultured... animals; they can drive anybody crazy. One child is enough to drive anybody crazy, so a whole lot of children, a whole class of children is really difficult. But if you love, it is a great discipline.

So don’t only teach them – learn, too, because they still have something which you have lost. They will also lose it sooner or later. Before they do, learn from them. They are still spontaneous, they are still fearless. They are still innocent. They are losing it faster.

The more civilization grows, the sooner childhood ends. Before, it used to end somewhere near fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Now even a child of seven years is no more a child. He starts becoming mature. Maturity comes sooner now because we know better methods to condition, to structure.

So it is good, with four and five-year-olds, to become four or five years old. And don’t think that you know and they don’t know. Listen – they know something. They know more intuitively. They are not knowledgeable, but they have a vision, a very clear vision. Their eyes are still unclouded and their hearts are still streaming. They are still unpolluted. The poison has not yet started. They are still natural.

So with them don’t be knowledgeable. Don’t be a teacher – be a friend. Befriend them and start looking for cues for innocence, for spontaneity, for intelligence. You will be helped tremendously and your meditation will go very deep.

[A sannyasin says of her first teacher, Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica: I’m still very attached to my first teacher. I love him very much.]

You can continue – there is no problem in it. Why create any conflict? You can continue loving him, and you can remain attached. There is nothing wrong in it.

Just tell him that this is your new love affair. An american woman can have many love affairs.

... Don’t be worried – it is between him and me. Don’t you worry. You can continue to love both. The wrestle will be between me and him.

I am never against any love. Whomsoever you love, it’s good. Love is always good – unconditionally good. And wherever you can learn something, learn.

[She then says: Osho, with you I feel love, but in the ashram I feel very unloved.]

That’s right – that’s my polar opposite. I have to have a polar opposite. If you love me, you will tolerate the ashram. That’s a price to be paid. One who loves me by and by forgets about the ashram and starts accepting it.

The ashram is part of the world. It cannot be like me... it is not possible. But you should be grateful towards it because it helps my work, that’s all. It makes me comfortable. It helps things to happen, that’s all. But it is just an organisation. Don’t be worried about it. Forget it and just remember me, mm? Good.

[The Tao group present tonight, which comprised thirteen men and one woman.

The group leader said: In the beginning the energy went very high. But after while people went to sleep and were sort of falling out of it. People would go out and then come back, so the energy would go high again.

Then he asked about a personal problem:It’s something like electricity occurring in my body –

particularly after the lecture. It comes so strong – as if I was on two-hundred-and-twenty volts.]

Mm mm, it can happen. It is good; nothing to be worried about. Allow it... just relax with it and enjoy the feeling of it. Even If sometimes it is very weird, enjoy the feeling of it. Soon you will become immune to it and you will be able to absorb it.

It always happens when new energy is released and you don’t have the capacity to absorb it. The energy is there, hovering. It is more than you know how to absorb. It is actually bio-electricity, and a human being is a dynamo. It can create tremendous energy.

So just enjoy it, and when it is happening just sit silently, be thrilled by it. Use it, vibrate with it. Let it have its own way. Don’t become an obstacle. Don’t become a controller; don’t try to manipulate it.

Don’t try to discipline and tame it. It is untamed energy, and it has to remain that way. Untamed it is beautiful – tamed it becomes ugly. Then it is just like a circus tiger who only looks like a tiger. Once the wildness is lost, everything is lost.

So just allow it. Soon your body will become adjusted to it. There is no need to control it. If you control it, the body will never come to a point of adjustment; the body’s capacity will remain the same.

Allow it and the body will adjust automatically. The body has a tremendous capacity to adjust. It can adjust to any situation. Its capacity, its flexibility, is simply immeasurable. So allow it.

And a group like this can happen again, so you have to learn a few things about it. It was good –

it was a new experience. One thing – don’t allow people to fall asleep; keep them awake. Create situations in which they are awake. Chant, or do something so that they cannot fall asleep. If they fall asleep, this will happen – this up and down. It is as if half of the person is asleep, paralysed, and half is awake, alive. If a few people are asleep in the group, part of the group energy is paralysed, one part is soaring high – and that creates a contradiction.

So first try in every way to keep everybody awake. When you feel that now it is impossible, let everybody go to sleep. But maintain a non-contradictory state. That is one of the meanings of the word tao – the energy should be non-contradictory. Don’t allow anybody to go out; that creates disturbance. Once he goes out, he takes much energy out of the room. It becomes a leakage.

When he comes in, he brings in some other type of vibration from the outside. That becomes a disturbance and a distraction.

So don’t allow anybody to go out or let them all go out. If it becomes very necessary that people go out, let everybody go out for a few minutes, and then let them all come back in together again. But don’t create a split in the group – that’s what I mean.

In fact, this group could have gone higher than any group with women, because when men and women are together, they are in proportion, they balance. Their energies are different. That’s why one feels the group is more graceful, because man’s aggression is absorbed by the woman’s receptivity. So there is a peace, a harmony – man’s logic and rationality is balanced by the irrationality and intuition of the woman. There is a balance.

So I can understand – it can become very difficult if they are all men. The energy can soar very high, can become very aggressively high. That’s why in militaries, in the army, women are not allowed because the soldiers have to fight. Their energies should not be balanced, otherwise they cannot fight. That was one of the reasons why America could not win in Vietnam – girlfriends were allowed for the first time in the history of the army. So the american soldiers were more balanced, more at home. It is difficult then because you need male energy on the front.

If someone is sexually satisfied, why should he fight in the first place? All fight comes out of frustration. The soldier has to remain sexually frustrated – then he starts fighting. Then even his bullet becomes a sexual symbol penetrating the other’s being. A sword becomes his genital organ, and he uses the other as a woman. Then his sexuality starts becoming destructive. But if the woman is there, he loves the woman and she is following him like a shadow, he will be so at ease that it will be impossible for him to fight.

So when it is an all male group, the energy will soar very high. That can create trouble, but you have to know how to use it. When it is happening, let them all sit, not doing anything. Just let them all sit in a circle. Let them hold hands and vibrate. Let them look into each other. Let energies soar high

– as high as it can go. This group could have become one of the most beautiful experiences... they would have attained to a peak. But you were not aware, so not to be worried.

If it happens next time, don’t be worried. You have to work in a different way. Because the balancing woman is not there, the energy has no weight on it. The woman is a weight. She does not allow you to go very far. She pulls you back, absorbs your energy. Man left alone has no anchor, no home base. There is no way to bring his energy back.

So if it is an all male group, first let their energy soar high, and when you feel that it is coming to a climax, a crescendo, and they will burst or explode if you don’t do something, then let them dance, and immediately the dance will bring their energy back. The whole room will become filled, charged.

If it is a female group, you will have another difficulty. The energy will be very relaxing. You will find that there is not any peak possible; only a valley is possible. The woman is a valley. When there are women, allow them. Let them sit – just as the men did – but let them relax. They will reach the very depth of the valley. When you feel that they have touched the very depth of the valley and that now it is difficult to go further, and that if you do, they will die.... Because the ultimate in relaxation is death; the ultimate in tension is madness. So if a man is allowed to go to the ultimate of his aggression, he will become mad. And if a woman is allowed to relax to her ultimate capacity, she will die. If a man is allowed to go to the ultimate point of energy, he will kill. If a woman is allowed to her ultimate capacity, she will commit suicide.

So when you feel that the energy is really going so deep that everybody has disappeared, then tell them to dance. Again, dance will be helpful. It will bring them back. Dance is a very very balancing act. If you are going mad, it brings you back to sanity. If you are relaxed too much it brings you back to a normal state of energy. It works both ways. So whatsoever the group – male or female – dance can always be used. But first they have to be allowed to go to the very extreme. Nobody should be allowed to go out; nobody should be allowed to go to sleep.

Next time it happens, just try, mm? Nothing to be worried about.

CHAPTER 22

11 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, and tarpana means sacrifice – divine sacrifice, or sacrifice to the divine. And that’s what life really is. Unless it becomes a sacrifice, an offering, you go on missing it. Unless you give your life totally, you miss it. And there is no way ordinarily to give it totally except to give it to God, because only the total can become the receptor of a total gift.

If you give your life to a woman, it cannot be total because she is not total; she cannot contain that much. And you cannot give that much because human limitations are always there. If you give your life to ambition, it can never be total. There is only one way to be total, and that is to give to the totality. That’s what God is. By giving, we get;. by sharing, we get – not by possessing. That is the meaning of sacrifice – that by possession we miss, we lose. The more you possess, the poorer you are. The more you give, the more rich you are. If one can give totally, unconditionally, then richness is tremendous, immense. Then it knows no limitations of time and space. It is immeasurable.

The word sacrifice is very beautiful. It has become ugly by wrong associations. People have tried to sacrifice everything except themselves. Sometimes it is an animal they have sacrificed to God, sometimes something else, but they go on avoiding the real sacrifice – and that is the sacrifice of one’s own being.

That means that after the sacrifice you are no more there and only God is... that He exists in you...

that you become just a vehicle, a passage, an expression, a song sung by Him. You become a flute, a hollow bamboo, nothing else.

I give you this name Tarpana so that you can remember to give more and more, to love more and more. Never ask for anything, and a thousand-fold will be coming.

Jesus says, ’Ask, and it shall be given.’ And I say to you, ’Don’t ask, and it shall be given.’ Ask, and you have already become a beggar. Ask, and already you have desired. Ask, and you have already expected something – and whatsoever you can expect will bring misery, because you are misery. The very idea of ’I am’ is miserable. Then I expect. This ’I’ goes on creating new desires, new projects, and it goes on asking.

Drop asking. Just be and everything will be given to you.

[A sannyasin said he had done a nine-month encounter course in the London centre but still felt unfinished.]

In fact, no group can be felt as finished because a group is artificial. The real is only in life. A group has to begin and end. The beginning is arbitrary; the end is also arbitrary. It is a created situation. It cannot be complete. In the very nature of things it cannot be complete. And one should not ask for completion because that is asking for the impossible. Only life is complete because it is an eternally ongoing process. It knows no beginning and knows no end. It never started and it is never going to end.

Each moment, it is complete. Each moment, as it is, is complete... it is perfect. Life moves from one perfection to another perfection. It is not from imperfection to perfection. It is just from perfection to another perfection, from one grandeur to another grandeur, from one richness to another richness.

In &ct it is not a growth – it is a play. The very idea that one is growing from one point to another and becoming more perfect, is linear. We are moving in a circle; we are not going anywhere. We are simply going because we are energies and energy has to go – not that there is a goal, but that energy has to dance.

So rather than going somewhere, it is more like a dance. When somebody is dancing, you never ask ’Where are you going? Why are you making so much fuss? What is the goal?’

When a person is dancing you know that he is not going anywhere – simply enjoying. Energy is there and overpouring, overflowing. What to do with energy? God is extravagant – hence so many flowers. Extravagant for no purpose at all. It is just that the energy is there, so what to do? – flower!

So many millions of birds and insects and men.

Darwin created a very linear concept in the western mind – that of evolution. Nothing is evolving. It is not that the monkey becomes the man. The monkey is perfect; there is nothing to become. He is as perfect as man, it is a different kind of Perfection, and man is another kind of perfection. There is no hierarchy – that man is higher than the monkey, and the monkey is higher than the donkey – all nonsense. Nobody is higher, nobody is lower. All are performing their own game. The donkey has chosen to be a donkey; that’s his will. And the monkey has chosen to be a monkey.

Nothing is going anywhere – that is the eastern concept. And everything is a play, a dance, leela.

Hence everything is as it should be. There is no need to be discontented – unless you decide to play the game of discontent; then it’s okay.

It is said about a very great sufi mystic that he was talking to a few people... he was talking about the same thing that I am talking about to you. He was saying that everything is perfect because how can it be otherwise? God is perfect. Out of His energy comes everything, so everything is bound to be perfect.

A man stood up – he was a hunchback – and he said ’What about me?’ It was very painful for him to even stand. His body was very unshapely and ugly. He said ’What about me? What do you say about me? You say everything is perfect.’

The mystic said ’I have never seen such a perfect hunchback. You are the most perfect hunchback I have ever seen!’ Everything is perfect.

It is very difficult to drop the idea of evolution because with evolution there is a possibility for the mind to exist. You have to hanker, desire, seek; then ambition is open. If nothing is happening, and everything is as it has always been – just forms change and the content remains the same; everything appears to be changing and nothing changes; it is just an overflowing energy, a waterfall, for no purpose at all, going nowhere, moving round and round, a merry-go-round – then it is difficult, but if you can understand that, suddenly one relaxes. Then there is no tension.

All growth groups are a by-product of the evolutionary concept that one has to grow. One has to do nothing! One has just to be. One has just to delight. All is available – one has just to dance. The orchestra is there and people are ready, just waiting for you to participate. Everything is ready – just start dancing.

So this time here don’t seek anything. If you want to do a few groups, you can, but just for enjoyment.

And that is a totally different dimension – of doing them for sheer joy. You would like to have a few communications, a few encounter people playing roles and games, and this and that. Enjoy, but don’t be a seeker. Seeking creates suffering. Non-seeking is bliss. You cannot seek bliss because that is impossible. Whatsoever you seek is bound to be suffering. Seeking is suffering. Don’t seek

– just be. For these six months here, just be.

I’m not saying not to do anything. I’m saying to do as many things as you like, but this time just let them be plays and games. Enjoy the very thing; don’t hanker for the result. That’s why you are feeling incomplete. If you had enjoyed it moment to moment, this feeling would not have been there.

That the total result of nine months’ work is a feeling of incompletion, is not good. Something basic was missed. And it is not only that you missed all participants would have missed because that’s how the contemporary mind is missing everything.

Even if you tell people not to do anything, not to seek anything, they say ’Okay, we will not seek, but then what will happen?’ Look at the absurdity. They say ’Okay, we will not seek. But then will it happen or not?’ The seeking continues. Now it goes a little deeper, more underground, but they are again asking whether something will happen or not. If you tell them to just sit and enjoy....

Man has become incapable of being in the present – and that incapacity is what hell is. So this time.... You have been doing .well, but now the moment has come when seeking has to be dropped; playing has to be started. So do whatsoever groups you want to, do whatsoever meditations you want to. Don’t misinterpret me because there are people who, when I say that there is no need to do anything, say ’Why do meditations? Why do a group?’ Then they become sad, they become depressed, because their energy gets suffocated. I’m not saying that.

I am saying to do as many things as you can, because even God cannot contain energy – that’s why existence is. To contain energy is to become ill. To contain energy is to become neurotic, because the energy wants to explode, it wants to express itself. It wants to move. It wants to go on an adventure. It wants to remain alive, fresh and flowing. So if you don’t do anything, you are stuck.

I’m not saying don’t do anything. I’m saying don’t be a doer any more. Become a player... just for the delight of it. And much is going to happen....

[A sannyasin says: I feel guilty because I always miss the morning meditation and the lecture. I always feel lazy in the morning.

Osho checks her energy.]

Simply allow it. It is just natural to your body energy. Different people have different times for their body. Each person, in twenty-four hours, has two types of extremes.

For two hours in the night the body temperature falls by two degrees; sometimes even by three and four degrees. Those two hours are the best for sleep. In the same way, in the daytime the body temperature rises by two degrees, or sometimes even three. Those are the best hours for work.

One is absolutely full of energy. But these periods are different for each, and even different for each person in different times.

For example if a person’s temperature falls in the night between three and five, then those will be the hours of the best sleep for the person. If he gets up at that time he will suffer the whole day. It has nothing to do with laziness. It is a wrong concept. I’m not saying that there are not lazy people, but many people are just thought to be lazy – they are not. For example if somebody’s temperature falls between five and seven, he will be thought lazy. At least in the East he will be thought lazy; in the West, not so much.

If that person’s temperature falls between five and seven, and he gets up between five and seven, for the whole day he will feel tired, as if something is missing. He will not feel vital. He will feel sleepy.

You can sleep for eight hours – that won’t help. These two hours are a must. If somebody sleeps only for those two hours, that is enough. But if you don’t sleep those two hours, you can sleep for ten; that won’t do.

So as I feel your energy, your temperature must be falling near six to eight in the morning. So that is the time – you just sleep. There is no need to feel guilty. You can do the evening meditation – don’t be worried about it.

By and by we can change it. Rather than forcing and getting up against your body, the temperature fall can be changed. So in the night when you go to sleep, make it a point just to tell your body.... Just talk to your body. You should learn how to talk with the body. Ten your body, ’Let the temperature fall between three and five.’ And trust it; don’t force. After three weeks you will find it easier and easier to get up. By and by the shift will happen, and your body temperature will start falling between three and five. Then you can get up at five completely fresh and with no problem. But don’t force it.

Forcing is just absurd; it cannot work.

You need deep auto-suggestion to change the body energy – its flow, its timings.

... So there is nothing to be worried about. Simply go on suggesting. And another thing – make it a point to go to bed regularly every night. Drop this habit. This is very disturbing; it creates confusion in the body. The body is a very simple mechanism. You put it into trouble unnecessarily. One day you go at eight o’clock and the next day the body expects that you will go at eight o’clock again, and that day you go at.eleven. The body is confused – what is the matter? – because after twenty-four hours it gets ready; it expects. It is just like food. If you eat every day at eleven, then at eleven the body expects food. The juices start flowing, the appetite arises. But if you frustrate the body every day, by and by it loses contact with you. Then it becomes muddle-headed. It does not know what is going on. It loses sensitivity.

[Osho said that he did not mean that she had to be absolutely strict about what time she retired. If occasionally it was later than, for example ten, that was alright, but irregularity should not become a regularity. He said that with this, plus the suggestion to the body about the temperature fall, soon she would find that she woke at five and felt like getting up.]

What I am meaning to point out is, never be violent with the body. It is a very simple, subtle, delicate mechanism. Persuade it... it will come.

[The Enlightenment Group is present. One group member said her body felt divided between the left and right sides, and this was more when she meditated.]

Do one thing. In the morning when you get up, sit in your bed, left hand this way [Osho holds his left hand up-turned], with the right hand on top of it. Start pouring energy from the right hand into the left. Just feel, visualise energy falling like a waterfall, and that the left is receiving it, absorbing it. Don’t touch the hand; keep at least two or three inches away. You will start feeling the tingling sensation in the left, and you will feel warmth flowing.

If the left is receptive, there is no problem. The right has too much – give it to the left. Feel the whole left side of the body being energised, vitalised. Do this for just five to seven minutes, and you will feel a balance coming. Whenever during the day you feel again that the imbalance is there, just pour it. In the night before you go to sleep, pour it again and go to sleep.

In the morning it will help the left side to be awake, alert, vital. In the night it will help the right side to relax. So before going to sleep, pour it, to help the right side – otherwise it will be too active and you will not be able to go to sleep; and in the morning to help the left side – otherwise it will be too inactive and you will not be able to get up, or you will not be fully alert. In the daytime, whenever you feel to, you can simply try to pour the energy.

You will become balanced. There is nothing to be worried about.

[A visitor says: I came here to go through most of the groups, to see you, to hear you. I would like, I want you to love me, but I don’t want to take sannyas.

Every day in the ashram I am being asked, ’Why don’t you take sannyas? When will you take sannyas?’ – and it disturbs me. I feel that all my life I have been running after a father I didn’t get.

I have been a catholic priest already, and I have had enough of this kind of clothes and so on.

But I just wanted to say that I want to be loved by you. And I am asking you if you can love me, even if I don’t take sannyas?]

No, I love you! [laughter] That is not the point. For that sannyas is not needed at all. But your disturbance shows that you want to take sannyas, otherwise your disturbance would not be there; nobody could disturb you by asking. If people ask and you get disturbed, that simply shows that deep down you want to take sannyas, and they bring it to your consciousness again and again. If you don’t want to take sannyas, nobody can disturb you.

And the second thing – sannyas has nothing to do with being a catholic priest. It has nothing to do with it. And it is an absolutely radical phenomenon. It is not a regimentation. It is not any outer discipline imposed upon you. The clothes and things like that are simply gestures – and they help tremendously.

My love is there about that you can be absolutely fearless; drop your fear – but you will never feel at home here unless you are in orange. That is your problem – it is not a problem for me. You will never feel at home here. Amidst so many sannyasins, you will always feel that you are an outsider, and that will be a disturbance to you.

It is tremendously beautiful to become a part; things start flowing more easily. You are more of the family. You not only belong to me – you belong to my family too. Not only will you be receiving my love, you will be receiving the love of all my sannyasins. I can love you without your being a sannyasin, but my sannyasins won’t be able to love you – and you will miss much love. You will be with them for twenty-four hours, and you will always be standing a little far away, a little distant, and that distance will be unnecessary; there is no need for it.

With my sannyas there is no reason to be afraid that you are getting into some regimentation, some discipline. There is no discipline. And if you are Still seeking a father figure, you are Still a Catholic.

That is the whole base of Catholicism. If the father figure is not available, then in heaven there is the father. And if you cannot get him, the. father, at least you can approach the son, and through the son you can approach the father. But that is the whole christian ideology. It is father-oriented.

So you may have dropped out of it, but deep down in the unconscious you are Still a Christian. My feeling – if you ask me to be true about you – is that you are not afraid of the regimentation and the dress. Your Catholic is afraid of the orange. Your Christian is afraid. That Christian is there and he will feel that you are betraying him or something. You may not be conscious of it at all. Consciously you may be thinking that you are a free person and that you have left all that; now you don’t want to get into it again. That may be your conscious idea, but that has nothing to do with your reality.

As I can see it right now, it is your Christian afraid of the East, afraid of the eastern, afraid of the orange, the ochre. It is the Christian. And it will be helpful to drop that Christian completely. You will be freed and you will feel very weightless. But think about it; there is no hurry.

If you love me and you want my love, you will have to listen to what I am saying. You will have to try to absorb it. Unless you start trying to understand my standpoint also, that love will be meaningless.

Love itself won’t do. A transmission of understanding will also be needed, will be very basically needed.

So love is there; don’t be worried about it. In fact I love you – that’s why I give you sannyas. Love is a priori; it precedes sannyas. It doesn’t succeed sannyas. It is not that you become a sannyasin and then I love you. In fact I love you – that’s why you become a sannyasin. And whether you remain a sannyasin or not, is not the question, but out of the love you take the jump with me. I’m not promising you any heaven or paradise or anything. I’m simply promising you a delightful journey to nowhere.

I’m not saying that you will arrive. I’m simply saying that there is no place to arrive at. But wherever you are, you will be moving. I promise you movement, I promise you process, I promise you a dynamism. And wherever you are, whatsoever the situation, I prepare you to be happy there, to be celebrating there.

These clothes are just symbolic. They are not in any way serious affairs as it is with Christianity.

They are very symbolic, and symbols of non-seriousness. It is just a non-serious gesture. I want you to become a little foolish, that’s all. And these clothes will make you a little foolish. With these clothes you will look a little wiser. With these clothes... just look around [indicating the group]

... Not in this ashram, but outside the ashram you will be a fool!

... You do whatsoever you want to – and be honest to yourself. Very good!

[A sannyasin says: I leave tomorrow. I have a problem – I have no self-confidence. I am very unsure of myself, and I feel much anger sometimes.]

About your problem.... Whenever a person feels the lack of self-confidence, he becomes easily angry. In fact anger is always an indication that you are not self-confident. A person who is confident about himself is not easily angry. It is very difficult for him to get into anger. It is our weakness that leads us into anger. The stronger you are, the less anger will be there. The strongest person goes beyond anger. Anger is weakness.

So don’t be worried about anger; it is a byproduct. Rather be concerned how to become stronger.

Do three things. One is, meditate regularly. Within six months you will feel a burst of energy and a confidence arising in you. But don’t be bothered about whether any result is coming or not.

Continue for six months. And choose any meditation you like, but stick to that; don’t change – one day Kundalini, another day Dynamic.

One day it will suddenly happen that you will be full of energy, and suddenly you will see that all unconfidence has gone. You have become sure about yourself, centred.

The second thing. Before going to sleep, just stand in the room and feel that you are a pillar of energy from the ceiling to the floor – just the shape of a pillar. Close your eyes and feel that you are a pillar of energy, and that you are melting. Visualise that the energy is falling and you are underneath it, as if taking a shower of energy – just for seven minutes. And feel completely cleansed, purified, bathed, and then go to sleep.

And the third thing. Whenever you feel angry, don’t throw it on persons. Rather, beat a pillow. [For details of the pillow meditation see Hammer On The Rock, Sunday, December 21st, 1975.]

[The sannyasin then asks if he should finish psychoanalysis which he has been in for seven years.]

No, continue. Now I give you a project. Continue, and convert the psychoanalyst to sannyas

[laughter]. That is the real work to be done now. He has helped you; now you have to help him

– otherwise if he commits suicide, you will be responsible!

So continue. He will be in the illusion that you are being psychoanalysed – you start analysing him!

That will bring you more confidence than anything else – if you can convert your psychoanalyst. That will bring you much self-confidence. So sabo-tage...! When he says, ’Talk,’ tank about meditation.

Talk about the ecstasy and bliss that comes – whether it has come or not, don’t be worried [much laughter]. And feel very happy. Soon he will become your follower. Once you can make a follower out of him, you will be so confident that there will be no need for psychoanalysis.

You don’t see many psychoanalysts here, but there are many. All psychoanalysts are bound to come by and by. They need help. So continue analysis because it will be needed – not for you, but for the analyst.

CHAPTER 23

12 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, and bhavana means feeling – the feel of bliss, the feeling of bliss. And remember that blissfulness has nothing to do with thinking. It is a feeling. People who are stuck in their heads can only be unhappy and miserable. For them there is no other way. The head is hell, the very centre of hell. Hell is not somewhere underground. It is in the head. It is there that the devil has his workshop.

So fan more and more towards the heart – and you can fall very easily; there is no problem. Just allow it. The society does not help it. The society is against the heart. The society is very stubbornly foolish. The society is only for the head because it wants people to be more and more efficient mechanisms, nothing else. The only requirement from the society is that you should be efficient.

The problem is that the head is efficient and the heart is not. The heart can never be efficient, and the head can be very very efficient. So by and by the society has come to train the head and bypass the heart.

In fact the more feeling the person has, the more incapable he becomes of doing many things. For example, he cannot be a soldier; he cannot kill. He cannot be a butcher. He cannot be a politician, because that is a very subtle butchery. He cannot be a criminal, he cannot commit any crime; it becomes impossible.

Once you start feeling, you start feeling that you are so much in tune with existence that even to hurt a small leaf on a tree is unimaginable. One cannot hurt anything – and the whole society depends on violence. It depends on violence, on hurting, on creating suffering for people, on torture. The whole society is violent, so the heart has been bypassed, and by and by a shortcut has been made by schools, colleges, universities. Their whole function is to connect your energy to the head, and not to allow it to move towards the heart. They prevent the movement of energy in every way from going towards the heart. Then a person is efficient, but dead. He is a robot – mechanically perfect

– humanly absurd, meaningless.

Then life has utility but no significance, because all significance is of the heart. You have a social life but you don’t have any individuality, because all individuality is in the heart. Then you are simply a member of a group. You are a Hindu, Christian, Indian, American, Russian. You don’t exist; you exist as a number. When an Indian dies, who dies? – nobody. When an American dies, just a number dies. You can replace an American by another American, but if you die, you are irreplaceable; you cannot be replaced.

An American can be replaced, an Indian can be replaced, a Hindu can be replaced. They are numbers – they don’t have any souls. But if you die, then you simply die, and nothing can be done about it. You were never before and you will never be again. You are simply unique, unrepeatable.

But the head can be replaced. Any day the computer is going to replace it. But it is impossible to conceive that science will ever be able to replace feeling. Thinking can be replaced. It is already on the way – it has already been replaced. The technology exists; now it is only a matter of time. Any day man will not be needed the way he has been needed up to now, because the machine will be more efficient than you.

Now the competition is going to be between the machine and man. Up to now the competition was between man and man. Even that competition has created much mechanicalness. Now the competition is going to be between man and machine. Then there will be no future for the competitors, the politicians – head people.

But the heart can never be replaced. And when I say heart, I don’t mean the physiological part. I mean the capacity of love, the capacity to love and the capacity to receive love... the capacity to give and to take love.

The word bhavana means all this. Become more and more a feeling. Drop from the head downwards and start living through the heart. It is risky, certainly risky, because a man of heart can never succeed in anything he is doomed to fail. But even to fail as a man of heart is more tremendously beautiful than to succeed as a head person. A man of heart will never be the first in the world – he will be the last. But Jesus says ’Those who are the last in this world will be the first in my kingdom of God.’ He’s talking about a total reversal of values.

In this world, people who are very violent, aggressive – maniacs – succeed. Humble people cannot succeed. Love is not a value.

But by becoming a sannyasin, you are entering the other world – the separate reality, the different valuation, the different outlook towards life. Hereby you enter into the kingdom of God....

Once you settle, things will start happening.

Deva means divine and naveena means newness – divine newness. And in fact there is nothing old under the sun. Everything is so new that if we don’t look through the mind, it is absolutely new It has never been so and it will never be so again. Each moment is so unique, but the mind is repetitive, so if you look through the mind, you feel repetition in life. Put the mind aside and everything suddenly bursts into newness. God is new – as new as the morning dew, as new as a leaf just sprouting...

always young.

And that’s what the divine quality is. To remain new is to be virtuous. Not to get old is virtuous

– not that the body will not get old. The body will get old, but one can remain always new, fresh, vulnerable... always ready to be surprised. That is the quality of innocence. Innocence, and nothing else except innocence, is virtue. A calculated virtue is sin.

So I give you this name, Naveena, as a discipline. This is going to be your discipline. Always look at life with new eyes. Look at people with new eyes. Look at things with new eyes. Never bring in the old. Never look through the memory, never look through experience. They are all clouds which surround you, and through which you lose the freshness of life. Always make way and look direct, immediate, and you will see that everything is so new.

Because of that newness a religious person is never bored. Because of that newness a religious person is always like a child, wandering in the world and wondering. Each moment and each step brings so many mysteries... it is a continuous surprise. It never ends. One never becomes a knower.

That is what I mean when I say be new, be fresh. Never become a knower – always be a learner.

Always remain in the knowing; never become a knower. Learning is beautiful, knowledge is ugly, because learning never corrupts your innocence and knowledge is poisonous. The moment you know, you are closed.

So go on dropping knowledge and always remain learning, learning. Learning is open, knowledge is closed. Don’t carry any conclusions, and life will bring such a benediction. That benediction is divine...

[A sannyasin says: I don’t feel I’m completely here. Sometimes I don’t feel like a disciple.]

I understand. It is natural. It has nothing to do with you, mm? Everybody feels that there are moments when he is not with me, because to be with me totally is almost impossible. Only in rare moments are you a disciple. You are not a disciple twenty-four hours. Even if those rare moments are there, it is enough, more than enough; more than one can expect. But they will do. By and by, more and more moments will be coming when you will feel closer and closer and closer. One day, disciplehood happens.

By your taking sannyas it doesn’t mean that you have become a disciple. It simply means that you have given me an indication that you would like to become a disciple. It is just a beginning of disciplehood, not the end. It is just entry into it.

So there will be many negative moments. And to cope with me is difficult because I am not an ordinary teacher. So many times I hurt you; I hurt you so much. That is part of my whole work: I have to hurt you. If I don’t hurt you, your ego will never be gone.

But it is natural that you will feel you are always only half here. To be fully here you will become enlightened.

CHAPTER 24

13 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and vishwa means the universe the divine universe. And that’s exactly how it is. God is not separate. It is not a separate reality. The whole world is divine. The creation and the creator are not two things. They are one, a single unity.

So remember it, and start looking for God everywhere. Once you do, you will start feeling peace there. Looking in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in the man, in the friend, in the enemy, in success, in failure, just go on looking for Him. And you will find Him everywhere.

In pleasure He is, and in pain also. In life, in death also. The whole universe, the whole existence, is divine. Imbibe that spirit as deeply as possible.

Anand means bliss and hansa means a swan – swan of bliss. The swan is very symbolic in the East, mm? – the whiteness of it, the purity, the innocence of it, and the capacity to fly to the very peaks of the Himalayas. The land of the swan is just beyond the Himalayas. The most pure lake in the world is just beyond the Himalayas – Mansorovar – and the swans live there. They come in certain seasons and then they go back.

So the word swan has become symbolic. We are in this world, but not of it. We come here but we have to go. Our home is beyond the Himalayas. Our home is the pure innocence of Mansorovar.

Maybe for the time being we are here, but we don’t belong here. So remember this: that this world –

the so-called world of desires, ambitions, power, money – is not the real world, and we don’t belong to it. Maybe an overnight stay, but in the morning we go. That is the meaning of the word hansa.

And keep your eyes to the purest virgin peaks of the Himalayas – untouched, unviolated. The highest plenitude should always be remembered. One may live in the valley – one should not forget the peak. One may live in darkness – one should not forget the morning. Even in the darkest night, remember the dawn is coming closer, closer.

[Osho suggested he do the Tathata group – a group to help one break the conditionings of the mind.]

The mind is a by-product of the society. It is a trick of the society. The society has put it inside you to control you. It is like electrodes, and it can be manipulated from the outside.

[Osho spoke about the experiment that Delgado did with a bull. By placing electrodes in the brain of the bull, Delgado was able to control the actions of the bull.

He would press one button and the bull would immediately become angry and charge towards Delgado. When the bull was just a breathtaking foot away from him, Delgado would then push another button, bringing the bull to an abrupt halt.]

The same has been the trick of the society. Sooner or later, at least in Russia or in China, they will try the electrode with the human brain – and the person will never know. When a child is born, with a small operation the electrode can be put there. The child will never come to know; he will think that he is doing certain things.

But the same has been done in a very primitive way already. The society has told you to do this.

When you do whatsoever the society says you should do, it appreciates you, applauds, awards.

And when the society says not to do this, and you do it, it punishes you, throws you into the jail or threatens you with hell and hellfire and eternal torture. This is the same thing but in a very primitive way.

It takes a long time to train the child – years – but once the child is trained, the mind is created. Then that mind goes on controlling you. You don’t know who you are then. The mind always comes in. It won’t allow you to be free. It won’t allow you to be yourself. It won’t allow you to have your own life. It goes on interfering in everything, whatsoever you do. Unless you follow it, you will feel guilty. Unless you follow it, you will start repenting. And if you follow it, you go against the very nature. Then too you don’t feel fulfilled.

This is the dilemma that humanity is in. If you follow the mind, you remain unfulfilled because then you are not following your intrinsic nature. You are going against your own tao, against your own dharma, against your own reality. Then you feel unfulfilled, frustrated. If you don’t follow this mind, you feel guilty. That’s why whenever you are happy, you always find, side by side, a certain guilt arising, as if you are doing something wrong. When you are unhappy, everything is okay. When you are happy, you are doing something wrong. Suddenly the mind starts creating trouble for you.

[A sannyasin says: I was in the Enlightenment Intensive group, and I just discovered that I make people feel guilty because I try too hard.

When things were too overpowering in the room, I stop, I freeze. If somebody is screaming, I can’t talk; I’m concerned with their screaming.]

It is good. We are not aware of many things that we go on doing. This is a good insight. By our attitudes we go on interfering with people – sometimes so unconsciously that you may not be aware; even the person who has been interfered with may not be aware. But just by our gestures, our face, just by our vibes, we go on interfering.

By and by one should relax and stop that, because to interfere in somebody’s life is to interfere in his freedom. If somebody is screaming, that’s his thing. You neither have to be disturbed nor have to make him feel guilty that you cannot talk when he screams. You are not distracted by his screaming

– you are distracted by your interpretation of it. So if you simply listen to the scream, there is no problem; it is not a distraction. It will be there but you can continue.

That’s why I have made this ashram in a city. I could have gone to the Himalayas. There meditation comes very easily, but then it is lost easily also. When you move back to the plains, it is lost. I am sitting just amidst a town, a city with all the distractions of the trains passing by, the aeroplanes, the rickshaws and the cars; every sort of disturbance is there.

I would like you to relax in this disturbance, because in fact you will be living in this disturbance for your whole life. People cannot live in the Himalayas forever, and not everyone can live there. It will be an ugly world if everybody goes to the Himalayas, and it will be a danger to the Himalayas also; it will be destroyed.

People have to live normal lives. Where all sorts of disturbances are, one has to accept them.

One has to remain calm and quiet amidst them. So remember, my meditation is not a method of concentration. [See Nothing To Lose But Your Head, Tuesday February 17th, 1976, where Osho talks about concentration as opposed to meditation. ]

Concentration is very narrow. It excludes the whole world and includes only a small part of it – for example, a dot on the wall. You concentrate on it, so in your consciousness only the dot on the wall is included and everything else is excluded. This is unnatural. Consciousness should be open and flowing everywhere in all directions.

Meditation is all-inclusive. It does not exclude anything. It absorbs everything. So if a train passes by, a meditator will simply absorb it. He will simply listen to it. It is beautiful; there is nothing wrong with it. Your mind is open... the train, the noise – then it goes. The noise vibrates for a while, it echoes for a while, and then it goes. There is nothing to be worried about. But if you are trying to concentrate, the very noise takes you away from your concentration. We are not trying to concentrate at all, so nothing can be a distraction. Everything has to be included, absorbed. Just try it – and you will feel very beautiful.

A great benediction comes to a person who becomes all-inclusive. You listen to me and a bird starts screeching – you listen to that too. The train passes.... [a sound of a loud horn in the background] this horn – you listen to that too. You are simply open from every side. You are a circle of consciousness, not a narrow mind. You are all-dimensional, not one-dimensional.

Concentration is one-dimensional, a very poor thing. Meditation is all-dimensional. But in the West thousands of books have been written which say that meditation is concentration – which is absolutely wrong. Nothing can be more wrong than that statement. They are opposites.

So just be all-inclusive. In the next group, go on doing your thing and let the whole world do its own thing. Just relax and do it. Don’t do it with a tension. If you do it with a tension, you concentrate. If you do it in a let-go, there is no problem in it.

CHAPTER 25

14 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor said three years of Freudian psychoanalysis helped her, but also made things difficult.]

That too is true, because all the analytical methods are in a way incomplete. They help you only to a certain extent and then they leave you in a limbo. One feels that something has happened, but much is missing. Something seems to be incomplete, hanging, suspended. But that is natural because analysis is a very new process. It just started with Freud; it is not even one hundred years old. And the whole method was developed by one man. It is on the way, it is growing.

It takes centuries for a certain method to come to a completion, because so many people have to be experimented upon, and millions of people have to pass through the method. They help the method to grow. The method helps the people to grow; the people help the method to grow. Freud has just given a framework and that too very primitive. It is bound to be so. All pioneers are primitive, rudimentary, crude; the polishing comes later on. The person who originated the method dies, but the method continues to evolve. Sometimes it takes centuries for a certain method to become so complete that once you pass through it, you don’t have any feelings of incompletion or of missing something. And once that happens, that means that the process has become a circle. It gives you a smoothness, an ease, an at-homeness, a relaxation.

Analysis is incomplete unless it becomes a synthesis too; that’s what is lacking and missing.

Analysis is good for the beginning – one has to diagnose the person, the problems, the anxieties, the dreams. The situation has to be analysed, diagnosed, categorised – but that is just the beginning of the work. When the disease is absolutely known, then the medicine has to be supplied, and then the person starts growing as a unity. That unity is missing. Psychoanalysis is just a diagnosis without a medicine.

It makes you clearly aware of what is wrong, but then what to do? In fact, in understanding what is wrong, a few things are reconciled, but many more things bubble up from the unconscious. A few things are solved; many more things become questions. So the analytic process makes you a little aware but it makes you a little more anxious too, because now you know many more things of which you were never aware.

It gives you a certain insight into your being, but the centre is not revealed through it – only layers of the mind – because Freud had no concept of the soul, so he thought that there are layers and layers of the mind – conscious, subconscious, unconscious – but nothing beyond that. That means that there are only peripheries, concentric circles and no center. A body cannot exist without a soul.

If the body exists, the soul must exist, because the outside cannot exist without an inside.

If the outside exists, we may not be able to penetrate the inside, but the inside must be there, because they go together – the outside and the inside. The body is nothing but the outside soul, and the soul is nothing but the inside body. And man is psychosomatic.

But Freud was a little too much of the nineteenth century, too physiological, too scientific. He had no religious attitude at all, so the centre is missing. And a psychology is complete only when at its peak it becomes a religion, because that is the very culmination. A tree is complete only when it flowers.

Otherwise the tree can be there very green and everything good and beautiful, but still barren if the flowers are not there. Something tremendously beautiful will be missing. In a way it looks complete

– the tree is there, alive, green, its branches high in the sky – but something is missing.

The tree has not yet been able to blossom, to overflow. The tree has not yet been able to produce colour and song and ecstasy. So unless psychology becomes a religion, it remains like a tree without flowers.

It is not only a question of becoming normal. The question is to become ecstatic. To be normal is not worth much. The question is not only how to get adjusted to the society – adjustment is just futile.

Unless you have something to dance for, just adjustment will create boredom. The whole freudian structure is how to make you normal, and how to make you adjusted, that’s all. The whole thing seems to be oriented towards the ill person, not the whole person. The approach is not wholistic.

The approach is that somebody is ill, so how to help him to be healthy so he starts working as a normal human being.

But there are millions of normal human beings. They are not abnormal in any other way; they are absolutely normal. But what is there in their life? – desert-like, boring. They are just somehow dragging. Religion opens a new dimension – the dimension of ecstasy, the dimension of festivity.

Unless you can dance, life is not worthwhile. Unless you can be so grateful and so blissful that you can say that even a single moment of this bliss is enough, a single moment is eternity – then a person is not really whole and healthy and holy.

So psychology is just a foundation. When the temple is completed, it will become religion. In the East we have tried. It was psychology in the beginning; then by and by we failed. For centuries we felt that something was missing. Then a totally new thing arose out of it – and that is religion.

Eastern religion is very psychological. It is a misfortune that Freud was not aware of eastern religion at all. He knew only Judaism and Christianity. And both religions are not culminations, have not really come of age; in many ways, very very primitive. If Freud was aware of Buddhism, he would have known how religion arises out of psychology, because whatsoever Freud says is absolutely relevant in Buddhism. Buddhism had all that Freud says – and more, and plus.

[Osho talked about T’ai Chi.... ]

When doing these exercises, feel more like a liquid, Flowing energy, than like a solid body. Drop the concept of a solid body and help to focus on a different concept of liquid, fluid, flowing energy.

Before you start T’ai Chi start doing this m the night so that you will be ready. Before going to sleep, just sit in the bed and start feeling that you are energy, and that energy is flowing all around your body. You are in a whirlpool of energy – ripples, waves, are coming. Then feel that the whole room is full of energy, and it is your energy. You don’t know where to make a demarcation; you don’t know where you stop and the world starts.

Then feel that the energy is flowing and becoming bigger and bigger like a balloon. Not only is it in the room, the room is in it, the whole house is in it. You have become a flood.

At this moment, go to sleep. This will take not more than three to five minutes. While you are falling asleep, continue to feel like a flood – surging waves reaching to the high heavens and the whole world is engulfed in you, in your energy. Just fall asleep meditating on it so it will enter into your sleep and will remain there as a shadow, hovering around you the whole night.

In the morning, the moment you feel that you are awake now, don’t open your eyes – first feel again the flood-like energy. Connect yourself again with the time you fell asleep. Bridge it again. Again start feeling like a surging wave, an ocean, an oceanic energy.

Just for three to five minutes Lying in the bed, and then get up. You will feel very very energised and vital. You will feel a new elan rising in you, a new life. Continue this for a few days and then go into T’ai Chi. Then you will be perfectly ready.

Chi means energy. The whole concept is that solidity is false – just as in modern physics. These walls are not real – it is just pure energy, but the electrons are moving so fast, with such terrific speed; that’s why it appears solid. Just like a fan can move with such a terrific speed that you cannot see the blades separately. So it gives a sense of solidarity. The same is true with your body. What modern physics has come to know right now, Taoists have known for thousands of years – that man is energy.

It is said about a T’ai Chi master that he would tell his disciples to attack him, and he would just sit in the middle. Five or ten disciples would rush from every corner of the room to attack him, but when they came near him, they would feel as if he were a cloud; there was nothing solid... as if you could pass through him and you would not be obstructed by anything.

If you continue this idea that you are energy, it is possible to become just like a cloud with no boundaries, melting and merging with existence. This anecdote is not just an anecdote. With a man who has gone deep into T’ai Chi, it is very easily possible that when you come across him, you will not find any obstruction; you can simply go through him. You cannot hurt him because he is not there to be hurt.

So for these ten days before you start T’ai Chi, imbibe the spirit.

CHAPTER 26

16 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin had previously written to Osho about her sexuality, which seemed to have become more intensified lately – mainly been through auto-erotic activity. Guilt feelings surfaced from childhood, about its being a perversion. Osho checked her energy.]

I told you to remain celibate for a few days specifically for this purpose, because once you are celibate for a few days, energy pools; it becomes a reservoir. And when it is a reservoir, then you can easily know where it wants to move, how it wants to be creative, what direction it wants to take.

A person who is using his sexual energy continuously, never knows what the energy itself intends to do. And these are two different things.

What your mind intends to do is one thing – what your energy intends to do is totally different. If they meet, good – if they don’t meet, then there is trouble. It is just a coincidence ordinarily – their meeting and their going hand in hand. Otherwise out of one hundred cases, almost ninety-nine percent of people miss the harmony between their mind and their energy. The mind goes on bossing, goes on judging, evaluating, condemning, saying, ’This is good – that is bad.’ The mind is a priest, and a catholic priest at that. The mind is a puritan... absolutely a victorian.

And energy is just a natural phenomenon. It does not know any man-made moralities. It is amoral.

It is neither moral nor immoral; it is amoral. It is beyond morality or below morality. But it has nothing to do with morality and moral inhibitions, condemnations, evaluations, oughts, shoulds; it knows nothing. It is simply like a river rushing towards the ocean.

The energy is continuously rushing towards orgasm. If the mind interferes, there is corruption. Then it is very rarely that the intention of the mind and the intention of the energy will meet. Then there is frustration. You are pulled apart... you are tom apart; a person starts falling into pieces. That’s what has happened to the whole humanity – all have become Humpty Dumptys.

I had this very thing in mind when I told you to remain celibate for a few days. Once you are celibate for a few days, the energy becomes so powerful that the mind cannot control it. The mind remains very impotent before it. And the energy is so much that it carries the mind with it. It has to go with it. Condemning, cursing, but it has to go with it. It is a sheer force, and the mind cannot do anything with it. Whether willing or unwilling, it has to go with it.

So this is the natural spontaneous intention of your energy. Whatsoever is happening, allow it and drop all condemnations, drop all judgements. Simply go with it. With no mind go with it.

Remember, energy is always pure. Its purity is invulnerable. The mind is always impure. Its impurity is unchangeable. So drop the mind, drop its bossing, its effort to dictate, dominate. Just go with the energy wherever it leads.

Many things will happen, and you will be surprised that they are happening, but they have to happen, because energy never does anything wrong. It cannot do, because it does not know what is right, what is wrong. It simply does that which is natural. For energy, the natural is right, the unnatural is wrong. It only believes in God’s law. It doesn’t believe in any man-made laws.

This is the first thing to understand – drop your mind. It has no business to interfere. Go with the energy, and whatsoever form it takes, it is good and beautiful. Whatsoever form it takes, never say that it is perverted, wrong, immoral, this and that. These are all mind trips. The mind is trying to force its own ideology on the energy. The energy is innocent – simply go with it.

Once you start going with it, many things will happen and many things will disappear. Soon – within two, three months – your energy will become a sheer delight. But if the mind goes on interfering, it will take a very long time. From your very childhood the mind has been interfering with it. It has never accepted its naturalness. That is the problem – not the form that the energy is taking; that is not the problem.

The problem is coming from the mind, not from the energy itself. The mind wants to have its own way, and now that the energy is there, overflowing, the mind cannot control it. When energy is less, the mind can control it. When you go on throwing your energy every day, then the mind is more powerful. Then the river is like a very small spring and it can be channelised by the mind howsoever it wants. But right now it is like a flood, it won’t listen – and there is no need for it to listen.

In the beginning you will find the mind cursing, condemning, judging, but simply don’t listen – listen to the energy. In the beginning you may find that it is maddening, but that will disappear. That too is because of the mind. Because the mind has never allowed the energy any freedom, when you allow freedom, it is maddening. It is just like when a man who has been forced to fast for many years, or has been given only a very small amount of food, who has been always starving, half-starving, is suddenly given freedom to eat whatsoever he wants to. Then he goes mad. He becomes an obsessive eater. But the problem is still not with the person. The problem comes from the past.

So something may be there like an obsession. You will feel that something is happening obsessively.

Don’t be worried. It is just a dam that the mind has built; it is being broken by the flood. So there will be chaos for a few days, but nothing to be worried about. As I am watching, your state is better than ever. You just have to drop this last barrier of evaluation. Simply drop it.

And remember one thing – whatsoever makes you happy is good. The whole criterion of good, is happiness; nothing else. Never forget about it. And whatsoever form the sexual energy takes is never perverted unless it becomes harmful to somebody. To me perversion only means that you become a menace to others. If you hurt and harm others, if you become a sadist or something, then it is perversion. But when you are not harming anybody – you simply delight in your energy – there is no problem at all. It is your energy – you have to be happy with it.

So don’t go as if being dragged. Go dancing. Don’t go reluctantly. Surrender... trust the energy

– because it is life, it is God. And trust absolutely. Just one condition has to be remembered –

one should not become harmful, violent, aggressive, towards anybody else, that’s all. Otherwise everything is permissible. If you feel happy – it is your energy – feel as happy as you want to. Go with it wholeheartedly.

For one month simply go wholeheartedly with it. Relax completely. And after one month, tell me.

Everything is going well. What is needed is happening. Within these two, three months, your energy will come to a real natural flow. All these things that are happening will disappear. They are not going to remain there forever. They are because of past starvation.

Will it be possible to trust the energy and to go into it?

[A sannyasin said the vipassana course was unbelievable.]

It is unbelievable, because the mind is not aware of millions of things which are available. The mind goes on living in a rut. It goes on moving in the same repetitive circles and it has become oblivious of the whole reality. It cannot even dream about the real. It has lost all contact. It has become closed, a short-circuit. But it goes on thinking in its own terms and goes on chewing the same thing again and again.

So reality is always unbelievable to the mind. And reality is enormous, vast. There is no beginning and no end to it. It is infinity. The more you know, the more you understand that you know nothing.

The more you know, the more doors open for you to be known. You reach one peak, another peak is there waiting for vou as a challenge. And this is non-ending.

But this has been very beautiful. Remember it always. We are missing many things in life just because the mind won’t believe, just because the mind has a certain fixed, obsessive attitude. It only opens itself to certain things and then closes.

If you bring four persons into this garden, they will not see the same things. If you bring a carpenter, he will see in the trees the possibility of furniture – doors, chairs, tables. If you bring a poet, he cannot even imagine chairs and furniture in the trees. He will see poetry. He will see the sheer poetry of the earth, the ambition of the earth trying to reach to heaven. If you bring a lover, he will see something else. If you bring a painter, he will see something else. He will see colours and colours. Only colours exist, only colours are real. And if you bring a scientist, he will see something else. He will immediately start labelling things – this tree belongs to this species, to this geography, to this climate. But nobody will be in the same garden – and they are all standing in the same garden. We see whatsoever our mind allows us to see.

In the old scriptures – the bible, the koran, the vedas – if you read, it seems as if God used to walk on earth. The encounter seems to be so real. Moses meeting God on Mount Sinai – it is a face-to-face talk. Now it seems like a parable or a story symbolic maybe, but it cannot be real We have lost contact with that reality. God used to walk on earth. He Still does, but we by-pass Him because we have lost the capacity to see Him. A Moses is needed. Mount Sinai is still there. God is Still standing in the burning bush, shouting... but there is nobody to hear. A Moses is needed to hear.

Reality is incredible, tremendous, but our minds are very tiny, very very tiny, very atomic – as if there is just a small hole in the wall and from that hole you are looking at the sky. You will have a certain glimpse but we remain poor unnecessarily.

That’s what meditation is all about. It is an effort to look at reality without this hole of the mind, this small, tiny hole of the mind. To look at reality without the mind, to push the mind aside, and to face reality without the mind. Immediately the enormous opens its doors. Suddenly you are there amidst abundance.

It is unbelievable. So remember it, and believe in the unbelievable – then you will become more expansive. Never believe only in the believable because that makes you narrow. The believable is not worth much. Believe in the unbelievable. That is the meaning of trust and faith.

There is a very famous saying of a christian mystic, Tertullian: ’I believe in God because He is impossible.’ This is something beautiful – ’I believe in God because He is absurd. I believe in God because He is unbelievable.’ This is something tremendously beautiful.

Before Tertullian other christian mystics just look foolish – people trying to prove God, finding out how many proofs are there, how to prove God, how to make God a syllogism. He is not a syllogism.

He is a song, a mad song. You cannot put Him in a logical way. He is too big for logic. Tertullian is the only real mystic in Christianity who is almost as zen-like as Bodhidharma. Mm? – ’I believe in God because He is unbelievable.’ So believe in the unbelievable.

[The sannyasin answers: The unbelievable is so powerful that there is no choice but to believe in it.]

Yes, that’s right. That’s right. That’s absolutely right. But remember it – that’s the point. Because we tend to forget it again and again. When the unbelievable happens it is really so powerful that there is no way, no alternative – you have to believe in it. But back home – back in the mind – it becomes sheer absurd-ity. One starts suspecting oneself. One starts suspecting, ’Was I under an illusion, a hypnosis, or was it a dream?’ Remember in those moments when suspicion arises – that’s what I mean. Remember in those moments when the mind comes back and starts creating suspicions and doubts, then too say to the mind, ’Yes, you are right. God is not possible, but that is why I believe in Him. That’s my ”why”.’

Then the mind is at a loss. You have taken away the very ground from underneath it. If you say to the mind, ’I believe in God because He is unbelievable, because He is unprovable, because He is illogical,’ then you have taken away the very life of the mind, because that is the whole trick. The mind can force you to doubt. It says that this is not rational. But tell the mind, ’Who says that it is rational? Who is arguing about it? It is irrational – you are right.’

And that is the beauty – that it is irrational. If God were rational, it would not be worth much. Then it would be a dictum of science, an axiom of mathematics or a syllogism of logic. You cannot pray to a syllogism. You cannot make a temple around a syllogism. You cannot dance because a syllogism is perfectly right, mathematical, logical.

It is good that God is improbable. One can dance... one can fall in love. One can be a fool because God is impossible and unprovable.

CHAPTER 27

17 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and pankaj means lotus – a divine lotus. The lotus is very symbolic in the East because it comes out of dirty mud, and yet so beautiful, so graceful, so other-worldly... is born of the earth but does not belong to the earth. It is unearthly.

So one has to be like a lotus – rooted in the earth but not defined and confined by the earth. Rooted, well-rooted to the earth, but still seeking the sky, going higher and higher. Not against the earth –

with the cooperation of the earth. Not in a denial – the earth has not to be denied. It has not to be negated. There should be no ’no’ in a religious person. The yes should be utterly total. The earth has to be accepted as a gift, but one should not remain confined to it. One should grow beyond it.

So there should be a rootedness and yet a transcendence. That is the meaning of the lotus.

It remains rooted in the earth, it is being nourished by the earth, yet it is an alchemical change, a mutation. If you simply see the lotus, you cannot imagine how it can be born out of ordinary mud. It is almost impossible to conceive. When you see a Buddha, it is impossible to believe how this can happen in an ordinary human being. With the body, with the bones, with the blood, how is it possible

– this lotus of consciousness? A Buddha is an impossibility. It happens but it is unbelievable.

So remember that – that wherever we are, our whole being consists of surpassing, of transcending.

So wherever you are, go on transcending yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that man is the only animal who tries to surpass himself. So the very effort to surpass is human. That’s what makes you a human being – that you are constantly dropping yourself, your past, your boundaries, and trying to go higher, trying to become more expansive, more huge, more indefinite, more infinite, more uncertain, more nebulous. A moment comes when you are just a cloud of unknowing. In that moment your inner lotus flowers and for the first time you see the unearthly beauty happening in the very earthly. The soul arising out of the body. God happening in time.

[A sannyasin says:... there’s too much to say.]

That’s right. And fear is natural. Being close to me, it is natural to be scared. You are just close by a precipice. If you fall, you are gone forever. And the attraction to fall into the abyss is tremendous, hence the fear.

When you come to me, you come to die in me. And unless you die, you will not be reborn. So fear is absolutely natural. Accept it, and go on moving in spite of it.

These two things have to be remembered. These are the two extremes. Either people start repressing their fear and start trying to impose some bravery, courage – which is going to be false because deep underneath there will be fear – or people become so afraid that they become paralysed; then the fear becomes a hin-drance. In both ways you will be stuck with fear. The right way is to accept it so that there is no need to repress. Accept its naturalness – that is natural, bound to be so. Accept the fact of it and still go ahead, bypass it. Don’t repress it and don’t be hindered by it. In spite of it, go on moving. Trembling, of course, because the fear is there, but go on moving.

Trembling, but go on rushing towards the abyss.

Don’t impose fearlessness, because an imposed fearlessness is a pseudo thing, a counterfeit. It has no value. So just be natural, authentic, sincere. Take note that the fear is, Still, but still go on.

That’s what I mean when I say go in spite of the fear. Trembling – okay; shaking – okay, go on.

Tremble like a small new leaf in the strong wind.

Have you seen the strength of a new leaf? So fragile, so weak, and yet so strong. Even when the storm is raging, the leaf goes on trembling – but have you seen its beauty? The fear is there, because fear is always there when something is alive. Only in a dead thing there’s no fear. The fear is there, the storm is raging, and the leaf is small and delicate, tender, soft. It can be crushed very easily, but have you seen its strength? Still it goes on dancing, singing. Still it goes on trusting in life.

So be soft, be tender, be delicate, be afraid, but never be hindered by it and don’t repress it. Accept the limitations, the human limitations, but still go on working beyond them. That’s how one grows, mm? And welcome home!

Deva means divine and saguna means with form. Your mother’s name is Nirgun. Nirgun means without form, without attribute. Saguna means with attribute, with form.

In the East we conceive of God in two ways – one with form. The whole universe is God with form, saguna – with attributes, qualities, colour, taste. You can touch it, you can hold it in your hands. You can kiss it. You can embrace it. It is available to the senses. That which senses can understand, eyes can see and ears can hear, and hands can touch and the heart can feel. You can love. You can worship. This is God in form.

Then another concept of God is formless, nirguna. It means the formless beyond – which cannot be seen, which cannot be touched, which is untouchable, unseen, unknown; not only unknown but unknowable. There is no way for the senses to approach it. Even the mind cannot approach it. You reach it only when all the senses are dropped and the mind is dropped, and you yourself lose all form. In deep ecstasy, in samadhi, when you are completely formless yourself, then you come to know it.

The devotee believes in the saguna. The worshipper, the man who goes to the church and to the temple and to the mosque, believes in the saguna, in God that is available, humanly available. And there are meditators who are not devotees, who believe in the nirguna – the God who is always beyond. You have to drop everything and you have to become a zero, absolute emptiness, then you come to know it.

I have given your mother the name nirguna because nirguna is the mother of saguna, because that form comes from the formless. This whole world comes from the formless. The original source is formless and millions of forms arise from it. So the formless is the mother and with the form is the son.

God is formless, Christ is the form. So between you two, it is complete. The whole philosophy is complete, mm?

[To a visitor Osho says:]

It is rarely that I give sannyas without asking. You may be the first sannyasin to whom I am giving it without asking, because I can see that you are absolutely ready. You may know it, you may not know it.

You have been working for it through many lives. Something is ripe, ready to fall. So just become part of the orange people and allow things to happen.

This will be your name: Ma Deva Ashu.

Deva means divine and ashu means quick – one who approaches the divine very quickly. And it has been quick so you will have to get adjusted to it a little, mm? Something to say?

[Ashu answers: I was going to tell you that I was full of anger.]

Full of anger? Nothing wrong in it. It is pure energy. It can be transformed in any way. It can become love. It can become compassion. It can become the very force upon which you can ride and move towards God.

Anger simply means energy stuck, energy not finding a way to move and to be creative. That’s what anger is. Anger is not really anger; it is just stuck energy... a river which wants to move towards the ocean but cannot find the way – so many rocks.

When energy is stuck and becomes stale, it becomes poisonous. It needs to be flowing. A flowing energy is pure, just like a flowing river. When the river is not flowing, then it becomes stale, dirty, angry. So nothing is wrong. It is perfectly okay. We will use that energy. Dance more, meditate more, do a few groups, and within a month you will feel your anger simply gone. And you will feel very grateful to your anger because it will release much energy that will make you more loving, more happy, more blissful.

A person who has no anger has nothing to grow with. He is impotent. A person who has tremendous anger has much potentiality. A person who has no anger is simply dull. He has no intelligence. The latest findings of psychologists say that children who are angry are more intelligent. The children who are not angry are a little stupid. They are a little dormant, retarded. Anger is pure fuel. It can be used in many ways. If it is not used, then it is dangerous. Then it can become destructive. If it is used, it becomes creativity.

Leave it to me. Simply do what I say and within one month it will be gone. Within a month the old will be gone and the new will have entered.

And you have to be quick! You have to be true to your name, Ashu!

Deva means divine and shobha means elegance – divine elegance, divine grace, divine grandeur or divine splendour, will it be easy to pronounce?

And try to become one, mm? Everybody’s destiny is that – to become a divine elegance, and unless we attain to that, we remain frustrated. Nothing else will satisfy unless one becomes a divine grace.

Everything else is just not enough. One can have as much money as one desires, and Still one remains poor; the beggar continues. One can have as much power as possible, Still one remains impotent, because all that we can accumulate outside cannot help us grow inside. The inner growth is the real need, and no substitute can be of any help.

Unless one becomes more and more divine each day, one can never be content. That’s why there is so much frustration in the world. People are here to become gods, and they are trying to become something else which falls very short of the goal. So if you don’t achieve, you are frustrated. If you achieve, then too you are frustrated because your destiny is far beyond. You belong to the stars.

Just make it a point to remember continuously that this is your destiny.

That’s why I change the name and I give a new name.

The new name will become a new

remembrance. Whenever somebody calls you Shobha, you will remember that you have to become one. Unless that is happening, you are missing the opportunity of life. You have to flower that way. And if one is continuously reminded of it, it starts happening, because it is only a question of remembrance. We are divine – we just have to remember it.

And remember – because you are a student of anthropology – unless you understand the divine element in man, you will not be able to understand man at all, because man is something like a bridge. Man is not a being in himself. Man is a process. That’s where anthropology goes on missing something. You cannot understand a process unless you understand the goal, because the process is goal-oriented. If you don’t understand the goal and you simply try to understand the process, it will look meaningless.

For example, a train is going somewhere. Just in the middle you start studying the train. You don’t know from where it is coming and to where it is going. Then the whole thing will look absurd. Why are these people sitting here? What are they doing? Once you know that the train is destined towards some goal, things start falling into a whole, into a pattern.

Man is a process, a bridge – a bridge between the animal and the divine, a bridge between the earth ar d the sky, a bridge between the known and the unknown, a bridge between the visible and the invisible, the finite and the infinite, a bridge between the material and the spiritual. Unless this is understood, accounted for, anthropology remains superficial. Then you cannot understand man, because man is not an animal like a dog.

You can understand a dog. Have you observed that a dog is born complete? You cannot say to one dog that he is less than he should be. All dogs are similarly dogs. You cannot say to one dog that he is doggier than another dog – they are all simply dogs. But you can say to a man that he is not human enough. You can say to a man that he is not man yet, but you cannot say the same thing to a dog. Dogs are all dogs; they are already. Born, they are complete.

They are not processed. They have a being. The dog has a being. The rosebush has a being.

Man has no being. That is man’s anxiety and his grandeur, both; his worry – that he has no being.

He is just in between two abysses hanging like a bridge. He does not know who he is.

A dog is perfectly aware of who he is... instinctively aware of who he is. He is not seeking his identity. You have never seen a dog with an identity crisis. They don’t have any psychoanalysts and they don’t have any therapies – nothing. They are simply whatsoever they are. A mango tree is a mango tree. A rose is a rose is a rose. But a man? – you cannot simplify him that way.

A man is a man – and a thousand and one things more, because man is the whole future, not only the past. The dog has only a past. The man has tremendous possibilities of growth, of evolution, of transmutation. Unless those things are accounted for, anthropology remains very superficial. Only religion can give anthropology meaning.

So it is good that you have come to me. Much will become possible, and your studies will be affected in a very meaningful way. You may be able to contribute something to anthropology. If this concept can be given – that man should be understood as a process, a being who is on the way, is not yet arrived, a being arrived, a being not complete, incomplete, a being in movement, fluid – then we can understand the anguish. The anguish is that man is always worried about who he is. And there seems to be no answer.

If he looks at the past he can find some answer about who he is, but the past is not at all. In fact the past is no more meaningful. It is gone. Gone is gone. And man is always arriving, surpassing his past, reaching beyond. He is always reaching for the stars. That is what man is – a surpassing, a transcendence. And unless that is understood, anthropology is not really anthropology because it is not a science of man yet.

[Sometimes I enjoy the thought of going back to the West and speaking with people about my experiences, my beautiful experiences here, and at other times I think it is better to be silent and to let you speak through me. You speak better than I.]

No, you have to speak for me. I will be speaking through you. I will need many more vehicles, I will need many mediums. And because I am not going anywhere, I will be sending ambassadors. You are my ambassador – official ambassador to Italy! Soon we will be having ambassadors everywhere.

You have much to do. You have to write. You have to speak... you have to shout from the rooftops.

And I will be there shouting through you, don’t be worried. You just start and the remainder I will do.

You just initiate it, mm? Good.

CHAPTER 28

18 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a sannyasin who is leaving]

... continue to meditate there and come back as soon as possible, because much work has to be done yet. Something has started but it is just a beginning – never forget that. And never be satisfied too soon. Sometimes it happens that we become satisfied too early. As far as worldly things are concerned, never be dissatisfied, and as far as the inner world is concerned, never be satisfied.

Only then is there the possibility of the ultimate flowering.

And just the opposite happens to ordinary minds. They are never satisfied with worldly things.

Something more is always there – always a bigger house, a bigger car, more money, more power, prestige, respectability. People are never satisfied as far as things are concerned, but people are absolutely satisfied as far as their inner growth in concerned. That is very suicidal. So reverse the whole process.

That’s what sannyas is all about. It is a revolution. It is putting things upside down. It is uprooting things. It is destroying and recreating, making and unmaking.

So remember, always be satisfied with whatsoever is outside. Never be satisfied with the inner growth. Always remember that something more is going to happen....

[A recently arrived sannyasin, said that she had done several growth groups in the West but though she enjoyed them, afterwards she always felt uneasy, unhappy. Osho checked her energy.]

Everything is good. You just have too much energy, so when in the group your energy is involved, you feel good. Out of the group you don’t have that involvement, so the energy remains unoccupied.

That unoccupied energy brings you down.

There are two types of people – low energy people and high energy people. The high energy people need deep involvement, commitment. They have much to do. Unless they are creative, they will be sad. If the low energy people have to do something, they will feel drained; if they have to do something they are never happy. They are happy only when they have nothing to do, then their energy is okay. But if it is difficult to understand what type you are, that creates a problem.

You are a high energy person. You need to pour your energy more into work, into creativity, into a thousand and one things. In a group situation you become deeply involved because so much is going on around you. Outside the group, the world seems dull. You remain a little aloof, detached, indifferent. [See darshan of Wednesday, September 1st, where Osho talks to Somendra about using high energy outside group situations.]

That is not going to be your path. You need a deep commitment. If you can put your whole life at stake, you will have your climax, your peak experience. If you can burn from both ends, then only will you be blissful.

That may be the reason why you are feeling lost here. First you were in and had nothing to do; you could not do anything. You could not get involved with the sannyasins and the orange world here.

But now you are okay. Go into it headlong. Join a few groups, do the meditations. Get involved in as many things as possible.

That is your way to grow... that’s your way to come home. You cannot go slowly, you have to run.

And you cannot sit silently. That way you will feel stuck, stagnant. You are really Western. Your way is going to be active, not inactive. Just witnessing won’t help you – involvement. Get lost in work, in activity, and don’t hold yourself.

Your energy is so good, flowing, there is no problem about it.

[A sannyasin says she is not doing the meditations because: It feels too much of an effort. I enjoy just sitting and walking, and being with friends.]

OSHO Then don’t create problems! – because that sitting and enjoying you have been doing your whole life. That has not changed you. Your problems are there. When something is to be done, you don’t want to do it – you enjoy sitting – but the sitting is not going to help you. If it is helping, then there is no difficulty. If you can just change yourself by sitting with friends and enjoying, then I am not here to force you into any discipline, any hard work. But it is not changing you. That’s what you have been doing for your whole life. You will remain the same Some hard work is needed. And when you have done hard work and you have earned rest, then sit silently and enjoy friends. It is beautiful... nothing is wrong in enjoying friends and sitting silently – it is good, but earn it first. But how can you-think that sitting and enjoying friends is going to help? It may be just an occupation – just getting into things so that one can pass time, or it may be just an escape from yourself. It may be just a trick of the mind to waste time.

If you are really interested in changing and in dropping your problems, then there are two things: either drop them... then I will not say to do any hard work. Simply drop them. Then you are allowed to sit silently and enjoy and do whatsoever you like, but then drop the problems – and never raise them again. I’m not saying don’t talk about your problems to me – not even to yourself. Drop them completely. And if you cannot drop them, start meditating.

It is hard but it has to be done. At least two, three months hard work is needed. It will cleanse you and it will purify you. It will destroy the old structure and a new possibility will arise. Otherwise you will continue with the old.

And I see that there is a problem. If you want to avoid hard work, drop the problem. But I don’t see that you will be able to drop it so easily. It is a real problem – it is there hanging in your unconscious.

And my feeling is that you are avoiding meditations. They are not hard... because so many people are doing them. You are perfectly healthy, full of energy; you are not old. It is just the mind that is avoiding meditation, because the mind knows if it goes into meditation, sooner or later the structure will explode and you will have to change.

My feeling is that you are enjoying your problems, your depression, your sadness; you are enjoying it in a subtle way. If you want to enjoy it, then too, there is no problem – but then enjoy it deliberately, knowingly. Then depression is no more depression.

So tomorrow, think about it – these two things. Sit silently tonight. The alternatives are there: either you drop the problems or you have to start meditating. And not so-so, lukewarm. You have to really work hard and go into it. Tomorrow write a letter about whatsoever you have chosen. And I am happy whatsoever you choose, so don’t bother about me; don’t think about what I would like.

Both are good, perfectly good. In fact if you can drop problems simply like that, that’s beautiful; nothing could be better. But if you cannot, then tomorrow morning get up and start Dynamic meditation. And all five you have to do. When the camp is finished, do two meditations and the Nadabrahma, the humming meditation, at home – three meditations. And after three weeks I am going to give you a meditation – but first you decide, mm? Good.

[A visitor says: How can I stop fighting with my mind and my stomach? because it distracts me during meditation very often... It’s a nervous kind of tension and a feeling of hunger. It has been there for about a year – since I’ve been meditating.

Osho checks his energy, and suggests he do some groups.]

And whenever you go in the morning for the motion – when you empty your stomach – after emptying it, take a dry towel, a rough towel, and rub your stomach. Pull the stomach in and rub hard. Start at the right corner and go round. Go just around the navel but don’t touch the navel... really hard so that it gives a good massage. Pull the stomach in so all the intestines are massaged. Do it whenever you go for the motion – twice, thrice a day.

And the second thing, in the daytime, between sunrise and sunset – never in the night – breathe as deeply as you can, as many times as you can. The more you breathe the better, and the deeper you breathe the better. But remember only one thing – that breathing should happen through the stomach and not through the chest, so that when you breathe in, the stomach goes up – not the chest. You are a German and you may do something wrong [Osho chuckles. When you breathe in, the stomach goes out, and when you breathe out, the stomach goes in. Leave the chest as if it has nothing to do with it. Just breathe by the belly, so the whole day it will be like a subtle massage.

Do these two things, and these groups will do much.

[A sannyasin says: I feel a lot of confusion here... One day I’m up and the next I’m down, and doubting the whole sannyas trip again. It changes so fast here that I can hardly follow.]

Mm, it is natural. Doubt is natural to the mind. It remains with the mind. It goes only when the mind is gone. You cannot have a mind without doubt; that is impossible. A mind without doubt is a no-mind. In fact, doubt is the very core of the mind. And no-doubt is the very core of the heart.

So it happens to everybody – to whomsoever comes to me it is going to happen; he starts hanging between the heart and the mind.

Sometimes when you are in the mind you are doubtful – doubtful about everything. It is not a question of about what you are doubtful. You are simply doubtful. Anything will do; that is just an excuse. You are doubtful so you put your doubt on any nail. Any nail will do, any hook will do. If there is none you will find one, because you are in a doubting state and the doubt has to be projected.

When you are closer to the heart, doubt will disappear; then everything is perfectly good. You are in trust.

That is what is happening. In the morning when you come to listen to me.... First I am talking in Hindi so you cannot understand much. That also is very helpful, because if you can understand, the mind goes on working. You cannot understand. You have just to be here sitting silently; whatsoever I am saying goes on passing. It cannot create any disturbance in your mind. You are simply absorbing my pure presence.

That’s what satsang is – to be in the presence of the master... just to be in close affinity, close quarters; just to be there doing nothing. Suddenly your heart starts flowering, opening. You feel good. One can almost feel ecstatic.

Back home you are back in the head. Again you start thinking about what is happening, what is going on, what you are doing here. You are hanging between the heart and the head. That’s how everybody is hanging, more or less.

One thing is going to help you. Whenever the mind starts doubting, just sit silently; don’t cooperate, withdraw your cooperation. Let the mind doubt. Tell the mind, ’Okay, you go on, but it is none of my business. I will sit silently by the side and look at you. I will watch the traffic. I will not be a participant.’

[Osho said that whenever the mind started to dominate, he should simply remain a witness... ]

... and whenever you feel that the heart is there, give it your total cooperation. Rejoice in it, dance with it, sway. Don’t be a miser; don’t hold anything. Just let go... what Sufis call fana. Just die in it totally. Disappear into it. Become such a participant that you are no more there. With the heart, drown yourself in the rejoicing, in the joy of it. In the fana – that is the exact word. It means to disappear, dissolve.

Then you will see, within a week, a shift. The heart will become predominant more and more. The mind will be there to interfere less and less. You will feel a leaning towards the heart more and more.

Further away the mind is still going on with its mechanical work – but very far away... as if on some other planet, far away on some other star.

And when the heart is there.... Tomorrow morning when you sit there [in the lecture] go into it really, float with me... ride on my wave. Be courageous. And don’t make any conditions – just go with it wherever it leads. And once you start enjoying the heart, there is no need for any discipline. This is only in the beginning, because once we know that the heart is really beautiful, blissful, the change automatically starts happening.

Right now we are not aware of the taste of the heart. We know only the taste – the bitter taste

– of the mind. That is familiar and we are trained for it, educated for it, conditioned for it. And nobody has told you anything about the heart. It is a neglected part – and it is your very core. The periphery has been decorated too much and the innermost shrine has been almost neglected. You have completely forgotten it.

There are many people who don’t know that the heart exists. By the heart they simply mean the physiological functioning of the breath, the pumping system for the blood. They have completely forgotten what poets talk about and what mystics talk about. It has nothing to do with pumping blood and breathing, or purifying blood.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28