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‌CHAPTER 10

25 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veera means courageous, prem means love – courageous in love. And that is the only courage there is... all else is cowardice.

So be more loving, and love completely unconditionally, mm? That is going to be your flowering of being.

[A sannyasin says she is afraid of going back to the West: I’m afraid that all the things I’ve dropped will come back again, and that I will drown in them.]

It is natural... fear is natural.

It is very difficult in the beginning to make a distinction between dropping a thing and suppressing a thing. The whole of life is a suppression so we know the language of suppression, but my whole effort is totally different.

I am not teaching you to suppress anything, but rather to drop things that have become meaningless. When you suppress a thing it becomes meaningful; it becomes even more meaningful, more significant.

[Osho went on to say that recently he had been reading Winston Churchill’s memoirs of the second world war. He said that in the entire book, in thousands of pages, Churchill had not once mentioned the name of God – and he was a theist. Stalin, who was not a theist, mentioned God on many occasions... ]

... and Stalin is not a believer! It is a suppression. His own daughter, Svetlana, became converted to theism when he died; she left communism and atheistic ideas – and the whole training from her father was to remain atheist. What happened? It was suppressed.

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Whatsoever you repress remains inside, moves into the unconscious, and goes deeper in fact than it was before.

When Laroslavski, the man who was the head of the League of the Godless in the U.S.S.R., died, Stalin was present. The moment he was dying, he suddenly opened his eyes and said to Stalin, ‘Please burn all my books. Look, He is here. He waited for me. Please burn all my books.’

These were his last words. Not that God was standing there. No – but his whole life he was repressing.

I am not teaching you to suppress anything. I am teaching you to become more and more aware, so that in your awareness many things become useless, meaningless, rotten – and they drop on their own. If they drop on their own, good. If they don’t drop on their own, there is no need to drop them.

Either way, going to the West is going to be helpful. If you again feel attracted towards things which you think you have dropped, move into them. Don’t be afraid of being drowned – because that fear will repress them, and they will remain. Again and again the fear and the desire will come, and you will be caught in a vicious circle. So if you feel attracted towards something, do it, and do it without any guilt.

I don’t teach any guilt. I am here to give you absolute freedom – not less than that, nothing less than that. If there is still some attraction it means that there is still some significance clinging somewhere in the unconscious. Be finished with it! And there is no way to be finished with it other than to experience it. You will see that it was futile. Going into it you will see that there is nothing to it. It was just an old habit . . . the old situation, the old association.

But be finished with it. Go into it fully alert, conscious, with no guilt, no fear. Why be afraid? You will see that many things that you think will attract you are not going to attract you. A few things will, because it takes time when your life changes. -

The more you repress, the more meaningful things become. When something is denied, it gathers energy. Say no to something, and it immediately becomes rebellious. Say no to yourself and there is resistance and a fight starts. So never say no to anything. Be a yea-sayer.

There is nothing in life to be afraid of. All are God-given opportunities. I don’t say to drop anything. I say let things drop. I don’t say try not to be drowned. Dive deep. Nobody can drown you... I am coming with you.

[A sannyasin says he is freaking out and wants to die.]

(a chuckle) No need to die. And nobody ever dies – people just change their bodies. But that is not needed right now. Go more in.

Rather than going out, travel inwards. Close your eyes more, and become more silent and more settled. Rather than activity, feel more inactive, passive... relaxed. Emphasize being rather than doing.

Things are going well, and whenever something is needed to be done, I will tell you.

[The sannyasin adds: I love you, but whenever you put a situation on me, I just don’t want to do it.]

So you go on resisting. Let us see who wins (laughter). You go on giving all the resistance you can, and I will go on pushing. We will see what happens, mm?!

[A sannyasin says: I feel that I always try to impress people, and that I don’t know how to respond immediately.

In the group (the Aum marathon that she had just completed) I had a lot of anger and I wanted to use it, but I waited and looked to other people to see how they react.

Yet when I let the anger out I feel good, because that’s really me.]

Always listen to your own feelings – there is no need to look around. And by looking at people, you cannot see exactly what is happening to them, because their face is not their reality – just as your face is not your reality. Their outside appearance is not their inner, just as your outside appearance is not your inner.

That is the whole hypocrisy of society – not to show your inner, your centre, your real face; hide it. Show it only to someone who is very intimate and who will understand. But who is intimate? Even lovers don’t show their faces to each other. Because nobody knows – this minute somebody is a lover, next minute, maybe not. So each becomes like an island... closed.

Don’t look at others. Look at yourself and let anger out – whatsoever the risk. There is no greater risk than suppression. If you suppress you will lose all zest for life, all enthusiasm. You will lose all life if you go on suppressing. It is toxic; it poisons the being.

Listen to the heart, and whatsoever is there, bring it out. Soon you will become efficient in bringing it and you will enjoy it. And once you know how to be true, it is so beautiful that you will never settle for being false. We go on deciding to be false because we have never tasted the real. From the very childhood the real was suppressed. Before a child becomes aware of what is real, he has been taught to suppress it. In unconscious ways, mechanical ways, he goes on suppressing without knowing what he is doing.

Be true to yourself – there is no other responsibility. One has to be responsible towards one’s being. You are answerable to your own being, and God is not going to ask you why you were not somebody else.

There is a story that when the hasid mystic Josiah was dying, somebody asked him why wasn’t he praying to God, and was he sure that Moses would be a witness to him.

He replied, ‘Let me tell you one thing. God is not going to ask me why I am not like Moses. He will ask me why I am not a Josiah.’

This is the whole problem – of how to be oneself. And if you can solve this, then every other problem becomes non-problematic. Then life is a beautiful mystery to be lived; not a problem to be solved, but just to be lived and enjoyed.

[A sannyasin says: The mind is still there.]

(chuckling) The mind is still there? It has to be, otherwise you would be in trouble.

The mind has to be there. It has to be used. The mind must not be allowed to use you; you are not to be possessed by it. The effort is not how to destroy the mind, but how to become master of it. It is a beautiful mechanism. Even the greatest computer is nothing before the mind, the human mind. It took millennia for the human mind to be evolved. It is the most delicate, the most complex and the most miraculous thing. So don’t be against it.

No-mind is not mindlessness. No-mind is total mindfulness. It is having so much awareness that the mind cannot disturb it. The mind hums beautifully then. You can use it, and it is such a good slave. You cannot see the tremendous beauty of it. It goes on accumulating so many facts and is always ready to supply you whenever you need. Just a second’s notice and it starts supplying.

I will take care of your mind, don’t be worried. Just leave it to me.

[The Aum Marathon group is present. An assistant groupleader said: I feel neither happy nor sad.]

That’s good. Being neither happy nor sad is better than being happy, because if you are happy, you will become unhappy. The wheel goes on moving. It is just like day and night. If you are happy, you cannot avoid unhappiness. It is going to come; it is already on the way. It has already arrived .

So that is the best – if you are neither happy nor unhappy. Then there is no change, and something can become permanent. Something can stabilise, integrate. You have a ground on which you can stand and build your house.

I know that feeling neither doesn’t feel good, because there is no excitement in it. It is not like happiness; it is not a high. It is not even like unhappiness, because it is not a low. Even in unhappiness there is a certain excitement. At least something is happening.

When you are neither, nothing is happening. It is as if all movement has stopped. It can become scary, can feel like negativity, emptiness, and one feels lost. I know it can create very much anguish – more than unhappiness. If there is a choice for human beings to choose between this or unhappiness, they will choose unhappiness, because there is something to do, to hanker about – something to change, something to destroy, something to desire, hope. But if you are just in the middle, then there is nothing.

But this is the point which is the best that human consciousness can start growing in. This is the best opportunity – where you are neither. Then all futile activity drops, all desiring disappears.

In the beginning you will feel like a zombie – moving, but not feeling any passion. In the morning one gets up just out of habit. There is nothing waiting for you; no excitement about the new day. Nothing is going to happen. One does things because they have to be done, but one is -not interested this way or that.

In the beginning it will be like a zombie state, but if you continue it, by and by you will feel a tremendous change coming.

It is not zombie-like. It is a beautiful silence. It appears zombie-like, is translated as being zombie- like, because you have not known it in your past; there is nothing similar to it. Only zombiness approaches somewhere near it.

By and by you will become accustomed to it. Then you get up for nothing. In fact you don’t get up; energy gets up. There is no motivation, so there is no movement really in the future. You are here and now. Each moment you do something because it is required in the moment. It is a response in the moment – for no result, no end. So whether it fails or succeeds makes no difference. Success and failure become one.

And that is the point where one attains to tranquillity. If success is more valuable than failure you cannot be tranquil. Then stillness is not for you, and you are going to be disturbed again and again and again.

So get acquainted with this feeling more and more, and don’t start trying to do something against it. Otherwise the mind will tend to create some unhappiness, some fight, some negativity, some sadness, anger, so that you can become unhappy again. And once you are unhappy you start desiring happiness – and the whole wheel starts moving.

Don’t give energy to that vicious circle now. Just keep aloof and go on doing things without being in any way attached. This is what Krishna has called in the Gita ‘renunciation of action’. You act without any motivation, as if God acts through you.

So just leave everything to me. Just become a vehicle. I want Sudha to do something, so she does it. Whatsoever the result – good or bad – leave it to me.

[A group participant says: The group (Aum) was very difficult for me.… I have a lot of love for everyone I meet, and like to show it. But I feel misunderstood.]

Never be too worried about that – because if you want to share your love, don’t make it a condition that it should be understood. Love has become such a rare thing in the world that nobody understands it. Misunderstanding is more possible than understanding.

People have become suspicious, and they have their own ideas about love. Nobody takes love naturally. There are always some notions, some ideas, some fears, some suspicions. Nobody can believe that love can be simply for no reason at all. They think that there must be some motivation, some motive behind it – otherwise why should someone be sharing his love? They think according to their own minds. They show love only when they have something to get out of it. They use love as a means. Whenever they come across a person who is not using love as a means, they are bound to misunderstand. But for their misunderstanding, you need not be miserable. That is their problem – let them be miserable.

You simply go on sharing. How can you help it? If you say that you will love people only when everybody understands, then you will create impossible barriers for your mind; you will not be able to share. So go on sharing, because that is your enjoyment. It is others’ fate if they cannot accept and understand it; it is their karma. So feel pity for them and forgive them.

Even this much asking is asking. If you have to give love, give it – with no strings attached, not even that it should be understood, mm? You simply enjoy it.

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