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CHAPTER 16
31 December 1975 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Dharma means the Ultimate Law that sustains life; what in Chinese they call Tao. Ananda means bliss. Dharmananda means bliss that comes if you live according to the Law. If you fall in tune with the Ultimate Law, suddenly there is bliss. In fact all misery is because you are not in tune with the Law, you go astray from it. The further away you go, the more miserable you become. Hell means the furthest point from the Law, or God, or nature – and the nearest point is heaven. To become one with the Law is to go beyond both heaven and hell. That’s what in India we call ‘moksha’ – total freedom.
If you fall into the Law as a fish falls into the ocean and becomes part of it, then you are blissful. Dharmananda – remember the meaning because that is going to become your sadhana, your path. Become as natural as possible, as spontaneous as possible, and live moment to moment, mm? Very good!
[A non-sannyasin seeker says she has tried meditation and likes it.]
We are living so minimally that it can be said to be almost nothing. Life can become a pinnacle of bliss, it can come to peaks of happiness.
In the talmud it is said that when you face God again, He will not ask you what mistakes you have committed, He will ask you how many opportunities to be blissful you have missed. That is the only sin – to miss an opportunity to become blissful. Because unless you become so blissful that a natural gratitude arises in you, you will not believe in God.
When you feel very very blissful, celebrating each moment of life, by and by you start feeling thankful – not towards anything in particular, just thankful towards the whole. That is what prayer is. You cannot believe in God unless you have come to a point where you can be prayerful. People ordinarily
think that through prayer they come to God; ordinarily they think that if they pray they will understand God. But just by doing prayer nobody can understand.
Prayer must happen, and that is possible only when your life has become so beautiful and so happy, that with each breath there is thankfulness. Said or unsaid, that is not the point. You may never mention the word God, you may never kneel down to pray – that is not the point. But with each breath you feel a deep gratefulness, you are grateful that you are – and the prayer has started. This prayer is not something to do, it is a way of being. Then you come to know the whole, and without knowing it, we live in vain.
There is much possibility as I can see, mm? You can grow. You have a very simple, innocent, loving heart. It can take a jump immediately and then become a flame and flowerAnd be a sannyasin!
[The girl said her one objection to becoming a sannyasin was the wearing of saffron-coloured robes. Osho spoke about the significance of the colour, but first said that as her husband was a sannyasin, it would be very helpful for them both if she too were to take sannyas.]
This has been my observation, that if the husband or the wife becomes a sannyasin and the other does not, it creates a very small rift. In the beginning one may not be aware of it, but one has started moving in a different way, and I don’t like that, mm? because later on that can create trouble. So I always emphasise that if a couple can go together into sannyas it is more beautiful.
My sannyas is not a renunciation or an escape from life. On the contrary, it is to live life as intensely, as passionately as possible. So if a couple can become sannyasins things grow very fast, and they become closer than they have ever been before. You can never become close to a person unless you start moving in the same direction. You may love a person and you can move into separate dimensions, but then your meeting will be just sometimes, and on the periphery – then you go your own way.
When a couple starts becoming so deeply in tune with each other that they are growing in the same direction, then love grows and becomes more and more divine, less and less lustful. Then love has a purity, a fragrance, and then it is eternal. You can die, but the love never dies.
But wait until you can accept it in toto. The saffron robe is part of it and does tremendous work. It changes your whole person; it is not just a change of dress. A dress is not just a dress, it is a very style of life. Your clothes are you: they show your choice, your mind, and they are not just accidental.
A man who lives at ease, relaxed, will always have loose clothes. A man who lives in tension, who is always struggling and fighting, will have tight clothes. If you want to fight, loose clothes won’t be helpful, they will become a hindrance. And if you want to relax, tight clothes won’t allow you. Watch a person who has loose clothes walking. He has a different walk, a grace in it. A person who has tight clothes walks as if he is trying to overtake himself.
In the old palaces, for the king there were certain stairs, and for the servants others. For the servant the steps were very little, for the king there were very big steps, because he would be wearing such loose clothes that he had to move very slowly.
Each and every thing that you do – your clothes, your furniture, your room, your hair – is you. You are written on everything. So when I change the name and the clothes I am trying to change your whole way of life. In a very subtle way I am trying to create a break between your past and your present, so that the past drops and you can start afresh.
If you love your husband, soon you will start loving orange clothes, mm!
[Members of the Enlightenment Intensive group were present. One participant says: I was having difficulty the first day as my left eye became very bloodshot, but after that it was good. I became more and more unidentified with my mind. I’ve also released some anger... I screamed a few times and released some of that anxiety in the pit of my stomach.]
Sometimes it happens that if you release anger, your eyes can be affected. Exactly at the same time as you become very angry, they become bloodshot. Only one eye became bloodshot; that means that only one part of the mind, the right side, carries anger. If the right-side mind carries anger then the left eye will become bloodshot – but that is a good sign. It shows that the anger has been released.
If you can release anger, anxiety is automatically released. In fact anxiety is nothing but a social by-product because you are not allowed to be angry. When you want to be angry, you cannot; when you want to be loving, you can’t be; when you want to dance or cry or laugh, you cannot – and that creates the anxiety.
Anxiety is absolutely human. No animal is ever in anxiety. When you are feeling afraid and you would like to escape from a situation, you cannot because it won’t be ‘manly’, so you fight. Animals never do that. First they have a mock fight to judge who is the stronger, mm? because if it can be solved that way why unnecessarily fight? They are more intelligent than human beings.
Then one dog realises that the other is stronger, so he simply pulls down his tail and escapes. Nobody is going to say that he is a coward. In fact he is intelligent, simply intelligent.
But when fear arises in you, you cannot accept it; you go on denying it – hence anxiety. Whenever you fight anything natural, anxiety arises. So try to accept the natural more and more, try to be more natural. In fact, try to be more like an animal. Religions have corrupted humanity because they have been teaching men to become like angels, and when you try to become like angels you fall even below animals. Become more and more natural like animals, and suddenly you will find that in your spontaneity you have become an angel.
Because of your religious training, (this sannyasin was a former catholic priest) you have created much anxiety for yourself. Once you understand, it will be released.
There is a saying of Chuang Tzu: ‘Easy is right.’ It is profoundly true. Uneasy is wrong, easy is right. So become more and more like a child, like an animal. Animals have a tremendous beauty that human beings have lost. Nothing has been gained, just anxiety and madness and a thousand and one neuroses.
Drop all unnatural ideals. If you can accept yourself as you are, anxiety disappears. That’s my whole teaching – to accept oneself as one is. Don’t go on top-dogging yourself. If there is a fight between
the top dog and the lower nature – what religions have called lower – then never listen to the top dog because that is the ego. Always listen to nature and always move with it.
This experience has been good but much more has to be done.
[The participant said he was going to do an Encounter group next. Osho said he should not be shy in the group]
One has to expose oneself in total nudity. When you have nothing to hide, anxiety disappears. That’s the beauty of truth. If you lie, there is anxiety; but if you are true, there is none. Whenever you say a truth you don’t need to remember it, but whenever you tell a lie you have to remember it. And one lie leads to a thousand and one other lies.
[The participant says:... it is hard for me to be totally open. Like, it’s easy here but when I function professionally it’s very difficult.]
It will not be. Once you know that it is easy, it is not a question of here and there. Once you live it and you have the taste of it, then it is always easy wherever you are – because it pays tremendously.
Right now you don’t know what it is, so you are afraid. Once you know that to be natural is so beautiful and so blissful, then you are ready to lose anything at any cost. If you lose your prestige, your power or your money, you are ready, because it isn’t worth it.
It is as if you have been carrying pebbles and then I show you a treasure, diamonds. Will you say to me that it will be very difficult for you to drop the pebbles? You will immediately drop them! You were in an illusion that they were diamonds, and because you had never known real diamonds there was nothing with which to compare them. Once you know the real diamonds, who bothers about pebbles?
There is a very old story in India about a prime minister who became interested in meditation. He left his post and went to the forest. The king became very interested in what happened to this man who had left such a great post, so he came to see him.
The prime minister was sitting with his legs spread, under a tree. When the king came he didn’t stand up, but remained sitting. The king said that he thought he would have become religious, but he had become uncivilised and had lost even his manners.
The prime minister laughed and said,‘Who bothers? I was paying you respect not for you, but because I was on an ego-trip. Now I have dropped out of that ego-trip. Whatsoever you call me – mannerly, unmannerly, civil, uncivil – to me it is irrelevant. I have simply dropped out of the game.’ It is said that the king was very impressed.
This man must have found something which was more valuable, because that is the only way you can drop things. Whenever you find a higher value, the lower drops. Whenever you find a more blissful way of living, the miserable way of living drops. If it doesn’t drop, it simply shows that you have not found it yet, that’s all.
So forget about your profession, your world there. Be here with me so totally that you can taste something of the natural, the spontaneous. Then when you go back nothing can destroy it’ You may throw everything else, but that you cannot throw.
Once you know what freedom is then no prison can allure you, however decorated. So just be natural here. Good!
[Another group member says: My energy tends to be always negative and the positive side is never strong enough to come up. The ego is so strong here. (pointing to his head)]
It is not strong enough, and you have not suffered enough. You need a little more misery. This is the point to understand: if something creates misery one never carries it. You are still enjoying it. You are saying these things – that it is negative and ugly, and your energy is lost – but deep down you are still enjoying it. Otherwise who is forcing you? There is nobody!
If you feel so miserable, get out of it! And don’t say that it has become a deep-rooted habit. There is no question of habit. If the house is on fire, you simply run out. You don’t say that you have lived in this house for thirty years and it has become such a deep-rooted habit that you can’t go out. If you say that, it simply shows that you are not aware that the house has caught fire. You may have heard the rumour, but you cannot see. And you are not true enough to yourself so you accept the word of someone else.
My suggestion is that you don’t try to get out of it, please, until you see the fire. Nothing is wrong in it, enjoy it! When you are doing negative things, enjoy it. When you are really in hell, then any day you will jump out of it. So if you ask me my advice, I will say go deeper into your hell – and go happily. Enjoy it and do it consciously. That is all that my teaching is – to do it consciously. Don’t think that you are something wrong – that is creating a division in you. What is wrong in it? Enjoy it.
[The participant asks: Hurting other people?]
But you are enjoying hurting others, so hurt. If they want to hurt you they will; that is for them to decide. You simply enjoy it. And you are enjoying it. Whether I say so or not is not the point, because unless you enjoy a certain thing you cannot continue it. There is no question of habit or anything.
It is a simple trick of the mind: that you go on enjoying but you also want to show that you are very wise and that you know that these are very negative things and rubbish, but what can you do? – you cannot get out of it. That is not true. I can see you enjoy it. I am never against anything. I am for absolutely everything, so just enjoy it.
[The participant answers: I don’t dare, that is my trouble.]
That’s what I was saying – that your ego is not strong enough! You are not courageous enough. You are not really thinking that you hurt others and you don’t want to. You are a coward. You are not worried about others; you are worried that they will hurt you, that they will react. So you are hiding under a philosophy, a good philosophy of not wanting to hurt people.
In fact all you want is to hurt but not to be hurt – that’s the whole game. So see it as it is. I may look hard, but I want things to be understood exactly as they are; then one can move very easily.
You are not the only negative person in the world, and if you don’t hurt people, somebody else will. And nobody can hurt a man who is not ready to be hurt.
There are people who want to hurt, and there are people who want to be hurt, so don’t worry about it. Simply accept yourself.
I know one day you are going to get out of it, but that is not going to be by your effort. When you have created such a hell around you that you cannot live in it a moment longer, then you will jump out of it, leaving no trace on you. That’s the only way, so accept it.
God must be trying to do some negative things through you. He has chosen you; what can you do? (the group laughs)
And the effort to try to change yourself is egoistic, so drop all this nonsense and enjoy your being as you are. One day suddenly you will understand the whole nonsense of it. I am not saying that it is nonsense. I am saying that you will understand one day. My understanding cannot be yours. I cannot give it to you, and you cannot borrow it from me.
So I would like you to understand yourself. The only way is to experience the intensity of it. My understanding is this: that if from the very childhood every child is allowed to be really angry, anger will disappear from the world. The child will come to know the poison of it for himself. He will feel almost burnt, and he will suffer through it. Nobody wants to suffer, so he will drop the nonsense.
Because a child is taught again and again not to be angry, he becomes angry but it is only luke- warm; it is never enough to bring him out of it.
So let things be as intense as possible, and then they evaporate of their own accord. Try it! Don’t move against yourself. It is perfectly good – be negative.
[A group member says she has difficulty surrendering in the relationship with her boyfriend] Tell him everything!
... And tell him this also, that you are feeling difficulty in surrendering but you would like to, mm?
Talking to him will help. Don’t hide it inside yourself. When you love a person you have to tell him everything. In love, no secret is allowed. Even this much privacy is not good. You should not carry your wounds alone. If he loves you he will understand.
Surrender is never easy, because the whole ego has to drop before it. Without surrender nothing is achieved – no love, no prayer, no meditation. So surrender is the key. And that’s why the whole world is so miserable – because people cannot surrender. They have missed the key. They remain beggars when they could have become emperors.
Don’t try too hard, that may have been the trouble. When you try too hard, surrender becomes more and more impossible, because – and this has to be understood – surrender cannot be willed. Will is against surrender. It is as if you are trying too hard to go to sleep. The harder you try, the more
disturbed will be your sleep, because the very effort makes you more awake. So the way to go into sleep is not to try at all. Surrender comes the same way.
So just talk to him, mm? Then just lie together, cuddled, and don’t try, don’t will. It will happen... leave it to me.
[Another member of the Intensive group said that the first day of the course he felt very negative... Things became progressively better, he said, and now he felt very open... it was very beautiful]
It has been beautiful.
It always has to be that way: first the negative and then the positive. If you escape in the negative you miss the whole point – and you almost missed it. But if you can prolong that period of pain, then a turning is bound to come, because every valley has a peak, every peak a valley. Every night has a morning, and the darker the night, the more beautiful will be the morning. So one has to pass through the dark night, the negative part, where hate and anger and all aspects of negativity arise.
This is what is meant by austerity. This is what is meant by being courageous enough to hope against hope, to go on and on and on – till suddenly the turning point comes. One never knows when it will come. One never knows the bottom of one’s negativity, but when you have touched the bottom, suddenly you are moving upwards again.
It has been really good. You were fortunate that you did not drop out, because when the positive comes it is tremendously beautiful and blissful. Now try to carry it on back home.
Once a month take twenty-four hours for an Intensive. Go on asking yourself the question, and you will pass through the same cycle from negativity to positivity. It will be faster now, and by and by within seconds you will be able to pass from the negative to the positive – because you have become efficient in diving immediately to the bottom, and you know the bottom so you are not afraid in any way.
So try to continue it. This is going to help you tremendously on your path. Once a month at least, give twenty-four hours to it, and this time will become your most cherished.
[The group member asked if he should move to the second question, ‘What is another?’ He said he felt it to be the same as ’Who am I?’the first question asked in the Intensive.]
It will be the same. If you have touched the positive through one question, all questions will be the same. Again and again you will touch the same point. The question is one; it has a thousand and one forms.
The question is one and the answer is one; there are not two questions and two answers. So you will reach the same point through either. The questioning is just trying to dig into your being.
It is just as if you dig in one place and after thirty feet there is water. Then you dig another place and again, after thirty feet you reach water.
You are the water and your mind is the earth around you. Sometimes the earth may have rocks in it, sometimes the earth may be soft and you will reach sooner, but you will reach all the same. So keep just one question, there is no need to change.
[The next sannyasin said that although she had done most of the therapies available in the ashram, she continued to have small areas on her breasts, hips and thighs, that she felt were blocked.
The therapy referred to in the following conversation is known as Rolfing, or Structural Integration.]
You have to pass through Rolfing... it is going to help you. It will be very painful, and that is why I was not telling you to do it up to now – you had to pass through the other therapies.
Rolfing is painful because it has to relax the body structure. When for many days you have carried a certain emotion, then it becomes part of the body. It is no longer a part of the mind only, so it cannot be dissolved just through the mind. It has to be dissolved in the body also. The body and the muscles take a certain structure; that structure has to be broken, unstructured.
Something about sex has happened in your childhood, and has gone so deep in the body that all the erotic zones – breasts, hips and thighs – have become frozen. The frozenness is just a protection, like an armour around the body, so it is as if you have become sexless. You are an almost perfect celibate.
This is what celibates all over the world have been doing. They freeze certain parts of their body – they have developed certain methods to do this – and once those parts are frozen, they are no longer worried by sex because the energy is not there. But this is not good, because they become deadened, dull. One should go above sex, not below, and this is going below. This sometimes happens, particularly to women, because they have a passive sex.
You may in your childhood have been offended, violated in some way, but you may or may not remember, because sometimes you forget what you don’t want to remember.
You have become so afraid that the very parts which feel sexuality have become frozen. They can be dissolved only through Rolfing.
If you can have the Rolfing done here it will be better, because the Rolfer is a sannyasin and he will be more careful about things. Rolfing is just a technique to relax, but if the Rolfer is meditative he can work deeper than an ordinary Rolfer can do.
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