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CHAPTER 18
2 January 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin said he needed to return home as he was unwell. He was apprehensive about going, and felt he would miss Osho’s physical presence. He was also afraid that he would fall back into his old patterns again.]
No, no. I will not allow that, don’t be worried. That is my responsibility, mm? You will not fall back.
Once you start growing you cannot fall back, but the fear does arise. In fact the more you grow, the more you become fearful of falling back. The fear is natural, but it comes only to those who are attaining something. Those who are not attaining anything are unafraid, because they are already beggars and they have nothing to lose.
Once you start attaining something you have to protect that wealth, and so fear arises – but it is a good sign. Whenever a man becomes afraid that he is losing something, it means he is gaining something.
But go back – you will not lose it. This is one of the criteria: that if anything is achieved there is no way to lose it again. If you have come to know something, how can you unknow it? If you have experienced anything, is there any way to unexperience it? There isn’t. And a spiritual experience is such a deep and intense phenomenon that once it starts happening, you will never be the same again. Even if you are thrown back into darkness, that light will still be there.
It is good sometimes to go back to the old situation, to the old people, the old friendships. To go back to the old world where you have lived before – before something started growing in you, before the seed started sproutmgis good. Go back to the past where there is every possibility that you may become the old.
Going is good because that will show you if you have really attained something. You may go back to the old world, but you cannot become the old, and in contrast you will see your growth more illuminated. You will see that you have attained something that cannot be lost. That which can be lost is not worth attaining. Only that which cannot be lost is worthwhile, because only that is your nature.
So observe what happens, and you will come back very very happy... and by going there this fear will disappear. I am in favour of people going again and again to the old situation, because it gives you a criterion to judge.
In the past, a tragedy happened to the East. People started becoming so afraid of the world that they simply started escaping. They moved to the Himalayas, to the monasteries; and then they started feeling a little silent, happy, unworried – living in such a peaceful atmosphere. Then they became afraid to come back to the world, to the old. This fear is bad because it shows that they had not really attained. Perhaps because of the Himalayasthe silence, the peace and the natural beauty, the tremendous quality of eternity of the Himalayas – they fell under the illusion that they had attained something. That is a reflected glory; they are simply reflecting the glory of the Himalayas.
To me, this is a basic training: that they should be sent again and again to the bazaar, to the marketplace, to test what they have attained. If it remains in the marketplace, then it is yours. If just by moving to the marketplace it was lost, then it was of the Himalayas, not of you.
For so many centuries people were so afraid that in the East, religion became completely separate from life. Life became of the market, religion of the monastery, and they became unbridgeable; both became lopsided. A marketplace which has no meditation in it will become absolutely ugly. It will be alive but it will be ugly. A monastery which is not courageous enough to go to the market will be silent – but dead. So the monasteries became dead and the marketplace remained alive, too alive – alive with madness.
This is the situation that happened in the East and it can happen in the West too, because now the West is moving on the same lines; the same spiritual search has come. Before that tragedy happens, I would like to work in a totally different dimension, so that life, the ordinary life, is never divided and separated from the religious life.
Have you seen the way a tight-rope walker balances? That is true meditation. When he feels that he is falling to the left, immediately he leans towards the right to gain balance. By the time he has gained balance again he sees that now he has moved too much towards the right; he immediately moves towards the left to regain balance. And this is the way – moving between left and right he remains just between the two.
Watch a tight-rope walker – that is the whole life of a sannyasin. One should always be leaning to both sides and always gaining balance.
So go, mm? And I am coming with youl
[Osho spoke next to a sannyasin who is to begin massage in the ashram.]
Continue working, mm? Massage is something that you can start learning but you never finish. It goes on and on, and the experience becomes continuously deeper and deeper, and higher and higher. Massage is one of the most subtle arts – and it is not only a question of expertise. It is more a question of love.
First learn the technique, Prageet will teach you that – and then the remaining I will teach you. (chuckling) Learn the technique – then forget it. Then just feel, and move by feeling. When you learn deeply, ninety percent of the work is done by love, ten percent by the technique. By just the very touch, a loving touch, something relaxes in the body.
If you love and feel compassion for the other person, and feel the ultimate value of hum; if you don’t treat him as if he is a mechanism to be put right, but an energy of tremendous value; if you are grateful that he trusts you and allows you to play with his energy – then by and by you will feel as if you are playing on an organ. The whole body becomes the keys of the organ and you can feel that a harmony is created inside the body. Not only will the person be helped, but you also.
Massage is needed in the world because love has disappeared. Once the very touch of lovers was enough. A mother touched the child, played with his body, and it was massage. The husband played with the body of his woman and it was massage; it was enough, more than enough. It was deep relaxation and part of love.
But that has disappeared from the world. By and by we have forgotten where to touch, how to touch, how deep to touch. In fact touch is one of the most forgotten languages. We have become almost awkward in touching, because the very word has been corrupted by so-called religious peo ple. They have given it a sexual colour. The word has become sexual and people have become afraid. Everybody is on guard not to be touched unless he allows it.
Now in the West the other extreme has come. Touch and massage have become sexual. Now massage is just a cover, a blanket, for sexuality. In fact neither touch nor massage are sexual. They are functions of love. When love falls from its height it becomes sex, and then it becomes ugly.
So be prayerful. When you touch the body of a person be prayerful – as if God Himself is there, and you are just serving Him. Flow with total energy. And whenever you see the body flowing and the energy creating a new pattern of harmony, you will feel a delight that you have never felt before. You will fall into deep meditation.
While massaging, just massage. Don’t think of other things because those are distractions. Be in your fingers and your hands as if your whole being, your whole soul is there. Don’t let it be just a touch of the body. Your whole soul enters into the body of the other, penetrates it, relaxes the deepest complexes.
And make it a play. Don’t do it as a job; make it a game and take it as fun. Laugh and let the other laugh too.
Soon you will be helping many people..
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