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CHAPTER 22
6 January 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin said that he was feeling much better since last darshan, when Osho had suggested he undertake much physical activity – running, walking, swimming, or whatever he enjoyed.]
You have much energy and you had not been using it creatively. Whenever energy is not used creatively it becomes destructive, stagnant, and by and by a prison of solid rock is created around you.
There are two types of people – those with high energy and those with low energy. If the high energy people don’t use their energy there will be problems: aggression, anger – anger for no reason at all, and against any and everybody – violence, hatred, jealousy.
Low energy people have a different type of problem – sadness, lethargy, a disinterestedness in life, and a dragging and dull attitude. So the problems of a low energy person need to be tackled in a different way. He needs more relaxation, and methods which don’t use energy, but rather allow him to relax into the non-tense so that energy is not dissipated in any way. Buddhist methods, Vipassana, are for low energy people. For a high energy person such methods will be a problem. He would not know what to do – so much energy and nothing to do, so the energy becomes suppressed. Dynamic methods and catharsis are for high energy people.
The East is basically low energy: poverty, malnutrition, and centuries and centuries of passivity. The West is high energy. You can divide it into male and female, yin and yang. Male means a high energy person, and female means a low energy person – it has nothing to do with man and woman.
So you are a high energy person, remember that always. Whenever you feel any problem arising, that is simply an indication that you need more work, more creativity. It doesn’t matter what you
do, but do something physical – anything physical is beautiful. If you don’t, then the mind uses the energy round and round in circles.
So swim or dance – do something with the body. Body movements are going to help you tremendously. It has been good, and you look perfectly well. But remember, don’t forget!
[A sannyasin said that many of the problems she had, or imagined she had, were dropping.]
They do drop – one just needs to be a little patient. Everything drops of its own accord, because in the first place it has come of its own accord.
This should be a continual remembrance: that everything arises on its own and subsides on its own. You are just a witness sitting on the bank, and the river flows by. Sometimes it is in flood – when it is raining; sometimes it passes slowly – when it is summer. You are just a watcher, it is none of your concern.
This is what is the attitude of a meditator – to look at everything but not to jump into it. Whatsoever passes is good. Sometimes happiness comes, sometimes sadness, anger, jealousy – you need not make them your problems. You have the attitude as if you are waiting at the railway station in the waiting room. So many people coming and going – good and bad, saint and sinner – it is none of your concern; you simply sit in your chair unconcerned. You are waiting for your train, and these people are not coming for you – you don’t even know who they are. You are not in a judging mood of who is good and who is bad, because you judge only when you think this is your home.
Let the whole world be just a waiting room. We are wailing for our train, and sooner or later we go. Whenever your train arrives you move.…
The mind is just a waiting room, so be aware of it. Soon you will come to a great insight that everything arises on its own, and if you interfere you delay the process. So let this be the motto: Acceptance – no interference. What can you do? The rain is coming and clouds have gathered in the sky; there is much thunder and lightning, but what can you do? You simply watch, and then sooner or later they disappear.
Your mind is also a sky. You are beyond it. You can watch your thoughts moving just as you watch clouds float by. You are the watcher – and when you see that, you will see that there are no problems left.
You follow me? Just try!
[The Tao group were present at darshan this evening.]
[A sannyasin says: I’ve been looking for areas in myself to work on, and I feel like there is nothing!]
There is nothing. This has to be understood: some people sometimes take lives to understand a simple thing – that there is nothing to do. One has just to start from this moment; nothing is lacking or missing. But there is this idea that one has to prepare first.
It is just like when a child is born. He is ready to breathe – no preparation is needed, everything is ready. Just a good cry and the lungs start functioning, the breathing comes. Sometimes it is necessary that the doctor slaps the child on the bottom to give him a jerk.
That is all a master can do. He can give you a slap, a jerk, so that you start breathing. Otherwise everything is ready.
Preparation is a wrong notion that has been given by the society. If you want to appear in an examination, you have to prepare for years, but this is not an examination. Life is not an examination! It needs no preparation. Trees are living perfectly beautifully, animals also. Only man is missing because he is trying to prepare first.
Just start living, and you will suddenly see that everything is always available. There is nothing to do, nothing to prepare to become capable – you are capable. The whole effort here is to make you aware in as many ways as possible that you are ready to live, to be ecstatic, to celebrate.
[A group member said she had felt some anxiety prior to doing the group... and that in the group she had gone to the very depths of sadness, but that she felt it had been good on the whole, and that the process had diffused a lot of things.]
Mm, you are looking very calm and quiet.
In fact anxieties never come true, and we waste our lives thinking about them. Ninety percent of one’s fears never actualise. That’s why I asked if these anxieties were before the group or in it, because you could flow – so the whole anxiety was baseless. Let that become an integrated understanding in you, so that next time, or whenever you are moving into a new thing, don’t start the anxiety again.
All anxieties are useless because the future is unknown. It never comes according to your expectations or fears. It has its own way of coming, and it doesn’t ask you, so why be unnecessarily worried?
Wait, and when it comes, see... whatsoever you can do, do. Everybody is capable of doing things when they are needed. Life sends you absolutely prepared for any situation that is possible.
You could flow, and when you flow never ask only for highs because that is patent foolishness. If you ask only for highs, then where will the depths go?
If you ask only for happiness and you are afraid of sadness, then how can you flow?
Flow means going into the depths, but going so totally that there is no resistance. Flow means going to the height, but going so totally that there is no clinging. Flow means always remaining free to move: moving with life wherever it leads, whatsoever its unknown goal. Once you start fixing your goal against life, then you are not flowing.
If life wants you to be sad, be sad – life knows more. If life wants you to weep and cry, then weep and cry – life knows more. Don’t start trying to be more clever than life itself; that is the human stupidity.
Just flow with it! Be like a small child who is following his father. Maybe the father is afraid of where he is going, but the child is happy and singing, because he knows the father is with him and knows where they are going.
That is the beauty of the religious mind. I call that mind religious which trusts life and says, ‘Wherever it is going it knows better than me. I have just come, a late arrival, and life has been always and always and always there.’ Just trust it.
That is the whole meaning of the Tao group – to flow. If you have a choice, if you say you will not move into sadness, that you want only happiness, then you cannot flow. Flow is only possible if you accept everything as it is, unconditionally.
You could have gone deeper into it if there was not this little resistance about going into depth. Go into depth and you will come up: the deeper you go, the higher you rise. It is exactly like the trees. The deeper their roots go underneath, the higher their branches rise into the sky; it is always in the same proportion. If a tree doesn’t want to go deep, is afraid of the unknown earth – dark, mysterious, deathlike – then the tree cannot rise towards the sun.
This is the way all beings grow. A really mature person is always ready to move wherever life leads. This I call maturity – the understanding that life is greater than you, that you are just a tiny part of it.
So why worry? There is no reason! Move with life.…
[A group member says: I had this feeling this morning of, just... being] That’s the whole point!
[She continues: I think I had the best meditation in my life in the group.]
That’s what meditation is – just to be. Then there is no problem. If you can just be, everything is resolved, solved.
[Another group member says: I’m getting more than I could ever dream!]
That’s right! Life is more beautiful than any dream, and has more to give than anybody can dream, but we settle for less. We settle for nothing and we think that is life. Only when we start entering into new worlds which were always there but of which we were unaware, only then one starts feeling what a wastage, what a criminal wastage. So many people go on living in darkness, and not only that, they resist any effort to bring light to them.
Good! Much more is on the way!
[Another group member says: My main sense of the group as I walked into the room was of endlessness: there seemed to be no beginning and no end. It seemed like an intensification of life.]
Very good... you understood. Nothing has any beginning and nothing has any end. All beginnings and all ends are arbitrary; they are human, and not really true. It is good that the group should have
the feeling of being part of an ongoing process of life. It just gives you a glimpse, but that’s what life is. Very good!
[The group member adds: I come here with all sorts of questions about what to do with myself. At the same time, I usually find that it becomes clear as time goes on.]
Mm mm. Just time is needed, and patience – then things clear by themselves.
When I answer your questions, I knowingly answer them, because no answers can be given really. It is just helping you to wait a little more.
The questions are yours, so how can my answers help? Your answer has to come – but you are in a hurry and you cannot wait – so I give you toys to play with, mm? Time passes, you do this and that, until by and by you become aware that those questions have dissolved, are no longer there. When a question leaves without an answer, it leaves no trace behind. An answer can suppress a question but it cannot resolve it. I can silence you and your question, but it will remain there underneath, and it will try ways and means to come up again. It will try to assert itself in different forms, in different terminology.
So all my answers are just to help you so that you don’t become desperate, so that you wait. Life gives answers, only life gives answers. Good!
[Another group member says: I didn’t flow much with the group. I feel very stuck with myself, and feel a resistance to opening up.]
Remain as you are... that very effort is creating more resistance. Accept yourself as you are: accept that you are closed, stuck, full stop. There is no need to do anything.
Participate in the groups, just sit silently, and tell the group that you are allowed to be as you are. One day, suddenly you will find that everything has collapsed – and then you will come out of it. You will not come out of h by effort, because effort is always partial: on one hand you make the effort to come out, on the other you are pulling yourself in. You take one step forward, and the other foot is ready to withdraw. It becomes futile, meaningless, and you are unnecessarily miserable.
I was waiting until this day, and I was watching what to do. Now this is my message to you: accept yourself as you are; there is no need to be anybody else. God must be trying to do something by your being stuck. There must be some purpose behind your being closed.
Drop the fighting, and instantly you drop it the resistance will disappear – because there is no point in being resistant. You will not open gradually, but suddenly.
There are flowers that open gradually and flowers that open suddenly with a Noise. You will open suddenly, so don’t be worried!
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