28

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‌CHAPTER 28

12 January 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[The sannyasins who had done the Aum marathon had darshan this evening.

The groupleader says: I’ve been a leader in the West... I’ve never had anyone to account to. I started to look at what I’m doing, and I realise that a lot is wanting to please you, to get your approval. I think that was important for me. The marathon seemed to be turning out better for the leaders than for the participants, from my point of view.]

Mm mm, I understand. I was thinking that it was going to happen that way, because you have been working on your own. Of course you could have more freedom that way, and there was no one you were accountable to. So it was easier; you could do things more spontaneously. I am here, and that was constantly in the background. That became a problem for your leadership. You could have dropped it – and then it would have been a great maturity for you.

To be free in the sense of being irresponsible is not really freedom. Being responsible and free has something of tremendous value in it. Responsibility becomes a growth for you too, so not only the participants, but the leader too is part of the whole group. If you are working on your own you don’t grow through it – you can’t, because you remain outside. So you help people – you push and pull and manipulate and force, and you create an urgency in them – but you remain an outsider.

That’s what I have been feeling, not only about you, but about all the groupleaders who have come here – and many more will be coming. They have been helpful to other people, but they have not been helpful to themselves. In fact they are in a mess. When I say that, I don’t mean that they have not been helpful; they have been tremendously helpful, but they have become divided. Their own personality is just standing outside the Group, and they have become technicians. So they use a technique, and they help others, but they have a dual personality. When they are dealing with others’

problems they are very true to the point; they know exactly what should be done. But when it comes to their own problems they completely forget their own advice, their own wisdom.

I wanted it this way so you become aware that you still have to grow. Sometimes helping others can become an escape, because you forget your own problems. There is no time or space to think about them; so many people, so many problems that you have to solve. You always have to be the wise guy, so you remain outside. How can you bring up your own problems? If you do, it will be difficult to help others, because they become unconfident about you. So you have to pretend that you are absolutely certain about what you are doing. The act helps others, it certainly helps, but for your own growth it is poisonous.

By and by you will forget completely that you were acting. Your problems will remain in the unconscious, waiting, but by and by you will stop looking at them. In fact you will avoid them whenever they come up.

This is not only for you, but for all groupleaders. This is so for [the Primal Therapy leader, who is also present]. She is perfect in helping others; then her technical knowledge functions. But when it comes to her own problems all technical knowledge flops.

I wanted it to become difficult for you because only then can you become aware that helping is good, and being of service to people is good, but you should not be lost in it. It is your growth, finally, for which you have to do something.

In this group suddenly you were not a leader but a participant too, because I was waiting outside the group. I was forcing you into the group, and that became the problem, and because of that you were not so certain about yourself. That’s why you thought that the group was average, below average, but it wasn’t. The leader wasn’t perfectly a leader. I was pulling your leg. The group was perfectly good, but you were missing your confidence, so your problems were coming in.

That’s how I managed the whole thing. I had forced Sudha to be in it, with Asha there too, and you were in trouble. One woman is enough to create trouble, but your beloved and your ex-wife were both there. They created much trouble; not that they created it, but their presence was there – watching you, watching where you were going, and what you were doing. And on top of it, I was watching continuously! So I know it was difficult, but it can become a ’very very valuable insight to you.

Next time simply relax. You need not be worried about my approval. What you do is not the point, but what you are. Whether you do or not, succeed or fail, is irrelevant. My approval is unconditional, and you can rely on it. You can be a failure and rely on it; you need not bother about being successful.

So next group, rather than working on your own, allow me to work through you, and then you will see the difference. Just work as a vehicle. Whenever you feel hesitant or uncertain, close your eyes and remember me. Suddenly you will feel a bridge between you and the sannyasins.

You have been working with other types of groups, and this was totally different. You belong to me, and they all belong to me. Other groups were all individuals. They were crowds, because each individual existed separately. This, for the first time, was a group, because the sannyasins are not a crowd. They belong to me, and are my family. They have a certain affinity with each other;

That also created trouble – the group was bigger than the leader. You could have tackled each individual easily, but it was not simply a group, mm? This time you made it a problem, and that was your mistake. You could have used it. This time you thought I was coming in between, because they repeated my words, hid behind them. So it became a problem for you – but next time you can use it.

In fact anything that can become a hindrance can become a help. The same stone or rock on the path can become an obstacle or a stepping stone. If you can struggle a little and climb’ the rock, you can reach a higher point of vision – and through using the rock. Next time use me, and then you will see that they are not hiding behind my words. You also try to become my vehicle, and then suddenly you will see there is a bridge, and you will never again find such a beautiful group.

When you go on working with groups, with people, a certain subtle ego goes on being strengthened. Drop that ego. Next time work as my vehicle, my medium, and just be instrumental. Don’t let [yourself] be there, but just my sannyasin helping other sannyasins. You need not be a leader really, but at the most, a catalytic agent. Then you will see a totally different phenomenon arising.

But it was going to be like this for the first group. Next time relax, mm? and work totally differently, and much will happen. Much has happened in this group too. I will ask people now individually, and you will realise that much has happened, but you were so worried you could not see it. Wait here...

[A group member says: All the emotional things, catharting things, seemed to be superficial on the one side, yet on the other seemed to be true, as I feel them. I don’t know if it is because of my knowing it or.… It’s not acting or theatre, because I feel it. Perhaps it’s because I’m aware of it, and that’s why I see the difference, that’s why I see myself doing it.]

If you become aware, then everything becomes superficial, outside you. When a moment of awareness is there, then nothing is deep; everything is outer and superficial because you are standing at the innermost core of your being. From that vantage point everything is superficial. For example we are sitting here in the porch. It is not on the outer or superficial, but from inside the house it will be just on the boundary, on the surface.

The more aware you become, the more things will become superficial. One can become scared sometimes, because even love will look superficial. If you watch and are alert, then whatsoever you do will look like acting, because you are no longer identified with it. It is no longer an act, but acting.

So a really aware person becomes an actor on the great stage of the world. He is never in anything deeply. He cannot be, because something transcendental is always there. Whatsoever he is doing he is always far away. Not that he is not authentic. He is, but he is so deep himself that nothing can be deeper; anything relative is superficial This is a good insight. Nourish and enjoy it more, and don’t start condemning because then you will miss the whole point. Don’t start saying that this is superficial and that nothing deeper is coming – there is nothing deeper.

When consciousness is there, that is the most profound and the deepest thing there is. Even if God is standing there He will be superficial, because He cannot be deeper than your awareness. He will be an object of awareness, just like any other object. Your consciousness is depth itself, abysmal. So it has been a good insight.

Now try to live it twenty-four hours a day. Accept it, and don’t condemn it. It is beautiful, and everything will look superficial and like acting.

[The group member says: It’s very strange... Like a dream.]

Yes, it looks like a dream. It is! That’s why in India, people who have attained to higher consciousness have called the world maya, illusion. It is not that it is unreal, but their depth is such that from there everything looks unreal in comparison. So enjoy it, and don’t be puzzled by it, because in the beginning it is confusing.

You need not go into the past, but just remain more and more alert. The need to go into the past is because you are not aware. [To the groupleader] this has to be understood. In the West, going into the past has become very very prevalent. Since Freud, to go into the past, into one’s memories and dreams, has become very important, and now even more important because of Primal Therapy. It seems that it is the only way to get rid of the past; but there is another way which the East has tried.

Whatsoever you call your past is present right now, in this moment. When you go into your childhood you go in the present tense, because you can never go in the past. You can remember it, but that childhood, and the concept and the memories, are all present herenow.

As we move, the whole past moves with us, and it goes on growing in us. We are carrying it, containing it.

In the East we have tried a more simple method which is quicker and more valid. It is just to become aware of the present moment. There is no need to go anywhere, past or future, but just to be totally aware of the content of the mind, whatever it is. Suddenly the bridge is broken, and you are no longer concerned with it. It is as if it is somebody else’s life, and no longer your autobiography. You are just the watcher, and the watcher has no autobiography, because in that depth nothing ever happens, there are no events. It is simply pure and uncorrupted.

So you can go into the past and try to clean your mind of all memories. But it is almost impossible to finish if you do this, because the moment you have finished with this life, another one immediately starts. When you have finished with that one, another lifeBuddha tried it, but it is non-ending.

When you have finished with your lives as a human being, you have still to go into your lives as animals and trees and rocks, and you can go on and on. In fact, (turning to the primal therapist) you never really come to the primal. To come to the primal means to come to the very beginning of existence, and that’s not possible There has never been any beginning, because existence is without a beginning; it has always been there. If you go on cleaning, it is non-ending. You can clean a little spot, that’s all, but you cannot clean your whole being.

Then isn’t it possible to reach to the purest point in you? It is possible, directly, now, with no need to go into the past. You can take a jump directly from the present moment, and become alert and aware. Suddenly everything is just on the surface, just ripples on the surface, and you are not bothered. In fact you don’t belong to it, nor it to you. A great distance exists between you and all that has happened to you. It is good to try, mm? then one becomes more aware – but there is no need for you to. Just become more and more aware...

Just remain alert, and happily alert. Don’t make it a serious thing; be happily, joyfully alert!

[Another group member says: I feel that my heart is opening. I don’t know what exactly has happened in this group, but I can feel it.]

Very good. There are things that you can only feel but never say, and they are the real things. Things that you can relate and describe are worthless. When something really happens it is indescribable. You cannot say it but you can feel it; it permeates your whole being.

Try to live from the heart more and more. Whenever it happens that your heart is feeling a little open, don’t miss that opportunity, because the door to the divine is open in that moment. Catch hold of it and taste it as much as you can, so by and by it becomes part of your life.

Feel more – because you had a closed heart – and if a little opening has come to it, help it to become more and more open. Otherwise you will fall again and again into the old pattern and your heart will close again. Then it will remain a memory; then by and by you start forgetting, wondering if it really happened or not.

It is real, but make it more real. Wherever you can find a situation in which you find you can feel – listening to the birds, or singing to the sky, or just sitting silently doing nothing – use it, so that your heart can open more easily, all the petals open.

After such groups you are very sensitive for a few days. If you don’t use that sensitivity then you will become closed again and dull, and things will go back into the old pattern.

A member of the group said that he had told the group that he felt he wanted to make a breakthrough, so the group had formulated a structure in which he was made to lie down, and be as if dead. He told Osho that he had not felt dead at all, and that when he heard them talking, he had felt it wasn’t true at all.]

The same is going to happen when you really die.

Then too it is false, because nobody ever dies. It has been a good insight. So remember on the day you die that it is just like when you ‘died’ in [the Aum marathon] group! It is just as false as this, because death is a drama. Real death is not real, so how can a dramatic death be real! It was just to give you an insight, and it has been good.

Nobody ever dies; it is just a belief of yours and of other people. Death is always outside, it never happens to you. So just do one thing...

Every night before you go to sleep, lie on the bed for five minutes and think that you are dying; enact the whole drama. Remember the group surrounding you, talking about you as if you are dead, but you knowing you are not. But go on thinking you are dying. And thinking... thinking... fall into sleep.

Soon you will become aware that when you think you are dying, something in you – your body and your mind – lose their grip, but you become more and more alert. You feel more and more deathless.

It is one of the old meditations. Buddha used to send his disciples to the hindu cemetery, shmashan, to watch dead bodies being burned. Every disciple had to go, and had to remain there for at least three months, day and night. Many people would come to burn bodies and the disciples just had to sit and watch. The meditation was to think that it was their body that was being burned, that was in among the flames.

One day, suddenly they would understand the whole thing and start to laugh – because they would understand that it is only the body that dies and nothing else!

[Osho spoke next with the sannyasin to whom, last darshan, he had said to simply be herself; that she was not to try to do anything against her resistance to changing, but was to attend all the groups – even if she just sat in the corner and watched.

She said she had felt guilty when the group confronted her about her attitude.]

No, I only send you into the groups to create trouble! You do it perfectly well, because now all the groupleaders are afraid of you! (much laughter from the group; pained expressions from the groupleaders!) A trouble-maker is needed, otherwise things become too easy for the groupleaders. So you remain the way you are. Now which group are you going to do?

[She counted off on her fingers all the groups she had done, which were all those available except Vipassana. Osho said she could rest for a few days, and then do the Vipassana, adding:]

But you are not to defeat anyone there because there is nobody to defeat, no groupleader, nothing, mm? It is going to succeed because in this group you are alone, so if you defeat anyone you defeat yourself.

It is up to you whether you do it or not. It may suit you perfectly because there are no enforcements, nothing. And it is not cathartic, there is nothing you have to bring out. You simply have to sit silently and move within.

There is nothing wrong. All these groups have been helpful because you have become more aware of things that are within you: your ego, your resistance and fight, your non-cooperation. It is as if the whole world is at stake if you change. You are clinging to something that is not worth clinging to. But it is perfectly natural, there are people like that. There is nothing to feel guilty or condemned about.

As far as I am concerned, you have been very helpful! Even if you change later on, I will send you to a few groups just to create problems! You are my representative there!

[Another participant says: For me it was more an experience of seeing the conditions I put on my growth. The groupleader says I have so much rubbish – but I can’t find it.]

Mind is rubbish! It is not that you have rubbish and somebody else hasn’t. It is rubbish, and if you go on bringing rubbish out, you can go on and on; you can never bring it to a point where it ends. It is self-perpetuating rubbish, so it is not dead, it is dynamic. It grows and has a life of its own. So if you cut it, leaves will sprout again.

Bringing it out doesn’t mean that you will become empty. It will only make you aware that this mind that you thought is you, with which you have been identified up to now, is not you. By bringing it up, you will become aware of the separation, the gulf, between you and it. The rubbish remains but you are not identified with it, that’s all. You become separate, you know you are separate.

So you have only to do one thing for seven days: don’t try to fight with the rubbish, and don’t try to change it. Simply watch, and just remember one thing, ‘I am not this.’ Let this be the mantra: ‘I am not this.’ Remember it, and become alert and see what happens.

There is a change immediately. The rubbish will be there, but it is no longer a part of you. That remembrance becomes a renunciation of it.

[Another participant says: I didn’t do the whole group. All of a sudden I felt, ‘Now it’s enough!’... I’ve got certain habits, but I’m not aware how to change them I guess.]

No, there is no need to change anything. Just awareness is enough – things change on their own... You have not done anything wrong. When your inner being says that that is enough, it is enough.

You have to listen to your own inner voice. Even if it leads you into error, takes you astray, you have to listen to it then too. One has to learn to listen to one’s inner voice, and to interpret it. You will commit mistakes a few times, but by and by they will become less, till the time it becomes absolutely clear. So always listen to it.

[She adds: Grown-up people from my childhood have tried to condemn me. They have always said it is wrong.]

Yes, grown-ups have that habit. (laughter) They enjoy condemning people. But don’t be worried. They are not grown-ups, mm? They have remained a little childish. When they were children, grown-ups tried this trick with them, so now they are repeating the same with others.

This is how diseases go on perpetuating themselves for centuries. You cop out of it Don’t condemn anybody. Even if you feel that the other is absolutely wrong, don’t condemn him. Condemnation is more wrong than any wrong.

Never condemn anybody – that is the quality of a religious person, who accepts and doesn’t interfere.

[An assistant groupleader says: I became really aware that I have a huge ego, really huge, and I don’t feel that it’s healthy. The more I’m hearing, the more I feel that it isn’t healthy for people in the groups. I’m probably causing more damage than... ]

(almost sadly) It causes damage. It causes damage to you, and to others. It is poison, but you are not yet fed up with it.

That too, you are just saying. You are still nourishing and feeding it. In fact you are afraid that if it leaves, you will be left in a ditch or a vacuum. You are safe-guarding and protecting it in every way, so that it can remain.

We can become addicted to our misery, and rather than becoming empty, we would rather go on being miserable. Rather than being nobody, one would prefer to be the most miserable man in the world. At least one is the most miserable!

This is stupid, but ego is stupid; not your ego, but ego as such and one has to understand this some day. The understanding cannot be forced, so you have to live it, to suffer a little more. But you will suffer, and then by and by.…

There is no other teacher than suffering. You have suffered a lot, and you are suffering now, but you go on hiding it. That’s why you seem to listen, seem to understand, and yet no understanding happens.

[Another leader says: It seems like I should never have touched one block – because now I’ve got hundreds of blocks.]

No, nothing to worry about. Just don’t create a problem out of this. Accept it. This is your way, this is how you are.

I call this maturity – to accept oneself as one is. Don’t create an ideal that you should not be like this, that you should not cop out, that you should finish everything.

‘Shoulds’ have to be dropped. Be natural! Whatsoever happens naturally is good, and all shoulds are repressive. If you are feeling like copping out, cop out! It will be wrong and you will be going against nature if you force yourself and remain in it.

Everyone should feel their own spontaneity. When you feel you want to withdraw, withdraw; when you want to be with someone, be. If you only want to half do something, only half do it. There is no urgency to complete it.…

There is nothing wrong in it, nothing wrong in it. You have an idea that one should do things completely. That idea is creating the trouble. There is nothing wrong in it! You half do things – why be worried about it? That worry is your own creation.

One should start loving oneself, accepting oneself, because there is no other way for you than to be yourself. Just accept, otherwise you will create misery.

All ‘shoulds’ are dangerous, and all ideals and perfectionist ideas are very very dangerous. There is no need for them! Whatsoever you can do, do, and enjoy it. When you feel that you want to get out of it, simply get out – with no grudge, no grumble or guilt, so you remain clean and pure.

[The leader answers: I’ve got so much guilt!]

So accept it! That is what the problem is! If you have guilt, accept that too. Now you will create another should – that one should not have guilt – and then you feel guilty about that!

I am saying that whatsoever you are, relax and accept it. That’s the way God wants you to be, otherwise why should He make [you]? He should have made a second Veeresh! [the groupleader]

So don’t be worried – there is no need.

[A sannyasin said that since he had been in India he had been receiving letters from his wife, which were becoming increasingly demanding. At first he had felt disturbed, but he said that he now no longer felt guilty; he felt she could cope without him for some time more.

Osho said that it was good that he no longer felt guilty because if he did feel guilty and acted out of that guilt, resuming responsibilities for her, he would finally take revenge on her.

Osho pointed out that it was irrelevant whether she could in fact manage alone or not; the main thing was that he should not feel guilty]

... and thinking that she can take care of herself may again be just a trick so you don’t feel guilty.

Simply don’t feel guilty, and don’t find any reasons for it. Just enjoy your non-guilt, and if out of that a responsibility arises, that is beautiful. If out of your non-guilt you feel that she needs you, it is beautiful. If you feel she doesn’t need you, then it is perfectly good, and there is nothing wrong in it.

Never fulfill any responsibility out of guilt, because then it becomes ugly and an imprisonment. Out of non-guilt, responsibility is a sharing and it is beautiful.

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