5

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‌CHAPTER 5

15 December 1975 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[An elderly woman, the mother of a sannyasin who was also present, says: I turned my back on religion many years ago, so I’ve been saying no for a very long time.]

That’s very good! I was talking about you this morning! (Osho had talked about yea-sayers and no-sayers that morning in the discourse.) The religion to which you were saying no is not religion at all, and it is good to say no to it. Only religious people will say no to it.

[The woman says: I’ve been calling myself a humanitarian.]

Yes, that is a new name for it, but not as good as ‘religion’. (a little chuckle) Because unless the human mind tries to reach beyond itself, it cannot grow. All growth comes to you only when you try to reach higher than your best. When you try for the impossible, then only the possible happens. Humanitarianism is good, but then only humanity becomes the goal and that is not enough. Good, but not enough.

... And God does not mean anything else: just an effort to bring your humanity to its total functioning. God is just a function of the total human being – a quality. When you are functioning at your optimum, at your omega point, then you are God. It has been good that you remained a skeptic, that you said no. Now your yes can be total.

[Two days later in discourse Osho mentions this same woman, saying:]

A few days before, a beautiful woman, a rare person, came to see me. She has been a humanist for her whole life – not believing in God, a no-sayer.

She told me that she was surprised that she was here. Her surprise is natural. She has never been to any temple, church, or to so-called religious people – and now she has come here. And not only that, she wanted to be initiated into sannyas.

She herself could not believe what was happening! But I could look into her. She has been able to come to me because she has loved human beings. She has taken the first step towards the temple. She may not have gone to any temple, that is not needed. She may never have thought about God – that is not needed – but she has taken an authentic step. She has loved human beings.

She has been a no-sayer, but that is the base to say yes. She has earned her sannyas. She has arrived, her whole life has been a preparation for it. She said no; to say yes to human beings she denied God. Perfectly good, as it should be. Say no to God, but never say no to human beings, because if you say no to human beings... then you will never be able to reach God!

[Asanga] is one of the most beautiful names. Asanga was a Buddhist mystic. Literally the word means unattached, non-attached, or one who is alone; one who doesn’t need the other, mm? But the name belongs to a Buddhist mystic, and something in you is going to fit with it. Two words have to be understood: one is loneliness, the other is aloneness. Loneliness is a negative state, aloneness is very positive. In the dictionary their meanings are the same, but not in life, not in existence.

You feel lonely when you miss the other. You feel alone when you have yourself. You feel lonely when you are bored with yourself. You feel alone when you are delighted in your being.

Asanga means alone. So alone, like a Himalayan peak. So absolutely alone that the other is not needed. That doesn’t mean that you will not love. In fact only a person who does not need the other can be loving. When the need disappears then love arises. If you need the other, you use him. Then all your love is a sort of manipulation, a deep exploitation, because you are using the other as a means. Because you cannot be alone and you need somebody to fill your loneliness, you talk about love, but it is not really love. You are using the other, and love can never use the other. For love, the other is the end and can never be reduced to a means. This is the highest morality there is: when the other is the end and not a means.

Only a person who is absolutely alone, who is capable of aloneness, can be capable of love – because it is not a need. On the contrary, love is an overflow. It is not a relationship; it becomes a state of being. You may be sitting alone in a room but love goes on flowing. There may be nobody to share it, but it goes on flowing. It is just like a flower that blooms on a path where nobody passes, but still it goes on sending its fragrance to the air, to the winds. Or a star at night – nobody is looking at it but it goes on shining. Whether you are with somebody or alone makes no difference then. It is a state of being.

I have given you the name Asanga for all these reasons. You have to learn to be alone. I am not saying that you have to escape from the other, no. I am saying that you have to realise yourself. Don’t escape from yourself to the other.

That is going to be your life work: to attain to a purity of aloneness where love can become a state and not a relationship.

That is freedom – what we in India have been calling moksha, nirvana, the last word in freedom – where you don’t need the other; where love is not a need but has become an overflowing of energies. So keep it in mind. Good.…

[A sannyasin says: I hear myself saying the same thing over and over again. I’m just – desperate. ]

Mm mm. Accept it. Accept it, because mind is a mechanism. Mind is repetitive and it can never invent a single original thought, never. That is not the capacity of the mind, so you are asking something that is not possible. And because you go on asking, you become more and more frustrated about it. Mind can only repeat that which it knows.

It is as if you feed a computer and then you expect that that computer is going to give you something that you have not fed into it. It cannot. The mind is a biocomputer: you feed it with something, it goes on repeating it. It is a parrot.

So the first thing to understand is that this is the nature of the mind. It is not something peculiar happen to you. Once you understand this – that the mind is repetitive – you drop the effort, and suddenly you see that you are separate from the mind. You are not the mind. So the real thing is to accept the mind and grow into a deep unconcern.

Who is it that is aware that the mind goes on repeating, that asks that it should stop? Just become aware of that. You are that.

So first accept the limitations of the mind. You accept the body limitations; you know that you cannot fly – but nobody tries. But the mind is invisible. You don’t know what is happening to Mukta’s mind, what is happening to Teertha’s mind. (two sannyasins sitting close by) You are confined to your mind, Mukta to hers, and Teertha to his – and nobody knows what is happening to the other.

In fact everybody needs a small window in the head so people can look in! (the group laughs) Then they will not be worried about such things because it is happening to everybody. Then you simply accept that this is just natural. The blood goes on moving in the body, the breathing goes on moving in and out; blood circulates, breathing circulates, thinking circulates – nothing is wrong in it!

So second thing: become unconcerned. Soon you will see it is just like the barking of the dogs there. (the local dogs were arguing heatedly somewhere in the background as Osho was speaking) Far away in the night the dogs of the mind go on barking and you are unconcerned. And the more unconcerned you are, the bigger the distance becomes. One day you come to realise that the distance between you and your mind is greater than the distance between you and the farthest away galaxy. Because the galaxy is still at a certain distance from you, it can be measured. But from the consciousness, the thought is so far away that it cannot be measured. Even in light years it cannot be measured, because the difference is not of distance; it is of different planes.

It is just as the difference between you and other human beings is not very much, but between you and a tree it is very much; and then between you and a rock it is tremendous.

Mind and consciousness are diametrically opposite poles, but this has to be realised by and by. The first step is to accept the limitations of the mind, don’t expect the impossible; and secondly, become unconcerned, forget about it.

And feel blessed that the mind is still making noise, the clock is still tick-tocking. There is nothing to worry about, just a distance has to be felt – and it is there. It is only a question of feeling it. You understand me? Try it!

[A sannyasin going to the West says she works as a psychologist, a mental health counsellor, in hospitals. She is also thinking of working privately.]

Start working privately, and you can be more helpful. By and by introduce meditation wherever you are and whatsoever you do. Many mental patients can be helped through meditation. In fact western psychology has not proved of much help. So with psychiatry, side by side start helping patients to meditate. If a mental patient thinks he can do something about his illness himself, that very idea helps tremendously. If he feels that he cannot do anything – that he just has to remain helplessly dependent on others, on drugs, on psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, treatments, electric shock and a thousand and one things – by and by he loses confidence. But you can tell him that he can do something and can come out of his misery, and that it is not in fact a disease, but, rather, an attitude. Now western psychology is discovering that madness is not always a disease; rather, it is a hiding place. Life had become too much for the person and he could not find anywhere to hide. So madness becomes a hiding place, a defence.

[The sannyasin answers: The problem is that most people will still want to hide.]

No, not once he knows that it is not a disease. That hiding is not conscious, it is absolutely unconscious. He has come to feel the convenience of it, but it has never been a conscious decision.

For example, you are burdened too much with financial difficulties; too many family responsibilities, and a thousand and one problems. You can’t sleep well, you feel depressed, and by and by you see that if people start thinking that you have gone out of your mind, then suddenly they don’t make you responsible. On the contrary, you become their responsibility; then they have to help you. And once the unconscious gets the hint, it relaxes.

But this is unconscious. Consciously no one would like to be mad. At such a great cost, no one would like to. But once it happens it becomes a comfortable thing. The government takes care of you, everybody sympathises, the children cannot demand, the wife cannot quarrel with you – you are not in your senses. And then, too, one does not want to come out, and that too is unconscious.

So help them to see the fact: that just for small comforts they are destroying their whole life, missing a great opportunity in which much was possible and still is possible. Tell them that they can do something about it if they decide to come out of it.

It happened once that I stayed in a friend’s house. His father was mad and he had always been so. But I suspected something because the man looked very clever.

So when there was nobody there and I was sitting with this madman, I told him, ‘I suspect you cannot be mad. You look too clever!’

He looked surprised. Then he said, ‘How did you come to know?’

Then he told me the whole story: that his father was a very hard taskmaster and he had learnt a trick – by and by he proved himself mad. It was very comfortable and convenient, with nothing to worry about. The father worked till the day he died, and this boy never had to do anything! Then his children started working – because their father was mad!

‘So,’ he said,‘it was such a convenient thing. First my father worked and now my children work, and I have lived at ease! But, please don’t tell anybody!’

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