9

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‌CHAPTER 9

22 December 1975 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Two sannyasins, who were returning to England and wanting to start a centre, asked Osho if they should approach the local mental hospital to introduce the meditations to the patients.]

Yes, you can help them to do some dynamic types of meditations. That will help very much because mad people need nothing else but catharsis. It is the only treatment, and it is because people have been so suppressed that they are in such a bad space. If everything is allowed, if they are allowed to be mad, then madness will disappear.’, The whole world is mad because nobody is allowed to be mad. We must make it a point that everyone has a certain space reserved where he can simply be mad, where there is no need to be worried about anybody else. If a person can be mad each day for half an hour, then for the remaining twenty-three and a half hours he will experience only tremendous sanity.

Madness is also part of humanity; it is a deep balance. When you become too serious you need a little laughter to bring you down to earth. When you become too tense you need something to help you to relax. In fact, there are many socially accepted ways in which we allow people to be mad.

For example, in a football match or a volley-ball match the spectators almost go mad. But it is accepted, and they feel very relaxed. Even watching it on TV they go mad – they jump and become very excited. But it is an accepted thing.

If somebody from Mars was watching for the first time, he would not be able to believe what is happening, because there seems to be no need to be so excited. Mm?just a few people throwing a ball from here to there, and others are returning it – and millions of people are so excited! They don’t know that this is a socially accepted avenue of release, a device. And each country has its own, creates its own device.

War is also a device that is needed continually so that people can go mad, can hate and destroy. And they can hate and destroy for a great cause, so there is no condemnation! So you destroy and you feel good, you feel happy, and there is no guilt – and you are simply becoming mad. War will continue until and unless we allow everybody a certain amount of madness to enjoy.

So you go and do the meditations and let the mad people watch. They will enjoy it tremendously, and they will say that there is not much difference between us and you! Then they will participate and you will be able to help them.

A madman doesn’t need a doctor, he needs a friend. A doctor is too impersonal, too far away, too technical. And a doctor always looks at a madman as if he is an object to be treated. In his very look there is condemnation: something is wrong and has to be put right. A madman needs someone who loves, who cares and is friendly; someone who does not make him an objective thing, and accepts his individuality. And not only that, but also accepts his madness, because he accepts deep down that each man has a sane part and an insane part.

Insanity is the night part of man. It is natural, there is nothing wrong in it. When you can say to a madman that not only are you mad but I am too, immediately a bridge is made. And then he is available, and it is possible to help him.

So go, that will be helpful... and I am going with you!

[Members of the Tathata group had darshan tonight. One person had discovered that though he had booked himself up for all the available groups, he did not want to change.]

You want to change, and that is why you joined the group, but when things start happening you become afraid.

Growth is difficult. It hurts because something has to be dropped; because only then something new grows. Something has to be destroyed and only then something is created. A death, however small, is needed for a rebirth.

So you want to be reborn, but you don’t want to go through the pain – that is what is happening. You would like to have the whole sky; but you don’t want to leave the comfort of the home. That is why you think about that room of yours in Frankfurt – it is just symbolic. You are continuously worried about what will happen to it. Nothing is going to happen to any room. Nothing is happening to you, so what can happen to the room!

But it is not a question of the room. It is a question of security, of comfort and convenience. You have become accustomed to living in a shell, and whenever a fear arises that the shell may break, you shrink away, withdraw. And then you say that you don’t want anything, you don’t want to change. But you do!

So do the marathon as well, and really do it. Howsoever much it hurts, let it, and accept it, and soon you will see that a very beautiful feeling is arising out of that.

[To a sannyasin who felt resistance to the pain of growing, Osho said:]

Pain is a part of growth and is very necessary. Nobody can grow without pain, so if you want to grow, you have to accept it. If you don’t grow, pain may not be there, but suffering will be. And that is the difference between suffering and pain.

Pain is beautiful because it has a potential to grow, and it is something on the way. Suffering is ugly, impotent, barren – nothing comes out of it. One goes on suffering and suffering and suffering, but nothing comes out of it; it is absolutely barren. Always choose pain, but never choose suffering. And that is the difference – you understand me? In the dictionary there may be no difference between pain and suffering, but in life there is a tremendous difference. Pain is beautiful – accept it, be courageous. Nothing is going to happen out of suffering so never accept it.

Seek some way to grow, because suffering accepted becomes hell; pain accepted becomes heaven, mm? (she smiles tentatively)

It has been good; now you can smile!

[Another group member asked if he should try to remain the watcher, a witness, in groups.]

No, don’t be a witness, not at all. If you try to be a witness you are divided; you are not one and unitary, and all growth needs you to be unitary. So these groups will lose all meaning if you remain continually a witness. You are not in them, and it is as if you are acting a role and. watching the role as well.

Be in the role, totally in it; let it take possession of you. Only then will you become foolish; otherwise you will remain wise – and wisdom never helps. There is a wisdom that comes out of foolishness; only that helps, and that has a totally different quality.

So put aside all that you know about psychoanalysis and mind – forget that you know anything about it. Just follow the group and the instructions as a small child, trusting. Then much will happen.

That knowledge is always there later on and you can bring it back. It can be useful to understand what has happened, to interpret. Knowledge can be good as a retrospective thing, but if you carry it in the moment then it is a barrier. This way the knowledge is used and you are not used by it. Try it!

[A trainee groupleader said that this group had been a shattering experience...’I felt totally incapable of doing anything...’]

But you have understoood completely wrongly.

The shattering experience happened not because you are incapable, but because you think yourself capable. It was not because suddenly unconfidence arose in you, but because you felt too confident in yourself. And to feel oneself too confident is a disease. That disease has been shattered. It is part of the ego to feel too self-confident and capable.

One has to accept the incapability, the helplessness; one has to accept whatever the situation is. And today you have again started in the old pattern: you are gaining self-confidence again. And again the shattering experience will come some day.

Now drop it! Don’t try to be self-confident again!

What is wrong in being unconfident? What is wrong in being hesitant, in being in a state of helplessness, incapable? In fact that is how reality is. Everybody is helpless, and has to be, because everybody is such a tiny part, how can you think yourself capable? So infinite a number of possibilities surround you; so much unknown comes each day and has to be encountered. How you have lived up to now is a sheer miracle. There is no reason for it.

The feeling of being shattered came because your confidence was lost. The confidence is false; just on the surface like a crust of thin ice. The crust is very-deceptive and any day you will fall into it, so it is better to know it. Just underneath is ocean, an infinite depth, an abyss. A thin layer of ice cannot protect you. It is better to be aware of it and to be aware of the danger.

It was not fear, it has nothing to do with fear. We have been taught, very wrongly, to be self-confident and to always be capable – or at least pretend to be. Man is helpless! The strong are as helpless as the weakest; the difference is not much. When a Napoleon dies, or an Alexander dies, he is just like any ordinary man – as helpless as a beggar, and there is no difference. The difference was only a pretension.

Drop that confidence. Even if for a few days that trembling remains, let it, but don’t try to regain the old thin layer of ice. If you can remain with your incapability, your helplessness, I don’t say you will never be weak again. The weakness arises with the idea that you are not weak. Then you have a comparison, an image, and when you fall short of it the trouble arises.

Once you accept whatsoever is, suddenly comparisons disappear: you are simply alone and yourself. Nobody is like you, nobody has ever been, or will be, like you; you are simply unique, incomparable.

This experience has been beautiful. Don’t take it wrongly or you will again restructure yourself.

All these groups are to unstructure you, to destroy you – you as you are – and just to allow the spontaneity in you, as you were before you were born, as you will be when you die.

It was tremendously valuable but you threw it completely, and it won’t be of much use. You may even become more structured than before, because now you know that the old structure doesn’t work so well, you can make a stronger one around you.

Live without a structure, unpatterned, moment to moment, as a flow. These groups don’t need a leader who is himself conditioned, structured. They need a leader who is just a flow, and who can help others also to flow; one who can create a milieu around himself in which others feel that they also can flow, that they can become helpless, like children, and that everything is accepted. But if you don’t accept yourself, how are you going to help others to accept themselves? The first thing the leader needs is to accept himself unconditionally, whatever it is.

All great experiences are shattering. And only that which is creative is also going to be destructive. Only out of chaos a star is born. So be happy about it, be blissful, mm?

[A sannyasin said that her clinging and her possessiveness with her lover had been the cause of their separating. Her boyfriend, who was also present, added that he simply needed some time and space to himself, and so he had escaped.]

So the thing is not to separate, but to understand each other. You love each other, I can feel it, but the love is in difficulty.

... you have to remember a few things. One is that every man needs a space of his own. If you want to love a man and love him forever, and if you want him to love you, never fill his space completely. At least a part, one fourth, has to be given to him. The poor man needs that much!

And that’s the difference between the feminine mind and the male mind. The feminine mind can be full with love, the woman’s whole being can move into love, but a man has other loves also. The love for the woman is only one of his loves. He may also love poetry, music, painting, hunting, and a thousand and one foolishnesses. For a woman, one love is enough.

Once she finds a lover she surrounds him from everywhere. She wants to fill every part and every crevice of his being. But then the lover becomes afraid because he would like some independence; he would like to be alone somewhere, to be himself. So one fourth you have to leave if you want three fourths. This is a bargain!...

Otherwise one day you will lose the whole. For a woman, love is her whole being. And this is a natural thing and has to be understood – a maturity is needed. If the woman had the capacity, she would make the lover a small child again and put him in her womb so she could surround him and have no fear of him escaping. But that cannot be done, so she creates a psychological womb around him – that is what home is.

And even if he is reading, she becomes afraid that he is more interested in reading than in her. Or if he is playing on his flute, she is afraid he is more interested in it. Everything seems to be competitive. She wants his total attention. But this is impossible for a man, and if you force him too much he will escape – or surrender, but then he will be dead.

If a man surrenders totally to a woman he is dead; a husband and no more a lover – he is a slave. Then the woman is not satisfied, because who is satisfied with a slave? She wants someone to whom she can surrender, not someone to surrender to her – he will be useless. So this is the dichotomy, the dilemma: that a woman wants the husband to be hers completely, but when he becomes hers, she is not interested.

It is good that Bhikshu is not surrendering, that he wants to remain independent and wants his own space – just a little space; he is not asking much.

And if you want to be with him, there is no need to cling. He will be with you. Clinging pushes people further away. You give it another try! And I will be with you this time. So whenever there is trouble you come to me; don’t try to settle it yourselves.

Give it a try again, get married! Face each other a little.

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