1

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 1

1 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, Madhyama means the middle – the divine middle. The extreme is the disease, and the mind lives through the extremes. The mind always thinks in terms of either/or, and reality is just exactly in the middle. It is never either/or; it is both/and. It is neither day nor night, neither life nor death, neither body nor soul. It is somewhere between the two, exactly between the two.

And exactly in the middle is also the point from where transcendence happens, from where you go beyond both.

To be in the middle is to go beyond both. Health and great balance, silence, come through this understanding. Because extremes create tensions and excitements, they create heaven and hell. And the mind is always a chooser, it lives through choosing. The moment you stop choosing and allow life to be as it is, you immediately fall into the middle. Let-go is the way of the middle. Choicelessness is the meaning of let-go; Then you allow life, whatsoever it brings. Buddha calls it the philosophy of suchness, ‘tathata’, the philosophy of as-it-is-ness. Let it be as it is: when it is night, it is night; don’t hanker for the day. When it is day, it is day; don’t ask for the night. When it is pain it is pain; when it is pleasure it is pleasure. Don’t choose, allow it to happen. Slowly, slowly a great understanding arises out of this allowing, out of this let-go. And that understanding makes you alert, aware that you are separate from both. You are neither life nor death: you are just a witness. That witnessing is Buddhahood, that witnessing is enlightenment. And to be in the middle is the way to it.

So let this be your key: never go to the extreme, always keep in the middle, like a tightrope walker. Slowly, slowly, the knack arises. Once you have understood how to be in the middle the mind disappears on its own accord, because it cannot exist in the middle; that is the secret of the work. It can exist only in the extreme, opposite to something, diametrically opposed to something. It is a chooser: it can either love or hate. It cannot rest in the middle without choosing, without prejudice.

2

It cannot allow things to have their own way. It interferes, it tries to impose itself upon reality. Reality is, God is, and all is already as it should be. We have just to relax and allow it to be.

[A visitor has been posted by the army from Nepal to Poona. Osho explains how to use even the discipline and uptightness of army life as meditation.]

The basic thing is not the technique of meditation. The basic thing is to do it with awareness. Any method can be of help if one practises it with a watchfulness. The real thing is watchfulness; the meditation is just an excuse for it.

For example, somebody can just go on repeating the name of God. If he is simply repeating it like a parrot it is not going to help. On the contrary, it may even be harmful, because repeating something every day like a parrot makes you more and more like a zombie, a robot. You start losing brilliance, brightness, intelligence; you become more and more sleepy and dreamy. But there are many stupid people who think those dreams are great spiritual vision. They are not. You can even dream of God but it is dream all the same. You can dream of great experiences – light and kundalini arising – but they are all dreams. All experiences are dreams, experience as such is a dream. The real thing is to shift from the experience to the experiencer. The whole gestalt has to change from the objective to the subjective.

So if somebody is chanting a mantra with the full awareness that he is doing it – with each assertion of the mantra he keeps alert and goes on watching and remains a witness – then that mantra will help. And it doesn’t matter whether you repeat ‘Allah’ or ‘Rama’ or ‘Christ’; it doesn’t matter. You can repeat your own name and that will do the same thing. You can repeat any absurd thing and that will do. The thing is: are you repeating it with watchfulness? That watchfulness has to be created. This is just a device to keep yourself watchful. One can walk and walking can become meditation. One can eat and eating can become meditation.

You are in the army: you can go on parade and that parade can become meditation. The whole thing is to be fully alert, conscious, not mechanical. Your army life can become a beautiful growth for you; all that you are doing there can be used as a device.

If one is not watchful then the army can create a zombie of one. In doing the same routine every day, continuously, year in, year out, there is no need to be watchful, there is no need to be alert; one can go on doing those things without being alert. One has become perfectly skilful in doing them. One can do them even while asleep. A perfect army man is one who, if you shout ‘Attention !’ while he is asleep, will jump up and will immediately be at attention. Not that he needs to be awake to do it, even in sleep it will function. It is just a mechanism: it triggers off the response.

I have heard that a general’s wife was very disturbed because whenever her husband slept on his left side he would snore. It was very difficult because if she asked him to turn to the right his sleep would be disturbed; and he was a very angry man. So she asked the army doctor. He said, ’Don’t do anything – simply say in his ear “Right turn !” And it worked!

So just be watchful in whatsoever you do . You can choose any method from the ‘Book of the Secrets’, but be watchful. And in your army work also, be watchful. Do those same things but not like a routine, not like a dead ritual that you have to do. Keep the light burning inside. Go into each

movement, become involved and committed, and slowly slowly see that your army life has become your religious life. Any life, any pattern of life can be turned into a religious life.

[The soldier says: I’d just like to ask what exactly it means to be watchful. As far as my profession’s concerned, when I go about doing my duty, do I watch everything as a separate entity, being aware that I’m not the person doing it?]

Yes, exactly that. You just think of yourself as a watcher, spectator; the body is doing the act. This hand is moving, mm?

The hand is moving, you are watching it – not only from the outside but from the inside too. You are separate, that witness is separate. It is unidentified with anything that we know of. It is identical only with God but we don’t know anything about God. That witness is God.

When you become a perfect witness you are a god, you are no more a human being. That’s why we have called Buddha a god, Krishna a god, for this reason – not that they have created the world but because in that moment of alertness, watchfulness, they are no more identified with the body, with the mind; they are not identified at all. The mind is separate, the body is separate, the world is separate, and they are only the watcher.

It gives such peace – just the idea that one is a watcher. Somebody hits you on your face. If you are just a watcher then nothing affects you. It is as if somebody else has been hit; you have been just an eye-witness, that’s all. It is none of your business. One can even laugh at the whole ridiculousness of it, one can even enjoy it. Somebody insults you and you can watch. There are millions of opportunities in life, when, if you watch, problems won’t arise. Problems arise when you become identified with the body or with the mind. Then you get disturbed, distracted.

It is exactly that, precisely that: just think that this watcher is sitting on the top of a hill, far away, distant, just looking down in the valley. As other people are moving, you are too. Slowly, slowly you. will be able to hover over your body and you will be able to see that the body is doing things. And the body will be able to do things more perfectly because there will be no distraction: there will be such a silent, peaceful, milieu inside.

Try it, and after one month tell me how things

[A sannyasin says her spine gives way sometimes when she’s sitting. Osho checks her energy.]

Nothing much to be worried about, mm ? Allow them whenever they come. Just a little energy is moving, but very little. It’s nothing to be concerned about. There are people whose energy here is moving like a flood. It is just a beginning: a small amount of energy has started moving. It will grow, but if you start becoming afraid of it or worried about it then in a subtle way you will prevent its growth.

Enjoy it so that it can grow. When it has grown completely it will disappear, but then the disappearance is beautiful because the energy has done its work.

It happens only because ordinarily our energy is in segments, in fragments, and the fragments are not joined together. The energy jumps from one fragment into another to join it; then you feel the jerk. It will jump from part to part. The whole spine is divided into seven parts so there are seven points at where it takes the jumps. It can drive one almost crazy when it really jumps. One cannot find what to do; in fact there is no way of doing anything, one has just to allow it. Going from one part to another, moving all over the place all those parts are welded together. Once that welding has happened, the energy stops. Then it is one whole; you will never feel the jump and the jerk will never come again. So it is good.

And it is very small. Much more is going to happen, so you have to be receptive from the very beginning. Otherwise you will be back home and if some day some more starts happening you will become panicky and you will freak out. No need to. If something suddenly starts happening, just close your door, sit in your room naked and allow it. Just go into it... enjoy it, co-operate with it!

[A sannyasin says she’d read that you’d said women can’t be masters.

Osho tells her: To be a master, one has to be masculine, because the master has to pour himself into the disciple, he has to give. But women make the best disciples because a disciple has to be able to receive, to absorb.]

[A sannyasin who has done a few groups says he is lacking in trust. He asks if he can work in group therapy. Previously he has been working in the ashram kitchen.]

Work in the kitchen first, mm? then we will see. Everything is therapy here. This whole commune is a therapeutic commune; from cleaning to kitchen everything is therapy. And everything is just a device to help your growth, so the name doesn’t matter. Whether you participate in the Encounter group or you participate in the kitchen doesn’t matter much; it is a constant encounter, an on-going encounter. Just go on doing that, mm?

And trust will arise. This is the beginning of trust, when you start feeling the lack of it; that is the beginning of it. People don’t feel the lack of it; they think they have trust so they don’t grow. When you feel that you lack something, the possibility opens: now you can grow in it. When a poor man thinks he is rich he will remain poor. If an ill person thinks he is healthy he will remain ill. To know that one is not well is the beginning; now you can find ways to be well.

And trust is such a beautiful phenomenon that to miss it is to miss one’s whole life. All that is great is possible only through trust. Without trust only small things are possible – you can have money, power, prestige, all that. With trust, love, poetry, ecstasy, God, all great things become possible. Trust is the door. Just remember it and it will grow.…

< Previous | Contents | Next >