21

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‌CHAPTER 21

21 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, asks if Osho has anything to say to him. Osho asks him which meditation he likes best. He replies: Kundalini. Osho checks his energy.]

Kundalini can still go very deep but you have not allowed it as totally as possible. You are enjoying it but you have not been allowing it totally. You are a little afraid and you are holding inside. You go only so far, you go into it cautiously. You have not gone into it madly yet, and that makes a lot of difference. You can go into a meditation cautiously, you can go up to ninety-nine degrees, but all that really happens, happens beyond the hundredth degree. A cautious person can allow, at the most, ninety-nine degrees. It looks very close but still it is far off. Because water remains water even at ninety-nine degrees – hot, but still water. Evaporation happens only when it has transcended one hundred degrees. It is just one degree difference but that is the difference between heaven and hell. That is the difference between ignorance and enlightenment.

You have been doing it, you have been enjoying it, but you are holding something. You still remain in control. And a meditator has to learn the difference – when the meditator is in control, that is one state; when the meditation is in control, that is totally another. And things happen only when meditation is in control. That needs courage, to be possessed by some unknown energy, by some strange energy, to be utterly possessed. And one never knows whether one will be able to come back to the normal state or not.

Before one enters the climax one almost feels as if one is going mad. But there is no need to be afraid. You have to take the plunge. So continue to meditate, but try to go into it a little, more and more and more. Slowly, slowly, you will be able to take the jump one day. And that day you will see the difference. When meditation takes possession of you the meditator has disappeared, then you are nowhere to be found. Suddenly all is empty and silent. Great energy is exploding but there is no

witness to it, nobody standing outside it, taking note of it, nobody as a spectator. That is the great explosion.

And that is possible for you. The energy is ready, you have been going perfectly well, doing perfectly well. Just one step is missing: you still hold a little energy back, you still remain in control. Drop that control, allow let-go, and immediately the unknown simply starts entering you. One is transported into another world, to the other reality which runs parallel; it is very close but is parallel. You have to take a jump from this reality to that. It is very close but the jump is needed because it cannot be bridged. It is really a separate reality so there is no way to bridge it. And there is where the mind feels afraid.

If something can be bridged the mind is always able to go into it, but to take a jump from ‘a’ to ‘b’, to become disconnected from the past, to become discontinuous from your own being, seems to be too risky. The mind is calculating, the mind is a businessman... and you have to learn to be a gambler.

But things are going well. Continue meditating and come back. Keep this (a box) with you, and help my people there.

[The mother of a sannyasin says she doesn’t want to take sannyasin because she cannot give up her catholic beliefs.]

I have been watching you and you have changed a lot. Back home you will realise the change. Then you will start thinking of sannyas. And sannyas is not against Christ, is not against God... that is just a wrong interpretation in your mind.…

The moment you call it a belief you have already given it up. The moment you start thinking ‘I cannot give it up’, you have already seen the fact that it is something you are holding but you don’t know what it is. It may be difficult, and I am not saying to give it up – cling.…

Mm, but back home you will see the point. You will see the point, because exactly what I am saying is that I can help you to see God and you say ‘I will cling to my belief – I cannot bother about God.’ That’s what you are actually saying. You are more interested in your belief than in God itself. You are more interested in your ego than in God. Your belief is part of your ego – it has nothing to do with God. What do you know about God?

It is just your belief!...

[She says: I know He’s been very good to meIsn’t that something good to believe in though?]

Nothing compared to knowing... nothing compared to knowing. Just to believe that food is good is one thing, and to eat and to digest it and to let it become your blood and bones and marrow is far more beautiful. Just to believe in love is one thing and to enter into it is another.

But if you are more interested in your belief than in God, that’s your choice; you can choose that way. But you will remember! What I am saying is this: that you are not interested in God at all. Otherwise you cannot miss what I am saying and what I am trying to make clear.

That’s what people were saying to Jesus – they were interested in Jewish belief and he was interested in God. They would say ‘We cannot leave our beliefs for your God. We are perfectly happy with our belief; why should we change? Why should we go with you?’...

You don’t know what Catholicism is! To be a Catholic means to be open, means to be available. To put it exactly, to be a Catholic means: not to be a Catholic means: not to be a Catholic or to be a Protestant or to be a Hindu. That is the meaning of being a real Catholic: openness of heart, acceptability.

But you are a believer! And you cling to your belief.…

If I see that you have something in your hands I will not take it away. But I see that your hands are empty and you are simply believing that you have something in them.….

I have to help you to become more and more trusting. How can I take away your faith?...

[A sannyasin says she feels empty and is trying to fill it with food; perhaps she is avoiding something. Osho checks her energy.]

A few things... You are coming close to some very strange space for you. It is new, hence strange. And you don’t know how to face it, that’s what you are avoiding. By eating too much, by making love too much, you are simply avoiding. You want to be entangled somewhere. It always happens. Sex and food are two things people can easily get involved in... two basic instincts and two things which are absolutely physical. So you can move away from the spiritual space.

You are trying to get into the body as much as possible so that you need not look into those spaces which are not of the body. And because they are not of the body they cannot be stuffed by food or sex. So it will make you feel very uneasy because you will be stuffing the body in the hope that you will not be falling into that emptiness inside. But that emptiness is standing there. For the moment you can become absorbed in the food but then you are destroying the body and creating unnecessary trouble and tensions for the body.

And just making love for the sake of escaping that inner space is reducing love to lust, to sex. Real love helps you to go into that inner space and eating rightly, in a balanced way, also helps you to go into that inner space. But if you do anything to avoid it, you will have to do it almost madly: eating, eating, just clinging to something, holding something. Food seems to be a very solid thing and so is sex, but both are dangerous at this moment. I am not against sex or against food but to use them as escapes from the inner is dangerous. And you will be becoming more and more puzzled, angry, sad, and you will start feeling lost.

So you have to look into this inner space. It is not something bad, you need not avoid it. It is something beautiful, you have to go into it. So rather than eating and making love, meditate more. Sit silently, learn Vipassana and do Vipassana. And with eating, chew more so you need not eat much, because these are the moments when less food will be better. These are the moments when in the past people stumbled upon the idea of fasting. If in these moments you can fast, you will be immediately going into that inner space like a jet, with jet speed. You are doing just the reverse: you are stuffing food in the body. That will keep you tethered to the body.

People came to know about fasting because of this inner space, and they understood the point: in this time if one can fast, one will go into that inner space so easily, so smoothly. But I don’t suggest fasting because one cannot fast for long and then whenever you start eating again that space will be destroyed.

[She says: I tried fasting.]

No, that will be destroyed again. It will be good for the time being but then it will be destroyed. Eat less, just the needs of the body have to be taken care of.

And don’t make love an escape. Love only when there is love, love only when it arises spontaneously. Don’t make it a mind thing, don’t think about it. Don’t force it. Don’t try to find excuses to make love; that’s not right. When it happens once in a while it is good, but only when it happens it is good. When you force it to happen then it is ugly, just ugly, obscene. Then it is nothing but a kind of pornography, three-dimensional, that’s all. And it is not love, at the most it is mutual masturbation – just wasting energy, just wasting the capacity to go in, going out into the other person, forcing yourself into the other person, trying somehow to get out of this inner space which is there, yawning like an abyss. And you are afraid and shaking and trembling.

Go into it! Go joyously into it. That’s my whole work here: I create that space. That space has to be created. Through so many methods that space is being created, and when it is created, you become frightened.

Go into it, sit silently. Lie down silently, just watch your breath. You learn Vipassana, mm? – and for at least one, two or three hours a day, continue Vipassana. Whenever you have time just sit silently or walk silently, but do Vipassana, walking, sitting, and within three, four weeks you will have something very valuable happening. When it happens, remind me again. But things are good... nothing to be worried about.

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