26

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‌CHAPTER 26

26 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A mother and nine-year-old daughter are present. She tells Osho she has done a Woman’s Lib type group in the West.]

I will take you out of your womanhood and manhood both! One has to go beyond both because both are imprisonment. One should not be so attached to the biology. One should start freeing oneself from biology, then from psychology and then ultimately even from spirituality. That’s the goal of Buddha. Then nothingness arises – when you are freed from all identities, when you are neither body nor mind nor soul.

The ordinary person lives identified with the body. He is man, woman, black, white, beautiful, ugly, young, old. Those are his definitions of his being. They are not untrue, a part of truth is in them, but neither are they true because much untruth is also there. Man is far more than his body. The body is more or less accidental. It is just a coincidence that you are in a female body and somebody is in a male body. These are just clothes.

If a person gets a little deeper into his being the body is not so important. But then the mind takes hold of him: he becomes a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Communist... ideologies and philosophies. That is a little wider than the body but still, a confinement. If one goes a little deeper then one becomes the soul, the self One is no more Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian – one is simply consciousness. But still one confinement remains: the centre of ‘I’. That is the last barrier to God; that has also to be dropped. Then one is pure nothingness. Then there is no way to identify, no way to demarcate. One is emptiness, blankness. And the purity of that emptiness is great because only emptiness can be pure. Anything else in it remains something of a pollution.

[Osho then tells the daughter to go to the school and to start meditating. She replies she started a little bit.]

A little bit? Just go on slowly, slowly, mm? and soon you will enter into it.

This is the time to enter into meditation – later on it becomes more and more difficult. The more you become grown-up, the more unintelligent you become. One loses one’s intelligence. Each child is born a Buddha and then he starts losing his intelligence. Each child is so perceptive, so clear – just clarity and nothing else. His mirror is dean, no dust on it. But slowly, slowly dust will gather. You will hear things, you will read, you will go to school, to college and they will teach you. Slowly, slowly, language and thoughts... Then one becomes too dusty and one loses that quality of a pure mirror.

So the sooner one starts meditation, the better. In the ancient days people used to start meditation when they were in their mother’s womb. There were techniques, there are techniques, and when we are living in the new commune we will start all those techniques again. When a woman is pregnant the child in the womb can be taught meditation. He can be helped to listen to music. A rhythm can be created in his being, there in the womb. And if the mother meditates then that meditation enters the child too because the child vibrates with the mother. We can create meditators from the very beginning, in the womb. And that is the best time to catch hold of people, so when they are born they are already meditators, ready to be sannyasins.

So start slowly, slowly, a little bit – soon you will get into it. And don’t think that you are a child so how can you meditate. Only children can meditate. The grown-ups have to become children again. Drop that idea that you are a child so how can you meditate for sixty minutes. EnJoy it! Children have more energy and they can go very deeply into it. They are still fluid, flowing, soft, river-like. Soon you will become a good meditator!

[A six-year-old sannyasin says she has been waiting to see him and is scared sometimes’And

sometimes I get kind of frustrated to be scared and then I think ‘Uh, I don’t wanna do it!’ And then it just goes’.]

Mm mm. That’s great! All these things will go.… I was also waiting for you to comeAnd you will

not get scared, the fear will goIt will go forever, mm? You just start meeting our little sannyasins.

Go to the school, play with them.…

Go to the school and start playing around and all fear will disappear. Next time you will come without any fear, mm?

A handkerchief for you – keep it with you. When you start feeling afraid, just put it on your head. Right? And it will go. Good!

Anand means bliss, Sarjan means creation. Man is the creator of whatsoever he lives in. Hell or heaven, it is you who creates it. This is one of the most fundamental laws of life to be understood, and once this is understood you become a master of your own.

We create misery, we create happiness. The thought becomes the thing: whatsoever we start thinking, sooner or later starts happening. Thought is the seed. People go on thinking that somebody else is making them miserable; then they can never .get rid of that misery. Because what can you do if somebody else is creating it unless he stops? – and that is beyond you! And there are millions of people. One may stop; others may start creating misery for you. There is no way out then, there is no exit. One is surrounded by a China Wall, one cannot get out of it.

That’s how people think: What can they do? – it is fate that is creating misery. It is their past lives’ karmas that are creating misery. It is God who is punishing them or it is the society or the economical structure or the politics. But it is always somebody else. Hence you go on missing the secret of changing your life. It is you, nobody else, it is absolutely you. Once this sinks deep into your heart you can start changing your life because then it is within your hands.

All alternatives are available, you can choose. You can be miserable; that is your choice. In the same situation, in exactly the same situation, you can choose to be happy and you will be. Try it. Just choose to be happy and suddenly you will see: the perspective has changed. Now you are not looking at the thing in the old way. Your vision is different, your gestalt is different. The same thing has been giving you so much misery for so long and suddenly it makes no impact on you. On the contrary, it thrills you and gives you great joy. You have chosen it. Slowly, slowly, trying in life again and again, one attains to an inner confidence, an inner certainty: ‘Yes, it is I.’

And God is always helping you. Whatsoever you say He says ‘Yes, boss!’ If you say ‘I am miserable,’ He says ‘Yes, boss!’ ‘I am in pain!’ He says ‘Yes.’ You say ‘I am blissful,’ He says ‘Yes.’ Because God is not separate from you, He is your very ground. So whatsoever you want to be, He simply makes Himself available and you become that. And when you become that, you start suffering or you start enjoying.

Once this is seen – ‘I am the master of my hell and heaven’ – then another insight arises: ‘If I want to drop both, I can drop both.’ That is nirvana, that is the ultimate creation, enlightenment. It is neither pain nor pleasure. It is utter quiet, it is silence, it is nothingness. That too you can create but that is possible only when you have learned that misery is your creation, that happiness is your creation.

First start changing misery into happiness. Always affirm happiness, never affirm any negative thought. Millions of thoughts are crossing your mind. Only that thought which you choose becomes real. Scientists say that fifty thousand thoughts pass through an ordinary, average man’s mind in one day. But only a few will become real and those will be the thoughts which you choose. Once you have chosen, you are trapped, and then it becomes difficult because it creates a vicious circle. If you have chosen misery it becomes easier for you to choose misery again; it becomes a practice. You get more and more deeply into misery. You start descending into hells and each hell takes you into a deeper hell. Once you start choosing happiness, you start rising upwards and each happiness makes you more confident to claim more, to choose something even better.

Both these choices make you capable one day of not choosing at all. Thoughts pass by like traffic and you stand aloof. That is the state of meditation, non-choosing, choiceless awareness. Then neither pain nor pleasure happens. Nothing happens. When nothing happens, that is the greatest thing, that is the greatest experience. You have arrived home.

[When Osho first began initiating people into sannyas, there was an intermediary group named saddhus instead of swamis, and who wore a mala but not orange. Tonight one sadhu comes to take sannyas. He says he is a research student of Sanskrit and has written some books. He begins to chant a scripture, having asked the meaning of it.]

Writing or reading won’t help. You can write beautiful things, you can think beautiful things – that won’t help. Because thinking is not going to take you beyond thought. And all these statements have

arisen out of no-mind. They have not been uttered by philosophers. Vyasa is not a philosopher, he is a seer. And because he has seen, the statements are bound to be contradictory. All truth is contradictory.…

On one side he will say this and on another side he will say just the opposite. That’s the sign that the person has experienced. If he goes on saying the same thing in a logical sequence, with no contradiction and you can find consistency in him, then he is not a seer. Then he is just a philosopher, he is a thinker – worthless. Whenever you find contradiction, paradoxes, you can be certain that you are coming across a person who has seen. Because when you see, the total is so big that it comprehends contradictions. One can say God is and one can say God is not and both are true. At that ultimate experience both are true. The soul is and the soul is not; both are true. One is empty and one is full; both are true. God is near and God is far away; both are true. At that peak all dualities disappear. Far and close are not different. Is and is not are not different.…

[The new sannyasin tries to discuss the scriptures further.]

But you are just reading him and that’s why you will never be able to understand it. You will also have to see as he has seen.…

Forget about his words! Go beyond words within you.…

But your are repeating these words and these words are hindering you! It is beautiful to read and beautiful to write but don’t get entangled with those words.…

Try to become more and more silent, wordless...

Only those moments of wordless consciousness will make you able to see what he has seen and only then will you understand what he is saying. Otherwise you can go on reading but it will confuse you more, it will make you almost mad because you will not be able to make anything out of it. He will say this, he will say that and you will try to make something out of it, figure out something, and nothing will come out of it. You will become more and more confused.

Study is not going to help, being a student is not going to help – only being a meditator. That’s why I said to you that now the time has come to go in. You have gone in the books enough – now there is no need. You know enough already about all that. Now start slipping out of it. And the traffic is okay – the mind will continue having its thoughts.…

It is going to happen – just keep a little alert.

[A sannyasin, leaving for the West, says: I feel more trust now... especially since the Vipassana group. Osho checks his energy.]

Yes, I can see it. It is on your face, in your eyes, in your body – it is there.…

Something beautiful is happening. Welcome it, receive it. When guests like trust knock on your door, open yourself totally, don’t hide. Let your heart be available and it will be transformed. Just as when the sun rises in the morning and flowers open their hearts to it, open your heart to this trust that is

arising and you will also become fragrant. Each person is carrying such enormous fragrance, such immensity of it, but is unaware of it.

Doubt closes one. That’s why I have given you the name ‘Veet Sandeha’. It means beyond doubt, it means trust. The possibility is there, great possibility is there. Drop all doubts. They are just stupid, they are destructive. People get entangled in their doubts and negativities and lose their whole life. Nobody has ever arrived at anything beautiful through doubt. It is always through trust that one opens, grows, lives, loves, prays. All that is valuable happens only through trust. Trust is the climate for all that is meaningful. Trust is a creative upsurge of the energy. It is a thrust into the unknown... with a childlike innocence, with no questions, because all questions are our fears deep down.

Just as a child trusts the mother and the father, trust existence and then the whole existence mothers you, fathers you. That’s the meaning when Jesus says again and again ‘God, my father... I and my father are one.’ He is simply talking about trust. He is not talking about God the father, he is simply talking about trust. When you trust, the whole existence becomes fatherly to you. It protects, it comes in a thousand and one ways to help you, it nurses you.

So go on deepening this trust. This is true religion.

[A sannyasin couple are leaving. The man says he has a pain in his back on the right side when he does meditations and in discourse. Osho checks his energy.]

Yes, it has something to do with your meditative energy.…

Don t be worried about it. It will disappear on its own, you need not do anything about it. It is not anything bad. It is just that energy accumulates there too much, more than in any other place, that’s why you feel it as heat. It will start spreading all over the body and when it has, it will disappear. Don’t stop meditation, continue. And don’t pay much attention to it. Just accept it, it is there. One day you will be simply surprised that it is gone. And when it is gone you will feel a totally different quality in your body energy. You will feel very very relaxed, as you have never been before.

The energy is accumulating there. When it accumulates too much it will explode and will spread all over the body. That place is almost like a dam, so energy comes and accumulates there. A few people have different places where energy starts accumulating. There are reasons why those spaces are there but there is no need to go into them. Maybe in some incident in childhood you got hurt there. You may not remember it at all, it may have been a small phenomenon, but there is a kind of gap. That gap needs to be filled by energy. Once energy is too much and is overflowing then it will spread, not before it.

So don’t stop. Continue at least Nadabrahma and whenever you can manage, do Kundalini too. It will be gone. At the most it will remain for three months. Just accept it and accept it very lovingly, with no antagonism.

[The woman says she now feels a conflict because she has made a commitment to a community in the States. They are beautiful people, but it is not a spiritual centre.]

Just don’t be afraid. Go there and you will be my messenger to the community, be my ambassador there. And soon people will start turning on. If they are loving people they are spiritual people.

Spirituality has nothing to do with the so-called spirituality – church-goers and ritual-doers; that has nothing to do with spirituality. If people are loving they are spiritual.

They are my people! Just go and just help them to meditate. Just spread the word and soon you will find many sannyasins amongst them and the community will become ours! Just go. One sannyasin is enough, mm?...

[A sannyasin says that when she meditates in the West, where she is returning, she has felt someone standing behind her touching her on the shoulder – and is afraid when she sees nobody is there.

Osho says: I must be touching you! Don’t be afraid.

She then says that she sees Osho’s eyes sometimes, and doesn’t know if it is imagination or real. Osho says: That’s good.Real! Absolutely real. Go on seeing.]

[A sannyasin says she is afraid to return to the West: I feel I need your help very much.]

I will be there helping you continuously. And when any of my sannyasins becomes a child, it becomes my responsibility to help, so you need not be worried.…

And this is a good feeling. Relapsing into childhood is going back to the source again, getting in contact with existence.

A child loses his track somewhere when he is three or four. At that time he starts becoming part of civilisation, artificial life, culture. Up to three or four he remains innocent of civilisation, he remains more a part of the animal kingdom.

When you start meditating and you go deep into groups, naturally you fall back to that state from where you were distracted by the society. So you start feeling near about three, four years old. And naturally it frightens you, because how are you going to manage in the world? – the world stuff, the cunning, and you are a child of four or three. How are you going to take on the challenges of the world?

So the fear is natural but don’t be worried about it – I will take care. That is the purpose of being a master and that is the reason why you are a disciple. When you start losing your cultivated patterns and you become simple, innocent, you will need somebody to protect you, somebody to guide you, because you will lose your mind with which to be guided.

But only when you become a child can you have a deep contact with me because then only is trust possible.

So just go – I will take care! And how long will it take for you to come back? [She answers: As soon as I can. I will come with my children.]

Bring the children, mm? – and they will be very happy finding their mummy has become a child. They will be really happy!

[A sannyasin who works in the ashram says: I always feel relationships with authorities in the past creeping into my work and I want to be right all the time. I just feel like a great weight would fall off me if I could enjoy being stupid.]

Simply disconnect yourself from that idea – go on doing your things. There is no authority here. But it is similar to authority and that creates trouble.

Surrender is just the opposite polarity of authority but polar opposites have a certain similarity. See the difference: in an authoritative relationship the authority is imposed on you. It is not voluntary, it is a coercion. In surrender, authority is not imposed on you, nobody is coercing. You surrender, it is voluntary. From the outside both will look the same. If somebody watches from the outside he will not find any difference because the authoritarian person will be ordering and the surrendered person will be obeying. But this will be the difference: in one the order is important, in another, obeying is important. But on the surface there are orders and there are obedient people, so anybody looking from the outside will feel that this is the same thing. But there is a great difference and the difference is so great that one has to feel it, only then can one know it.

Here there is no authority. I am not authoritative. You are surrendered, certainly. That is your decision. If you want to take your surrender back you are free to, nobody will prevent you. That is your choice, you have chosen it; you can choose not to have it. With an authority it is not your choice. Whether you choose it or not, it is there: you have to obey, you have to follow it. And sometimes it happens that you can disobey the authoritarian person because you cannot always go with him. People start finding ways to disobey, small ways to keep their self intact. But you cannot disobey a non-authoritarian person to whom you are surrendered.

For example, you can disobey Alexander but you cannot disobey Buddha. You can rebel against Alexander but you cannot rebel against Buddha, because there is no point in rebelling – you are free! It is out of your freedom that you have chosen me. And your freedom remains intact. Any day you can claim it; there will not be a single moment’s delay and you are free. But if you choose to obey, that is your choice and that is your freedom.

A disciple obeys because he loves to obey. He hankers, desires to be ordered. He wants to do something. It is not that someone is interested in forcing you into some regimentation, nobody is interested at all. The disciple follows the discipline on his own accord. It is not an army. So you have to see the difference, slowly, slowly; they look alike.

And everybody has passed through those things. Parents were ordering and they were demanding, then teachers were ordering and they were demanding. Wherever you were, somebody was ordering and demanding. Naturally one has become fed up with all that! I am not ordering – you are obeying. I am ordering only because you want to obey... not that I order so you have to obey.

So simply disconnect; your past experience has nothing to do with this experience.

This is a totally new experience. You have not known it before so the past has nothing to say about it. You will have to learn what it is and then you will see the difference The difference is tremendous, although on the surface it is very difficult to find out what the difference is.

There are subtle delicate things in life which only go deep like undercurrents, they are not visible on the surface. Anybody coming to this ashram will see that everybody is following orders, people are working, people are doing things. And I don’t even go out of my room. I don’t know where your office is, I have never been to your office... and I will never go! How can I order you? (chuckling) What can I order? I don’t know exactly what you are doing there! This is not the way to order people and command people. A commander has to continuously watch and move around you and see what is being done and what is not being done.

It is simply out of your freedom and love that you have surrendered, that you’re enjoying doing something for me. It may be something very small – just cleaning the floor – but you are enjoying it because you are doing something for me. You are sharing your energy with me that way. It is valuable – not because of the economic value of the work. It is valuable because of your love and your trust.

So keep alert. Your mind can get confused and you can miss a great opportunity, but I am not going to allow you to miss it!

[A sannyasin says that she has always enjoyed making a home for herself, but since ending a relationship ten months previously she has been unable to take care of domestic things at all. Now she has fallen in love again and is afraid of a relationship. She feels distraught.

Osho checks her energy.]

It is nothing to be worried about, not at all. It is something beautiful growing in you. But I can understand the difficulty that you are feeling: your whole gestalt of being is changing, and the home- making and things like that were part of your old personality and that personality is going. The new personality has not yet settled, there is a gap. And you are in a process of a great change, hence you cannot even take care of your body, your clothes, small things. You are almost like a child, newly born. But this is beautiful! Nothing to be worried about. Every sannyasin has to pass through it. Soon everything will settle.

I am not saying that you will be able to have the same attachment with the home again; you may not need it. That may have been just an escape, that may have been just to avoid your self, your being. So as not to encounter it people become interested in doing this and that, in the furniture and the curtains and the paintings – just to avoid. It may not come. But this situation will not remain either. You will become sane. That may have been an obsession, it may have been a great burden on you, that home-making. It may not come back but you will become able to take care of your body and to wash your clothes and to go to the marketplace for a few things; that will come back. It may not come with the old gusto because that may have been a kind of obsessive state. Naturally, whatsoever is needed will happen, but right now you are in a state where things are changing.

It is just like changing houses, mm? – one is on the truck taking all the things in the truck to the other house. The old is left and the other is ahead and you are on the street. That’s the situation but it is a beautiful situation. And don’t be worried at all – relax into it. Soon it will be gone.

And this new relationship may be helpful to settle you again into a new state. Love is always settling, centering. It may bring you sooner, faster, out of this state than anything else, so fall in love headlong!

And don’t force yourself to do those things, they will come on their own. Let the man take care, let him go to the marketplace for your hairbrush. Why be worried? Let him wash the clothes and take care of the home. Just remain as you are – don’t force. Slowly, slowly it will change. And love will help, because whenever a woman is in love she immediately starts taking care of the body, immediately. Even if she is mad and she falls in love, she immediately starts taking care of the body. It is impossible not to take care of the body when you are in love. And when you are not in love, who cares? For what should one care?

I don’t think that when you are in love you will go around in lousy and dirty clothes! That is not possible. Just fall in love!

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