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‌CHAPTER 8

8 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, who is leaving with his wife and child, says he has been feeling negative about India and the ashram – maybe because he just recovered from hepatitis.]

It is natural: sometimes the negative comes. In fact, it is a miracle that the positive also comes sometimes, because the negative is the natural state of the mind. The mind is negation, the mind lives on ‘no’, that’s its food. It feels very reluctant to say yes. It is very stubborn, always opposed to saying yes. And whenever it says it, it says it very grudgingly. It has to say it so it does, but not gratefully, not joyously. But that’s how the mind is.

One can get into the mind very easily. To get out of it is difficult. To get into it again and again is very easy. It is your old pattern, it is everybody’s old pattern... familiar. And your illness may have helped, because whenever one is ill, one becomes weak, and when you are weak the mind can pull you back into its patterns and grooves. It is very difficult to go beyond the mind when you are ill hence the ancient emphasis on health in all the systems of Yoga. This is the reason, that if a body is perfectly healthy it can retain itself in the yes more easily. It can go soaring higher and higher into the positive and the mind will not be able to pull it back to the earth. The gravity of the mind will be less on a healthy body. On an unhealthy body the gravitation of the mind is far more heavy, far stronger. You cannot jump out of it easily when you are ill. And hepatitis certainly makes one very weak.

It is natural when you are feeling ill and weak and not good, that you feel like this. It is India that has brought the hepatitis, and me; it is because of me that you are here. Otherwise you would not have been in India and there would have been no hepatitis either. So all these things become associated. And then there are always a thousand things about which you were never very happy in saying yes. You had said yes in a happier mood, you had said yes in a stronger mood. But then all those nos that have been waiting all along, start asserting themselves.

It is going to be so because this ashram is not to console people and this ashram is not to help people remain rooted in their minds. This is nothing! Once the commune settles I am going to make it really hard for people to say yes to the commune. Because only if they can say yes when it is really hard to say yes, will they get out of the mind; otherwise there is no way.

If I am all sweetness and I fit with all your prejudices and ideas and opinions, if the ashram simply dances around you and you become the centre of it, then there is no problem in saying yes. But then you remain the same.

The ashram has to create hurdles, and the deeper those hurdles are, the deeper will go the work. One who can come across all those hurdles, obstacles... They are created. It is very simple to make the ashram as people would like it to be, it is not difficult at all, but then it won’t be a device to help growth. Then it will be a church and as churches are. They fit perfectly with prejudices, with likes, dislikes, with ideologies. Then temples are there, millions of temples; it is very easy to work them. But this is not an ordinary place – it is a lab, it is experimentation into the inner journey. So things are going to be difficult.

And one has to be very alert to use all opportunities. For example, you are in. That is the moment to try yes-saying. If you can be positive while in, while you are well, you will be surprised: when you become healthy, your yes comes up so radiantly, your trust comes with such strength and integrity unlike you have ever known before. It becomes almost spontaneous, it takes over your being totally, it becomes your very nature. It is not that you have to say yes; you just say it; it comes on its own accord. One can use these situations, people are using them.

Just a few days ago [one sannyasin] was here. Hepatitis is not going to kill you – he has cancer and he is going to die. But he used that opportunity and transcended it. He left in such a grateful state that it was really worth praising. Very rarely does it happen when one is going to die within two, three months and it is almost certain that death is coming and there is no way to avoid it.

He could have been very much against me, very much against the ashram, very much against the whole thing. He could have created great doubts about why he is with me if I cannot save him? If I cannot protect his life, then what is the point of being a sannyasin ? He could have created a thousand and one doubts but he transcended all and the cancer became an opportunity to grow. Even death becomes an opportunity to grow.

He will die in a state of satori – that is now almost certain. And he will die in such a state that is higher than life and higher than death. He will die in a kind of orgasm. He will return only once and his next life is really going to be of great benediction and beauty.

Hepatitis is nothing – within two, three weeks you will be perfectly okay. Rather than getting pulled down by the hepatitis, try to soar beyond it. All these are opportunities: one can use them, one can miss them. And the mind is always there waiting to Jump upon you and catch hold of you and create doubts and negations. If you want that you can simply relax into it. But that is not going to help, your mind is not going to help you. If it could have helped, it would have. Now avoid it. But remember, if sometimes negativity takes possession, it is a passing phase, it will go. Pull yourself out of it.…

Veet means beyond, Shavda means the word. Man is imprisoned by the words. Man’s whole problem is language. Below language is the world of the animals and beyond language is the world

of the gods. Between the two is the world of man, the world of language, words – philosophies, scriptures, theories, ideologies. To fall below language is to become inhuman; to go beyond language is to become superhuman. That’s why sometimes the mystic almost looks like a madman. And vice versa: the madman also sometimes looks like a mystic, but the difference is great. The madman has fallen below language. He is no more part of humanity – he has slipped back, he has regressed. And the mystic has gone beyond humanity. He is also no more part of humanity, that is the similarity: both are no more part of humanity. But one has gone below, another has gone beyond; that is a great difference.

So all mystics have something in them like the madman, and all madmen have something in them like the mystic. Jesus used to look like a madman to people. There still are psychoanalysts that go on writing that Jesus was neurotic... because they don’t understand the difference between the below and the beyond.

Veet means beyond, shavda means word, language, doctrine, scripture, all that consists of words. The mind consists of words. The word is the brick that the palace of the mind is made of, it is the stuff it is made of. Slowly, slowly, one has to go on dropping the words and one has to enter into silence. And that is not difficult: once you start trying to move towards it, it starts happening. The reality is when all words have disappeared, when you are not thinking but you just are... when there is no thought cloud in the mind but pure awareness, unclouded, an unclouded sky. When there is no thought there is no trembling, no winds are blowing. All is tranquil and quiet. In that quietude, one penetrates reality. Reality cannot be thought about. You can see it but you cannot think about it. To think about it is to go far away from it, because whatsoever you think will be wrong. Thinking is wrong.

You see a rose flower. what can you think about it? The moment you say it is beautiful, you have gone far away from the rose flower, from its facticity, from its reality. Now the mind has come in, it says it is beautiful. Now the word ‘beautiful’ will create many other associations, a chain will start. You will forget about the flower, you will think about the man whom you used to think beautiful or a poem that you used to think beautiful. The flower is forgotten. Now you have got into a train of thoughts. It is unending and one never knows where one is going to land.

When the flower is there just be with the flower. Don’t allow any word to come between you and the flower; see that which is. Just see, fully alert and aware, and push aside all thoughts. In that interval the rose will reveal its reality to you. Then it becomes meditation, meditation on the rose. Meditate on the moon, meditate on your friend. Look into his eyes and don’t think. Or sometimes look at your own face in the mirror and don’t think – just look. Let the look be strong, forceful, penetrating, but don’t think. And slowly, slowly, there are gaps of silence, and those gaps bring new breeze into being.

[A sannyasin, who is a doctor of Allopathic and Ayurvedic medicine, asks if he should become part of the university being set up here. Osho says: Become part of it, much has to be done.]

I need so many people because so much has to be done. I need so many hands. The work is so enormous that it is impossible for me to do it on my own. The whole of humanity is in such a great need and the need has to be fulfilled. Otherwise humanity is just on the verge of committing suicide. Its sources of joy have run out. It is desperately struggling to survive. Meaning is no more

there, any kind of significance has disappeared. People are only living because they are afraid to die, otherwise there is no reason to live. It seems utterly absurd to live because unless there is something beyond, life cannot have any meaning. The day God disappeared from the human mind, man started dying. Our roots have been in God, in the beyond. By God I mean the beyond, I don’t mean a person.

Man always lives in the hope of transcending, always lives in the hope of surpassing himself. The darkest hour comes when there is nowhere to go beyond, when there is no beyond. Then there is nothing to live for. You cannot just live – you have to live for something. Life needs a kind of significance, meaning. Religion is nothing but creating meaning in human life. Otherwise life becomes sad, dull, boring. Life becomes anguish, anxiety... without any kind of fulfilment.

Great things have to be done. I will need all kinds of people of all talents, of all possible talents, because this is not one-dimensional work; it is multi-dimensional work. Sannyas is just a device to find people who can take the message to the masses, to the people who are in need. People are spiritually starved. They can survive physical starvation but they cannot survive spiritual starvation. It is difficult to survive physical starvation but not impossible. To survive spiritual starvation is impossible. Then there is no reason to exist at all. Suicide becomes more significant.

Albert Camus has written that the only significant metaphysical problem is suicide. At least he is right about this contemporary mind. In the past God was the only significant problem for metaphysics, now it is suicide. We have really fallen! And when people used to think about God, there was thrill, great adventure, great possibilities opening into the beyond. Their eyes were full of hope, and through that hope they were flowering, they were looking upwards. There was something to look up to. Now they are thinking of suicide. There is nowhere to go, no-one to look up to, nothing to live for; one can at the most, drag. It looks cowardly to live. It seems brave to pull out, to commit suicide; the cowards are living! This has to be changed.

And this university is not going to be an ordinary educational institution. This university is going to be education in life, education in God, education in meaning, in meditation, in prayer, in love. It is not going to teach arithmetic and geography and history. It is going to teach life as such and how it should be lived. It is going to become a great experiment in living, in new ways of living.

Become a part of it!

[At a previous darshan, a sannyasin had been upset because Osho did not console him over his friend’s suicide. Tonight this sannyasin says that he sees how he wants Osho, and his girlfriend, to be a perfect mother to him, to do everything for him. He sees this is futile.]

But I am your perfect mother! [Your girlfriend] may not be but I am, so it is not just a projection. I coincide with your projection. You can ask as much as you want and you will get. The problem is not that you are asking, the problem is that in your childhood you must have missed, so it hangs around. And unless you really get, you will not be able to give either.

Whenever a child gets from the mother, he starts giving; that’s how he learns to give. The mother gives to the child and the child knows that the world is giving to him and there is no need to hold. He can give and he will be getting again so there is no fear. The fear arises when the mother is in

some way not giving as much as she should. When the child feels that something is missing, when the child feels that the mother is holding something back, he becomes afraid. He cannot trust even his own mother – how can he trust anybody else? And if the mother is not giving to him, he has to become a hoarder. He will not be able to give now; how can he? He can’t trust the source from where things will be coming.

Out of this fear children become constipated, they even stop excreta from coming out of their body. They hoard it, they become tight, they can’t lose anything, they can’t afford it. Milk may not be coming, the mother may not be giving, so one has to keep something in reserve. They become misers. Whenever a child gives freely you can know that he has been given freely. Whenever a child is not a miser that simply shows that he has been with a mother who has given him totally. But that rarely happens.

No mother is a perfect mother, that’s why this world is so imperfect. This world is created by mothers. The father is just on the periphery, he looks to the business side of life. But the real life is given by the mother. The world is miserly, the world is uptight. People are afraid, they are worried about tomorrow, they are worried about insecurity. Deep down it is the mother who has not given totally. Once mothers change, the world will change; all that is needed is a revolution in motherhood. But I don’t mean that your mother is responsible. Because she had her own mother and so on, so forth, so it is very difficult to find who is the culprit, mm? If you go on searching, you will find that God is the culprit finally somewhere. He must have not given as much as was needed to Adam and Eve, because the world has existed this way forever and forever. So I am not saying to start thinking that your mother has been responsible and become angry against her; that is pointless. She suffered in her own way, and whatsoever has been done to her in her childhood, she repeated with you. Now you can become more understanding about it. Nothing is wrong in it.

Each man is searching for his mother in his woman. And each woman is searching for her future child in each man. This is a natural process, there is no pathology in it. It has to be accepted and understood and lived. If you consciously understand it, things become very simple, mm? Otherwise deep down you go on hankering for Bodhi to be your mother. On the surface you go on showing that you are a man, mature, a husband, this and that, and you will protect Bodhi. Deep down you want her to protect you but your male ego says ‘I will protect you. I will give my life for you.’ Deep down you are just a small child: you want to hold her apron strings and hang around her. Between these two the schizophrenia arises. Once you understand that this is natural, this is how it has to be, then you forget all about that male ego. You still hold her apron strings but now you do it consciously, meditatively.

So continue on your way. Nothing to be worried about. And if she understands, she will pour her love on you, because she also needs a child. Each man potentially remains a child and each woman is potentially a mother. Even a small girl is a mother, and a man of one hundred years is a child. These are natural things. That’s why the opposite sexes attract each other: they fulfil each other, they complement each other. So let her be your mother and you be her child... and enjoy!

Once you have accepted it, all fear will disappear Then slowly, slowly, you will become able to give. And really, there is joy in getting but nothing compared to giving.

Giving is real joy – getting is just so-so. By getting you get the joy that a beggar gets. By giving you get the joy that an emperor gets. They are qualitatively different. But first one has to learn

how to get, how to receive, how to be a child – vulnerable, dependent. That’s how each person is born. Only then is the second step possible. When you are settled with life and you feel that the whole existence mothers you – it does mother you – then you can give. You don’t worry; tomorrow existence will be there to mother you again so you need not worry about tomorrow. Then there is security. In the very insecurity, there is security. Just live this consciously and things will change.

[A sannyasin says she has an emptiness coming up with a desire to eat. She is resisting going into the emptiness. Osho checks her energy.]

You have to allow the tears – they are needed. They will cleanse you, and they will not only cleanse the outer eyes: they will cleanse the inner eyes too. So don’t stop them. Whenever they come, enjoy them. Allow them, rejoice in them. Tears can become great prayer. No words can compete with tears, because they come directly from the heart.

So something beautiful is happening. But my feeling is you have not been allowing the tears to come as much as they would like to. That’s why you are feeling like a lost child. You are trying to be a grown-up. There is no need! Everybody is a lost child. Unless they know God, everybody is a lost child. Unless one realises oneself one is a lost child, but people pretend that they are not. That pretension is going and it is something very very significant and beautiful: one hypocrisy is going.

You are a lost child. How can you be otherwise? Being grown-up in age does not make any difference – unless one feels rooted in existence. And it is not to be a belief but an experience. Unless one faces reality, one is a lost child. It is better to know it and it is better to cry. Feel that lost child as deeply as possible, allow it. Be it – and let tears come. Become helpless. The ego will fight – that’s where the problem is arising; it is from the ego. The ego says ‘... you are a grown-up, mature person, and you are crying and you are feeling like a lost child?...’ The ego is trying to prevent all this process. Let the ego go.

The ego is feeling empty. It is not existential emptiness, it is ego emptiness. The ego is feeling empty and it always tries to fill itself with something, anything: knowledge, food, sex, anything will do. The ego wants to stuff itself, to feel full. The ego is empty, it can never feel full. It can go on stuffing but it never feels full. It can’t by its very nature. It is a bucket without a bottom: you can go on pouring water into it and it all disappears.

So don’t be too much with the ego. Be with your child, be with your tears, be with this, your lostness. And soon you will start feeling grounded, in a new sphere, in a new being. A new space will arise out of it. Once you allow the child and the tears, once you accept it, and not accept reluctantly but joyously, the feeling of emptiness will disappear and you will stop stuffing yourself with food.

To me it is something very beautiful. Report to me after four weeks, and in these four weeks cry and weep and enjoy!

[The leader of the massage group says that the groups are good but she gets this crazy doubt that Osho doesn’t know what is happening in the groups.]

Just allow everything as it is happening. And this doubt will disappear. One day you will suddenly know that I know. Just wait! It happens to every groupleader sooner or later.

[She asks: You do know?]

But let it happen to you, because my saying won’t be of much use. If I say it, then you will be again trusting my word and the doubt will persist. But one day you will suddenly know: in the midst of the group suddenly you will know that I know, you will find me there. Only then will this doubt disappear.…

But don’t be worried. I am following you whatsoever is happening. And allow! Everything has to be allowed.

[She says that it seems the more let-go in the group, the greater the fear and doubt.]

It is natural, because the deeper the group energy goes, the more afraid you will become. Because the groupleader is really in a very strange situation. The strange situation is this: the groupleader has his own limitations. If the group moves within his limitations everything is okay. He knows what is happening, he is in control. Here things go beyond your limitations – they have to. That’s my whole work here. You are just to become a jumping board: The groupleader is not really a leader but just a co-ordinator. He has to trigger the process and then sooner or later the process starts going beyond his limitations. Then the fear arises about what is going to happen. That’s why the mind asks ‘Does Osho know or not? If he knows then it is okay. If he does not know and it is going beyond me, then nobody knows what is happening. If something goes wrong then who is going to bring everything back?’

If it is within the limits you will be perfectly okay – you will never feel afraid. But it has to go beyond you. And slowly slowly if the group goes beyond you, you will go beyond yourself Because you will see that people are going beyond you so why should you not? Slowly, slowly, your limitations will become larger and larger. Your boundaries will go farther away from you. And as the boundaries start receding and you have more space within you, you will become more and more capable. But the group will always go on beyond you.

My work is not only on the people who are participating in the group. My work is also on the groupleader, so double work is going on. I want to prepare rare groupleaders. This is just the beginning. Within two years you will find the rarest groupleaders here. Then no groupleaders anywhere in the world will be able to go beyond them. Because there (in the West) they are alone: they exist and work within their limit and if something goes beyond that they pull everything back to it. Here you can go on expanding as much as you want, because I have no limits.

The fear is natural, it comes to every group-leader in the beginning. But within three, four months things disappear, mm? – then you never ask that, that doubt never arises. Just continue. And you are doing perfectly well. I am happy!

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