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‌CHAPTER 1

13 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor asked what the agreement of sannyas meant.]

That you are no more. It is a total surrender. No agreement – because in an agreement there are two parties. You simply surrender. Much courage is needed...

It is not an agreement because it is not a legal thing. It is just a love affair... you fall in love. It is not an agreement because it is not a marriage. So if you feel love for me you take the jump and of course it needs courage, the greatest courage. All other courages are nothing compared to it, because before you were moving on familiar ground. Even if something new was there, it was not absolutely new. You knew it somehow; it had a context in your past, with your mind, with your intellect. You simply move in deep trust.

Much happens through it – and there is no other way of happening – because once you put yourself aside, all barriers drop. Suddenly you are open, vulnerable. That is the meaning of courage – to remain vulnerable. Whatsoever happens, one remains open. Storms may come, but still one never closes the doors. Once you close the door, it is closed against the enemy. It is also dosed against the friend. A closed door makes no difference between the enemy and the friend.

In fear we close ourselves. Of course we close ourselves against death – but life is also left outside. This is the risk: if you want to live, you have to live with death constantly.

So if you want in short what sannyas is, it is losing your head. And you have nothing else to lose except your head. So let me cut it, mm?

[A visitor says: I am looking for my master... I try to understand.] That will be difficult.

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The disciple can never choose the master – only the master can choose the disciple – because the disciple is almost asleep. In sleep, how can you choose who is going to wake you? At the most you can dream, dream about the master. But you cannot choose, because you are asleep. Only somebody who is awake can choose whether to wake you or not.

So if you leave it to me I can wake you, but if you are trying to choose, then it is for you...

[The visitor had previously found Yoga and Sufi techniques complicated when he expected to find them simple.]

They are very simple but because you are looking through a certain mind, because you are not looking directly and you have certain ideas in the mind, then things become complicated.

If you have certain ideas, then whatsoever I say has to fit with those ideas. If it doesn’t fit then there are complications; then there comes conflict and confusion.

[The visitor adds: What I mean is, for example, Jesus went to the lake in Israel and said to people to follow him.

And to come to this place I had to go to the secretary to arrange things, and had to wait to see you.] I am not Jesus. I have my own ways. And I am not a follower of Jesus. He lived his life – I live mine.

That’s what I say – you have a certain idea so you are trying to figure it out; you are trying to compare with Jesus. If my followers go to Jesus they will be in trouble, because they will look for a secretary, and there will be none. (laughter) They will say this man is wrong. You understand me?

Each master lives his own way – there is no other way he can live. This is my way: to make myself as unapproachable as possible, to make it as difficult as possible for you to come to me. This is nothing, this is just the beginning. Wait a few more days and you will have a secretary to the secretary.

That’s my way, because this is my understanding – that the more easily available you are, the more useless your availability is. Make it difficult, and then people come with intense desire. Only then they come – otherwise crowds come. I have lived that way also. For many years I was available under a tree...

[The visitor asks: Is it not a natural right to be free, or to go one step after the other – just a natural right?]

There is no particular nature. Each has his own particular nature – there is nothing like a generalised nature, nothing like human nature. Jesus has his nature, I have mine, you have yours. And when you flower, you will flower in a different way.

Everybody has his own. Even Jesus’ master, John the Baptist, had a different quality. Jesus never followed him – he started moving in different ways. It has to be so. There is no problem in it.

I have to follow my nature. This is how I see that it is more helpful to you – if I am less available. If I give you one hour to talk to me, you will talk rubbish, because you only have rubbish. If I give you

only three minutes, you have to choose from the rubbish; you have to choose whatsoever jewels you have. If you are allowed to live with me for twenty-four hours, you will completely forget me. That’s how all Jesus’ disciples missed him. But that was his way and nothing can be said about it, because there is no comparison, no criterion.

And there is nothing like human nature. Each individual human being has his own nature. So if you reach to a Buddha he will be totally different from Jesus. If you ask a Buddhist, he will say that Jesus must have been a little political, that he was not purely religious, otherwise why should he be crucified? Buddha was not crucified!

If you ask Jains, the followers of Mahavir, they will say that one is crucified only when he has committed many sins in a past life, otherwise not. So Jesus must have been a murderer in a past life, and he was crucified because of that karma – because a Mahavir cannot be crucified.

Mahavir lived naked, so his followers think that everybody who has attained has to live naked, because when you become innocent, what is the use of clothes? Jesus is not realised because he is still wearing clothes. Even a Buddha is not realised – he is still wearing clothes!

So these are different people, and they have all attained in their own ways; their expressions are unique.

And it is good that they are unique, otherwise life will be too monotonous. Think – a row of Jesuses standing in a queue. (laughter) It will look ugly. Alone Jesus is beautiful, a precious diamond, but if there are too many just like him, he will be a pebble on the shore – nothing of worth.

[The visitor then says: That’s what I found with the sannyasins – they all look too similar.]

You have not seen them yet. Become a sannyasin and see. You will find them each different. Their clothes are similar – they are not. That is just appearance. No two individuals can be similar. Approach them, be close to them, and you will see the difference.

So if you are ready, then I give you sannyas. Or if you want to think a little more... [He answers:... show me something. If you can let me feel – I am prepared to feel.]

If you are prepared to feel, you will feel. I am not going to show anything to you. If you are prepared, you feel. Just by saying, no one is prepared. The very saying shows that you are not prepared. You may be greedy, you may be looking for some miracle, but you are not prepared.You are not

prepared.

Those who are prepared simply relax and surrender, and then many things are shown to them. Not that I show them to them – they see. That’s also a difference – I am not a magician, and I am not here to show you miracles.

If you are ready, things will happen to you.but you wait.

Avinash means immortal, and anand means bliss – deathless bliss; immortal bliss. Forget the old completely. I will be working through you. (Avinash had said earlier that he was working as a

psychologist in a clinic for people who were mentally troubled, in Switzerland.) You will become a vehicle. There is no block, nothing – the passage is completely clear. Very few people are so completely clean and clear.

[A sannyasin said he had been aware of a block in his chest, a sensation of pain and chaos, that came when he was lying down, and which happened after meditating but also at other times. Osho passed him one of his special initialled handkerchiefs that he gives to people who are leaving him, or to others to help clear blocks and discharge energy.]

This night, put the handkerchief where you feel the pressure. Press it there, and remember me.

The pain will become more and more intense... it will become hot, white-hot, and burning. But don’t be afraid... and keep the handkerchief there. This will last only a few minutes, and then you will feel a relaxation – it has disappeared.

Everything disappears at a given intensity, never before. It is just as when you put water on fire. It will evaporate only when the heat has reached one hundred degrees.

Lukewarm water cannot evaporate. It can remain lukewarm for centuries, but it will not evaporate. A single moment of one hundred degrees heat, and the water takes a jump and evaporates.

So it is going to be painful, but it will remain only a few minutes. Do it tonight, and continue doing it for seven days. You can use it anywhere you feel blocks. And when the pain has disappeared from everywhere, bum the handkerchief – don’t give it to anybody. Just try until you feel that everything has disappeared, because in many parts of the body that pain can be felt. It may disappear from here and start appearing somewhere else.

There are many blocks in the body, natural blocks, and when you don’t meditate you are not aware of them.

When you start meditating, the energy goes and hits the block, and you feel the intensity and the pressure. But they can be dissolved. There is nothing to worry about.

Rani means queen and devika means divine. And everybody is a divine king or queen – one has just to remember it!

[A sannyasin says: One thing I notice very much at night, and sometimes if I am trying to relax, is that the right side of my body always has some energy in it, so I have to move it.]

You do one thing: in the morning when you get up, always get up with the left nostril closed, and the right nostril functioning. The breathing should be running through the right nostril, mm?

It changes continuously. After each hour or forty minutes it changes. The left nostril gives activity to the right-side brain and the right side of the body, and the right nostril gives energy to the left-side brain and the left side of the body – just cross-wise.

So in the morning before you get up, just feel which nostril is functioning, which nostril is taking the breath. If you see that it is the left nostril working, then close the left nostril for a few minutes so that

the breathing changes to the right nostril, and keep it closed. One has to breathe, so by and by the right nostril starts breathing. Always get up out of the bed with the right nostril functioning, and in the night also do the same when you go to sleep.

[The sannyasin replies: I find if I lean on my left side the left nostril will close automatically.]

Yes, automatically. You do that; you can lie down on that side. Whenever you go to sleep and whenever you get up, the same has to be done. If in the afternoon you go to sleep, again do the same – going and getting up.

Just watch it for one month and then tell me. It will change. Nothing to worry about. You must have got into the wrong habit of getting up from the very beginning.

In the West nobody is worried about the nostrils and their function. Western medical science has not come to discover the working of the left and right nostrils, and their inner mechanism. Many things can be changed very easily.

We have two brains, not one. And we have two sides – the whole body Is divided. Nobody has both the sides exactly similar, nobody. A little difference is bound to be there, because one side is active, another side Inactive. One side is male, another side female – yin and yang.

Difference are bound to be there, but sometimes they can be too much. That’s why you are feeling it, otherwise nobody feels it. And if it is too much, sometimes it can be dangerous, for the weaker side will start becoming more and more weak, and the bridge between the two will become difficult. Then all the illnesses will happen on the one side.

So just do this for one month. Go on watching what is happening. It will be okay.

[A groupleader spoke about a group that would combine therapy and creative arts for Poona Ashram and Western Centres.

Osho said that it would involve much planning, and it would need a longer commitment than the current groups... ]

Don’t think right now about the West. First we should have a centre here working perfectly, then we will think of connecting it. That can be possible. But right now it must happen here first. Many people are going to come, and it can be a real course in creativity.

Don’t call it therapy at all. Let it be a discipline in creativity, but not therapy. In fact it is not for ill people. It is for people who are healthy, and would like to be more healthy. So the group can become a course after people have done all the other therapies. They must pass through all the other therapies so they are cleaned first.

For it, much will be needed. It may be possible for people to work and live together, not only being creative in the arts, but in their lives too. And in nine months’ togetherness, living together, eating together and working together, they can solve problems as they arise. It will be a group soul for nine months.

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