10

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‌CHAPTER 10

23 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said he found life easier in the West, and it was difficult for him to be totally here.

Osho said he should go and live out the fantasies he had been having, but that the moment he reached the States he would start thinking about Poona. He said it was good to go and be finished with those things he felt incomplete, and that he would find that there was a vast difference between reality and fantasy.

Osho said he should make it a meditation to bear in mind what his fantasies were while he was with the reality of a situation, otherwise he would continue to chase fantasies for the rest of his life.

Osho said that life and one’s experience of it was the same, basically, wherever one was... ]

Your response is your reality, your world. You are your world, and you carry your world with you. It will go with you on the plane. When you land, it will land with you. When you reach Miami, the world that surrounds you will reach with you. It is always there, invisible. It is your atmosphere, your climate that you go on creating continuously, peddling continuously.

So wherever you are, you are in the same world. Once this experience becomes clear, then there is no need to change the outer reality. Then one changes the inner reality, the inner space.

[To another sannyasin with desires, Osho said that the nature of the mind is to be always somewhere else, because in fact wherever we are, we are never there totally. We don’t live any experience totally... ]

... that’s why you are constantly thinking of London. You have lived in London for eight years, and if you still think about it, it means you have not really lived there. Otherwise London is co horrible

(much laughter) that eight years is enough – one should escape forever and never go back. So this time live really there.

And always make it a point that wherever you are, live the experience. Either it is a worthwhile experience and you can live it again tomorrow, or if it is not worth much you can choose something else. But live it totally, so either way a decision arises.

[The Aum marathon group were present. The group leader said: I’ve always worked with extreme negativity hoping that that will bring about love, but I began to question the whole thing.… I got confused.]

Don’t get confused. Your group is not meant to bring love. If you try that, not only will you be confused; you will confuse everybody who participates in the group.

Your group’s whole meaning is cathartic, to bring up all the negativity – that is your work. For example the group ‘Soma’ that we are starting will be a positive group. The whole effort will be totally different. It can be useful only when you have done the negative work – and within forty-eight hours you cannot do both. Later on I can introduce a new group for you. We can have two Aum marathons – one negative, one positive.

In the negative one you simply work on negativity. The whole point is to bring it out, because people carry negativity their whole life. It has to be brought out, otherwise they are blocked. If you force love it will be just an enforcement, and of no use. They have to be cleaned completely.

Then the positive group will have a totally different orientation. It will have nothing to do with anger, sadness, hatred – no catharsis at all. Here they will do the opposite – float in love, compassion, tranquillity, calmness. But this is possible only after the first group. So you plan a different group – but with the same methods.

In fact the human mind is neither angry nor loving, is neither happy nor sad. Try to visualise that you are sitting in a room and there are many windows. One window is sadness – you open it and you become sad. You are not sadness – the scene just opens on sadness. You can open the window of anger, and you become angry. You can open the window of love, and you become loving. You can close all the windows and just sit there.

This is what eastern meditation is – to close all the windows and sit there. And whatever window you open, of course you get identified with it; that is the only way to open it. Identification is the key. If you want to open the window of anything, you have to get identified. In fact anger is no more there – you are anger. Only then it comes totally... you are totally possessed.

But negative windows have to be opened first because society has closed them, and people have completely forgotten how to be angry. And if you don’t know how to be angry, how can you know how to be in compassion? It is impossible. Compassion is a higher state, and you have not even fulfilled the preliminary. The first step has not even been taken, so how can you take the last?

So you move to anger. You open the window and go as far as you can so that you are finished with it. When you are finished with it you are ready to open the door of compassion. It is exactly the opposite window. So once all that society has repressed, surfaces, is relieved, you are cleaned.

And once a person is cleaned, he will automatically start moving towards the positive windows. Take his hand and lead him towards the window and he will move – because nobody really wants to hate. Nobody wants to be angry, because one suffers through it. Everybody wants to love and to be loved. Everybody wants to live as beautiful a life as possible. One lives an ugly life because one does not know how to live a beautiful life. One dreams about the beautiful and lives the ugly. And the ugly has been repressed and that repression has culminated and corrupted the whole being, so that it becomes almost impossible to reach the higher dimension.

Anything about you?

[The groupleader answers: I just feel sober.]

That’s very good. One should be very sober, because ups and downs are very destructive. One should move on the plain ground. No need to go high, no need to go low. Just being oneself – happy, but not excited.

Real happiness is not an excitement. It has a silence in it, a sadness in it. It will be very difficult to comprehend, but real happiness has a flavour of sadness in it – that’s why it is called sober. You are peaceful. Nothing extraordinary is happening – but there is no need. All extraordinary ideas are ego trips.

One lives an ordinary life, not hankering for anything. Then there are no valleys and no peaks – one simply moves on the plain ground. Then your smile will have something of the depth of tears also, because the opposites meet in the middle. When you move on the plain ground it has something of the peak and of the valley. It is just in the middle, and opposites meet there; it is the boundary of both. So it is very very essential to understand, otherwise one can feel soberness as sadness.

It does have a sadness in it. Happiness is there, but without any turmoil or excitement, without any fever. One is simply happy, so happy that one even forgets about happiness. Just sitting with your wife or your beloved by the fire – nothing special happening, but just a silent happiness... everything at-home, peaceful. Not the excitement that you have won an award and have become a millionaire. One is neither laughing nor crying.

And this is the right state to be in, because if you achieve a peak, sooner or later the valley will come. You cannot avoid the valley, and the more you try, the sooner you will fall into it. The higher the peak, the deeper is going to be the valley.

That’s why love affairs fail. They have such a peak of excitement, of romance, and then suddenly everything falls down – after the honeymoon, the valley. And it becomes intolerable, because you have seen the peak and now you have to live in the valley. That’s why many people have settled for the valley. In the East, people live with arranged marriage. It never fails, because it cannot; you cannot go lower.

If you seek peaks, valleys will follow. If you seek tranquillity, serenity, silence, peaks will disappear, and happiness too; all feverishness will disappear. One will feel a little sad because one has become accustomed to excitement.

So allow it to settle. Move easily from moment to moment, catching hold of the silence that has come to you. Nourish it, protect it, and be happy in it. That is the meaning of contentment – whatsoever is, is good. Wherever one is, one feels grateful. If you understand, then this is the greatest peak without any valley following it.

[A group member said he expected to be able to cathart more than in Primal group but: I got very angry and I couldn’t let it out. I was so fed up that I just left – and I felt good afterwards.]

Your expectation created trouble. Expectations always create trouble.

[The participant answered that another expectation of being able to undress in front of people went well.]

That is a very simple thing. It worked because it is a very simple thing. The other thing is real nakedness – when you can bring out your inner stupidities: your anger, your foolishness, your sadness, neurosis. Just taking off your clothes is nothing. So you chose a very poor substitute. You played a trick.

There were the two alternatives before you; these were the two things you thought at least you could do – so you felt good. That’s how the mind goes on playing clever tricks. Just being naked has no intrinsic value. Whatsoever value it has is because society has created a taboo. When everybody else is naked, in fact to be dressed is more difficult. If you move dressed in a nudist camp that will be very awkward and you will look foolish.

The real difficulty is to bring out the second – to bring out your inner nakedness, to be exposed and to look like a fool and an idiot, yelling and jumping and crying. That is the real thing. This is just a beginning. It is good as far as it goes, at least you have taken the first step, but because of your expectations, trouble was created.

But at least you did twenty-four hours, you did half the group – you could have escaped earlier. Sometime you will have to do it completely and then go without any expectations. Just move into it and allow whatsoever happens. And when everybody is exposing themselves, it is easier to ride on the wave and expose yourself. Don’t miss that opportunity. And nobody is thinking that you are wrong – everybody is worried about himself.

You will feel clean, because whatsoever you are hiding is a burden. Even by being naked you felt good – and that was just a physical nakedness. Think of spiritual nakedness. The significance is tremendous. Then one has nothing to hide and no burden to carry. One is again innocent and pure and virgin.

So next time don’t go with expectations, don’t plan. Simply be there.

[The assistant groupleader said: I started to feel ‘What am I doing this for?’... Every time it changes, seems to be different. I can’t find a clear train or something to watch. It’s very crazy.]

You just let it happen. There is no need to be worried about what you are doing, or for what you are there. Just let it happen.

[Osho went on to say that each group would be different, because it would be made up of different people each time. He said groupleading was a knack, an art, not a science, and that if you make dead rules, the whole game is lost... ]

When you say crazy things happen, it simply means that you have a certain idea of how things should happen, and when they don’t happen like that, you think it is crazy.

... If you have a certain idea of how things should happen and they don’t happen that way, it is crazy.

All the societies throughout the world have done that. Whenever somebody is different from the society, they call him mad. He is not necessarily mad – just the opposite may be true. The whole society may be mad and this man not at all, but because he behaves differently he is mad.

In Soviet Russia now, whosoever is against the communist party is sent to a psychiatric ward – he is crazy. To be against Communism is to be crazy, and he has to be treated, has to be given electric shock and drugs, and things like that – because he has gone mad.

Whenever a person doesn’t fit with the society, he is crazy. The same person may not be crazy in another society. For example, those people who are in russian hospitals being treated as schizophrenic, split, this and that – if they are in America they will not be crazy at all; they will be perfectly well. To be against Communism in America is perfectly sane. In fact to be a Communist in America is a little crazy.

Crazy people will remain in the world unless we create a society where nothing is expected. You follow...? Because crazy people are created by your expectations. Once you say that this is what is expected and somebody doesn’t fulfill that, he is mad. Madness is a condemnation from the society. The person becomes a victim, and the society is the majority and is powerful of course, so they can force their will on him.

A society is needed which has no expectations of anybody; where there is freedom for everybody to be himself and to do his thing. Then madness will simply disappear from the world. Madness is not a disease. It is an outcome of a particular structure. Those mad people are victims because they cannot follow the ideal, the track of the society, because they go astray. They go astray because we have a super-highway. If there is no super-highway – and there is none – then everything is perfectly right, and nobody is crazy.

So if you have an idea about other people – that if they behave like this they are sane and if they don’t, they are crazy – the same is applicable to yourself. If you have a certain idea that [the assistant groupleader] should behave like this, or be like that, or that [her] life should fulfill such an idea, then whenever you are not fulfilling it you will feel crazy.

Drop that idea. The problem is not craziness – the problem is the idea. Move moment to moment. Who knows who [you are], or for what purpose she is? And it is good that nobody knows. If somebody knows then you are just a puppet. But nobody knows. Your destiny is open-ended. One should be happy – this is dignity. Freedom is dignity.

B. F. Skinner has written a book ‘Beyond Freedom and Dignity’. In it he says that man is just an automaton, a machine, and that there is no freedom and no dignity. He has chosen the name well – ‘Beyond Freedom and Dignity’.

Our whole work is just the opposite. Freedom is the essential being of man, and dignity is natural to him. It is nothing to be achieved. Everybody is born with freedom and dignity.

So just don’t enforce any ideals on yourself. Just move moment to moment and you will never feel crazy.

[She adds: I feel myself judging what I say or do in the group.]

Next group do whatsoever you want to do, say whatsoever you want to say. That too you are hindering because you are afraid of being crazy. Continuously the whole problem is the same: you want to say something, but immediately your mind says this will not be good, that people will think you are crazy – so you don’t say it. When you don’t say it, the stomach feels suppressed – of course. Say it and be finished.

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