13

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‌CHAPTER 13

26 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[An ashram yoga teacher wanted to teach a synthesis of what he had learnt from several teachers. He asked Osho if he should ‘do my own thing’.]

You do your own thing. Absorb whatsoever you can get from anywhere, and always create a synthesis out of your own experience. Otherwise what you teach is borrowed, and the borrowed cannot be taught – because it is an art, not a science. Unless you have experienced something within you you cannot transfer that experience to anybody else. You can teach the techniques, but they are not the basic thing – they are just the outer shell. The content is something totally different – that is your experience.

So always remain open to learn from wherever you can. Never become closed. Life is so tremendous that one can never come to a point where one can say ‘Now I have learned’. It never happens. Even God is learning – hence He goes on creating. If He has learnt the art, there is no need to create anymore. He still goes on innovating, creating, experimenting. The whole existence is an experiment.

Knowledge should never become a dead thing. It should be a constant learning. So learn from everywhere, and then always listen to your own inner synthesis. If you are teaching something which you have not experienced, which is not your own, in which your own heart is not beating, you are transferring stale knowledge – and that is dangerous. All stale knowledge becomes poisonous to the person to whom you are transferring it. So learn from everywhere, and learn with total humbleness, but remain open to transfer your own experience.

I am not in favour of too much strain. The whole point is that people are already too strained. They are almost on the verge of breakdown. Don’t put any more strain on them. Rather, teach them how to relax – so relaxation remains the background. Even if they are doing yoga exercises, the

goal remains relaxation. Sometimes in certain postures they have to strain, but the goal remains relaxation. For example, I can close my fist as hard as I can, I can put all my energies into closing it. A point will come where it is no more possible to force it, and it will open on its own and become relaxed – more relaxed than it was before.

After every deep exercise you can relax more. Tension can be used only as a step towards relaxation; it is not a goal in itself. Many Hatha Yoga exercises are designed as if tension is the goal, and many yoga teachers think tension is the goal – it is not.

Just the other day I was reading a book of Lenza Del Vasto. He is Italian and a disciple of Gandhi. He says never allow yourself any unoccupied moment: constantly do something. Even if you have nothing to do, walk, dig a hole in the garden, run – but do something. Don’t just sit without doing anything, because then the mind will start working. If you are tired, the mind cannot think – but this is not a state of meditation. This is simply a state of exhaustion – it is not rest.

I also say work hard – but the goal remains relaxation. Work so hard that you can relax deeply. If you don’t work hard you cannot relax deeply.

Work is not worship. Worship is always relaxation. Work is just a means to reach that relaxation where worship is possible, where deep gratefulness, prayer, meditation, is possible. But rest is the goal, not work. Love is the goal, not labour. Celebration is the goal, not duty. So this emphasis has to be remembered.

Whatsoever you are doing here is to help people to become more happy, more loose, more easy- going. It is to help them towards a deep let-go. That remains the goal of whatsoever is happening around me – that people should become capable of deep sleep, of deep meditation, of deep relaxation. They should become capable of enjoying fun. They should be able to fool around. They should not be serious. Seriousness is a disease.

So while you are teaching Yoga, don’t be serious. When one is teaching people, one tends to become serious – because if you are not, people will think that the thing that you are teaching is not serious. Teachers become serious, longfaced, and they destroy young children.

Be laughing, ke relaxed – because the whole goal is how to be able to play; how to be able to play without any motivation. There is no motivation, but the energy is there. The thing is now to delight in it. So remember, mm?

[The sannyasin then asks about giving space to his girlfriend when she is involved with someone else.]

If you can relax and give [your girlfriend] that much space, it is going to do something tremendous for you. For her it may not be much, but for you it is going to be a tremendous thing, and very meaningful.

When you give freedom, it has to be unconditional. Sex, no sex, is not the question. When you give the other person his or her own space, you give it totally, with no strings attached to it. It is not a long rope – there is no rope. If you mean by freedom a long rope, it is not freedom. It is just cleverness

and being cunning – and it is not going to help you. You give space and freedom, but you go on hoping that it will never be taken for granted.

That’s the confusion; that’s why you feel off-balance. We give freedom to the other with the idea that the other is not going to use it. Deep down we go on hoping that the other will feel obliged to us. will become more in love with us. We give freedom but with the deep unconscious hope that the other is not going to use it. If the other uses it, then the problem arises. Give total freedom.

You should feel good that she is not feeling guilty. To make anybody feel guilty is a sin; there is no other sin like it. It cripples people, paralyses them. So tell her to be completely free and not to feel any guilt.

Once you have accepted this, you will have a very very deep freedom within yourself, because this is a basic law: if you can give freedom to others, you have it. And there is nothing like freedom. If you don’t give freedom to others, you don’t have it, you can’t have it. The more you give it, the more you have of it. The less you give, the less you have of it. It is a double-edged sword – it cuts both ways. You give freedom to the other and immediately you are free. You try to make a bondage, a possessiveness around the other, and you are bound, you are a slave; it is mutual.

So just accept it. If you do, very soon a deep tranquillity will come to you, suddenly a freedom. It can come right now. It is not a question of thinking about it. It is just a flash of understanding.

And if she feels attracted to somebody else, what can she do? Nothing can be done about it. One is a victim of so many desires. So feel compassion for her, and just tell her to not be disturbed in any way about it.

Soon you will see that as you give her more freedom, her guilt will disappear, and then by and by the desire for others will disappear too. It is a vicious circle. You feel attracted towards somebody and you feel guilty because you have promised to somebody else to be with him forever. You are going against your own promise, your own ego, your own image. The more guilty you feel, the more attracted you feel. The more you try to repress a desire, the more powerful it becomes. The more you resist it, the more the mind fantasises about it.

When the guilt disappears, it is a good sign; a sign that [your girlfriend] is coming out of the vicious circle. Soon she will see that nobody is preventing her, and all the charm will be gone. She will see that somebody is there who loves her so much that he is even ready to love her lovers. She will feel a new and even deeper relationship to you. Freedom will bring you closer and closer.

And this is something to be understood: you can be close to somebody in two ways. You can be forced by the law, by conscience, guilt, religion, the police – then you are close, but you are not close. You are just physically close.

There is another closeness that comes out of freedom. Both partners are free to be as far away as they want, but still they choose to be close. It is a choice out of total freedom. It has a different fragrance. It is nothing of this world... it is almost something of another world.

So just accept it, and accept it with joy. Feel happy that you could give her such freedom.

[The sannyasin replies: I don’t know whether I’m suppressing my feeling... I’m confused about what I feel.]

No, if you have understood me, things will change immediately, from tomorrow.

And it is not a question of what she says. It is for you to look inside and see whether you are real or not. She may say that you are not being real because she cannot understand that a man who loves her will allow her to move with somebody else. That is her problem, not yours. Now she will try to throw the whole responsibility on you – as if you are trying to be higher than her, holier than her.

That too is good, that too is a situation for you, mm? First she will wait for you to make her feel guilty. If that doesn’t happen, then somewhere something is wrong. So she will immediately say that you are being unreal. She may even say that you don’t love her, and that is why you are allowing her to move with someone else. She will say that if you had loved her you would have fought for her, and that it is not that you are not jealous – you don’t love her. She will say all these things – it is natural. She will have to cope with this problem, and it is a great problem, because the vicious circle has been broken.

By and by the clouds will disappear from her eyes and she will be able to see what is happening. But it is good, it is very good. It is going to be a great blessing to you... This is the real Yoga!

[A sannyasin in the yoga class said she wanted to scream in one of the postures and asked if she should do so.]

You can do it in your own room whenever you feel like it – and it will come again. It is good to allow it – but not in the class, because then everybody will start.

And this is going to happen, rememberThis is going to happen with our people because they are

doing other meditations, and the meditations are hitting their repressed things deeply. In doing a certain posture they may touch the same centre. Many people will feel that they want to scream, so tell them they will have to do it at home.

Soon we will have a small room here, and whenever somebody feels, he can go and scream there. Underground rooms will be ready soon. But allow it in your room. It will be very good and will relax many things.

[A sannyasin said that he was hard of hearing in his right ear since he had been blown up in the second world war.…

Osho checked his energy, and then said that much could be done, and suggested that he should take a very very hot shower, so hot that he perspired, then follow this with a very cold shower. This would give exercise to the tissues of the right hemisphere, helping them to expand and contract.]

... within three months you will be able to hear almost sixty percent. And this exercise will help your consciousness also, because the mind will start functioning.

The second thing: when you do the Nadabrahma meditation, use ear plugs so that no outer sound can be heard. Then just hum so that you can just feel the inner sound. That inner sound will hit the ear from inside and it will become an inner massage. That also will help.

[The ashram yoga teacher] can teach you two yoga exercises. One is sarvangasan, if shirshasan is not possible. These two exercises will do – just three minutes in the morning before you take your bath. It is just standing on your head so that the blood circulates deep down into the head. The whole thing is how to make the inner brain moving, functioning. Ordinarily it is very difficult for blood to reach the brain, because it is against gravitation and the heart has to pump continuously.

If you feel that these positions are difficult, use a slanting bed – just for five to ten minutes. Dead tissues have collected in your head, and this blood will carry them away.

If you continue these things for three months, you will have almost sixty percent hearing in your right ear. If you can continue them for a year, you can have almost ninety percent hearing.

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes when I go to sleep and I lie on my back, I can feel something moving in my body. It’s not my body... it feels like energy.]

Mm mm, it is energy – so help it to move, and don’t stop it. Wherever it goes, you simply follow. Simply become the shadow and let it become the real; it is your real energy. So just help it to move.

You may be scared in the beginning because it can go away from the body, and that is very scaring. Once you become attuned to it, it has a beauty of its own. Nothing can be compared to it – sexual orgasm is nothing. It gives you such a deep orgasm... the whole body thrills with bliss.

If you follow it silently, without resistance, it will move away, and you may be able to see your own body lying on the bed – and you are standing near the door. You may be able to hover over your bed like a cloud. Don’t be afraid. Enjoy it... it is perfectly good.

When you come back to the body you will have a thrill. Leaving the body and coming back again, you Will have a thrill, and the thrill is deeper than any sexual orgasm.

In fact in sexual orgasm the same thing happens. Because of the female energy, your male energy is attracted so deeply that it leaves your body for a few seconds. It is not only an ejaculation of semen – it is an ejaculation of you. Your whole energy is ejaculated just for a second, and then you are again back in the body. And that is the whole thrill of it.

Once you know how to do it without any partner, without any sex being involved, then sex becomes meaningless because now you know a higher way to attain to a deeper orgasm more easily, and at no risk, no cost.

So allow this... it is very good. For fifteen days cooperate.…

[A visitor says: I don’t know... to get in touch with my creativity, with some warmth inside me. I have low energy a lot, and I don’t have good relationships with women... I came to ask you the answer... I admit want something from you.]

I know – and you will have it.

All these things are interconnected. If you feel something is missing, some key is missing, then you will not be able to move in a deep relationship. You can move deeply into another being only if you have moved into your own depth, otherwise not. A superficial relationship is possible, but it satisfies nobody. On the contrary, it makes you even more disconnected.

So the first relationship is with oneself. Meditation is more primary than love. Without meditation, your love will be a failure. You may try with many different people, but again and again something will come in and the affair will be destroyed. That something comes from within your depth. You move so unconsciously – as if almost in a sleep – that somewhere or other you are bound to stumble and everything will be destroyed. Love is very fragile. Unless you have a perfect light in you, it will be difficult to move in love.

And the work that you have been doing – Encounter groups, Psychoanalysis, Marathons – is all negative. They bring out your negative things but they don’t give you something positive. They help to clean you, but they don’t replace anything. Nobody can live in an emptiness, so again one fills oneself with the same things.

So you go on cleaning every day – and you will feel good. It is just as when you have taken a bath and for half an hour you feel good. Then again dirt gathers and you perspire, and the feeling from the bath is lost. That’s why people go on living from one Encounter group to another. It gives a thrill, and one feels good, but again the same life and the same things happen. These are good cleaning processes, but that is not enough. Necessary, but not enough.

It is as if you have cleaned the ground and you think that that is the garden. Cleaning is good – the weeds and stones have to be removed. The ground has to be prepared, seeds have to be planted, and watering and work and much patience is needed – and then the garden will come.

What you have been doing is just a half of it. The other half is missing, and that is the key that you feel you would like to have.

Sannyas can be very helpful if you take courage. It becomes the first positive step. It is a commitment, and it is getting hooked with me on an unknown journey. For you it is almost dark, and you are moving in the unknown. Of course fear comes and a thousand and one questions and doubts arise, but they all belong to your negative mind.

If you decide to go towards some positivity, you have to become indifferent to all those doubts and questions. It is a risk. All positivity is a risk, all growth is a risk. Every birth is going to be very painful.

Whenever a child is born, there exist two possibilities: he may live, he may not live. When he was in the mother’s womb, she was breathing for him – he was not even breathing for himself. Out of the womb he will have to breathe for himself. The first two or three minutes after the child is born are the most dangerous. Everybody is in suspense, wondering whether the child will breathe or not. And if the child does not cry the doctor has to hit him so he starts breathing. And the child has never breathed before, so it is unknown.

Sannyas is like a new birth.

You have lived a way, a certain style of life, and you have worked – and still you go on missing something. Try something new, something absolutely new.

And this is the thing – when I say take sannyas, I mean give the responsibility to me. You drop it. Start living as if there is no problem. From this moment, simply relax. And that relaxation comes through sannyas.

So if you can take courage – and it is a question of courage, it is an adventure – it can be tremendously helpful. Would you like to take the jump?

[The visitor answers: I have to think about it... I’ve worked too hard and I don’t want to think about myself anymore. But what I really want to do is to go in the other direction... to be wild and you know, not holy in the least bit.]

That’s what my sannyas is! (laughter) Not holy in the least bit... and it is wild. And if you are really fed up with working on yourself – that’s what I am saying – give the responsibility to me. After that there is no work. There is only trust.

Work you have been doing – and if you think about sannyas, that also will be work. You lose nothing by it – just your past, which is meaningless. You get rid of something that has been of no worth to you. But if you think about sannyas, you will ask that same past. It is as if you ask the disease if you should take the medicine or not. That is absolutely stupid! Whom are you going to ask? You will ask yourself – and you are in a mess.

That’s what I mean when I say not to think about it. This is moving from reason to irreason... so come closer, (much laughter ) and close your eyes.

... and the only thing I would like to say to you in this moment is to start living as if there is no problem. In the beginning it is only ‘as if’ but by and by you will feel that there is no problem. In fact there is no problem. The mind just goes on creating them – it is a problem-creating machine.

Life as such has no problems. One can simply live it. Even trees are living it. Even birds and animals are living it. Only man is somehow missing it, because man has a mind, and the mind goes on creating problems.

So start living from this moment as if there is no problem. Move completely freely. The past is gone. And I start working immediately from this moment.

[A sannyasin said that he was reluctant to leave Poona he was nearing a point of surrendering on another level... ]

You will be afraid whenever you go, because once you are here, you are so different, that going back to the old world creates fear. But that has to be faced, and it is going to be a deep experience. It will not disturb anything. It is going to be beautiful and you are going to be strengthened by it. And the next surrender will happen there, so don’t be worried about it.

Many surrenders happen – because the first surrender can rarely be total. The mind won’t allow it. It even seems total, but it is not. The mind goes on holding something – just as a safety measure. Many times you will feel you are surrendered, and many times you will feel that you have gone far away; this will happen many times.

By and by you will be able to watch both. Then the real surrender will happen – and that surrender is not surrender at all. The real is so different from what you call surrender that there is no need even to call it surrender – because there is nothing opposite to it. In the beginning it is going to be a duality – just a part of the mind surrenders.

Try to understand the mechanism. Maybe sixty percent of the mind, seventy percent, sometimes only fifty-one percent of the mind surrenders, and forty-nine percent doesn’t surrender. Then too it is good, because it is the major part and you surrender. The fifty-one percent of the mind that surrenders may lose its majority any day. It is almost parliamentary, mm? The other part of the mind will remain there hiding, watching for the right moment when it can persuade a few members of the major party towards it – and there will be many moments.

Many times you will be angry with me and suddenly forty percent will be surrendered and sixty percent not. Many times you will expect something and it will not be fulfilled.Because it is not

always good to fulfill your expectations; sometimes they have to be completely destroyed.because

unless you love me even with frustrations, you cannot love me. Your love has to come to such a point where anger, frustrationsnothing matters. The love remains uncorrupted by all these things.

They come and they go – at the most they become momentary things, flashes. But they are no more meaningful in any meaningful sense.

So many times it will happen. You have simply to watch the game of the mind. Watching both sides, by and by you will become separate from both. Then a surrender happens which is not of the mind. You cannot even call it surrenderthere is no word for it. It has a taste but it is non-verbal. When it

comes you will recognise it immediately.

[The sannyasin’s wife was present. He said that though they had been married for ten years, they would have fights between them, but why, they could not say.

The wife said: We don’t believe each other]

What is the need to believe? [She asks: Surrender?]

There is no need. You are asking unnecessary things. What is the need to believe and to surrender? You think you should surrender to him and he should surrender to you? That is impossible. No wife and husband can ever do that.

The fight is clear – you are both trying to force the other to surrender. It is an ego trip and very dangerous. If he surrenders you will not be able to forgive him – because no woman can love a man who surrenders to her. And every woman tries to have the man surrender to her.

So this is not a problem at all... just foolishness. If you want, I can tell him to surrender to you – and he will do it because he is my disciple. I can tell him, and every day he will touch your feet and surrender completely. (laughter) Whatsoever you say, he will do – he will become obedient.

[She asks: But the fighting will go on?]

There is no need – if you understand that there is no need to surrender. There is some need to share... share your love with each other. But this is not a master and disciple relationship – sharing is enough. Two people loving each other are equal – there is no question of surrender. Drop that idea and the conflict will drop.

One woman came to me a few years ago – she was on the same trip. I told her husband to touch her feet at least three times a day, and that whatsoever the wife says, he has to say yes. Just after a few days she said to me, ‘What are you doing? My husband has gone almost mad! He says yes to everything. I cannot love such a man... he looks like a dog!’

Share and love – and then sometimes fighting is not bad. But then it should be out of love, and not for each other’s surrender, and things like that. Two persons live together and sometimes a quarrel arises. It is good. It simply shows that the two are alive. If you are both dead and you live in the same room, no quarrel will arise. (laughter) Alive – a little quarrel, a little conflict.

And then – he is a German. (more laughter) Take care of him... and you love each other, so there is no need to surrender. Simply share – and things will be good.

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