16

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‌CHAPTER 16

29 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asks about studying Tai Chi and acupunture. Osho said they were both very meditative.]

... both are joined together deep down. So if you learn both it will be good. If you know your own energy and its centring, it is very easy to feel another’s energy.

And in fact it is a knack – it is not a science. If you don’t have an inner feeling for it, you can learn the technique and you can be helpful, but it is just going to be so so... you are groping in the dark. If you have felt some centring in yourself, have become aware of your own energy movements, your own meridians of energy, then Tai Chi will be of help. Then it will be very easy to feel another’s energy moving, to feel where the energy is blocked. Once you can feel that, it is very easy to help unblock it. There is no need to even go as far as acupuncture. Acupressure can help, mm? – just a small amount of pressure on a certain point. The exact point at where the meridian is broken and the pressure is discontinuous needs to be known. The whole phenomenon is of energy.

So it is good. You go!

[A member of the Encounter group says: I’ve always been out, and losing myself out there... for the first time I am beginning to go inside. It was amazing, an incredible group.]

Very good. Now continue to have that feeling of going in.

Make it a point to remember every day. Whenever you can find a place and a space to be silent, sit, relax the body, and just start going in. Come closer and closer to yourself, and go on forgetting the world... it is falling away. It has moved onto some other star and you are moving in a totally different

dimension. The noise of the road will be there, but it will be on the periphery, and the distance between you and it will be tremendous.

Each day you have to catch the feeling again and again. Then it will become stronger and stronger, and any day the breakthrough is possible. The feeling is just hovering around trying to find the way to your interior, to your very coreAnd feel it rather than thinking about it.

The posture of your body will be a certain way when you do it.your head will start falling forward.

A point may come when your head is touching the earth, you will be kneeling down. So allow it – because that is the posture of the child in the womb. That is the posture of the innermost state of energy, mm? When you are touching your centre again, you will again take the posture of being in a womb. So put a pillow there and help it. You will be again like a small child, and all the learning and all the knowledge and experience will have been left behind. It has been good.

[A sannyasin says he feels alone, because he is very loving and other people are not.]

If you feel loving in your heart, you will never feel alone. Whether others love you or not is not the point. If you are full of love you will never feel alone, because love needs no response. If your love is not returned it’s okay – you are not waiting for it. You simply love, and you are happy in loving.

You ask that love be returned only when you are not loving. This is one of the basic things to understand. If others are not loving, that is their problem. Why make it yours?...

[The sannyasin describes a situation where he someone became angry with him because he had taken potato chips from him.]

Then something is wrong with you. Whosoever brings the problem has something wrong with him.

You interfered with the person – and if it was your authentic feeling to take a chip, it was his authentic feeling to beat you. He was responding authentically. He would have been a hypocrite if he had been feeling like hurting you, hitting you, but smiled at you. That would have been wrong.…

[The sannyasin then says: It’s not that I knew I should ask permission. I was not aware.]

Then become more awareand don’t try to teach people. Nobody is so humble that he can learn

from you. Nor are you ready to learn from anybody. Everybody is a teacher.…

If it is difficult for you, then you go away. But if you want to be here, you have to learn a few things. Don’t interfere with people – and even love can become an interference. If somebody is passing and you go and hug him, he may not want to hug you, so then he will have to throw you off. It is not your decision only. He has to be asked whether he wants to be hugged or not.

You go and kiss a woman because you are very loving – and the woman will call the police. (laughter) You may say ‘What is the point of asking permission?’ – you were not taking anything, but rather giving a kiss, so the woman should be grateful to you.

Never interfere in anybody else’s life. Move on your own. And if you feel loving, be loving. But love always thinks of the other, is always considerate of the other.

[The sannyasin says: When I see somebody dressed in orange I feel connected to him, because I think that he’s changed.]

No, but you have not changed – and you are dressed in orange. Have you changed? [He answers: I’m trying.]

The other will also say that he is trying. Trying is not the point. Always remember that whenever you bring a complaint, it is you who is always somewhere in the wrong. The complainer is always wrong.…

[The sannyasins says: I believe that there might be somebody good who sees that somebody else is bad – this is a fact.]

A good person never sees that way. And if you are interested in seeing people’s faults and this and that, then please go away. Don’t be worried about them, and don’t interfere with them. They will not tolerate you. You are taking a very wrong attitude.

If you want to be here you will have to learn many things. And drop teaching. Rather, start learning.

These are all tricks of the ego. These ‘shoulds’ – that people who are in orange should be loving – should be dropped by you. Who are you to decide for anybody?

... You are wasting time. Don’t interfere, and don’t take anybody’s things.

And you need many groups. That too – that you don’t have any problems and you don’t need groups – is your ego. You need them because right now you have problems. But I am not saying to do them. You decide for yourself.

If you can be happy here, then be here – and drop all these things. .

[The Vipassana group are present. The groupleader says: What should one do when people are getting very very tense?]

Just leave them. Nothing is to be done, because if you do anything it will become a repression. They have to watch and witness it, and not to suppress it, or be occupied in something else to avoid it.

[The assistant groupleader says: I’m amazed at human nature!]

Human nature is absurd. People go on somehow managing, and deep down much turmoil and neuroses of many sorts continue. People somehow manage a facade, a face – but deep down the madness continues.

But in such an intensive group – fifteen days of just sitting down and doing nothing – they cannot manage it. Their tricks drop, their structure doesn’t function. Their old routine is of no use. They simply fall out of their patterned ways of hiding. So things start surfacing – eccentricities will come up.

And if you watch, you will see that to think that man a rational being is patent nonsense... man is not. He is absolutely irrational. Other animals seem to be more rational. Though they don’t have any reason, they live a very rational life. You cannot find a buffalo eccentric. They are always following a certain natural way. Only man is irrational because he has to hide many things.

Once the structures don’t function, the eccentricities surface, bubble up – and the man himself is worried about what to do. He has not been aware of these things, so he tries to rationalise, to convince himself that this is nothing, just fun, and he is enjoying himself. But watch... and while you are watching, remember that the same is hidden behind you.

[A trainee leader asked: how to watch the breath, and yet be totally relaxed at the same timeIn

the literature I’ve been reading on Vipassana, they use the word concentrate all the time, and I feel that’s thrown me off a bit.]

Don’t bother much about what books say. Books are almost always written by people who have not been meditating themselves. So they may be informative, but they don’t come from knowing.

Always remember that you are the decisive factor. Whatsoever you feel is good, is good. And finally you have to decide, finally you are the authority, because it is a question of feel. Listen to the feeling, and not too much to the reason. And feeling is almost always right. I say almost always, because sometimes you misunderstand thinking for feeling – otherwise it is absolutely right. Sometimes you think that you feel, and you become confused and deceived by the thinking.

So just think of these three things: if you feel relaxed with any method, then it is good. If you feel tense, then it is not good. If you feel happy with anything, then it is good. If you feel unhappy with it, then it is not good. If you feel silent, if you feel a calm, a coolness in you, then it is good. If you become heated, feverish, disturbed, then it is not good. So let these be the deciding factors.

Everybody has to come to his own meditation. All methods are just to help you to find your method. And remember this – that your path is going to be a little different from everybody else’s path. You are different, and nobody else can decide what is good for you. That has been done, and it has corrupted the whole human mind.

So whatsoever you feel is good, is good. Be a hedonist!

[A groupmember says: I’ve just been sitting on tons of energy. I haven’t felt happy about it at all.]

... whenever you feel that tension is there, become as tense as possible. You have been trying to relax, and that is creating the whole trouble.

When a certain energy is blocked and you are trying to relax, you are going against it. Move with yourself.

[To the assistant leader with the zen stick] watch, and whenever he is becoming tense, go to him, and leave it to your heart – not your head – and wait. When he comes to a climax, then hit. But the hit has to happen – don’t decide when. Just keep your hand there – just as you do in automatic writing. You keep the pen in your hand, then the hand has a jerk and suddenly starts moving, writing. Then you can watch your own hand writing – and you are not doing it.

The staff has to function exactly that way. Then you are not hitting. [You are] no more there. Then it is just an energy phenomenon. His energy is asking your energy, and the energy has a communication of its own.

[Another groupmember says he felt feverish. The groupleader explains that the first group concentrated on the breathing, but in this recent group the instructions were: to watch the rise and fall of the abdomen, and as soon as anything else starts happening to watch that until it stops, and then to go back to the breathing. And to be very relaxed.]

No, I think this way won’t work. You will have to go back to the first.

... because this way can work if it is a longer period, but ten days is not enough.

... Do exactly as you did the first group, because only that way will the intensity come in ten days.

... If something happens, then nobody feels tired, because that happening gives delight. Then one is not bothered about being tired, or the backbone being painful. If something has happened then these things are worthless. But if nothing happens, these are the only happenings, and it becomes too much.

So from tomorrow, follow as you did in the first group.

[Another sannyasin who did the group said that both pleasant and not so pleasant things happened for her.]

It has been good. Negative moments are there, mm? but even if you can achieve just a few peaks rarely, that’s very good.

Whatever peak experiences you have had in this group, try to catch hold of them from tomorrow. The peaks that we touch are not outside. They are your inner treasures, so they are always available – you just have to grope for them.

And always remember, don’t pay much attention to the negative. Always pay attention to the positive. Even if you can get hold of one rose flower – enough. No need to count the thorns around it. Just think of the one rose flower, and let it become so intimate that it colours your whole being. Its fragrance surrounds you completely and totally. In that fragrance, thorns are forgotten.

So just find something... anything that turns you on. Looking at the sky or at the stars, suddenly you get to that space. Try it, and after fifteen days, tell me.

[A participant said at one point he felt a little click which happened a few times in the past for him: I feel that’s the closest that I’ve ever come to really going into something. Just suddenly the body feels different, and the mind doesn’t slow, but it’s a little freer to look at things.]

Continue sitting for at least one hour each day – just waiting for that moment. When I say waiting, I don’t mean expecting – no. If you expect, you become tense.

Just sit relaxedly, with a very slight idea around you that it might come. Let it be ‘may’ – don’t make it a should, or that it has to come, or it must come. It may come. It is an unknown guest. Nobody can force it, nobody can command or demand. When it comes, it comes, but one can be ready for the guest. You can clean and decorate the house. Sometimes you can go to the door to see whether the guest has come or not. There is nothing else to do.

So make it a point just to sit and wait – doing nothing. Once it starts coming, your waiting, and you, will become more and more confident. Any moment it can be released. And that energy is always within you. Only a right tuning is needed. Up to now it has always happened as an accident.

Meditation always happens as an accident for the first time. The whole science of meditation has been developed out of accidental phenomena. Nobody can force it – but by and by you can start feeling the knack of it.

By and by you can start to even prepare for it, because you start feeling when it is going to happen. You can watch what climate precedes it, what you were doing in that moment, what thoughts were passing, in what situation it happened. By and by you become acquainted with that situation. And it can be managed, but still you cannot force it. You sow the seeds and wait.

In the right season it will come. In the right season the sun will knock at the door of the seeds. In the right season the seeds will disappear, and the sprouts will come. So you can prepare the ground, you can do many things. But you cannot force the plant to come up, you cannot force it to have flowers.

You can wait, you can hope. You can care, you can love. You can pray – but when it happens, it happens. By and by it will become more and more of a certainty. A moment comes when you can just close your eyes, take a certain breath in a certain rhythm, and it is there. You have found the key.

It has been good.

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