17

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‌CHAPTER 17

1 March 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Paravritti means turning in, moving towards oneself.

[The new sannyasin says she has been travelling through many countries and experiencing things.]

It is good. There is a time to experience many things. When one is young, one has to experience many things – both good and bad, the dark and the light.

But the real travelling starts when you start turning in. We can go on moving outside from one country to another, from one place to another, but finally one gets tired. One comes to know that everything is almost the same everywhere. And this constant travelling is not going to lead anywhere. It is good, it has something to give – a certain enrichment – and everybody needs it, but one should not be stuck there, mm? But soon you become aware that changing places outside is not going to help. Rather, the only thing that will help is to change the inner space.

There are two ways of wandering. One is moving from one town to another, one person to another, one food to another, one house to another. This is one way of travelling – very superficial. One can go on moving in the world and one will never come to a point where one can say that now, this is the goal and I have arrived. One never arrives. In the outside world there are only departures. You simply depart from one place – but you never arrive.

There is another way of travelling – from one state of mind to another, from one space to another – inside. If you go on changing from one state of mind to another – deeper, more far out, more silent, more blissful – then one day suddenly one settles to one’s own centre of being – and that is the whole point of wandering

But it is good... one starts from the outside – there is no other way. But by and by one should go on making the circle smaller and smaller and smaller. So one day suddenly, the traveller himself is the destination... Now turn in... enough travelling outside!

And once you are in a new space within, the whole outside world changes. Then in the same places, you will see things that have never been seen before. In the same people you will have glimpses of the unknown. In the same food you will taste something of the divine. Once you change inside, everything outside also changes. Then very ordinary things – an ordinary flower – become tremendously valuable. Just an ordinary tree becomes almost sacred. And wherever you move, you bring your inner silence with you, and your blissfulness.

So now be here as long as you can, and move inwards.

[Previously Osho had spoken to a sannyasin about the need to be centred before venturing out into the world. Tonight he enlarged on that, saying that it was good to keep some sort of direction in mind...

Always remain open – but openness can be of two types. One can be open to all possibilities but is aware of one’s inner direction. The direction is known. For example, you have a feel for music – that direction is known. You are open to all possibilities but you know that your sense of inner direction is there. You feel where your fulfillment lies. Remain open, but remain perfectly aware of the inner sense of direction. Then many things will fall in line with you, and you will not be disturbed. You will be able to use all the opportunities available to help your inner direction. And the inner direction will become more and more clear, integrated This is one way of being open.

Another way of being open is this – that you don’t have any sense of inner direction, but you simply drift. Then something catches your attention and you go that way. Then something else, and you go that way. Then you become accidental – and that is not going to be fulfilling. An accidental man is the worst possible, mm? because he gathers bits and pieces from here and there. He has no inner direction, he is never integrated.

You go home, and on the plane you meet somebody who starts talking about poetry, and you start thinking of becoming a poet. By the time you have reached London, the man is gone – and the idea has gone. The taxi driver is interested in Sufism and you become interested in Sufism. Then you are staying in a hotel, and you meet a girl and fall in love. She is going to China, so you go to China. (laughter) Then your whole life becomes zig-zag. You do many things; many things happen to you, but you are not there to be benefited.

Drifting is not being open. People have become afraid of drifting – that’s why they plan their future. They plan their future and then they become closed. Both are wrong, because both are extremes.

One has a fixed idea and he doesn’t bother about whether the opportunities allow it or not, whether the time is right or not. He goes on insisting on his own idea, and then he is frustrated. He is constantly in fight because he has some idea that he has to fulfill. That creates tension. And he is not open, because he is afraid that then he would be vulnerable. Many things may happen, and his idea will be lost in the crowd. So he remains clenched, closed. He does not look here and there, because anything may become a distraction. So he just looks at his own idea and moves like an arrow – not looking anywhere, otherwise the target will be missed.

This type of person is not a person at all. He is almost like a thing, a mechanism, a zombie. He goes on planning for the future and missing the present. And the future is nothing but an outcome

of the present. If you miss the present, you are going to miss the future also, because where is the future going to come from? This is the robot type of man that all the old societies have created, who is in fear of drifting.

Now the new generation all over the world have moved to the other extreme. They say that they want to remain open. That is a reaction. They don’t plan anything. In fact they are avoiding the responsibility of any direction. They say that they will live in the moment – so they become driftwood, not knowing where they are going, what they are doing. Today they are learning music. Next day they have forgotten all about it.

And music or poetry or dancing or meditation, are such deep subjects that they require your whole life. So a drifter can never be of any depth in anything. He will play the guitar for a few days, then forget all about it. Then the guitar is just a toy.

These two extremes have to be avoided. The old robot type is wrong. It makes you like a thing, dead, with no windows, closed completely, an imprisonment. The other type, the new type, makes you a drifter. You go on avoiding responsibilities and you call it openness. It is not openness; it is just trying not to take any responsibility for tomorrow. If you cannot take any commitment for tomorrow, you will again miss your today.

For example if you fall in love, and you tell the woman that this is just momentary, that this moment you love her, but you don’t know about tomorrow – immediately the love will lose depth. It will be a casual thing, superficial. There is no need to plan for lives together. There is no need to get married and become closed, no need. But if you love the woman this moment, out of this moment a sense of involvement arises. You would like to risk your whole life for it. Eventually it may not prove so, but that is not the point. It is not a planning for the future. It is part of the feeling of love that arises. You feel you want to be committed, to take responsibility. One remains humble, one knows that it may change. Knowing that, one is still committed. Then there is a sense of direction, and love can flow around this sense of direction. Around this commitment, love can become a home.

So remain open, but always keep alert about a sense of direction. Otherwise you will be in the marketplace – so many people selling so many things, and life is so short. If you don’t have a sense of direction you will simply become a wastage.

So don’t become a drifter and don’t become a zombie. Somewhere just in the middle is the balance. Remain alert about what you would like to be finally, where you feel your fulfillment is going to come from. If you feel for music or meditation or anything whatsoever, then keep it as a centring point in you. Then whatsoever you learn through your openness goes on collecting around this centre, and you go on becoming more and more integrated, mm? Otherwise one becomes fragmentary. Intensity is lost, and intensity is all.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve always had this fear of being touched. And all over my body there is pain. I can’t dance because of the pain. Osho suggests Rolfing will be helpful.]

Body and mind move together, but sometimes it happens that the mind gets ahead, is better than the body. Or sometimes it is otherwise – the mind is in a worse state than the body. When alignment breaks between the body and the mind, there is pain.

When people come to me their body and mind are functioning together – whatsoever their state. If they are miserable, then the body is adjusted to that misery. If they are happy, then the body is adjusted to that happiness. When they start meditating, that adjustment becomes loose because the mind starts growing.

So your mind is getting better every day. In fact you have never been so well in the mind as you are now. But the body is adjusted to the old mind, and that mind is going, almost gone, so the body is at a loss. And the body has not much intelligence, mm? It is a mechanism and it is very slow. But by and by it follows. Rolfing will be helpful at this moment.

Rolfing is nothing but making the tissues loose. On a few points on the body the musculature takes a certain shape. If somebody has been worrying continuously, then the body takes a certain musculature which is adjusted to worrying. Then worries may disappear but the musculature remains and it will feel heavy, painful. Its function is no more there, and the body does not know how to dissolve it. If you don’t do anything about it, it will dissolve by and by but it will take a long time. But why wait?

Through Rolfing it can be dissolved by pressure. The musculature disappears, and you will feel almost as new in the body as you are feeling in the mind. Then a new adjustment arises again – at a higher stage.

It is going to be painful, that’s certain. It will be really painful, mm? because the whole of the past is accumulated in the body, and the musculature has to be melted, reabsorbed in the body. That reabsorption is painful, but it pays. And after Rolfing you will feel very very good. So you just do it... nothing to worry about.

[The Tathata group is present at darshan. The groupleader said that, following Osho’s advice, he had given his girlfriend more freedom, and consequently felt more free and relaxed himself – and this helped in the group.]

Each group will give you something, and the most basic thing is confidence.

When you start helping people, it is a delicate affair, because each man is such a mystery, an almost bottomless abyss. And there exists no map about man, and whatsoever you think about the other remains at the most an inference. One gropes in the dark.

But the more you work with people, the more you gather confidence that your hunches are working. Once you become more confident, your functioning becomes more free.

This has to be understood – and it is one of the most basic things – that when you are totally confident, you are completely in a flow. Whenever you feel a certain hesitancy, the flow is abruptly broken. Or whenever you feel something contradictory in you, you are again frozen.

For example if you are talking, and you are only saying the truth, then there will be a flow. Then suddenly you lie. That lie becomes an interference. Now you are in a contradiction, because you know that the truth is something else and at the same time you are going against it, so you are moving in opposite directions together. Your flow is broken. Suddenly you will feel that you are not free.

Only a true person can be free. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying: Truth liberates. It makes you a flow of energy. And this is so on all layers and at all spheres. If you are helping somebody, and at the same time you are thinking that maybe you are wrong, immediately the flow is broken. Your hand is hesitant. A tremble has entered in you.

Once you feel confident, then there is no fear and no doubt. You simply move in a flow. And the more you move in a flow, the more the other is helped. The other is not helped by your techniques really. Techniques are just excuses. The other is helped by your alive flow. Your flow surrounds the other. It overwhelms the other. In your warmth, the other melts. With you, he becomes a flow. And that is the real thing. But it is going to be so – that in the beginning one hesitates.

By and by, the more helpful you are, the more you see the glow in the other’s eyes, the more you relax, the more you become one. Never do anything contradictory – that is the meaning of being authentic. And authenticity is a liberation.

[Osho went on to reiterate what he had said to the groupleader at his last darshan – that by giving others freedom, you yourself become free; that a free person liberates all he comes in contact with...

]

So remember this, because the old pattern does not go so soon. You can understand, but the old pattern is there and will go on watching from the comer. Whenever you are not aware, it can jump on you. So whenever you catch yourself in the pattern, immediately relax. Immediately do something to undo the effect of the old pattern. If one wants to be free, one has to make everybody free.

[A sannyasin says that she feels caught between old patterns and new – she is not so clinging... and not yet centred in her aloneness.]

The problem is a very natural one – of mind moving from one extreme to another.

First you were thinking that fulfillment was in the other. Now you are thinking that fulfillment is in yourself. Both are wrong attitudes. Fulfillment is somewhere between you and the other. It is neither in you nor in the other. So you have become free of the other – now become free of yourself also. Otherwise you will carry a loneliness. It is just the opposite extreme to the first.

One goes on clinging, and that clinging brings misery and frustration. One is fed up with it, so one moves in the opposite direction completely – to avoid it. Then one tries to remain alone, strictly alone, and then one carries a loneliness. Sooner or later that loneliness will force you to move to the opposite extreme again, because one cannot live alone.

One cannot live in clinging, and one cannot live in loneliness. But don’t be afraid, because there is a way in which you can relate to the other but you don’t cling, in which you remain yourself. That’s the whole art of love. These are easy alternatives that you have chosen – and everybody chooses them.

The way out is to remain alone but available to relations. Be in a relationship but never be clinging – then for the first time one starts living. Clingingness brings misery, and loneliness brings misery, because if you are not relating, you shrink.

It is as if you have decided not to breathe because the air is polluted – but then you will die. The air is polluted but you have to find ways to continue breathing. If you are simply afraid because the air is polluted, you will die. So you have to find ways to breathe pure air, but breathing has to be continued.

Love is like breathing. If you stop it, something in you starts dying. Your warmth will disappear. You will become like a closed house, and you will become afraid of opening the windows because someone may come in, and the clinging will start.

So there is no need to cling – that you have understood. There is no need to cling to the other, there is no need to cling to oneself.

Now understand the second step also. Breathe well, remain available, but from the very beginning remain alert that relationships are beautiful, but only up to the point where you can go on feeling your aloneness. You remain alone. You relate, but you remain alone. This becomes a rhythm – relating and aloneness – inbreathing, outbreathing.

Every relationship is beautiful if clinging doesn’t start. If you don’t start clinging, you won’t help the other to cling to you. These things go together. So relax, and don’t shrink – remain available. And if somebody knocks at the door, don’t hide.

Drop the old mind. And don’t move to the opposite, because in the opposite, the old mind continues. The opposite is the trick of the same mind. If you drop one thing, always remember to drop the opposite with it, otherwise from the back door the same mind enters.

But I know you will be able to do it.

[A sannyasin says that since her husband became a sannyasin he has been beating her physically, which she hates. She admits that this happens when she is being bitchy.]

No, but if you really hate this hitting, then don’t create the situation in which he becomes physical.

That’s the difference between a man and a woman. Every woman wants to have the freedom of being bitchy, but of not being beaten. But a man is very physical that way. When things get beyond him, he has to beat. I can say to him not to beat you, but then he will become false. And if anger is not allowed and you have to become false, then love also becomes false.

Say something about his love since he has become a sannyasin and beats you. Has his love changed in any way? Has it a wild quality in it, has it become deeper, anything?

[She answers: Yes, yes I think so. More open in his capacity to give love to me.]

Mm mm, it is bound to be so. Because those things – anger, love – they all grow together. If you stop one, the other stops also.

There are two ways of being related. One is being authentic – then one has to accept anger also, until it disappears on its own. If you don’t like that, then the whole relationship becomes false,

phoney. Sooner or later, the other will become interested in another woman. All phoney relationships are unsatisfying because you cannot be free in them.

But this is the dilemma – if love is going to be real, then anger and everything comes in. If he loves you, then where, with whom, is he going to be angry? He cannot find a woman just to be angry with. If he loves you, he will be angry with you also.

So these are the alternatives. Many people choose the convenient one – they become phoney. They become aloof from each other, controlled. But then one suffers because love disappears. Convenient, but at a great cost.

The other way is to allow everything – and be true and real. There will be passion – in love, and in passion also. Getting a fracture is better than being phoney. It is worth choosing. And by and by understanding will arise if you are real. His anger will disappear, your bitchiness will disappear, because you will be able to see that it is simply foolish.

If you are together to be happy, why create so many obstacles? But only when you are real, and you suffer reality, does understanding arise.

So I don’t see that anything is wrong. It is good – your relationship is becoming real. And the real is always dangerous and risky. Don’t try in any way to make it comfortable. Make it wild. If you feel like beating him, beat. And afterwards you will feel very good.

[Osho went on to say that deep down, each partner realises that they love, and are loved, otherwise they would not bother to beat each other.

The husband said that he felt, as Osho had suggested, that his wife liked being beaten. He said he felt much better after beating her, felt things were cleared between them... ]

Beating can be beautiful, if it is done in deep love. Nothing is wrong in it. The only thing is that love should be there.

If you hit somebody in deep love, that hit is a blessing. And if without love you hug somebody, that is a curse. So remember that love makes everything holy – everything unconditionally. If you love the woman, you are entitled sometimes to beat her. And if you love her, allow her sometimes to beat you.

If you don’t love, then it is a trespassing, then don’t hit her. You follow me? Because the hit has to be earned by love. If you don’t love her, then who are you to hit her? Simply leave her alone.

By and by quarrelling will disappear. You will understand that this same energy can be used in love. You can dance together rather than hitting each other. With the same calories (laughter) you can dance and sing.

So when energy can be gold, why waste it in mud? Transform it into gold. And love is alchemical... it transforms everything into a precious metal.

So after one month you both come. And for this one month be true and authentic.

[A sannyasin says: The group was very beautiful... some very. new experiences. But today I’m feeling more closed and more tense than before.]

No, it will go. It happens sometimes, because the group is in a way a very extraordinary situation. When you come out of the group, that opportunity is gone and you are suddenly in the world – which won’t allow that type of opportunity. In fact it is against it. Suddenly one feels afraid and closed, but relax, and within two or three days you will be open again. Not as much as in the group – but you will become open.

And just remember that the openness has nothing to do with the group. It is your interior quality. It has nothing to do with the society. One can remain open wherever one is. One just has to learn how to remain open in a world which doesn’t allow openness.

It happens to many people – that they become open in the group and then they immediately close. But if they become just very very slightly open, then the closing will not happen, because that much openness can be carried into the society, and there is no fear, mm?

You had become too open – and that’s why you immediately felt closed. But relax, and within two or three days, you will be open again.

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