9

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‌CHAPTER 9

22 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who has just returned from the West said that she felt that she wanted to open up as much as possible... ]

... if one wants to open, one opens – there is no barrier, nobody hindering you. If the wanting is really there, the opening is just a by-product of it – nothing else is needed. Once you desire something intensely, it has to happen. Happening follows it like a shadow. And this is particularly so of inner opening because it is not something to be achieved outside. It is already there – one has just to claim it. Once you desire it, it is there.

So the whole point is whether one really desires to be open. People say they would like to be because they see that there are many possibilities with being open, but deep down they have many investments that won’t allow them to really open. For example, a mind that is continuously thinking of security cannot allow you to open. Openness means vulnerability, an opening to all possibilities – both good and bad, helpful and harmful. When you open the door, it is open not only for friends but for enemies also, because the door makes no distinctions – once it is open, it is open for all.

Hence people go on living behind closed doors to avoid the enemy. But when you avoid the enemy, you avoid the friend too. So this is the dilemma: if you remain closed you will be able to avoid enemies, whosoever they are – but you will miss the friends. If you open the door you will not miss the friend, but you will be open to the enemy too. This is the risk. But I say it is still worth taking, because if you miss friends, you miss everything. One can remain safe and out of all danger and risk, but then one is already dead.

If you want it it is going to happen. So think first about it. [She answers: I tried the other way and it didn’t work so... ]

Now give it a try this way. People only come to this way when the other way fails. They try all the ways of the mind and only when they fail and feel frustrated and hopeless do they try something of the no-mind. Opening means no-mind. Opening means living a life without a head. Opening means taking the risk, becoming a gambler and not a business man.

To live dangerously is to live openly. To live secure is to live closed. So try it! [A sannyasin says that after visiting his parents he got sick.]

It happens – that to go back to the old associations is sometimes very anxiety-creating and tense, because they are expecting you to be someone whom you are not anymore. They see that you are not, and you feel a little hesitant because you would like to pretend that you are the old person – just to satisfy them – and that pretension becomes very heavy.

Because you are no longer identified with it, you have to carry it consciously, and it is like a load on the head. Then it disturbs your stomach and by and by the whole body is disturbed. You cannot relax in a situation where people are expecting you to be something that you cannot be and you are trying not to hurt them.

But this is a good experience. Next time if it happens at all, remain the new and don’t pretend; don’t try to pose. Just tell them beforehand that the old man is dead, and to excuse you if you cannot fulfill their expectations. Tell them that you love and respect them more than ever – because the old person could not love or respect, the old person was just a pretender. But it will be a little difficult – so say it will be difficult. Once they understand, you will give them something – a new ray of light may enter their lives.

I was afraid you would be in difficulties – it happens to everybody who has really changed a lot. Going back is very very difficult. You don’t fit and you try to.

But good – you are back home, so it is good!

[A sannyasin asks about his relationship: I wonder if we should live separately, but then I tell myself that maybe the friction is good for me.]

You do one thing – rather than living completely separately, just meet for two or three hours every day, and the remaining time be alone. You can use the friction and the situations that come up in your relationship, and be alone too.

In fact whenever two people are in love, they should not be together for twenty-four hours. It is very very harmful to them, and more than that, it is harmful to the love itself. People kill and destroy their love by being together too much, because something deep down is violated. Each is in need of a certain space, and lovers become too interfering in each other’s lives, unknowingly of course. They love, so they want to cling and interfere in each and every thing – and that’s how every love is destroyed.

Love can be tremendously beautiful if it is not destroyed. If it is destroyed, it can become the greatest hell there is.

[Osho went on to say that when they were both feeling high it was good to be together, but as soon as anger or irritation or a desire to be alone arose, they should immediately separate for a time. He said each person needs a physical and psychological space to himself and that just the presence of the other could act as a repressant.

He said that lovers should only meet again when they were really wanting to be together very much, when it had become a really intense desire.]

If you live alone too much you get bored. There is no excitement – simply you and you and you. It is monotonous, a single note. You want a change, a little spice. The other brings the change, brings another world into your world, and that is helpful.

So when you feel the need of the other, seek her. And when you feel that the need has been fulfilled, move back into your own world. If lovers can know this rhythm of being alone and together, and constantly move between the two; if you suddenly feel like being alone and you move – that’s what I mean by love.

If the other person loves you, she will respect your need, and if you love her you will respect her need. (addressing the girlfriend) The alternative is between love and no love. If you don’t allow the other person space, by and by he becomes miserable and he will escape completely. So give him a little space, don’t cling, and the love affair can become a permanent thing. It can go on and on if the rope is long enough. If the rope is very short, sooner or later one feels imprisoned, and once that feeling comes, suddenly freedom becomes more important than love.

Freedom is not more important than love, but it feels so if love itself becomes an imprisonment. If the love keeps overflowing into freedom, then there is no problem – the relationship goes on enriching every day. The greater the freedom in love, the greater the possibility of it remaining forever and forever.

(to the boyfriend) She will understand, don’t be worried about that. Once women understand that this is the way that love can remain for a longer period of time, that the flower can go on blooming, there is no problem. The problem arises because they think that you are trying to escape and that the love will be destroyed, so they become afraid and they cling more. The more they cling, the more you start escaping – so a vicious circle settles.

Once understanding flows between you, there is not much of a problem. We are here to make each other happy, not unhappy. If you make the other happy, your own happiness grows and the other returns it, and there is no end to it. It can go on reflecting in a thousand and one ways.

So try it and then we will see.

[People who had done the Tathata group were at darshan. The groupleader says: I feel like I’m being moulded into something... the knack of having the role of leader, and also being a participant.]

Right. You are being moulded – just go on allowing. Only your cooperation is needed. You need not do anything in particular except to allow me to go on moulding you. Every day you will be taking a form, and as the form becomes clearer to you, your consciousness will become sharper in the same

proportion. If you don’t have a mould, you can’t have a sharp consciousness. It is as if the pot is broken and the water spills all over the floor.

Ordinarily people are like spilled water. The whole effort is to pour them into a certain mould so they have a form. In that form many things become possible. You can become a vehicle of many forces.

It is as if you put many seeds in the ground. Each has a blueprint to develop into a certain type of tree. Just a blueprint; there is nothing else – all the seeds are the same. You put them into the ground; the ground is the same. You water them, and the watering is the same. But each seed will grow into a certain tree. will take a different form by and by. Each seed will bloom in different flowers.

Each seed has an intrinsic, a hidden and unmanifested form in it. Because of that form it goes on taking and using energy in a certain way. The rose flower takes the colour of red from the same earth that the dewy flower takes white. From the same earth they will take different perfumes. From the same sun they will take different life forms.

Each person has a seed form that is his destiny. Once the form starts becoming clear, your destiny is clear. When you go astray less and less, when there are less and less alternatives, possibilities disappear, only potentialities appear. One becomes almost choiceless. Then the river flows direct to the ocean. There is no hesitation, nowhere else to go. One simply moves in a straight line.

So a mould is being given. You just cooperate. You can do two things – you can fight with it, and then it will take a longer time. Or you can not fight with it, and then it will happen sooner.

And each group is going to be a repetition in a way, and yet not a repetition. Each group will consist of different individuals, of different potentialities, different destinies, so it cannot be exactly the same. And each group will give you different opportunities. But it is very subtle. Ordinarily you will be following the same techniques, you will be doing the same things more or less, but don’t pay too much attention to the technique. Pay more attention to the people who make up the group.

Each group is different. Not only each group is different, each group is different every day. Yesterday it was the same group, but twenty-four hours have passed so it is not the same. In twenty-four hours they have lived, had many experiences, dreamed, thought, meditated. They are no more the same people. Their whole is continually changing; it is never static.

So different groups will be different opportunities for you to come back again and again to the same knack. And by and by the knack almost becomes a perfect art. then one forgets all technique, all art. Art is perfect when you forget it completely and you respond spontaneously, when you don’t plan at all. That will come – you will simply wait for the group and things will start happening.

So just allow more and more. Just be in a let-go. You are not expected to do anything, but just be in a let-go so that I can function through you.

[The assistant leader says: I don’t know how to relate to people anymore. I feel like I’ve lost my power. A lot of my confidence just all seems to be fading away.]

It is just that your ego is dying – these are just the symptoms. When the ego dies you feel that you are losing power, because all the power that you have known was of the ego. When the ego starts

dying you feel that you are losing self-confidence because all the confidence was of the ego. You start feeling that you are no more certain of anything, because all the certainty was of the ego. But all that is from the ego is just deception. Power, certainty, self-confidence, will – all nonsense.

If you can be courageous enough to pass through this period, soon the ego will disappear with all its power, and the power trip and the confidence, and the certainties – all of which were nothing but facades to hide doubts, and clever tricks to try to deceive yourself with. When all that has gone the whole circus, you will feel very clean, purified, serene and silent. Not powerful, not certain, not self-confident – but very serene and very quiet, with no certainty and no uncertainty, with no power and no impotence, with no self-confidence or with no lack of self-confidence. In fact with no self.

So this is a beautiful moment if you can pass through it. It is difficult – understand – arduous, hard. But it is a birth pain, and everybody has to pass through it. Everybody has to die a death, and only then a new life is released.

[Osho checks her energy.]

Good. But you are holding continuously – and that will delay the whole process. You will suffer unnecessarily.

It is as if a child is to be born, and the mother is holding on hard. She is not relaxed so the birth canal is narrow and the child cannot come out of it. The more the child tries to come out, the more the mother feels the pain. The pain is not because of the child but because the mother is strained, is not relaxed. The mother needs to help the child come out. She needs to relax the whole birth canal so that the child and the birth canal start throbbing in the same rhythm. That’s what you are doing – holding it. You are trying hard not to lose self-confidence, not to lose power, so you will simply prolong the process.

For seven days simply cooperate. Try as much as possible to relax. There is no need for self- confidence because it is a disease, it is a shadow of the self. In the West there are foolish people who go on teaching that one should be self-confident. I am not saying be unself-confident. I am saying that both are useless... simply be. There is no need for confidence or no confidence.

So for seven days simply relax, because if you don’t allow what is happening, you will have it for the rest of your life – the struggle can remain. So the ego has to be dropped, mm? Don’t think about it, simply drop it...

[A pet snake had been introduced into the group, and one sannyasin said she felt a great revulsion for it, but eventually had been able to hold it. After the group she was afraid of finding it in her bed.]

The feeling of revulsion is a relationship. You feel repulsed only because somewhere deep down in the unconscious, you feel attracted. Repulsion in the conscious simply shows attraction in the unconscious. So this is good because it has brought up something from the unconscious to the conscious.

And it is good that you touched it. Deep down you really wanted it to crawl over your body.

That’s why you started thinking that there might be a snake in your bed – something was incomplete... You can borrow the snake... And once you have done it, you will be finished with snakes forever. Then the attraction and repulsion will disappear... they are both aspects of the same coin. [The groupleader who owns the snake] can give you a special session, and then you will be free forever.

Always remember that wherever you fear, it is better to go in and be finished with it, otherwise it goes on hanging. That’s why we create problems unnecessarily.

In India people are not so afraid of snakes, because they worship them, and when the worship a snake it becomes a god, and you have no fear for it.

It has been good, but deep down you are still holding. Be finished with it. It will be good therapy.

[A sannyasin asked Osho to tell him about his past lives. Osho said that sometimes it could be helpful but not in this instance. It would be more helpful for him to be in the present, to forget all past lives; that one day he would have to forget this present one too!

Another sannyasin asks about the different faces she sees when she does Tratak.]

It is good. Continue it but don’t think about it. Whatsoever happens is good, so don’t brood about it.

... It has something to do with you. Something from your past life is surfacing. It is very good and will relax your unconscious deeply. But don’t think about it – otherwise a certain repression starts...

... Almost always it is something to do with you – unless your mind has disappeared. Then it has to do with the other person, because you are just a pure mirror. Ordinarily it is to do with you; it is your own mind coming up.

[The sannyas then said: I gave somebody a massage on their face and I felt as though it was my face, and when I put my fingers in her ear I heard the eternal sound. Afterwards she said she heard it too. I’m afraid that I’m getting too identified.]

No, not identified – that’s how it should be. The energies meet and the experience can be shared. Massage is true only when your energy and the energy of the other person merge into each other – you will feel almost similar experiences.

It is nothing to do with identification. It is just the energies merging, because the deeper experience is of energy, not of the body. The body is just a vehicle of a subtle energy. When you massage, that subtle energy functions.

It has been good don’t be worried. It will give you deeper and deeper experiences. While massaging, forget that you are separate. Be as if you are part of the body of the other, as if you are massaging your own leg – then your massage will go very deep.

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