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CHAPTER 10
Make womb for god
10 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means blissful, yoganidra means a certain kind of sleep that only is possible in deep yoga.
The ordinary sleep has dreams; yoganidra has no dreams. In the ordinary sleep you become unconscious. In yoganidra you still retain your consciousness, you still remain alert. You know that you are fast asleep, but that knowing remains. You know that the body is changing its posture. Deep down a small light of awareness still continues. That type of sleep is called yoganidra. And that is going to be your method. That has to be worked out...
Each night when you go to sleep, go with this idea in the mind – that soon you will become able to be alert in sleep. It will take two, three months. Then one day suddenly you will know that you were deep asleep and still there was a kind of consciousness hovering around it, you knew it. The day it happens you have to report to me.
This is something tremendously valuable. Once it happens things become very simple. Because deep sleep is the easiest way to drop the body, to forget the body. It is the easiest way to know that you are not the body. While awake, we are more identified with the body.
In the yoga sutras of Patanjali he defines samadhi as deep sleep with awareness. That is the only difference between samadhi and deep sleep. In deep sleep everybody moves into a kind of samadhi – but unconsciously. So the benefit is there: if you have slept deeply without any dreams, in the morning you feel the freshness, the vitality, the rest, the relaxation that the night has given to you. On some other occasion you have been dreaming the whole night and by the morning you have slept for eight hours but something is missing. You are still disoriented, you are not settled.
Just the other day I was reading a small anecdote.… A father is waking his son, a small boy, in the morning, saying ‘Get up! You have to go to the school.’ The boy turns over and he says, ‘I am feeling very tired.’ The father says ‘Nonsense – because after sleeping for at least ten hours nobody feels tired. What are you talking about?’ ‘Just now I have been participating in a ten-mile race in my dream,’ the boy explains. ‘I am feeling very tired!’
It actually happens: if dreams have been there, in the morning you are tired. Whether you participate in a real ten-mile race or in a dream, both affect you.
Patanjali says that if one can sleep with awareness, then in that awareness one comes to know that the body is absolutely another world. You are a separate reality: you are in the body but you are not the body. The body is your shrine, your abode, but you are not it. It has to be respected, it has to be loved, but one should not get identified with it. If one gets identified with the body one loses the real perspective of being eternal, immortal, timeless. Then it is as if you are looking into the sky from a window and you get identified with the window; you start thinking that you are the window. It is exactly the same case with the body.
You are looking through the eyes but you are not the eyes; the eyes are only the windows. You are listening through the ears but you are not your ears; your ears are only the windows. And so it is with your hands and all the senses. You are deep somewhere inside.
The awareness of that inner core is easiest in deep sleep. And it will be easy for you; that’s why I am giving you the name. Good!
Anand means bliss, manohara means beauty. And you are carrying a great seed of beauty within you, still unsprouted... great energy that can explode in a great dance. Whatsoever you have done up to now has helped a little bit but the potential is much more, so don’t be satisfied with it. Create a great discontent. Otherwise what happens is that people live nearabout ten percent of their potential, not more than that. Ninety percent is simply wasted, goes down the drain. The more potential a person has, the more he will lose. The more potential a person has, the more he will feel a kind of frustration in life unless he fulfills the potential.
You are carrying a great treasure. It has to be explored. It is difficult, it is dangerous to go into it. That’s why people cling to the shore; they don’t go into the ocean. By and by they forget the ocean; they start living on the shore. They become beggars. They lose contact with their own kingdom.
These two things you have to remember: bliss and beauty. You have to become more and more aesthetic, sensitive – to colours, to forms, to sounds, to the music that surrounds the earth... the music that fills the whole universe and the music that is within you. Feel more and more in tune with it. Explore, innovate, and never be satisfied. There is always something more that can be done. Only then does one come to the point one day where the flower has bloomed in its utterness. And that’s what god is.
God is not something like an object that one day you encounter. God is your potential come to a flowering; god is your being realised. God is not a separate entity, god is not sitting somewhere. God has to be created, and everybody has to create his own god. My god will not be your god... can’t be; it will be a borrowed god. Jesus’ god cannot be your god. Jesus explores his being, gives birth to that god. You will have to explore your being and give birth to your god.
Everybody has to become a womb, and unless you give birth to god, it remains just a theory, a dogma, a belief.
[A sannyasin who is leaving asks if there is a particular meditation he should do. He likes Nadabrahma best.]
Nadabrahma? Then you continue Nadabrahma, mm? Always remember, whatsoever you enjoy can go deep in you; only that can go deep in you. Enjoying it simply means it fits with you. The rhythm of it falls in tune with you: there is a subtle harmony between you and the method.
Once you enjoy a method then don’t become greedy; go into that method as much as you can. You can do it once at least or if possible, twice a day. The more you do it, the more you will enjoy it. Only drop a method when the joy has disappeared; then its work is finished. Search for another method. No method can lead you to the very end. On the journey you will have to change trains many times. A certain method takes you to a certain state. Beyond that it is of no more use, it is spent.
So two things have to be remembered: when you are enjoying a method go into it as deeply as possible but never become addicted to it, because one day you will have to drop it too. If you become too much addicted to it then it is like a drug; you cannot leave it. You no more enjoy it – it is not giving you anything – but it has become a habit. Then one can continue it, but one is moving in circles; it cannot lead beyond that.
So let joy be the criterion. If joy is there, continue, to the last bit of joy go on. It has to be squeezed totally. No juice should be left behind... not even a single drop. And then be capable of dropping it. Choose some other method that again brings the joy. Many times a person has to change. It varies with different people but it is very rare that one method will do the whole journey. So right now continue nadabrahma.
[A sannyasin, newly arrived has been assigned groups.]
Remember one word continuously while you are here: that is ‘yes’. Don’t allow a ‘no’ to settle anywhere. Don’t allow it any entry; then much will be possible. Yes makes all things possible so be in the mood of yes. Even when sometimes your intellect says no, in spite of that go on saying yes and immense will be the benefit. The whole chemistry changes with yes. With no you have one chemistry; with yes a totally different chemistry. With no you are fighting against existence. With no you are an ego. With yes you disappear: only existence is.
With yes you are a religious person. With yes there is nothing impossible; with no there is nothing possible. The person who lives in a no lives in a citadel, behind iron walls. The person living in a no lives in his grave already. No goes on poisoning everything: it poisons love, it poisons trust, it poisons surrender; it poisons everything!
Yes purifies. Yes is the philosopher’s stone: any baser metal can be simply transformed into gold by touching it. So keep that in mind.
[A sannyasin says he’s been involved in work in Esalen, Arica and Gurdjieff work. Osho says, good preparation. He checks the sannyasin’s energy, and says that his intelligence is functioning perfectly
well but love hasn’t yet started growing. And love and intelligence should grow together, adds Osho, otherwise there is an imbalance]
That is one of the problems with Gurdjieff work: it does not believe in love at all. It is just pure effort to awaken intelligence, remembrance. Good, because there is something immensely valuablebut
something is missing ill it.
Buddha had said that unless meditation and compassion go together nothing is possible. Compassion alone can grow much. That’s what christian mystics have been doing: just compassion, service, humanity, this and that. Compassion grows but meditation is missing. Through Gurdjieff’s work meditation grows, concentration grows, self-remembering grows, but compassion is missing.
So you have come in the right moment; your heart can be opened. And once your heart starts growing then you will see how they both balance each other and what benediction happens when they are in utter balance. Then there is bliss. Bliss is balance.
[Osho suggests groups for him.]
These three... and then I will tell you what else to do, mm? Much has to be done – and you are ready in many ways. Just a few things here and there, final touches, and the quality of the painting is changed completely. Sometimes a single stroke of the brush and the painting becomes a masterpiece, but one has to know exactly where the stroke is needed.
I have heard a story about a great factory that had to be closed because something went wrong; it was fully automatic, the factory. The expert was called; he had to come from a faraway country. He came and with a small hammer he simply hit a certain place and the mechanism started humming again. It was almost a miracle!
The owner was very thankful, but the expert demanded ten thousand dollars. The man said, ‘Are you joking or what? You have not done anything at all; you have just hit with your hammer! Just for a single hit, ten thousand dollars is too much.’ The expert said, ‘As far as the hit is concerned, for that I am charging only one dollar. But where to hit? – for that I am charging the remainder!’
Sometimes one can go on groping, not knowing where to hit. But all your groping in the past has been beneficial. It has not been a waste; it has given you something. And once the right place is hit everything will fall into one whole.
[The teenage daughter of the previous sannyasin is present, says he plays the father with her too much.]
(To the father) I think she may be right! She may be right. She says that she resents your advice, and she feels that you are trying to be too much of a father. That is possible, mm? – because you must be thinking to compensate for the mother too. (to the daughter) That is very natural because he is functioning as both father and mother.
[She answers: My mother is here.]
No, but you were not with your mother. You have been living with [your father], so he has to function in both ways – as a mother, as a father; that can be too much. That can be very problematic.
(to the father) So now do one thing: while you are here, for three months give her complete freedom, complete freedom. If she wants something, help her, otherwise leave her. Let her float, do whatsoever she wants to do, and that will be great... for you both. (to the daughter) Because his desire is to help you but sometimes children resent that very much. Nobody wants to be helped because it makes you feel helpless – that you cannot do anything on your own. And this is the time, the age, when the child wants to become independent and wants to say no. You want to do something which shows that you are independent, no more a child.
(addressing the father) So if you advise her, the only result will be that she will go against the advice. Don’t advise; for three months leave her. I will look after her. (to the daughter) So for three months be completely free and do whatsoever you always wanted to do, right. And then we settle, mm? – then we will see what can be done.
[A sannyasin says she has done some mind type groups in the West.]
Now I will give you some no-mind work. And I have the key – don’t be worried. The lock is going to be opened. Just cooperate with me. Good!
[The Vipassana group which is here tonight. One participant says: There’s always joy and sadness and a lot of anger sometimes; I feel much hate. They all come together and become mixed. In vipassana it was very strong.]
... And were there some moments when it disappeared too or did it remain all the time? [She answers: Two or three times it disappeared but that was only for a very short time.]
Then there is no problem. Just do one thing: start becoming a witness to the whole chaos that comes. Just watch it; there is no need to figure out what it was. There is no need to be worried that the sadness and the happiness and the fear are all mixed. Let them be mixed; let it be a cloud of all kinds of things. Just be there far away looking at it. It is not you; that has to be remembered. It is just the mind overflooded with all kinds of repressed emotions.
Something has broken in you; it is going to become a break-through. Right now it will look like a breakdown. Some layer has broken, something that was keeping things separate is no more there, so things have become mixed up. But it is good that they are coming up, surfacing. Anything that surfaces is released from the system, and if you can just remain a witness, not doing anything – just looking at it with no judgement, with no idea at all whether this is good or bad, whether it should be or should not be... Let it be, whatsoever it is. No need to say good, bad – don’t label it, don’t verbalise.
Just go on sitting there looking at it silently and soon you will see that those moments when there is no chaos, no sadness, no fear, no happiness, will come more and more. Those moments will be the first glimpses into your being, into your self-nature. Something immensely valuable is happening but you can miss if you get too much involved in it and become worried. This is not the time to worry.
This is the time to witness, so from this moment try witnessing. Whenever you forget, and suddenly you remember that you have forgotten, there is no need to feel guilty about it, no need to become worried about why you forgot it. Forget that you forgot; again become a witness.
Soon you will get in tune with witnessing.
[A sannyasin, who is Indian and a film star, is in a very emotional state and says she is afraid, and tired of being so afraid.]
But you don’t listen to me! If I say something, you don’t do it. I wanted you to do a few groups – that will help immensely – but you don’t do that. I wanted you to get out of this relationship but you continue; you know that it is meaningless but you continue. So you are creating the whole mess around yourself.…
For example, I told you to do a few groups; you have not done them. They can bring things out. You need a good catharsis, that’s all. The fear will go, the crying will go, but you need a situation where it can be helped and brought out. Just sitting in your house you will be crying and weeping and afraid and this and that. That won’t help.
It is so simple. If you ask me, I prescribe some medicine and you don’t take it. Then what to do, mm? (a chuckle) You see people growing here, you see people changing here... but they listen to me! If I send them to some group they go; even If sometimes it is hard, they go. You want to change, you want to become more centred, more happy, but you don’t want to do anything for it! It cannot happen that way. Either accept it as it is... then stop crying and weeping for it; this is your fate. Accept it! Or some effort has to be done.
And you can grow out of it; it is very simple. Thousands of people are getting out of these problems, but if you want to protect those problems then it is up to you. I cannot force you. There too it seems there is fear. You don’t want to grow either because you are afraid that if you grow things will change!
Just think about it. What can be done? You are afraid that if you go into encounter you will come to realise that you are in a foolish relationship; that fear is there. If you come to see that it is a silly relationship and it is creating trouble, then what will you do? So it is better not to see. You are keeping your eyes closed so that you cannot see the enemy and you can believe that he is not. But you know that he is; that’s why you are keeping your eyes closed.
You are like a person who will not go to the doctor because he is afraid he may have cancer. But not going to the doctor not going to help! You can go on saying ‘Why should I go to the doctor? – I am perfectly healthy!’... but you know that you are not.
Problems are very simple but they need some treatment, they need some process. I cannot just take your fear out. You will have to be pounded so the fear can come out. And you can simply come out of it; it is not such a big problem as you are making it. You are magnifying it and making it very big. It seems you enjoy it being a big problem: ‘[I have] a big problem; not a small problem.’ Maybe you are afraid that if it is solved what will you do? Sometimes it happens: people cling to their misery because it is better than nothing. The fear may be of a deep emptiness, so anything – worry, depression, misery – anything is good. One feels full.
If you listen to me you can get out of it. Think about it. If you want to get out of it, then do whatsoever I say. If you don’t want to get out of it then...
[Osho suggests she book for Encounter first, and then Tantra.]
These two you do. Just go with courage and don’t hide, because if you hide then it will... open yourself, open up completely. Be innocently open and these two groups will do much.
It will be hard for three, four days, and then things will start happening. You will come out of these things just dancing!
And these are not punishments; you think these groups are punishments!...
Mm, frightening, but they are not punishments, mm? They are really awards, not punishments. Once you have gone into one or two groups, you will start asking for more!
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