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CHAPTER 19
Dropping burdens for birdswings
19 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[To a new sannyasin Osho says:]
Raise your hands and close your eyes. Feel like a bird flying into the sky; these are your wings. If you start feeling like moving upwards, allow the body. If the hands start moving upwards, allow them; if the body starts swaying, go into that. Go into that feeling of flying... you are going higher and higher and higher and beyond the clouds.
Ananda means blissful, sadhu means simplicity: a blissful simplicity. And the word ‘sadhu’ has a special meaning. Ordinarily the simplicity is a practised simplicity – you practise it. If you practise it long enough it becomes a character. That makes you a gentleman but not a sadhu; that makes you a good man but not spiritual. Deep down you are carrying all complexities, repressed. You have managed a facade, you have created a mask. It helps... it helps to move, to relate. As far as the society is concerned nothing more is needed but as far as your own being is concerned it is a falsity. It helps in the society but it hinders you when you want to go within. So this simplicity, practised, cultivated, is not the simplicity that sadhu means.
Sadhu means a simplicity that has arisen in you spontaneously, uncultivated, unpractised. It is not a character; it is spontaneity. It is not an armour around you. It has no motive. The practised simplicity has a motive in it: it gives you respect, respectability, it makes you honoured in the society. It helps your so-called relationships; it functions like a lubricant. People like you because you never hurt anybody; you only hurt yourself. People love you because you go on buttressing their egos by your simplicity. They like you and of course their liking helps your life. Mm? You can be a good businessman and a good salesman, a good politician.
And I am saying it especially to you because japan has created, cultivated, too much gentlemanliness... too much of it. The japanese is the most perfect gentleman. But that is a facade, a mask; behind it everything is totally different. The politeness that one shows outside is not the real politeness. One has all kinds of poisons hidden behind it.
Sadhu means a simplicity that comes not by motivation but by understanding. You understand life and you see how tiny you are, how small, how atomic... just a small particle in this vast universe, a drop in the ocean. In that very seeing the ego disappears. Not that you have to work and throw it out; if you throw it out it will come in from the back door. If you don’t throw it out and just see the point of its meaninglessness, how can you fight with existence? How can you be cunning with existence? How can you cheat god?
It is just impossible. In cheating god you will be cheating yourself; in deceiving the universe you will be deceiving yourself, and in that very deception you will become false, more false, more false. A day comes when you are just layer upon layer of falsity and untruth and lies. And then it becomes very difficult to know who you are, because whenever you go inside you find these lies and dishonesties and deceptions and all kinds of curtains upon curtains, layer upon layer. One is lost in the jungle of lies.
Sadhu means a simplicity that comes through seeing the real. We are tiny, very very tiny; to claim any ego is just stupid. We are here not knowing why. One day we are here, another day we are gone. Life is so mysterious! How can you be an egoist in such a mysterious existence?
And life is moving so perfectly, in such a harmony, that you need not improve upon it. You can trust it. That trust is what brings real simplicity. When you don’t trust you try to deceive. You try to become clever and cunning, mm? because you are constantly afraid that life may not help you, may be inimical to you. But when you understand, how can life be inimical to you. It is your mother, it goes on mothering you. Its constant support is needed for you to survive, to exist, to be. To distrust, mistrust life, is almost like a tree distrusting the earth in which it is rooted. No, the tree trusts the soil.
So a man of understanding trusts life, and out of that trust comes a simplicity, unpractised, uncultivated. And then it has beauty... then it has utter beauty. That is the meaning of sadhu.
[To someone taking sannyas, Osho says:]
Close your eyes and go in. Just go behind your heartbeat, stand there. Start listening to the heartbeat. Good... go on! Forget everything, except the heartbeat; be focussed there.]
Prem means love, madhu means sweet, sweetness. And that has to become your goal. Become more loving and become more sweet and drop all bitterness. The bitterness that we have for others may harm others, may not, but it certainly harms ourselves because we go on carrying the poison inside our beings. So it is not a question of being good to others. It is simply a question of being good to yourself. If you are sweet you respect yourself. If you are loving, you are making the path for yourself towards the divine.
It is not some kind of altruism. It is pure and simple selfishness – to be sweet and to be loving. It removes a thousand and one thorns from your path and it starts blooming all around you in roses.
The more loving you are, the more roses you will find on the path, and if one can become total love, then the whole path is studded with roses. Then you never come across a thorn, because the thorns that we meet outside are produced inside. We manufacture them first, inside our being... and so is the case with flowers too!
[A sannyasin says she wants to drop wearing glasses and can Osho recommend some exercises to improve her eyesight. Osho checks her energy.]
It is not good to drop the glasses; it will be harmful for the eyes. Go on using glasses, and then you can continue doing some exercises for the eyes. Then after two, three months, let the eyes be checked by the doctor.…
[She says her eyesight lacks depth since doing Vipassana group.]
Then go to the doctor – maybe the number has changed; maybe you need a lesser number. Sometimes meditation can do many things. And vipassana is a very deep-going meditation: it can change the inner structure of the brain and the eyes can be affected. But if you cannot see well with the glasses, you see better without, that’s a good indication; that means you will need a lesser number. Just go to the doctor and first be checked, mm? It will be okay – nothing to worry about!
[A sannyasin says she has been feeling depressed. It may have something to do with being unsure whether to complete a book she is writing or drop it.]
Finish it. A novel is such a thing that it can go on and on. In fact there is no beginning in a novel and no end. A novel is just the middle... you can go on. You have to start somewhere: the starting is arbitrary. You cannot start from the very beginning otherwise you will start writing a bible. And even the bible is not finished because the end is not known yet!
Nobody can write the full story because a few things will have to be presupposed. And nobody can end it because things never come to an end. Everything is so intertwined, so that maybe your character commits suicide but then his son goes on living. Something goes on... it is always in the middle.
Old stories used to start from the beginning, and they used to go to the end, but they were false. The real life story cannot have any beginning and cannot have any end. It starts abruptly, it stops suddenly. And you can manage it; your character simply has a heart attack and finished! What?... who knows? He commits suicide or becomes a sannyasin or something like that... and it is finished! You can finish it with me: he comes here and becomes a sannyasin – and now, what to do? The whole story is gone!
Finish it, mm? because continuing it is unnecessary.
And your energy will come back. It has just gone a little low because of your illness, nothing else. There is nothing in the mind, no problem, mm? Good.
[A sannyasin says she wants to feel Osho more. The person she lives with feels Osho very much, but she is in the head.]
If you want to feel, that very wanting becomes an obstruction. That is again from the head. You live with... a headless woman!...
Don’t start imitating her, otherwise you will never feel!...
Just forget about her – that is her business; and if you start feeling that she is feeling and you are not then the tension will arise. You will try to feel... but nobody can feel by trying. It happens when it happens. There is no hurry either. It is going to happen; simply remain available.
And [your friend’s] presence will be helpful if you don’t start competing with her. If she feels, just feel her; just be together with her. Hold her hand when she starts feeling me. Just hold her hand, be loving to her rather than being competitive and comparative. Don’t compare; never compare with anybody, otherwise you will get into more and more difficulties.
She is flowing in a certain space; be present to that space. Be in deep wonder, awe. Feel that something is happening... at least to her! In the same room it is happening – very good – and you are also a witness to it. Soon it will start happening to you, but it will start happening; you cannot manage it... nobody can. These things are unmanageable. These are beyond human hands, and that’s why they are so beautiful. Otherwise human hands will destroy their beauty. Then they will be manufactured by us; they will be homemade. Then the sacredness will be lost.
These moments are sacred: they simply come! They simply come and drown you. They come and refresh you, rejuvenate you. They come and revitalise you and then they are gone like a breeze. It comes, it was there and it is gone. Nothing can be done about it.
Don’t start thinking in terms of doing something about it. It is going to happen!
[A visitor says she has been longing to have a child desperately for ten years, and wonders if she should have one without being married, because she is afraid to go against her social condition.]
Have a child!... Go against all the rules; those are just meaningless.… Have a child and be courageous.… You are making too much of it. It is nothing!...
People have been doing it and more and more people have to do it – only then will it go. More and more women have to do it out of wedlock, out of marriage, and they have to declare that they have the right to become mothers. If they don’t want to become wives, perfectly good! Motherhood should not be confined to wifehood. Motherhood is beautiful in itself... far more beautiful than any wifehood.
[She says she has listened so carefully to society and her heart is screaming out for a child.]
That listening to the society is ego, not this longing for the child.… It is ego... it is ego! You want respect, you want people to respect you; you don’t want them to condemn you. You depend on their opinion too much. They can take only your ego, nothing else. They will say this woman is evil or bad... so perfectly good! That has to be sacrificed. That respectability is worth sacrificing for a child. By giving birth to a child you will be fulfilled if that longing is that deep in you.…
Mm mm, there was no need to wait for ten years. Finish it soon!... In a month.And if you feel the
society is very difficult, come to my commune and be there. There will be nobody saying anything..
People will really respect a woman more because she has been courageous. Without a husband, without becoming a wife, bringing a child into the world, the woman has been daring! She should be respected.…
It is just because you want both the things together: you want to be respected by people and you want the child too. That will not be possible. The child is from god, and the respect is just from ordinary masses. No need to worry about that. You just take a jump!
And once you are pregnant, then finished! You can’t go on brooding about it! Just go into it... with my blessings!
And what about your sannyas? That will help you!
[She replies: I’ve only been here three weeks and I don’t feel very familiar with this whole operation yet.]
You will be familiar with it only when you are operated on! How in the world are you going to become familiar without becoming a sannyasin ? It is a very crazy thing! You have to go into it and then you know it. At least you will have this commune of sannyasins all over the world who will respect you when you become a mother.
Think about it. Think about sannyas too!... Mm? because if you want to become a mother out of wedlock, before that it is better to become a sannyasin! So within the month, both things! Good!
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