21 To categorise is to devitalise

‌CHAPTER 21

To categorise is to devitalise

21 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives someone sannyas, saying:]

Mm, close your eyes, and go in. Feel you are going in. You are not the body; keep that in your consciousness. The body is far away... surrounding you but you are not it. And neither are you the mind. That too is surrounding you – thoughts and thoughts surrounding you – but you are beyond it, you are the witness. For a moment just be the witness.

Come here! Very good! The energy is ready for a great jump. It is almost like a runner who is waiting on the boundary for the signal: all ready, absolutely ready, excited, expectant.The signal just has

to be given and he will move fast. The energy is very ready, and if you don’t take the jump the same energy will become very heavy. It needs expression, it needs flow; in the flow there will be joy.

That is the beauty of energy and that is the misery also. People who have energy, who have grown up in a certain way in their past lives and have come to a certain point from where they can take the jump, are very disturbed people if they don’t take the jump. Because the energy goes on disturbing them; it makes them restless. They cannot relax and they cannot be totally in anything because that energy is always there rushing into some unknown.

They are always tom apart. They cannot be in the mundane world, and they have to be there. The energy wants them to move. So that creates trouble; many people go mad because of that. Many creative people go mad simply for the reason that they have more energy than the so-called normal people. Now, this is a very ugly scheme of things. They can become great creators: somebody is just needed to help them to understand their energy, to trust their energy, to go with it.

Your sannyas is going to be of immense benefit to you.…

[Osho tells him that his key is to be natural. Drop all phoniness, because that is standing as a barrier. Drop all that has been taught so that you can again start Learning from abc. The door opens only to the innocence of a child, Osho continues. The day we lose our innocence, our growth stops.]

Close your eyes, and feel that a great cry is coming to you from the heart... as if somebody you loved very much has died. You lose all your control and you start crying; tears come to your eyes. You can even start saying the gibberish that happens when one is crying and is no more in control. Just relax into that space. I would like to contact you there.

Don’t be shy, don’t feel embarrassed. The people who are around me are always accepting of everything and they know how to revere everything. Just relax; let it come. If your body falls down on the floor, allow it, but go into it deeply, very deeply.…

It is difficult for you to cry and difficult to move into a sad space... but that is so for the majority of people because we have been taught, conditioned, to be manly. Never cry; it is feminine. Even if you are sad, go on pretending that you are not sad. You are a man; you know how to control everything.

But the problem is that when you control sadness, automatically your happiness will be controlled. If you control your tears, automatically your laughter will be controlled; they go together. The range is proportionate: if you can go into crying one foot then you can go into laughter one foot, not more. If you can go one mile into crying, you can go one mile into laughter; they balance. It is not possible to stop crying and to laugh. Then laughter becomes phoney, it is false.

You will have to learn it because both these things are needed: peaks of joy are needed, and valleys of sadness too... and they are both beautiful. There is nothing wrong in being sad. It has as much beauty as joy because it has a kind of depth, a silence, a solitude. In those sad moments compassion arises. If you cannot suffer you cannot feel compassion; you don’t know what suffering is. When you suffer you attain to compassion. Then you know what is happening when you see the tears in somebody’s eyes. Then you cannot only sympathise, you can empathise. You can move into empathy: you can move in the same space. You know when you see a sad face what it is; you are acquainted with that space. Your own suffering makes you capable of compassion.

If you cannot suffer yourself – if you are very hard and have managed not to suffer – then compassion will never come to you. And compassion is something one should not miss. It is a higher stage of passion. Passion has an intensity – so has compassion – but passion is concerned with particular individuals and compassion is not concerned with particular individuals; it is universal.

In passion you love a particular individual – a woman, a man, a friend – but your love is very limited. In compassion your love is vast. It is flowing in all directions altogether; it is not addressed to anybody in particular. That’s why passion makes a person small and compassion makes him huge.

Passion gives you a boundary, and naturally every boundary is a prison. So in every passion you become a prisoner; that’s why people suffer with passion. You love a woman and there is passion and slavery. She starts possessing you and you start possessing her, and immediately you become prisons for each other, prisoners of each other and you start killing each other.

Anything that has a definition, is directed, has an address, makes you limited. Definition limits and limitation is a death. If you limit yourself you commit suicide, a kind of a suicide. If you limit the other you commit murder, a kind of murder. In compassion there is no limitation and neither murder nor suicide. You simply bloom... not for anybody in particular, but for all.

But compassion arises only out of suffering, so suffering has immense spiritual value. Tears are very precious because they will bring compassion, and on the other hand they will also make you capable of rising high. The deeper you go, the higher you can go: the truth and the height will always correspond in proportion.

So while you are here start being more and more your emotions. Take care of them. You have been neglecting them, but everybody is doing that because they make one so embarrassed. If suddenly seeing somebody on the road – a beggar – you start crying, it will be very embarrassing to you. Somebody has died and you cannot control yourselfLife has many many sufferings, many pains.

One has to become hard and stiff to protect oneself but in that very protection we are lost. In that very defence we lose all the joy. So become very very vulnerable.

Deva means divine, swatantra means freedom, independence, liberty. And the word has another meaning also: swa means self and tantra means expansion. When you are in freedom your self expands, you go on expanding. One day you become the whole universe. That’s why in india we have never called the ultimate state heaven. We have called the ultimate state moksha; moksha means freedom.

Expand and become more and more free!

[A sannyasin had written to ask Osho to give him the courage to surrender. Now he says he has been watching the battle between his heart and his mind.]

Just remember watching. You are not to choose between the two. Choice brings conflict. If you choose you will be in trouble because the unchosen will take revenge and they are both part of your being. You cannot choose your right hand against the left hand, and you cannot choose vice versa; they are both your hands. And deep down you are separate from both. You can use both but you cannot choose. And the choice will be detrimental.

If you choose the right hand then you will lose the left and you will become crippled. And both are needed: in fact their opposition is very helpful. That’s why we can carry things – because the fingers oppose each other. The thumb can oppose the fingers; that has been the greatest thing in man’s life. Animals have not grown because their fingers cannot oppose and because they cannot oppose they cannot carry things easily.

This opposition of fingers is one of the greatest blessings to man; that’s how he has evolved – through opposition. But there is no need to choose: they are all your fingers; you are behind all of them. And so is the case with the mind and the heart.

Never choose! Choice will bring great difficulty and trouble. If you choose the head, love will start disappearing. Your life will become dry, desert-like; there will be no juice flowing in you. You will live, you will earn, you will succeed, but for no significance. There will be no joy in it. You will become a machine. Reason is a machine. Joy never comes through it.it is not meant for that.

If you choose the heart against the head you will become loving but you will become foolish. You will start behaving stupidly. You will have joys but your life will be almost mad. And in that madness, joy will become more and more difficult, because a few things are needed in life: bread, butter, shelter. If you choose against the head you will become very poor on the outside. ..rich in the inside but very poor on the outside. .And when you are very poor on the outside you cannot be very rich even on the inside because the inside and outside exist together. There is a hierarchy of needs.

You may be a great musician but if you are forced to starve for a few days you will forget all about your music. You will only think about your stomach and hunger and you will start getting angry and enraged and irritated. Your sleep and your peace will be gone. Music will not have any relevance; it will disappear. The physiological needs have to be fulfilled, and they can be fulfilled only through the functioning of reason .

Then there are psychological needs. They have to be fulfilled too, and they can only be fulfilled through reason. A man needs a certain kind of house to live in, otherwise he is very helpless under the sky. He needs clothes, he needs friendship to exist. He needs relationship; alone he becomes uprooted, starts dying. So there are security needs, safety needsA man needs a certain training

In logic to function well, to move well. Both are needed. A man of the head without the heart is lop-sided; so is the man of the heart without a head. Then what should be done?

One should become a witnessnot a chooser. Just watch; both are yours. Enjoy the game of their

conflicts and don’t take any side. You will be surprised one day that their quarrel is disappearing and a day comes when the enemies have become friends. If you don’t choose they become friends, they start cooperating, and in that cooperation is the wholeness of life.

So just remember that watching. Whenever the conflict arises again, just sit silently there and watch – with no judgement, with no favouritism, no side-taking. Just be there and enjoy; they are playing a game. It is just as when a mother is watching her two children playing. Maybe in playing they are fighting, maybe they are playing the game of being warriors... and the mother is watching. There is nothing to choose.

So be a mother and a witness, and soon there will come a harmony. That is coming.that is on the

way.

[Osho asks a sannyasin if they will be staying forever. She replies: It is difficult – forever. I can’t think about foreverbut a long time.]

There is no need to think about forever, mm? A long time will do. Life is not very long! A few years and life is gone. So when I say forever, I mean something else. I mean not a relationship in time but a relationship in eternity. This life is very short but we can be related foreverI can be your home

forever! But by and byJust plan only for a long time, and I am planning forever!

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