24 Reflect, don\'t project

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‌CHAPTER 24

Reflect, don’t project

27 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, mukul means mirror: a love mirror. And the message is that if one reflects rightly, if one becomes a mirror, one will not find anything else other than love. It is because of our distorting mind that we cannot see love, otherwise love is all around. From the trees and from the stars and from the sands and the sea and the pebbles, love is vibrating from everywhere.

Love is the basic vibe of existence itself. The tree can exist only if it goes on vibrating in love, and the star can continue only if it goes on vibrating in love. The moment the love vibe stops, death happens. Only in love is there life. Without love there is death; hence the great urge and desire for love. You cannot live without it; it is the nourishment. Just as food is to the body, love is to the soul. But because we cannot see rightly, our vision is crooked, our mirror is not mirroring but projecting, we go on missing.

Become a mirror, and by saying to become a mirror, I mean: don’t project, don’t have any prejudice, don’t have any idea. Look at things without any idea interfering. Look at a rose flower with no idea... not even with the idea that it is beautiful, not even with the idea that this is a rose. No idea interfering... just silence, and the silence will bridge you with the rose, and you will become a mirrorIn that moment you will see great love being thrown towards you from the rose. It is always

coming from everywhere; we just have to be in a right, mirroring state. The day one becomes a mirror god is everywherebecause love is everywhere, and there is no other way to know god. The

only way to know god is to know love.

But as is the case even when we love people, we love with ideas. Then only fragments of it reach. You love a man but you have certain ideas about the man, an image; that image occupies you.

Because of that image you cannot see the real person. The image gives you expectations. If the man is not according to your expectations, there is frustration. If he is according to your expectations, there is no joy because you take it for granted. In either case you miss; either there is boredom or frustration. If he goes on fulfilling your expectations you will be bored by the man. Sooner or later he will look dead because he will become so predictable. You know what he is going to do, you know what he is going to say; you know the future. Then the excitement is no more there; it is mechanical. If he fulfills your expectations you are bored.

In China they have a saying, that if you see a woman bored it simply means she has got a perfect husband. That appeals to me; it looks very very psychological. The same is true about the husband. If the husband looks bored that means he has got a perfect wife; now there is nothing else to happen. Everything is perfect, everything is closed. They may as well die. There is no longer any future: it is going to be the repetition. If the expectation is fulfilled it creates boredom. If it is not fulfilled it creates frustration, anger. Both ways it is destructive. To be a mirror means to have no expectation. When you come before a mirror, the mirror has no idea of who you are, whether you are beautiful, not beautiful; the mirror has no idea at all. Just a moment before you came the mirror was empty. In that emptiness, you are mirrored. Once you are gone again the mirror has no idea about you; it is again empty.

That should be the key for you. That has to be worked out. Encounter life as a mirror, and immense will be the benefit. Every day your joy will go on increasing. When the joy comes to its crescendo, that’s what we call god. It is the total orgasm between the individual and the whole.

[The new sannyasin says: I would like you to explain the word ‘allah’. When I was doing the prayer meditation in the centering group, the word came to me when I had lost my mind and body. I did not know what it meant.]

Yes, it is a sufi word for god and it is a sanskrit word for mother. Both are significant, because to me god is more like a mother than like a father. God is more accepting, receiving – not like the male energy: aggressive. So the sufi word means god, ‘allah’, and the sanskrit word, the same word ‘allah’, means mother. But the thing that bridges both is love. God is love and the purest representation on the earth is the mother. The closest love that comes to god, to the unconditional love of god, is a mother’s love.

You can make it your mantra. Whenever you are sitting silently, repeat ‘allah, allah...’ and sway with it. Let it not be just a mental repetition. Your body should participate in it, your body should vibrate with it, and great joy will come out of It.

You have stumbled upon your mantra, and that is the right way to find it. The right way is not to ask somebody. The right way is to go on groping. Then one day suddenly you feel a sound which is the sound of your innermost core, which fits with you, arising in you, and you will feel immense joy. The meaning is irrelevant; the sound itself is enough. The meaning is given by it; whether we call it god or mother or love it is our meaning. The sound is pure. It has no meaning really; It has significance but no meaning.

So while you are here, whenever you find time just sit silently, repeat it, sway with it, and it will start encompassing you. You will be engulfed by it, drowned in it, and you will almost feel drunk after a few minutes. That is the ultimate in drugs!

Anand means bliss, murti means statue: statue of bliss. And two things to be remembered: one, remain as blissful as possible but don’t get excited; that will be your work. Let the bliss be very silent, unmoving. It is there but nobody becomes aware of it. Let it be like the prayer jesus spoke, said in secret – only you know about it. Carry it like a mother carries a child in the womb. Be careful so that it is not disturbed, but don’t get excited about it. If you become excited bliss will never go very deep, because each excitement expands the energy. I am not saying this for others; I am saying it particularly for you.

If you can go on preserving it, it will go deeper and deeper and deeper because more and more energy will gather together; it will become accumulative. And when you are feeling that you are almost bursting with it, then enquire what to do next – not before that. Before that simply go on accumulating it so that it can touch the very bottom of your heart. Otherwise a little bliss comes and you express it. For a few people it is good. There are different types of people: there are people who will gain more by expressing it; more will be flowing in them. There are people who will expend it and feel spent, exhausted. You are the second type. You have to make a reservoir out of it.

When you feel you are bursting with it and you cannot contain it any more, ask me about it. If I feel that now is the time to express it you can, but first gather it. Let it become a vital force. It should explode like a volcano – only then... not small sparks; that won’t do. It has to be a fire in the whole forest. The whole forest is afire; then it will change you and transform you.

So right now be blissful but keep it inside. Be very very careful not to express it, not to get excited about it. Soon you will see it is there all the time. Even while you are asleep you will find it; it is in you. Moving you will find it is there. You will start gaining a certain weight inside, a rootedness, a centering, a grounding. Mm? the more it is there, the more you will feel grounded, very confident about your being. Then one day it will be there throbbing. You will be smaller and it will be bigger. You cannot contain it any more and you would like to explodeBefore exploding you have to ask

me.

Prem means love, vihar means play: love play. And let that become your very philosophy of life. Two things: be loving and be playful. If love becomes serious it brings misery. Life without love is not life at all. And that’s what happens ordinarily: when people love they become so serious about it that the seriousness creates misery. They think the misery is because of love; then they start becoming afraid of love. They start withdrawing themselves from all love; they don’t go on that path any more. They start existing lovelessly, because love brings misery, anxiety, anguish, sadness. So they avoid it. But then their life is a boredom, a sheer boredom, for no purpose at all. Without love life is a boredom; with love, if it is serious, life becomes a pathology, ill, unhealthy.

A healthy life needs two things: love and playfulness. A non-serious quality is needed for love. Love should be fun! Then there is great joy, and the joy goes on growing every day. Because it is just a play you don’t take it seriously; it cannot create misery. So be loving but be loving non-seriously!

[The new sannyasin says: I am a nurse and part of my work is taking care of dead bodies. When people die it is not very nice; mostly they die very terribly. It is the smell and the dirt that really disgusts me. Then I become hard and I treat them like an object; it is like a dirty job.]

A few things to remember: first, once a person is dead, he is no more. It is just a dead body; it is dirt! You need not be worried about it; there is nobody left! So there is no need to feel guilty that you

are not loving. How can you love a dead body? If you don’t hate it, that’s enough . A.dead body is a dead body. Even the person himself has left it! It was no more worth living in, so how can you...? You want to enter it and live there?! Mm? the person has left because it was rotten. Now the house is dilapidated, it is in a ruin and nobody lives there. It just has to be dissolved.

So nothing to be worried about! How can you be loving? Drop that idea! Be loving when a person is alive. Then even if he is in a dirty body, be loving... because he is not the body. Always be respectful to the person who is inside. Sometimes he is in an old body, an ill body, stinking, but he himself is not that. Take care of his body, be respectful towards it, but once he has left then it is just dirt – dust unto dust.

So clean the body, wash it. It is just a ritual really, mm? now it is all meaningless. It has to be thrown back to the earth. We have to do a certain ritual so that it is not so abrupt. To be polite, we do a certain ritual: the bath, new clothes. In different countries it is done in different ways, but we are just trying to create a certain meaning about something which is absolutely meaningless; otherwise it will be too abrupt.

Somebody has died and you suddenly throw him out. It will hurt you so we have to make the passage slowly, and make it as beautifully as possible. But basically it is all meaningless. The whole point is how to end it. So in one country you bury it, in another country you burn it, in another country, another way, but the whole question is disposal. The disposal has to be done in a certain way so it looks human and polite, but the body is just empty.

So don’t be worried about it and don’t create any guilt about it. It is just natural. Good!

[Osho had invited a sannyasin to come to the new commune. She says: One of the things that you have taught me so well is to live in the moment, and so I feel that a moment will come and then I will rush back.]

Mm mm, it is coming... I can see it coming. When I tell you to live in the moment that doesn’t mean that I cannot see the future! It is coming.… Let it come; there is no hurry. There is no need to enforce it, because anything enforced becomes partial; it can never be total. Just wait, mm? it will be coming.…

I will not allow you in if I see that it is enforced. I will allow you in only when I see that you have come totally on your own... not before that. But it is coming, so there is no problem. Any day, once you are back in New York, it will start haunting you!

[A sannyasin says she has a problem but doesn’t feel like talking about it. She asks: If you can see me without me explaining... ]

I can see you but that won’t help. I can see you, but you have to say it; that makes a lot of difference. That is a very very necessary thing: you have to bring your question. At least that much work you have to do. I can see where the problem is. If you want me to tell you I can... but that won’t help; that won’t help.

The problem is that you want to be independent and yet you want me to take every care of you. That is the problem. You would like me to take every care of you, and I am ready to, but then you

also want to be perfectly independent of me. Now, those are contradictions. You will have to choose one. If you choose independence, perfectly good; be independent. Then don t expect any care from my side; you have to lose that. You cannot have the cake and eat it too, so you have to decide. Or surrender totally; then all independence and nonsense has not to come in. Both are good, but you are trying to keep yourself in both the boats, hence the confusion.

You are afraid to surrender and you are afraid to be independent, and that is the basic thing somewhere. Other things are there but they are just by-products. If this is solved, your problem will be solved. So what do you want?

If you want to be independent, try. There is nothing wrong in it; it’s perfectly good. In fact if you surrender to me, in the end that’s what I am going to make you: absolutely independent. Surrender is just a passage for preparation. But if somebody wants to be independent before it, he can try. It will be nothing but an ego assertion.

And this can go on playing tricks. Mm? you wrote that you wanted plastic surgery on your breasts and you didn’t even wait for my answer! Either you should not write... there was no need; I was not telling you to write and ask me. I would not ever have asked you about it; that was not a problem at all. But you wrote to me and you didn’t wait. By the time my letter reached, you had had the operation already. That shows the mind: on one hand you would like to throw the whole responsibility on me. On another hand you would like to keep your independence intact. But being in both the boats you will be in trouble and in great confusion.

[She replies: I don’t want a false surrender. I don’t want to say ‘Yes, I surrender,’]

No, saying won’t help, mm? saying won’t help. You live it! If that is the way it is to come, go through it! But then don’t ask tor consolations – because there will be suffering. And then don’t say that it is confusion; there is going to be confusion. Accept it and live it. You will crack, but when one cracks it is not an easy thing; it is painful. It is a breakdown. If you can live it then it will crack, that is certain, but then don’t be in a hurry to find some solution. Just live it... and suffer it. It is perfectly right to go through the whole agony of it. That may bring light, that may bring clarity.

And that’s exactly what I am saying. I am not saying to choose; how can you choose? I can only say to try to see the whole thing. What the problem is has to be seen, then the confusion and how the confusion is being created by you. Because you are trying to do two things together, two polar opposites together... hence the confusion. Now see it and go through it!

If you have seen it totally you will come out of it. And whatsoever the outcome, it is good. If surrender comes out of it, it is good; if independence comes out of it, it is good. So there is no need to keep some prejudice or other from the very beginning – that surrender has to come – no; otherwise it will again be manipulated.

You just keep yourself open and go through it. But it will be great agony for a few months, so be ready for it.… And don’t seek cheap consolations then. You are choosing the hard way.…

You cannot choose anything else right now; you are already on the hard way. Not everybody is confused here, so there must be some ways people are choosing which are not hard. Not everybody

is in the same confusion as you are. It must be your choice but maybe that is the only way you can go through it. And everybody has to go in his own way. If it is hard, it is hard; nothing to be worried about.

For one month just let it be there, and after one month tell me, if you feel like saying something, mm? [The sannyasin adds: I feel that you’re telling me all these things as if you are angry with meIt

makes me feel guilty.]

No, no, no, there is no need to. These are your confusions that you go on creating. That’s what I meant: I don’t want to say what the problem is. If you had asked the question then it would be different. Then you would not think that I am angry... because you had asked it. Because I am saying it, it will look as if I am angry. I am simply saying that this is a situation in your mind. Watch it, see it, go through it, and after one month tell me how you feel.

[A sannyasin has just completed individual Primal therapy. He says: I was very shocked and surprised at.what came out.]

It is always surprising because we don’t know ourselves... and much more is there. In fact one can go on and on and can go on being surprised. It is almost a bottomless abyss. But it is good to know a few surprising things about oneself. That makes one very understanding about oneself, and about others too. A great compassion arises; then you can understand others also and their problems. You are not so hard; expectations are not so perfectionistic. You are not neurotic about your demands. You can see the limitations of others because you know your limitations. You can see the childishness of others because you see your own childishness. You can feel compassion.…

[The new Tantra Yoga group is present. The leader says she is used to using more rituals and this time she did not have a plan and it worked well.]

And you had been doing the work before more structured and more ritualistic? And this one was not that much?...

My feeling is that you let it be completely structured. Not half way, then it will miss both the beauties. Let it be completely structured and with rituals, because we have another group, tantra, which is completely spontaneous. So there is no need to create another spontaneous group.

That’s why I have called it tantra yoga; yoga means technique. It means method, ritual. The other one I simply call tantra; it has no ritual, no method. First people should pass through tantra yoga and then they will do the tantra. So don’t make a compromise. Simply make it planned, programmed, and go accordingly, mm?

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