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CHAPTER 3
Madness keeps you sane
3 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A mother brings her child to take sannyas. The child sits very still with closed eyes, and Osho tells her mother to help her meditate.]
She has very meditative energy... can easily go into meditation. So help her; whenever you go to the meditation take her with you. She can just be there and by and by she will start moving. And children can learn far more easily because they have nothing to unlearn. The slate is clean. They are not yet corrupted by the society, so much is possible.
Anand means bliss, and vihari means playfulness blissful playfulness. And by saying to be playful I am giving you a message: don’t be serious about the search. It is very easy to find truth if one is not serious, because seriousness Is a shadow of the ego and playfulness is innocence, the innocence of a child.
So take life, the search, sincerely but not seriously. Be involved in it, but very playfully. Let it be a joy and a fun... and god is not very far away!
And don’t try to escape! Because I see something in you which can seduce you into escaping. Escape is very easy; growth is difficult. So I can see that part inside you that will tell you to go here and there or will say, ‘Why bother? Why go into such pain? Why make so much effort?’ Beware of it!
Only the first few weeks are difficult then things start flowing smoothly. My work is that of a surgeon, mm ? In the beginning it is painful, so don’t escape from the operation table! Sometimes a few people escape and then they repent very much!
[Osho tells an initiate to feel as if he is dying, to allow the body uncontrol and imagine it is falling apart. Osho then talks about the significance of being able to move into that space of dying. Sannyas is a process of dying, he says – dying to the past, to the ego, to time – and it is only through death that one is reborn. So my first thing for you is to drop the fear of death... and you can.]
Anand means bliss and chandresh means god of the moon. And the moon is very symbolic. In the east the moon represents the feminine, the soft, the yin energy. It also represents the non-logical, the poetic mind; that’s why poets are all ‘lunatics’.
The moon represents the intuitive part of your being. We can say the right hemisphere of the brain is represented by the moon and the left hemisphere of the brain is represented by the sun. The left-side brain is male: aggressive, logical, prosaic, mathematical. Science comes out of it. The right-side brain is intuitive, illogical, aesthetic, mystical. Religion comes out of it.
So become more and more moon-orientated. Whenever there is a moon in the night, never miss meditating on it. Just lie down on the grass and look at the moon... just look at the moon. Let there be a communion. a dialogue, and sometimes if you feel it coming, you can actually have a dialogue. Start talking to the moon.
In the beginning it will look a little foolish, crazy, but soon you will get the knack of it and the beauty of it. A moment comes when not only you say something to the moon. You start feeling, almost hearing, what the moon is saying to you. That dialogue will relax you immensely, and it will start changing your emphasis from the male side to the female side.
The female side is the receptive side. All that is great always happens through the female side and all that is trivial happens through the male side. So the greatest art in life – even if you are a man – is how to continue to remain feminine inside.
It is not coincidental that god has chosen woman to be the womb for the new child, for new life. In fact, the feminine mind is the womb of all that is new. Even when great scientists come to discover something, they come to discover it from the feminine side, not from the male side. The male side formulates it, systematises it, argues for it, but the insight, the intuitive flash, is not’ from it; it comes from the other side.
Many scientific discoveries have been made in dreams, in moments of reverie, fantasy. And all the great insights ever – religious, scientific, poetic, literary – all the great insights have bubbled up from the feminine side. The feminine is the mother, mother of all, and the moon is the symbol for the feminine. So this will continuously remind you to become more and more feminine in your approach towards life – more poetic, more illogical. Allow a little bit of madness! A little bit of madness is perfectly okay. In fact a man without any kind of madness is mad! A little bit of madness keeps you sane; it helps you remain sane. Don’t become too serious... a too serious person becomes neurotic. So before one becomes a neurotic, one should become a lunatic!
Deva means divine, and shyama is a very very small bird, a black bird, that you will come across. Its singing is just divine. It is a very small bird but with great music in it. The indication is that music is going to help you.
And the second thing: think yourself as being more like a bird than like a human being. When you see birds flying in the sky, fly with them... at least in your imagination. Empathise with them and feel how they are feeling high in the sky. Sometimes lying on the grass, close your eyes and feel like a bird. It will be an experiment in visualisation. Soon you will be able to grow wings!
In the beginning it will be just like a dream – that you are seeing a dream and flying in the high altitude – but within six, seven weeks, you will be able to see its reality. And the day you feel that you have felt it almost as if it is real then try to look down from the height and see your body lying down on the grass. The day you can see that, you have to report to me. It will be possible, and it will be the beginning of meditation for you.
[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says she would like to return, to become part of the ashram, but also feels that it is not for her but for more blissful people.
You are a blissful person! says Osho... and if you are not I will make you one! That’s why I am going to create this commune. I want to create such a collective energy there (in the new ashram) that howsoever miserable you are, once you are thrown into it you will not be able to resist the pull of it. It is going to become a great magnetic force by and by! Finish things and come. This is your home!]
[A couple remind Osho that at a previous darshan he had told them to drop their relationship problems, or the relationship itself. Tonight they say they have decided to separate.
Osho agrees that it is best to part, saying that one shouldn’t get stuck in any relationship. If it flows forever, good, he says. If for the whole life or even for a few lives it continues... I know a few couples who have lived as a couple for a few lives. (Osho mentions an indian couple present) They are not a couple for the first time. In their past, for a few lives they have lived together. And there is every possibility that if they don’t become enlightened then again they will be together next life!]
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