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CHAPTER 4
Hollow man or hollow bamboo
4 October 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means blissful, bhagat means a devotee a follower on the path of love.
There are three paths; one is of knowledge, of meditation, of purifying the intelligence. The second is of action, of service. And the third is of devotion, of love, of the heart. The path of action is body-oriented, the path of knowledge is mind-oriented, and the path of devotion is heart-oriented
You have to concentrate on the heart. You have to forget the body and the mind; you have to remember the heart more and more. Be filled by the heartbeat, because it is not only your heartbeat: it is the heartbeat of the eternal. It is god’s heartbeat. Listening to your own heartbeat, by and by you Will start hearing the heartbeat of the universe too.
Love has to be evolved as much as possible. Accumulating knowledge won’t help you but pouring yourself into love Will transform you. That’s going to be your alchemy, so forget everything else. Focus all your energies on love. For twenty-four hours, remain mindful of love – whatsoever you are doing. Even in cleaning the floor, one can do it with great love and devotion as if one is washing the very feet of god. When watering the trees one can do it lovingly, one can do it indifferently; one can do it almost full of hatred.
Each act can be transformed by love, and unless and until all your acts are transformed and transfused with love you will not know that god exists. No argument can prove it – only the experience of love. One day suddenly you know god is. Not that you have come to it as a logical conclusion but that your heart has felt it; it has become an experience. Then the whole world can go on saying there is no god; .that won’t affect you. Nobody can take that experience away from you. You know
in the deepest core of your being that god is, that only god is, that nothing else is... that you are not and god is.
Anand means bliss and bhagwata means a divine poem... divine poetry, a divine song.And bliss
is the divine song. It happens in you, it happens through you, but it comes from god; it is not from you. It descends on you, it filters through you, but it is not from you. Whenever you are blissful something of the divine is penetrating you.whatsoever the excuse. You may be seeing a full moon
and you feel blissful, or you may be listening to music or you may be just swimming or making love or doing nothing – just sitting silently – and suddenly it is there, the benediction. Suddenly for no reason at all you feel a kind of blissfulness surrounding you.
Next time it happens, watch: it is not from you. It has come to you from above, from beyond. It is there around you: watch it, and you will see that you are just functioning as a passage. You are a hollow bamboo. the song is always god’s and whenever his lips touch you, you become a flute. Otherwise man is a hollow bamboo. Only with god flowing through him does he become a flute. that’s why all the religions emphasise one thing – that the ego has to be dropped.
So from this moment start thinking in terms of god. Whatsoever beautiful happens to you, look around for god and you will always find him. Whenever there is misery you are the cause of it, and whenever there is bliss you are not the cause of it. The insight becomes a key. Then you can drop being miserable because you are responsible for it. And the more you drop misery, the more you become a vehicle capable of receiving god more and more.
The miseries hinder. when you are in a sad mood, sometimes god comes around you but has to go away because you are closed; you don’t give an opening to him. Even if he knocks on your door you can’t listen. You are too full of your own noise. You are going mad, round and round inside yourself. Even if he whispers there is no possibility of any response on your side. So when one is miserable one hinders god.
All that man can do is not be miserable. Then god comes, and comes in abundance, comes like a flood. And god is not a miser; if you are ready he goes on coming, every moment; awake, asleep, he comes.
That is the meaning of bhagwata: it means the song belongs to god. and if we can become right vehicles we can become great poets, great artists, artists of life and great creators. But still the creativity is his; we are at the most instruments in his hand. It is just as when a painter is painting: the brush is doing the actual painting and it can become very egoistic and think that it has done the painting. It can forget the hand that is behind it, And that’s what happens when there is too much ego: we go on forgetting the real hand that is behind us!
[The new sannyasin says he has done here, and in England, Primal and Encounter.] Mm mm. But nothing seems to have helped you.…
[The sannyasin answers: I don’t agree.]
Mm mm. That is perfectly good – there is no need to agree you can disagree. If you disagree then there is no problem why be here? If you agree, I can work on you; if you don’t agree then there is no
problem, you can go. If you think it has helped, perfectly good – I’m very happy! But not agreeing with me Is not going to help you. It is as if a man comes and says to the doctor ‘I am perfectly healthy’. It is perfectly okay! I was going to suggest some groups but I will not. You can choose whatsoever groups you feel like doing and whatsoever you feel like doing here.
With me agreement is a must, so it is not a question of whether you agree or disagree with me. Otherwise it is perfectly good. I am not in any trouble and I am not hankering to help you. If you need my help it is available. If you feel like doing some groups, you can do; if you feel like doing some meditations you can do. But if you feel like agreeing with me, then I will suggest things to do, otherwise not. That’s your choice, mm ?
That’s what I was feeling from the very beginning: the ego is very much there. You didn’t even like the name!
[The sannyasin replies: No.]
Mm, that I know... that I know. And I think you have taken sannyas wrongly. You should not have taken it. And it is still not too late; you can give it back. Because I don’t see why you decided to become a sannyasin. I don’t say no to anybody – I am always ready to give whatsoever you ask – but I don’t feel that it is going to help you in any way, because your basic attitude is not that of surrender... and sannyas is surrender.
I have given you that name knowingly, and when I was talking about the name you were continuously disagreeing with it. You w ere not happy. The very idea was hurting you: you, an instrument? You, a hollow bamboo? Even to conceive of yourself as a hollow bamboo was very difficult.
It is perfectly good that you disagree, mm? – but think about sannyas also. If you feel like it tomorrow, go to the office and give it back... because it will be pointless! The very beginning is wrong. And I will not be able to work on you at all, because we have agreed to disagree from the very beginning. It will be an unnecessary conflict. You remain free, you remain nick. Bhagwata is too much for you!
But you think – there is no hurry, mm? Think about it the whole night and tomorrow decide. If you want to remain a sannyasin, then this is going to be total agreement. I don’t want any nonsense of disagreement, this and that; that is meaningless. You have to simply drop your old ideas and your old mind and give me a chance to give you a new mind, a new insight.
If you are too much attached to your old mind and you are not ready to accept anything new and you are not ready to explore it, it is your life and you have to decide about it.
And when I said that groups have not helped you, I meant this: if they had helped you would have agreed with me. They would have made you humble. If they had helped you would have felt more open to move into something you didn’t know. At least you would have said ‘perhaps’ – not that you disagree; you would have remained open. But the disagreement simply shows you have not understood at all what the primal process is. It makes you innocent, it makes you a child again. You look so serious and so much in the head. The primal scream has not happened. If it happens one becomes so innocent.
Think about it, and tomorrow go to the office. If you decide to remain a sannyasin, remain, but if you decide to drop it, drop it. If you want to remain a sannyasin then there is no possibility of disagreeing with me. This is not a democracy with me; it is absolutely dictatorial! That’s how I work... that’s my way of work.
These people have not voted for me! It is not their decision – I have chosen them. So think about it, mm? Good!
Deva means god, lalasa means desire for: desire for god. And that is the only desire worthwhile. All other desires are very very trivial, meaningless and a sheer wastage of life. One has to gather all desires together and make one desire out of them: the desire for god. And only that desire gives dignity; it brings splendour to life. All other desires only disintegrate a person, make him divided into fragments. As many desires as you have, so you will be divided into one thousand parts, so you will have one thousand minds; you will be a crowd.
Each desire will create a small centre of its own, and there will be many centres in you. It will be very difficult to know exactly who you are. And each desire pretends to be the soul, the very centre. So a man of many desires remains in pieces, in fragments.
With lalasa, with a single desire for god, one becomes integrated because then there is only one desire and only one centre and only one self. And that brings joy, that brings strength and that brings an authenticity in life.
[The new sannyasin says: I’ve been in the Gurdjieff school in England with Mr. Bennett.]
Very good! That’s exactly the meaning of the word ‘lalasa’! That’s what Gurdjieff says – that man is a crowd, polypsychic, many minds together, and each part pretending to be the master of the house. And a divided house cannot stand long. That is the whole work of Gurdjieff: to create integration, to help you to crystallise.
[A sannyasin, returning to the West, said she had been in love with someone in the West, and since she had come to see Osho had received threatening letters from him. She is still in love with him, but afraid. She says: And it’s very messy; I feel very unclear about it.]
Mm mm, this thing called love is always messy! I have never seen a clean love!... Things are really messy! You are not the woman he used to know!...
Just go! Your love for me is so deep that nothing can distract you, and anything that tries to distract you will become meaningless for you. So I don’t see there is any trouble; things just have to be cleared. Either he understands you – either he loves you with your freedom, with your personality, without any kind of domination over you, without any kind of possession – either he understands and loves you with all your freedom, or it is finished!
And never settle for anything less... because this is the problem every lover faces sooner or later and the sooner you face it the better, because there will be less entanglement. The problem is of love and freedom... always!
You would like to be with the person you love but not at the cost of freedom. At the cost of freedom love becomes a slavery – and nobody can love slavery, nobody! Those who love slavery are below human. They lose all dignity; they don’t respect themselves.
Love is perfectly good but it can never become a higher value than freedom. Freedom remains the ultimate value. If love comes as a shadow to freedom it is beautiful. If it comes and murders freedom it is ugly. Then you will suffer very much and you will not be able to enjoy it.
So just go and make things clear. Tell him that you love him but that freedom remains the ultimate value. Tell him you love him but you don’t want to possess him and neither would you like to be possessed by him. It will remain an affair between two freedoms so nobody will possess the other.
If freedom remains intact love is benediction. If freedom cannot remain intact, then remember well, that man does not love you, because how can a man love you and destroy your freedom? That is impossible; it is inconceivable. Then all that love is a pretension – just a pretension to dominate you, to possess you, to enslave you. Beware of it! Even if you love the person never sacrifice freedom, because once you sacrifice freedom love will not be worth enjoying at all.
So go; make things clear. And don’t cry and weep before him, otherwise he will think you are ready to become a slave. It is perfectly okay: here you can cry and weep, but not with him; you have to be very clear. It is better to be clear in the beginning rather than getting involved in it and suffering later on. Then coming out of it becomes difficult and one thing leads to another.
Just make everything clear – that you love him and you would like to be with him, but you would like to be with him as a free person. You don’t want to become a wife and you don’t want to make him a husband; you want to remain lovers. And the agreement is not for the future: it is only for the present. The future remains open. Today you love him and tomorrow we will see!
Today’s love and freedom and joy will decide tomorrow’s love, but there is no contract for tomorrow. How can you promise for tomorrow? No one knows what tomorrow is going to bring. So to promise for the tomorrow is to move into a falsehood. It is untrue, insincere, because you may not be able to fulfill it... and then it creates guilt. If you fulfill it and you don’t feel like fulfilling it, it represses you. If you don’ fulfill it, you feel guilt; then on both sides you are caught.
So never promise for tomorrow. Who knows? – tomorrow death may come. So nothing can be said about tomorrow; just today, this moment is available. Make things very clear to him.
My feeling is that you are in love with him – that is true – but he does not seen to be in love with you.
Maybe he thinks he is in love but there is some other reason in it, something else, otherwise why should he become so afraid? Love knows perfectly well how to give freedom, how to allow, how to allow the space for the other to be.
But go and make things clear. And you are a different person so let him know the new person! If he decides to be m love with this new person, only then.Otherwise even if it is hard and it hurts, drop
out of it or you will get into more trouble.
Whenever you can come, come back, mm? And I will be continuously with you. Keep this (a box) with you. And whenever you start becoming weak, just put it on your heart and it will give you strength.
Freedom has to be protected, and there are many dangers in it! [A visitor says: I am a little bit afraid of you.]
Just a little bit? Mm? tell me the truth! If it is just a little bit then there is no need to worry. Become a sannyasin, mm?... So it is better you become a sannyasin so you will be entering more deeply into things.
Deva means divine renu means dust: divine dust. That’s what we are made of, the stuff we are made of is divine dust.
Remember both things together: on the one hand man is divine; on another hand man is simply dust. And remembering both together is of immense value. If you simply remember that you are divine, there is a possibility of having a subtle ego If you remember also that you are just dust, the ego disappears, humbleness arises. If you only remember that you are dust then life becomes meaningless, joy disappears. How will one celebrate? – there is nothing to celebrate. If you also remember that you are divine then there is meaning, significance.
So to remember both together is of great insight. It keeps you humble yet meaningful. It keeps you celebrating yet does not create an ego.
[A sannyasin asks: I have a feeling that I want to be here totally, with you totally, and yet there’s something in me hiding. What is it that’s hiding?]
No, no, nothing... nothing like a problem. It simply takes time to dissolve. You are melting, and every day you are melting more and more, but still it takes time. For thousands of years you have learned not to dissolve; you have learned to protect, to defend yourself. Now against those thousands of lives, these few days you have been here with me are nothing. But you have started unlearning those strategies of defence and you are becoming more and more non-defensive, more and more open.
Things are going perfectly well. Don’t be too greedy and don’t be too much impatient. I am happy with your progress. There is no problem. Good!
[A sannyasin couple talk about their relationship. She feels more vulnerable. He sometimes feels irritated by small things, and often they can laugh about this, but also they experience tensions for no reason.]
So make it a point that when one of the two is getting silly, the other has to laugh – immediately – that’s all. It is nothing... it is nothing. In fact you are both getting more silent; that’s why you have become aware of these sillinesses and these small things that create so much tension – for no reason at all. Everybody gets those tensions but everybody is not aware. To be aware you need a background. If you become more silent you will see your foolishness more. If you become
more silent you will see your tensions very very clear-cut against the background. That’s what is happening; nothing is a problem.
And there is no need to be so much concerned about your space. That too is basically deep-down an ego idea. Nothing is wrong in overlapping each other’s space a little bit; that’s what love is. If you don’t overlap at all, then it can be friendship but not love. If you try to overlap each other completely it becomes possessiveness; it is no more love.
So this is how it should be – overlapping a little bit, just a little bit; on the fringes, boundary lines, overlapping a little bit. There are some moments when both disappear into each other and there are some moments when both are completely individual and separate. But these will be rare moments of being absolutely separate individuals and absolutely dissolved into love. These will be rare moments.
On the whole, as a general thing, there will be a little bit of overlapping, and that is perfectly natural for love; nothing to be worried about. It happens: if sometimes he is hungry, you can feel hungry, but nothing to be worried about.…
Enjoy it and do this thing. Whenever one of you becomes aware that the other is leading you both into some silliness have a good laugh. Immediately laugh and that will give the other also the idea; the thing will be gone. Laughter can be used as a technique. Try it, and after three weeks you report to me, mm? Good!
[The new group, Awareness, is present. The leader says: It was a struggle to get some people to be really aware of what was happening to them and to the work.]
Awareness is a difficult phenomenon, so it is expected. People aTe so fast asleep that they give all kinds of explanations and put up all kinds of resistances. Sometimes they even pretend to be aware. Just to get rid of the problem that is facing them they pretend to be aware, but they are not aware.
But you continue work. By and by... It takes time, mm?
[A sannyasin says: During the Primal I tried to experience fear but instead of fear I felt something in the perineum coming up the spine. More generally, my problem is that I don’t know when to be in emotions and when to witness them.
Osho checks his energy.]
It was pure fear, that’s why you could not recognise it. By pure fear I mean: just the energy, just the energy, uninterpreted... raw. If you interpret it it can become anything according to the interpretation. It can become fear.… It was raw energy that you felt. That is a very rare experience. It has been a great insight; now you can work and help it. Every day for at least fifteen minutes just sit silently and work it up; excite it and move with it. Feel as if it is pulling you upwards. Soon it will be a rod, and you will be able to feel that it is going beyond you; you will feel a great pull. That’s what yogis have always felt as levitation. With closed eyes you will feel as if you have left the earth; you are no more on the earth. You are going, disappearing upwards, falling upwards. But it is a very beautiful experience.
This energy can be interpreted as fear. This energy can be interpreted as love. This energy can be interpreted as Kundalini. This energy can be interpreted as orgone. This energy can be interpreted as ki or chi, and there are thousands of names: elan vital, prana. These are the names of this energy, but they are all interpretations. Interpretation comes from your mind; the energy comes from your sex source. Because there was no interpretation coming, you became a little confused about what it was. Your mind had a moment of stopping. The energy must have been too much so the mind could not manage to interpret. But the experience has been of tremendous value.
Every day for fifteen minutes work on this energy so by the time you come back, it will be floating all over you. It will come like a flood one day and wash you clean. It will leave you virgin.…
I would like to have all energy people around me. You will become an energy person soon!
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