25

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‌CHAPTER 25

29 May 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, leaving, says: It’s been very good being here. I’ll be back.]

Mm mm, you have to be back! Being here has done something, but much more has still to be done. Never be satisfied by the little that happens, because great is our destiny. And always remember that – less than God will not suffice. Sometimes it happens that we become settled too early; something beautiful happens and we think ‘This is it.’ This is never it. Each new step, each new experience simply brings you closer to it, just closer to it, because ‘it’ means the infinite, the eternal, the unbounded. So it is always coming closer but it never arrives.

This is the joy of the existence and the celebration of existence. It is a journey, a pilgrimage, not a goal. God is not a goal but a pilgrimage, an eternal pilgrimage, from beginningless time to endless time. We don’t know how much more is possible. So it happens almost always that something happens and we become settled with it. Remember always that everything that happens has to become only a step. It has to be used for something higher, for something more transcendental.

It is this point where the western therapies miss something. Something happens in an Encounter group or in a Primal therapy or in Gestalt and one feels very satisfied, contented... as if one has arrived. It is not that it was not valuable – it was valuable, but then one closes. The discontent, the inner discontent has to remain aflame. Be contented with the outside and never be contented with the inside. People go on doing just the opposite: they are discontented with the outside and contented with the inside. This is why the world is topsy-turvy.

A religious person takes a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn: he becomes contented with the outside – the house he lives in, the money he has; he becomes contented with it – but now the discontent starts moving inwards. He becomes very discontented. And that discontent is not a kind of misery; it is an adventure, it is a thrill; one is always on the go. And when you reach one peak,

suddenly you see a higher peak is waiting for you ahead. The challenge of it, the lure of it, the charm of it and you are again on the go.

This is what I mean when I say ‘God is a pilgrimage.’ Much more is going to happen.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says: There are moments when I feel like meditating and moments when my mind is very speedy and it’s hard to meditate. So should I move into meditation more systematically every day?]

Yes, you have to move more systematically and every day. Meditation has to be tasted in all kinds of moods. When you are feeling calm, meditate, because you are already feeling calm and this is the moment – you can ride on this calmness and go very deep; the experience will be profound. There will be no struggle, it will be a kind of let-go. Surrender to the calmness. Let it possess you, ride on it, go as far as it can take you.

When you are not feeling calm and the mind is speaking and thoughts are rushing, that too is the moment to meditate. Now, take the challenge – don’t relax into it; detach yourself Let the mind move with all its rush and thoughts and traffic and you remain aloof. That’s what sitting means – keeping oneself aloof from the mind, detached, as if one is not concerned at all, as if this is none of one’s business, as if it is just the traffic on the road; you are sitting by the side under a tree. People go on passing, the cars, the trucks, bicycles and all kinds of things are passing and all kinds of things -are happening, but you are sitting under a tree, unconcerned; you have nothing to do with it. This too is a moment for meditation. This is a different situation, and meditation has to be attained in different moods.

When you can attain it in every kind of mood then you have attained it; only then have you attained it. When you are angry and you can meditate – the anger roams around you like a great cloud, but impotent: you are just there, silent, calm and cool, and it cannot affect you – when you are feeling great sexuality, passion, and you can meditate, the passion disappears – in all kinds of mental states, one has to go into meditation.

The doors are different but the goal is the same and one has to enter from all the doors possible. When you have entered from all the possibilities, then only can you be certain, ‘Now, nothing can disturb me. Now meditation is mine. If anger comes, let it come; if lust comes, let it come. If the mind is speaking, it’s okay. If calmness is there, perfectly good. If happiness is there, we will use that.’ Use every excuse.

Sometimes when the mood is positive you have to relax and sometimes when the mind is negative you have to remain aloof, detached, far away, a watcher on the hills. When the mind is negative, make every effort, because it is an uphill task. And when the mind is positive, flow with it, because now you are going with the stream; it is a downhill phenomenon.

But a real mountain climber knows both: he knows how to climb and how to come down – and both have to be known. What kind of mountain climber will he be who knows only how to come down? Uphill he cannot go, only downhill. Or the man who knows only how to go uphill and remains hung up there and cannot come down? The peak is ours and the valley too. My sannyasin has to claim all that the mind can give.

We are not to reject anything; we have to use every possibility. Life we have to use, and death too.

So make it more systematic, and when you feel that the mind is ready, relax; there is no need to fight. When the mind is not ready, fight; give a good fight too. And joyously, playfully – don’t get serious about it. Both are good.

You will attain to a very very deep meditativeness. And your meditativeness will have more richness, because you will have both the polarities in it.

A person who meditates only when he is calm will have a certain kind of meditativeness, but it will depend on the moods; he will not be the master of it. When you are calm, you are calm; you cannot do anything about it. So you have to wait for the moment. Or a person who can only fight and somehow subdue the mind will not know how to use the calm moment, will be puzzled by it, because he will not know how to relax. So make it more systematic, and both ways have to be used.

[Osho tells a sannyasin that anand is the bliss beyond the state of mind that we call happiness and unhappiness, the no-mind, no-thought state where nothing stirs, not even a ripple.]

And ‘Kalika’ is the name of the mother goddess. The name is very significant. The root meaning of the word is ‘time-eater’; ‘kalika’ means ‘time-eater’: one who eats time. This is a very strange name.

We all live in time, we are born in time and we will die in time and we will be born in time again. This wheel of time goes on moving. ‘Kalika’ means: one who has eaten birth and death and this whole wheel of time, for whom time has disappeared, for whom eternity has opened up. That is the literal meaning of the word, the root meaning.

But it is also a name of the mother goddess. Only in the East does the idea of mother-goddess exist. In the West, God has always been thought of as the father. The western approach is masculine, it is male-chauvinistic. The western God is a magnified form of masculine energy, male energy. That’s why the western God is very arrogant, angry, jealous.

In the Old Testament the jewish God says ‘I am a very jealous God, and those who don’t follow me I will crush to death. I will throw them into hell, into hell fire.’ There seems to be no idea of love. That was the reason why jews were angry with Jesus: he introduced the idea of love in God. He was trying to make God a little more feminine, he was trying to make God a little closer to she than he. That’s why jews were angry; they could not tolerate the whole thing.

But in the East, mother-goddess and the idea of it is more ancient than the idea of God as father. And that seems to be more logical, more relevant, because the child first becomes aware of the mother, not of the father. And the mother is more significant than the father; the father is, at the most, institutional. That may be the reason why western religions all become institutional – the church and Rome and the Vatican. Nothing like that exists in the East. Hindus don’t have a church. They don’t have a head, like the Pope; they don’t have a council to order people what to do and what not to do. There exists nothing like an organisation. Hinduism is a chaos. Everybody is free. And everybody can choose his own way, his own style, his own prayer, his own approach to God. There is no formality about it and no institutionalism about it.

The basic reason is because the feminine energy is non-institutional. The mother is not an institution, the mother is natural. The mother has always existed, the father is just an invention of man. In animals there is no father, in birds there is no father, but the mother exists. The father is at the most the triggering point of a process but not very essential. In the western religion the non-essential has become very essential. And the whole society has been created around that concept of God as father; it brings more war, more violence. The idea of mother-goddess is beautiful. The message is: become more and more non-institutional, non-formal, non-ritualistic, less logical, more poetic, more loving.

When your femininity has bloomed in its totality, you will become a ‘time-eater’, you will be able to absorb time. And to absorb time or to eat time means to disappear from the turmoil of time. Meditation is nothing but a technique to go beyond time, to eat it, to destroy it. While meditating again and again you will come to the moments when time disappears. There is no movement of time inside. Those are the calmest moments and those are the moments when you will know what bliss is.

So become a ‘time-eater’; become a mother-goddess. Let religion be more like a love affair than like a business phenomenon... and it is possible! It is possible for everybody – we just have to become aware of it and grope for it. The only misery is that people have even stopped groping. They think that that which they are living is all, that this is all there is of life. This is not all; this is not even the beginning! What you understand as life is not even the beginning of life. Life has not yet begun. Life begins only when you come in contact with eternity, with timelessness, with mindlessness.

[A sannyasin asks if he can trust a vision that he had... and about destiny. Osho checks his energy.]

The energy is so good; you need not be worried about anything. Whatsoever is happening is good; just remain a watcher. Many more visions will come to you. You have that quality of being a great visionary. And you can easily develop many psychic powers but they are not to be developed.

They are not to be developed because they will be a hindrance in your spiritual growth. You can develop them easily – you have to avoid. Sometimes they will start on their own; then too you have to be very alert. Because psychic experiences become a distraction and they can fulfill the ego so deeply that one wants to have them. If you can read somebody else’s thoughts, the ego will be very very happy. If you can see somebody’s future, who bothers about God then and who thinks about nirvana ? Then one starts playing these games. You have the capacity to develop psychic powers, but they are not to be developed. You just have to be watchful.

If something happens, just see it, take note of it but don’t pay much attention to it. Ignore it, neglect it, don’t use it. Otherwise you will be trapped by it and you will lose something which is really valuable but which is ahead, which is beyond the psychic phenomena. So visions will come, a few faculties will start functioning, a few intuitions will open up, but you have to be very very careful not to get trapped in them. Telepathy can come very easily to you, clairvoyance can come very easily to you – just a little work. The temptation to have them will be there.

Right now I can see that you are tempted. Your mind has started thinking about how to have them. But I will not help you to have them. I will create all kinds of obstacles so that you can’t have them, because they will be your undoing. One has to remember continuously that one has to go beyond all kinds of mind phenomena, good or bad, outer or inner.

[The sannyasin asks about going back to Holland or taking a trip to the States.]

You can go, that’s nothing to bother... you can go, mm? – you can have a trip to America. Just don’t go on a psychic trip! You can go anywhere else.

But it (the psychic trip) is there and possible, and sometimes it may start, that’s why I am talking about it. Sometimes it may start on its own and you may not be able to avoid it; that’s why I am insisting that you become very very alert.

And whenever you feel any temptation, any vision or any psychic phenomenon coming to you, just put it (a box) on your heart and it will stop it immediately!

[A sannyasin says he feels disturbed because he wants more money to enjoy himself more.]

For what do you want to have money? Because money in itself is neither good nor bad. It depends on what you want it for.…

But have you seen any person who has money and can enjoy life too? It is very difficult... almost impossible. one has to be really a great master to have money and enjoy it! Because there are a few things to be understood: you can earn money only if you stop enjoying life. That is the first necessity to earn money. Because soon, if you go on enjoying it, you will not be able to earn it. By the time you have earned enough, you have also earned a habit of not enjoying life; they go together.

For example, if you want to have a million dollars it may take you fifty years. You can have a million dollars but then fifty years asceticism will have destroyed you. For fifty years you have lived for a goal which is going to be there, somewhere in the future. By the time you arrive your eyes are fixed on fifty years ahead again. That’s the dilemma of the rich man. Slowly slowly, the means become the end.

Everybody thinks that he needs money to enjoy. By and by he learns that he has started enjoying having money. Once you have learned that – enjoying having money – you cannot enjoy anything. So my suggestion is: whatsoever you have, start enjoying right now. And if you don’t have anything, start enjoying nothing. But enjoy it immediately; don’t postpone it for tomorrow. If you want to become rich you have to postpone. If you really want to enjoy tomorrow more, practise enjoyment today, because fundamentally it is not money that will make you capable of enjoying life – it will be enjoyment itself.

Just start enjoying! What is missing?

[The sannyasin says he has enjoyed himself very much the last half year, but he may have lost the ability to live for something.]

If you live for something, you can’t live, you don’t live. To live for something is just postponing living. One has to learn the art of living for nothing... just to live without any purpose, without any goal.

[A sannyasin says that he has had a bad heart since an incident when he was fifteen, and he is always worried about it.. Osho checks his energy.]

Good. It will go away; nothing to be worried about. It is nothing, mm? You have just brought an idea into the mind but your body is perfectly okay. There is no problem physiologically, not at all – your energy is perfectly flowing, as alive as it can be. You have just got an idea – it is a kind of auto-hypnosis. You have lived under an auto-hypnosis, mm? The boy chased you and you were afraid and you were running for miles in fear that you would be caught. The whole situation created such a mental state that it has become a fixed idea in your mind. So whenever you feel any kind of pressure, stress, strain, any kind of chasing, something chasing you, the panic starts. It is just caused by the mind and the old idea.

There is nothing corresponding to it in the body – the body is completely free of it – so it is simply a question of deconditioning you. A deep de-hypnosis is needed, that’s all. That tape in the mind just has to be erased, and that will be easy, it is such an easy thing. You need not be worried about it – you can leave it to me. Do a few groups and it will be gone. Simply leave it to me, I will take care of it, because it is such a simple thing. You need not even think that you have to do anything about it.

The first group you do is Intensive Enlightenment, the second group is Centering and the third group is Leela. Do these three groups and then I will give you a few more. Within the time you are here all problems will be resolved, because you don’t have a real problem. Good.

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