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CHAPTER 26
OUr destiny is to have wings, to fly
26 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means blissful, and sadhu means simplicity; blissful simplicity. And these two things are to be remembered – be blissful and be simple. Only a complicated mind is lost – a simple mind is never lost. A simple mind is always at home – and you have that simple mind. You have not yet lost your innocence – it is there; you are fortunate. Very rarely are people capable of saving it – it is lost.
Within two, three years a child starts losing it. By the time he is four he has almost lost it. By the time a child is seven he has completely forgotten that he was master of a certain different dimension – the dimension of simplicity, innocence.
But you have not lost it yet – it is still flowing. Just a very small effort on your part and it will spread all over your being. That’s why I am giving you the name ‘sadhu’. It means simplicity, spontaneity, goodness, natural goodness – not any cunning goodness, not calculated goodness... not that one should be good so that one can achieve heaven and paradise... not that if you are good you will succeed in the world... not that honesty is the best policy. One is simply good because one feels good in being good. There is no other end to it – its value is intrinsic. One is good because to be otherwise is to be miserable. One is good – not for anybody else. One is good because one feels happy only when one is good.
And remain blissful. That too will not be an arduous thing for you just the decision will be enough – because I don’t see any barriers. So nothing is to be drastically broken in you. You can become absolutely new without any demolition; no destruction is needed.
Ordinarily it is not so. When a person comes to me I have to destroy him utterly – only then the new can come up. But with you this will be totally different – no destruction is needed. You are already on the brink... you are already on the boundary – just a little push.…
Satya means truth, and sadhya means the end; truth is the end, truth is the goal. And a few things to be understood.…
First, truth is not in the theories, not in the philosophies – truth is alive all around you. Truth is in life – it is not in dead scriptures. It is in the trees, in the rivers, in the stars... it is in man, in woman. Truth is not a dead concept, so don’t look for it in the books – search for it in life, in existence.
Ordinarily whenever a person becomes thirsty for truth he goes to the library. And once you are lost in a library it will be very difficult for you to find where life is. People are lost in the jungle of words.
It is good to look directly. It is never helpful to use somebody else’s spectacles – they are never going to suit your eyes. They will make things blurred... they will give you a headache. It is better to search with one’s own eyes. So experience directly – that is the only way towards truth.
And the second thing – truth is the goal of life. Ordinarily we live in lies – convenient lies, comfortable lies, but they’re all lies. We live in many sorts of fictions – in the illusory, in dreams. We create many dreams and we waste our life. The time that is wasted cannot be reclaimed, and howsoever beautiful the fictions may be, they are not true. Only truth liberates and only truth satisfies.
We are here to know what truth is. This life is an opportunity to seek and search... to explore. So let it be an adventure – it is a great challenge. Truth is not given to anybody – one has to work for it... one has to become worthy of it.
That is the real meaning of the old word’worship’. Mm? ‘worship’ means ‘worth-ship’. There is no other worth, and there is no other worship – unless you become worthy of truth.…
[A sannyasin who is leaving for the West to lead groups said that she was very unsure of herself, and her role as a therapist. She has recently separated from her sannyas husband.]
You are becoming more aware, that’s why. When awareness arises for the first time, it creates a rift. One becomes very much puzzled and muddled – everything becomes blurred. You cannot see and you cannot make any distinctions about what is what: whether it is real or unreal, whether you are dreaming or you are really seeing something which is there.
Ordinarily people take their dreams to be real – they are clear-cut. It may be a dream but they are certain that it is a reality, so they are not confused; they go on head-long. They are stupid but they are very certain – they are not confused.
This is one of the troubles in the world – that the idiots are very certain and the intelligent people are very uncertain. And those certain idiots run the whole world! They become the politicians and the priests and everything – they run the whole world! Certainly they create confidence because they are confident! And the intelligent people lag behind – they always lose the opportunity because they are hesitating so much about what to do, what not to do, about where they are, whether this is – right or wrong, whether what they are doing is just an acting or really coming out of their inner world.
By the time they decide, the moment is gone – the moment does not wait. And in fact they are never able to decide. So when for the first time in an idiotic mind – ant all minds are idiotic; the mind as
such is idiotic – when for the first time the first ray of intelligence enters, everything is topsy-turvy; everything goes into chaos. The old certainty is no more and the new certainty has not yet arrived. That’s where you are.
There is no need to fall back to the old pattern, and even if you try you cannot fall back. That is one of the most troublesome factors – that once a certain intelligence has happened you cannot fall back. You have to go forward – howsoever arduous, you have to go forward. So you have to become more and more alert and more and more aware. Now don’t get puzzled by this – this is beautiful.
Up to now you were certain that whatsoever you were doing was good. Now you are hesitating – but go on doing it, there is no need to drop it. Do it with more awareness. Sometimes it may be coming from your innermost core – sometimes it may not be coming. Both are good, because nobody can be flowing for twenty-four hours – unless one is enlightened. Nobody can be, so don’t expect that! That is expecting the impossible and putting an unnecessary strain on your being.
Sometimes you will be able to give love naturally, spontaneously, with no effort, and sometimes suddenly you will feel that you are closed. Then pretend, but pretend consciously, because if the other is helped – even by your pretension – why not help him?
Just look at the thing: even a pretended love helps,. so what to say about a real love? Love is such a miracle that even when you are pretending or playing a game, just acting – then too it helps people. So what to say about when the love is real? It helps tremendously.
But I am not saying to drop the pretended one. I am saying to let it be there but to be conscious about it... that it is pretended. Don’t be befooled by it, don’t be deceived by it, don’t get identified with it – be an actor. And do it as perfectly, as impeccably as possible, but fully alert that it is not flowing – you are maintaining it, managing it... but the other is helped!
People are in such need that even a false love helps. People are in so much misery that even if somebody just says’I love you’ – not meaning anything by it – they feel grateful. Mm? just look at the misery of people.…
People are coming into groups only because they have lost all contact, all relationships. They are hankering to be related, they hanker to belong, they hanker for a family somewhere where people will love them and accept them as they are and nobody will demand that if they be this, be that, then they will be loved... where love will be unconditional.
Now, in a group, twenty strangers meet – how can they suddenly be truly in love? But even the imitated love creates an atmosphere – even the pseudo-love creates an atmosphere – and people relax. And when they relax, by and by the real love starts coming up. The pretended functions like a triggering point – it triggers something in them. It is a simulation, it is not real, but it helps them relax.
Mm? first they are tense because for the whole of their life they have been always given love as a bargain. Even their parents were bargaining: ‘Do this for us, then we will love you. Be like this, then we will love you. Don’t do this, otherwise we will withdraw our love.’ Everything was just business- like.
They always wanted to be loved for themselves – not for what they do, not for what they achieve in the world, but just for their beings, just as they are – and nobody loved them.
So now they are hankering for someone... even for strangers. In a group strangers meet: they are all in the same boat, they all need love, they all understand each other’s need – they help.
In the beginning they pretend, but the pretension helps. By and by they become more relaxed and they see that something is happening. In that milieu the real starts flowing.
Once a person is accepted as he is, he starts blooming.
You will not be able to love these group people all the time, twenty-four hours, or for the whole time you run the group. Mm? sometimes you will really hate them! Sometimes you would like to escape from the whole nonsense. Sometimes you will start thinking, ‘I am never going to do another group!’
So how can you love all the time? It is super-human to love all the time – it will not be possible. Don’t ask, mm? otherwise that will create much anxiety in you.
When you can love, love really. When you cannot love, at least you can pretend; it will be helpful. Only be aware – what is needed is awareness – so that you know when you pretend and when it is real.
And by and by you will see that the pretension is needed less and less, because what is the point? When you can give the real thing, why give the false thing?
This is one of the most fundamental things – when you give real love you are tremendously satisfied. Maybe it reaches to the other or not – that is not the point; it may not reach. The other may not receive, may not be in the mood, may not be in the space to receive it – you may miss the target, but that is not the point. When you really love you are so tremendously happy that you love.
So sometimes it happens that the real love misses and sometimes it happens that the pretended love reaches. Life is very mysterious. When you see that the real love makes you so happy, why pretend? Why not let it be real? That will come by and by – the more you understand that the pretended makes you tired. All pretensions are tiring, very tiring. Mm? you have to manage and you have to do something against yourself. It is repression; it tires, it exhausts... one feels wasted.
The real love fulfills – you are rejuvenated. You feel more vital, more alive. You feel more when you have loved than you had ever felt before. You don’t lose – you gain.
When you see these mechanisms, by and by the pretended will drop. But right now it will continue.
So only one thing: be alert. Know it well – if others are deceived, nothing wrong in it; if they feel happy, good. You should know that it was pretended. Then it will be possible... it will drop on its own accord. So one day suddenly you will see that the pretended has disappeared – you can deal in the real thing, so why pretend?
And the real is so much and so infinite that you can go on giving it. It is not that when you give, it is less – when you give, it is more. When you don’t give, it is less. If you never give it, it dies within yourself, dries. Then the juice flows no more... you are a dry bone.
Go, do the groups, finish your work and come back, mm? And you are moving in a good space, so continue to move in that. Don’t let the West disturb it! Disturb the west – don’t let the West disturb you.
There is a very famous Buddhist sutra.The day Bodhidharma said goodbye to his disciples and
moved into the Himalayas and disappeared – and nobody knows what happened to him – the last message was this: ‘Remember one thing – when you read a Buddhist sutra, don’t let the sutra disturb you.rather, you disturb the sutra’ – and he escaped!
For centuries the zen monks have been thinking and meditating upon it: ’Disturb the sutra – don’t let the sutra disturb you. Mm? if you are reading the bible, disturb the bible but don’t let the bible disturb you.
And the same I say to you: Go to the West, disturb the west, but don’t let the West disturb you! Good!
[Another sannyasin who is leaving says: Sometimes I feel that there is energy but I don’t know how to bring it out.]
Where do you feel the energy most in the body? (He indicates his abdomen.)
Don’t try to bring it out. If you try you may disturb the whole thing inside. Bet it rise, mm? It is just the beginning – it is accumulating. Soon it will become such a powerful dynamo that it will explode. It will come on its own – you cannot bring it. The very effort will make the process delayed.
Forget about expressing it, bringing it – no! That is an ego effort, and this energy has nothing to do with the go. The ego cannot catch hold of it – it is beyond the ego. Just wait, just feel it. Whenever it is there, just put your hand there. Have you got a box with you? I will give you a box.
Whenever you feel the energy is very much there, just put the box there, hold it there, and the energy will become almost like fire. You will feel that all the life has reached there; it has become almost like a ball of fire, and you will feel a burning sensation – but very pleasant, not uncomfortable. If it becomes uncomfortable, take the box away and immediately it will subside.
But let it rise, mm? By and by it will start finding its own way – it will come up. It will be expressed and used in many creative ways.
[Another sannyasin says: I feel that if I’m doing an effort to get something, it just seems stupid, but if I hang around and just sit there I feel stupid too]
So what is wrong in it? – you are stupid! (laughter) What can you do about it? Start enjoying it you are fighting with it.
And the moment you start enjoying stupidity, you start becoming wise. Wisdom is not something that is against stupidity – it is a way of enjoying it. Everybody is stupid – a few people enjoy it; they are called wise! What is the difference between a stupid person and a wise person? A wise person is one who starts enjoying it!
Now, you feel that whatsoever you do you feel stupid; if you don’t do you feel stupid. In every way you are stupid – now why not enjoy it!
[The sannyasin asks: There’s no way out, huh?]
There is no way out! And there is no need... there is no need. Enjoy it – and if you start enjoying it you will suddenly see that nothing is stupid; it is a delight. Sometimes sit and enjoy that stupidity; sometimes do things and enjoy that stupidity – and both are good. And for a change sometimes one can do this, and sometimes that.
... If you enjoy it you will stop calling it stupid. What is the point of calling it stupid when you enjoy it? In fact if you don’t enjoy something you call it stupid. It is derogatory – the word is derogatory, condemnatory. If you enjoy something you don’t condemn it. In fact you pray,‘God, give me more stupidity – I am enjoying it so much. Never make me wise!’
If you enjoy it the time will not look so long. Time looks long only if you are not enjoying it – the length comes from non-enjoyment. When you enjoy, time shrinks and becomes very small. One hour can pass as a second if you enjoy it – one second can be like an hour if you don’t enjoy it. So I don’t think you enjoy it. That is one of the criteria – time.
If time feels very very long – and the day goes on and on and seems non-ending – you are not enjoying. If you start enjoying you will see that suddenly it is the morning and then suddenly the evening and where has the day disappeared? It disappeared into your enjoyment!
Enjoyment is alchemical... it is magic.
Try it – you have not tried it. Just because I said to enjoy it, you said that yes, you enjoyed it. You are very much against this stupidity. You somehow want to get rid of it – you cannot accept it. You think that others are wise and you are stupid. That is not the case at all – everybody is stupid. A few people are wise enough to enjoy it, that’s all.
Try it for three weeks – enjoy, and then you report to me, mm? Make another statement after three weeks – no need to make a question out of it, mm? I hope you will be able to enjoy! And if you cannot within three weeks, then I will do something, so please do! Good!
[A sannyasin said her relationship had recently finished and she still felt hurt and love.
Osho said that one should allow the other to go without resentment, without ill-feeling. He then recounted an incident from his days as professor at Jabalpur.]
It happened once that I was in Allahabad lecturing in the university there, and a professor was just sitting in front of me. I saw that he was crying while I was talking. For twenty, thirty minutes he was there, then he suddenly got up and went out. I was surprised – what happened? He was so deeply vibrated. He was falling almost in tune with me, he was merging with me and then suddenlySo
when the talk was over I enquired, ‘Who was this man, and where has he gone? What happened?’
So somebody enquired – somebody went to him and asked, and he said, ’I had to leave because once I fell in love with a man – a very rare man he was – and then that man died. Again with this
man I started to feel the same relationship – I was again falling in love – and then I became scared, because the first experience has been such a wound.’
He escaped from the meeting and he wouldn’t come to see me. He said, ‘I am afraid, because if I go this man is going to catch hold of me and again I will be in trouble. I am still not free of my first affair.’ That was also an affair. He was in love with a sannyasin – and he was a rare sannyasin. I used to know that man – he was worth falling in love with.
Then suddenly he died, but he had been dead for almost seven years and this man was still bitter: ‘I am not going to fall in love with any other saint again!’
He had come to listen to me – he must have thought maybe he would just listen and then go home, but then he started feeling that something was going to happen. Then he wrote a letter to me asking my forgiveness: ‘Forgive me – it was rude of me to get up. It was hard also – impossible really – for me to get up from there, but I had to because I was again moving into the same space with you as I moved with my first spiritual love-affair. Again I might have become possessed, and again the same trouble would have started, and who knows? You may die, you may disappear; you may never come again to this city. You may not accept me.’ This happens.…
So be clean about it. Close it with beauty, with grandeur, howsoever it hurts. Just say to him,‘If it is finished, then good – be happy; wherever you are, be happy. All that you have done for me, I am glad for.’ Then there is a possibility that he may come back.
Good, if he comes back; if he does not come back, that too is good. And one never knows – you may find a better man, a man who fits deeply with you. He may be simply making space for the other to come in. Who knows?
Always remain thrilled with the possibilities – they are infinite. And never hanker for the past – remain open for the future; who knows? Just let it happen.…
[A sannyasin asked about an understanding he had in the sahaj group: We all have love and hate for each other. The existence of one person might be a burden on my own existence. So I take it the other way: my existence is a burden for other people’s existence. It makes sense?.This was
new for me to discover and very scary.]
Good that you came to know about it – but it is only the beginning of a certain truth; you have got hold of only part of it. Yes, that is true – somebody’s existence can be a burden to you, so your existence can be a burden to somebody else; this is a half truth. The other half is: somebody’s existence can become wings to you; somebody’s existence can give meaning to your existence, can give significance to yours, and so can your existence be significant to somebody else’s existence – that is the other side of the coin.
Now it depends on you, on how you live. If you live in an unconscious state you will be a burden. If you live consciously you will never be a burden to anybody – you will be an unburdening presence. With whomsoever you are, he will feel light. Just your presence will help him to float easily. It depends.…
If you have a luminous presence inside you, your impact on others will be unburdening. If you are an unconscious, rock-like person, your presence is going to be heavy on everybody you meet, everybody you come in contact with.
Out of one hundred people, ninety-nine exist like rocks – they crush each other, they destroy. But each has the possibility and the potentiality to become luminous, aware, conscious. Then suddenly you are a light – not only on your own path: you are a light unto others’ paths too. Whosoever walks with you, walks in light. Whosoever walks with you, walks meaningfully – your meaning surrounds him too. Then your life can be a great sharing.
You have come to understand – good – but this is only half of the truth; the other half is still waiting. This is the negative part that you have seen – now you have to look for the positive part. But good! In the beginning the negative comes always to mind, because the negative is our reality. e other is our possibility. We are like rocks – that is our reality... but that is not our destiny. Each rock can fly and have wings – that’s our destiny.
Soon the other part will also arise in your consciousness... but the experience has been good. Mm? don’t be worried about it – the other will be coming.
[A sannyasin said that before going to a doctor he wanted Osho’s comments on physical sensations he had: It’s as if you get this peculiar and orgasmic feeling all over the body. It is a localised feeling when you ejaculate, but it’s something that you feel all over your body at times.]
You can go to the doctor and let it be checked but I don’t think it has anything to do with the body and the doctor will not be able to do anything about it. But it is better to be checked.
And it will disappear on its own as it has come on its own; nothing special is needed to be done for it. It is something that is happening in the body but is not of the body – it is more concerned with the mind.
The mind is going through a process, and the process is so up-rooting, it is such a radical change in the very roots of the mind, that the mind has become shaky. But you cannot feel that shakiness in the mind – you will feel it in the body.
It is very subtle in the mind but when the vibration reaches the body it is easily detectable. If you become watchful you will see that the trembling starts in the mind, then it spreads towards the body. It spreads on the body but it doesn’t come from the body.
This is one of the oldest experiences in yoga. It has always been a problem and many people have tried to locate it – as if kundalini is something in the body – and then they move into stupid speculations. It is not in the body.
Of course the spinal column is the most sensitive part of the body so there it is felt more, but it is not there... it is just because it is the most sensitive part of the body. So it catches easily and vibrates. And through its vibration the whole body vibrates, because the whole body is connected with the spinal cord and when the spinal cord throbs, the whole body throbs.
And the head, the brain itself, is nothing but one end of the spinal cord. So when the spinal cord starts throbbing, by and by it becomes too much in the head because that is the most sensitive part of the spine. The spine is the most sensitive part of the body and the brain is the most sensitive part of the spine. Just hidden behind the brain is the mind. The throb is coming from the mind, then it enters the brain, then the spinal column, and then all over the body.
And your guess – that it is orgasmic – is almost right, because what happens in sexual ejaculation is that another end of the spine is affected. These two ends – one is the brain, another is the sex centre, and spread between is the spinal cord.When you ejaculate, that ejaculation, that throb,
enters the spinal cord but it remains local. Mm? just one part of the spine – but the lowest part throbs.
When the same orgasm happens through the mind and enters the brain the whole spinal cord vibrates. Why? Because for the energy to go upwards is difficult – the gravitation pulls it down.
You may be surprised to know that in khajuraho there are a few statues depicting a man standing on his head making love to a woman. Now this is absurd – looks on the surface to be very perverted.…
Yogis became aware almost five thousand years ago, that if you can make love standing on your head, even sexual orgasm will become total because the spinal column will be throbbing on one part and then the gravitation will pull it towards the head; ordinarily it remains local. But it is very difficult to make love standing on your head – almost impossible – unless you practice it for years. It is difficult for many reasons.
It is difficult to get the erection while you are standing on your head it needs long practice – because the energy is being pulled in the other direction. And it is almost unnatural for the bodyBut the
statue is very symbolic and very meaningful.…
It shows that very early on, yogis became aware of the fact that the spiritual orgasm and the sexual orgasm have something similar. The only difference is that the sexual orgasm happens at the lowest rung and cannot go up because the gravitation pulls it down. The spiritual orgasm happens at the uppermost rung and then easily spreads because the spinal column sucks it very easily – the gravitation helps – and then the orgasm spreads all over the body. That’s why you are throbbing.
It is odd and a little strange, but I don’t think that it is uncomfortableJust go and let it be checked.
If there is something they can do, good – because it will not hinder your process, so you need not be worried about it. If there is something wrong in the body, let it be treated.
It is not going to affect the process at all because the process is not arising in the body. You may be able to absorb it sooner or later without any shivering or shaking. That’s why in yoga they move very slowly from yama, neeyama, pranayama, pratyahar, dharna, dhyana samadhi; they go very slowly.
First they teach yama and neeyama; then they teach asana. These three steps make the body very very strong – so strong that when in pratyahara these vibrations start, the body is ready to absorb it. Then dhama it goes still a little deeper. Then dhyana – then still a little deepen But the process is so long that almost a person’s whole life is wasted by the time he reaches the third. So I have dropped all: I simply start from dhyana, the sixth to the seventh; from dhyana to samadhi. The other six have been dropped.
But only very rarely does it happen that a person feels this, otherwise nothing is a problem. A few asanas will be helpful to you. Sirshasan will be very helpful so your body will become a little stronger. The vibrations will come but the body will not be shaken by them, that’s all. The vibrations are very strong and your body cannot control them so it goes into sparks. But you go and let the body be checked, and when it is checked and if they want you to take some medicine, take the medicine.
After it you can start doing sirshasan and a few other asanas; whatsoever you feel good with, you can learn. Just a fifteen, twenty-minute procedure will be good, mm?
[The sannyasin asks: Should I continue with my meditation that you have given me? Because the moment the throbbing is there and I become aware of my breath, the turmoil is accentuated... but that doesn’t worry me.]
Continue – meditation you continue, because these are not reasons to stop meditating.
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