CHAPTER 31
Theology becomes alive only when a person is alive who knows God
by existential experience
31 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Dharma means the ultimate law, tao, or what Christians and Jews call god. But in the East the word’god’ is not thought to be so supreme, because it becomes personalised; it becomes more anthropomorphic. So in the east we conceive of the ultimate reality more as an impersonal law than a person.
Dharma means the ultimate law according to which the whole cosmos runs – the very substratum of the whole. And shastra means the science, the science of the ultimate law. In the west the term that can come closest to it is theology. It consists of two words: theo and logy. Theo means god and logy means science: the science of god. But when I say ‘theology’ I’m not using it in the ordinary way that it has been used.
Ordinarily theology has become an ugly word, but the root word is beautiful. Three things are the basic constitutes of a theology: god – theos – and rational speculation about god, a rational approach about the irrational. It is accepted that god cannot be explained but still effort has to be made to explain, because there is no other way to convey it. So the intellectual discourse about god is logy, science. There is a third element in it which is invisible, known as ‘charos’.
‘Charos’ means a living, alive experience of god in somebody’s being. Theology becomes alive only when somebody has experienced god. Then he has three elements in him: the experience of god – not just guesswork, not just philosophy – and the rational approach to explain it to others, to those who don’t know what it is; to bring the indefinable into the world of the definition; to bring
the absolutely wordless into the world of language. But the whole thing depends on charos – the experience of the person.
So these three elements are the basic elements of dharma shastra, theology. But there are possibilities... there may be a religion in which one element is missing.
For example a religion can be of theos and logy, and no personal experience. Then it is a dead tradition... it is just convention; it is formal. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, are formal dead traditions because charos is missing. Charos was there when Jesus was alive then it existed in Jesus. Once Jesus is gone that alive element has disappeared – then it is a dead tradition. All organised religions are dead traditions. So one can go on searching in an organised religion but one will not find. One will find much logic-chopping, many words, many speculations, but nothing alive – as if one is dissecting a dead corpse.
There are other possibilities, like zen. A religion is possible where theos is, where charos is, but logy is missing. Then a religion becomes just mysticism – it has no rational approach. It is ecstatic but it is nonsense. Zen is the best representative of this second possibility. The experience is there, the experience is there, but there is no way to convey that experience into language, there is no effort to make a doctrine out of it – the logy is missing. Charos is there, theos is there, but logy is missing – there is no science. That too is a missing element.
There is one other possibility: the theos may be missing – there may be logy and there may be charos. Jainism, buddhism, are the representatives of the third possibility – god is not talked about at all. There is great science and there is great experience but they don’t talk about what, of what it is. Then there is a religion which is more like a moral teaching than like a religion, more like a moral system, a moral discipline... more like a philosophy of religion than religion itself.
These are the three possibilities and in all the three possibilities one element is missing. The fourth possibility – when all the three elements are together – happens only when a person like Christ or a Buddha or a Mahavira or a Moses or a Mohammed is alive.
Theology becomes alive only when a person is alive who knows god – not by thinking but by existential experience – and who is not satisfied only by knowing it but who tries to convey his experience to others who have not known it, who starts a scientific approach towards it. Theology exists only in such a person.
This is the meaning of ‘dharma shastra’. So try three things, remember three things: one has to become deeply involved so that one can experience and taste religion on one’s own, but one has not to lose one’s reason completely – otherwise there will be ecstasy but then you will not be of any use to others. You will enjoy it but you will be dumb... you will not be able to convey.
So don’t lose the reason completely. That’s what I was trying to tell you to keep quiet, be silent – because I can see the possibility that you can lose the reason very easily. You can become ecstatic very easily and You can experience also, but then you will lose all rational possibility – and something will be missed. So remember it!
... But keep your reason alert... you can lose it! You are a potential madman! So you keep alert about it. It has not to be lost, mm? When people cannot lose, I help them to lose; when they can lose easily I help them not to lose. Right?
[Osho speaks about the Nadabrahma meditation.]
It is a mantra meditation, and mantra is one of the most potential ways. It is very simple yet tremendously effective, because when you chant a mantra or you chant a sound your body starts vibrating; your brain cells particularly start vibrating.
If rightly done your whole brain becomes tremendously vibrant, and the whole body also. Once the body starts vibrating and your mind is already chanting, they both fall in a tune. A harmony – which is ordinarily never there – between the two. Your mind goes on its way, your body continues on its own. The body goes on eating, the mind goes on thinking.’the body goes on walking on the road the mind is moving far away in the stars. They never meet – they both go on separate pathways, and that creates a split.
The basic schizophrenia is created because the body goes in one direction, the mind goes in another direction. And you are the third element – you are neither the body nor the mind, so you are pulled apart by these two. Half of your being is pulled by the body and half of your being is pulled by your mind. So there is great anguish – one feels torn apart.
In a mantra meditation – nadabrahma or any chanting – this is how the mechanism works: when you start chanting a sound – and any sound will do; even abracadabra – if you start resounding inside, the body starts responding. Sooner or later a moment comes when the body and the mind are both together in one direction for the first time. When body and mind are both together, you are free from the body and the mind – you are not tom apart. Then the third element which you are in reality – call it soul, spirit,‘atma’, anything – that third element is at ease because it is not being pulled in different directions.
The body and the mind are so much engrossed in chanting that the soul can slip out of them very easily, unobserved, and can become a witness – can stand out and look at the whole game that is going on between the mind and the body. It is such a beautiful rhythm that the mind and body never become aware that the soul has slipped out... because they don’t allow so easily, mm? they keep their possession. Nobody wants to lose his possession. The body wants to dominate the soul, the mind wants to dominate the soul.
This is a very sly way to get out of their hold. They become drunk with the chanting, and you slip out.
So in nadabrahma, remember this: let the body and mind be totally together, but remember that you have to become a witness. Get out of them, easily, slowly, from the back door, with no fight, with no struggle. Mm? they are drinking – you get out, and watch from the outside.…
This is the meaning of the english word ‘ecstasy’ – to stand out. Stand out and watch from there... and it is tremendously peaceful. It is silence, it is bliss, it is benediction.
This is the whole secret of chanting – that’s why chanting has prevailed down the centuries. There has never been a religion that has not used chanting and mantra. But there is a danger also! If you don’t get out, if you don’t become a witness, there is a danger – then you have missed the whole point. If you become drunk with the body and the mind and your soul also becomes drunk, then
chanting is an intoxicant. Then it is like a tranquiliser – it will give you a good sleep, that’s all. It is a lullaby. Good – nothing wrong in it – but not of any real value either.
So this is the pitfall to be remembered: chanting is so beautiful that one wants to get lost. If you are lost, then good, you enjoyed a rhythm, an inner rhythm, and it was beautiful and you liked it, but it was like a drug – it is an acid trip. By chanting, by the sound, you created certain drugs in your body.
Chanting creates chemical changes in the body, and those changes are no different than marijuana or LSD. Some day, when research goes deeper into meditation, they are going to find that chanting creates chemical changes – just as fasting also creates chemical changes.
After the seventh or eighth day of fasting, one feels tremendously jubilant, weightless, very glad for no reason, delighted – as if all burden has disappeared. Your body is creating a certain chemical change.
I am as much against LSD as I am against fasting. And if chanting is used as a drug, I am against it. So the point to be remembered is that you have to use the sound, the chanting, the mantra, not as an intoxicant for your being. Let it be an intoxicant for the body and the mind but you slip out of it before you become intoxicated; you stand out and you watch. You see the body swaying and you see the mind feeling very very peaceful and calm and quiet. Watch from the outside and be alert like a flame.
If this is not done you will have a good sleep but nothing more. Then it is a good thing for health but nothing for the ultimate growth.
Good – pay attention to nadabrahma, mm? And sometimes sitting silently, start chanting anything, ‘aum’, will do, or choose anything, any word, and get in tune with it. Meaning is not important: it can be meaningless – it can be meaningful. ‘Aum’ has no meaning. Or you can create your own mantra and chant it. But remember to slip out of it.
Let the body get drunk, let the mind get drunk, let them fall into a deep love-affair with each other, and you slip out of it. Don’t stay there longer – otherwise you will fall asleep. And if one falls asleep, it is not meditation. Meditation means awareness. So remember it!
[A sannyasin who is leaving for the West is concerned about her boyfriend being open to Osho.]
No, No, he will come one day. Just don’t harrass him in any way and don’t try to convert him. Never try to convert anybody; conversion is a violation of the other’s freedom. Let him be himself, and if he feels like coming some day, help him, otherwise never!
Even by gesture, never try to be a missionary. That is the dirtiest profession in the world. Even prostitutes are better, because the prostitute may corrupt somebody’s body but they don’t corrupt their souls. Missionaries try to corrupt their soul – and the soul needs absolute freedom.
And when you love a person, never try. Mm? just forget all about me when you are with him. Be happy, be loving, be meditative, let him feel your energy. If that converts, that’s okay. If your meditative quality becomes a challenge to him, that’s okay. If your love brings him here, that’s okay – but not logic, not argument.
People become defensive when you argue with them – they defend themselves. Sometimes they can start becoming too defensive and then that will become their barrier. So just don’t create any barrier – he is bound to come. He will feel more and more how much you are changing. That is going to bring him. One day he will come like a shadow, following you!
[A sannyasin says: I did the gestalt and the centering group and when I finished the centering I felt I wanted to ask you a question about the different experiences I had in the two groups and the different approaches, but now I sense they just come out of my own confusion. Sitting in the lecture I’m looking at you and I feel a huge fog in front of me. I’m sort of screaming at myself saying, ‘Wake up, wake up! This could be jesus or buddha in front of me and I can’t see it.’
So maybe you could speak to me about my confusion or about the fog that I feel that I’m trying to see through, to see the reality of the being in front of me.]
Don’t make too much effort.… And that is very natural – when one feels the fog around one, the confusion, one tries to make hard effort to see through it. But the very effort to see through it creates the fog, because when you are really too intent on seeing, your consciousness becomes narrowed. It is not wide, it is not expanding – it becomes like a small tunnel. And when the consciousness is like a very narrow tunnel there will be more and more confusion, because you will not be able to see the whole – you will be able to see only parts, and then those parts seem to be very contradictory. It is very difficult to figure out what is what and how to connect them.
The whole confusion of the human mind is that it is a very narrow slit, just a small hole, and from that hole we are trying to see the reality – and the reality is vast! When we see one part, other parts are missing. When we see other parts, the first thing is missing and we can never see the whole.
Later on when we try to figure it out, we are in exactly the same situation as the five blind men who went to see the elephant. They had all touched the elephant but they all missed because their perception was very narrow.
Somebody touched the legs and he felt that the elephant was like a pillar – and he was right in a way! But the other touched the ear – how could he believe that the elephant was like a pillar? He said ‘Have you gone mad? I have been there!’ And then all five of them started arguing. It was impossible to convince the others – nobody was able to – and they all became confused. They even started becoming suspicious about what they had experienced – whether they had exper-ienced it or whether it was just imagination .. . because four persons were against it! How could one be right when these four persons were giving such absurd statements that there seemed to be no consistency at all?
That is the situation of the mind. The story of the five blind men and the elephant is the story of the mind itself. It is a sufi parable.
When you look through the mind you see only a part – and the part is not the whole. The whole is vast and the whole contains many parts which may not be like this part – sometimes may be just the opposite of it. And when you come across those parts you will be confused.
So my suggestion is: there is a way to look at reality without looking at reality. There is a way to relax and let the consciousness expand; don’t narrow it down.
It always happensSomebody asks you something and you know that you know it – you say, ’It is
just on the tip of my tongue but I can’t remember.’ Now, what is happening? You are giving a very absurd statement – you say, ‘It is on the tip of my tongue.’ Then why don’t you produce it? You say, ‘But I cannot’ – and the more you try, the more intent you are, the more difficult it becomes. It is not coming – it can drive you almost crazy, because you know you know, and you know it is thereand
still you are missing it. Then in a desperate hopelessness you drop the whole project.
You start smoking a cigarette or you go into the garden and you start looking at the birds and the trees and suddenly it is there – it surfaces. Now, what happened?
When you were too intent on it and looking for it you became too narrow – you shrank. The hole was so small – almost not there – so the thing wanted to come up but it could not; there was no space for it. Then you started smoking a cigarette or went into the garden or started reading a newspaper. You forgot about it, the mind relaxed, the narrowness disappeared, you became a little wider – suddenly it bubbled, it came up.
So my suggestion is: please don’t try to look at reality – don’t strain, don’t stare. That is not the way – that is the way to miss. You will become more and more confused and more and more tense and tired and desperate. You will start feeling that you are going crazy and that the whole reality becomes a jigsaw puzzle and nothing fits with anything else. It seems as if there are so many realities, not one reality. It seems as if the universe is not a ‘uni-verse’ but a ‘multi verse’ – plural realities, contradictory to each other, paradoxical, inconsistent. You will go crazy! Don’t do it.relax.
The fog is there because you are very tense. Your tenseness is creating the fog. Relax! With your relaxation the fog will lift, and with the fog the confusion. When you see the reality as it is – without any effort on your part to see it – suddenly everything fits together. There is nothing inconsistent, cannot be. It is a universe – everything is fitting together with every thing else. There is no conflict in existence.
The problem is of the mind, and it cannot be solved with the mind. Hence meditation becomes so important, so significant. Meditation is nothing but looking at reality without looking at it.Looking
at reality but not really hankering to look. You understand what I mean?
Sometimes you can look without looking at. Mm? then your eyes are unfocused, empty. Sometimes mad people have that quality in their eyes. If you look at a madman’s eyes you will feel that he is unfocused. You are standing there but he is not focused on you. He may be even looking at you, but he is not looking at you. It doesn’t matter whether you are there or not; if you move, you move – he will not move his eyes. He is not looking at you in particular – he is simply looking. It is just coincidental that you are standing there – that’s just a coincidence; if you go, you go. The madman goes on looking the same way.
To feel it.… For example right now I am looking at you. Now my eyes are focused on you: you are the object and my eyes are narrowed down on you. Now watch.…
[Osho looked at a point somewhere above the sannyasin’s head, but in such a way that he was still within his vision.]
I am still looking at you but not looking at you. You are just in the way of my vision, that’s all. You follow me? Just in the way of the vision – not that I am looking at you; you are simply there.
Become more unfocused, and relax. This confusion is going to disappear.…
[Osho had previously (see ‘Blessed are the Ignorant’ December 4th) suggested the formation of a boredom group. He talked about boredom as a device to help the mind drop. The group would be called the ‘hell group’. Tonight the first group are present.
The leader said: They were just waiting for one person to leave then they would have all gone out.
It also seemed that the women experienced it as more hellish than the men. Also, people said that if I made it more hellish, they feel that everybody would leave.]
Mm, let me talk to them first.
There is a difference between the male mind and the female mind. They need a different type of torture, then they will feel different.
And secondly: people don’t know how much they can endure. Man has an infinite capacity to endure. And that too is right: if one left, others might have left – not because it was impossible to endure – just because the person may have given them the idea of following. And in such situations people become very very vulnerable, imitative.
These methods are being used in China and Russia; they were used in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, in Mussolini’s Italy, in Toshu’s Japan. They make people very very vulnerable and then they make people very imitative.
What they used to do in Germany or in Russia, they are still doing in China. Ten persons who are against communism are to pass through a very hellish experience. They will put among them a spy – they will make it eleven. That one is a bogus person – he is an agent. All start suffering and that person also pretends that he is suffering very much. Then after three, four days, the agent ‘confesses’, he surrenders, and then the ten surrender immediately. That man is there to surrender in the right moment – when people become vulnerable! They start watching: ‘If one surrenders, we will surrender.’
Nobody wants to take the risk himself, nobody wants to be so low and mean himself, but if one person surrenders it is too much. So they put a spy among them. The spy surrenders after three, four days when he feels that now the time is ripe, people are boiling, they want to get out of it and they will do anything. So he surrenders and he says, ‘I was wrong and communism is right. I withdraw whatsoever I said before. I commit myself to communism.’ And immediately another surrenders, and another. Within hours all the ten are gone.
So that is right: if one had left, the others would have left – not because they are not capable of endurance but because the human mind is very imitative, and in these soft moments when one is feeling very very sad, bored, tortured, one is reduced to being a small child again. Like children they will follow anybody.
Down the centuries these torture methods have been used to convert people. In fact the whole idea of hell is a psychological idea so that people become afraid and don’t do things which the priests don’t want to be done. It is just a psychological fear. Hell is the fear and heaven is the reward.
The priest is playing with the idea of hell so whatsoever he wants, or the ideology he represents wantsHe will say, ’If you do this you will go to heaven and you will be awarded, and if you don’t
do this you will go to hell.’
And people are afraid of being tortured. Just the very idea is enough. Then, out of fear, imitation. Out of fear so many christians and so many hindus and so many mohammedans – it is all out of fear. There is rarely a real religious person. Ninety-nine percent of people are imitating out of fear.
That is right, but this point has to be remembered – that nobody left. That shows that human consciousness is capable of great endurance – it is not made of ordinary metal. Once a person decides, one can endure anything – any hell! And that is the dignity of human beings.
I would like this group to continue for so many reasons. First, a person who passes through it will feel a certain dignity – that he could endure. His self-confidence will grow tremendously. He will be able to see that he is not impotent, that he has something in him; he has a certain integration. Of course he was afraid, and many times he wavered, and many times he thought, but still he persisted. Against all those waverings he persisted.
This persistence will give a centering. This will be a great pay-off. And this is a voluntary group – he can leave it. In fact he has paid for it! Nobody is forcing it on him – he has chosen it on his own. And sometimes to choose pain on your own is a great experience, because pain ordinarily happens – you don’t choose it. When it happens, it happens – you cannot do anything about it.
If you are caught in communist china they will torture you but you cannot do anything about it. Here it was your own choice – you were the centre; you had chosen it that way. When pain is chosen consciously, you overcome pain, you become victorious.
My feeling is that such types of groups have to be repeated all over the world so that the human mind is trained and no dictatorship can destroy human dignity.
For example, if those people who are being tortured in china had passed through such experiences on their own, then nobody could convert them. It would be impossible to violate their integrity... impossible! They would come out of the whole experience stronger than before.
So don’t be worried about it. Continue it, and slowly slowly make it more and more of a hell, more hellish... slowly, go slowly. The people who go through it may not understand the meaning of it immediately, but when they go through other groups they will see that this group has prepared them, has given them a stamina, and that now they can face many more things they were never able to face before.
For example, people are very much afraid of encounter, very much afraid of primal, very much afraid of this and that. Once they have passed through this group they will not be afraid of anything. Then everything will feel like a reward!
It is good sometimes to consciously choose pain. Mm? that’s the whole secret of austerities. The austerities are not masochistic. I am not saying that all austere people are not masochistic, but the root of the idea of asceticism is not masochistic – it is a conscious choice. A person chooses to stand in the hot sun the whole day, whatsoever happens. He stands in the hot – starts being crazy, feels crazy, but he stands there. It is difficult, arduous, but by the evening he will feel tremendously happy that he could go through it, that he was strong enough to go through it.
A person fasts for twenty days – the first three, four days are very difficult, great torture, great hunger arises; one becomes obsessed. But if you can pass the first three, four days, things relax and then you feel tremendously happy. You feel a certain freedom from the body because now you are capable of not eating. Even if you want not to eat, you are capable – you are free from the body. The body is no more your master – a subtle freedom has been achieved.
So people who go through ascetic methods are really creating their own hell, and through pain they become more aware. This too has to be understood: when you are happy, it is very rare to be aware – very difficult – because in happiness the natural tendency is to be drowned in it. Who bothers to be aware7 If you are happy and if you try to be aware, that awareness will destroy happiness. One wants to be completely lost in it.
In pain it is very easy to be aware – and helpful too, because the more aware you become, the less is the pain. If you really become aware the pain is completely nil. So that has to be remembered – you have to teach the people who participate that when there is tremendous pain they just have to be alert and aware. They should watch it as if it doesn’t belong to them, as if they are passing through a nightmare – it is a dream – or they are seeing a very hellish movie, but they should remain aloof, a witness.
And whenever somebody feels that he is getting too bogged down by the torture, by the boredom that is going on, tell him to remain alert and suddenly he will feel a freedom.
In awareness pain is so far away, so distant, that it doesn’t affect you. So by and by develop methods, but the insistence should be that they should remain alert. Then they will feel tremendously joyful after the experience is over. And sometimes in the middle of the experience also, they will feel great glimpses of awareness... because there is nothing like pain. Pain can simply give you such a shock that it can destroy your whole sleep. It can throw you into awareness like an electro-shock.
But my feeling is that they could not participate in the celebration, the last part.
.… Ask everybody, so that you can develop the group, mm? You ask everybody their experiences personally, talk to everybody, so you can gain out of their experience and your method becomes more and more sharp. You will be able to know what has to be added and what they have to be told... how they have to be aware, how they have to watch.
That is one thing they have to be aware of. Another thing: they are to be in the present. Otherwise what happens is that when somebody is suffering he starts hoping that after three days it will end – it is only a question of three days... two days have passed, now it is only a question of two days; tomorrow it will end. So he starts hoping in the future and he misses the whole point, because the pain is here! To avoid the pain he starts moving into the future, or somebody may start moving into
his memories, into the past – the home and the family and the love-affair and childhood, mm? – to avoid what is happening here.
So tell them not to avoid. Don’t go into the past and don’t go into the future. Be in this moment! If it is a painful moment, it is a painful moment – be in it; just be alert. If they can be alert and in the moment, they will be surprised – then the pain disappears. Because nobody can suffer in the present – that is impossible. In the present it is always happiness, always blissful. The present is heaven. But if you avoid it, problems arise.
[One group member said he found it exciting and felt close to Osho. Another said he didn’t think it was hellish enough, till the very last afternoon. He would have walked out but did not want to be the first – he was waiting for one of the women to go first.
Osho addressed the leader again:]
Even if somebody escapes you are not to tell the others. Nobody will escape because nobody wants to be the first one, because that will be very cowardly – but sometimes a coward may be there, may escape. But then too you need not tell them that he has escaped. Because people are very imitative – they don’t know what they are doing.
When I was entering the university, it was a coincidence, but a rare coincidenceWhen I went
to the office and I was filling my form for the subjects, a boy was standing there and he had no fountain-pen so he asked for my pen. Then he asked, ‘What subjects are you taking?’
I told him, ‘These subjects’ So he said, ‘Okay, I will take these!’
So I said, ‘This is nonsense! You can take my fountain pen...(much laughter) but why these subjects?’
He said, ‘Well, I have not decided yet, so that will do.’ So he filled in those.
It was a rare coincidence, but.this was for the BA. When I was filling out my form for the MA in
another university... the same boy! When I saw him I said ‘What is the matter? Have you your fountain pen or not?’
He said ‘No!’
I said ‘What about subjects?’
He said, ‘As you are here I will do the same, because it worked well! It was fortunate’ he said, ‘that I followed you. I have got a first class in my BA because of those subjects, so whatsoever you say I am going to fill in for – I was waiting for you! For two days I have been here and I have not filled in my form – I have been waiting. When you came, then I would fill in the form.’
People are very imitative – so that has to be remembered. Ordinarily nobody is going to escape, because that is the problem – who is going to be the first?
But if sometimes somebody is idiotic, foolish, or really a coward and escapes, there is no need.… And remember and always repeat it – that whenever somebody escapes I am going to send him back again. He has to complete the hell group, only then will I send him to other groups, otherwise not.
[To the participant] But I think you could manage it – you are not aware of how – because you were not taking it seriously.
[To the leader] So let that be a key. Tell people not to take it seriously, then they will be able to endure it very easily; then it is not irritating. You know it is a game, fun. If in the real hell you think it is fun, you will not be tortured.
There is another way to avoid torture even if it is real! The first way is to take it as fun. Start enjoying it, find out ways to enjoy it – and there are always possibilities to enjoy everything, just as there are always possibilities to suffer in anything. You can always find ways to suffer in everything that happens to you – and the vice versa too. This is one way.
The second way – for which now american soldiers are being trained after the chinese and korean experience – is not to resist, not to fight. Whatsoever happens, go with it. If you go with it totally, you will not be tired and you will start enjoying it, because then it is a game – then there is no problem.
For example, now it is being said to the american soldiers that if they are caught in a chinese camp, then from the very first day, from the very first moment, if they are asked if they are against communism, they say ‘No’. If they are asked to confess – confess. If secrets about their government are wanted, whatsoever they know, they should tell. They are going to be forced, so why be tortured? They should say everything, cooperate.
At least by this cooperation the enemy will not be able to destroy their minds – and then there is nothing to be done to them. The whole effort was that they confess – now they have confessed, and they have remained intact. Their mind has remained untouched.
But that is useful only when you are forced into a torture – this is a voluntary group. If you take it as fun you will not feel the torture. So tell the participants next time to try to enjoy it!
Even if the same line is repeated again and again and again and again.It is an irritant because
you don’t want it to be so. The repetition is not an irritant in itself – it is your idea that it should not be so that makes it an irritant. Start enjoying it – find out the music in it, the repetition, the rhythm of it. Enjoy it, get into the rhythm of it. Even start desiring it – that it is so beautiful you would like it to continue forever and forever (laughter).
And suddenly you will see a change of quality. Then you are not fighting, not resisting. Something of beauty can be found there too.
[To the participant who had peeped through his blindfold in one of the structures:] But don’t cheat, because you are not cheating anybody – you are cheating yourself. That way you miss something... don’t cheat.
Do all that you can do consciously, to get over it, to be above it, to float over it – not to be distracted by it, not to be destroyed by it – but don’t cheat, because that cheating goes against yourself; that is not going to help your consciousness. But once or twice, it is understandable. It is human to err – nothing to be worried about.
So you peeked through your blindfold once? Only once, or many times?... Many times! (chuckling) Don’t do that next time, because that isSometimes it is very good to be voluntarily in a certain
situation, howsoever painful. It gives sharpness to your being, a crispness – it makes you more vital. But, good!
[Another participant says: In the last two days I felt my resistance growing against the system. I felt that I got stronger in resisting the system.]
Resisting the system your ego gets stronger – you don’t get stronger. And these are two different things – you are not your ego. Your ego is the problem. If you resist, your ego becomes strong. If you relax, you become strong. And to make the ego strong is dangerous. That will make you more miserable in life because that will make you false.
Certainly the ego can give you a feeling of great strength – that’s why the ego is so appealing – but it is a false strength, pseudo, and ultimately suicidal. It kills your inner being, your real being. The real being comes up only when you can relax. Greater courage is needed to relax than to resist. To resist is very ordinary – everybody can do it, more or less. To relax is some-thing extraordinary.
So just watch it. Good, a good experience that something has come up into consciousness, that you tried to resist and you felt strong – but this strength is of the ego; this has to be understood now. It would have been difficult to understand it before, but now you can understand it more easily. Now next time try to relax, and then watch. Then again a different quality of strength will come to you. You will be able to compare and then you will know what is real and what is false.
This is a false coin that you are carrying. It looks like the real coin and sometimes it may also deceive somebody, but it is false. And you can deceive the world but you cannot deceive god. In the ultimate analysis it will be found to be falseand you wasted your whole life for it.
Resistance is very easyTo relax, to surrender, is rare, very rare. Next time, try that.
[Osho suggests that in her next group, satori, she should relax completely. She replies that she doesn’t know how.]
Just the opposite of resistance. If you know resistance you will know relaxation. Just don’t resist, and you will find relaxation. Don’t fight against the system – go with the system.
Resistance is like a person trying to swim against the current, upstream, and relaxation is like flowing with the stream, not trying to go upstream, just going downstream.
If you know resistance, there is no problem – just the opposite!
Just this evening I was reading an anecdote about a man who goes to the psychoanalyst for the first time. He tells the doctor he is suffering from a recurrent and frightening dream: “Night after night I
dream I am in a rowboat, at fist close to shore. Then I row out – farther, farther. Suddenly the oars break and I am alone and helpless on the wide ocean. At that moment I wake up, sweating and frightened. What does that mean?”
“Very simple,” says the analyst. “It is a symbol of castration anxiety. Your dream means that you are afraid of being castrated.”
At which, the session for the day being over, the man departs. He does not come back, and the doctor, puzzled at first, finally forgets him until a few months later they chance to meet at a party.
“Why didn’t you come back to see me?” says the analyst. “We could have discussed your dream.”
“Oh, doctor, that was unnecessary. You explained to me its meaning.” Then, after a pause: “But you know, I’ve taken to dreaming again. I’m awakened almost every night by a dream that I’m being castrated.”
The doctor now becomes all solicitude. “Why not come in so that we can discuss it?” “Really, doctor, it’s not necessary. I know what this dream means.”
“??”
“Yes, doctor. It means that I am in a rowboat, I row far from shore, the oars break, and.” (laughter)
If you know what resistance is then relaxation is just the reverse.
[Another participant said: It showed me how many mind games I play to avoid being herenow. On the last day when it became hellish in the afternoon, I was frightened at times so much that I could see it more all the time. I wanted to scream or get out but I waited for another woman to leave first.]
... This is the whole point – that one has to become aware of how one goes on playing games and avoiding the reality. And only in painful situations can we become aware, otherwise we will not become aware. We have to be hit upon the head, only then do we become aware, otherwise not.
These groups are just like hitting on the head – you have to become aware of the mind games. But if you become a little alert, by and by you will see that those mind games change – you cannot play as efficiently as before. Again and again you catch hold of yourself red-handed, and the moment you catch hold of it, it becomes meaningless – then it is pointless to play it; you have to drop it.
Many times you will catch hold of yourself again playing, again playing, and then in the middle it stops. By and by, your awareness will go still deeper. Then you will be able to catch hold of yourself before you start playing. And then you have become the master – then there is no problem.
Right now people are not aware of what they are doing; they are not aware at all whether they are playing games or not.
This is good that you have become a little alert. Bring that alertness in more and more. Not only in the group but outside the group also, try to find out when you are playing games. And whenever you
catch hold of yourself, stop that game immediately, because it is games which don’t allow you to be in contact with reality, which don’t allow you to be in contact with yourself. These games take your whole energy, and they are meaningless! They are just insane games and the whole life energy is being sucked by them.
[Another group member said at first she felt centred, but especially the last day was torture. She let her resistance inward, and afterwards, when everyone was laughing, it took her a long time to come out of it.]
It will be different for everybody... it will be different. If a person is an introvert – as you are – it is will happen. The introvert person will go on absorbing – that is his way of tackling a situation. That is the feminine way, the passive way, the introvert way.
The extrovert will start laughing – laughter is throwing out. He is also doing the same thing that you are doing. One has to manage – the situation is too much: either you take in or you throw out, but you have to do something about it. These are the two ways ordinarily available. So one person will absorb it – the one who is absorbing may start crying and tears may start coming. He may start feeling very sad – not in relation to himself or herself, but because of the very situation. One may feel sad for the whole world – a deep compassion – and may start crying.
The extrovert will start laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it, at the whole absurdity of it; he is throwing out. These are the two ways: throwing in, throwing out.
There is a third possibility which comes only when you become very very alert and you are neither extrovert nor introvert. You simply watch – you neither take it in nor throw it out; you simply watch. There is nothing to take in and there is nothing to take out. You simply remain a witness – unperturbed, undistracted, not doing anything whatsoever, in or out. That witnessing has to be learned.
The extrovert is half, the introvert is half. The introvert will be shocked by the extrovert and the extrovert will not be able to believe why the introvert is crying – why doesn’t he laugh? He will be shocked at his tears – because both are completely antagonistic to each other.
Only the third type of consciousness will be able to understand – and that third type of consciousness has to grow in everyone.
Carl Gustav Jung has divided the possibility into two – the extrovert and the introvert – but he has not talked about the third, which is the real, because he himself was never aware of meditation, samadhi. In fact he was a little against yoga and meditation. So his psychology misses the basic point. The periphery he categorised well, very well! Mm? there are two types of persons – introvert and the extrovert – and he divided it very very logically. But it is just a classification of the waves – the ocean is left behind; the ocean is not even accounted for.
There is a third state, the real, which is neither extrovert nor introvert but just in between, or beyond the both, transcendental. Then you will be able to understand both the extrovert and the introvert, and you will feel compassion for both. You will have understanding for both... otherwise there is going to be shock.
But this was your way to tackle the situation – somebody did it the other way. Both are half and both are shocking to each other – that is true – because both are inconceivable to each other... two totally different languages.
One will see the whole situation as very sad – a great sorrow and compassion will arise – and the other will see the ridiculousness, the absurdity, and he will have a belly laughter. But both have to go and the third has to come.
So next time become more alert – neither take in nor throw out. But the experience has been good.
[Another participant said that he had wanted to leave the group but then at the end he had a glimpse of its being a blissful stage. He asks: how can it be so easy sometimes?]
It can be – in fact it is easy. We make it difficult by fighting with it. It is not difficult. We make it difficult because we don’t know how to relax in it – and the whole point is to learn to relax in it. If you can relax in such a torturous group, in life nothing will be able to make you suffer. In any situation you will be able to relax, and that will become a great key in your hand; you can unlock many doors. Good, that you continued.
[Another participant said: I noticed that my mind was like an enemy and I don’t know how to stop it from coming up.]
The mind is the enemy, because you are not the mind. The mind is all your past, all the experiences, all the conditioning – not of this life, but of all the lives of the past. Your consciousness is caged in that mind and that cage has to be broken. The mind resists – it does not give way easily. The consciousness has to get out of the imprisonment, so there is a conflict – that’s why it looks like the enemy.
If you start meditating you will always find that the mind is the enemy. If you never meditate you never become aware that the mind is the enemy. Then you think that you are the mind. But once the idea of meditation arises, then you start feeling that the mind is the enemy and you are separate.
But this is a good glimpse... a beginning, the first ray.…
That’s what I’m saying – ‘I see.’ I go on saying the same thing again and again – that I see. The day you hear it in deep awareness, you will also be capable of seeing. There is nothing else to say. I see – you can also see, and that seeing is the goal. In the east we call philosophy not philosophy – we call it ‘darshana’.