11

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‌CHAPTER 11

14 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A newly arrived sannyasin says: So much has happened in the past few months. I just don’t understand. Everything’s changed.]

Once it starts happening, and if you don’t create any obstacle for it, it goes on happening. It is a chair. thing. You only have to take the first step and then things follow. You have simply to allow and one thing leads to another. It is a non-ending process, a chain reaction. Only the first step is yours and all others are taken by the whole. Once you allow the whole to function within you through you. things start happening.

Man’s whole power is negative. Man has no positive power – so you can hinder it. You can withdraw and then things will stop happening. Or you can allow it and surrender to it. But the greatest secret is to learn how to allow. All that is beautiful happens. You cannot do it.

And that’s why you cannot understand it either. That which you can do, you resist. That which happens you cannot resist because that comes from the beyond.

You are at the receiving end. It is bigger than you. Understanding will not be of significance. It is incomprehensible and the effort to understand it can create a disturbance because then your mind starts becoming active. When you become active, the whole stops because your activity is negative. Whatsoever you do will create a problem.

If man can learn just simply to be, not doing anything, then everything that we always wanted to happen and about which we were always frustrated because it never happened, starts happening on its own.

We simply become a witness. We are simply in wonder and awe. It is unbelievable when it happens because you are not doing anything – and it is happening! It is bigger than you – and there is only contentment when something bigger than you enters your heart.

If something smaller than you enters your heart, sooner or later you will be dissatisfied with it again because there will still be space left which will be empty: it is smaller than you. When the whole enters into the part, when the ocean falls into the drop, only then is there contentment. But then there is no understanding because understanding is yours.

There is a certain feeling, but not understanding. You relate to it but not through the mind. You relate to it through your total being. The mind is a small part, a very small part. In fact, animals are doing perfectly well without it so it is not very essential to life; almost superfluous, almost a luxury.

Animals do without it, birds do without it, trees do without it. The whole existence is doing without it. The mind is a very small part, but man has become obsessed too much with the part because it gives a certain feeling of power; that is the obsession. No other part of your being gives you the feeling of power.

If you are in love, you become powerless. Somebody else becomes powerful over you. You cannot manipulate when you are in love; all manipulation stops. Even to think of manipulation is sacrilege. But the mind is something which can give you a very pseudo-feeling of power – that you are powerful, because you can manipulate through it.

By and by, the mind has become the power-trip, the ego-trip, of man. Man has repressed all his being, sacrificed his whole being, for just this minute part, this dictatorial part. This is the neurosis of man. Whenever one part becomes so powerful, out of all proportion, so powerful that it starts dominating the whole, there is neurosis.

When the whole functions and every part functions in proportion and is not dominating, no part is dominating and the whole functions in a deep inner unity and harmony, then man is healthy and not neurotic.

To me, neurosis means a part gone crazy and trying to dominate the whole. That has happened inside man, and man is trying to do the same thing to the whole universe. The whole scientific attitude is based on a very neurotic fixation – to conquer. That’s why science finally leads to destruction and may finally destroy the whole ecology of existence. Man’s neurosis is now being spread through science all over existence. It is very destructive.

So there is no need to understand. The very need to understand is an acquired need; it is not natural. If you love a person, you don’t bother to understand. If you are happy, you don’t bother to understand what happiness is. If the flower is beautiful, the flower is beautiful. You don’t bother to analyse why it is beautiful. The moment you dissect the flower, the beauty disappears. The sunset is beautiful, but once you question why, it is no more beautiful. The question brings an awareness into it.

The question is good if vou are suffering. Then ask why vou are suffering, because then the question will help the suffering to disappear. Try to understand suffering but never try to understand happiness, otherwise that will disappear. If you are ill then go to the doctor, take medicine. For health, no physician is needed. If you are healthy, no medicine is needed. If you are ill, surgery is needed.

So whenever you feel some moments of happiness, aliveness, something tremendous happening around you, incomprehensible, unbelievable, beyond you, watch in deep awe.

That is the meaning of ‘respect’. It comes from a root ‘spectare’ – to see, to look at and relook at, ‘re-spectare’. Respect is to look again and again... something so beautiful that one would like to look again and again with no mind to understand but just to be filled with it, just to be with it, flow with it. Then much more will happen. But one becomes more and more capable.

The more you drop your mind and start living and enjoying and delighting in things, the more things will happen to you. You are creating a passage. You are inviting God. Once you start trying to understand Him you are becoming philosophic, and religiousness will be lost.

So watch it with awe, with great enthusiasm, with respect, but don’t try to understand it intellectually. It cannot be done. When many people see that they cannot understand something they start denying it, because they think that if something cannot be understood it doesn’t exist.

Somehow this feeling has caught hold of the human mind deep down – that if you can understand something, only then is it there. If you cannot understand it, then how does it dare to be there? It cannot be there – deny it.

The scientist says, ‘God is not, because we cannot understand how God can be. Beauty, love, are not, because they are all incomprehensible.’ But if you deny God, beauty, love, then what is left? The whole personality disappears from existence, the whole mystery. There will be only things then and life will be absolutely meaningless, horrible.

So keep a little shrine in the heart for the incomprehensible, for that which cannot be understood, for that which should not be understood.

[A sannyasin says: You told me to be in the moment for twenty-one days... I think my mind is more visible to me than it has ever been. It was even more ridiculous than I could ever imagine.]

It is, mm? It is not only your mind. The mind as such is ridiculous. We can go on tolerating it because we never look at it. To be in the moment is to encounter it continuously. Then one can see the whole stupidity of the mind. It is just absurd. We are wasting much time and energy with it. As a master the mind is the most terrible thing there is. As a servant it is useful.

Watching, becoming aware, first will make you recognise the fact that the mind as such is mad, and one starts laughing at oneself. That is the beginning of wisdom. Ordinarily, people laugh at others. Then they have not yet known what laughter should be. When you see your mind, you start laughing at your own situation. And when one laughs at oneself, it is a breakthrough.

Once you understand that the mind is ridiculous, the mind is losing control over you already – otherwise you would not have been able to see the ridiculousness of it. It is very clever in hiding itself, in rationalising itself. In deception it is very clever, but if you have seen it, it is a very good indication. And to live moment to moment is the only way to get out of the mind.

The mind can exist only with the help of the past and future. It is either of the past or of the future. When you live moment to moment, it becomes ridiculous. It is continuously running into the past or into the future and is never here.

You want to be here because the moment is here, so you see the whole foolishness of it. You are eating and the mind is going somewhere else. You are looking at the stars and the mind is going somewhere else; it is never here.

It is always missing, always desiring, and when the moment comes, it never enjoys. It is always fragmented and jumping from one thing to another, never completing anything and creating a mess around itself. Looking at these antics, one starts laughing.

So now the second thing for you is that whenever you feel it is ridiculous, laugh. Don’t just visualise a- laugh, but really laugh, a good laugh. Don’t be worried that others will be surprised at why you are laughing. They don’t know the joke; they don’t know what is happening to you. So just start laughing whenever you feel it.

There is nothing like laughter to help you to get out of the mind. People go on doing these things, but at a very cheap price laughter was possible.

Physiologists say that if you frown, two hundred and fifty muscles are involved. It is a great strain. If you laugh, only seven muscles are involved. It is the most economical act that can be done, the most relaxed; the least musculature is involved. The more you learn how to laugh, the less important are even those seven muscles. A moment comes when nothing is involved. Laughter simply spreads all over you like a ripple, just like a passing breeze. Then it becomes very subtle, but it helps you to go as far away from the mind as possible.

So now add this second step and continue to live moment to moment. Whenever you feel the ridiculousness, have a good laugh.

[A sannyasin says: I feel so much energy sometimes that I just feel lost in it. I don’t know if I can use it.]

Yes, when it comes, one always wonders whether there is any possibility to use it or not. One is so overfilled, almost overflowing.

We have lived at the minimum so we know the use of only minimal energy. We have lived at the very poorest level of our energy, like beggars. We could have been emperors but we have been very miserly so we have lived like beggars. Now suddenly you become aware of your empire, your treasures, and you don’t know what to do because you know only beggarly habits. You will have to learn new habits – the habits of an emperor – and how to use the energy and to use it creatively. Otherwise too much energy can become heavy.

If you don’t know how to use it, you start being destructive. If you don’t know what to do, at least jog, run, sing, dance. Get into the whirl of the dance as deeply as possible. Put all your energy at stake and start overflowing.

Once meditation starts working and energy is released, one has to be creative. If one is not creative, one will go mad; too much energy will drive you mad. So before the energy is so much that you cannot control it, start putting it to some use creatively.

That’s the criterion. If meditation is going rightly, the meditator will become a creator. And if the meditator is not creative, that simply shows that somewhere he has missed.

If he becomes creative, not only he will be enriched. He will enrich the world. When he leaves the world, he will leave a better world – at least a little more beautiful, a little kinder, a little more human. He will do something – whatsoever he can. He will paint, he will sing, he will dance, he will play on an instrument or do something, but he will not leave the world as he found it. He will leave it a little better... a few strokes here and there.

When you use your energy you feel fulfilled. Unless energy is expressed, there is no fulfillment. So this is the moment to start dancing. And when you dance, don’t be a miser. Miserliness is a very deep-rooted habit. We always go only to a certain extent and then no more: to this extent and no more, so far and no more.

Break that old habit – go the whole way. Don’t hoard and you will feel relieved. When the energy has been dispersed in a creative way, has been returned to the universe, you are in a deep connection with the universe.

Ordinarily that is what is missing in life. You go on taking from the universe and then you never give back, so the circle is disconnected. That’s what I mean when I say it is like a beggar: he simply takes, never gives. He knows how to beg and does not know how to share.

We breathe; the universe is constantly pouring energy into us. We eat, the trees, the plants, are preparing food for you, the sun and the moon, the ocean and the earth, the clouds and the sky, are all preparing food for us. You eat but you never return anything; not even a single song. At least trees give a few flowers, a few fruits, back to the earth. Look at the circle: they take from the earth, then give back to the earth.

Man has disrupted this circle; that’s why he is miserable. Hence the insistence of all the great masters of the world to share, to give, to love, so that whatsoever you have been given, you return. And not only that you return it, you return it enriched. You return it transformed. You return it transfigured.

If the air has given you oxygen, you sing a song. The sky itself cannot sing a song; it waits for you. The air cannot itself sing a song; it waits for you. The earth has given you food. It cannot dance itself but it waits for you.

Some day the energy that has been released by food, air, water, will become a dance, and that energy will fall back again, now enriched, transformed. This is the alchemy of sharing.

So start, mm? Enjoy and share.

[A couple said they would like to do the Encounter group. Osho said they could do it, but not together... ]

Couples are a disturbance, particularly in Encounter. They cling to each other because they are afraid of each other and they would not like to say something that might hurt the other. Not

even knowingly, but unknowingly, you will not say something that will hurt her and she will not say something that will hurt you. So the whole point of Encounter is lost.

You have to be completely free – and it is very difficult to be free with people to whom you are related. In fact it should be just the otherwise, just the reverse. If you love a person, you should be totally free to say everything. But that is the ideal state: ordinarily it never happens. We hope some day between two lovers it can happen, otherwise each lover becomes a censor on the other.

In groups it almost always happens that if couples are there they remain together in the group also. They become like an island. Others are meeting and merging but those two persons will remain like an island. They will not meet and merge – so that will create a disturbance.

[The swami says: We’re on different paths. I feel towards Zen, she feels towards love.]

That’s no problem. It’s good in a way. If you were both on the same path you would not be attracted to each other. Only polar people are attracted to each other. It is perfectly good. Be on the path of meditation and let her be on the path of love and then you can be very fulfilling to each other, because...

[The ma says: Can you tell us how, because at the moment it seems that we only hit – or miss; miss, in fact. There’s just a lot of conflict.]

That conflict has nothing to do with your being on the path of love or the nath of meditation. So don’t try to throw it on that. That conflict has to do with your minds. That’s a natural conflict that comes to every couple. Either the conflict wins or your love wins and the conflict disappears.

It is a crisis and one has to face it. One day or other, every couple has to face it. And it is good, because if love survives, it will move on a higher altitude, and if it disappears, then it was not worthwhile. In both ways the conflict helps.

I’m not saying to go on struggling and conflicting forever. If the conflict is there, come to an understanding now and try to see what the problem is. Encounter can help you both. Either you come to understand that the love is not there – hence there is conflict – or you will come to understand that the love is there and that’s why there is conflict. But you have to come to an understanding. I cannot say because my saying will not help. You have to find out.

These are the two possibilities. People who are in deep love are also in fight but their fight has a different quality. They will fight but they will not separate. They will fight but they will try to understand each other. So they will fight but they will know that this is only a critical state; it will pass. They will fight but still love. The fight may continue parallel to love, but love will not be distracted by it. In fact they will love more, because they will start feeling compassion for the other – so much conflict, so much fight, so much suffering. Love will be there and a new compassion will arise.

But if love is not there, then too there can be fight, but that fight is not going to be very long. Sooner or later one gets fed-up with it because there is nothing to fight for. Just fighting cannot continue unless by chance one in the couple is a sadist and another is a masochist, only then. It is rare. It is very difficult to find a sadist and a masochist together. They can fight for no love because they love

fight. Then they can torture. They need somebody to torture and they need to be tortured. They are a neurotic couple and they need psychological treatment.

But I don’t see that you are neurotic. So there are only two possibilities. Either you are fighting because love is not there so fighting is creating a distance so you can move away, or you are fighting because you love each other and the fight is trying to give you an opportunity to go to a higher altitude. But first you have to find out, mm?

Encounter will help. It will make things clear, mm? Good.

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