12

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‌CHAPTER 12

15 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To a new sannyasin who had told Osho of the various groups and therapies she had experienced in the States]

No method is for all persons – and no method can be. For each person something suits, but something else does not. Sometimes the method that suits somebody may be very destructive to somebody else. A method is like medicine. It may suit somebody, may be of tremendous benefit, and to somebody else it may become poison.

Just a few years before, physicians used to think that the medicine relates to the disease and not to the person. Now they have changed that idea. Two persons may be suffering from the same disease... and still the medicine may not work. So now they say, ’Don’t treat the disease, treat the person. Two persons suffering from the same disease... it looks logical that the same medicine may work. But the disease is a small part and the whole gestalt of the person is very big.

So the disease is different – maybe the symptoms are the same, but two persons cannot suffer from the same disease because two persons are not the same. As our fingerprints are different, exactly like that everything else is different and unique, individual. So each individual has to be regarded as an individual and cared for individually.

The West is too technology-oriented. Technology does not bother about individuals. It does not believe in individuals; it believes in the technique. So the technique becomes very important, and in reality the individual is supreme.

So, many times it will happen that something does not suit you; so then don’t try to fit with it. It can be destructive. Listen to your heart. If it does not fit with you, then it is not for you – whatsoever the authorities say.

The authorities have their own vested interests in it. They try to make you feel guilty that something is wrong with you. They throw the whole responsibility on you and save the technique. They say the technique is perfect; you are defective. The technique is perfect; you are not okay. The technique is perfect; you are not allowing it to work. Then one starts feeling guilty, as if one is not dOing the right thing.

So never feel guilty. Let that be my message for your sannyas day: never feel guilty and never think in terms of your being made for some technique, some method or means. No man is made for anything and everything is made for man.

So the ultimate decision has to come from your innermost core. If it suits, then go headlong. If it doesn’t suit, then watch. Whatsoever others are saying, don’t be bothered. It may be suiting them. There is no need to contradict them, no need to distract them, no need to convert them to your own way. Simply remember that it may be suitable for them; it is not suitable for you. And forget all about it.

Now so many techniques are about and people are moving from one technique to another, doing this and that. Much confusion is going to be created out of it. People will be left without roots. One technique you uproot, with another technique you uproot something else. Unless something suits, it will not get roots. Now this is a trend that even when a technique suits, then too people go on looking for sensation, for some thrill – maybe something more can happen somewhere else.

This vagrant mind, this mind of the wanderer, is not good, because a tree has to remain in one spot lo get more deeply rooted. A person should do many things before selecting a spot for himself. But once you see that something is fitting, then forget all about what others are saying, what others are doing. Move into it, otherwise there will be no time left for finding roots.

[The sannyasin adds: I go on and on about my path, wondering which is the right one. I feel it is meditation and yet I wish it were love.]

No, don’t worry, and don’t wish against it. Love will come. There is no need to be concerned about it.

When I say love will come, I don’t mean that you have become unloving or that you don’t love people. You love people, you are loving, but you are not following love as the path to the divine. Human love is perfectly okay. It is good, it is helpful, but technically you are not moving towards God through love. You enjoy love, you share love. That’s perfectly good. That has nothing to do with God. That’s your delight.

But technically you are moving on the path of meditation. Soon you will see more and more love arising. Go on loving People, dispersing love, sharing your life, your being, with others, but always remember that is not the path for you to be on. That may be your expression of meditation but not the means to the goal.

When meditation is going well, suddenly love will bloom forth like flowers in the spring. So you need not think about it, and don’t create any anxiety about it. It is not a question of our wishing, because wishes are very deceptive. The question is of feeling, not of wishing. If you feel that meditation helps

you – you become more quiet, more calm, collected – then that is your path. Love is not negated. It is not chosen as the path, that is all.

Love will follow like a shadow.

Deva means divine and amitabh means infinite light – infinite divine light. Amitabh is also a name of Buddha, because of his infinite light. In Japan, Amitabh has become Amida. They call Buddha ‘Amida’, but it is a form of Amitabh.

[The new sannyasin says: And all my life I’ve felt like my path was the path of love, and yet I get so much from the meditations. I’m not really struggling with the two, but I heard you say about one path or the other... ]

No, no need to struggle. And no problems are ever solved. People who are trying to solve them are moving in a false direction. They may find some solutions but those solutions will be homemade because problems are existential and solutions will be mind-products. So for a few days you can concern yourself with the solution, but sooner or later they wear out and the problems reassert themselves again, or the solutions will give birth to more problems. Every solution creates more problems than it solves.

The right path is to grow out of them, to grow beyond them, to transcend them. Problems can never be solved, but they can be dissolved. My whole effort here is to dissolve them, not to solve them.

A moment of pure consciousness comes where no problem exists – and no solution. You are settled there with no problem to solve, and no solution to carry and to remember. Everything has simply fallen, withered away. This state is what satori is.

So the whole effort here is not to solve anybody’s problems. We are not working philosophically. We are working existentially.

Existence knows no problems. Problems are man-created. In fact, problems are because we are tense. It is not the other way around – that we are tense because there are problems, no. Because we are tense, there are problems. So once the tension is relaxed the problems disappear.

People ordinarily think that there are problems and that’s why we are so anxious and worried. Not so. You are worried, anxious, so you cannot live without problems. You create them. Your worry needs some problems to hang on. So if one problem is solved, immediately you create another.

Just solving problems is not going to help. It will be a sheer wastage. So I try to cut the very root, the grass-root – and that is the state of a tense mind. Once that state relaxes, all problems simply disappear as dewdrops disappear in the morning.

Once you have known that moment – even for a single time – you have the key in your hand, and whenever you want to you can open the door of the temple and enter. If you want to enjoy a little worry and problems, that’s up to you ! But now it is not a problem really, it is a game. If you want to sharpen your mind against anxieties, do it. But then you know that it is a game and you enjoy it.

In fact, anxiety is not anxiety then. It is as if you are solving a crossword puzzle. It creates anxiety but that’s just a game. Or you are playing cards or chess. You know that the whole thing is created by you. Don’t play the game – get out of it! Nobody is forcing you to play it. You enter it on your own initiative, voluntarily, because you enjoy that sharpening, that state of tense consciousness. There is nothing wrong in it.

But then the whole life is nothing but a chessboard and any moment you want to get out of it you can throw the board and finish the game. You have the key and you can move. Then problems are like toys and you play with them. So that is exactly the point to be understood.

When you move into deep meditation everything becomes tremendous, because so much energy is released – the same energy that is getting caught in many nets and knots, anxieties, problems, tensions, worries, depressions, sadness, this and that; so many knots around you.

I have heard one joke.…

Visitor: What happened to the fellow in this cell? Attendant: He went crazy trying to untie a knot in a string. Visitor: What is this other fellow’s trouble?

Attendant: He went nuts trying to help the other fellow untie the knot. Visitor: And who is the raving maniac in the padded cell?

Attendant: He’s the guy that tied the knot.

Through the whole of life we go on making many knots around us, unknowingly, unconsciously. The way we live is so unalert that those knots are created automatically. Then we try to solve them. Then we get caught and the whole energy becomes diversified, divided and blocked everywhere.

So when you start meditating, you start becoming loose from your preoccupations, and the energy that was involved in it falls back on you... a tremendous upsurge – unbelievable. Then everything becomes tremendous. If you are angry, you are tremendously angry, or if you are loving, you are tremendously loving. If you are sad, you are tremendously sad. If you are happy, you are tremendously happy. This is the first step into meditation.

By and by, you start seeing that when with the same energy you can be tremendously happy, then why be tremendously sad? It is the same energy, and it is so easy to change it from sadness to happiness, from anger to compassion, from violence to love. It is so easy just as if you are putting the light on and off. But if you don’t know the button, it looks difficult.

A friend of Sigmund Freud, who was a poor man but had been childhood friends with Freud, came to visit him from his village. He had never seen electricity and it was for the first time that he saw it in Freud’s house. Just so as not to look ignorant, he didn’t ask what it was.

In the night when he was left in his bedroom, he tried hard to figure out how to put it off. If you have never seen electricity, it is almost impossible for you to conceive that somewhere just behind the door there is a knob which yon just have to push and the electricity will be off. He had known only lamps, kerosene lamps and other things, so he stood on a chair and studied the light but it seemed impossible to extinguish it.

He tried the whole night but he couldn’t put off the light. In the morning Freud asked, ‘You slept well?’

The man said, ‘Everything was okay but I couldn’t sleep because of this light. Tell me – it’s miraculous – how do you put it off?’

Freud said, ‘Why didn’t you ask me?!’ And the man said, ‘I am just foolish and I didn’t want to look ignorant, so I tried to find a way but I couldn’t.’

So if you don’t know, it is very difficult to think that the same energy can become anger, and the same energy can become love. The same energies can move the fan, can give you light, can run your car, can do a thousand and one things, on the surface completely unrelated to each other. What is the relationship between a fan and a lightbulb? On the surface there is no relationship, but deep down it is the same current.

So the second step will be to look deeply and see that it is the same energy. Then it is foolish to waste it in anger and sadness. Why not be happy? A moment comes when one is simply happy. Not that one becomes happy; one is simply happy... happiness becomes one’s climate. In fact one completely forgets that one is happy. Then only is one happy. Happiness is then so engrained, so natural, so spontaneous, just like breathing.

If there is some trouble you become aware of your breathing; otherwise there is no need. It goes on functioning so smoothly. It is just like when you have a headache then you remember your head, but otherwise why? If your body is perfectly healthy you forget the body. Only an ill person knows that he has a body. A healthy person forgets. He becomes bodiless.

In indian medicine, health is defined as the feeling of bodilessness. I have never come across a better definition. Western medicine defines health as an absence of illness. That is not a true definition. If you have to bring in illness to define health it is a very negative definition. Absence of illness is not much of a health because there is no positive element in it.

It is possible that a man may not have any illness and may not be healthy either, because health has a positive well-being in it. The indian definition seems to be very refined: the feeling of bodilessness. When the shoe fits, one forgets the feet. When the shoe is not fitting, then you remember it. When the body fits completely, you forget all about it. Then you are a nobody.

To be a somebody is to be ill. The very feeling that ‘I am somebody’ is ill. To be nobody is perfectly healthy.

And much is going to happen... leave everything to me. Now I will be responsible. You can be absolutely irresponsible.

[To a visitor from Israel who was unable to stay much longer, Osho suggested he do meditation regularly, saying that dancing, particularly would be helpful for him... ]

You can create a small group of friends who can dance together. That will be better, more helpful. Man is so weak that alone it is difficult to continue anything. Hence, schools are needed. So if you are not feeling like doing it one day and others are, their energy moves you. Someday somebody else is not feeling like it but you are, so your energy comes through.

Left alone, man is very weak and willless. One day you do it and another day you feel that you are tired and have other things to do. Meditations bring results only when they are done in a persistent way. Then it sinks inside you.

It is just as if you are digging a hole in the earth. One day you dig in one place, another day in another place. Then you can go on digging for the whole of your life but the well will never be ready. You have to dig in the same place continuously.

So make it a point, at the same time every day. And if in the same place it is possible, very good; the same room, the same atmosphere, burn the same incense... so the body by and by learns and the mind by and by gets the feel of it. The moment you enter the room you are ready to dance. The room is charged, the time is charged.

That’s how temples, churches, synagogues came to exist in the world. In the beginning they were beautiful places. People came again and again to the same place, to the same atmosphere. Once they entered the synagogue or the temple, they entered a different world from their ordinary world. That very feeling helps to change the mood.

So if you can find a place where you can go every day, every night or morning, do it, mm?

[A sannyasin reports back to Osho after being advised to accept his mind (see ‘Beloved of my Heart’ May 10th.):

I feel more conscious of what I’m doing... but I’d like to be able to do what I’m doing, rather than thinking all the time what I’m going to do next.]

Everybody is trying to improve and to become somebody – and that’s absurd. Nobody ever becomes anybody. Everybody remains himself or herself, so the whole effort is a wastage. It is good for you to accept yourself, but I still think something is lurking in the mind. Just accept and don’t create any tension.

I want you to be completely rid of your guilt feelings so that the division is no more there. You are two [of you]. One is trying to manipulate the other; the top dog continuously trying to manipulate the bottom dog. The bottom dog is also very cunning; he has to be. He goes on saying, ‘Yes sir, yes sir,’ but he goes on doing his own thing.

Drop this division. Whatsoever happens is good. Don’t judge. Just remain with whatsoever is. There is no other way for it to be. It is very difficult because it is against the ego. The ego says, ‘Something better is possible. Something more is possible. I can do this and that, and I can become somebody.’

The ego does not feel good with deep acceptance. In fact deep acceptance will become a death to the ego. The ego thrives on conflict.

So just float. You are looking better. You have not looked so good for many months . . . relaxed. If you feel like doing something, do it but don’t make it a drive. When you have completely relaxed and there is no guilt, then I will tell you to do many things. But first this guilt has to go. If it remains it will again jump and will possess you again.

So there is nothing to do right now – simply float. When you feel like meditating, meditate, otherwise simply be.

[A sannyasin said:... a thought came into my head that only God is important. And then somehow the word ‘important’ dropped and I had to say ‘God is only’.

He goes on to ask about dropping his attachment to his mother who has passed over.]

Good... very good. Good things are happening. Nothing is important, and when nothing is important, that which is left is important – call it God. Better not to give it any name because once we give it a name we start having some idea, some definition, some limitation. No need to give it a name.. This much is enough: nothing is important.

And if one can remember that nothing is important, one becomes detached spontaneously, by and by. No need to practise detachment. Just in the very realisation that nothing is important, one becomes detached. That detachment is beautiful.

If you practise detachment it is ugly, because deep down the attachment continues. You go on fighting with it and you create the opposite but the conflict continues. And wherever there is conflict there is ugliness. And wherever there is no conflict there is beauty. Beauty is energy moving into deep harmony without any conflict.

Nothing is important, but when you repeat this, remember that nothing is unimportant either. Unimportance is a byproduct. If something is important, only then is something unimportant. Nothing is important because nothing is unimportant. Things simply are. If we are attached to them we call them important. If we are not attached to them we call them unimportant.

Importance and unimportance come because of our attachment. Once the attachment is not there, things simply are – unlabelled, unclassified. They don’t belong to any category: important, unimportant, valuable, not valuable, profane, sacred. The world is simply there then in its total nakedness and its total beauty.

Sheer purity is there... one is surrounded by innocence. It has been good. Continue to remember it.

[A sannyasin asks: I feel somehow detached from feeling hungry and eating. Before, it used to be that feeling hungry meant to eat, and now I’m very confused about eating and taking food.]

One has to feed the body. It is a great vehicle. It is a shrine, a temple of God. So one has to take every care – more care than you have ever taken before.

It is through the body that we are going to experience many more things. This moment comes if you go on meditating. When this moment comes, one day suddenly one realises, ‘I am not the body, so why bother?’ You are not the body, that’s true, but you are in the body. You are not this house but you keep it clean. Just because you are not the house you don’t make it dirty. Your body is just like the house.

You are in it; you are not it, that’s true. But when this realisation arises that ‘I am not the body’, this problem is natural. One feels, ‘Why bother? Why feed it? Why take so much care? Why bathe it? What is the need? If it disappears, it disappears.’

The understanding is good but can become suicidal. Many people have moved into a suicidal line from this point. It is a cross-road. You have to take care. This experience has come because of the body, it has come through the body. You have to be deeply grateful. You will attain to many more things through the body. One day you will attain to the deathless also but then too it is through the body.

When St. Francis was dying, at the last moment he opened his eyes and started thanking his body. People thought that he had gone mad or something. What was he doing? He started thanking his body and saying, ‘You have been my vehicle. You have been my medium, my instrument. And you have brought me to this point where I am ready to meet my God. Many many thanks.’

A really religious mind is thankful to the body also. But there are religious people who are against the body and they go on destroying the body. They are really psychotic; they are not religious. Something went wrong.

So this moment is critical. From this moment, start taking care of the body. The body is becoming more important than it ever was.

[A sannyasin said that he was feeling much turmoil and pain in his third eye when he was doing certain meditations or exercises.

Osho told him to stop the exercises that were provoking the pain... ]

One should be alert about what one is doing and what is happening. You must be doing many things. There is no need to do many meditations because you can do confusing things, contradictory things, and then pain will arise.

Choose two meditations and stick to them. In fact I would like you to choose one; that would be the best. It is better to repeat one that suits you, many times. Then it will go deeper and deeper. You are trying many things – one day one thing, another day another thing. And you are inventing your own, so you can create many confusions.

In the book of Tantra there are one hundred and twelve meditations. You can go crazy. You are already crazy! [laughter] Just do two for a few days and then tell me. And don’t invent your own.

No, meditations are not fun. They can sometimes be dangerous. You are playing with a subtle, a very subtle mechanism of the mind. Sometimes a small thing that you were not aware you were doing can become dangerous.

For example, I told a couple to sit in front of each other and to look into each other’s left eye. They thought, ‘What is wrong with trying the right eye?’ They tried and both had terrific headaches. And they never told me that they were trying it with the right eye !

If you look into the left eye it is good, because the left eye is connected with the right brain, and the right brain is the meditative part of your brain. But if you look into the right eye, it is connected with the left brain and that is for reason, thinking, the scientific brain and it can create trouble.

So never try to invent, and don’t make your own hotch-potch meditation. Choose two and just try them for a few weeks. Even if you are tempted to do others, don’t. And then tell me. This pain will go.

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