13

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‌CHAPTER 13

16 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and Samadhan means one whose problems are all solved. So from this moment this is going to be your constant awareness: that there is no problem. And in fact there is none.

All problems are our illusions. First we create a problem and then we start seeking solutions. The first step is wrong. And once you have taken a wrong step, the second step cannot be right. One has to come back to the very beginning.

There is no problem. There cannot be, because we are not separate from the reality. How can there be any problem for the wave? It is one with the ocean. Who is going to create a problem for the wave?

There is no antagonism in nature; it is deep harmony. We create the problem and then we try to solve it... but then there is no solution.

The real learning is how to drop problems, how not to help them arise. So catch hold of yourself whenever you start creating problems; catch yourself red-handed and immediately drop it then and there. Don’t look for a solution.

The problem is the only problem. And the dropping of the problem is the only solution. So when you see that the mind is creating a problem, relax. Let it unwind. And you will start laughing – the problem disappears if you don’t fall into the trap. If you create a problem, you divide yourself. A part of your being you interpret as problematic, and the other part starts trying to solve it. For example, if you think sex is a problem, the mind starts trying to solve it. Now you are divided. There is going to be constant struggle and conflict now.

The english word ‘agony’ is very beautiful. The original root means conflict, struggle, division, a constant wrestling with oneself; that’s what agony is. Once you stop creating problems, agony

disappears. Suddenly you find yourself tremendously beautiful, tremendously blissful. And it has always been so! From the very beginning it has not been otherwise. But the mind has learned a trick and that trick has to be unlearned.

[The new sannyasin says: I turned from a psychologist to the spiritually-oriented person.] If everything goes right, every psychologist has to turn towards the spiritual.

Psychology at the most can clarify problems, questions. It can analyse the situation more, but that is not enough – necessary, but not enough. One has to seek the transcendental. Psychology can give a very good background if rightly used. If it is not rightly used then the psychiatrist is as mad as the people he is treating or trying to help. He himself is in the same boat. Then one can just go on playing a game.

Otherwise, basically everybody has to turn towards some transcendental source, because mind is not the source of contentment. At the most it reflects your life, but it is not the real life. It is just a mirror in which to see your face. But if you constantly go on seeing your face in the mirror and never turn to yourself, that mirror has become your enemy. That’s what happened to Narcissus.

He looked into the pool and fell in love with his own mirror-image – so much so that he forgot that he existed separately and this was just a mirror. Then he started looking for this person who was hiding there in the lake. Whenever he stepped into the water, the image would disappear. Whenever he came back to the shore, the image was there.

He died there... waiting and waiting and waiting and looking into the mirror. He became a plant. That plant is known as narcissus. It grows by the side of a river or a lake, so still Narcissus goes on looking.

Psychology only gives you a mirror-image. It is looking into your mind. It is good, but then one has to turn back. One has to seek the original, the one who is looking into the mind. Then religion, spirituality, starts.

The christian word ‘repent’ is very good. It means a returning, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree about-turn. It does not mean – as it has come to mean – that one repents for one’s sins. The original meaning is simply ‘returning’.

Jung has written in his memoirs that from observing all his patients through his life, he noticed that those who are at the age of forty, or close to it, deep down have no psychological problems but religious problems. And unless they can find a religious value in their lives, they cannot be happy.

It is how it should be. The age of forty-two, in the indian calculation, is the turning-point, the point where one repents. It is just as at the age of fourteen one becomes sexual.

In indian Yoga they say that each seven years there is a change in the body, in the mind, in the structure, in your gestalt, because every seven years the circle is complete. So by the time one is seven, one is no more a child. Childhood is gone; one circle is complete. That moment one starts becoming homosexual.

Up to seven, the child is masturbatory, completely self-contained, narcissistic. He himself is his whole world and he is the centre of it. After seven, the centre starts moving out. He starts becoming friendly with people. If he is a boy, he finds boys; if she is a girl, she finds girls to be friendly with. The boy is not interested in the opposite sex yet. He still remains oriented to his own sex. That’s what homosexuality is. This is up to fourteen.

Then suddenly another circle is complete. He becomes heterosexual. Now he is not content with boys. He would like to know the other – the absolute opposite. Now he is no more confined to his own sex. He would like to see the other shore of the river.

And in this way it goes on changing. Forty-two is again a turn, a returning.

So it is good that psychology has not become your confinement. Now you will be free to use it in a very deep and creative way.

[A visitor says: I’m very interested in the synthesis here. It’s been an interesting experience to feel it coming together with Yoga.]

Yoga is significant, but many more things have to be added to it.

The discipline is very ancient and man has changed a lot. It is one of the most ancient things in the world, but the discipline was created for a certain type of man who no more exists. A rift has come. Man has changed tremendously and the discipline has remained very orthodox. It is necessary in a way, otherwise the purity of discipline cannot be protected. So guardians of every school protected the purity. But the problem is that they succeeded in protecting the purity of the discipline, but then the rift became bigger and bigger between man and the system – because man goes on changing.

Tremendous change has happened – not only in the mind of man, but in the biology, in the physiology of man – and Yoga has to keep pace with it. So, many more things have to be added to it. Many people try Yoga but few succeed. At the most it can become a sort of exercise. It is good as far as it goes. It gives you a certain health, a certain well-being, but that was not the aim of Yoga.

It is as if you have an aeroplane and you are using it as a truck.

You can use it as a truck and it is good as far as it goes, but you could have flown in it. So Yoga is just a means towards the ultimate. The physiological part is not the most essential part, but it has become the most essential. Many people are lost in it. For their whole life they go on practising in the body and they feel good. But to feel good is not enough.

Unless you feel God, to feel good is not enough. Unless you become a god, nothing is enough.

And one should continuously remember that one has still far to go, so much more work is needed. Whatsoever physiology has discovered in the human body, whatever new insights have come to biology, to genetic science, whatsoever new lights have been thrown on sexual energy by Freud, whatever has become much more possible through acupuncture – all these things have to be added to Yoga. Then Yoga can really become the supreme science.

And that synthesis is going to happen somewhere in the West – not in the East, because the latest developments are happening in the West. Much has to be done. I would like you to come back for a longer time and be here, because unless it happens within you, you cannot have the vision. It is absolutely subjective. So if you come to an integration inside – and you can feel that the integration has happened within you and everything is clear – then you can have your own approach as to how to integrate with the ancient science of Yoga all that the modern mind has done. What has happened to the modern mind has always to be kept in view.

When Patanjali was working, a totally different quality of man existed in the world – very simple, primitive, unrepressed, with no neurosis, no enforced pattern; natural, more spontaneous, more in tune with nature. Trust was easy, doubt was difficult. In fact, to find a doubter was almost impossible. Trust was as natural as breathing.

Now just the opposite has happened. Trust is almost impossible, doubt is as natural as breathing. And the whole energy is repressed. Man is no more streaming. He is no more a flow, but frozen; many limbs are completely cut or paralysed.

Those things have to be considered. Otherwise, if you give Yoga to the modern man and he is repressed too much, Yoga can become a repressive system in him and it will not help him to grow. He will start shrinking. Bodily he may feel good. Spiritually he will disappear.

First a great and intense catharsis is needed. That’s why I insist so much on cathartic methods. Once catharsis has happened, only then can Yoga techniques be used, because then there is nothing to repress. Otherwise Yoga is such an intense control that if you have something to repress and you practise Yoga, that repressed energy will fall to the very bottom of your unconsciousness and it may take lives for you to come back to it.

So all repressions have to be released. Before one enters on the path of Yoga, at least now, one has to drop all repressions whatsoever. So new growth methods can be of tremendous help. Encounter, Gestalt, Marathons, can be of tremendous help. But yogis seem to be against them and new growth people seem to be against Yoga. Growth-group people think that Yoga is a Son of repression and yogis think that this is a sort of indulgence. And I think that both are wrong.

Before a repressed mind can move on the path of Yoga, he has to go almost through indulgence. Only then can those repressions be thrown out and his system can be purified. Then he can move into Yoga.

[A visitor says: I find it difficult for me to stay here and I wanted to ask you if you think I am too young to be here. I feel too young.]

In fact if you are young, it is easier to be here. If you are old it becomes difficult, because the older you are, the more smug you become. The older you are, the more you think you know – and nothing satisfies the ego like knowledge. To be young, to be naive, in a way is very good. You are clean. Much can happen to you right now.

And while one is young, to drop the ego is easier. The older you become, the more investment is in it, because the older you become, the bigger a past you have. That’s what old age means. And

the bigger the past, the more difficult it is to drop, because you have much to lose. The whole of the past is associated with the ego.

Young persons can drop the ego easily because they are young, full of energy, courageous and can take to an adventure. It is an adventure.

And to me, religion is the greatest courage in the world. Going to the moon is nothing. Going to yourself needs more courage than that.

I understand your problem. What you mean is that you would like to live more, experience many more things.

... But I’m not against life. My whole effort is to intensify your living.

Be here, and in three months you can live as much as you cannot live anywhere else in three years – and that is an understatement. If you are ready, within three months you can live as much as most people ordinarily live in three lives, because everything can become intensified. I’m not against living. I’m all for life.

But that’s why I say to drop the ego, because the ego will not allow you to live. It will always be a hindrance. If you fall in love with a woman, the ego won’t allow you to love. It will always be standing there like a wall. If you drop the ego, you can love. If you drop the ego, you can laugh. If you drop the ego, you can be. Otherwise the ego disrupts everything, corrupts everything, poisons everything.

The ego is not life, remember. The ego is the anti-element in life. The ego is anti-life. Because the more you think yourself the centre, the less and less you become capable of moving to others.

Life means relationship. The ego means remaining confined to oneself. Life means moving, melting. The ego is an imprisonment. Life is a merger.

So if you really want to live, you will have to drop the ego – and the sooner, the better. Once you become attuned with the ways of the ego, it will become more and more difficult.

If you can stay here right now for a few weeks, it will be good. But if you have a sort of fearThat’s

what I see – you are completely afraid to be here a little longer. You are afraid of sannyas. You will become a sannyasin if you are here. So I must make you alert – if you are here for a few more days, you will become a sannyasin. So if you want to escape, escape immediately ! [laughter] Don’t think twice; simply escape.

You will not go very far [laughter]. You will come back. But you can tryYou are also afraid of

lifeand travelling is not life. Travelling is a substitute. Many people think of travelling as life, that

going from one place to another is life. Maybe sensation, maybe a thrill, a kick – but not life. Going from one space inside to another space is life. And going from one space to another is just a poor substitute for it.

If you really want to become a traveller, I am here. I can take you on the longest journey – that starts and never ends.

But that has something to do with your inner map, your inner territory. You move from one space to another. You will be going east, that’s true. You will be moving towards the east farther and farther, but inside – not towards Japan. Japan is no more a part of the east. If you want to go to the west and don’t want to go to the west, go to Japan. It is almost the west now, and sooner or later India will also be the same.

In a way it is good because then whenever one wants to go to the east. one will have to close the eyes and go inwards. That’s where the real east is, because that is where the sun rises... and such a sunrise that it never sets again.

There is no western horizon inside. Just the east... just the beginning of light. So if you are too much afraid, you can go, but it will be cowardly.

... Nobody knows about tomorrow; nobody knows. And particularly for the modern man it is even more difficult to say, because the modern man. has become almost accidental. You go and you meet a woman and fall in love. She does not want to come to India, then what to do? She wants to go to California, so you go to California, and so things go on.…

Modern man is a driftwood. You are here – that too is accidental. You have not come for me. You had never thought about me. You have not planned to come here; it is accidental. So just see it.

But I’m not against your going. If you want to go, go and be finished with your travelling. But remember that man, modern man particularly, is very accidental. Anything can change your direction, any small thing that even feels unbelievable can change your direction. A piece of paper on the road and you look at it and it has a little writing on it. It can change your whole life and you will never be the same again.

So if you feel that there is some urgency in going and that there is something to be done, you can go. Otherwise it is better that, rather than postponing me, postpone Japan. For a few weeks be here and then go to Japan. Then you will be a totally different man, and you will be able to contact a different Japan. If you enter into meditation here deeply, then when you go to Japan you will be going to a different country, because each country is many countries.

Right now you will go to Tokyo. After two months of being here, you will go to Kyoto, not Tokyo. Right now if you go, you will go to geisha girls. After two months if you go, you will go to some zen monastery – and that is a totally different Japan. Japan is not one country, India is not one country – no country is one. A country is a multiplicity of countries – countries within countries.

All people who come to India don’t come to the same India. Somebody will come and he will immediately go to the prostitutes. Somebody will come and will immediately go to Kashmir and to the Himalayas. They are different worlds, but you always find your world wherever you go. That is the only world you can live in. You go on groping for your world.

My suggestion is that if you meditate here for at least two months, and do your groups here and then go to Japan, then you will come in contact with a totally different Japan, very ancient and very beautiful – of Basho and Joshu and Rinzai – a real world, very essential. Right now you will go and

you will just see Tokyo, modern cities, modern technology. That you can see anywhere else; there is no need to go to Japan.

But you think, mm? I never want to distract anybody from anything. Even if you are going on a foolish journey, I am the last person to distract you – because who am I? Why should I distract you? Who knows? – you might be going in the right direction. Just think over it. If you feel like going, go and come back. If you feel like being here, you can go later.

[A sannyasin says: I have a trembling in my body which I had before I came here also. I don’t know if it is related to meditations or not but I can’t sleep very well in the night I think because of it.]

Sometimes it can happen naturally. When it happens through meditation, then too it was just something that was already there and meditation simply hits it. But it is a good thing.

Something will have to be done so the sleep should not be disturbed. Do you feel disturbed for the whole night and tired in the morning?

I think you will have to change your sleeping time. This is one of the problems to be understood.

A child sleeps for twenty-four hours in the mother’s womb. Then the child is born and he sleeps twenty-three hours, then twenty-two, and twenty, eighteen, and it goes on getting less.

By the time the child has come of age, he sleeps seven, eight hours. That continues up to the age of forty-two, but it starts to decline from eight hours to seven, to six, to five. If one lives to around the age of seventy it remains at five hours. And then it drops more – near the age of eighty, ninety, it comes down to three hours. If one lives over ninety or even more, it comes near to two hours or even one hour. And if a person lives beyond one hundred and fifty, sleep totally disappears.

It has something to do with the inner biology. When the child’s body is getting ready, much work goes on inside the body. That work can happen only if the child is asleep. Only in sleep do you not interfere in the inner work of growth. So the child sleeps for twenty-four hours in the womb, and after he has left the womb the work still continues, but not as much. By and by the work is reduced to nil. By the age of forty-two, the work of growth completely stops. In fact, deterioration sets in. The body is no more being built, rather it starts disappearing – so the sleep disappears with it. So there is nothing to be worried about. If you have been sleeping for eight hours and then suddenly you find that you cannot sleep for more than five, you become worried because you think that eight, seven hours is a must. Nothing is a must. Your needs change.

A young man of eighteen or twenty eats much. But by the age of thirty-five, he cannot eat that much, and if he goes on eating because of the old habit then there is danger. He will gain too much fat; a heart-attack and this and that, a thousand and one things can happen. If he does not feel like eating that much, he thinks that his appetite is disappearing. Nothing is happening. It is just that the age is changing. We have to adjust every day, again and again.

So as I see it, it is not a problem. Simply change – because getting up at four, what can you do? Go later to sleep and then you will be able to get up at five. And that is one of the most beautiful times, particularly in India. In twenty-four hours, there is no more beautiful time than then.

Do a little exercise, take your bath, and then you can come to the ashram. By six you start your meditation here. Change your pattern and go to sleep later. That will completely settle things.

And later on, back home, go to bed later. Even twelve o’clock will be good. Go as late as you can so that in the morning when the world is awake, you are awake. Getting up when nobody is awake disturbs the mind very much. Everybody is sleeping, people are snoring, and you are awake. You feel out of sorts, as if you are not in tune with the world, and that worries you.

So you go a little later to bed.

[Osho asked her to raise both her arms and to allow any trembling in them to happen. No trembling was visible, and afterwards she commented that it did not manifest externally]

No, but bring it outside and then it will disappear, otherwise it won’t. Emphasise it, even exaggerate it. I can see it but you are holding it. Just allow it to move and then it will be released. Otherwise it will simply move inside and that can become a habit. It is good to release energy. Then you are unburdened and you will feel very very light.

[A sannyasin said that he had always been an angry sort of person, even when he was a child. He said that the cathartic meditations, rather than helping, seemed to make it more pronounced.

Osho suggested two groups for him saying that he should tell the groupleaders that anger was his problem, and ask them to help him work on that.]

You look angrybut it will go. Once it goes you will be almost flying, because it is a great energy.

Angry people are good people if anger can become transformed. Then it becomes love.

People who cannot become angry are, in a way, ill, because they cannot become loving. People who cannot become angry have no problems, that’s right – but that’s all. They are very low-energy people. Their fire is burning very low, almost at the minimum. They will somehow drag themselves in life but they will not be able to overflow.

Unless your torch burns from both ends, you miss life. So an angry person is good because at least he has a potentiality. Energy is there, now it is a question of the direction – and direction can be given.

[Previously (on June 8th) Osho had advised a sannyasin to think about whether she wanted to open or not.

Tonight she says: I feel deep down I do want to but I also want to hide. I saw very clearly that there is something inside me that wants to hide so it’s more clear now.]

But good – you looked into it, and you felt it from the right direction. That’s how it is. Deep down everybody wants to open, because deep down everybody wants to flower. You cannot flower unless you open. Flowering means opening, so all your petals open and your fragrance is released to the winds.

Man is also a tree, and man’s destiny is also to flower. Unless one flowers, one remains set. So deep down you looked rightly. But, not so deep, the desire to remain closed is also there – in many people, more or less. It differs only in degrees. With opening there is fear. If you become open, you become vulnerable. If you open then you don’t know what is going to happen to you. You don’t trust the winds. What will they do to you? They will simply take your fragrance away.

So one starts thinking in terms of hoarding and one becomes a miser. That’s why people want to remain closed. It seems to be more protected, secure.

So the conflict is between security and opening. You still want to be very secure, safe. You are afraid of moving anywhere where there may be danger. You still want to remain in control.

If you want to control, then you have to remain closed. You can only control a closed being. An open being is at the will of the winds and the rains, the clouds and the sun. An open being is open to everything possible. Life passes through him this way and that. So one is afraid.

Fear makes people closed. But one has to learn to drop fear, because even if you remain secure for your whole life, the whole life will become useless. Just to be secure?... Then there will be no romance. There will be no adventure, no peak. You will simply be moving on an asphalt super- highway. Secure – no possibility of any robbery because you are not in a forest, no problem that you can be looted. There will be no problems in your life if you remain closed, but there will be no life either. So it is a very great risk to settle with fear. One starts dying.

So your insight has been good. Now watch it. There is no need to do anything in a hurry, because nothing can be done in a hurry. One has to follow one’s pace. There is no need to overdo anything or to do it before its time. Let everything ripen. Just go on watching and seeing.

Just keep in mind that the deepest has to be fulfilled because the deepest is you. And that which is surrounding you like a wall, closing you, is nothing but learned fear. You have learned it from others. Their fears have entered you.

To settle with fear is dangerous. It is better to live for a single moment – but to live – than to live a hundred years of life without any adventure. Because then what is the use? What is the point?

By and by, you will become more aware. By and by, you will see the foolishness of it. It is as if a bird is in the egg and is afraid to come out. His fear is logical, because he does not know the world; inside the egg he is completely secure. Food is supplied, warmth, everything is there and there is no fear of any enemy. Coming out of the egg he will be moving in an alien world. He will be a stranger. Who knows what is going to happen? He will be moving into the unfamiliar, the unknown.

But if the bird becomes so afraid that he clings and does not come out of the egg, then he will be dead. That egg will become his tomb, his grave. Many people are like that. They live only for the name’s sake.

Come out of that egg. Only then is there life. I’m not saying that there is no danger. I’m the last person to promise you that there are not dangers. There are dangers – but they are beautiful.

[The sannyasin adds: I’ve been afraid of sickness of physical things and above all of cancer... but I’m afraid to have it verified so I don t go to a doctor.]

Fear can take many shapes – of illness, Of death, of cancer. So when you are afraid you cannot go to the doctor to verify it either, but that too is a fear.

Fear is the only cancer. So if you really want to be afraid, be afraid of fear and nothing else. But you will have to learn. Just meditate, dance, sing, and let these things open you by and by. If you fall in love, very good. That will be very helpful, because love is the antidote for fear. If fear is cancer, love is the panacea.

Try it, mm ? It will go.

[A sannyasin Primal therapist says: I received your note that said to go back to the West... I don’t want to.]

Then don’t go. It was only for the work. If you can go happily, only then go. It will be good if you go. You can work much and you can help many more people. You are ready.

My contact has happened with you, so wherever you are it makes no difference. Whether you are here or in the West, I will go on nourishing you. There is no problem about it now. Just a few days ago I would have not said to you to go, but now there is no problem. Wherever you are, it makes no difference. You will feel me as close as you feel here, or sometimes, even more.

You are ready now. You can take a few groups there, and then many more people can come to me – because I am not going anywhere, so people who love me and understand me have to go and work for me.

But if you feel that right now you would not like to, then be here and later on we will see. But if you can go it will be very very good. Make it a point to be there for a few months and here for a few months.

Think about it. If you can go happily, only then go, otherwise not.

... you think about it. If you can go happily, go. And either way is good, so don’t feel guilty in any way. If you go, you go for my work. If you stay, you stay for my work.

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