19

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‌CHAPTER 19

22 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and tanmaya means absorbed; absorbed in the divine. That is going to be your continuous work on yourself. Feel, wherever you are, that you are absorbed in the divine. Everything is divine. The air that surrounds you, the clouds that move in the sky, the trees, the earth, the people, the stars; everything is divine. Once we start getting in tune with it, by and by many more things will be revealed. So the only thing is how to fall in tune with the whole.

Ordinarily we are very resistant and we go on trying to prove that we are separate. That’s how the ego exists – in separation, in your creating a fence around yourself, insisting that you are not the tree, you are not the cloud, that you are not the earth, that you are not the other; you are separate. That continuous undercurrent makes you an island, and naturally one feels alienated. One starts feeling miserable, because happiness is a function of the whole.

Whenever you are in tune with the whole you are happy; when you are out of tune with the whole you are unhappy. So happiness is simply symptomatic that knowingly or unknowingly you are coming closer to the whole.

So let this become a constant remembrance. Whenever you remember, relax and feel that you are one with it and that the whole is absorbed in you. You are not separate, apart, but just a small part, a very tiny part, an atomic part. It is really mysterious. The whole is very mysterious, once you start getting in tune with it – otherwise life is just meaningless. Left alone there is no mystery. With the whole, everything is beautiful. Alone, everything becomes miserable. Hell is to be alone... to be so alone that you cannot find any way how to relate, how to create bridges.

Tanmaya means ‘absorbed in’. It is a feeling, so by and by it will start working on its own. First it will be needed to be remembered again and again. By and by, you will see that even without your

remembering, suddenly you are aware that it is there. Then it has moved to the heart. So allow it to sink in.

Once you start feeling that way – that’s the way of a religious mind – then you are in the temple. Wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing, everything then has an inner glow. Small acts become worship when you feel absorbed into the divine. If you don’t feel absorbed, then even prayer is nothing but a futile, impotent gesture. You can pray in the church, but it will not help unless the whole existence becomes your temple.

So wherever you sit, you sit prayerfully because the earth is divine and one has to be respectful. Wherever you are moving, you are moving on sacred ground . The jewish story says that when Moses reached to the top of the hi11, Sinai, God shouted to him, ‘Take your shoes off! This is holy ground.’ But this should be so wherever you are.

We are walking on holy ground. Eating, we are eating God. Drinking, we are drinking God. Whatsoever we are doing is sacred – there is nothing profane. The profane cannot exist; there is no place for it. The existence is so full of the divine that the profane cannot exist. Where will it exist?

Hindus in the East have no concept of the devil, because they say that the divine is so vast, how can the devil exist? It must be in the imagination of man. It cannot be true. It can only be just a nightmare that we have seen but which is not. And that is how it is.

So just allow this vibration to surround you... many things are going to happen.

[The Tathata group is present. The group leader, Kabir, said he was much softer than Pujari, the previous leader: I feel that being hard is what the group demands and so I’m in a sort of a conflict. I don’t feel it is the group for me.]

No, it is the group for you, and you are going to learn many things through it. It is not only going to be a help to others; it is going to be a growth to you also.

One should become capable of playing roles and then one becomes free of roles. What is the difficulty in playing a role? The difficulty comes because you are fixed with another role and you think that that is your personality. You have been playing one role, and you have become so identified with it that the contrary role seems to be impossible. You will have to loosen yourself from the past and move into the new role.

But it is good to move into new roles. And just think – it is just a role, a game that you are playing. It is not going to be your permanent character. Just for three or four days you are in a certain role. Play it as perfectly as you can. Once you become capable of playing this role you will see that the other was also a role. Pujari is a role; Kabir also is a role. Maybe you have been playing that very long so you have forgotten and you think that that is your personality. All are personas.

Your essence has no personality. Your essence has no roles. It can play all the roles, but it has no character. That’s how inner freedom is beautiful.

So just be an actor. In one film the actor is working in one role in another film in another role. Maybe in the morning he is in one role and in the evening he is in another. He simply slips from one role to another – and there is no problem because he knows it is just acting.

The whole of life should be like that. One should be so capable of slipping out and in that nothing holds one. You will start feeling a freedom arising in you and you will start feeling your real essence. Otherwise it is always confined in a role.

So this is very good... it is going to help you tremendously. But you have to work hard. The problem is not with Pujari’s role. The problem is with the old role of Kabir. That is holding you. It goes on saying that you are Kabir, you are not Pujari. You are none! You are simply nobody.

And if you play many games, you will start feeling that you are a nobody. That’s why you can become somebody very easily. You can become anybody very easily because you are nobody. You are just a tremendous emptiness. It can take any shape, any form, but it has none.

But we get fixed, we get structured, because it becomes easier and one becomes efficient in playing the same role. You feel that you are soft; somebody feels that he is very hard. Softness and hardness don’t belong to your essence. They belong to a certain game that has been imposed on you or which you have chosen. They are just surfaces.

Go deeper into the surface and nobody is soft and nobody is hard. One simply is. That isness has to be tapped, that isness has to be reached.

So don’t make it a strained thing, because a strain will make it difficult. It will create a tension in you. For half an hour before you start Tathata, just meditate. Sit alone, close your eyes and say good-bye to Kabir and accept Pujari. Start feeling that you are Pujari. Make gestures, walk like him, sit like him. You will be tremendously surprised that you can get into that role. Say to Kabir, ‘It is only for a few days, so don’t be worried. After a few days I will be coming back. I am very grateful that you are ready to use me.’ Tell Kabir, ‘You are tired. For twenty-eight days of the month you have to work hard, so I give you two days holiday – enjoy it. Let me be Pujari for a few days.’

After two days, again sit silently for half an hour and say good-bye to Pujari. Again get back into your ordinary role of being Kabir. Thank the outgoing personality and the incoming personality. And just watch for three or four groups, and then report to me how you feel. But make it easy. It should not be done by any willpower or you will create trouble. It should be done by auto-hypnosis, not by willpower. Simply suggest it, that’s all. Do you know the difference?

When you try by willpower, you start forcing somewhere. So Kabir remains there – you never say good-bye to him – and you start becoming Pujari. Then there is a conflict, and of course Kabir starts fighting, resisting. You are divided, tense, and anguish arises. No, that is not the way. Willpower is not the way for anything.

Auto-hypnosis is the way. Auto-hypnosis means simply suggesting, that’s all; not trying to do anything. It is so easy; the suggestion works.

Emile Coue, one of the most penetrating thinkers and scientists in the world of hypnosis, found a law. He called it ‘the law of reverse effect’. If you will something, the opposite will be the result. If

you try to become something with effort, with strain, just the opposite will be the result. You will not be able to become that.

Have you watched somebody learning cycling? The whole road, sixty feet wide, is empty and the person goes and crashes against the milestone! What happens? The whole road was open, so why did he go to the milestone and crash into it ?

The man who is learning is very afraid, so he is trying to force himself by willpower. When he sees the milestone he becomes afraid that it is going to be trouble. He starts trying not to go there.

In that very effort not to go there, he forgets the whole road. His whole attention is fixed on the milestone, because you have to be aware of it if you don’t want to crash into it.

In his mind’s eye, everything else is excluded, and only the milestone is there. It produces an almost crazed state in his mind because that is the only thing he is focused on. He tries to avoid it, but somehow he is being pulled. Not that the milestone is doing something; the milestone is absolutely innocent. It is not even aware of the cyclist, but the cyclist will go towards the milestone. It would have been difficult even for a blindman to bump into it, but the cyclist has hit it with open eyes!

If you are afraid of an illness, you start avoiding it. You start thinking, ‘No, I am never going to have cancer or tuberculosis, or this and that. No, never.’ Now you are becoming focused. You are playing a dangerous game with yourself. Only tuberculosis or cancer will continuously flash into your mind, and you will avoid it. The more you avoid it and the more you want to forget it, the more you will remember it, because every time you try to forget it, you are remembering it.

There is no way to forget anything without remembering it. And every time you remember, it is emphasised, and every time you remember, you feel you have failed again; it is there. So you lose confidence. This is how you may create the whole illness out of your own mind.

Many people suffer from the law of reverse effect. What they want to do, never happens, and what they always wanted not to do, always happens. Will is not the way. Beware of willpower. To reach reality, one needs to use more persuasion, less coercion. Persuasion is the right thing.

Persuade the mind. The whole methodology of hypnosis is persuasion. A thousand and one things can happen through persuasion. You can simply persuade somebody out of his unhappiness.

Miracles are possible if you can persuade. So learn more to persuade and less to coerce. You may not be aware, but through deep hypnosis, hypnotists have come to know that the whole personality can be changed just by a small suggestion. Sometimes very strange phenomena have happened. Somebody is hypnotised and he has never known any Chinese. The hypnotist says, ‘You are Chinese and you know the language. Now speak Chinese!’ – and the person starts speaking Chinese.

Back again to his consciousness, he cannot even remember what happened. He has spoken Chinese and he never knew anything about it. How could he? But it has happened many times.

The East has an explanation for it. A man has lived many lives, in many races, in many countries. Maybe he was Chinese sometime in the past. Somewhere the seed is there; you have simply to persuade the person to take that role again, and he can become Chinese again.

In China they are working on a special method for students. For example, somebody is learning music and they hypnotise him. They say to him that he is no ordinary person, but a great musician – a Wagner, a Mozart. They give an association to the deep unconscious and say, ‘You are a great genius’ – and the man is just ordinary, mediocre. But the next day his capacity to be a musician is increased because that confidence has increased. Now deep down a great trust has arisen in himself that he is a Mozart. He does not know consciously but deep down a subtle thing has started working.

They have come to find that a person can be taught anything very easily and in a very short period. If you can hypnotise him and persuade him that he is a genius in that art – that he is not ordinary, mediocre, but very talented – then he starts taking that role.

So just persuade yourself and for the two or three days that you are in the group forget all about Kabir. Just be Pujari and even tell the people in the group to call you Pujari – and see. You will be hard and without any effort; there will be no strain. You will enjoy this trip of being Pujari. You have learned a great secret and then you can try with other personalities also.

Once you know that you are absolute freedom and that all personalities are accepted roles and nothing is fixed, you become liquid. You are not like a rock. You become like water. Then you can take any shape, any form. That’s what freedom is. Good, Kabir.

[A group member says: I enjoyed this group very much but I don’t know if I have changed or if I am any better.]

In fact never think in terms of getting better. That’s a wrong evaluation. Always think in terms of enjoying more, of making life more of a joy, more of a play, more fun.

This idea of getting better is very dangerous but it has been planted by the society – ‘Improve yourself.’ If you get that into your head, you will never be happy. These improvers are never happy because whatsoever happens, they are always thinking in terms of getting better and better and better. And there is no end to it. You can never come to a point where you can think, ‘Now the better has happened.’

Enjoy life more. Become capable of enjoying it, that’s all, and the betterment will come on its own accord; you need not worry about it. You can completely forget. Don’t make life a sort of ambition. Rather, enjoy whatsoever is available. Don’t say that ‘When I am better then I will enjoy.’ You will never enjoy. Enjoy and then you will be better – but you need not worry about it. You need not think about it. It is not worth a penny.

Whatsoever is happening in this moment, be capable of being with it – flowing, wondering, loving. Be intrigued by this moment. The next moment you will find that you have become better automatically, because a happy person becomes better. So my evaluation is totally different.

You have been taught, ‘If you become better, you will be happy.’ And my teaching is, ‘If you are happy, you will become better.’ You have been taught, ‘If you are good, you will go to heaven.’ My teaching is, ‘Be in heaven and you will be good.’

If you want to be in heaven by becoming good, you will be in hell. You will be already creating hell for yourself because you will become a condemnatory mind. You will go on condemning. You will become an enemy to yourself: ‘I am not good – not good enough.’ You will start punishing yourself, because how can a bad person be allowed to enjoy life? You will become miserable.

Enjoy life. Nobody is barring your path. Life is as available to you as it is to me. Exactly in the same proportion, life is showering its blessings on you as it is showering its blessings on me. It is just that you are not accepting it. You are looking somewhere in the future to when you are better.

Drop the future completely. Enjoy life. The future will arise out of your present. A happy moment brings another happy moment – happier. The more you taste of happiness, the more you become capable of tasting it. You become a connoisseur. You start knowing all the nuances of it.

So drop that idea of bettering yourself. That’s one of the basics of the neurotic mind. A person who is trying in any way to become better is going to become neurotic. He is neurotic. The seeds are there... the crop will follow. If you enjoy, that’s all. Don’t ask more... and more will be given to you.

If you can learn only one secret key here – that life is an art of how to enjoy more – tremendous possibilities surround you and infinite doors are ready to open for you.

You are standing there, worried, thinking how to better yourself, how to become a saint, how to become a god and how to become heavenly – and heaven is passing in front of you. This is the way to remain in hell. Drop it !

The group has been good. It has brought up something very deep inside you – this idea of getting better. This is a criminal idea. This is one of the most dangerous ideas that a person can get hooked with. Drop it immediately. It is like a disease and it can become chronic.

[A sannyasin who has been practising massage for some time, suggested to Osho that someone set up a ‘Living Love’ workshop. Osho said he should do it as it would help give him the confidence that he lacked... ]

... and there is no other way to gain it unless you do something. When you see that your work helps people to flower, and that something is happening to people, you feel tremendous, because that has become creative work. There is only one way to participate with God, and that is to be creative.

That is the whole meaning of the story of creation – that God is the creator of the world. So whenever you become a creator of anything, in a small measure you participate in God’s being. The more creative you become, the more divine you become.

The greatest creation that is possible is to help people to flower. When the gardener looks into the garden and the trees have bloomed, he feels happy. A great joy arises in his soul.

When the mother looks at the child and the child is growing and laughing, running around the house, a great joy arises in her heart. When the painter sees that his painting is complete, he stands with tremendous awe before his own creation. He cannot believe his own eyes... that it was possible that he has done this. It is unbelievable.

But the greatest creation in the world is to help another human being to flower into a spiritual being, or into a spiritual life and dimension. It will give you tremendous happiness, and it will give you a great confidence, a centring.

I would like you to start a group, but you think about it, mm?

[A sannyasin asks: if it would be possible to do Dynamic and Kundalini meditations with students... they’re sixteen seventeen-year-olds.]

Yes, do it. It succeeds with children as it succeeds with nobody else.

... Yes, perfectly good. They will enjoy it tremendously. In fact fourteen is the right age to start meditation. That is the age when sex becomes mature and life is at a very critical moment. Energy becomes available, and the girl or boy does not know what to do with it, so the only natural safety- valve is sexuality.

That is the right moment to introduce meditation, because then immediately they have another dimension also. Their energy can move higher, to higher chakras and centres, and then their sexuality will not be so much of a problem to them and they will not waste their sexual energy. They will become more loving persons, and less sexual persons.

So that is exactly the right time to introduce meditation – because they are on a great wave. You can use that wave for anything. They will never again be as energetic as they are at that time, so the later you introduce meditation, the less energy is available. People have a very stupid notion about religion – that it is something to do with old age, and that when you are going to die you have to pray or become religious and go to church or something; that it is not for young people.

It is especially for young people because it is such a great adventure, and so much energy is needed, that when you are spent, you will not be able to move more easily. It will be very very difficult and against all odds.

But a child growing into a sexual being is at the crossroads. Tremendous possibilities open. So introduce all meditations and they will be tremendously happy.

[To a sannyasin who had left the group, because she was so afraid.

Osho said not to worry about the experience, but that it had been good as an indication for him to see what type of work she needed. He suggested she do the Encounter group, as it was softer, saying... ]

You need these groups but you are afraid. If you go through them, the fear will drop. There is no other way to drop the fear, otherwise you will always carry it.

The only way to get rid of it is to pass through a situation where you think that there is some danger and then you pass through it and nothing happens. You come out of it completely open. It is finished, gone. If you are afraid of the night, go into the darkness of the night.

... I think you should try the Encounter, and if you don’t feel like it, drop out. Just tell [the groupleader] that if you start getting too frightened, he has to allow you to leave. But do your best and don’t be in a hurry to leave. If you feel that it is impossible to tolerate it, he will allow you to leave. But try.

It is better to try, because otherwise how will you get rid of this fear? Even if you do three or four days of Encounter, that will do, mm? Good.

[Osho mentioned her in the morning discourse the following day, saying that she had an overwhelming fear of madness, but that this is in everyone]

If you are too afraid of madness, you cannot be in love, you cannot meditate, you cannot pray, because all these dimensions are, in a way, mad dimensions; because you will be going beyond the normal boundary of humanity, the normal routine work-a-day world, the normal logic, reason, the so-called ‘normal’ humanity. You will be going beyond it. You will be transcending it. It will look mad.

Madness is possible in two ways: either you fall below the normal or you go above the normal. In both ways you become mad. If your madness brings you more sanity in life, then don’t be afraid. Remember, the madness that is below normal is always non-voluntaryand the madness that is

above normal is voluntary. You can do it, and because you can do it you remain the master of it.

In these meditations here, our whole effort is to give you a taste of the madness that is beyond the normal, but you remain the master. Any moment that you want to come back, you can come back. This is the indication that you don’t need any psychiatric help. This is totally different from ordinary madness. You are going on your own. And remember, if you go on your own, you will never be neurotic because you will release all possibilities of madness. You will not go on accumulating them.

Ordinarily we go on repressing them. The sannyasin who was afraid has repressed much sadness in her. Now she is afraid to do meditation. That can create trouble some day. One day the cup can be too .full and overflowing. Then she will not be able to control it. Right now is the moment to allow it, to move into catharsis, to throw it out, to act it out, so that she is cleansed of it and her system is cleansed of it. But then she interprets and fear arises.

Whenever God approaches you, you will see that you are going mad. You will vibrate with a new rhythm. Your whole body will be full of shivering, shaking. You will feel a new energy pouring into you and the energy is so tremendous and your capacity is not so much. By and by your capacity will grow. By and by, you will be able to absorb it. By and by, the shaking and trembling will disappear. By and by, you will become perfectly silent.but it takes time.

Prabhunivasa. It means abode of God, a house of God. Everybody is a house of God. In the innermost core of being, on1y He resides. God lives in every being. Every being is an abode of God. We may know Him, we may not know Him, we may have completely forgotten Him, but it is He who lives in us. We live through Him.our life is His life. That you have to start remembering.

When you feel hungry, feel as if God is feeling hungry. When you feel thirsty, feel that God is feeling thirsty. And of course you have to serve Him and arrange for food and drink. When you are feeling tired, God is feeling tired and of course He needs to go to sleep.

Just become a servant of the innermost essential being. Just serve Him whatsoever His need. By and by you will start feeling an inner light, an inner glow. Tremendous will be your enjoyment when you start feeling that. But first one has to remember. It is there – remembering helps it to become revealed. Remembering just allows you to see it. Good, Prabhunivasa.

[A group member said that he has a spinal complaint for which he has been having treatment from a mesmeriser for fifteen years. He said that for two days after each session, there was no pain but then it would return again.]

But for two days it remains alright? Then there is nothing wrong with the spine. It is just that the idea has entered very deeply into your unconscious.

If there is something wrong then mesmerism cannot do anything. But it helps. Out of almost one hundred cases, seventy-five cases will be helped because seventy-five cases are more of the mind and less of the body. There may have been something wrong in the beginning, but then the idea entered, and now it is the idea that is holding it. So through mesmerism something can be done for two or three days and the impact of the suggestion remains with you. When that withers away, again your old idea asserts itself.

So do one thing. Tonight, just put this [a handkerchief of Osho’s] under your back, and go to sleep. Don’t wash it but leave it there for seven days, and then burn it. Then tell me how things are.

Do Hypnotherapy and then later we will see. Within seven days this back trouble will be gone so there will be no need to go to the mesmeriser any more, mm?

[A sannyasin said that unless he was in Osho’s presence, he felt distrustful of people. He added that when he liked a woman, because he was not sexual. he always lost her because ‘the first sexual man who comes along takes her away’.]

About trust something has to be done, because if you can’t trust people you will miss many things in life and you will never be able to relate. And that may be the real cause why your women are taken away by other men. It may not really be sex. It may just be because deep down you cannot trust.

You think that it is because you are not very sexual, that’s why they are taken away. That’s not the point – unless a woman is really oversexual, but ordinarily it is not so. Ordinarily nobody bothers much about sex. People want love. People want trust. If it is there, there is no problem. But if it is not there, everything else may be, but it is not worth anything.

You are in the head too much, that’s why you cannot trust people. You are sceptical, doubting, thinking too much, rationalising. But you have to understand that it is your choice. If you love this, then forget about people. There is nothing to worry about. But if you miss relationshipBecause

a relationship is very nourishing. When you trust people you really live in a richer world. Maybe sometimes a few people will take advantage of your trust, but that’s nothing to be worried about. What can they take? What have you got?

Empty-handed we come and empty-handed we go. We bring nothing into the world, and we take nothing out of it. So who can cheat you? Who can deceive you? There is no one who can cheat,

no one who can be deceived. Even if they play deception, that is up to them; it is their problem. But you have to choose. You have to see it and meditate over it.

If you live without trust, you will live alone. And that aloneness cannot be real aloneness. It will be loneliness. You will miss people, because you are not yet capable of enjoying your solitude. You would like to mix with people but you mistrust so you cannot mix. Even if you mix you remain distant.

And if you are distant, who bothers? People feel offended and then they are also distant. Then you may be close physically but a great distance exists between you and others. Then it is not possible for you to love a woman.

Hitler never allowed himself to get married because he was so distrusting. Once you love a woman, it means you have to trust her. In the night she will be in your room. He was so distrustful and so suspicious. Who knows? – the woman may kill him or spy on him. She may just be playing a trick on behalf of the enemies. He never allowed himself to get married. He was in love with a few women but he was always distant. He used those women, but it was not love.

Not a single woman was allowed to sleep with him in his room. It was said that there was not a single man who was friendly towards him, or to whom he was friendly. Nobody was allowed to put his hand on Hitler’s shoulders; he wouldn’t allow that closeness. He married a woman that he had wanted to marry for at least ten years, but he married her just before he committed suicide – three hours before – because then there was no danger. Just three hours before – seeing that Berlin was bombed and that everything was lost and now there was no hope – he called a priest in the middle of the night. A priest was rushed, dragged, out of his sleep, and immediately the ceremony was done in the basement. After the ceremony, the first thing they did was to both kill themselves; they committed suicide.

There was not even a chance to love that women or to kiss her. But only then could he decide to marry, because now there was nothing to lose. So just think of such a man. What type of life must he have lived? Can you think of a more hellish life? Not a friendship, not a love, no relationship with anybody. And he was continuously afraid of shadows. He was not able to sleep well. Just a small noise and he would jump out of his bed; somebody might be going to kill him. He lived in a nightmare.

So you decide. There are two ways: either one should start enjoying one’s alonenessThen one

moves in a totally different direction. Right now I don’t think it will be possible for you.

That is possible only when you have lived with people, loved people, been enriched by them. Then, fulfilled, you say, ‘Now it is enough.’ One moves, and then solitariness has a beauty. It is solitude. Then loneliness is aloneness. You don’t miss anybody. You are so full.your own presence is so

much. You are a world unto yourself. But that happens only after much experience, much maturity.

Right now you need to go into the world, to have many experiences, good and bad, all. Many times you will be deceived, but that too is part of life. But never drop your trust. Even if you are deceived, continue to have trust in trust. Deceiving is others’ problem: don’t make it yours.

Never lose the respect for others, because only through respect is there a bridge. One man has deceived you? It is only one man. Don’t think that the whole humanity is deceptive. Two men have

deceived you? Only these two men... but humanity is a vast phenomenon. One or two men have deceived you, but don’t condemn them for the whole of their life. It may have just been a moment of deception.

The person who deceived you may right now be repenting or may be feeling bad, guilty; may be feeling that it was not good. So don’t condemn the whole man. Just say that at a certain moment he was tempted. But we are so ready to mistrust that one man deceives you and his whole life is condemned. Not only him, but the whole of humanity. One man is enough and you say that the whole of humanity is not worth trusting. This is bad mathematics.

So be a little more mathematical, and never lose your trust in trust – whatsoever happens. For a few years move in the world, in love, in friendship. Then one day you will be able to be alone also, but you have to wait for it.

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