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‌CHAPTER 2

5 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said: I experienced something very strange after the Enlightenment Intensive group. I felt I was disconnected from myself – I was here and my body was down there. It was very scarey. I ate a sandwich and that made me feel better but it was a very strange feeling.]

The first time it happens it is always very, strange because you cannot figure out what it is. Whatsoever happens, we can figure it out only if we have had some acquaintance with the same experience in the past. But when it happens for the first time, you don’t have any past, You don’t have any knowledge about it. Or, it will be more accurate to say, you don’t have any mind about it. So when it comes, suddenly the whole mental mechanism stops. It cannot function. It is so new for it that it cannot digest it. And it scares you because whatsoever you know already is never scarey.

That’s why death is so scarey – because we don’t Know anything about it and we cannot know before it happens. That is the whole fear of death. If there were some way to know about it, to experience it a little bit, then the fear would disappear. In fact meditation is a way to experience death before it happens.

That’s what happened when you felt your body separate from yourself. For a single split moment all connection is lost. You are disconnected; no bridge exists between you and your body. It is tremendous, terrible. A terrific fear. arises.

You did well that you ate something. That is helpful, because the moment food enters the body you are reconnected to yourself. Either food or a woman who can lovingly touch you can be helpful. That will be better than food. It is food plus something more. If a woman can touch you lovingly, immediately you will be reconnected. It is through the woman, through the woman’s womb, that you become connected with the body for the first time.

If next time when it happens some woman is near you, just tell her to hold you. If that is not possible, then food is good. But sometimes it can happen that the body will not be able to take the food in. You may feel nauseous; you may feel like vomiting. That’s possible, because the body is in no mood to eat. The body is on the verge of death and you are trying to eat something. That is contradictory. Deep breathing is good because that also reconnects you.

When the child is born from the womb, the first thing that he has to do is to breathe deeply. If within three minutes he has not cried and taken a breath in he will be dead, because the body cannot exist for three minutes without breath.

So in such an experience you are unconnected, as if you are being born again. So crying, breathing, food, can be used – milk will be the best, war n milk. That again reconnects you to the mother

But try to remain in that terrific moment for a little longer. Don’t be in a hurry, because if you are you will miss many things that can happen through it. When it becomes too much and you cannot tolerate it, or you think it is almost going to be the last moment of your life, when you feel that it is going to be a death and you are so terrified that you cannot bear it, then use any device to bring yourself back to the body. If you cannot do anything else, start running and jumping.

Any activity needs you to be connected to the body. That’s why meditators all over the world have insisted that you sit silently, not moving the body – because in that unmoving state it is easier for the soul and body to separate, to disconnect. When you are doing something, it is difficult to disconnect. Action is not possible without you and your body being together, but inaction is possible.

Next time it happens, try to be in it more. There is nothing to be afraid of. It is going to be a tremendously valuable experience and by and by you will see the beauty of it. The more you taste it, the more you will desire it. Soon it will become a blessing.

Once you can remain in your body, but unconnected with it, meditation has happened. This is the first satori. Many hours may pass but you will not feel the passage of time. But this happens only when fear has disappeared and your mind has become acclimatised to the new experience and it is not too terrified by it but becomes curious. Your mind will become so interested that it wants to know more about it and the fear will become transformed into a witnessing of what has happened.

Go into it more and more, little by little, and if you start feeling that you will go mad, absorb that madness also by and by. Many people have gone mad. If they are working without a master and not knowing what to do, they land themselves in something which they cannot manage, and they can go mad. Then it is very difficult to bring them back because this madness is no ordinary madness. It is not something like a neurosis or psychosis. Psychiatry will not be of any help in it because it is not below normal mind. It is above normal mind. It is a breakthrough, not a breakdown.

But a breakthrough can be maddening. The current may be too much and your readiness not enough. You may be able only to carry a one-hundred-voltage current and it is a thousand-voltage current, so a fuse goes off or something burns.

So don’t carry it too much. Just remain alert and go into it more and more. One day if you can go through the whole of it, there will come a moment when you will feel that everything is revolving,

becoming maddening, everything becoming illogical, absurd, but you go through it; you go on witnessing. Suddenly everything is set back into place again. Again there is order and the chaos has disappeared. You have passed through madness.

This is satori: to go into madness and yet not be mad. It is risky, but everything valuable is risky.

It is like a tunnel. You pass into the darkness but you know that sooner or later you will come out of it. Just remember me whenever you are in it and go a little further into the tunnel. One day the tunnel will be finished. You will be in the open sky – and this will be a new sky, a new space that you have never known before.

[Osho asks a visitor about sannyas and he replies: There is so much in me that is not yet surrendered.]

I know... everybody has to tackle that part which is never ready to surrender. If you wait for the moment when you are ready totally, you will have to wait forever because the mind is never total. That is the very nature of the mind. It cannot be total, because whenever it is total it disappears.

Totality is the death of the mind. It is to commit suicide.

The mind exists in the tension between polar opposites. It is really a tension between contradictions. One part says do this, and another continuously says don’t do this. This is how the mind manages itself. It exists between the thesis and the antithesis and it never allows synthesis to happen.

Even if you feel sometimes that the synthesis has happened, that moment it becomes thesis and antithesis again. This is the dialectics of the mind. It has to create the opposite continuously.

If the opposite is not there, the mind simply cannot function. It is just like two pedals of a bicycle. One goes down, the other comes up; the other comes up, the first goes down. That’s how they maintain the momentum of the bicycle. Once you understand this, you have to take the jump in spite of the part that says no.

Yes is never going to be total. It has to accept the no and to absorb it. And that’s the beauty of the yes: it can also absorb the no. Then yes becomes very strong. Just think of it in this way: if there is no no in you and only yes, that yes will be impotent. It will have no energy because it will have no challenge. If the yes is there in spite of the no, then it is powerful; there is energy.

Never try to kill the no otherwise you will1 lose all energy. You will lose all zest, enthusiasm, all possibility to grow. The yes has not to be total – in a certain way it has to absorb the no also. It has to understand the no – to feel it, listen to it and absorb it, because nobody can live in a no. One has to live with a yes, because yes means life and no means death.

But one can use the no to define the yes. Then it is beautiful. It becomes like a field and a figure; it becomes a gestalt. The no becomes the field, the darkness, and the yes becomes like a lamp, a flame – the figure. The no is no longer against it. In fact it enhances it, so it gives a contrast; it gives it life.

That’s why in the night the stars are so beautiful. In the day they disappear because there is only light and the background is not there.

So I would not like a total surrender, because that will be a dead surrender. I would like a surrender which is not total but very creative, which will use the no in defining the yes. Then you will have a more beautiful vision. And you will never be against yourself. Otherwise you will always be trying to drop this no-part – and that is you !

That’s how all the religions have crippled humanity. They make something the enemy. Sometimes they say sex is the enemy, and then people try to drop sex. Sometimes they say love is the enemy, and then people try to become unloving, cold, because love brings attachment. Sometimes they demand total surrender. Then what will you do with your no-part which is very active, throbbing and kicking? This is what gives you life.

Never try to drop it; rather, try to use it in a higher synthesis. Try to use it in a greater creativity. Make it part of a higher harmony, because it is needed in the orchestra; it gives contrast. So when you surrender in spite of the no, surrender is more alive. And that is the only way to surrender.

If somebody waits until they feel total they will find it never happens, because totality is just an ideal; it is never actual. It can never be actual, because the moment it becomes actual you will drop dead.

That’s why in the East we say that whenever a person has become a totality, this is his last life. He will never be coming back again because he has attained to ultimate death. That is what nirvana is. Buddha will not come back because he has come to such a total synthesis that now nothing is lacking. Perfection is death. He will have to disappear.

This world exists for the imperfect. This world exists in dialectics.

So don’t try, otherwise that will be a suppression. Accept that no-part. I accept it. When I give sannyas to people I know, and I am not in any way befooled that their surrender is total. They are taking a risk. Maybe at the most fifty-one percent of their being is saying yes and forty-nine percent is saying no; that’s enough. I say that’s enough. There is no need for ninety-nine or one hundred percent. That type of purity is impossible.

[The Vipassana group is present. The group leader said they had been trying unsuccessfully to do something about people’s posture. The photographer had taken photos of the group and when people saw them they became more aware of their posture. He asks if they should do that in each group.]

No, no need. It may be helpful but it will be against the Vipassana mood, which is that the person should rely on his own inner feelings.

Even a mirror can deceive. In fact when your photograph is being taken, even that can change you. It is very difficult to take a photograph which is natural. When you go to the mirror you are not the same person, and when you look into it you are not the same person. There is a very subtle change, because you can observe yourself, and the observation changes the observer. You start being deceptive; you start looking the way you are not. You can manipulate yourself.

That’s why the mirror is loved so much. It helps you to manipulate your own body. But it is looking at yourself from the outside, and the whole Vipassana attitude is to feel yourself from the inside. This is an extrovert thing.

So it is better to tell them and to let them see from inside how they are sitting, how the body is feeling, what the body language is saying, where there is pressure or tension, whether they are relaxed or not. Teach them to feel from within.

In fact buddhist monks are not allowed to look in the mirror, because to look in the mirror means that you are preparing for others.

You are taking a bath and suddenly you become aware that somebody is watching from the keyhole. You are not the same person any more; you have changed. We live through reflections – and a photograph is a reflection.

[The group leader then said that in every group a couple of people found their attention drawn to the third eye.]

This will happen to one or two percent of people. Whenever it happens, tell the person to do this. [The group assistant] can do it. Tell the person to make the concentration on the third eye as tense as possible and then press the third eye for one or two minutes. So tell him to bring it to as focused a point as possible so that the whole body becomes intent upon it, and then tell him suddenly to relax.

If the person notices it happening every day, then do it every day and it will help tremendously – particularly for a person who feels the energy rising there.

Every person is different in many ways. For example, in his past life [this sannyasin] has done some meditation which works on the third-eye centre, and has done it very very deeply. Whatsoever you have done in the past, it will start functioning again if the right opportunity arises. His third eye can be easily opened.

But only do this if somebody comments that it is happening to them. The same thing can happen at other centres also. If somebody feels a very intense tension in the navel, then do the same with the navel. It will be felt at these two centres more.

[The group leader asks if there is a connection between the third eye and the hara.]

Yes, there is a connection. These are the two poles and they are both deeply related. There are two types of persons. More will feel tension at the navel than at the third eye.

The yogic analysis divides persons into two types: the navel type and the third-eye type. There are more navel types, because the third eye starts functioning only when somebody has been working on it. The natural functioning is at the navel.

[A member of the Vipassana group said she went very deep and was afraid of losing this if she goes out towards people and activity.]

This difficulty arises, but don’t create any conflict or any duality. Don’t think of these two things as being inimical to each other; they are not. But if you start thinking in that way – that getting lost is against that space that sometimes you come to feel and live in – then you will create very great anxieties for yourself. And that anxiety will be just your wrong interpretation.

Being lost is part of the rhythm. The more lost you are, the deeper you will come back to yourself. The space will be more empty, more deep, if you move further away. So go out as far as you can – then you will go in as far as it is possible. This is always in proportion. If you go three feet outside, you go three feet in. If you go three miles out, you go three miles in. If you go out to the farthest corner of existence, you go to the innermost core of your being.

This is one of the basic things I want to contribute. Religions have always created trouble because they think that if you go out too much, you become incapable of coming in or you may be lost. So one becomes afraid and goes on avoiding people, relationships, work. One starts condemning all that is extrovert, worldly, this-worldly. One starts keeping oneself in one’s inner space. You can remain there but the inner space will remain very shallow because the pendulum has to swing both ways.

If you want the pendulum to stay always at the left, sooner or later you will not be able to even keep it there, because when it goes to the right, then it comes to the left. The bigger the swing the better. So be a swinger !

[Osho said that through moving into opposites, depth would come more easily. He said that if you practice sleeping the whole day so that you sleep better at night, you will find that you cannot sleep at all.

Sleep comes more easily and will be deeper if one has gone as totally as possible to the other polarity of work.

Osho said that this fear of losing oneself in the external world came to everyone who had gone inwards deeply, but that outer things should not be regarded as distractions.]

Nothing is a distraction: this is my message. Every distracting factor has to be used in a creative way.

So when you are lost, be so lost that when you come home you really come home. And never create any conflict with any rhythm of life. All rhythms only appear opposite, but they are complementaries – yin and yang, male and female energies, outer and inner.

So, good... your growth has been going very smoothly in the time that you have been here.

[A group member says: It went very deep for me. Now I feel like going inside rather than going out with people. Is that right for me?]

Yes, right now it will be good. This is not going to be a permanent thing but right now something is coming up. The more time you give to the inside, the better. After a few days you will be free to move; This is just a transit period. Right now you will be helped more if you don’t mix with people too much.

And continue &zen either in the group or alone. When you feel that there is no problem and that you can move and meet with people, can move into relationships, then don’t avoid, move.

It is just as when somebody has been ill and is recuperating. He needs rest, more rest than ordinarily. Something new is coming up and it is very fragile. If you move in the world, it may be disturbed. When you become certain of it, when you feel that you possess it, and when you can go into the world and come back home again and there is no trouble, then move and do whatsoever you like.

[Another group member said that she found her stomach had become very distended with air and that it had happened when she was breathing shallowly.

Osho suggested that Rolfing (Structural Integration) would be helpful as, like many people, she had learned to breathe shallowly since childhood in an attempt to control feelings. By doing this, an air-strip is formed just near the diaphragm, so the body becomes divided.

Osho has talked about the benefit of working through both groups and Rolfing. Once patterns have been identified and dropped from the mind, they often need to be worked on at a bodily level too. Osho said shallow breathing had become a habit.]

Now it has entered into your musculature. Rolfing will help tremendously. And tell [the Rolfer] to be hard because that is the only way the musculature can be changed. It is a whole life’s structure and it will be painful, but allow it.

And after ten sessions, when you have started breathing naturally, for at least twenty-one days continuously remember to breathe naturally – otherwise you can fall back into the old pattern. After twenty-one days you will never fall into the old gap because you will have such a flowing life. The whole body will be vibrating.

[A group member says: I’ve been feeling a lot of emotions of a man and child, but I noticed I don’t feel the emotions of a woman.]

There is nothing to be worried about. The emotions of the child will soon become the emotions of the woman; just wait. You have repressed the woman so much that it cannot surface directly. It is surfacing through the child.

Have you watched that whenever you love a woman, you start calling her names that indicate childhood – ‘baby’? The face of a woman is more like that of a child and it retains that childhood to the Very end. It has no beard or moustache and is more soft, more like a child, than anybody else.

You have repressed the woman part so deeply that the woman cannot face you directly now. It is coming via media now; it is coming from the child. The child is the woman. Soon you will see a change coming and the child will turn into a woman.

Women are childish – that’s their beauty and their aliveness. A real woman never matures, in a way. She remains and retains something of the virginity, the purity and innocence of the child. Once a woman becomes mature, her face starts becoming ugly. She becomes cunning and clever.

So this child is just a symbol. When the unconscious is repressed too much, it can communicate only through symbols. For example in a dream, if you want to kill your father, you will kill your uncle, not your father – because the uncle looks like the father but is not. To kill the father even in a dream is difficult, so you kill the uncle.

Our censor has gone so deep and we have repressed so much that even the unconscious mind has to take some garb, some mask. Otherwise, even in your dream your hand will be slapped. What are you doing? Killing your father? That is the most criminal act in the world !

All societies think that patricide – the murder of the father – is the worst crime that a man can commit. Why do all the societies have that idea? There is a possibility that if people were allowed, many children would like to kill their father. That idea arises naturally because the father tries to discipline you, to prohibit you, to order you – so he looks like the enemy. It is very difficult for any child not to think of killing the father. You grow up, but the idea remains inside.

Certainly patricide is one of the most criminal acts, because the father has given birth to you and you kill him. He gives you life and you give him death.

[Osho said that as a child, if one is a boy one is condemned for doing anything girlish, so that attitude of condemnation becomes part of one in growing up and the feminine side of one becomes more and more repressed... ]

So a part suffers, because a man and a woman are each both man and woman. That part is trying to communicate to you. It is afraid that you may not accept it as a woman so it has taken the garb of a child. Accept it, allow it.

The more you allow these emotions, the sooner will the day come when the child has disappeared and the woman has come in. That will be a great experience, a satori – when your inner woman and man meet and you become, for the first time, indivisible. Right now you are divided into two parts. When they meet and there is an inner orgasm of these two energies, you become one, indivisible, undivided.

So allow it. It has been very good.

[A sannyasin said that during the group she had felt different sensations in the left and right sides of her head, and felt like she was going mad. Osho checked her energy.]

You can sit silently by yourself and press your own eyes. Press the eyeballs until you start seeing lights. Don’t hurt the eyes too much; a little hurt is allowed. Just go on watching those lights.

That will settle many things. Do this for four or five minutes – pressing the eyes – and then relax for five minutes, then again press them. Do this for forty minutes and then just splash cool water over them. Close your eyes and feel the coolness.

Do this for fifteen days and then tell me. Both your minds are functioning separately. Everybody’s does this, but when meditation hits you deeply, the separation and the difference become exaggerated.

This exercise will settle many things in the brain and you will feel very collected and sane. Then I will give you a meditation.

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