CHAPTER 23
27 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Deva Salila.
Salila means a river and deva means divine – a divine river. And I give you this name to help you remember always that life should never be allowed to stagnate. It should always remain riverlike, flowing. Flow should be the motto. And whenever you feel that something is getting stuck, something is beginning to stagnate, then do whatsoever you can do to break it, to go beyond it, whatsoever the cost, but never surrender to stagnancy.
If one can remember this much, then the river one day reaches to the ocean. There is no other barrier: The barriers come from within us, because to be stagnant seems to be more comfortable, more secure. One is always afraid of the unknown the unfamiliar. the strange, and if one remains riverlike one is always moving into the unfamiliar.
One would like to become a pond. Then one remains in one place. It seems comfortable but it is suicidal. Even if it is inconvenient to continuously move, it is good. It is religious to remain moving. So never stay in one place and never allow any staleness to gather around you.
This name will always remind you. The very word ‘salila’ means a continuous flow, swimming, moving. In fact the river does not know where the goal is. She knows only flow; the goal is unknown. The ocean may be there or may not be there. Nobody can guarantee it but the river trusts and goes on moving. And one day trust is always fulfilled. It has never been otherwise.
In life also it is the same. One never knows what the goal is, but if you have trust, you move. If you don’t have any trust, you become stale, stagnant. If you have trust you remain unafraid, daring, courageous. If one doesn’t have trust and one is so scared that one closes one’s eyes and becomes like an ostrich, then one is closed into oneself. Then there is no ocean and no expansion.
An expansion of consciousness is the very purpose of life. The river should become the ocean. The bound must move towards the unbounded. The finite should lose itself in the infinite.
And were you in the group? [the Encounter group present this evening]
[She answers: Yes. It’s fine, but I feel stuck. I’ve been stuck and things are starting for me now.]
They will move. Just remain conscious, because when they start moving one becomes afraid. Then sometimes one even clings to miseries because they look familiar. So many people go on clinging to miseries, diseases, illnesses, a thousand and one sorts of madnesses, because they are familiar with them. At least they know them. They have lived with them long enough.
Growth is always a gamble. One has to lose that which one knows for that which one has no way to know yet. One has to lose that which one has in one’s hand for that which is not yet.
That’s why I say that religion is for those who are courageous enough to be gamblers. It is not for businessmen. A businessman is always thinking in terms of what he has. He has to protect that and, if possible, he will get more. A gambler puts all he has for something which may happen, may not happen. There is no certainty.
In real life there is no certainty, no promise, no guarantee. And that’s the beauty of it. That’s why there is so much thrill.
So don’t listen to the old. If you have become aware that you are feeling stuck – I can see it; that’s why I have given you the name – get more identified with movement, flow, streaming. And help the new to happen... just a little help, and tremendous is the possibility. And when one loses the past one loses nothing, because it is already dead and gone. It is only in your memories and nowhere else. It is just in the mind, an imprint, an image; that’s where one is stuck. It is not real. The real is always happening. That which has happened has become unreal.
The real is that which is happening right now, this very moment. Once it has happened it is unreal. But that goes on accumulating in the mind. That which has happened, the experienced, we go on accumulating; we go on treasuring our dead selves.
Then the more dead selves you have, the more difficult it is to move, to become new; the more difficult to die and resurrect. But just a little understanding – not much, just a little understanding – that that which has happened has happened.Now there is no point in clinging to it, so lose your
grip on the past.
Open your hands for the future.
There are only two types of people: people who are clinging to the past with clenched fists, and people who are open, with hands open, prayerful, waiting for the unknown to happen.
So never be of the first category. Those people go on missing whatsoever is beautiful. So never be of the clenched-fist type. Open in prayer, as flowers open, and remain open.
[A sannyasin says: I’m leaving tomorrow.… Sometimes I feel very unrooted... I feel fear with making contact with people, communicating with them... Sometimes I feel unsure in my legs, especially in my left leg.]
It is one of the most prevalent problems for the modern man. It is not only your problem. The whole of humanity is suffering from uprootedness. When you become aware of it, you will always feel that wavering in the legs, uncertainty, because the legs are really the roots of man. Through legs man is rooted in the earth.
So you have observed it exactly rightly. You have diagnosed your own problem very accurately. Half the work is already done, because once you understand a problem directly, it is already on the way to being solved. Now you have to do two or three things.
One: every morning, if you are near the sea, go to the beach and run on the sand. If you are not near the sea, then run anywhere barefooted, with no shoes on, just on the naked earth, and let there be a contact between the feet and the earth. Soon, within a few weeks, you will start feeling a great energy and strength in the legs. So running and barefooted – one thing.
Second thing: before you start running and after you have run, starting and ending, do this – stand on your feet, just six or eight inches apart, and close your eyes. Then put your whole weight first on the right foot, as if you are standing only on the right. The left is unburdened. Feel it... and then shift to the left foot. Have the whole burden on the left and relieve the right completely, as if it has nothing to do. It is just there on the earth but it has no weight on it.
Do this four or five times – feeling this shift of energy – and feel how it feels. Then try to be just in the middle, neither on the left or the right, or on both. Just in the middle, no emphasis, fifty-fifty. That fifty-fifty feeling will give you more rootedness in the earth. Start and end running with this, and it will help very much.
And the third thing: start taking deeper breaths. Your breathing must be shallow. With shallow breathing that happens – one feels uprooted. The breath must go to the very root of your being, and the root is your sex centre.
Man is born out of sex. The energy is sexual. Breathing should go and make contact with your sex energy so there is a continuous message of the sex centre by the breathing. Then you feel rooted. If your breathing is shallow and it never goes to the sex centre, then there is a gap. That gap will give you a wavering, uncertainty, confusion – not knowing who you are, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what your purpose is, why you exist... just drifting. Then you will by and by become lustless, no life – because how can life be when there is no purpose? And how can there be a purpose when you are not rooted in your own energy?
So first, grounding in the earth – which is the mother of all. Then grounding in the sex centre – which is the father of all. Once you are grounded in the earth and the sex centre, you will be completely at ease, tranquil, collected, centred, grounded. These three things. And breathe as deeply as possible. Running will help that too.
But ordinarily, sitting, if you are not doing anything, close your eyes and have deep breaths. When you breathe, let the belly function, not the chest. Let the breath go in, belly go up, exhale and belly
goes down. The whole emphasis should be on the belly, and the chest should be left. It will move a little but that will not be the basic thing. The basic thing is the belly.
So do these three things, mm? And you will be able to come back soon!
[The Encounter group leader says: When the group has been stuck for two, three or four days, there’s a temptation to use little techniques. But if the patience is there to wait, it seems to go much deeper.]
No, in the Encounter methodology you have to be a little technical and active. If you remain passive, things will happen, but it will take a very long time. Five or seven days won’t be enough. It will take a very long time. Things will happen and they will go very deep but people are so suppressive and so inhibited that they may take months.
But the very technique of Encounter groups is active – because the evil is already there; you have to bring it out. It is as if one thorn is already in your foot, so just passivity won’t do. You have to take out that thorn with another thorn. Then you can be passive. . The poison is already there. Society has done that poisoning already, so you have to suck it out. And much effort is needed.
So my suggestion is that for the first three days you can go on moving slowly, patiently. Those who can come out through passivity will come out, and on those who cannot, you have to work hard. For the remaining four days, you have to force them. If they were natural there would be no need to force them. But in fact then there would have been no need for the Encounter group itself.
The need exists because they are not natural. They have been corrupted, crippled. They have become crooked and you have to straighten them out. And they will resist effort. They will not bother about passivity at all. They will resist even your effort. They will try to protect themselves and to defend themselves, so you have to grab their defence – all their suppressed, inhibited ideas, desires – otherwise they will not come out.
People will come out who are really deeply desirous of coming out. But people who are not so desirous of it, or who are ambiguous about their desire – one part wants to come out and another part goes on repressing – they will need to be forced, cornered.
Passivity is virtue. That is the whole ideology of tao – just to be passive, just to be natural – but for that a very long time is needed. A seven-day group will not be of any use for that. Even seven years may not be enough! So in taoist monasteries where they don’t do anything active, twenty years is nothing. If a person has been meditating with taoists for twenty years, he is thought to be just an amateur.
By the time people are very aged, almost ancient, they start flowing – because the process is so passive that it does not give any fight and it does not give any enforced struggle against the inhibitions. So inhibitions have to be corroded by and by through just waiting... just waiting for years. Then they go. They go, certainly, but for that groups will not be helpful. For that the whole lifestyle has to be taoist, and that is very difficult now.
In the contemporary world the taoist cannot exist. Monasteries have disappeared even in China. Now taoists are gone – because who will support a monastery of five hundred monks just sitting
there waiting? Who is going to feed them? They appear to be exploiters. Communists have killed them. They have burned their monasteries or have made hospitals and schools out of them. They have forced taoist monks to work in the fields and in the factories.
With the modern concept it is very difficult. In ancient times it was possible because the very economics of the society was such. In India just a hundred years ago it was possible to support thousands of sannyasins. In fact, in every family you could have found one or two people who were not doing anything. But nobody was against them, because even if one person was a working member in the family – a family of thirty, forty people – that was enough. So lazy people were not condemned. And if a lazy person became religious, he was worshipped. There was no problem about it. He was almost thought to, be a great holy man.
Passivity is being completely at ease, with no goal, no effort, nothing to be done. If something happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. One has no choice about it. One is not bothered at all. Things happen but then they take a very long time.
In this modern world where speed is so valuable and time seems to be so short and people need everything immediately, it will be very difficult. It can become a lifestyle but not a group-style. In a group it will be difficult.
But I am thinking later on when people have done many groups – for example seven, eight or nine groups – then we can develop a group in which nothing is to be done and there is no leader, because the leader is not needed. It will be a ten or fifteen-day group with no leader, with no programme, with no technique. People will be just sitting there and nobody will be there to tell them what to do. They can sleep, they can take their bath, they can sit, they can dance, or whatsoever they feel like. Nobody is there to goad them.
Much will happen out of that. Sometimes tremendous happenings will bubble up, but that is possible only when one has been forced in all the groups and has come to a point where one understands one’s own responsibility.
Right now, the people you are working with are not even aware of what their responsibility is. They are looking for somebody to guide them. They have always been guided from their very childhood. They have always been told to do something or not to do something. They were never left alone. Nobody trusted them and everybody was ready to give them advice, so they have become dependent.,
If you don’t say to them to do it, they won’t, because they are waiting for somebody to say something. They are looking for a father-figure. That’s why catholics call their priests ‘father’ and they call their head priest ‘pope’. Pope means papa. They also call God ‘father’. The whole search seems to be for a father-figure – somebody who seems to be powerful, somebody who at least pretends to know, somebody who has the aura around him that he is in the know.
Then People are ready to listen to him. They are ready to follow him. They are always ready to fall in the queue. In fact, when there is nobody to say to them to do something they are at a loss, because they don’t know. They have lost their own moorings. They don’t have any heart of their own, and no conscience, no consciousness. They are simply bewildered about what to do, if you don’t tell them.
They need each detail: where to sit, how to sit, what to do and what not to do, in detail. Then too you cannot rely on them. If you don’t give them details and you don’t force them, they are irresponsible.
Passivity is wonderful when one is responsive. If you understand your responsibilities then nobody is needed to goad you because it is your life and you feel responsible. So whatsoever you want to do with it, you do. It is nobody else’s life. If you waste you waste your life. If you are creative, you are creative in your life. It is your misery, it is your blessing.
Once a person understands this, he has become mature, ripe But ordinarily people are not ripe. They are stuck somewhere in their childhood. So the groupleader is a father-figure and he has to force them, but knowing that this is just a device. Sooner or later we have to leave them to their passivity and to their own life. But you have to work and to force them.
[A group participant says: I’m not planning to do any groups after this. I’ve done many groups in Holland and also led groups.]
Everything, mm! But I don’t see that you have really participated. You may have been a participant but you have not really participated. You have done it because it was in fashion. People have done it so you have, but I don’t see that you have really participated. You may have even become a leader. That is easier than to become a participant, very much easier.
To become a guru is the easiest thing in the world. To become a disciple is very hard. So just find out if you want to do any more groups here. Anything else to say?
[The sannyasin answers: I feel that it’s very easy to be a guru and it’s very difficult to be a disciple.]
Yes, exactly so, because being a guru you need not lose anything. In fact it is so in tune with the ego that you can gain something rather than losing. The ego feels very good to lead, to advise, to order, to command. Knowledge gives the ego satisfaction such as nothing else can. So to be a guru is very easy. There is a sufi story.…
A man came to a master and said, ‘I would like to be your disciple.’ The master said, ‘Are you really ready to be a disciple?’ The man looked a little puzzled and he said, ‘Difficult to say, but I would like to know what one has to do to become a disciple.’
The master said, ‘For a few months you will have to cut wood in the forest for the ashram. Then you will have to work in the kitchen. And when you are ready – and that is not up to you to decide; it may be a few months or a few years – then I will start working on you.’
The man said, ’It seems to be a very long process and hard.
Would you help to enlighten me on one more point? This is what the disciple does. What is required of a master?’
The master said, ‘The master is required to sit here and just order people.’
Then the man said, ‘It will be better if you can make me a master. That seems to be easier.’
It is always easier, but one loses out, because once you are in the grip of the ego, you are on the wrong track. To be a disciple means to surrender the ego. To say, ‘I don’t know,’ to say, ‘I am ready to learn,’ to say, ‘My whole life up to now has been meaningless and I am ready to learn from A-B-C,’ is a great effacing One effaces oneself completely. utterly. Then one becomes a disciple.
But if you have never really been a disciple, you can never be a master. So if somebody becomes a master without having ever been in the long process of disciplehood, then he is a pseudo-master.
The long process of learning and disciplehood ripens you integrates you. Then the moment comes when you have something to impart. It is no more ego. It is just that you have so much to share that you would like to share it. But it is learned the hard way and there iS no shortcut.,
So meditate here, and find out what groups you want to do Or if you feel like asking me, you can ask what groups to do, mm? Good.
[A sannyasin said that he had at one time an explosion of anger and then of pleasure. He felt very happy about it but wondered what he could do outside the group.
Osho said the anger needed to be released and he could do the anger meditation every day]
Deep down, your anger is hooked with pleasure. In your childhood, whenever you were going to be happy, your parents or somebody else, some authorities, stopped you. You were never allowed to be happy, to enjoy yourself, and you became angry.
Naturally when a child is feeling happy and somebody says, ‘Don’t make a noise. Don’t jump. Don’t shout,’ he feels great anger arising, but you could not be angry either. How can you be angry with your father and your mother? They are powerful and you are helpless. So deep inside the pleasure was there and the anger came; they got hooked.
So now when you become angry you feel pleasure, and if you want to feel happy and pleasant, immediately you feel a certain anger arising. That has to be settled. That hooking has to be dropped, and pleasure and anger have to be disconnected. The only way to disconnect it is to go through that experience which has been stopped. It has remained incomplete in your being and it can be dangerous. It can create many sorts of diseases, so it has to be finished with.
Continue as you are in the group and, out of the group, make it a point every day – the evening is good, because by the time evening comes one has become more and more angry – just close your door, put a pillow in front of you, have a little talk. Get very heated up, say things to the pillow and then start beating. Go really mad for at least twenty minutes. You can do anything to the pillow and no karma happens out of it [laughter]. Pillows are like Buddhas; they don’t retaliate, they don’t react.
When you start feeling ripples of joy arising, just sit silently and enjoy that feeling of bliss. Once you start feeling that there is no more pleasure arising out of the anger, then stop being angry.
There is no need to continue then. Your pleasure is free.
[A group member said: In the group I’m not taking any risksI’m just crippled with fear and I hate
myself.
Osho said that he would benefit from a tougher group and recommended that he do the Aum marathon. He said that he needed to be forced so much that the fear became anger, because they were the same phenomenon, reversed – fear is negative anger, anger positive fear, and if one goes on swallowing anger, it becomes fear.
Osho said that he was afraid that if he released any anger it would be uncontrollable so he was sitting on top of it. Osho told the groupleader to work hard on him for the remainder of the group.]
... a beautiful energy is there just waiting to be tapped, just waiting to be broken. Once his life-energy starts flowing, he will flower like a lotus.
So just have compassion on him and be hard !
[A sannyasin who is pregnant says: I’m taking a few risks but I’m still holding back on some anger and my sexual energy is not really flowing. I think I’m hiding behind being pregnant, but I’m not sure.]
You are ! Just take a few more risks. Risk-taking is the only way to grow. The more you risk, the more you grow. Life is attained only at a price. Risk is the price. So if you don’t want to be only lukewarm alive, then take risks, live dangerously. There is nothing to lose because empty-handed we come, empty-handed we go.
Be ready to lose, because nothing is lost. All that belongs to you is yours; there is no way to lose it. And that which doesn’t belong to you, there is no way to keep it. It will go. Death will take everything.
So before death takes you, you should be able to play all sorts of games. And the riskier the game, the better, because it gives you a sharpness of being.
That’s why people go mountaineering. Risk... hanging between life and death one becomes very sharp. People take many types of risks. They go at high speed in their autos. A moment comes when you are nearing seventy, eighty, ninety miles per hour and each moment is dangerous. At one hundred miles per how each moment is just pure risk, but in that risky moment one feels tremendously aware. You cannot afford to be sleepy in that moment. You cannot dream – you cannot even think. Thinking stops, dreaming stops. The risk is such that you are suddenly so full of awareness. That’s why people like speed so much.
If you watch people you will see that everybody is seeking a risky sort of life in his own way. These are the only alive people. Others are already dead. They may be buried later on but they are dead.
People die near about thirty and then they are buried near about seventy or eighty. It takes fifty years for others to understand that this man is dead.
Take a few more risks !
[A newly arrived sannyasin says: I would like to know how I can serve you.]
You will be able [smiling gently]. Just the very idea creates its own reality. The idea functions like a seed. If you want to serve, you will. The very wanting is enough. In fact there is no ‘how’ to it.
Serving is a very deep phenomenon of love. There is no ‘how’ to love.
So if the idea is there, just let it be. Feel it and let it sink in deep down. The idea will find its own reality. Ideas are very potential realities. Whatsoever you are is nothing but the ideas of the past, and whatsoever you will be is nothing but your ideas of the present. Each idea becomes a seed and becomes its own crop. So just let the idea be there.
Service is a great humbleness. It is great receptivity. It is great passivity. In fact it is not an act at all, because it has no aggression in it. It is a sort of waiting. They also serve who just stand by the side and wait. They just wait, and whenever the need is there they will be called. They trust and they wait. They are ready.
This is one of the most important things to understand – that all that is good is passive, and all that is bad is very active. Evil is active virtue is very passive. If you try to make virtue active then it serves evil ends.
You can play with the words ‘devil’ and ‘god’ and much can be understood there. ‘God’ is ‘good’ but one ‘o’ is dropped. ‘Devil’ is ‘evil’ but one ‘d’ is joined to it. ‘D’ plus ‘evil’ becomes ‘devil’, ‘good’ minus ‘o’ becomes ‘god’. Something is very indicative there – that evil has something positive added to it and God has something negative deleted from it – God is good but not actively. Evil is bad but active. Evil is very positive in the world. That’s why you can see war, fight, violence, but you cannot see love.
Evil is very visible. God is very invisible. You cannot see God anywhere. There is no need to prove the devil. The devil is all too apparent. There is no need to prove that evil exists because there is so much evil, it is so obvious. But there is no way to prove God, and all the proofs that the saints have been trying are just foolish. God cannot be proved. He is so invisible, so passive.
Service is a passive quality... a deep awaiting and patience. So meditate and be more loving, mm? And you will be called.…
Premdas. It means servant of love... and that is the service of God also. Jesus says ‘God is love’, and I say ‘Love is God’. Even if we forget God completely and remember love, nothing is forgotten. And even if we go on repeating the names of God and we forget love, then nothing is remembered.
For the modern mind, the contemporary mind,.love is more relevant than God. Somehow God has become associated with wrong things – the church, the dogmas, the priests. God suffers from the effect of bad company. Love is still human, pure, innocent. Love is not theological; it is still natural. So become a servant of love.