3

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 3

6 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I don’t want to miss while I’m here. Is there any direction or anything that you see for me ?]

The only thing that can be done is to allow, to let it happen. Positively there is nothing to be done and nothing can be done. But negatively you can do much.

It is almost as if you are sitting in the room with closed doors and the sun has risen and beautiful winds are blowing and the fragrance is carried by the winds but you are sitting in a closed room. The winds knock on the door, the sunrays knock on the door, but you are sitting in a closed room; you don’t listen. The knock is very subtle. Even if it is very gross you are too engaged, preoccupied with yourself. The sun cannot enter forcibly. It cannot coerce you. It will wait. If you open the door, it will come in.

So when I say that negatively much can be done, I mean you can let it happen, you can let it come in. You can permit it to come in. You can open the door and it will come. But if you don’t open the door, the sun will be there and yet it will not be available to you. If it is not there you cannot bring it in. That’s why I say that positively nothing can be done. But the light is there; you don’t have to produce it. The energy is there.

The total is surrounding you. You live in the totality just like a fish lives in the ocean. Nothing is to be done. You just have to open.

So in fact it is not an effort. Rather it is more like effortlessness. It is passive. You are not to be aggressive towards the whole, because the part cannot in any way conquer the whole; that’s impossible. The part can only allow the whole to overwhelm, to overflow, to pass through it from this end to the other... to fill you, the part, so that you are soaked in it. A passive effort is needed.

And you are exactly right. I am not an entity and I am not a person. Never think about me like a person or an entity but just as being symbolic. You have to learn the A-B-C of surrender with me. Once you have learned it you are on your own. Then you move in the totality. At the most I can just be a passage so you can learn how to surrender. It will be difficult for you to surrender without a symbol in the beginning. That too is possible but very very difficult and the ego can play many more tricks.

So this is all you have to do. There is no need to physically relate with me, to write letters or to come [to darshan] more often. That’s not the point at all. Just don’t allow the ego to stand between you and me, that’s all. And that you can do anywhere, in any part of the world or on any other planet, because it has something to do with you, not with me. I am just symbolic. Sitting in your room you can remember me, and the remembrance will become tremendously penetrating if the ego is not standing there, if the door is not closed.

By remembering me, by and by you will forget me and you will start remembering something which is the whole, the total. The symbol has to be forgotten, but it acts as a link.

Just today I was reading a storyAn aeroplane crashed and a young woman died, but she couldn’t

understand what had happened. It happens in many accidents; the story is significant.

When you die suddenly and you were not thinking about death, you cannot believe what has happened because you are still there. The gross body disappears but the subtle body is there, and it is exactly the same, a replica. Or it is just the other way round: the gross body is a replica of the subtle body. You go on feeling the field of energy in the same way. You see your hand – in fact more beautiful. You feel your body – in fact more alive.

So the woman couldn’t believe what had happened. The only thing that she remembered was that she was going to London, so that desire pulled her there. She hovered over London and could not believe it. She had never seen this town so beautiful; she had always thought it horrible. Now it was really tremendously beautiful – psychedelic, so many colours. Even the Thames which she had always thought of as an ugly, dirty and polluted thing and the sewerage system for the whole town, looked very beautiful.

She came to the Thames bridge but she could not see anybody. Many people were passing but she could not see them, because when you have lost your gross body you cannot see another’s gross body. It is difficult because we only see that which we are. So the bridge seemed completely empty. Houses were there but they were all empty. She was becoming a little terrified. What had happened to this town?

Then suddenly her husband passed over the bridge. She could see him because he was the only man she had ever loved and that love remained a link. Because of the love she could see the gross body of her husband. Then when she could see him, she remembered her home, her dog, her husband’s friends, and then by and by she could see more and more people. The husband functioned as a link so that by and by the whole town was repeopled.

I function for you just as a link. Through me, if surrender happens, your inner world will be peopled with the whole. It will be difficult for you to see the whole directly. Through me it will be possible. So

I am a symbol, and your surrender to me is symbolic. It is towards the whole through me. At the most I am instrumental, a bridge to be passed. Don’t make your home on me.

Everything is going well. Just remember one thing: don’t help the ego in any way. And whenever you see that the ego is too much then you can come to me, otherwise there is no need. You can come to me so that I can push it a little aside. That’s all that has to be done. Push the ego aside, open the door, and everything happens.

Nothing specifically is to be done. Rather it is a sort of undoing. Undo the ego, that’s all. Things are going well... I am happy!

[A sannyasin asked Osho if he and the woman he was living with should marry once she had obtained a divorce from her husband.]

First let the divorce happen and then come here. You are already married, so marriage is just going to be formal. You can do it later on if she wants to.

Don’t be in a hurry, because sometimes the very fact of marriage changes the quality of the relationship. People start taking each other for granted; that’s the difficulty of marriage. Without marriage you are lovers and love is more fluid, more flowing. Because you cannot take each other for granted, you have to renew your love every moment.

Once you are married, once love has become legal, once the law has entered into love, then logic has entered; economics and politics have entered love. Love is a private phenomenon between two persons and marriage is a social affair. Once society enters, it is already public.

Then there is trouble, because sooner or later you start thinking in terms of the past, not in terms of the future. Then you are a husband and she is a wife. You have certain roles and those roles become so fixed that people are forgotten; only roles remain. Then there is the responsibility of being a husband and a father, of being a wife and a mother. There are duties to perform, but the joy, the playfulness, is lost.

So don’t be in a hurry. First come here together.

[The Tathata group is present. The group leader said that he saw through the group how the harmony that comes about through conflict works.]

The whole pattern of Tathata is such that you go on forcing so that the negative surfaces. When the negative is released on the surface, the positive will be left there. You need not create it. You have simply to make way for it. The negative gone, the way is open. The negative leaves the inner space and that empty space simply attracts the positive. You are not to do anything else.

It is just as if a seed is in the earth and a rock is sitting on top of it so the seed cannot sprout. You remove the rock and immediately the seed starts sprouting. It was ready to sprout but there was no way for it; the rock was in the way. So anger, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness – all negativities are just rock-like, sitting on top of your positive seed. Remove them and the seed sprouts.

You need not worry about the seed. Your whole effort is to remove the rock – so concentrate on that. If you start thinking about the seed, your effort will be divided and you will be half-hearted in removing the rock your mind has already moved to the seed – the sprouting of it, the flower and the fragrance. You will not be total in removing the rock. If half the rock is removed, the remaining half will still be enough to destroy the seed.

Even a single drop of poison is enough to make you sad, to make you ill, to kill you. So your whole effort is to bring all the poison out of the system. Go on forcing... and that’s why I say that you have to be hard.

Softness will not be of any help. The rock won’t listen to softness. You have almost to be like a ghost haunting them. They have to be stirred so deeply that all their defense mechanisms are broken. You have to hit hard because they all have hard shells around them. Their anger is not just available. On top of the anger there is a personality, a character, a structure, that defends the anger inside. You have to be hard to destroy this structure. You have to bring them to a state of characterlessness. Then only will they reveal their reality.

And once it starts, go on pushing; don’t relax. And don’t be bothered about the positive. It will follow. Be hard!

[A group member says: I’ve been a doctor for the past ten years in Canada, working as a general practitioner and also an anesthetist. I don’t know whether to return to that or to be here.]

It is good to continue the work and to continue working on yourself side by side. It is always good to be in the world. Never be an escapist because escape is not going to help. The best arrangement is to work in the world but don’t be lost in it. Work for five or six hours and then forget all about it. Give at least two hours for your inner growth, a few hours for your relationship, love, children, friends, society.

Your profession should only be a part of life. It should not overlap into every dimension of your life, as ordinarily it does. A doctor becomes almost a twenty-four-hour doctor. He thinks about it, he talks about it. Even when he is eating he is a doctor. While he is making love to his woman, he is a doctor. Then it is a madness; it is insane.

To avoid this, people escape. Then they become twenty-four-hour sannyasins. Again they are making the same mistake – the mistake of being in anything for twenty-four hours.

My whole effort is to help you to be in the world and yet to be a sannyasin.

Of course it is more difficult because there will be more challenge and situations. It is easier to be either a doctor or a sannyasin. It will be difficult to be both because that will give you many contradictory situations. But a person grows when there are contradictory situations. In the turmoil, in that clash of the contradictions, integrity is born. You become more centred.

My suggestion is that you go back but with this decision: that you work for six or eight hours and then for the remaining sixteen hours you are not a doctor at all. Use those sixteen hours for other things: for sleep, for music, for poetry, for meditation, for love, or just fooling around.

That too is needed. If a person becomes too wise and cannot fool around, he becomes heavy, sombre, serious. He misses life.

So a wise man has to be so wise that he can allow himself a little foolishness also. That is the greatest wisdom: to use foolish-ness also as a part of life so that you can laugh – not only at others but at yourself also; so that you can play for no profit, no motive; so that you can simply relate to people for no reason whatsoever. You can do many things that are not economical, not political; things that are just for pleasure.

One should also remain a child. If you can find an old man collecting stones on the seashore, then he has understood life. If he can still enjoy collecting seashells just like a small child, with reverence and awe, full of as much wonder and surprise as if he has come across treasures, then he is really wise. He has matured.

Real maturity always retains something of childhood, and a real wise man always remains available to foolishness also.

So my suggestion is that you be here for as long as you want, and then go. Continue your profession back there as a sannyasin. Move in orange and let people laugh. You can also laugh with them.

Life should be multi-dimensional; then it is rich. A doctor is monotonous; a politician is monotonous. Just one tone, just one note, they go on repeating, repeating, repeating. So seek, discover, investigate new realms and make life as rich as possible.

Life should be of many colours, rainbow-like. All the colours should be there. One can face God only when one has become like a rainbow, with all the colours absorbed – nothing sacrificed, nothing excluded, everything included.

Whenever you can come here, come, and then go back. Later on, finally you can settle here, but here also you have to be a doctor, mm? Good!

[A group member said she had been feeling negative and closed to people. Osho suggest it was time for her to move into a relationship. She replied that she didn’t feel anything happening with anyone.]

You may not be allowing it to happen, because it seems that you are happy with the ‘no’.

That will be a difficulty – because a relationship is not something than can happen out of the blue. You have to at least help it to happen. It is not the sound that can be created by clapping one hand. Both hands are needed. If one person is unwilling deep down, he will not allow it. You can always throw the responsibility on others: that nobody is coming to you or nobody is worthwhile bothering with, and that you don’t feel for anyone so what can you do? But these things are very deeply related. If you move, you will start feeling. If you feel, you move more. They go on helping each other, and one has to start from somewhere.

My suggestion is that you find somebody. The world is full of so many beautiful persons who are available. Everybody is seeking and searching for love, so I don’t see that it cannot happen. Just be available. Be a little outgoing, available, otherwise it will not happen.

With meditation there is a deep necessity for love. They are both like wings and you cannot fly with one wing. If meditation is going well, suddenly you will see that love is missing. If love is going very well, suddenly you will see that meditation is missing. If nothing is going well, then it is okay. One settles with one’s sadness, one’s closedness. But right now, because of this group, one wing has started moving. You felt very positive in the group because meditation has worked and some catharsis has happened. Now the other wing is needed.

So seek somebody. And have you booked for other groups? [she shakes her head.] First seek a lover. Let that be your group right now, and then we will see. And when you have found him, bring him !

[A sannyasin said that she was in the middle of a law course... she would like to remain here and discontinue her studies but she did not want to upset her mother for whose sake she was studying law.]

My feeling is that one should always listen to one’s heart. No other considerations are significant.

It is your life. If you don’t want to go into law, then don’t go. Once you enter into something which you don’t like, your whole life is distracted. One can manage to persuade the mother and the father; that’s not a big thing. But if you don’t want to do it, then don’t. Do something else that you want to do.

Life is very precious. One should not waste it on formalities. This is just a formality – that your parents will be happy. And I cannot see how they can be happy if you are not; I cannot see. If you are unhappy and you don’t want to do it but are doing it as a duty, they cannot be really happy. They can be happy only if you are happy.

[She replies: My mother doesn’t feel the same.]

But that is not the point. That is her problem. If you want to finish the course, then go. But be alert. You may be simply throwing the responsibility on your mother. I want you to become responsible.

If you want to do it, go. It is better to join the studies and not to waste one year. You can come here again; that’s not a difficulty. But if it is just because of the mother and you don’t really want to do it, then I don’t think that it is necessary. Then just be here, meditate, do the groups. And when you go back, mothers can always be managed. That’s not a problem.

If you cannot manage your mother, you will be in difficulties. You will not be able to manage anything in the whole of your life. Mothers are the simplest things to manage!

[A couple ask about their relationship. He says that their love-making is explosive, but not a healthy sort of madness. This is the first time he has felt like with with a woman.

She says that she does not feel intense – more melting.]

She has touched something very deep in you. The relationship is going to be very healthy and good for you, but you will have to do a few things.

Before you move into love, just sit silently together for fifteen minutes holding each other’s hands cross-wise. Sit in darkness or in a very dim light and feel each other. Get in tune. The way to do that is to breathe together. When you exhale, she exhales; when you inhale, she inhales. Within two to three minutes you can get into it. Breathe as if you are one organism – not two bodies but one.

And look into each other’s eyes, not with an aggressive look but very softly. Take time to enjoy each other. Play with each other’s bodies.

Don’t move into love-making unless the moment arises by itself. Not that you make love, but suddenly you find yourself making love. Wait for that. If it does not come, there is no need to force it. It is good. Go to sleep; no need to make love. Wait for that moment for one, two, three days. It will come one day. And when that moment comes, love will go very deep and it will not create the madness it is creating now. It will be a very very silent, oceanic feeling. But wait for that moment; don’t force it.

It seems you have been forcing it. You have been bringing it, trying to manipulate that moment. Then you will go neurotic, because she has touched a very deep point in you, so love has to go still deeper. And there are many layers.

Gestalt psychologists say that the first layer is the cliche layer: Hello, how are you, good morning. This is the most superficial layer. Behind it, just below it, is a very repressed layer: all that you have denied to yourself – the neurotic layer. So if you go into love immediately – just saying ‘Hello, how are you?’ – and then you move, that neurotic layer will function and it will not be healthy.

It will be weird and you will feel tired and tense, and love will not be fulfilling. You will miss something.

It has not been the same for her. She has moved deeper than that layer. So you have to move more slowly and more naturally. If the moment does not arise that you naturally fall into love-making, then wait; there is no hurry. The western mind is too much in a hurry – even while making love. It is something that has to be done and finished with. That is a completely wrong attitude.

Love is something which has to be done like meditation. It is something which has to be cherished, tasted very slowly, so it suffuses deeply into your being and it becomes such a possessing experience that you are no more there. It is not that you are making love – you are love. Love becomes a bigger energy around you. It transcends you both... you are both lost in it. But for that you will have to wait.

Wait for the moment and soon you will have the knack of it. Let the energy accumulate and let it happen on its own. By and by, you will become aware when the moment arises. You will start seeing the symptoms of it. the pre-symptoms, and then there will be no difficulty.

But right now, as I see it, you don’t know the symptoms of the right moment. Somehow you are not in tune with your innermost core. That is creating the neurotic experience. But it will happen; nothing to worry about.

Love is like God – you cannot manipulate it. It happens when it happens. If it is not happening, there is nothing to be worried about. Don’t make it an ego-trip that somehow you have to make it. That is

also there in the western mind; The man thinks he has to manage somehow. If he is not managing, he is not manly enough.

This is foolish, stupid. Love is something which is transcendental. You cannot manage it. Nobody has ever managed it and those who have tried have missed all the beauty of it. Then at the most it becomes a sexual release, but all the subtle and deeper realms remain untouched. So try it, mm?

< Previous | Contents | Next >