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CHAPTER 9
12 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin actor said that in rehearsing for a play, one encountered many emotions which one had to deal with, so he felt he had been doing a similar sort of thing to what happens in groups.]
... but it is, in a way, totally different. In acting you falsify. It is not your emotion. You pretend that it is yours but deep down a gap remains. Deep down you remained uninvolved. You may be showing love to a woman, but how can you show love if you don’t have it for her? So you remain uninvolved. You just show. By and by you become efficient in pretending. The whole art of acting is pretension. You can pretend so well that sometimes the natural act may not be so impressive.
Have you heard one joke about Charlie Chaplin? To celebrate his birthday they arranged a competition. Somebody who was going to play the best Charlie Chaplin act would be given the first prize. So one hundred actors from all over the world participated in the competition. Just to play a joke, Charlie Chaplin himself participated in somebody else’s name. He was hoping that he was going to come first but he didn’t. He came second!
Reality can always be less than the pretension because when you pretend you put all your energies into it. When you are real, you are relaxed, and when you are pretending you put everything at stake. When you are real, nothing is at stake. So acting is not really similar to a therapy group. It is exactly the opposite.
In a therapy group you drop all pretensions and you allow your innermost being, whatsoever it is – good, bad, hatred, anger, greed; whatsoever it is. It is exactly the opposite... and every actor needs it.
In fact every human being needs it, but it is needed more by an actor because his whole profession is pretension. In a way it will by very difficult because by and by we become so efficient, so clever in pretending, that we completely forget who we are.
An actor is bound to get lost, because one day he is somebody, and another day he is somebody else. He goes on pretending and changing his roles, his masks, and by and by his identity is completely lost. He does not know who he really is. At the most he can remember many roles that he has played, many names that he has assumed, many phases that he has passed through. But what is his original face?
I have heard a joke. A man is sitting with his wife in the theatre where a drama is being played. The main actor is showing tremendous love to the lady. The woman says to her husband, ‘You never loved me so much.’
The husband said, ‘You don’t understand. He is paid for it! I consider that he is a great actor !’ And the wife said, ‘It is not only a question of profession. They are husband and wife in real life.’
Then the husband said, ‘It is a miracle! He is really an actor then ! If he can show so much love to his wife, he is really an actor !’
Acting is a falsification of your emotions. You are paid for it.
... Once you can reenter into your being and find out who you are, there is no harm in being an actor. It is beautiful. Continue it.
And once you know your real being, you will also become a better actor because then it is just a game. Deep down you remain a witness and you don’t get coloured by it. You retain your identity, which is beyond all roles and transcends all games, and can only be found by being a witness, never by being an actor.
I can see that much can be done. You have a very pure heart... much can be done. Just a small effort can be tremendously beneficial.
And help my work there. In your profession, also help. Now you belong to me !
[A resident sannyasin says: I have much energy which I use in talking a lot... I don’t sleep much. And the more I work, the more energy I get and I don’t know what to do with it.]
You are an active type so you have to make your activity itself your meditation. You are not a passive type, so passivity will create problems for you. You have to use your energy creatively.
Do more physical work – as much as you can. Even when there is nothing to do, walk, run, jog, and when you are doing something, move into it as totally as possible. And don’t avoid it, don’t withhold yourself. Go into it as deeply as possible and make activity your love. Soon you will have ripples of pleasure arising from your action. Whenever you are deeply in activity, suddenly you will see an orgasm spreading over your body. You will come in contact with the universe, with the cosmos, only through deep action.
In India they divide the path into three paths. One is of karma – that is action. Another is of knowledge – gyan. And the third is of bhakta – devotion, love. You belong to the first type, the path
of karma, the path of action. So remember it. Activity is going to give you much, so never avoid it. Go as deeply into it as you can. The more you go, the more energy you will get and the more capable you will become of going into it. There will be no end to your energy.
A passive type is tired immediately. He does a little thing and he is tired. He is almost always retiring, withdrawing, renouncing. That is not for you. You are still not putting your total energy into work. That remnant of energy goes on moving in the mind. If you don’t put it into physical activity it will become mental activity because that then is the only release.
These are the two possibilities: either you release energy through action, or if you don’t release it through action, it becomes a mind thing. The mind then goes on around and around and around and dissipates energy that way. That will become restlessness. Then your sleep will be restless and you will toss and turn.
Never sleep more than seven hours; six will be even better, and by and by, five. You will be fresher with less sleep because whenever your mind starts moving, that simply shows that sleep is over. The energy is available to act and you are still sleeping.
So for one month work hard and as totally as possible. That’s your meditation. Then tell me. These problems will disappear. They are very superficial, and nothing to be worried about.
[A sannyasin says: I feel happy – happier than I have ever been before.]
Very good. Now don’t lose track of it. It is very difficult to be happy and very easy to be unhappy. People almost always choose the easiest thing – and to be unhappy is very easy. It needs no talent to be unhappy. Have you watched?
To be happy is a great talent. Great intelligence, great awareness – almost a genius is needed to be happy. To be unhappy is nothing. Even stupid people are unhappy. It is nothing.
And it is very easy to be unhappy because the whole mind lives through unhappiness. If you remain happy for a longer time the mind starts disappearing, because there is no connection between happiness and the mind. Happiness is something of the beyond. That’s why the mind will create some problems sooner or later. Even when there is no problem, the mind will create them – fantasy problems, out of the blue, to make you unhappy. Once you are unhappy, the mind is happy. You are back on earth then and things start moving in the rut.
The mind is the root cause of unhappiness and whenever you are happy you are mindless. Watch a moment of tremendous happiness. Suddenly there are no thoughts. You are simply happy; not even the thought of unhappiness is there. That too you have to recapture later on. Later on you suddenly realise, ‘Ah, so I have been happy for so many minutes without any unhappiness arising, popping up!’
You recapture it only when it has passed. But in a really intense moment of happiness there is no thought. It is pure. It is completely empty of thoughts, so the mind is disturbed very much. It lives through unhappiness. It has a great investment in unhappiness.
So watch that. Once one has learned how to be happy, one should by and by start dropping habits of being unhappy. And they are simply habits, nothing else.
It is unbelievable that people are unhappy just because of habits. There is no causality for being unhappy. The world is absolutely ready to make you happy. Everything is as it should be, but somehow one goes on missing. One goes on living in one’s own cloud – dark, dismal. By and by one gets too attached to it. One almost starts liking it. In fact without it, one will feel at a loss as to what to do. People are wed to unhappiness. It is almost like a marriage unknowingly.
So you have found a track; a window has opened. Now don’t lose that track. Whenever you see that the mind is arising again with its old tricks, immediately jump out of it. Immediately do something to distract yourself. Even jogging will do. A good jerk to the body will do or slapping your face. Anything that gives a shock just a cold shower or running around the house – anything that simply changes the trend, and you will find that you have regained the track. This is only for a few days.
Once you start living in happiness, once you know the taste of it and it enters deeply into your being, there is no need then. It is simply there.
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