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CHAPTER 1
Blessings on your journey to the further shore beyond darkness
1 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin says: Just that I hope to make more progress with myself. I’ve been working on myself, and I hope I get somewhere with it.It’s so joyous being here.]
You will grow every day. Just relax and meditate and sing and dance and forget the whole world! This community is to forget the whole world. Now this community is your world and nothing else exists, so get lost in it, utterly lost.
And you will growGrowth is very easy if we allow it to happen, and the way to allow it to happen is
to be joyful, cheerful. Growth happens in laughtergrowth happens in innocence. Growth happens
when you are dancing and singing. When you are moving, your spirit moves too. When you are not moving, your spirit also gets stuck.
Spiritual growth is just like a shadow: if you dance, it dances; if you become sad, it becomes sad; if you laugh, it laughs. So let laughter be your goal. Mm? – that is the virtue to be learned. Never be sad! Let there be a thousand and one reasons to be sad, but don’t be sad; find a way to be happy and to laugh. And if one is insistent, one can find something to laugh about and something to be happy for in every situation.
It is only a question of our choice. The world consists of both things: of bliss, of misery. If you want to choose bliss, it is available; it is only a question of choice. You have to just shift your awareness and it is there.
So if sometimes you find some cause to be unhappy, immediately start looking for something to be happy about; there is no reason to be unhappy, and you will always find something to be happy about. I have never seen any situation in which something cannot be found.
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There are people who can find something wrong in every situation and who will be unhappy. And there are people who will find something good in every situation and who will be grateful... and that’s what I call being religious.
The irreligious person goes on looking for the negative, for the dark, for the black side. He is negative; he lives in the no. The religious person lives in the yes. His life is nothing but a’yea- saying’; he says yes! And he always finds something or other to be happy about.
There are thorns and there are flowers – it depends on you what you are going to choose. So be careful and choose flowers.
It is going to happen... growth is going to happen!
My blessings for your journey to the further shore beyond darkness!
Prem means love and pranava means the primal sound. The mystic experience is that life consists of a subtle sound. The basic element, the basic constituent of existence is not matter, it is sound. It is not even electricity as physicists say; it is harmony. But the sound is not a word; it has no meaning, it is meaningless. It is pure music. That’s why we become thrilled so much by music. It touches something primal in our energy.
The language of music is universal – it simply goes deep into the heart. It knows no east, it knows no west, it knows no white, no black. It recognises no one as a Chinese, no one as an Indian, no one as a German. It simply goes deep into the heart; it is universal.
In fact this cuckoo (whose song is coming from somewhere in the garden) you can understand as much as another cuckoo can; it is universal. The wind passing through the trees creating a certain music is understood by everyone. If we don’t understand then the problem is with us, with our noisy mind. Once our noise settles the messages are very loud and very clear.
The whole existence speaks. Even when it is silent it speaks... even silence carries a message. The whole existence is very vocal, and the ultimate source is pranava. This is the soundless sound, the sound of silence. That’s what one has to seek and to become one with. And it is just there, close to your navel, just two inches below the navel.
So for you, my specific suggestion is that whenever you have time, just close your eyes, go into your belly. Settle just two inches below the navel, abide there, and you will attain to great joy.
The juices will start flowing, and you will feel tremendously satisfied for no reason at all; you will feel a wave of contentment continuously arising. And whenever you feel that you are distracted, disturbed, tense, just close your eyes and go back into the belly; settle there.
The West thinks that the mind is in the head, but the east has been thinking for centuries that the mind is in the belly. When the western people came across this idea for the first time, they laughed; they thought this was foolish!
Buddhist scriptures say that man thinks through the belly. They mean something else. They don’t mean the thinking that we know as thinking: they mean universal consciousness. By the mind they
don’t mean the brain. The brain is in the head but it is just an instrument in the hands of the mind, and the mind is in the belly.
Freudian analysis comes a little closer to it in the concept of the unconscious, but it is still far away.
Our existence is rooted in the belly. There we are one with the whole; it is from there that we live. So go there again and again. Whenever you feel distracted, just go – and you will be able to. Close your eyes and just settle there.
That is your centre, and by and by you will start hearing a sound. I’m not saying that you have to create this sound – it is uncreated – but by and by, the more you settle in the belly, the more you will hear a sound which is very strange.
When it happens for the first time it is unbelievable; one feels ‘Have I gone crazy or what?’ It fills you from the toes to the head; ripples of it come. It surrounds you, it overwhelms you and it is really great! You forget the whole around you. You become that sound, you pulsate with it.
That sound is very close to the sound ‘aum’... Not exactly ‘aum’ – this is just an indication of it – but very close, almost like it. That’s why ‘aum’ became one of the most important sounds in India, mm?
There have existed three religions in India: Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism. They differ in all their concepts – their philosophies are absolutely contradictory to each other, they refute each other – but about one thing they are in agreement, and that is the sound ‘aum’, because you cannot deny the existential.
That sound exists in the mohammedan ‘amin’ and the christian ‘amen’ – that ‘aum’. The sound is so subtle that you can hear it as ‘amen’, or ‘amin’ or ‘aum’, but it is the same sound; these are interpretations. That sound is called ‘pranava’.
[A sannyasin says he has a problem relating to women. Whenever something starts developing between him and a woman, part of him seems bent on destroying it: I’m just forming a big knot in here (touching his belly), you know. The energy’s just imploding and getting hard and cynical about everything, and I feel pretty stuck with it.]
Basically that is the human dilemma – every human being is in that – because half of man is still animal. Only half of man’s being has arisen above the animal, so there is a continuous conflict. One part of you wants to do this; another part wants to do that. One part wants to create; another is ready to destroy. One wants to love; another is ready to hate. One is very very kind, compassionate; another is very cruel, hard, violent, aggressive. But this is how it is, and whatsoever you choose, the other will create the trouble.
If you choose your animal part, then your human part is against it. The animal part also has a few beauties in it. It is wild, free, amoral, spontaneous. It knows no boundaries, it is unconfined. It is sheer delight in a way. If you choose it, the human part feels very very disturbed, miserable, because your spontaneity tends to become indulgence, your freedom becomes licence, your amorality tends to become immorality, your freedom becomes a danger to others. You start becoming anti-social; you can become criminal any moment.
So the human part starts being afraid; it freaks out! It starts creating trouble. It says, ‘What are you doing? Pull yourself up, control yourself, discipline yourself.’
If you follow the human part it is more civilised, more graceful, more tender, soft, delicate... it has many virtues. If you listen to it, the animal part rebels and says ‘What are you turning into just a slave? In the name of softness you are becoming lousy, dull, dead. In the name of discipline you have turned into a slave. In the name of morality you have lost all your spontaneity. In the name of society you are no more an individual! Where is your freedom? Where is your soul?’
So this is the human dilemma, mm? Don’t look at it as your personal problem; that is not the way to look at any problem. No problem is personal in a way. Each problem is everybody’s problem, more or less. A difference of degree may be there but that is not of much importance. Look at each problem as human – then it is easier to solve because then you can stand aloof. Look at it from a distance, then you are not involved personally. You can be more an observer and you can come to more impartial judgements. So don’t take it as personal; that is one of my basic approaches. Always treat a problem as universal, as human, then things are easier. Then you can look at the totality of it.
When you think ‘It is my problem’, you are too worried; in that worry, you cannot think. Worry is one of the basically destructive qualities of the mind which does not allow thinking. Worry is not thinking. Thinking is never worried; thinking is a very relaxed phenomenon. Worry is too tense; it cannot think. It moves into the same groove again and again and again. It is simply confusion gone berserk. Everything rushes in, rushes out, but there is never any conclusion. It is like a wheel that goes on moving in the same rut.
So don’t be worried about it.Look at it from a distance. It is everybody’s problem; this is how man
is. At this point, man is at the middle stage: he is no more an animal, he is not yet totally man, so there is a tension in the being. Now, this tension has to be solved but in such a way that the solution is not more dangerous than the illness itself.
So you have to choose all the qualities of the wild animal in you. They have many qualities; the wild animal is not just to be condemned. It has something very beautiful, tremendously beautiful: the spontaneity, the freedom, the wildness, the simplicity, the innocence. They have to be chosen, they have to be absorbed into a higher synthesis. And the human also has something to say.…
From the human take awareness, and from the animal take spontaneity. From the human take responsibility, from the animal take innocence. Start working on a higher synthesis then both will be satisfied and will not be at each other’s neck. Your conflict slowly, slowly, will cease, and you will come to a point where both have become a support to each other. Otherwise you can become schizophrenic, you can split in two.
Become a triangle. Right now you are only two angles; the third angle is missing. Join these two angles and the third, the higher angle. Let the lower two become the base and let there be a pyramid; the higher angle has to be created.
Love; love with responsibility and yet be wild in your love, be spontaneous in your love. I am not saying the path is going to be all roses, no. The higher your target, the more difficult is going to be the path, the more thorny will be the path; it is an uphill task.
Many people have chosen the easier way. A few have chosen to be animals; they become criminals. They fall out of society, they are the drop-outs. They don’t bother about any humanity or anything. They simply want to live and do their thing, so they are doing their thing. But they are not the real flowers. They may be carrying flowers in their hands and in their buttonholes, and they may even be called ‘the flower generation’, but they are not flowers because they have not bloomed. They are just drop-outs; they are cowards.
The word ‘hippie’ is good. It means one who has shown his hip, an escapist who has run away from the battle of life, from the challenge of life – a run-away, an escapist, a coward. These are the people; they have always been there.
Certainly the animal part has an attraction, naturally, obviously, but one never feels fulfilled with it: something goes on gnawing at your heart. You can never be at ease with the lower. You can slip into it; but again and again you will find that you are bigger than it, it cannot contain you. You have to come out of it and you feel confined too much. It is a regression.
It is as if you have become grown-up and you are still living in a child’s skin; it is a bondage. Nobody can go back; the animal is gone forever. Man cannot move backwards; the only movement possible is forwards.
If innocence is to be attained, it has to be higher, not lower than man, not lower than you are already. On some higher peak the innocence has to be attained again. Man has to become a child but not by becoming childish. Man has to become a child by becoming a saint.
So this is one – people choose the animal – but that is not my choice; that has not helped anybody. The other choice, and that too is simple and comfortable, is that people become bourgeois, mm? the middle-class bourgeois mind.
They look for comfort – a small house of their own, a car of their own, a family, children, a little prestige, holidays, radio, TV – and they are finished. They live a life of comfort, security. It is not that they are criminals; they have simply made compromises – but they have sold their souls.
I am neither for the criminal, the drop-out, nor am I for the bourgeois, because the bourgeois is missing his whole life, the joy of it. I am for a higher synthesis: one has to go beyond both these. So those who are with me are on a dangerous trip.
And it is not an easy thing; it is arduous. It is simple, but it is not easy. By simple I mean that if you understand it, it can be done, it is not impossible. But it is not easy: it will take its toll. You will have to pay the price for it, and you will have to pass through many many turmoils, many crises, many critical moments.
So don’t be worried. Take it as a challenge and not as a problem. Never think in terms of problems – always think in terms of challenges. This is a challenge!
You love a woman, and then one part of you starts destroying it. So choose something from the part that is destroying it. Choose something from that destructive part which can help love – and there is something in it: the energy, the spontaneity of the wild animal, the force of aggression. Choose that
part of it, and it will be satisfied because you have chosen something from it; you have not denied it completely.
Go on loving, become more aware and more alert, and when something starts destroying the relationship listen to it, meditate over it. What exactly is it that is trying to destroy it? What is the message? Go into it and don’t be judgemental. just go into it: what is the message? What does it want to convey?
If you really want to destroy something and it is too much, then destroy something else. There are many things to be destroyed. The destruction can be channelised: jealousy has to be destroyed, not love; possessiveness has to be destroyed, not love. If you are too much in the mood to destroy, I will give you the whole garden; there are so many weeds! Destroy the weeds – but don’t destroy the roses! Let your destructive feeling be fulfilled, let the destructive quality be employed.
So look: if you want to destroy something, then destroy! There are so many things to be destroyed. Why not fulfill that desire? But there is no need to destroy the roses; that is simply foolish.
My feeling is that you have not watched it; you have not tried to listen to the message of it, you have not allowed it to say what it wants to say. You have been pushing it away; you don’t want to listen. Then sometimes in unaware moments it catches hold of you, it possesses you, and then it destroys the roses. It will destroy the roses.…
Listen to it and put it to some job. The world needs so many things to be destroyed and demolished. Use that energy and you will be fulfilled, and it will not be destructive to the roses, to your love.
In fact, if you can enjoy jealousy, your love will flower, your love will become more and more refined. If you just remove the weeds, your roses will grow higher, the bushes will become thicker, the flowers will grow bigger, because the same soil is supporting the weeds. Remove the weeds!
[A sannyasin says he is disturbed because although much has been happening, he doesn’t feel connected to Osho.]
That too will happen – wait! Lots of things have to happen before that can happen.
[He answers: But it seems the last time that I was here I felt my connection with you was much stronger.]
Many times you will feel it and many times you will lose it – because it happens on many layers. A man is not a single layer, a man is many layers... you are many people.
On the first layer the connection happens. Then my whole work is to destroy that layer so that you can penetrate to the second layer. When that layer is destroyed, many things will happen; then that connection is gone. Again, you feel that you are not connected to me.
Now this time it will happen on a deeper level, and it will take a longer time to happen, but when it happens you will feel thrilled because then you will see that the first was nothing. But this will happen many times – nearabout seven times. Again the second layer will be destroyed, because that is the only way to reach to the third; again you will feel lost.
There are many people who unfortunately escape. When the first layer connection is broken they think that the connection is broken; now there is nothing to do – they escape. This has to be consciously understood: it will happen at least seven times.
When all the layers are gone and you have penetrated to your being, to your very core, you are connected to me forever; then there is no problem. Then ‘I’ and ‘you’ are not two: ‘I’ is ‘thou’ and ‘thou’ is ‘I’. Then there is no problem. We are one.
At that point, the whole existence is one. But before that point many times you will be joined, many times you will be disconnected. It is a constant shunting.
Nothing to be worried about.
[The sannyasin then says he was a therapist leading groups in the West. He would like to lead groups at the ashram, but is not sure if it is just an ego-trip.
Osho checks his energy.]
Everything is going perfectly well, and you can become a good therapist... but don’t make it a trip, don’t make it an ego-game. Slowly grow into it. If you try to play it as an ego-game you will be very very disturbed by it; it will be a tension on your head. Just let it grow as a hobby, slowly, by the side, unconcerned, as if it is just a play.
And wait.My feeling is that first you should start in the West. Here it will be difficult for you to start.
First start in the West; there it will be easier. Next time you come I will give you some groups to do here, but first start in the West.
Here you will find it difficult because the people who are doing groups have done so many. Here everybody is almost a therapist! So it will be difficult for you: it will make you very self-conscious. It will make you tense, and because of that tension you will not be happy. You can do it but you will not be happyand then it is pointless. If you are not happy, it is not going to help anybody.
The healer should be a very very happy person: flowing, cheerful, at ease. The therapist should be such that in his contact everybody becomes relaxed. Mm? and that is the very quality of happiness: if you are happy, people feel relaxed with you. They start opening, they open up. They have nothing to hide from you, they are not afraid of you, they don’t defend themselves.
If you are too much of a groupleader they start defending. When they start defending you become more aggressive; when you become more aggressive, they become closed. A groupleader has to be a person who is not really a leader at all – at the most a facilitator, at the most a coordinator, at the most a midwife, but not a leader. The very word ‘leader’ is political and dangerous; it is an ego-word.
You can become a therapist, the possibility is there, and I will make one out of you, but wait. Here just relax, don’t become tense about it. Next time you go to Europe, continue working there. Mm? Good!
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