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CHAPTER 2
To be with a master is just a device
2 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin says he is continually changing his mind about staying or going to the West: So there’s never an acceptance of the way the thing is. It’s always wanting the other, and then as soon as that possibility happens, I don’t want that either.]
One has to go through this suffering; this is part of human growth. By and by one learns that it is futile, but one always learns the hard way because one learns only by one’s own experience. A thousand and one times you will experience the stupidity of it. Only then slowly, slowly, does it penetrate into the unconscious and become an experience.
Just by passing through a certain situation, it does not become an experience. It touches you only superficially and passes by. But many times it will touch on the same track again and again and again. Hammering one day opens your deeper realm to it. Then you see it as if in a lightning flash and it is absolutely clear. In that moment something is transformed. You have experienced the stupidity of it, the futility of it, the fruitlessness of it. Then it will not bother you again.
When you are here with me, you forget your mind. That happens to everybody who is in love with me. When I am here I become more important, your mind becomes less important. That’s what love means: you love a person – the person becomes more important than you. Then I overwhelm you and your mind has no say in it, so you feel perfectly good.
One day you will learn that it has nothing to do with my presence. In fact, the basic mechanism is that whenever your mind has nothing to say, has no say, you will be at ease. This is just a device – to be with a master – to see the fact of it: if the mind is put aside even for a few seconds, you
are totally different. Then there is no misery, no dichotomy, no tension. Everything is good. You are blessed and you can bless the whole existence.
See the point of it! The master is just an excuse to put the mind aside. The basic phenomenon is that the mind is put aside; that is to be remembered.
Whenever you are able to put the mind aside you will be in the same space. Experiencing again and again that the mind only brings misery, that the mind is hell, that the mind promises heaven but never delivers it.… Mm? that’s what is happening. You are here; the mind says heaven is there. Heaven is always somewhere else; it is never here. That’s the mind trick. It says it is there, not here; it is that, not this.
The mind needs distance to function; it cannot function in the present. Whenever you are in the present you are happy.
Heaven is here, now is enough. But the mind needs distance, so it goes on putting heaven there – the further away the better. Then you reach there in the hope that you will find peace and you will find happiness and you will find this and that, but the moment you reach there, that there becomes here; it is no more there. And the mind cannot be happy in the here so it again projects onto somewhere else.
Maybe the place that you have left becomes your projection, but see what the mathematics of the mind is – that it has to project somewhere else, either in the past or in the future, but it cannot exist here. So it always postpones; the mind is a postponement, a perpetual postponement. The mind is tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, never today. But this has to be seen again and again; there is no easy way to learn it. Otherwise wisdom is always available – buddhas have always said the same thing – but it has to be learned the hard way. You will have to pass through the misery of it, you will have to be deceived by the mind.
Many millions of times you will again and again hope with the mind and again and again you will be frustrated. You will move with the mind and it will lead you into a ditch. It will again and again land you in more misery. Only out of that continuous failure will you one day see the whole point.
Then it is no more intellectual, it is not even understanding. It is your very being; the arrow has penetrated the very heart. Now it is not a proposition, not a hypothesis, not somebody’s advice, not something that you believe in, not an inference. It is your existential experience. You have seen it, it is finished! That very day ‘there’ disappears, ‘that’ disappears, and with that disappearance there is no mind: you are, only you are.
That state of no-mind comes sometimes when you are close to me. But go, there again see the game of the mind, and come back! Mm? one has to pass through that misery. It cannot be avoided, because if you avoid it, then whatsoever I am saying will always remain a belief: it will never become your own authentic understanding.
[A sannyasin says he has just split with his partner so he is feeling unsettled. Osho says it is natural to feel uprooted, but to be always moving, never static, is good. People usually die around thirty, he says, and are buried some forty years later. Never become a family man, bourgeois; avoid middle-classness like the plague!
The sannyasin then says that in the West he became more aware of unconscious conditioning of society, which seems to become stronger as he gets older. He is frightened by it.]
It is there, mm mm. It is there and it becomes stronger the older we become.
... There is no need to be frightened; just awareness is enough. Fear never helps. If you are frightened the system is winning over you, because if you are frightened there is a possibility for the system to overcome you. The very fear will make you weak.
There is no need to fear: it is a dead system – you are an alive individual.
That has to be remembered again and again, mm? One keeps forgetting, that’s natural, but if you remember it again and again that’s enough, that will do. The older you are, the more you start looking for comfort, convenience and things like that. These are the ways of the system to catch hold of you; these are the briberies of the system: that’s how it bribes people into things.
A younger person is more stubborn, a younger person is more foolish, a younger person is ready to take risks. The older you become, the more you feel that how you were living is difficult now. It is better to settle, have a wife, have children, have a small house, a car. It is enough; one should start settling. The system starts becoming powerful.
The system is never powerful on young minds... and a mind can remain young even when the body becomes old. The mind and body need not be old together. In fact the mind has no inner necessity to be old; it can remain young forever. The body has an inner necessity to be old, it cannot be young forever, but the mind can be young forever; there is no necessity for it to age. If the mind becomes old, it is just our mistake. We were not aware enough to keep it young.
So just remember: remain young! That’s the whole message of sannyas. It is anti-system, it is against establishment. Good.
[An ashram resident had left and now wished to return, and was told it was not possible yet. He said he felt like there was something basically wrong with him, maybe a negative attitude.]
Nothing is basically wrong with you; nothing is basically wrong with anybody anywhere in the world! Nothing is basically wrong... and the negative is just a shadow of the positive.
If you pay too much attention to the negative, it becomes important and then you tend to forget the positive. It is a shadow phenomenon: you walk in the sun and a shadow is created. But somebody can go on looking at your shadow and forget about you. The shadow cannot exist alone, it exists with you. That’s why it is negative: it cannot exist on its own.
The positive can exist on its own; the positive is not dependent on the shadow. You come into the house: the shadow disappears and you are still there. If the sun sets or clouds come over the sun you will be there and the shadow will disappear. The shadow was a by-product, it cannot exist on its own: it is not possible that you disappear and the shadow exists.
So the negative is never a problem; it is always with the positive. In fact it shows that the positive is there.
When a man doubts, it simply shows that he trusts! Without trust doubt cannot exist! Trust can exist without doubt, certainly, but doubt cannot exist without trust. So when somebody doubts, my whole effort is to bring to his notice that the doubt exists only because he trusts.
You need a shift in consciousness: don’t look too much at the shadow – it is meaningless – look at the positive. Get in tune with the positive. Nothing is wrong.And even this leaving the ashram has
been of great help.
Sometimes things help in such a mysterious way, sometimes curses become blessings. One just has to use the situationand you have used it very beautifully. There was no necessity to – you
could even have escaped, you could have taken it absolutely negatively but you didn’t: you remained positive.
[The soma group is present. One member said it was an incredible trip, almost like an explosion: I never experienced so much love for my parents.]
We are carrying incredible worlds within our souls, and we are not aware of them. We have the seeds of incredible experiences of love, ecstasy, but we have never allowed them to explode over our being, we have never allowed them to pulsate us. The whole effort here is to make you able to pulsate, to vibrate with your inner rhythm, with no inhibitions, with no taboos.
And the day you can feel love for your parents, you feel love for the whole existence. The day you can feel love for your parents is the day you understand that god is! God is dead because parents are dead!
Once you start feeling how grateful you are to your parentsThey have given you birth, they have
brought you in life; it is because of them you breathe, you love, you see, you hear. These green trees, those flowers, this wind – all this is possible because of your parentsThen you start feeling
a great gratitude arising towards the whole.
Psychologists say that god is a projection of your father. In a very roundabout way they are right. They use this thing as if they are condemning god – that is not true, but god is in a way related to the feeling that you have for your father, for your mother. Once you are cut from your parents you are cut from existence itself. Then you become an island; you don’t have any continuity with the totality. You are a freak, a stranger, you don’t know why you are here. There is no meaning, because meaning exists with the whole.
When you are related to your parents, you are related to the whole past. It is infinite! When you are related to your parents you start feeling related to the future too. Because if you are related to your parents, only then can you be related to your children; there is no other way.
If you are not related to your parents, how can you be related to your children? If you are cut off from your parents you will feel cut off from your children. They will be just accidental. You can tolerate them at the most but you cannot really love them.
Love exists with this continuity: in the past, the parents – in the future, the children. And when you see this continuity – that one day you were not, one day you will again be no more, but this life into
which you come and disappear continues, this ocean of life continues and you are just like a wave in it.That oceanic existence is what god is.
Primal therapy should become part of all theologies, all religions. Each temple should have it as a basic process.
There was an ancient university, Nalanda, in India – a buddhist university: never again and never before has there ever been a thing like it. Thousands of students lived residentially; it was a huge campus, of miles. There were four gates to the university and great scholars were the gate guards.
The examination before one entered into the university was taken at the gates. Mm? – sometimes for months the student had to wait outside the campus. Unless he was able to satisfy the gate guard that he was worthy enough, there was no way to enter the university. Not even a visitor was allowed to get in; even a visitor had to pass through certain examinations. Sometimes years had to pass before a student could enter!
To me, each temple should have gates where one has to pass through primal therapy. Unless one has passed through primal therapy one should not be allowed to enter into a temple, because there will be no relationship with god.
You have passed through a very beautiful experience.
[The tantra group is also present. One member says: I’m always hanging between polarities. I never know what I want; it makes me very crazy. I feel it must be related with my belly. It’s always cold, always cold. And now I’ve been crying for eight months: I’m always crying and crying.
Osho asks several questions, and checks her energy.]
Just a few things to be understood: one is that you have done enough crying. [The group leader’s] suggestion is right that crying will help; ordinarily it does – but you have done it for so long that it has become habitual. It won’t help now. If you had not done it for so long it would have helped. Mm? – it has become habitual now, it has become a rut. You can cry but it will not go deep. You know how to do it so you will do it, but it will go only so far, and it has been going that far all this time.
So for a few days stop crying completely. Instead of crying, start laughing, mm? Laughing will shake your belly more than crying; it shakes the belly more than crying. It will make the whole belly throb and will bring warmth to it.
Sometimes crying can even create coldness, because crying has become very much associated with sadness. People rarely cry when they are happy; they cry only when they are unhappy, so it has become associated with unhappiness. Unhappiness is cold, happiness is warm. People laugh when they are happy.
Laughter is going to help you right now, so stop crying completely. Whenever you feel crying comes, start laughing. Mm? – tickle yourself and start laughing. Laugh as much as you can. Laugh so much that sometimes laughter brings tears, and that will be of tremendous help. Then tears will start becoming associated with laughterand that is one of the revolutionary steps – to make tears
come out of laughter.
After one month report to me. After one month we will see whether now crying will be good; but right now laughter is good. In the morning when you get up, the first thing to do is laugh.
Just sit in your bed and start laughing for no reason at all. And really laugh so hard that you start feeling that the belly will burst: hold your belly and laugh. You will find it difficult only for two, three days, then it will become very easy – because the whole thing is so ridiculous that one starts laughing at one’s own laughter! But that is the first thing to start in the morning.
And in the night the last thing before you go to sleep, have a good laugh, mm? – that will warm your belly. It is cold, but nothing to be worried about; it will be warmed up!
[Another group member says: In the group many people told me that they love me and I was seeing that I don’t love myself enough.]
There are very few people in the world who love themselves – only very rare people – so relax! You are a normal person; very abnormal people love themselves! People don’t become aware of it, but this group has made you aware of it. You have a clear-cut intellectual understanding: that’s why it became very very crystal-clear to you that you don’t love yourself. Even others could see it, mm? It is on your face, written on your face, that you don’t love yourself. You are an honest person.
It is very rarely that people love themselves, but it is not written on their faces. They keep two books: their real book is hidden, the unreal book is on their face. You don’t have two books, you have a single book. You don’t make double entries, so it is written on your face. It is good. You are a sincere person, and with a sincere person there is a way. With the insincere there is no way.
If you recognise the fact that you don’t love yourself then there is a possibility that you can... because this is sheer stupidity not to love oneself. If you don’t love yourself then who is going to? If not you, then who? And if not now, when?
The first and the most fundamental thing is to love yourself – then others will love, they will follow, but nobody is going to break the ice if you don’t love yourself. But it is good that you have understood it.
So start loving, learn to love yourself, be more soft with yourself. You have been taught to be hard. You have tried to discipline yourself, you have tried to be in control. But it is there; it will come up.
From this moment, start loving yourself, be more tender to yourself. Don’t be hard, don’t be cruel! Give a little joy to your body, to your mind. It is your mind and you have to take care of it. It is your body; treat it as a temple. And small things make much difference.…
You take a shower every day: you can do it very unconcernedly, you can do it very lovingly. You can feel the water falling on the body. You can enjoy the feel, the freshness, the joy that comes to the body – how every cell of the body starts feeling fresh. You can enjoy it is your body: your body is feeling good. When you eat food you can just go on stuffing like a duty.…
From this moment start doing just small things, mm? and within three weeks you will see that that thing which was hidden inside has come up.
[Osho reiterates what he has said often before, that we are conditioned from an early age to love everyone – parents, siblings, teachers, priests – but not to love ourselves.]
So start loving yourself, and if somebody loves you... and there are so many people to love! There are two needs which are love needs: one is to love somebody and one is to be loved by somebody – and both are basic needs. Love is a double-edged sword: it is not only that somebody should love you; it is also that you should love somebody.
So start loving yourself, and if somebody comes and takes the initiative in loving you, feel grateful and don’t think that she or he is wrong. You are wrong, because god never creates anybody who is not worthy! Worth is intrinsic in life. You are a worthy man, you are an end unto yourself.
... Treat yourself really well. Join the music group in the night, dance, sufi dancing. Very good! The group has helped you.
[The sannyasin then says: I have been almost impotent all my life and I think that if I cleared my mind.]
Yes, it will go! Impotence is almost always a psychological phenomenon. If you don’t love yourself, what will you do with potency? It is useless! So when you don’t love yourself the body dries up.
Start loving and you will start flowing. Nothing to be worried about.
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