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CHAPTER 3
In this community everything is allowed
3 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin who has just completed the primal group says: I feel very young and unable to be grown-up. And it frightens me... My body feels very unloose – as if it’s not me. I feel very separate from it and with what’s going on in me.]
I can see it... mm mm. The primal succeeded, that’s why you are feeling like this. The process of the primal is to bring you back to the point from where you lost track of your natural life.
For example, a boy or a girl grows up to a certain age naturally – four years old, five years old, at the most seven years old, in more primitive societies, ten, twelve years. It depends on many things – the parents, the society, the culture – but somewhere between the fourth and the fourteenth year.…
[She says: I feel about twelve.]
You feel about twelve? Exactly right! Somewhere there you lost track of your natural growth and you started growing an artificial being. That is the whole social effort; socialisation they call it. At that age, somewhere neat twelve, you became a social being; up to that moment you were a natural being. So a rift happened.
So the primal worked. You should be happy that it worked. It creates trouble, but if you can take the courage and start growing towards your natural inclination, soon the trouble will disappear and you will attain to an authentic being. And this will not take long.Consciousness can grow very fast.
Now your body is grown-up; just your consciousness is hanging behind. How old are you as far as the body is concerned?
[She replies: Thirty-two.]
Thirty-two? Mm – so there is a twenty-year gap between your being and your body, but that twenty- year gap can be covered in twenty minutes even... sometimes twenty seconds, sometimes one second. Sometimes it may take twenty years; it depends how courageous you are. If you become frightened and you start playing the old game again, then you can destroy the work that primal has done.
Be courageous! – that’s my whole idea here. Be courageous; in this community everything is allowed.
Nobody is trying to control you and nobody is imposing any goals from the outside. You will be loved as you are; you will be loved more if you are really true, so become spontaneous. Start moving, behaving like a twelve-year-old girl.
It will be embarrassing; nothing to be worried about. Start falling in love, in puppy love, again, mm? – which you missed in the past. Fulfill it, let that be completed. Become shy like a twelve-year-old girl; start fantasising and dreaming like a twelve-year-old girl. Allow it, don’t repress it any more because then you will undo the whole thing. And I can see even on your face that that child is there; in your eyes the child is there.
Your body is grown-up so the body will pull you, but you have to resist that temptation. Sometimes you will look foolish, mm? – if you behave like a twelve-year-old child you will look foolish – but nothing to be worried about: be foolish! There is nothing wrong in it; sometimes it is very very beneficial.
It is better to be foolish and true than to be untrue and wise, because ultimately truth is wisdom and untruth is stupidity. Go with truth; even if it is foolish in the beginning you will find that by and by it turns into great wisdom.
So start behaving like a twelve-year-old child. For a few days forget your age... and you will become younger. It will be greatly refreshing for your body energy, it will be a rejuvenation. Because we are as old as we think we are. If you can really trust that you are twelve, you are twelve, and the body will start behaving like a twelve-year-old’s.
There will be problems; they have to be faced. No need to hide, no need to escape from them. Be natural, spontaneous and allow all kinds of dangers. I am here to protect you, mm? Soon you will bridge the gap of that twenty years.
Once that gap is bridged, you will be back into this body, thirty-two years old, with a thirty-two-year old consciousness also. Then there will be a synchronicity between you and your body. That’s why you are feeling separate; they are falling apart, they are not together. The bridge is broken, that’s why you are feeling disconnected. They are good indications, tremendously good indications; the therapy has succeeded.
You will be connected again and really connected this time. The other connection that was there was not a real connection; it was just so-so. It was a kind of identity rather than a connection. You
were not rooted in it. How can you be rooted in it? When you are twelve years old, how can you be rooted in a thirty-year-old body? That twenty-year gap is there. You can deceive, you can pretend, you can believe, but the gap is there.
Now that gap can be bridged: the opportunity has opened up – now the wound can heal. So don’t hide that wound again. Let it be opened, allow it to be in the sun and the air, and let it heal. The connection will come but you are not to bring it. You have to simply wait.
[Osho suggests the tantra and leela groups. She says she is afraid of tantra because it feels too grown-up!]
... That’s my whole approach: whenever I see that somebody is frightened of something, I push.
If children are allowed total freedom with sex, tantra will not be needed at all. Children are more sexual than grown-up people... repressed, but more sexual. In fact their sexuality is total sexuality... and that has been one of the basic misunderstandings in the modern world. Even freud was not able to understand that point.
A child is not genital. His sexuality is total, his whole body is sexual. You see a small child sucking his thumb or toe. Sucking the toe is almost as joyful as masturbation for a small child. His whole body is genital, each cell of the body is sexual. His sexuality is not confined yet, not local yet; he is sexual all over. You tickle him from anywhere and he is sexual.
Because of this, there has been a great misunderstanding about the children: people think they are not sexual. They are not genital, that’s true. Later on the sexuality will come more and more to the genitals, will become narrowed, confined, local.
Then your head is not sexual, your hands are not sexual, your body loses its erotic quality... and that is not good! That’s why people cannot attain to a total orgasm. How can you attain to a total orgasm if your body has lost erotic qualities? You can attain to total orgasm only when the whole body functions erotically.
Women are more erotic than men – their sex is less local than man’s. Man’s sex becomes very very localised: his whole idea of sex is genital – the remaining parts of his body become dead and dull. That’s why women remain more beautiful than men, remain more alive than men, remain younger than men and live longer than men.
One of the reasons is that their sexuality still remains unconfined to the genitals – not totally unconfined, but still unconfined, more unconfined than man. They have more erotic zones in the body still alive. A woman can be as erotic in her ear lobes or in her neck as on her lips or breasts. Man is completely dead and dull. But a child, boy or girl, is completely erotic, totally erotic.
The society makes sex localised. It is afraid of that much eroticism, it is afraid of that much joy all over the body. So it helps to cripple it and forces sexuality to be in the service of generating. It is no more fun and no more joy. It is just to give birth to children.
The society is interested in the society living; it is not interested in the individual and his joy, so all so-called religions preach that you should make love to a woman only when you want to procreate.
Mahatma gandhi in India used to say that if you make love to a woman not for the specific purpose of procreation, it is adultery; you are committing a sin. Now this is absurd, patent absurdness, but this is what the popes and the saints and the so-called religious people all over the whole world have been teaching down the ages. This is a trick to transform the whole of sex and its joy, into work, to destroy its fun its humour, to destroy its delight, to reduce it to something ugly – procreation; the very word is ugly.
Yes, if a child comes out of your delight, good, but if just to create a child you make love to a woman, then it has no fun, no delight in it. You are treating the woman as a factory, you are treating yourself as a factory.
So all societies cripple sexuality; they force it down to the minimum, and that minimum is the genitals. Then the whole body becomes non-erotic – society is unafraid.
The tantric approach is to let that sexuality spread all over the body again, to let the whole body become erotic. Once the whole body becomes erotic all your activities attain to a quality of delight. You eat but you eat in a different way: your eating has a sexual joy in it. It should have! You see, but your eyes have a sexual joy in them, a sexual light in them; it should be so! You hear but your ears are erotic. Mm? – the words go in like ripples of joy. You touch, but your touch is sexual, sensuous, alive, throbbing, pulsating. Whatsoever you do becomes a joy... and life can become a celebration only when the whole body functions joyfully.
That’s what the meaning of tantra is: tantra means expansion. The very word ‘tantra’ means expansion – that which has been confined has to be expanded again.
Don’t be afraid, mm? First do tantra and then do leela. Leela will help you to be more playful.
And behave like a twelve-year-old child. You can have a small board on you saying ‘I am twelve years old. Treat me that way – don’t treat me as a grown-up’. People will enjoy it!
[The enlightenment intensive group is present. One participant, returning to the West, says she does not love her family to whom she is returning shortly. She discovered that she knows nothing – does not know what love is, what attachment is.
Osho says this is a good situation. Now her mind is a clean slate, the old building is demolished. All false distinctions have to be done away with before we can see clearly; this is the first part of the work. Then only can the second phase, of creation, begin.
And families, he says, enforce love. When you are small, your parents demand love and respect from you. You may not feel it, but you compromise between your real feelings and what is expected of you because you are dependent on them for your survival.
The sannyasin says that she is repeating exactly the same pattern with her child. Osho says of course we will repeat the same patterns – unless we ourselves change]
Passing through groups these structures are destroyed. Again you are thrown back into your childhood, again you are made available to alternatives, again you start seeing for the first time
without any prejudice. Now your life is not at stake: if you don’t love your parents, your life is not at stake. Now you can afford not to love. To understand this – that now you can afford not to love – will give you a freedom. And this very freedom can grow into love again, but that will be totally different love and it will not be a discipline. You follow me?
Now you are free to decide: if you love, you love; if you don’t love, you don’t love. And I’m not saying that if you don’t love you are committing some crime. What can you do? Love is not something that one can do. If it is there, it is there; if it is not there, it is not there, and there is no condemnation in it.
So for the first time you are capable of taking account of your life. You can see whether you love or you don’t love... now no more deception. If you don’t love, you don’t love. And don’t think that you are committing some crime or some immorality; it’s perfectly okay.
If you accept this, then love can grow.
[She says: It was actually my husband I was talking about, not my parents.]
It is okay, husband or... that doesn’t matter, that doesn’t make any difference. That too is the same game we go on playing. Because we are very very repressed, all our games are false games.
Take hold of yourself, of your freedom. There is no need to disturb anybody, because they will not be able to understand; they have not passed through the things you have. There is no need to disturb anybody – just keep this in your inner world. Become more and more alert and watch.
If love grows, allow it to grow; if it doesn’t grow, don’t be worried. But don’t force it, that’s what I am insisting on: don’t force it this time. Wait, let the right season come for love to grow. If it grows, good. And it always grows: if we can wait, if we can be patient, it always grows, because nobody can live without love. Love is such an inner necessity. It is like breathing: you cannot live without breathing, you cannot live without love.
So just wait. There may be an interval of a few days, a few weeks, and in that interval don’t say anything to anybody. On the surface go on playing the same game, but now this will be a game and you know that it is a game. Simply go on playing the game in the same way, inside go on watching. Inside you know that now you are completely...
[She says: I can even pretend that I love as long as I’m alert about it being a game.]
Pretension is not the right word then, mm? It is just a game... it is just a game. Pretension means that you have taken it seriously. This is just a game. And I am saying to continue to play the game so that you can have a little chance to grow into love. The love will come... and I’m not saying that it will come for your husband; it may come for your husband, it may not come. It may come for somebody else. I’m not saying anything about for whom it will come. One thing is certain: love will come. It is possible for your husband, maybe, for your children, for your parents, maybe not. I’m not predicting for whom it will come. I’m predicting only one thing: that it will come! Your commitment should be towards love.
It is going to come, so wait... just to give it a chance. If you start telling people then you will get disturbed, they will get disturbed. Then you will create so much misery that you may lose this space that has become available; hence I say go on playing the game.
And when you know it is a game you can play it perfectly; there is nothing serious about it. It is almost as if in a drama you are playing the role of a wife. It is just acting, not even pretending; it is different from pretending. In the pretension you are also deceived.
My feeling is it will take at least a few weeks for you to be clear, and then things will become very very authentic. You will know what love is. Once you know what love is, then you will know what attachment is, because when you know the real coin you can immediately recognise the false, not otherwise. First taste the real and the unreal is revealed.
When will you be able to come back?... because you need to be here. Something has to be done still: half is done, now the creative part has to be done.
And don’t destroy what has happened to you. Be watchful and careful about it. It is of great importance. This state where you are not certain what is what is a great beginning. Don’t again become certain in a false way. Unless certainties arise of their own accord, wait. Whatsoever it costs pay the price and wait.
[Osho reminds her to continue meditating, and suggests that it will be helpful if she maintains contact with sannyasins living near her.]
[Another group participant says: I was wondering who I was following – is it you or myself?]
Yourself... and even if meanwhile you are following me, that is only to reach to yourself. It is just as when you look in a mirror: at whom are you looking – the mirror or yourself? In a way you are looking at the mirror, but in the mirror you are looking at yourself. That’s exactly the relationship between a master and a disciple: the master is a mirror!
You are looking at me, but only to look at yourself. If you forget about looking at yourself then I am no more a mirror to you, I am just a wall; then the relationship is meaningless. Unless a mirror reflects you it is not a mirror. You surrender to me so that I can give yourself back to you.
So finally you are following yourself, mm? – I am just a ‘via media’... and that has to be remembered. I only reflect you, I throw you back on yourself. I am a mirror; that’s the only function.
If I can fulfill that, if I can make you aware of your real face, my work is finished. Then there is no need for the mirror: you know your face, the mirror can be forgotten.
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