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CHAPTER 11
29 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[To a visitor]
One thing has always to be remembered – that we are not to control the energy. We are just to help it wherever it is moving. We are not to direct it into a certain direction. We are just to help it wherever it is going. We have to go with it. Ordinarily the mind tries to control. It tries to give direction, it tries to give a discipline, it has some ideals to force on the energy. Those ideals are the most dangerous things; that’s what has created so much misery in the world.
My whole effort is to make you natural, spontaneous, and to let the energy control you, not vice versa. It is not you, your mind, that has to control the energy – it is the energy that has to control you, the energy has to possess you.
[Osho recommended that she do the Tao and Tathata groups, saying that they would help her to relax into the energy.]
Energy has its own way if we don’t hinder it. If we don’t create any obstruction, then each man and each woman is bound to become a god. Nobody can prevent them, but we can prevent if we hinder.
So the whole point here is how to become natural, flowing, and to move with the energy, not knowing at all where it is leading you. Trust the energy and go with it. Never trust the mind and always trust your inner energy. The mind is the culprit, the criminal. So all these groups here are just a help to destroy the mind and to help you to have a glimpse of your spontaneity.
Tathata means suchness, spontaneity; that is the first group you have to do. And the second group is Tao; Tao means the ultimate law of life. Once you relax, the ultimate law starts functioning. If you are tense, you hinder its functioning.
Anand means bliss and medha means intelligence. And these two words are going to be very very important for you. The more intelligent you become, the more blissful you become. Or the more blissful you become. the more intelligent you become.
But by intelligence I don’t mean intellect. Intellect is of the head. Intelligence is of your total being. Intelligence is wisdom, it is not knowledge. Intellect is knowledge, intellect is just a continuous accumulation of information. Intelligence is just the opposite of intellect: intelligence means not to accumulate and not to function from the past, not to function through the accumulated knowledge, but to function out of one’s centre... to function as a response, not as a reaction.
For example somebody asks you, ‘What is love?’ You can answer in two ways. One is the answer of the intellect. You have studied, you have read about love; you have heard people talk about love. You may have even experienced something like love in your past so you carry that experience, that imprint, that impression, that memory, and you answer according to your past learning, studies, reading, experience. Then it is from the intellect.
But somebody may ask you, ‘What is love?’ and you simply remain in an emptiness, and you don’t allow your past to come in and answer for you. You simply remain in that moment, and you allow the question to penetrate your heart, and a response arises. That response will not only surprise others, it will surprise you also because it will be new for you too.
Whatsoever comes from the intellect is repetitive; you already know it so you are repeating it in a mechanical way. When something comes out of intelligence, it is so new that even for the person from whose centre it is coming, it is a surprise. So just try to be more intelligent and less and less intellectual.
Somebody asks you, ‘Is there God?’ You answer according to your conditioning – you have been taught from your childhood that there is a god or there is no god. You repeat the answer that has been put in your mind – then it is intellectual, it has no intelligence in it.
Intellect is very mediocre; in fact stupid. All machines are stupid, they cannot be intelligent – and the mind is a machine. But if you listen to the question, ‘Does God exist?’ and you listen to the question as if it has been asked for the first time, you don’t know any answer and you remain silent, then out of that silence comes an answer. Nobody knows what it can be. Even you may be surprised. Or if no answer comes, the intelligent person will say, ‘I don’t know.’ The intellectual person will never say, ‘I don’t know.’ He will always try to prove that he knows; whether he knows or not, that is not the point.
The intellect is very egoistic. It cannot concede any ignorance. It cannot agree that it does not know. It goes on formulating false answers, pseudo answers. Out of one hundred questions, for ninety percent the intelligent person will say, ‘I don’t know,’ and to the remaining ten percent he will respond. But that response will be absolutely new. It will be a virgin response. That’s what the word ‘medha’ means. It is one of the most beautiful words.
And ‘anand’ means bliss. A person who is intelligent is bound to be blissful. It is our stupidity that creates misery, it is our foolishness that creates pain, it is our foolishness that makes us sad. An intelligent person is never sad. Even if there is a situation where sadness seems to be just natural,
even then he will find a way to go beyond it. That’s what intelligence is – an effort to find ways and means to go beyond misery, to go beyond sadness, to go beyond anguish, anxiety, depression.
And this is my feeling – that’s why I am giving you the name – you look a little sad. Your energy seems stuck somewhere. not flowing. So I am giving you this name so it helps to remind you. So drop all the knowledge that you have been carrying – it is useless, junk; no need to carry any knowledge. While you are here it is better to be childlike and ignorant; then you can learn. Out of ignorance a person can learn – out of knowledge, nobody ever learns. The biggest fools in the world are the people who are knowledgeable.
So just put aside your mind for these six months. If you really want to be with me, and if you really want me to transform your being, an utter transformation is possible. And I am not interested in change – my whole interest is in transformation. Change means that you remain the same – just a little more polished, a little more decorated; transformation means a break with the past, a discontinuity.
In these six months you can die and be reborn. My effort will be that. If you cooperate with me it will be possible. So just put aside all your knowledge and be here like a small child who knows nothing. Then tremendous is the possibility of learning.
And the second thing: remember not to get into old ruts of sadness, depression, anxiety. Whenever you feel that something is getting sad, jump out of it. It is just an old habit, so don’t allow it to catch hold of you again and again. Dance, sing, mix with sannyasins. Become more flowing. It will take at least two or three weeks, and in that two or three weeks both things will start happening – intelligence and bliss.
[A recently-arrived sannyasin says: I’m still hanging on to the idea of going back after six months, but I feel that’s just security. I could stay indefinitely.]
Mm, mm. So just be here for six months and we will see, mm? Six months is a long time. Nobody knows what is going to happen – and it is good that nobody knows, otherwise life would lose all zest and all charm. The next moment is so unknown that there is no possibility of predicting it. That’s why life remains so beautiful.
And it never goes according to you – that is the tremendous, beautiful thing about life. Whatsoever you plan is not going to happen; you can be certain about that. Life has its own ways, and we unnecessarily start struggling with it. When we say man proposes, God disposes, in fact just the reverse is the case – God proposes and man goes on disposing.
Because we cannot hear the still, small voice and we cannot decode the language of God that goes on signalling, we go on making our own plans – and life has its own destiny. Whenever your plan and life’s plan clash, you are going to be defeated – and that’s how it should be; it is perfectly okay.
So whenever by coincidence your plan and life’s plan coincide, then you see that things are happening according to you, but they are never happening according to you. It is only accidental that your plan coincides with life. Sometimes it coincides, sometimes it doesn’t. When it coincides, you start succeeding. When it does not you start failing and being frustrated.
Once you understand that it is always life that succeeds, there is no problem. Then one simply surrenders – that’s what trust is. It is not to trust in some concept, some idea, some god somewhere in heaven – a christian god or a hindu god. It has nothing to do with that. Trust is simply in this life. And when I say life, I don’t mean life with a capital ‘L’ – lower case will do... just the ordinary life.
So just relax with this ordinary life here, and then whatsoever happens is good. Never propose and then God will never dispose. Good.
[At a previous darshan (see ‘The Passion For The Impossible’, September 1 st), Osho had advised a couple to work on their relationship. The woman was jealous about the man being with other women. Now they report back to Osho.
The woman says that before her energy was more with her man, now it is moving outside more... I’m afraid of becoming attracted to other people.]
There is nothing wrong in that – it is better than jealousy. It is better than jealousy, because there is nothing worse than jealousy: it is the worst poison. So do whatsoever you want to do but never be jealous.
And this is one of the feminine tricks: they concentrate on one man, and they concentrate only to be jealous. So when I say to drop jealousy, then there is no point in concentrating on [your man]. The whole point was that you were enjoying the jealousy and the misery that was being created out of it for you and for him; now there is no point. You were in such a great love – you were thinking it was love, that’s why you were feeling jealousy.
What I am trying to show you is that it is not love that feels jealousy. So when you drop jealousy and even love is disappearing... Just see what is happening. You were thinking it is because of love that the jealousy is there, and he was thinking that if the jealousy is dropped, your love will become pure. And see what actually happens – you drop jealousy and love disappears. So your love was just a garb for your jealousy, a trick to be jealous. And that’s why you were not looking at other men, because if you look at other men you cannot torture him. Then you cannot say, ‘Why do you look at other women...?’ because you yourself do it. Women play that trick perfectly.
They will never look at any other man so you cannot find fault with them, you cannot find any flaw. [Your man] cannot say, ‘... you look at other people,’ so you can torture him. He is simply in your hands because he sometimes talks with a woman or laughs with a woman. So you can torture him and he feels guilty, you can create much guilt in him.
This trick has been so ancient that it has destroyed much in humanity. If you want to torture a man, you have to be almost a saint; only then can you torture. That’s why saints can torture more than anyone else, because they are so good, you cannot find any fault. Their very goodness creates guilt in you. And women have been very saintly. They pretend to be saintly, but in their saintliness, deep down is a very violent, aggressive attitude.
I wanted you to see it because to see it is to get out of this whole nonsense, is to go beyond all this stupidity. Now when I say to drop your jealousy. the whole point is lost; the game is no more meaningful. Then why go on loving only [your boyfriend]? Start looking elsewhere.
Try to understand what is happening inside you. This way you will never be able to find love. You will get attached to another man and you will start torturing him. Either you will torture a man or you will become driftwood.
This is something – try to understand it: either a woman becomes saintly or she becomes a prostitute... as if there were no middle course. And. as far as I can see, both are two aspects of the same coin. If you love the man, drop jealousy and put your whole energy that is released by it into love; because jealousy is taking so much energy – put that energy into love.
Looking at everybody is not going to give you any depth of being. I’m not saying to cling to [him]. If you feel there is no love, be finished. The sooner you finish, the better; why waste time? But you will repeat the same thing with everybody else. You can go on repeating it your whole life and you will always feel miserable, because unless love happens, unless deep intimacy happens, a man is never content. For a woman particularly, it is impossible to feel happy unless she has a shelter of love, unless she can trust in a man, and unless she can feel that a man trusts in her. A woman is very fragile – she needs somebody to support her, to protect her – a woman is like a flower.
So first I told you to drop your jealousy. Now I tell you the second step – to love him as deeply as possible and not to start fooling around. This is a chance. You have done one thing – half the work is done – you dropped jealousy. Now if you miss, the whole point is lost. Dropping jealousy is not going to help, if with jealousy you have also dropped your love.
So for one month try another thing. This will be a great experiment for your life: now love him without jealousy. And this is not the time to wander around and to become a vagabond. Jealousy is dropped, the energy is there – now pour it into love, and something of a very different quality will arise in you. So for one month at least simply forget that anybody else exists in the world – only [him]. Pour your love into him and watch, because the moment you start pouring love, jealousy may come again. That has to be watched – that’s the whole work to be done: love has to be taken beyond jealousy. The jealousy has to be dropped, discriminated from – love has to be made pure of jealousy.
So you can do both things very easily: either you can love him and be jealous, or you can drop both. Both are easy and simple. In both ways you will not be growing. What I am insisting on is to drop jealousy and to go on loving. At least for one month give it a try. You will not lose anything by giving it a try and you will gain much.
This is a great chance to grow – love brings the greatest situations for growth. You have done one thing very well – you tried to drop jealousy. But now you are falling into another error. Do you follow me?
[To the man] Help her, mm? Help her, because she has done something beautiful. But it is natural when jealousy is dropped that immediately love starts disappearing. That is one of the dilemmas.
So help her and don’t give her a chance to bring back her jealousy. Don’t give her a chance to look for love with somebody else. For one month at least, give your total love to her. This can be something meaningful, very meaningful for you both.
[The Tao group is present. One group member says: The group was really wonderful. I still feel I’m not flowing as much as I could be, but I’m ready for the next!]
Things are happening, but the mind can always imagine more and can always feel miserable because more could have happened. So drop that ‘more’. It is an obsession, because you can never come to a point where you cannot imagine more. Even if God is standing before you, you can always imagine more.
Imagination has no limit – and more is unlimited. So if a person really wants to be happy, he has to drop this constant hankering for more, otherwise he will always find himself miserable. Much will happen, but one will remain miserable because that more will always be there. Imagination is very creative, but it can be very dangerous also. It is a double-edged sword. You can use imagination in a tremendously creative way, and you can use imagination in a destructive way also.
This is a destructive use if you start thinking about more – then whatsoever happens leaves you unsatisfied, discontent, because you are always comparing it with something more. And comparatively you are always a loser – so become a gainer; drop that.
Start thinking that it was possible that even this may not have happened. Less was also possible, and if less had happened, there would have been no way for you to do anything about it – so feel grateful. Whatsoever has happened is exactly as much as was needed. Whatsoever your need is, it will always be fulfilled – more is not needed. If suddenly you come across more, you may go crazy, you may not be able to bear it – it may be too much. So it always happens in the exact proportion in which it is needed.
God goes on giving only that which you need. He may not listen to what you want, but He always listens to what you need. And these are two different things. You may want something that you don’t need – you may not want something that you need. God never bothers about your wants – He simply goes on listening to your needs. And whatsoever you get, you get according to your need – each according to his need.
It is good that He never listens to your wants, otherwise you would be in constant trouble because you don’t know what you want. And whatsoever you want is almost irrational; it has nothing to do with your happiness.
Somebody wants more money without ever thinking of how money is concerned with contentment. Somebody wants a bigger house without giving it any thought. If you are miserable, you will be miserable in a bigger house because misery is somewhere inside your psyche; it is in your mind; it has nothing to do with a small or a big house. Maybe in a bigger house you will be more comfortably miserable, but you will remain miserable.
Man goes on wanting things which have no relationship to basic needs, and only when needs are fulfilled does one feel contented. A religious man is one who pays every attention to needs, and by and by disconnects himself from wants. Wants are very complex and unfulfilling. There is no way to fulfill them because their very inner ingredient is in the more. Needs are very simple, fulfillable – there is no problem about them.
The more is like the horizon. It seems as if it is there just a few miles away and that you can reach it within minutes but you never reach it because it is nowhere; it only appears to be there. If you go towards the horizon, the horizon goes on receding. The difference, the distance between you and
the horizon remains always the same... it is constant. And the same is the case with more. The distance between you and more always remains constant; it is one of the constant things in life. So drop that ‘more’, mm?
But something has happened... something beautiful has happened. If you had dropped the idea of more, you would have enjoyed it and you would have felt more grateful. But good, mm?
[Another group member says: Things happened.]
That’s good. Things always happen. One should only search for them. They are just by the corner, not very far away.
Have you read one of Kafka’s parables? – a very beautiful parable.
A doorkeeper stands on guard before the temple of the Law. To this doorkeeper there comes a man who begs for admittance to the Law, but the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment.
The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed then to enter later. ‘It is possible,’ answers the doorkeeper, ‘but not at this moment.’
Since the door stands open as usual, the man bends down to peer through the entrance.
The doorkeeper laughs and says, ‘If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful and I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall, keepers stand at every door, each one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot bear to look at.’
The man is given a stool and permitted to sit down at the side of the door, and there he sits for many years. Again and again he tries to get permission, or to get at least a definitive answer, but he is always told that he cannot enter yet.
At long last his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question which he has never put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper.
‘What do you want to know now?’ asks the doorkeeper. ‘You are insatiable.’
‘Everybody strives to attain the Law,’ answers the man. ‘How does it come about then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?’
The doorkeeper perceives that the man is at the end of his strength and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: ‘No one but you could gain admittance through this door since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.’
The man dies... but a beautiful parable. He was always sitting there by the side and the gate was open but he never tried. Even the gatekeeper had been provoking him saying, ’You can go... try!
Although I am powerful, try!’ But he said, ‘No, I will wait. Whenever the time comes.…’ But then the time comes never. Jesus says, ‘Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given. Seek and ye shall find.’ It is just around the corner but we go on waiting as if somebody is going to give it to us. Nobody is there to give it to you – and the door is open ! If you try, the doorkeeper is not going to prevent you. In fact he is there just waiting for you to enter so he can close the door. But he does not invite you because then it will be too cheap. So he gives a challenge, a provocation.
This sannyas is nothing but a provocation, a challenge, so that I can goad you and tell you, ‘Don’t go on sitting on the stool – the gate is open!’
[A group member says: Two things came up. One was how much horror, how much hate and how much self-hatred I have in the way that I relate to men. And also that this part of my body (her thighs) is pretty dead. I feel a lot of energy in the top but in this part it doesn’t seem to be moving. I don ’t know if they are connected.]
They are connected. If you hate men the lower part of the body will feel dead because the lower part is associated with sex. If you hate men, you hate them because of sex. You hate sex. If a man hates women, his lower body will be dead because the lower body is the sexual part. So the higher body is okay, because you feel that the higher is beyond sex: it is neither man nor woman. Above the sex centre you are neither man nor woman. Below the sex centre you are man or woman. There is the division. If you hate men, you will suffer in your lower body. In your old age it can become a trouble, so drop that hatred.
Once you start loving men, this problem will immediately disappear with no trace. It has nothing to do with your body. It is a division in your mind of the lower and the higher. The lower is sexual, the higher is spiritual, and you need to join them together – you have to become a unity.
But good that you came to understand it, that it surfaced. that it came to your consciousness. Now something can be done. Even this coming to consciousness will do much.
[She asks: I was wondering if just being aware of it will change it. I’ve been aware of it so much for a long time. And I see it connected very much with a whole trip with my father. It seems very deep.]
No, no. Watching is good but will not be enough, because in watching also you may be carrying a sort of antagonistic repression. In watching also you may be forcing it. Your watching may be violent.
Watch – it is good – but the best remedy will be to start making friends with men, and start loving people, otherwise the problem will be there. Settle it soon because once the body becomes older, even if you settle this, the body may not listen. Right now there is no problem. Right now you are young and there is no problem. But if the body has lived with this division for long and becomes old, then even if you start loving men, it won’t be of much help. Come out of your hatred.
[She then says: I don’t feel that I have no male friends or that it’s that heavy – it seems more subtle. It’s just a certain tone to the way I relate.]
Yes, that too will go... that too will go. Just start relating, and whenever you feel that there is a certain tone, then watch – but go on relating. Otherwise you will not feel that there is any problem. If you relate, the problem will be coming again and again into consciousness and then you can go on watching.
And it is for you to decide. If you want to drop it, nobody is going to hinder you: it is your responsibility. If you want to settle it, you can settle it right now. This very moment it can be settled, but it is totally your responsibility. If you understand that this is the problem, then drop it – just as when you know that fire burns you don’t put your hand in the fire.
Love makes one whole. There is nothing like love. It is the greatest therapy. So love people. Just move more and more in deeper relationships.
In the next group, just forget that the men are men. Nobody is a man, nobody is a woman. All are just energies. Let the energies mix and meet and mingle, mm? Nothing to be worried about. It will go.
[A group member says: All the groups I did in the West – I felt all the time that it was an effort, hard work. But in this group I could just be more and more. I really enjoyed it.]
These groups are different because the whole energy is different. In the West when people are doing groups, the people come from different directions, with different minds, with different energy. It is a crowd. It is a very neurotic situation.
When you are doing a group here, all are sannyasins, part of my family; a subtle harmony exists. And all are seekers moving in one direction – that gives a rhythm. It may not be visible on the surface but deep underground, it becomes a totally different kind of foundation; then things become very easy.
Then there is a certain devotion – you are all devoted to me. That functions as a centre. It becomes the soul of the group. When you do a group in the West, there is no soul to it; it is fragmentary. Techniques are there but the soul is missing. So you can go on doing techniques – they will help to a certain extent – but they cannot be very fulfilling. But they are doing good work because whomsoever is working in the groups in the West is by and by moving towards me – knowingly, unknowingly.
He has to come because those groups will leave him hanging in the middle. They will bring him into a state of limbo. Then he would like to somehow complete it, because everything incomplete becomes a burden.
So sannyas is going to become a completion for millions of people, and particularly those who are in any way concerned with new growth groups; they are bound to come to me.
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