18

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 18

6 October 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

The inner growth is not something that you can do anything about. At the most you can stop obstructing it, that’s all. Positively, nothing can be done. But if you stop hindering it, it goes on its own accord.

It is as if there is a small plant and you put a certain pressure on it. You hang certain stones on its branches and you are trying to give it a certain shape. You will hinder it because the natural growth will not be possible. All that you can do is to drop those stones that you are hanging on its branches and don’t try to give it any shape. Let it go on its own way. You can water the plant, you can fertilise the soil, you can protect the plant from animals and children and people, but that’s all – this is all that a man can do. So growth is not something that you can do. Growth happens if you are not hindering it.

This is very difficult for the western mind to understand because the whole western mind is basically technological. Even people who are drop-outs, even they may be thinking that they are against technology but still they remain technological. The very framework of the western mind is technological. Technology means all that can be done has to be done. The only way to do a thing is to do it – that’s what technology means. It means to find out ways to do it and to invent means and methods.

In the East we have a very different attitude. All that can be done, need not be done. That which can be done and has to be done, belongs to the outer. The thing is happening; it is not a doing on your part. It is not something that you plan, and it is not something that you project. It is not something that you have to discipline yourself for. It is something that when there are no hindrances and obstructions grows. just like a tree, out of its own energy.

Just as a child becomes a young man and a young man becomes an old man, just as life grows into death, just as the morning sun becomes the evening sun and the sunrise turns into sunset, just as

everything is going on its own accord – the inner growth also happens that way. All that we do in the name of meditation is nothing but to help you to drop the hindrances, the obstacles.

In old China. in ancient days, they had a very ugly and cruel phenomenon. For kings and rich people, just for entertainment, the one or two-day-old children of poor people, would be put in a pot and fed. Now the pot wouldn’t allow the child to grow and to take its own shape. It would become like a pot, so whatsoever the shape the pot has, the child would start having that shape. When the child had got the fixed shape of the pot, they would break the pot. Now this child would be a laughing stock. It was a very cruel thing but it continued for centuries. The way the child walked would be ugly and ridiculous, but rich people enjoyed it very much; it was an entertainment.

The same is happening to every spiritual being on this earth. The society gives you a certain structure and it doesn’t allow you to go beyond that. So, bodies have freedom but the soul still remains confined in pots – cultures, conditionings, societies, religions, dogmas, creeds. The body is okay but the soul remains crippled. All that we are doing here is not really to help you to grow – because for that no help is needed.

All that we are doing is just withdrawing the structure that has been given you by the society. So meditations will help, and group experiences will be of tremendous value.

So be here for at least one month and just feel. Something is bound to happen.

[Referring to working in the ashram, a sannyasin says: But it feels as if I want to get either in or out, and I feel as though I’m always hanging about the edge.]

Mm mm. Even that is needed – hanging around the edge. That’s part of it. Nobody gets in without hanging around the edge. There is a time, an interval, when you simply hang. You are neither out nor in; you are in a limbo.

It is just as when a child is born. Half the body has come out of the mother’s womb and the other half is still inside. Half-half is bad but there has to be a period when the child will be half-way. And the same happens in spiritual growth.

The time depends on the person, so there is no fixed time of how long you will hang around the edge. A few people hang for a few days, a few for a few weeks, a few for a few months, a few for a few years and a few for a few lives – it depends on you. And remember one thing: there is no way to go back. If the child has come half out of the womb, there is no way to go back. Nobody has ever heard of a child going back, howsoever much he wants to. It was very beautiful in the womb – comfortable, secure. no anxiety; he was simply floating. It was most luxurious. You cannot conceive of anything more comfortable and convenient. Of course life was not there, but convenience was.

But once the child has come half out of the womb there is no way to go back; he has to come out completely. So there is no way to go back, but this idea of going back can make your interval very long. The gap of hanging around the edge can become very long if you still hanker to get out. Drop that hankering; it is not possible. It has never happened and it cannot happen. It is not in the nature of things.

Once you have become interested in spiritual life and you have taken even one step, there is no going back. Blessed are the ignorant because they don’t know that there is much more to life. Once you have taken one step – and you have taken that step – there is no going back. So drop that idea, otherwise it can keep you hanging around. So the first thing to understand is that there is no going back now. You have already crossed that point. You should have asked before; it is already too late. You have to come incompletely.

But everybody has to pass through this pain, this pain of flatness, this pain of being nowhere, this pain of being nobody, neither here nor there. Everybody has to pass through this pain. It depends on you whether to cut it short or not to cut it short.

If you want it to be prolonged, keep the alternative alive that if you want, you can come out of it. If you keep that alternative alive, you can prolong it ad infinitum. If you really want to finish it, the first thing to be done is to drop the idea that you can go back. Then immediately your energy will become concentrated, fragmentation will not be there. Then you have to go in; there is nowhere else to go. Then things become simply easy. When there is no alternative and no choice, energy has a canal in which to move. Where there is choice there is hesitation. If the choice is of a false alternative, there is bound to be trouble. So just drop that false alternative and get in.

And the second thing – don’t divide activities into stupid and non-stupid. Don’t say that this is something stupid that you are doing. If I also think this way, I will not be talking to you. It is absolutely stupid – why should I be talking to you? For what? But I don’t divide things into stupid or wise. I enjoy everything that comes. So if you really want to get in, you have to drop these categories that this work is stupid. If you have that category in the mind, it is going to be difficult. You will not be able to get in because everything will look stupid. Then what is there that is not stupid, tell me? It will be difficult to find anything that is not stupid – cooking, cleaning, typing; everything is stupid. So drop that category in the mind, otherwise that will make you sad.

All activity is beautiful if done out of love. Whatsoever you are doing here is out of love for me. Activity is not activity. It is because I want you to do something that you are doing it. It is symbolic... it is symbolic of your surrender.

[Osho said that Gurdjieff used to give his disciples quite nonsensical activities to perform, but if they were surrendered to him, the disciples carried out his wishes without judging, and out of their love for him.]

And the people who remained with him and continued to do whatsoever he said, by and by came so close to him because their surrender was really tremendous. They stopped judging. When you accept somebody as your master, you stop judging him. Many times he may play games to see whether you still judge him or if you have stopped judging. A disciple never judges his master. That is part of the game of disciplehood. Whatsoever the master says, the disciple has to do – and in that very doing the surrender grows.

If you call some activity stupid, you are already creating trouble for yourself. It is not the activity that is creating trouble; it is your calling it stupid. How can you enjoy an activity if you call it stupid ? You have categorised it. You have already taken a negative attitude towards it; you’ve already said ‘no’ to it. And of course all activities are the same, whatsoever you do is the same. You have to do it

because you love me – and love is not stupid. You have to do it because you are surrendered to me – and surrender is not stupid. Only very wise people know the beauty of surrender. Stupid people cannot even understand what surrender is, what love is.

You should feel happy that I have chosen you. So drop that idea, and let all work be worship, and let all work be your meditation. The mind may create troubles for you many times. but don’t listen to the mind. Here you are to listen to me, not to the mind. If you continuously listen to your mind, you will not grow because your mind is your past. If you go on listening to your mind, you remain the old. If you listen to me only when your mind agrees with me, then too you are not listening to me. It is just coincidence that I am saying something that agrees with your mind, but you are still listening to your mind .

When there is something which does not agree with your mind at all, which goes just contrary to your mind, to your whole past, to your whole knowledge, to your whole experience, and then you still decide to listen to me and not to your mind, then you are on the verge of a revolution. That will take you to the land of no-mind. Otherwise you will remain in the mind – and your mind is your problem. Your mind is your disease. Your mind is your hindrance, the barrier, and you go on listening to the barrier; you go on listening to the disease.

Enough is enough. If you want to come really close to me, stop listening to your mind. You have listened to your mind long enough. What has it done for you? Where has it helped you to arrive? What is its achievements? Anxiety, anguish, sadness, boredom – that’s the whole outcome. Now I am trying to make a gap between your past and your future, a discontinuity between your past and your future so that the past simply becomes irrelevant to you and something absolutely new and fresh starts. It is arduous – needs courage, needs tremendous love, needs trust. And always remember that trust is not anything logical.

Just this morning I was talking about a french mathematician whose name is Blase Pascal. He had a friend, de Mere, who was a very notorious gambler. The gambler would come many times to Pascal and ask him about his problems in gambling, and Pascal was interested in the psychology of gambling so he would listen to him. He would make suggestions because he was a mathematician, and gambling has a mathematics to it.

By and by listening to the gambler, Pascal created a theology out of it – a very pseudo-theology, but very much respected. Christians have respected Pascal very much. They think he has come to something very valuable.

His logic was this – just the logic of the gambler: he says religion is also like gambling. If you believe that God exists and finally you find that He doesn’t, you lose nothing – at the most a little time that you wasted in prayer. But if you find that God exists, you gain much – eternal blessedness in His paradise. On the other hand. if you don’t believe in God and finally you find that that He does exist, you lose much. You will be damned to hell for eternity.

Now Pascal says that this is simple logic, a safe bet to believe in God. This is a very logical approach towards God but absolutely foolish, meaningless, because God is not a logical syllogism. What type of prayer will this be? How will this man pray? How would this Pascal have prayed in church? With this idea? – that if God exists I will be gaining much; if He does not exist nothing is lost – just a little

time in prayer. But can the prayer be really there in such an attitude? Can prayer exist in such a mind? Is prayer possible?

With ‘ifs’, prayer is not possible. So being here with me is a trust. I am leading you towards the unknown. You don’t know anything about it. You don’t know its whereabouts. And I cannot make you understand where I am leading you because there is no way to explain it. Its very nature is inexplicable. So you just have to love and trust me, and you have to just follow me into the unknown, into the unfamiliar, the strange. You cannot figure out beforehand what it is. You have just to go and experience it.

And this ashram is just a device, nothing else. I am not interested much in creating a monastery or an ashram. This is just a device so people can be here with me and can learn how to love, and how to surrender... how to transform small things into great... how to transform cleaning the floor into prayer, or cooking into worship, or typing or editing or guarding or gardening into holy experiences.

So that attitude, Bhasha, has to be dropped. Never call anything stupid. And it is not only a question of calling – drop that very background of the mind. Then you will suddenly feel that things are happening and you are no more flat. You will start being more full of energy, radiance, because they all follow love and trust just like a shadow follows a man.

And there is no way of going out, so please come in! Good.

[A sannyasin says: I stopped smoking and that seems to have helped me in some ways. I’ve been sitting a lot. I haven’t felt to do any active meditation.]

You can sit. Listen to your heart always. It may not shout so you have to listen very carefully. The heart simply whispers – listen to it. If the heart says that sitting is good, just sit. Many people have attained just by sitting. Buddha himself attained by sitting. He was not doing anything. Zen people call their meditation ‘zazen’. It means just sitting and doing nothing. So just sit – it is perfectly beautiful. As dancing is beautiful, so is sitting. You have to listen to the heart. Sometimes it wants to dance, then dance. Sometimes it wants to sit, then sit.

Never force it to do something which is not naturally coming to it. Just move very naturally and spontaneously. You will see periods... there is a period when sometimes you will feel very very active; then do the active meditations, dance and sing. Sometimes you will feel very very passive: then just sit silently.

Every man is man and woman together, and every woman is a woman and man together. These are your yin and yang; this is your polarity. Right now your woman is on top of the man, so sit silently. The wheel will move by your sitting silently; the woman will be satisfied. Then the wheel will move – the man will be on top of the woman. You will want to do something – to jump and jog and dance, so do. Don’t think that when you were sitting it was so beautiful so now you need not jump and dance. No, listen to the heart. Everything that the heart indicates is good. The heart is your real master.

What I am doing here is just translating your heart to you. I have nothing to say really. That’s why whatsoever I say differs from person to person, because I am simply translating what you cannot hear directly from your heart. I have to be an interpreter, a translator. I’m just giving you the

message that if you were alert enough you could have heard yourself. The outer master is nothing but a representation of the inner.

I am here just like a mirror. If you cannot see your face without the mirror, see it in me, but soon you will learn by and by that I simply reflect you. Then you can just close your eyes and drop into yourself and you will find exactly the same answer that I had given you.

[The Primal group present tonight. One of the leaders said it was a very high energy group, which brought out a clash between the three leaders.]

You three can meet when the group is finished and resolve it. It’s very good.

It was good. Leaders clashing is always good! The followers must have en joyed it! Sometimes you can just pretend for their entertainment. That will be good... a good treat!

[A group member says: It was all so crazeee! And you! You are the leader!]

Yes, that’s right! I am the real devil. These are just the devil’s disciples. (laughter) I am the devil – but there is no other way. First I have to take you through hell, then to heaven.

[A group member says: But I find that I can love a group of people much easier than individuals. I still keep running away.]

But by and by you will learn. The group is just a situation to learn that people are beautiful; there is no need to keep them away. Everybody is beautiful, but everybody is afraid. Just as you are afraid of a person, he is afraid of you. Both remain alert, and because of that alertness and caution they cannot relax. If you are cautious and very alert and tense, the other tends to be alert and cautious because something seems to be dangerous. When he is tense and cautious, you become more cautious and it becomes a vicious circle. You feed each other in a negative way and then you start avoiding. Nobody is less than beautiful. Everybody is beautiful; one just has to discover the beauty of a person.

Everybody brings tremendous beauty into the world but needs somebody to discover it, needs somebody to reveal it to him. So let the group be a learning situation and then start moving with people outside the group; then you will always come across beautiful people. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

[A group member says: I feel sad and heavy. I feel that I fought for the whole group. I just want to rest. What do I fight with ? My feelings or? I don’t know. I’m always tense and scared. I felt a lot of fear.]

So you want to continue fighting or you would like...? Mm? Then drop it – it is your choice. This is what the group has to do – to bring out all that you have been doing to yourself, to bring it to consciousness. That’s what you have been doing your whole life. The group simply condensed it and focused it into these few days, so you became aware. The group cannot do anything else than just mirror you. If you have seen your face in this mirror and you want to change it, there is nobody who can hinder you. Simply stop fighting and start enjoying. There is no need to be a fighter. Become a lover. But good.…

The group has shaken you, and that’s good. Unless you are shaken you will not change your old habits. You have to be forced into a corner where you see the whole ugliness of your past and the horrible mechanism of your mind and the hell that you go on creating for yourself, and of course for others too. A person cannot create hell only for himself. With whomsoever he is related, he will create hell for them too.

So they have simply opened you. Of course it was very difficult for you to accept it; that’s what has made you tired. It was difficult for you to accept that you are such a person, but you are. Accept it – and that very acceptance will start a great movement towards change, because when you accept the ugliness of something, you cannot cling to it any more. The clinging needs a deception. The ugly should be thought of as beautiful, only then you can cling. The dead should be thought of as alive, only then you can cling. The moment that you see it is dead.…

It happens in monkeys. A child, the baby monkey dies, but the mother goes on carrying, holding the child, the dead child, for days on end until the dead child’s body starts stinking. Then it becomes too horrible, unbearable – she throws it.

You have to come to see a very significant fact about yourself. It is difficult to accept that this is you, but it is. Once you accept it, once you see the deadness, the ugliness of it, the hell of it, then there is no point in clinging to it. It is stinking – drop it! It is a dead thing; be released from it. This very moment if you can drop it you will feel a relaxation, a freedom coming out of it.

The next morning the sun can rise on a totally new world. The trees will be greener and you will be able to hear the birds sing for the first time... the graceful movements of the clouds.You will be filled with the benediction that is already there, that has always been there, but you were too much into your own racket. So get out of it!

The group has done a tremendous service to you. It has brought all the pus out. It is painful, but once the pus is out the wound can heal. Now it depends on you. You can collect the pus again or you can stop collecting pus and can drop the wound. So a great decision has to be made, and it will be good if you can make it right now in front of me. Just let this moment be a decisive moment. Just decide that this is enough – I will not be like this any more.

I’m not saying to try to change yourself. I’m saying to simply drop the past, because if you try, it will go on hanging around you. Drop it! There is no need to postpone for tomorrow – right now! Mm? Good !

[A group member says: I realised I have to trust my own feelings more and not worry about what other people will say. But it’s very hard for me to do that because I don’t always know if what I feel is real or not.]

Don’t be worried. Whatsoever you feel, you feel – whether it is real or unreal, there is no need to bother about it. That’s again a trick of the mind so that you can ask others whether your feelings are real or not. But how do you know that the other will be right? So if you are feeling, one thing is certain – you are feeling. Real or unreal is not a criterion. In that moment that feeling is real.

Take your life in your own hands. That’s one of the basics of spiritual growth. Never look at others. And don’t go on being manipulated and controlled by others, otherwise you become by and by a

slave. The slavery is very subtle but it is a slavery. If you look at others, at what they say, by and by you lose contact with your own feelings. That’s how people have lost contact – always listening to the mother, to the father, to the wife, to the husband, to the friend, to the psychiatrist, to this and that, and always getting a sense of the reality from the outside. You lose contact with your own heart and by and by you forget the language. You always need somebody from the outside to say, ‘Yes, it is so.’ You always need a father-figure. That’s not good – you remain childish.

To be like a child is very good. but to remain childish is very bad. To be a child means to be innocent, and to be childish means to be immature. So start trusting your feelings. The problem will arise about whether it is real or not; forget about it. If it is there you have to follow it. Take it as a criterion – whatsoever feels good is good; at least in the moment it is good. Never look retrospectively; there is no point. Yesterday you felt something and you did it, and you felt good doing it. Now to say you feel it was not real is because you compare it with today. You are bringing in something foreign. Today was not there yesterday. Yesterday was yesterday. Today is today. Today it may look as if it was not real and tomorrow you may come to see that even this feeling was not real, so never look backwards. Always look forwards.

There are three possibilities. People who look backwards – they are the people who are never able to live. They always repent because whatsoever they do always proves wrong. is bound to prove wrong, because it was true in a certain moment. When the moment is gone it is no more true. It was a momentary truth – and all truths are momentary. So when the moment is gone it looks unreal. These people always go on missing.

Then there is a second type of person – better than the first – who always looks forward. It is better than looking backwards – at least they have a thrill in life; they don’t repent.

They dream, they project, they expect. They are always arriving. They may never arrive – that’s another thing – but they are always arriving. They are very happy – something is going to happen; they are always expecting it. They are better than the people who look backwards – because those people are always repentant; everything is wrong and everything has gone wrong. They are always feeling a bad taste, a bitter taste in their mouth.

Then there is a third type of person who is the highest possibility – they are God-ward. Backwards, forwards, Godwards. Godward means just to be in the present – neither looking back-wards or forwards, neither in the past nor the future. Just being here – and whatsoever is happening is true. They trust it, they move with it.

So become Godward. If it seems very difficult, it is better to become a forward-looking person. The backward-looking person lives in hell. The forward-looking person lives in heaven and the Godward person is simply free of all hell and heaven. In English there is no word for it. In the East we call this state moksha, nirvana. It is neither hell nor heaven, neither pain nor bliss. One is simply silent, blissfully quiet. One neither knows any hopes nor knows any frustrations. One remains uncorrupted by any idea of the past or of the future. One is purely herenow. That’s what I call a being who is Godward, because God is herenow.

So take hold of your life in your own hands and stop asking outside agencies about it, and you will start growing, maturing. It has been good.…

< Previous | Contents | Next >