22

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‌CHAPTER 22

10 October 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says about taking sannyas: That’s the big fear – not the fear of being a sannyasin, but the fear of the betrayal of my previous initiation. It’s still there lingering on and I feel like a Judas or something.]

Not at all... not at all. That’s a very wrong attitude to take about things. It will not be a betrayal. In fact if you don’t take sannyas, that will be a betrayal.

... If you meet a master and you are initiated on a certain path, he is a help. Some day somebody takes you ahead on the same path. It is not a betrayal – it is the same journey. In millions of lives one comes across millions of masters. The whole life is your master. So if you don’t take sannyas that will be a betrayal, because then you are clinging to a certain thing and not flowing with your growth. But soon you will be able to.

Right now if you are able, go into it.

[The visitor answers: Wearing this outfit (indicating the orange robes around him) I would feel strange in the West.]

That’s the whole purpose of it! That’s the whole purpose of it – to make you absolutely a stranger there and to create difficulties for you, because those difficulties will help you to be very alert and aware and you will not be lost in the crowd. That’s the whole purpose of it.

Ordinarily we want to be lost in the crowd, so we conform. We just live as others live, and we are always afraid to do anything which is not in a way allowed by the society or is not expected. So we move in a uniformity, and we lose our awareness in it. To become part of a crowd is to drop being an individual.

My whole effort here is to create a situation for you in which you can again reclaim your individuality, and again you can say, ‘I am myself. If I choose ochre, I choose ochre. Then whatsoever the society says is irrelevant. My only relevance is with my own being.’ Not that you become anti-social, because that too again is wrong.

There are two types of conformists: one who follows the society, and one who moves anti-society and follows an alternative society. But both are crowd people. An individual is one who follows his own being – not as a reaction against the society. It is not in any way against the society – it is only for one’s own self. And it will give you so much awareness you cannot imagine. Imagine that just by being in a certain colour can make you so alert and mindful.

In the East we have used the change of name and dress for thousands of years, just to give the person such a unique individuality that, wherever he is, he is never part of the group. Something makes him like an island – and that being an island is of tremendous help in the beginning. In the end it is of not much help, but in the beginning it is of tremendous help. It makes you so keenly alert... everybody watching you. Wherever you go you are obviously there.

Ordinarily we go on passing and doing things; nobody pays any attention. Because nobody pays any particular attention, you need not be aware. When nobody pays any attention, you need not be aware. When everybody pays you attention it creates a certain heat in you! a tension, an anxiety. It is just the same anxiety as comes to a person who goes to talk to a big crowd. He goes on the pulpit and starts trembling, perspiring, afraid. What will people think? Or it is as stage fright comes to the actor.

Even if the actor has been working on the stage for dozens of years, again when he comes to the stage there is fear – so many people looking at him. He has become a focus of so many minds – what are they thinking about him? People want to remain in such a way that they are not too obvious. They can simply go on passing here and there and nobody pays any attention.

This change of dress and name is for a particular purpose, and that purpose is to create around you a situation where ordinarily you would become tense. That tension has to be relaxed – and that will be your work. That tension has to be relaxed by and by and you have to transform that tension into attention. And both are the same energy.

The word attention is very beautiful; it is made of tension. When your tension is no more like an anxiety and you have relaxed with it, it gains a purity, it attains a certain quality. Then you are simply aware, attentive, but there is no tension in it. First it will create tension and you have to relax that tension. By and by, moving many times in many situations, for how long can you be tense? – by and by you will start relaxing. And when you relax the tension is released and becomes attention.

In the beginning years, sannyas helps very much. But to know it, one has to be it. So think about it, mm? Good.

[A visitor says: I’m very happy to be here. I expected much worse.]

If you expect the worst, it never happens – so always expect the worst. Hope for the best and expect the worst. People expect the best and then frustration happens. And this should be the golden rule

for your whole life – be ready for the worst and you will never be frustrated. And if a person can learn how not to be frustrated, he has a great key in his hands: he can celebrate life – otherwise our whole energy is wasted in frustrations.

First we go on dreaming about things, fantasies – that is a wastage of energy. All dreaming is a wastage because nothing real can happen out of dreams. When reality comes, it never fits with your dreams, because dreams are very illogical and dreams have no limitations, so when it doesn’t fit with the dreams, you are frustrated. First you waste energy in dreaming and then in frustration. The whole life becomes just a pendulum between dream and frustration, dream and frustration, and one goes on being destructive to oneself. That’s how people become mediocre – they lose all intelligence.

Intelligence needs overflowing energy. Intelligence needs a radiant energy. But people don’t have energy. Whatsoever they have, they waste. Then they become dull, stupid, insensitive.

So that’s a great thing. And make it a point that whatsoever you are going to do, always note down in the mind what can be the worst. And then whatsoever happens, it is going to be better than that.

[Osho suggested that he take part in the camp, saying that doing meditations almost continuously all day, another level of energy is called into action – the emergency level.]

Once it is released, it is released below the mind. The mind exists only with day-to-day energy. When the day-to-day energy is finished and the emergency level is released, it has no mind. It is very pure, uncorrupted by society, uncorrupted by your habits. It is direct from God.

Anything else you would like to say?

Deva means divine and toshen means contentment. And this is the goal for you – to be in deep contentment with whatsoever is; never to lose track of contentment. And if you can remain content, nothing else in fact is needed. Then everything comes a grace.

Much is going to happen – it has already started!

[A visitor said she had been living and working with a group of people for fourteen years, under the guidance of Maurice Nicoll and Rodney Collins, two teachers of the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky schools. Since both teachers had died, the group moved into Subud, and from then began to fall apart.]

Mm, I can understand it. There are great complexities in it. Your problem is not simple and it has many complications. When you were working with Nicoll it was absolutely on the right track – you missed that track. With Rodney Collins, everything was good. Subud was not for you, and Gurdjieff people lost much unnecessarily getting involved with Subud, because Subud is totally different. Even if there are some similarities, they are just appearances.

Gurdjieff’s whole work was very scientific. He was trying really to create a metascience of spiritual harmony – as scientific as physics or chemistry or mathematics. His dream was impossible, but he was also capable of it, and he has left all of the blue-prints for it – they need to be developed. Much

work is needed to be done on them. Subud is totally different. It has nothing of the scientific in it. In fact to Pak Subud it never happened through work on himself – it was just an act of grace. It simply happened – in fact it was an accident. He was not working for it, he was not seeking it. It simply descended upon him – maybe from his past lives, but he was not consciously after it.

When you are not consciously after a certain experience, yet it happens, you cannot make a science out of it. The whole thing remains hodge-podge. You can at the most be a little poetic about it, that’s all. But poetry is one thing and science is totally different. It was a misfortune that Gurdjieff people got involved with Subud.

Nothing is wrong in Subud when I am saying this – Subud is perfectly good. But it is meant for a different type of people – people who have much devotion, simple hearted people, peasants, religious, who can trust, and who can trust unconditionally; in fact who have never doubted. Their doubt has never become conscious.

But with people who have worked with Gurdjieff it is simply impossible to be in a simple trust. The whole thing is so scientific, so experimental, and one has to work for it. And it is not a question of God descending in you. In fact it is a question of your integration. It is not an outer agency.

For Gurdjieff the soul as it is does not exist in man. The soul has to be created. If an ordinary man dies, for Gurdjieff he simply dies, nothing survives, because to survive a particular crystallisation is needed. There is no soul so there is no question of God. Only when you are crystallised do you become an integrated point – and only from that integrated point is an integrated vision of the universe possible. Then God becomes a reality. God is real only for a real person – and we are unreal persons.

But for Subud that is not the same work. God is there, you are there, everything is available; you have simply to relax, not to work. It is not a question of work – it is a question of surrender. It is not a question of will – it is simply a question of let-go. God is there – you simply be possessed.

Now there are a thousand and one problems with it. As I see it, if we can divide human energy into one hundred degrees, then up to thirty-three degrees a man remains subnormal. And in that subnormal state, a man is very very capable of being possessed by anything whatsoever. Lower states can be there. Below the thirty-three degrees, all sorts of pathologies are possible if you relax and you become vulnerable – and it is dangerous. A person who is below thirty-three degrees should never relax. His whole effort should be first to get higher than thirty-three degrees, then relaxation is okay, otherwise he will be possessed by very ordinary things and his whole life will be distracted and disturbed and destroyed. Illness, pathology, neuroses, psychosis – anything can happen. Or in the old terminology – spirits, lower spirits, can possess him.

Between thirty-three and sixty-six is the normal range. Ordinarily a healthy person, a normal person, lives in that range. If he relaxes it will not be so dangerous. And he may have a few glimpses of the higher – but that too depends on where he is. He may be nearly very close to thirty-three – he may be thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six – the relaxation will be dangerous. If he is near sixty-six, there is no problem. If he relaxes at sixty-six, something from the above can descend on him. If you relax near thirty-three, something from the below arises in you.

To go beyond sixty-six is the whole work of Gurdjieff – how to attain a supernormal state. And it needs tremendous work. It is not a simple question of relaxing, of relaxation and let-go. It needs tremendous work to get beyond sixty-six. From sixty-six to ninety-nine is great work, and if a person relaxes at ninety-nine, then God becomes available, not before it, because that hundred degree point is what God is.

So it was really a misfortune. One of the greatest calamities that has happened to the spiritual world in these few years, was this Gurdjieff group becoming involved. And it happened because of Bennett. I have never felt that he really ever understood Gurdjieff. He was always wavering between so many things. And he had a very cultivated mind – a great thinker – but that was the problem. He synthesised many things, and he led the whole Gurdjieff group on a wrong trend.

Gurdjieff will allow you only to relax either at the sixty-six degrees, when the supernormal can become possible.… That’s what is needed when a disciple surrenders to a master. And if the master is really a master, he will watch for the right moment when to tell the disciple to surrender. The disciple must be about sixty-six – only then. If then at sixty-six degrees the disciple surrenders, the master can pour himself into him. And that will be a great revelation; a satori is possible. Then the next point of surrender is at ninety-nine degrees. Then God Himself descends in you.

But if you surrender at thirty-three degrees or near about, you will be possessed by lower things.

Many Subud people are in trouble and there is nobody to help them. Once you are possessed by a lower energy, you are simply in a chaos. Then one becomes more and more fragmentary.

[The Hypnotherapy group are present.

A group member says: The group was good, but I slept a lot. Last time I came to darshan I felt really open and that I was receiving energy the whole time. But now I feel really closed.

Osho checks her energy.]

There is no problem. There are just waves of energy. Sometimes it is a tide and sometimes it is the ebb. When you are in a tide it is very easy to relate, communicate, be open, to love, receive, to give. When you are not in a tide and energy is ebbing, it is very difficult to communicate, almost impossible. That’s why you started falling asleep again and again in the group. But both come and go – they are both part of life. Nothing is wrong in it, it is natural – so remember to accept it.

When you feel that the ebb period is there, don’t try to communicate. Don’t force yourself to open because that opening will not be opening. That is the seed time. One simply closes oneself and remains in oneself. Use that time for deep meditation. It is very fertile for meditation. When you are in a tide and energy is flowing and going higher, that is the time for love. Then relate, be open, share. That is the crop time, but it cannot be all the year around. They say that even in heaven, angels don’t sing all the time.

So when there is a song arising, sing. And when you feel that everything is closing, just help it to close. That’s what being natural means. By being natural it is not meant that one should remain open for twenty-four hours – you are not a magical store. There are moments when one should

close, otherwise it will be too tiring, too tedious, boring. There is no need to continuously smile – only politicians do that, and they are the most stupid people in the world.

There are times when tears are welcomed, should be welcomed. There are times when one feels sad – sadness is beautiful, so when you feel sad, be sad. When you feel happy, be happy. To be authentic means never be against that which is already happening. Go with it... trust it. In the night the petals of the lotus close, in the morning they open again – but that’s a natural process.

Now in the modern mind – particularly in the new generation – a very wrong notion is arising – that one has always to be open; one has to be always loving. That is a new sort of torture, a new sort of repression, a new fashion in violence. There is no need.

An authentic person is one who is whatsoever the case; you can rely on him. If he is sad, you can rely on him that he must be feeling sad; he is a true person . If he is closed, you can rely on him, you can trust him. It is a state of meditation – he wants just to be within himself. He does not want to go out, he is in deep introspection. Good! If he is smiling and talking, then he wants to relate and go out of his being and to share. You can rely on that person.

So don’t try to enforce anything from your mind upon your being. Let the being have its say, and the mind should be just a follower, a servant. But the mind always tries to become the master. I don’t see that anything is wrong. Just live this period and by and by you will be able to watch that every month it will be so. For a few days you will be very open – for a few days you will be closed.

It is more clear in women than in men because women still live in a periodicity. Because of their monthly course, their chemistry, the body chemistry goes in periods – twenty eight days and the period comes again – an inner clock functions. In fact the same happens to a man also but it is more subtle, more invisible.

Now just recently a few researchers have revealed that there is a sort of monthly period for man also, but it is very invisible because there is no release of blood. But as for four days of every month, a woman goes into a very low energy state, every man also goes into a low energy state for four days every month, but it is not so physical, not so visible; very psychic – more inner than outer.

But if you watch your states you will be able to chart them out.Go on noting on a calendar. My

feeling is that you and your moods must be moving according to the moon, so just watch and relate how you go with the moon. Make a calendar for at least one, two months, and then you will be able to even predict. Then you can plan your life that way.

If you want to meet friends, never meet them when you are closed; meet them when you are open. And when you come to me, never come when you are closed. Come when you are open so that you will be receiving more.

But there is nothing wrong in it – it is just a natural process. Good.

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