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‌CHAPTER 8

26 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor said he had done Zazen; he liked Zazen but felt it was too mental, too much ‘in the head’.]

Mm.… One has to come into the body before one can go beyond the body. It looks a little paradoxical, but unless you come deep into the body, you can never be free of the body. Experience liberates... any experience is liberating. If you go deep in sex, you will be liberated from sex. If you go deep in anger, you will transcend anger. If you move into the ego to the very extreme, it falls on its own accord. One should not be lukewarm, that’s all. One should go to the very end. And from that very end, the quantum leap.

So if you have not gone deep into the body and you do meditation, you will remain in the head; it will become a head trip. In fact you will become too heady. It will become almost like a headache because you will think and think and go into thoughts and thoughts – and there is no end to it. You will hover around and you will not have any roots and grounding.

The body is very much grounded in the earth; it is part of the earth. In the body are the roots. One has to go to those roots as deeply as possible. Once you have gone deeply into body, once you have experienced what this embodiment means, what exactly being embodied is all about, then suddenly from that extreme there is a jump, and in that jump you become a witness.And that is totally different from the head. The head is one polarity, the body is another, and above both, above body and mind, is you. And there is no way from the head directly to you. All the roads go via the body.

If you love a woman and you simply go on thinking about her in your head, it becomes cerebral, you cannot get any satisfaction out of it and you cannot get any dissatisfaction out of it. You simply go on playing with pictures – empty, meaningless. They cannot lead you anywhere – you go round and round; in a vicious circle you go on moving. It is very frustrating because nothing comes out of it. If you love the woman you have to go into the body, and through the body you have to love the

woman. If the experience through the body becomes deep, then one day there is a possibility of a new dimension opening – and that is love through the spirit.

The head is really isolated. It has no interconnection. When you are in your head, you are a private thing. When you are in your body you are no more private. You are connected... you become part of the great continent.

That’s why to be authentically in the body is one of the ‘musts’ of all spiritual growth. It gives you a feel of the real, of the authenticity, of the solid. The mind is very vague; it is made of the stuff that dreams are made of. The body is very solid, material, selective; it consists of reality. And if you pass through the body and go deep into it, you come to another corner. From there, for the first time, you have a glimpse of that which is beyond the body. It is not the head. This is the trinity.

If you allow me, I would like to call your head the holy ghost. It is a ghost – and nothing holy about it. The body is the son, the spirit is the father. This is the trinity. If you go on thinking and thinking, you become a ghost. It is better to be in the body than to be in thinking. At least you will be the son, and from the son the door opens towards the father.

Jesus is reported to have said, ‘Nobody comes to my father unless he comes through me.’ Christianity has never decoded the symbolism. They think if you go through Buddha you will never reach to God; you have to go through Christ, because Christ says so: ‘Nobody reaches to God unless he comes through me.’ But the meaning is totally different.

The sky is the father, the earth is the son, because the earth is out of the sky. It comes out of the sky and it dissolves into the sky. Out of nothing arises the form, and again back into nothing it dissolves. Jesus is the form of the formless... embodiment of the unembodied... walks on the earth but does not belong to the earth. He is both – that is his paradox. He is man and God, body and spirit.

If you become too heady, you can become a great thinker, a philosopher, but your life will be very poor. You will not know anything real. So all the movements in the West that are for body sensitivity are going to create a real base for religion. Once you have known what the body is, you cannot be contained by the body. You start moving out of it to a new dimension – not of the bodyYou don’t

think. The body teaches you how to be. Then you can leave the body and still be. And the purest reality happens.

This to me, is the trinity. Beware of the holy ghost!

Prem means love and satyanam means truth . Love is the door to truth, and all else is false. The path is love and the goal is truth. And all else is just nonsense.

Religion consists only of two things – love and truth. If you become loving, you will start arriving home. If you become truthful, you will become loving. Truth is the innermost core of your being, and love is the sharing of it.

Truth is like a seed and love is like a flower. It releases its fragrance to the winds. So if a person is just after truth, there is every possibility he may become an island, closed. Many monks in the past have become very closed, island-like, almost dead. They were seeking just truth. It is difficult to

seek truth alone, because it will kill you; it will be too much. You will not be able to have it. The very condition of having it, is to share it. The more you share, the more capable you become. The path of the monk is a half-path.

Unless you are also a lover, truth will go on being elusive. So love is to relate to people, and truth is to relate with oneself. We are not alone, we are not independent – we are interdependent. So the search for truth alone can be very suicidal. Love keeps balance.

So these two things you have to remember – that’s why I give you the name.

... Mm, do a few groups here. Just a little more effort, a little more let-go, rather, a little more surrender to the energy, more trust, and the target is not very far. Your arrow is ready: it can leave the bow any moment. So remain expectant – not expecting, just expectant. And there is a vast difference between the two.

When you expect, you know what you are expecting. Then there is a desire, a motivation, a projection into the future. When you are simply expectant, you don’t know what you are expecting. You are simply in a thrill. Something is going to happen. That something is unknown. It can be X it can be Y, it can be Z. You don’t have any ideas – not even a vague idea about it, of what it is. And you cannot have any idea of what it is because it has never happened before. It is going to happen for the first time. It is going to be unique. It is going to be absolutely new.

Unless God is new, He is no more God. And unless meditation brings you a clearance that you have never been in, to a space that you have never visited – not even in your dreams; you have not even imagined it – then meditation is not happening. Only when you come to such a fresh and virgin land which has not been there in your mind in any way before – it is uncorrupted by your past, it is not a continuity with your past, it is a discontinuous explosion – then only meditation is happening. So remain expectant but not expecting. Nobody knowsBut this much I can say to you – something

is going to happen, so be receptive. Remain in a welcoming mood.

I was reading just the other day about a Sufi mystic; Malik-bin-Dinar was his name. He would pray and meditate the whole day and then at night he would sit in his bed and pray – sometimes for the whole night; he would not fall asleep. His disciples became worried. They asked him, ‘What are you doing, master?’

He said, ’I am expectant. He can come any moment, and I would not like that He came and Malik was fast asleep. It is just on the verge. I can feel.it is in the air. He is very close by. I don’t know

His direction, I don’t know His form. I know very well when He comes I will not be able to recognise Him because I have not known Him before, but this will be unmannerly if He comes and I am asleep. I am expectant. The whole day I meditate to prepare myself. The whole night I wait – He may be coming.’

A seeker never expects, but a seeker is always expectant, tremendously expectant. Immense is his expectancyimmense. That creates openness. If you expect something, that closes you, because

expecting comes from the past. When you are simply waiting for some unknown to explode in you, or maybe you are going to explode into something unknown; nobody knows the whereabouts – then one is simply open, throbbing, thrilled.in a great passive receptivity.

So as I see it, your energy is very very ready. Trust it, go with it. Even if sometimes you feel that something crazy is going on, don’t be worried. I exist here for crazy people.

[The new sannyasin says: I work with crazy people.]

That’s very good. You work to treat them. I work to help them to become more and more and more crazy. You work to bring them back to the world. I work to help them farther out... to lead them to the ultimate craziness. That’s what ecstasy is.

Much is going to happen.

[A sannyasin says: I was in Goa for a few days and there by the ocean I feel it so much, and so much bliss. I’m so thankful that I am existing. All the no’s inside turn into a big yes.

But when I am here it is as if it is just a half flame; only a half flame burning. And I don’t understand why at this ashram I can’t be so ecstatic as I can be by the ocean.]

You will be – because it is always so. With the ocean there is no problem; with people there are problems. The ocean creates no problem for you. You may create problems for the ocean – that is up to you – but the ocean creates no problems for you. With the ocean in fact you are alone. The other does not exist. But with people you are not alone – and unless you learn how to be alone in a crowd, the ocean is not going to help.

This too is a sort of ocean – an ocean of consciousness... so many people with so many different waves and rhythms and vibrations. You become affected by them. The ocean simply does not care whether [you are] there or not. The ocean simply does not know anything about you; it doesn’t bother, it is not aware. You think that you are with the ocean. The ocean does not know that you are there, otherwise there also there will be trouble. Sometimes the ocean may like you, sometimes the ocean may not like you. Sometimes the ocean may be bored with you, sometimes the ocean may be happy with you. Sometimes the ocean will say, ‘Just go away,’ but the ocean does not respond or react. It is simply there whether you come or not. You are alone.

With people the problem arises. Each person responds, reacts in a thousand and one ways. Unless you become such a witness, unless you become ocean-like – that whatsoever happens is happening and you are not worried, it does not make any difference to you.Somebody insults you – it doesn’t

make any difference. Somebody says, ‘Hari, you are great’ – and it doesn’t make any difference. When you become ocean-like then you can move in the crowd, in the market-place, undisturbed, undistracted, unperturbed.

If you remain by the ocean for long, by and by the beautiful feeling that has come to you will disappear, because there are so many people who live by the ocean and they don’t even know that the ocean exists; they have become completely oblivious. There are fisherman in Goa who simply would not be able to believe’What nonsense are you talking? saying that sitting by the side

of the ocean you feel so grateful and so peaceful and so silent.’ They have lived there – they have been born there; for centuries their parents and their parents parents have lived there, and their children will live there, and it has never happened. ‘What nonsense are you talking ?’

If you live there a little longer you will become accustomed, and then this shattering that the vastness of the ocean brings to you, this total indifference that the ocean brings to you, will be lost. It is good once in a while to go, but that is not going to help really. It is an escape from people. I’m not saying don’t go to the ocean and to the mountains. Sometimes go – it is really beautiful – but it is not going to help your growth, your integration. It is only people who are going to help, because it is only people who disturb.

It is only people who create worries, anxieties. It is only people who penetrate your heart and poke you this way and that, and will not leave you in rest. Unless you learn how to live with people and yet far beyond, far away into the stars, then nothing is going to happen. Only this is going to become a deep integration in your heart.

So whatsoever you felt by the ocean, carry it here. I have chosen knowingly to remain in the market- place. I could have moved to Goa, but right now if I move to Goa I will not be of much help to you. It will be very good for me, but it will not be of much help to you. I can move to the Himalayas and you will have tremendous beauty, but sooner or later you will become accustomed to it and you will start hankering for the world. You will start hankering for people because only people can satisfy you and only people can dissatisfy you.

People are your atmosphere. We are not simply part of nature. We are part of a subtle atmosphere of humanity. If you remain outside of it there is every possibility that you may become primitive. It has happened to many people – and I am not for it. I would like you to go beyond society – not below it. Both look alike but they are not. You can fall back, you can become more animal-like. That’s what is happening in the West – the new generation and all sorts of revolts: hippies and yippies and others. That’s what is happening – they are falling out of the society, they are falling beyond it. It is not going to help.

Falling out of the society, you become a little less. Maybe you will be more helpful, but not for long. Sooner or later you will be pulled back by the society because your own innermost being will feel starved. It is not only food that you need, it is not only air and water that you need. You need a subtle human vibration; that’s a subtle food that you need.

Sometimes it has happened that a few children have been found in the forest. Some wolf took a child, and a miracle of nature – they didn’t eat the child. They helped the child to grow. Four or five times within fifty years, this has happened. The child has grown like a wolf-man – absolutely in nature without any human contact.

Just a few years ago in Lucknow they found one child – twelve years of age, brought up in the forest by wolves. He was a wolf, he was not a man. He was unable even to stand on two feet, and he was absolutely animal-like. They tried hard to bring him back to humanity, to reclaim him. In that very effort he died – it was too much.

Just to help him to stand erect on two feet took six months, and even then, whenever there was some possibility, he would run on all fours; that was natural. After six months of effort they could teach him only one word of the human language – his name, ‘Ram’. They started calling him Ram, and it took six months for the child to learn that when somebody asked him, What is your name’, he was able to say, ‘Ram’ – that’s all. His eyes were absolutely empty and stupid; his brain remained retarded.

If hippies and yippies are allowed, this will be the final result. No, man has to go beyond society – not below it. You have to use society to go beyond it; you have to use society as a ladder. Much is wrong with it, but falling out of it is not going to help, but going beyond it. Buddha is beyond it; below is a wolf-man. Both are no more parts of the society. Buddha is not a part of the society because now he is higher, greater. A wolf-man is also not a part of the society because he is no more human. He is inhuman, fallen back.

My whole effort is this – that you should grow with people, and you should grow beyond them. Never make the ocean or the mountain a substitute for people – there is no substitute. For a human being, humanity is his natural element. And there is much temptation for the mind to move away from the society because people really create so many problems.

Live with a person and you will know many problems. You live with [your partner] and then you know how many problems. Just such a beautiful [woman] – she can drive you crazy! Then one starts thinking, ‘Leave all. Go somewhere where you are alone,’ but then you are escaping from the challenge.

Never escape from any challenge. Tackle it. Try to understand it. Become a witness to it, become more conscious of it. Be in it deliberately and still retain something like a far-away look, a distance. Remain in it and yet distant. That’s the whole art of religion – to be in the world and not be of the world.

But sometimes when you get too lost, go to the ocean, go to the mountains. Have a feel there of how things should be, and let that experience remain with you when with people. If you can bring your ocean to your relationship and it remains there, then something has happened; otherwise you are dreaming.

Try it here. Good.

[The sannyasin, who is a musician, then asks: Is the music also a sort of ocean?]

It is because it simply gives you a totally different dimension. Many dimensions are available. For example when you are listening to me you are part of a totally different dimension – you become part of me. Then you start feeling my vibeThen you start moving with me – howsoever reluctantly.

Even a few steps – but you move in a different dimension.

Music is a different dimension. You can be completely drowned in it.you can become drunk with

it. It is a great therapy, and it can make you whole and healthy and holy. It is meditation, and a very natural meditation.

[Osho said that just as physics says that everything is made of electrons, the eastern esoteric sciences say that everything is made of sound – not of electricity.]

Music was born originally out of meditation, because in deep meditation one starts feeling the cosmic sound: ‘omkar’ – what the zen people call ‘the sound of one hand clapping’. It is not a produced sound. When two hands clap, it is a produced sound. When one hand creates the sound, without any clapping really – because there is nothing else to clap with – when the sound comes out of oneness, unity, unison, then it is natural.the cosmic sound.

It is always there. When you become silent, you hear it. When you have too much noise in your head, you cannot hear it. Not that it is not there. It is always there, but you are not there. Your own noise, your own fussing mind, goes on creating such barriers that the still, small voice cannot be heard. Out of that original sound, music has been created.

In the East we say that all music is an effort to bring that cosmic sound to be. That’s why there is spirituality in indian music... a new sensitivity which is nowhere to be found. In the western music there is too much sexuality, it is too sensuous. In the indian music there is too much spirituality – it is not sensuous at all. It silences you, calms you down, cools you, and brings a breeze from the eternal... the breath of the eternal. It is an effort to give you an indication of the cosmic sound.

It is just as when I am talking to you. My whole effort in talking is to bring you something that cannot be talked about... to say something that cannot be said... to bring to words something which is wordless... to define something which cannot be defined and is immeasurable. In the same way, music is an effort to say something about the cosmic sound.

The greatest master is one, listening to whom you naturally fall into meditation: that is the criterion of a real musician, a real master – otherwise people are technicians. One can play the sitar beautifully and you can enjoy it – it’s good, an enjoyment.

But a person becomes a master when his created sound brings you something of the uncreated... when his created sound has a gospel in it... side by side comes the unknown... travelling with the sound comes the soundless. The sound you will forget, but the soundless will remain with you.

Music is born out of meditation, and so is dance. In fact all that is beautiful has come out of meditation because there is no other way for it to come. Meditation is the door.

Drown yourself in music – and don’t practise it just like an art and a skill. Practise it like a meditation, practise it religiously. It is the holiest of holies.

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