7

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‌CHAPTER 7

7 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asks about earning money in the West and finding time for sannyas activities.]

Do at least one meditation every day. Choose any meditation, but persist with one method; don’t go on changing. Whether results come or not, go on persisting in it. Results certainly come; all that is needed is patience. Methods don’t work. What really works is patience. Methods are devices to help you to remain patient and open.

If a person simply sits in his room for one hour every day doing nothing – no method, no technique, just sitting there – if he sits long enough it is going to happen. All meditations are just explanations for people who cannot just sit, rationalisations for people who cannot allow themselves to just sit. They need something, so when they think they are doing meditations they can allow themselves a one-hour gap, otherwise they won’t allow. In fact meditation is nothing. It is simply waiting, resting, a state of no action... and that is our natural state.

Think of the child in the mother’s womb, doing nothing. That is a nine-month meditation marathon. And the child is utterly happy. In fact, because of that blissfulness, one always feels a suffering in life. Compared to it whatsoever happens in life falls short. Although consciously you have forgotten about it, unconsciously it persists as a nostalgia. We know in some subtle way, our body knows, that there was a time when all was just bliss. But you were not doing anything in the womb; you were in a state of no action – ‘wu-wei’. You were just there. That’s what meditation is all about: again creating a womb situation.

So close your doors, sit silently; even that will do. But make it a point that one hour has to be given every day. And results won’t pop up immediately, because we have learned habits of action and they have become so deep-rooted that even when you are sitting, you find some ways to do something. At least you can go on changing your posture, you can think of a thousand and one things. You can

have dreams. You can wonder ‘Who is this child crying? Why? Why is this dog barking?’ Or you can create subtle mechanisms in the body to distract you. Maybe an ant is creeping on your leg or there is pain and you have to change the posture. These are nothing but tricks, strategies of the mind to keep you occupied, because the mind dies utterly if there is no occupation. The mind is occupation. Meditation means a state of no occupation.

So if you like any method, you can do it; if you don’t, just sit. Twenty-three hours are yours; one hour give to me.

And finally you will see that only that one hour has been saved; all the other twenty-three hours have gone down the drain.

You have to put the energy into your earning because you have to come forever, so settle things. But one hour for meditation, mm? that will be a contact with me, a connection, and it will rejuvenate you every day. It will go on creating new spaces for you. But don’t hanker for them and don’t expect them. Don’t even think about them. When they happen say ‘thank you’ to the sky and forget all about it.

And don’t for a single moment have the idea in your mind ‘Now it has happened it has to happen every day.’ Once you desire a repetition you are getting into trouble; it will not happen again. It happens only in an innocent mind. It happens only when there was no expectation, no desire, no action, no occupation, just a simple passivity. One was, nothing else – a pure being, a naked, bare being. One was just breathing, one was aware.

So give one hour to meditation and put your energies into the work and come back as soon as you can.

[A sannyasin meeting Osho for the first time says: Can you tell me what I need?]

I will... I will not only tell you, I will give it to you. You need me! You just have to prepare the heart for me so I can enter and start working inside. The meditations are just cleansing processes and so are the groups. They simply destroy the negative in you. Once the negative is destroyed I can enter into the very core of your being. That very entry brings an alchemical change, brings transformation. The very touch, just the contact, and suddenly your energy that has remained blocked for centuries starts flowing again. And the life that has disappeared from you into some kind of underground in your consciousness starts surfacing again, blooms in your consciousness.

The real work starts only when I penetrate you. The disciple has to be unconditionally open. It is risky and only courageous people can take it in, can go with me. But much is going to happen...

Participate in as many things as possible. Use your time as totally as possible. Don’t waste any time, because a great intensity is needed to penetrate into a new dimension. And that intensity is created the more you participate in groups, meditations, dances, and the things that are going on around here. So in one after another, go on participating. That builds up the energy – it brings a peak. And from that peak the transformation happens of its own accord; It is like heating water: when it comes to one hundred degrees it evaporates. But much is going to happen.…

[A Japanese sannyasin asks about a friend who went ‘mad’ recently; Japanese sannyasins who were helping to look after him felt confused and embarrassed.]

I can understand, but one has to watch. If something like that happens, take care of the person physically, make him as comfortable as possible, but don’t try to help him psychologically in any way, because that will create more madness in him. Never advise a madman. He has become mad in the first place because so many people have advised him in the past. He has been driven mad by advisers. Nobody is mad, nobody need be mad, but we create such abnormal expectations of people that they drive them mad.

And the Japanese culture is one of the most repressive cultures. It had to be in the past because it was a military culture, and you can create samurais only if you repress them. When they have so much repression in themselves they become dangerous. They can kill easily – it is an inner necessity for them to kill. And they can commit suicide also very easily; their whole energy turns destructive. A repressed person is a destructive person; either he will be a murderer or he will commit suicide. And if neither are allowed he will go mad. That’s what happens.

Japan has to learn more and more how to live without so much repression. And this has been my observation here – so many Japanese sannyasins have come and I have been watching – when they come here, this is such a polar opposite to whatsoever they have experienced in their past that they can go insane. It is very confusing, because ‘discipline’ is a dirty word here, repression a calamity, a disaster, a disease, and to have a very uptight character is ugly. But they have been made for it, so when they suddenly relax here, all the repressed things bubble up.

In the new commune we will make arrangements, special arrangements for the Japanese so that special care can be taken of them, mm? Because their whole culture, the whole past, has to be taken away. All that is needed is caring, love, but no advice. Take care of the person, give him food, sleep, nourishment, comfort, but no psychological help. Just leave him alone. It is a kind of catharsis he is going through. Just a few weeks and he will be out of it on his own.

But I can understand – the difficulty is there. Right now we don’t have any special arrangements but in the new commune we will have. Nothing much is needed – just three, four weeks complete rest and the hidden samurai will disappear.

To be a sannyasin is just an effort which takes you beyond being a samurai. It is just a totally different vision of life. The samurai is a fighter, a warrior, and the sannyasin is in a let-go. He has nowhere to ’go, nothing to fight with. The samurai believes in will and the sannyasin believes in no will of his own.

[A sannyasin says that she did have something to say before she was here, at your feet; now it’s gone. So you tell her to express it with energy. There is no need to say anything, you tell her, some minutes later.]

You are in a very very liquid state of being, melting. The ice is melting, and by ice, I mean the ego. So there will be much confusion also, because when the old ego melts, with it melts the whole old world and one has to learn how to live in a liquid way. One has always lived as a solid thing. You will never be a solid thing again; now you will be a river. And to be a river means to live in insecurity. A

frozen pond is perfectly secure, but a flowing river is continuously insecure because it is continuously moving into the unknown territory.

Your ego is melting. It is good! That’s why my whole emphasis is on love, because love is the warmth that melts the ego. These are the three states of consciousness: the solid – the ego; the liquid – the humble; and the vapour – that is beyond ego and beyond egolessness too. Once you have entered into the second, then the third becomes possible.

But good! Feel blessed and move with the flow. Don’t hold yourself back: wherever it takes you, go with it. Become a dry leaf in the wind – let the wind take you. You need not even decide about the direction. Forget all about goals. Let let-go be the only goal, and it is not a goal at all. Relax more and more, and more and more you will open up.

[The Primal therapy group are present at darshan. One group participant who used to be a nun asks about sexual relationships; she does not feel any desire while she is involved with the ashram and meditating, but does not wish to live like a nun again.]

No, it is not the same type of life. It is not. The way you have lived in the past was a kind of deep repression. Now there is no question of repression here. But one can move to the opposite extreme – one can force, start forcing expression. That will again be repression. You need not force it. You have just to drop repression, that’s all. Then if it comes naturally, good; if it doesn’t, then it is not needed at all. Then your path is very clear. And on the surface they may look alike because you will be celibate again, but this will be a totally different kind of celibacy; nobody is forcing it on you, nobody wants that you should be like that, but if celibacy comes naturally to you, then you have to listen to your nature. Don’t be destructive to your nature.

There are born celibates for whom to move into sex is simply ugly. If they have to, they will, but it has no charm. These were the first celibates in the world, the natural celibates, and because they looked so happy, so radiant, many people started following them. Those who followed were not natural celibates, so they had to repress themselves. And repression can only create an appearance: deep down, that which you have repressed remains, persists, poisons your being.

So all that is needed here is to drop repression, that’s all. Then if sex comes easily, you enjoy it and you can be in it without any forcing on your part, then it is good. Anything natural is good. But if you have to force and practise it, then it is wrong. Then you will be doing the same wrong that you have done before.

You have done enough groups, you have gone through many processes and my feeling is that now there is no need to be worried about it. Meditate, listen to me, feel me, and then whatsoever comes naturally is good. If it doesn’t come, that too is very good. There is no value in sex or in no sex in itself. There is no value or disvalue, the value is in being natural, simple, innocent. If celibacy is innocent, perfectly good. If love is innocent, perfectly good. You follow me?

My whole idea is: one should be natural, innocent. One should live through one’s heart, not through one’s head. That celibacy that you lived as a catholic nun was from the head. If this celibacy happens, feel blessed – it will be from the heart. And there is no need to get into any relationship. Why get into any misery? There is no need – you have not to go through anything. You have to start living naturally, and that is happening. Just go on listening.

And remember this too: that whatsoever is natural today may not be natural tomorrow. Things change tomorrow you may come across a man and fall in love. Then fall in love! Go headlong into it! Never be afraid of life. Life is good... always good, forever good. And if tomorrow you start enjoying sex, that’s absolutely right; go into it without any guilt. Make it a meditation; it is sacred. But if it doesn’t come on your path, go on dancing towards god without it.

It has not to be the same for everybody. People are different and people have lived in so many lives in such different ways that they have evolved different personalities. To somebody music is just natural and to somebody else it is impossible. Think like that about everything in life. Sex is also a kind of music. There is no intrinsic necessity in it; it is your choice.

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