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‌CHAPTER 20

20 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas to someone who had great difficulty to decide to take sannyas, because of her commitments in the West.]

The decision was difficult – decisions are always difficult but it is good to be decisive. Sometimes one may even take a wrong decision; then too it is better to be decisive rather than remaining indecisive, because in indecisiveness one disintegrates, one becomes fragments; one has a centre no more. The centre is created through constant decisiveness. Each moment one has to decide. It is not very important what you decide. My emphasis is not on what you decide; my emphasis is on that you decide.…

Mm mm, so start making decisions in small things, in very small things. For example if you have decided that at ten o’clock you will go to sleep, then go to sleep. It is not very important whether you go at ten or eleven, that is not important, but decide that you will be going at ten every night, and suddenly you will feel very good. Or decide that you will get up early in the morning at a fixed hour or you will eat at a certain timeJust start being decisive in as many things as possible and

then you will find more and more decisiveness coming to you. It needs practice, that’s all. You have never practised it; you have always been hanging in a vague way, ambiguous, this or that. One can go on hanging between this and that the whole life.

Ordinarily the problem is created because people make much fuss about the right thing to be decided. that’s why. Because we have been taught always to decide the right thing that creates a problem. It is not always so easy to decide whether this is right or not.…

My whole approach is: don’t be bothered too much about right and wrong and don’t be bothered about what is better. The whole thing at stake is to be decisive. Try in as many things as possible, and then after a few months you will suddenly see that a new kind of centre has arisen in you from

where decisions easily flow, they don’t take so long a time. And if a decision takes too much time it is always inadequate, because the right moment, the right situation is already gone. By the time you decide it is no more the moment for it, so you are lagging behind.

For example, somebody says something and you start deciding what to answer. By the time you decide, the man is gone, or whatsoever he said has become already irrelevant; it needs no answer now.…

Life is a constant decisiveness. Each moment one has to decide. And sometimes not knowing what is right and what is wrong, sometimes not knowing which is better, one has to decide. One cannot afford not to decide, mm? otherwise one will start disintegrating. So this decision was difficult, I know, but it is a good beginning.…

And now, from this decision, start becoming more and more decisiveIt will happen!

Deva means divine, darshan means vision – and you have immense capacity of vision. It just has to be released, it has to be uncovered. The door is there; it just has to be opened.

And you have come in the right moment. This is the time one should become a sannyasin. So everything can be hoped for and all is possible. You have all the energies needed, you have all the faculties needed. A great poet is going to be born – just allow me to work upon you. And you have started it.

[A sannyasin asks about doing the Fischer-Hoffmann process because she has a tight knot in her stomach at the idea of seeing her parents. She says: I either become very distant, mechanical with them, or very argumentative and defensive. And I know that they’re limited and they have problems, but I don’t have the compassion for them.

Osho checks her energy.]

There is, in fact, no need. The energy is perfectly good, but your fear is also there. It is just a fear which comes from the past, just an impression from your whole past which is hanging around. Your energy is perfectly good: there is no knot in the energy, the knot is just in your memory. These are two different things.

If the knot is in the energy then it is a difficult thing, a difficult problem to solve. But if the knot is just in the memory it is a very simple thing. If you want you can drop it just like that. My suggestion is that before going into anything else, just be happy back home for two, three months, the way you have been here. Just enjoy life with no barrier, with no guilt, with no inhibition. If you can enjoy life with no guilt and no inhibition, a great compassion for your parents will arise in you. Now you will not be able to see how this can function.…

In fact, no child is ever able to forgive his parents unless he becomes guiltless, because parents mean guilt. They have created the guilt, the basic guilt: do this, don’t do that; be like this and don’t be like that. They were the first creative elements, but they were also destructive. They helped the child to grow, they loved the child, but they had their own minds and conditionings and they tried to impose those conditionings on the child. So every child hates the parents.

That’s why all the societies make it a cultural programme to respect your parents. It has to be made to balance the hatred, otherwise parents will be killed! They will not be able to survive; it is a survival measure! So, all the societies, ancient, new, eastern, western, cultured, uncultured, all agree about one thing – that the children should respect the parents, because they know that if this respect is not enforced, forcibly, the children are going to revolt. When they are small they cannot do anything, but when they become powerful, when they come into their own – by the time they have become a little older and powerful – the parents will start becoming old and powerless; that time will be dangerous for the parents. To avoid that calamity all the societies have to create this taboo. Now, this taboo cannot be dropped unless you drop the guilt – because it is a shadow of the guilt.

You are feeling against your parents, afraid of your parents because they don’t allow you to be yourself. So whenever they are there, you start feeling cramps, you feel knots in your stomach, because they won’t allow you to be yourself. Again you become a child in their presence; again the past becomes alive. Again you are helpless, and you are not a child now, so naturally you become argumentative, you retaliate, you say things, you become angry or you become very defensive, or you start avoiding... but all these things create a distance.

And there is a deep urge in you to love your parents; that’s so with everybody. You have come from them, you owe your life to them. Everybody loves this origin but the origin has done something which does not allow closeness, communication, so when you come close there is a problem. If you don’t come close, some deep urge to commune, to forgive, to make new bridges is there.

For three months just live as you would like to, and that will be the cleaning of this memory part. Just live the way you want to live. Your parents are not obstructing you any more so you can live your life. Your parents will speak from within you many times: you will be doing something and a parental voice will come, ‘Don’t do this’. Laugh at that parental voice and remember that now you are free and your parents have made you mature enough that you can live your own life and can take responsibility for it. So no need for this voice – now you have your own consciousness, you need not have a substitute for it. Now the parents need not speak for you; you can speak on your own.

Just keep this in mind, and don’t listen to the parental voice. Even if sometimes it is hard, go on your own; don’t listen to the parental voice. For three months try this; within three months this knot will disappear. If it doesn’t disappear then you can go through Fischer-Hoffmann, and that will be helpful.

But I don’t see that there is any problem. Much has happened to you here. Mm? you were not here for many days but much has still happened. The energy is perfectly flowing. It is just a memory thing, and a memory thing is not very important. Mm? it can be washed very easily, it can be erased; this will be the way to erase it. And you can do it on your own, then there is no need for therapy. If you cannot and you feel it is difficult, then Fischer-Hoffmann will be helpful. It will do the same thing: it will try to erase the memory. If you cannot do it alone it is always good to take the support of any expert who knows how to do it, there is nothing wrong in it, but first try it on your own.

Otherwise, what happens sometimes is that your therapist may be able to help you to get rid of your parents but he becomes your parent. The mind is so clumsy, so confused, that if it starts losing some grip on something, it immediately starts grabbing something else from some other direction

as a substitute. So, many people who go to the therapist by and by get rid of many problems but then the therapist becomes the problem. Then they cannot afford to lose the therapist; they cannot drop out of therapy. They have to continue in one or another. They can change the therapist, they can change the therapy, they can go from one kind of therapy to another kind of therapy, but they become therapy-addicts.

It is very good sometimes to tackle your problems on your own – it will give you more confidence. If you can finish... and my feeling is that you can finish; there is no problem about it. You have just to make an effort for three months.

And this is the process – to do whatsoever you want to do; don’t listen to any parental voice. Good or bad, that is not the point. Whatsoever you want to do is good for these three months, and whatsoever you don’t want to do is bad so don’t do it. Be completely at ease and free, and enjoy life almost as if you are born for the first time. And that’s exactly what has happened through sannyas. You are a new child, it is a new birth. You can start growing on a new line, and then those parental voices and the parental conditionings will not come in the way at all, it is a new growth.

For three months just enjoy, and if you feel that things have changed, perfectly good; if they have not changed, then there is nothing wrong. You can take Fischer-Hoffmann. Keep this (Osho gives Madhu the box) with you. And whenever you need me, just put it on your heart and remember me... and I will be working continuously. And help my people there!.…

[A visitor says he has been with the Gurdjieff movement.]

That’s very good; all Gurdjieff people have to come to me. Spread the rumour! That’s very good, that is one of the most precious things to be related to.

[The visitor says that he was a little afraid of Gurdjieff.]

He was that kind of man. Nothing wrong with you; he was that kind of man! He was really a dangerous master. The West has never known anyone like Gurdjieff. The East knows many people. In the East Gurdjieff is not thought a dangerous master, but in the West he was. He was absolutely new, a phenomenon – because the West has become acquainted only with christian mystics.

Christian mystics are good people – saintly, virtuous, loving, compassionate, goody-goody. Gurdjieff is totally different, mm? – he can cut off your head! But only a man like Gurdjieff helps. Christian mystics are good to worship. They are beautiful flowers, mm? – you can worship and praise them and sing a song for them but nothing much will happen to you.

Gurdjieff is a roaring lion. You will either escape forever or you will start roaring in the same way! His roar is to provoke your sleeping lion. So it is very natural to be afraid of gurdjieff; nothing wrong in it.…

And be afraid of me too!... That is not just! Just being afraid of Gurdjieff is not just. You can have the same relationship with me too!...

Mm, good! Become a sannyasin!

He says he is surprised... and it is like an accident.] That’s how things happen: they start with surprise!...

Everything is an accident while you are asleep. Accidents stop only when you become enlightened, otherwise not. In sleep you cannot expect more. How can you expect more in sleep? – everything is accidental while man is asleep.

Just the other day I was reading about a man, a very famous poet. He writes that his father was travelling in a train – he was a young man in those days – and there were five more people in the compartment. He took out his packet of cigarettes to smoke and then offered cigarettes to all, so all the six cigarettes that were there in the packet were finished. Then he got down at a station, was going out, then again started feeling to smoke. He looked, but the pocket was empty so he turned back and went to the cigarette store... and he fell in love with the woman who was working there. She became the mother of the poet!

[A sannyasin asks if she should finish everything in the West and come to live here forever. Nothing to be worried about! says Osho. Finish everything and come, mm? And I am coming with you!]

[Another sannyasin says if he stays in his job another three years he will receive a pension, but he is not enjoying the work. Move where you feel joy, Osho says, Don’t wait for the pension – that is nothing.]

My whole effort here is to soon create a big alternate world, so people who cannot live in the world, who have got stuck in the world, can have some alternatives where they can start moving again. They can be born again, can become children again, can become innocent again. And it is possible only in a new kind of commune. It is not possible in the world because the world has its own ways and you have to fit with those ways. That’s why creativity disappears sooner or later. It is like a river moving in a desert; how long can it move in a desert? Sooner or later it simply gets stuck and then divided and lost in the sands. The desert is so big that it is almost impossible to hope that the river will be able to continue to flow out of it, it is not possible.

The so-called world is a desert, it is a wasteland. We have to create small oases where people can start living the way they always wanted to – with no worry, with no financial problem on their head, and amidst people who think in the same way.

In the West the family has disappeared and it is not going to come back. Only communes can come back; the family is out of date. And without the family man is uprooted. The family cannot exist the way it used to in the past because that whole social structure is gone.

First the joint family disappeared; then came the unit family. Now that too is disintegrating, and people are left alone: nobody to be together with, nobody to understand, nobody to commune with. One has to drag on in one’s life because one has to earn one’s living. One goes on doing things that one doesn’t like because one has to earn money. It is selling one’s life – for nothing!

It is a very vicious circle: to live you need money and to get money you have to lose your life; this is a vicious circle. If you want to live, you will need money, and if you need money then all kinds of

compromises.… And then you don’t have any life to live! You have money but no life to live. Either you have life but no money to liveAnd the problem is so complicated that people think, ’Let us do

this for a few years, then we will get the pension. Then we will retire and I will do things in my own way.’ Now there are many problems involved...

First, one has to postpone living continuously. When you postpone your living for thirty years, twenty years, that very postponing becomes part of your mind, part of your structure; you learn it. You postpone for twenty years saying that when you are retired you will go to the forest and live your life – but twenty or thirty years postponing is a conditioning. You did it for thirty years – tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow – then after thirty years one day you get the pension, but that thirty years habit of tomorrow is there. You cannot drop it just like that; it will persist.

Now you will be stuck. At least up to now there was hope; there will be no hope any more. Up to this day there was hope that one day you would get the pension, you would retire. The problem of money would be solved and then you would do your things – non-utilitarian things. You would sing, you would dance, you would play the guitar, paint, or whatsoever you wanted to do – because money would not be a problem. But after retirement one suddenly feels empty because one knows only one way to liveand that is for tomorrow. Now today is there but it is empty and you cannot

postpone it for tomorrow.

Retired people die very fast: they could have lived ten years more if they were employed. In the same employment where they were always miserable they could have lived ten years more. Life is lessened by at least ten years through retirement. The man may have lived ninety years; he will live only eighty. And the retired man’s life becomes a nightmare because nobody needs him any more. He is no more important, no more significant. He is almost thrown into the junkyard. Who cares? He starts feeling useless.

The day you feel that you are useless you have started committing suicide. It is poison. So my feeling is that vou need not waste your time.

Soon we will be moving to a bigger place far away, so you can come and just be here and do whatsoever you want to do. I would like you to be here. Good.

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