CHAPTER 31
31 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[Osho gives sannyas to an Indian prince.]
Mayoor is so good and so meaningful. Mayoor is the symbol of dance and celebration and joy... and if life becomes joyful, then nothing else is needed. It is through joy that god comes; it is through joy that the first contact happens. So create this dancing energy around you. Don’t be serious, be joyful; serious people miss much. Be playful and get more and more in tune with nature.
Man has become very much alienated, almost like an uprooted tree, hence there is so much misery and depression. Get in tune with nature – go with the trees with the river with the mountains – and drop many wrong notions. For example if you are talking to a tree your mind will say, ‘What nonsense are you doing? – talking to a tree? How can you talk to a tree? This is absurd!’ But I tell you that it is possible to talk to a tree. It only needs a certain kind of silence, communion, and you can talk to the tree. and there is an opening. It is not only that you talk to the tree – a moment comes when the tree starts responding to you.
Luther Burbank, a very famous man, used to talk to trees. He was a nobel prize winner and people used to think that he was mad – but he was experimenting. He was talking to a cactus plant for seven years and telling the cactus plant, ‘You need not be afraid of me. You need not grow thorns. I’m your friend and I will protect you. You need not be afraid of me’. It was one of the greatest experiments ever done. And then a branch without any thorns appeared on the cactus. That was a miracle! The cactus responded. By and by the cactus came to believe.…
So talk to trees and to birds and to rivers and to animals.…
Sometime stay a little longer and do a few groups. You will be immensely benefited and you need them! Mm? and you will grow very easily. I don’t see any blocks. I just see that you have not been expressing yourself; you have been holding yourself.
And it happens; when you are born in a very aristocratic family that happens: one starts being a little closed. One is always mannerly, doing things according to etiquette, this and that. One has to do this and not that, so the natural flow stops.
So whenever you come next, be here for a few more days and do a few groups, mm?
[A sannyasin who is leaving says she feels as if she has been thrown back on herself. She’s been crying a lot since sannyas-taking.]
I can understand. It is natural: you are going so early. Something has started to happen and you will be going into an alien world.
Here things are on a different wavelength. It is easier here to grow into sannyas, into meditation. Going back to the west, and you are going so early, the fear is natural.
... But come whenever you can manage and next time you come, stay a little longer. Within just six to eight weeks you would have settled... and then you can go anywhere.
The contact has happened with you, but you will only become aware by and by; it takes time. The contact happened in the unconscious. When you take sannyas you decide from the conscious mind to take sannyas, but when I give you sannyas I give it to your unconscious mind, not to your conscious mind. The conscious mind is not very reliable and it is very superficial. It is a very minute part of your totality... just one-tenth of your total mind. You decide from the one-tenth and I give to the nine-tenths.
My approach is not towards your conscious mind, the known you; my approach is towards your unconscious mind, the unknown you. I try to relate to the unconscious, and you will not be aware of it for a long time. By and by your conscious will understand that something is growing in the unconscious. By and by the message will reach from the unconscious to the conscious; then you will be thrilled with joy.
Right now I can understand why you are feeling that you are being thrown back on yourself, but you are not. I’m there, and I will show you ways to relate to me even if you are far away.
One thing is: continue to meditate. Choose one meditation – any one. Which one did you like the most?
[She answers: The Nadabrahma.]
Then the Nadabrahma is perfect; do the Nadabrahma every day. To do it at night will be the best thing, but not just before you go to sleep because then it will create so much energy that it will be difficult for you to fall asleep for two or three hours. So do it at least two, three hours before you go to sleep. If you go to sleep at twelve in the night, then nine is the right time.
Do the Nadabrahma, and after Nadabrahma keep this box with you, put it on your heart and remember me. And you will not be thrown back on yourself. Once you are a sannyasin you are my responsibility.
[She tells Osho she works as an assistant to a publisher.]
Mm mm!... so that’s very good for me! I will work on you – you work for me! You can do much, mm?
And help a few more people to become related to me so that sooner or later there will arise a small centre, and that will be helpful for you.And come back!
[A sannyasin who has returned from the West where she took a mala to give her sick father sannyas. He says: I feel like something very beautiful has happened to me while I’ve been awayI haven’t
felt my heart so much before.]
Good! Very few people feel their heart and when they talk about the heart they talk about the physical heart – the pumping system. They don’t know that that is not the heart. The physical heart is just the corresponding spot in the body to the real heart, the soul. The real heart is not part of the physical body at all, it is your spiritual centre – but they correspond.
Just hidden behind the physical heart is that space, that point, that mystics have been calling the heart. And when you start feeling it, it is immensely beautiful. Then for the first time you start becoming aware of something which is not just the body in you. And with the feeling that something more than the body exists in you, there is great joy.
And I can see: the feeling is coming. Help it to come more; be more available to it. Do everything that you feel will be helpful, and don’t do anything that you feel hinders. And only you can judge, mm? You will immediately be able to know when you lose contact with it. If you do something and you lose contact, then that is the thing not to do.
And if you feel that you are doing something and the contact goes deep and it comes with force, the feeling of heart, then that is the thing to do more. You will just have to grope and find out what is right and what is wrong.And only you can find out because what is wrong for you may be right for
another. So no instructions can be given from the outside. And what is right for you may not be right for anybody else; it depends.
The deeper you go, the more individual you become. On the surface we are almost alike; the deeper you go, the more differences come up. And the heart is one of the deepest so there you are unique. There only you are you and nobody else is like you. So no programme can be given from the outside, no instructions supplied.
So just go on feeling. If you feel that this thing helps then do this thing more. If you feel that sitting with the trees helps, good – follow that feeling. If you feel that being angry hinders then become a little more alert. Now you have something to lose if you become angry. If you feel that being jealous creates a barrier and you forget your heart, now it is for you to choose; then don’t be jealous.
In fact this is how real morality has to be found. When you start feeling something precious is happening then you have to sacrifice many things which are meaningless and which are hindrances.
[The counselling group are at darshan. The leader says: I feel that it was a group of individuals.… they were all developing their own uniqueness.]
That’s how it should be!... that’s how it should be. Ordinarily people tend to fall into a crowd and become part of it. People want to somehow lose their identity. It feels good; it is a kind of alcohol, an intoxicant. That’s the appeal of alcohol. People become intoxicated so that they can forget themselves. Then there are many kinds of intoxicants. The political crowd is an intoxicant. You become a part of it, you become a communist, you lose your identity and it gives you the same feel as alcohol. Or you become part of a religious crowd: you become a hindu or a mohammedan or a christian. You are no more individual and you don’t have any individual responsibility; you are anonymous. If you do something you will not feel any prick of conscience.
And this happens in many ways. It can happen in a group here too... but it was not possible because these people are almost all sannyasins. They are not searching for any intoxicant; in fact they are searching for awareness. They are moving to the polar opposite. Their whole effort here is to become more and more conscious and to become individuals more and more. They want to get free of society, they want to get free of dependence... they want to be themselves.
That is the whole work here. So it will be a different kind of group here; it will not be like... And your observation is perfectly true. In a way it will be a difficult group too because you will have to tackle twenty, thirty people separately.
It is easier for the groupleader if it is a common mass. Then he can talk to the group; the group functions as one unit, it has no separate individual souls. It is easier and convenient for the groupleader, but when the twenty persons are each individuals and each is functioning in his own way, it is difficult for the groupleader. If the groupleader wants to be the leader it is almost impossible – the group will drive him mad – because you can only become a leader of a crowd. A leader is only possible when there is a crowd.
When there are individuals the leader cannot be a leader; he can only be one who facilitates the process. Yes, he can be the midwife but not the leader. And that’s my whole approach here – that the groupleader has to be less and less of a leader... because leaders tend to convert people into a mass.
It is easier to control a crowd – naturally. When you want to control twenty persons, twenty individuals, it is complicated. When you control a crowd it is very simple: there is only one person, and that person too is anonymous.
So here, groupleaders will not be really groupleaders; the name is a misnomer. Here they will be more a kind of facilitator, cooperating in a process, helping, midwifes, not leading really – just being there, remaining available if they are needed. If some problem arises they can be helpful but they will not be dominant. They will not give commandments. At the most they will only be in the capacity of advisors, and whether the advice is taken or not depends on the individuals.
There will be no effort from the side of the leaders – that if you don’t listen to his advice then you are doing something wrong; no, not at all. If you don’t listen that is your decision; if you listen that is your decision. It is not a commandment. It is not an army and people are not treated like sheep.
That is the greatest humiliation a man can suffer – to be treated like a sheep. Here you have to treat them with great respect. Each individual has such dignity that nothing else is more valuable than that. So your experience has been good.…
And by and by as sannyasins will be growing more authentic, the less and less will the leader be the leader. And then the leader can be of more help than he can be as a leader, because then there is no burden on the leader; he is not to lead people. He can be more playful, there is no need for him to be serious. He can be more authentic and he can be more true. He need not pretend, he need not pose. He can simply be there and let his truth help people. He need not be very very dogmatic... he need not be a demagogue. He can also be a learner, and when the leader is also a learner it is beauty, it is tremendous beauty.
And people learn more when the leader is also a learner because people feel more in tune with the person; they don’t feel humiliated, dominated, directed. When there is no demand from the leader – that you should listen to this – there is no resistance from the other side. Demand disappears, resistance disappears, and then there is for the first time a kind of rapport... and through rapport comes rapture. Good!
[A group member is returning to the West. Osho reminds her to continue meditating. She says she liked the dynamic meditation best of all.]
That’s very good! If Dynamic suits then there is nothing like it, because it functions on all three planes of the being: on the body, on the mind, on the soul.
For example, Nadabrahma: it functions only on two planes – the mind and the soul. Techniques like tm function only on the mind. Any technique that functions on all the three planes of being brings a higher kind of integrity. Otherwise one plane starts lagging behind.
For example, one can do some chanting, jappa, mantra, prayer, but the body will remain uninvolved. In a christian prayer the body will not be involved, so the body will remain lagging behind and sooner or later there will be a great distance between the mind and the body and the body will start feeling like a burden. That’s why Christian mystics started feeling the body was the enemy. It is not the body that is the enemy; it is the technique that they have used.
If all the three planes function-together and the meditation is such that it keeps all three flowing together in a togetherness, then one never feels any disintegration, any fragmentation. Then body, mind and soul, all are you, and they all go on pooling energy into one centre. And obviously when all the three pool energies into one centre you have more energy and higher possibilities. You can go as far as all your three planes can permit.
If dynamic suits then it is very beautiful. Continue it, mm? Good!