30 November 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin says all his money has gone to his wife, from whom he has separated, so now he is unable to stay in Poona, and does not know what to dohe feels very happy here and would like
to staybut doesn’t really care.]
.If you want to stay, you can do something in the ashram and be here. But if you don’t care, that
won’t help; you will not be a part. You have to care, because I don’t like people around me who don’t care; they prove useless. You cannot do anything beautifully if you don’t care.…
If you want to be here, something can be done. If the money is gone and the wife, it is good, mm? something can be done; you can do something here. But then you have to be caring. You have to love the work, you have to love what is happening here and you have to be really involved in it; then there is no problem. We will see. Keep this (a box) with you. Good.
[A sannyasin says: I’m having a very simple life, going from place to place, eating, drinking, walking, being in the ashram. I’ve been following this life for one year alreadyIt feels beautiful.]
Then continue, mm? That’s perfectly good. If you can afford to be a vagabond then there is nothing like it, mm? – it is perfectly good.
[A sannyasin says that he has been crying almost every day. He is afraid it might become a habit.]
No, it’s perfectly okay; not only okay, it will be helpful. you can cry every day it is a kind of unburdening. t is a kind of cleansing.…
We gather dust and if you really cry, all dust is washed away.…
No, no, nothing... nothing. And even if it does, it is a good habit! Nothing to be worried about. If a man can cry every day this is prayer. And if you can cry for no reason at all it has a tremendous beauty to it; it is sheer joy! – it has nothing to do with misery. When you cry because of a certain reason there is misery, but if it is just a purifying process, then it is good. Continue.…
[The sannyasin asks if the crying is part of the path of prayer Osho spoke about in his discourses on the Hassids.]
You cry! I am your zaddik. Be a Hassid!
[A visiting doctor says that a few years ago he left medicine and moved into leading groups to help people go deeper. He had an experience where everything dissolved and he became terrified. He tried the Shraddha group here but was unable to express himself in it. Osho checks his energy.]
That type of group is not needed; you need a different kind of work. Your energy is there and in a very beautiful space. No need for any catharsis. You have to move more creatively rather than in catharsis. You have to give this energy a creative dimension.
All that has happened has been good. That disappearance was also very good. It will happen many times, and each time it happens it will shake you more than the previous; you will become more frightened. So learn not to be frightened. Because when energy starts moving it passes seven layers and as it passes each layer it disappears for a period. Naturally, because you have known it on one level. When it moves into another level, you don’t find it on the first level any more; suddenly you are frightened. And you cannot become aware of the second layer immediately: it will take a little time. When it becomes available on the second layer, when your consciousness reaches the second, then.There will be a gap between the energy movement and the consciousness reaching
it. In that gap you will always feel very much frightened, as if a kind of death is happening. You have become empty, all is gone and you are utterly exhausted. There seems to be no way out of it; you are stuck in a kind of emptiness.
It is frightening, it is a death; on one level you have died. On another level you will be reborn but there will be a small gap. If you become too frightened the gap will take a longer time. If you are not frightened, if you can remain a silent witness, undisturbed, unperturbed, then the gap will be of a very small period. After three, four crossings, the gap will be almost immediate because you will know; then there is no problem. But for the first time it always happens; one becomes scared.
The energy has moved from the first level to the second and this way it will move up to the seventh. Those are the seven chakras in eastern psychology. They are not physical phenomena so you cannot find them in the body. They are not part of the body, they are part of the subtle body, they are part of your energy-body.
You have come in a very very right moment. Do a few things hereDon’t do any cathartic method
– Dynamic Meditation, no. Do Sufi Dancing; that will be good. Do chanting; that will be good. Do the Music group in the night and then the camp is coming. In the camp do Nadabrahma; a humming meditation will be there. Nataraj, a dancing meditation will be there. You have to look around at whatsoever is available here. Do the non-cathartic ones. And I will suggest that you do a few groups after the [camp]. The first group you do is Zazen, the second group is Rebirthing, and the third group is Leela, these three groups.
Just remain available, open and much is going to happen. But you need not enforce it. It will come in a kind of effortlessnessSo don’t force it in any way. If you force it you will be preventing it. When
something is happening spontaneously, on its own, just remain available to it. Be in a pregnant awaiting, thrilled, welcoming, but not making any deliberate effort for it to happen, because that deliberate effort is ego effort and it will prevent your process.
Deliberate effort is helpful when the energy is not moving. Then it has to be moved. Once it starts moving, once the river has started flowing, you can flow with it. And it is better not to push: let things happen in their own time, in their own season. This is what trust is, and the more you trust, the more they will be happening, because you become a channel, a receptivity.
What I mean in short is that you become feminine.… Male means effort, aggressive, an effort to conquer, an effort to prove; feminine means receptive, passive, no effort to prove, no effort to go anywherejust waiting, a womb. And become a sannyasin!
[The visitor answers: I shall see.]
If you shall see then I will not give you sannyasbecause you seeing will be a disturbance. Just
wait don’t see.…
Just wait; it will happen one day and then don’t prevent it. That’s all that you have to see – that you don’t prevent it.
[The visitor says: I think I already am a sannyasin, except in this moment I’m not!]
Even that idea will become a prevention – that you are already a sannyasin so what is the need to become a sannyasin? Mm? that can be a trick, a strategy of the very cunning mind: ‘I am already, so then there is no problem!’
No, you are not! Keep it in mind that you are not yet. Only then can you become, otherwise how will you become? And when it happens, just see that you don’t prevent it. Then don’t find explanations and rationalizations: simply come here and become one. Good.
[A visitor, who has been meditating and attending discourses in the ashram for three months, says he is finally breaking out of his shell...
Osho recommends a group for him, and checks his energy.]
Mm! That’s right. Good! The shell is breaking. There are cracks, and soon it can fall and you can be reborn. You will have to remember a few things. One is, start praying every night and that will be very very helpful. Don’t do any formal prayer – just whatsoever happens in the moment, just a small chitchat with God, whosoever he is. Put the lights off, sit in your bed, and just have a little dialogue with the universe – call it God or existence. It is not addressed to anybody in particular.
And you have to be spontaneous. Just sometimes saying ‘hello’ will do, or ‘how are you?’ or anything that comes in that moment that you would like to share with existence. As if existence were a person, share in the same way. Assume that existence is a person just standing there in the darkness of
your room and have a little chitchat. That will help you very much: it will give you courage, it will give you trust and it will give you a kind of protection.
The problem arises when the shell starts breaking and becomes afraid, shaky, mm? because the known is disappearing, the familiar is falling apart and one is moving into the unknown and the uncharted. One never knows what is going to happen so naturally one clings to the familiar. It seems like a shelter and a security and it looks convenient.
Prayer is one of the greatest things in such moments, so every night be in a prayerful mood. I’m not suggesting any prayer – Christian, Hindu, or Mohammedan, but anything that happens. Sometimes you will be laughing and sometimes you will be crying; everything is good! But go into that trust. That trust bridges you with existence. One becomes more courageous, daring, and that daring is needed now.
And the second thing: be more loving. That will support your prayer, that will become a base for prayer. Be more loving because love is closest to prayer. And a man who is loving is always more courageous than the man who is not loving, because the loving person feels a kind of friendliness surrounding him. The unloving person feels alone, the unloving person feels that everybody is the enemy and he is insecure. The loving person feels secure. So love as much as you can!
These are just general indicationsAnd then come back. Much is possible but come for a longer
time, mm? And then on the eleventh be totally open. Good.
[A seeker asks if his sannyasin girlfriend can sit next to him while he takes sannyas.]
Prem means love, vandan means prayer. Become a love prayer. Those so-called religious prayers are verbal. A love prayer is existential. It is not something that you can do in the church, in the temple. It is something that you have to do twenty-four hours, IN LIfe. You have to be loving. That becomes your prayer. And you have to be loving to everybody and all – even sometimes when you don’t like a person. I cannot tell you to like him, because what can you do? If you don’t like him, you don’t like him, but still you can love, and that is a totally different thing.
You don’t like the person, you know that you don’t like the person, but he is God’s creation and God exists in him as much as in you. Your personal opinion does not matter – whether you like him or not. You owe that much, that you have to love him. That is the meaning when Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies’.because they belong to God as much as you do. In this particular situation they
function against you and you are against them but that doesn’t matter. The ultimate remains true. Likings, dislikings, come and change; love remains. So be in an existential love prayer.
Ordinary prayer is limited: you do it once a day and then your whole life is against it. For half an hour you are prayerful and for twenty-three and a half hours you are anti-prayer. Now how is your prayer going to have any effect? What you do in half an hour you destroy in twenty-three hours. It is not possible: the palace will never be created.
Love has to be something like a quality of your life – that each moment you are prayerful. You see the rock and you are loving, you see the tree and you are loving, you see people and you are loving. There is no need even to say to them that you love; that is not needed. You may not know the
person, you may not even see his face – you have just been looking at him from behind, you have been walking behind him – but you can be loving! This love is the real prayer and only this prayer is ever fulfilled; all other prayers simply go down the drain.
[A visitor has come to visit his wife who is a sannyasin here. He says it was good to see her again... the first day he did not notice a change, but each day he is discovering new things.]
The first day she was not changed because it always happens that when you meet somebody with whom you have been related for a long time, you fall into the old trap immediately. One relapses very easily. That may have caused it and your idea ‘How can one change? One is not supposed to change.’
People have a kind of tacit belief that nobody ever changes; all remains the same. This tacit belief is there because it helps you not to bother about changing. It doesn’t happen so why bother? Why hanker for something which is not possible? It keeps millions of people untransformed, this idea – that nobody ever changes.
So people are very reluctant to believe that somebody has changed. People are very reluctant, very resistant, and even if you say that somebody has changed they will find ways and means to prove that no, nothing has changed. This is a kind of self-defence. They are saying ‘If [the wife] can change then I am left behind. I feel a little inferior. No, it cannot be possible: she must be deceiving me or must have been deceived. She has become hypnotized or she has become auto-hypnotized. She only thinks, believes, that she has changed.’
Ordinarily we try to find ways, excuses, reasons, to prove, ‘Look, here you are – just the same as you have always been’. That relaxes us; then we are relieved of a burden – that neither she nor anybody else has changed so we can enjoy being as we are. That also, and this too -that seeing you, she will relapse... unconsciously.
It happens that if you have not met for ten months the meeting has to start again from the point where you left off. That ten month gap has to be bridged. So when you first saw her and she first saw you, you saw her the way you had seen her ten months ago, because it is from there it will begin. And that is natural.
That’s why when people meet they talk about past days and reminiscences, and memories, mm? That is a way to settle the gap in between so that they can become contemporaries again. First they have to go into the past. Two friends meeting after five years will have to first have a long talk overnight about things which are no more meaningful but which have a certain relevance. Mm? then those five years are accounted for; they can start from there.
So that must have caused... Otherwise she has changed, and you are also going to change! It is better to believe that people change, that helps you to change. It is always good to believe that change is possible. Then it becomes possible because sooner or later thoughts turn into things. But it is good that it lasted only one day and then you started seeing
(to the wife) Help him to see more and don’t behave in any way in the past. Mm? that’s your duty towards him. Even if sometimes he provokes you, knowingly, unknowingly into something past, don’t