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CHAPTER 11
31 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
The first thing is to fall in line with me. Just dose your eyes and feel yourself surrounded by me – as if you have entered me, as if I am only a door. Relax, and if something starts happening in your body energy, allow it. Just go with it .…
Geet means song and Govind means God – God’s song. It is also the name of a very great poem – Geet Govind. It is one of the most beautiful devotional books.
So now forget the old completely and start anew. It helps tremendously. Once you can get the idea that you are reborn, then you are really reborn. It is just a question of getting the idea. Whatsoever we are is nothing but our idea about ourselves. If we get into the idea of being miserable, we are miserable. If we get into the idea of being blessed, blissful, we are blissful.
This is the only thing worth understanding – that we live out of our ideas, that we create our world around us; that the world is not there really, the world is not given – it is projected. It is we who create it, and hence we don’t live in the same world; we cannot. There are as many worlds as there are people. We only appear to be together. We cannot be because we live poles apart. Everybody creates around himself his own projection which follows him like a shadow and goes on creating things for him. So just the very idea that the old is dropped from this moment and hence forward you will be a new person .…
In all religions some sort of ritual exists to give you the idea. That is just a suggestion. In Christianity, baptism exists. That’s nothing but something to just give you an idea that you are no more in continuity with your past. A discontinuity has happened, a gap has arisen. That very understanding helps tremendously, because old problems now look ridiculous because they don’t belong to you.
Just watch it: sometimes if you think a problem belongs to you – even if it doesn’t – you start getting anxious about it. Just sit silently and think that someone is insulting you. What to do now? You start
feeling anger arising in you. Nobody has insulted you! Or when somebody has insulted you, just relax and think that he has insulted somebody else. How can he insult you? You don’t even know yourself – how can he know you? Maybe he has insulted your name, your form, but that is not you. Suddenly you see that something subsides. The very idea becomes our identity.
So from this moment, feel completely discontinuous with your past. And start anew, with a new nucleus, so new integration can arise. It is always easier to demolish the old structure and make a new start than to renovate the old. Howsoever you renovate, somehow it remains old. Modified, changed a little here and there, plastered again, decorated a little – but deep down it remains the old structure; the pattern, the gestalt remains the old.
Sannyas simply means getting rooted in the idea that you renounce your past. I don’t say renounce the world. I say renounce the past because that has really been your world. I don’t say renounce your relationships. I say renounce yourself. I don’t say renounce money; I don’t say renounce anything outwardly. I simply say have deep renunciation inside so that you simply wipe out the whole past and you start creating a new world.
For a few days you will have to remember it... only for a few days. For at least three weeks you will have to remember again and again that you are not the old. Then things settle, a new centre arises and you start feeling grounded in the new.
And I give you a beautiful name just to remind you that one has to become a song, the Lord’s song. That’s everybody’s destiny, and unless we become that, we suffer.
The whole human suffering consists of our not finding that which we are meant to be. If we are meant to be a rose flower, we don’t know how to become a rose flower. Or if we are meant to be a lotus, we don’t know how to become a lotus. The whole suffering consists in our somehow going on missing our destiny. The song remains unsung. That’s exactly what misery is; everything else is accidental This is real misery – that you cannot sing the song you have come to sing... that you cannot bloom into the flower that you have been carrying in your heart for so many lives. And unless the song is sung, one is not freed. Freedom comes at the exact moment when you flower. The moment of fulfillment and the moment of freedom are just two aspects of the same phenomenon.
And much is possible. Just allow it to happen!
Deva means divine, asawa means wine, divine wine. And I give you this for a particular reason. From this very moment be drunk with me. Become a drunkard – sing, dance, celebrate. Let joy be your path. And if one can be really joyful, there is no need for any other prayer.
Joy is the greatest prayer, and when we are delighted, when we are in simple delight, we are in tune with God.
So never be serious and never be sad, because to be sad is a complaint against God. To be serious in fact is a rejection of God’s world. Remain joyous. Make it your very style of life – and you can; it is simple. I can see it in your energy. It is so good. If you just allow it, the dance will arise.
[A visitor says: I don’t know what love is. I feel very closed... The more I’m here, the more I feel it.]
And the more you become aware – that’s right. In the ordinary world everybody is closed just like you, so you don’t have any comparison. And ordinary life is so loveless that everybody can think that he loves very much. Whenever you come in contact with real love, then the problem will arise. Whenever you come close to people who are open, more open than you, flowing, then you will feel that you are closed, because then comparison arises.
But you have felt something which is there. It is good that you have become aware of it; now do something about it. If you remain closed, you remain dead. It is as if when the whole sky was available, you were just looking from the keyhole. Of course you can see a little sky from the keyhole also, and sometimes a ray of sun passes by; sometimes you can see a flickering star. But this is unnecessarily hard and you remain poor unnecessarily.
Come out of it – and you can come out of it. Just try one small experiment back home. Every night before you go to sleep, just stand in the middle of the room and look at the wall. Concentrate on the wall; not the door, the wall. Think of yourself as just a wall with no door in you; completely closed. Nobody can enter you and you cannot get out – imprisoned. Almost become a wall, psychologically. Let your whole energy become a wall, a china wall.
For ten minutes become the wall and become tense, as tense as you can become. Drop all openings and become absolutely dosed – what Leibnitz calls a monad, a windowless atom; completely closed within yourself. You will start perspiring, you will start trembling; anxiety will arise. You will feel as if you are dying, as if you are entering your grave. Don’t be worried – enter it. Bring it to a climax – this tension, this contraction, this shrinking.
Then turn, look at the door, keep the door open and become a door. Start feeling that you are becoming a door; you are not a wall. Anybody can come in you – there is no need even to knock. And you can go out; there is no barrier. Relax... relax the whole body and the whole feeling. Expand. Remain standing there, but expand. Feel that you are filling the whole room. Feel that your energy is streaming out of the door into the garden. Just let the energy go out, and feel that the outer world is entering you. For ten minutes become a wall, and for twenty minutes become a door. Then go to sleep. Continue this for at least three months. After the third week you will start feeling so open, but continue. I am giving you both so you can feel the contrast more easily.
Once you can understand your own energy – that it becomes a wall, it becomes a door – then you will become aware of a very beautiful dimension. Then you can feel others’ energies. You pass a man on the street; you can feel whether this man is a wall or a door. Now you have an inner understanding about it. Then if you want to relate with this man, don’t relate when you feel he is a wall, because then nothing will succeed. Only relate when you feel that he is a door.
Many times this can become such a deep experience in relationships, that you cannot imagine it. You fall in love with a woman without knowing whether she is a wall or a door. If she is a wall, maybe she looks beautiful but that is meaningless. She has a beautiful nose, a long nose, very shapely, beautiful eyes, but what to do with eyes and nose? If she is a wall, you will be in misery.
So the basic thing to be felt is whether she is a door, whether she is an opening, and if you go into her, whether she will allow you in or will obstruct the path. If people become more aware of their own energy phenomena their whole life will be totally different. Then they will fall in love with a personis
a door, not a wall. Then they will find moments when people are doors – because people change. In the morning somebody may be a door; by the evening he may become a wall – because the whole day has been of struggle, fight, tension, anxiety, and one tends to close.
So approach a person when he is a door, and the same person will be totally different. Approach your child when he is a door. Then he will listen, then he is ready to absorb what you say. Otherwise you go on shouting. He is deaf; he is a wall. Talk to your wife when she is a door. Make love to her when she is a door. When she is a wall, it is better not to disturb her. But once you know it as your inner feeling, then you can feel it everywhere.
Then you can find who is your master – not before it. Unless you can see a gateless gateYou
can be attracted to someone’s teachings; that won’t help. You can be attracted by his persona; that won’t help. He may be a very charming person, he may have a charisma, a sort of magnetism. That is not going to help unless he is a door – a door to the divine. Many people live a miserable life because they miss this very basic perception, perceptivity; and one should start it from the inner.
[A sannyasin says she is not ready for sannyas. Osho tells her her energy is ready.] Go with it. Your energy is simply flowing beautifully. Go with it.be possessed by it.
That is one of the basic human problems – we try to possess the energy, we try to control the beauty of it. We never do anything which is beyond our control. We always want to remain in control. That makes you very limited. That makes you very small, because your control cannot be for the infinite, and your control cannot be for the whole. You choose by your own choice to remain miserable and small and tiny and confined to a very small prison cell.
Now this energy is coming like a tidal wave; go with it. Why be afraid? Why cling to the small? Always choose the big, the vast. I don’t see the point of why you should lag behind.
[She answers: I don’t want to jump. I want to feel the ground.]
There is no ground! It is an abyss. The jump means a jump into the abyss. I’m not saying that there is any ground: there is none. I am saying that all ground is false imagination. Because we are not ready to jump, we imagine a ground underneath. We think we are safe. But there is no ground – just look! The floor does not exist; it is just imaginary. Because of our fear, we go on thinking that we are moving well-grounded. But where are you grounded?
Life is an abyss. There is no beginning and no end, so there cannot be any ground. Sannyas is nothing but to recognise the fact that we are in the abyss, that there exists no ground. And we are not trying for any ground. We are ready to enjoy this abysmal beauty.
No, I am not saying that I will give you any ground. People who have ground – I take it away. I lead them into that emptiness. In the beginning it is very scary – naturally. One feels very frightened because one has become accustomed so much to living on the ground. But by and by you feel a certain freedom arising in you. When there is no ground, suddenly you see that your wings are opening. Then you start flying.
And when there is no ground, by and by you feel that your freedom is unlimited. Then the very insecurity becomes your security. Then there is no death, because death happens only because you cling to the ground. The ground is illusory. One day or other it will be taken away; hence death exists.
When you accept that there is no ground, immediately all death disappears, because nothing can be taken away from you. You don’t have anything.
[A sannyasin says: I feel dizzy. It’s not physical, but every day has been so meaningful – I just wonder, ‘What next?’ I feel that something has opened in me.]
Mm, it has opened – that’s why the excitement. Excitement is life. One should always live in tremendous excitement and readiness to be surprised, never taking things for granted. One can never take anything for granted. The moment you take anything for granted, a part of you dies. If you start taking your whole life for granted, you are dead. That’s how people die before their death.
In fact if you have the eyes to see, you will see dead bodies walking on the road, going from here to there, in the offices, in the factories, in the shops, coming back home; but dead bodies, automatic, robots. They have died long ago. They died the day they thought that life is just something which has happened. They lost excitement. You cannot surprise them. They know everything.
So remain in a state of unknowing. Remain in a state of subtle excitement and you will remain alive. Your life will grow more and more every day. Expect nothing, but be ready for everything. Anything can happen – even God. Expect nothing, because expectation kills excitement, and expectation creates frustration. Expect nothing and be ready for everything. Then small things will be so beautiful. Ordinary pebbles on the shore are like precious diamonds and the whole world is so beautiful then.
If you have the eyes which are open and ready to be surprised, eyes which are ready to wonder, a heart which is ready to be in the state of awe, then everything is beautiful. It is a great epic, this life. It is a great dance, this life, and each moment is unique; it is not a repetition. Nothing every repeats.
So be thrilled, and live more and more in a thrilling, streaming way. Don’t get accustomed, don’t make your life a routine, a mechanical thing, and much more will become possible every day.
[A sannyasin says: I just keep creating the same problems – the same melancholia, thinking about things that aren’t necessarily negative in a negative way. Things that don’t fit into my usual pattern, I take in a negative way.]
You have a negative shadow which hangs around you, and in your moments of unawareness, it overpowers you. Then you become completely identified with it, and you are no more yourself. Then you say and do things for which you will repent afterwards – and you do repent.
So this has to be understood: don’t get identified with your negative shadow. Remain aloof, otherwise it can be very destructive. You do something, create something, and then you get identified with the negative; then all that is created is destroyed again. The positive is really fragile and the negative is very strong. The positive is like a rose flower and the negative is like a rock.
It is dead but it is very strong, and if you throw the rock on the rose flower, the rose flower will be crushed.
The higher is always fragile, the lower is always strong. The higher is delicate, soft; the lower is rough and rude. The negative is the lower part. So whenever you get identified, you wash away many things that you were creating. Something beautiful was going to be there. Again the rock falls and crushes it. Again you have to start from ABC. This I have been watching. Now you have to be alert about it.
When you feel in a negative mood, make one point certain. Don’t say anything in that mood, and don’t do anything in that mood. In that mood, simply remain closed with yourself... become completely withdrawn. Lie down on the bed. Eat, go to sleep. Lie down in your bath, relax, but don’t do anything. Don’t relate, don’t make any decisions, because those decisions will be wrong and they will undo the work of many days and then you suffer.
[The sannyasin answers: That’s what’s happening now, but I didn’t feel it was because of me; it was a matter of what was happening in the world.]
No, no, that is another thing. I’m not talking about that. The world goes on changing and you have to change many times. That’s not the thing. I’m talking about your inner growth. Many times you create something beautiful, and you destroy it – you destroy it within a few moments.
So you have to be alert about this from now on. Decide to do things only when you are positive; when you are happy, flowing, loving, trusting. Don’t do anything when you are not positive – and that will save much energy. Soon you will realise its benefits.
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