12

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‌CHAPTER 12

1 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is going back to the West said she ran groups in a mental hospital and also privately, but she worries about being too serious.]

No, don’t do it, because then it becomes almost impossible to live. As humanity is, it needs many lies, many pretensions, many pretexts. If you are talking to a child, you talk in a language that the child understands. Maybe it is not the right thing to say, maybe you can explain it in a more scientific way, but then the child won’t understand. When you are talking to a child, you talk in his language, knowing well that whatsoever you are saying is arbitrary and when the child grows he will know that those things were just ways of saying things. He will understand.

So what I suggest is, one has to go on playing many games. One should play non-seriously, and one should remember that they are games. One should not forget that – but there is no need to become serious about it.

[The sannyasin said:I carry in me also, somewhere, a fear of going crazy.]

Everybody carries it. And unless you enter that fear, you will always remain afraid of it. To dissolve fear, the only way is to get into it. If you feel that you have a fear of going crazy, make it a point that at least once in twenty-four hours, for one hour, go crazy. Don’t go on accumulating it.

Nothing is wrong in being crazy. That is also a game; a few people decide to play it. And there is nothing valuable in what you call sanity. It is just a question of choice, what you decide to play, what game you want to play. Then you have to follow the rules. Crazy people follow their rules.

For one hour in the night, when the day is finished, close your doors, sit in your bed and go crazy. Do crazy things and enjoy it. Be a child again, a madman and a mystic. Don’t judge it and don’t condemn it. That too is a dimension.

There are a few things only crazy people know; nobody else can know them. They live in a totally different sort of relationship with existence. They know a certain door to reality which the so-called sane people have completely forgotten. They have a certain access to their unconscious. They dive deep into their own being and they bring up beautiful pearls. They live in a different rhythm, in a different vibration. I am not saying become crazy. I am saying remain available.

To me the perfect man is one who is available to all dimensions, who is able to move contradictorily, who is able to allow paradox. That is my definition of a perfect man. When he wants to play the game of sanity, he is as sane as anybody can be. Then he can defeat Aristotle. He can be as logical as possible. Then he follows the whole game and the rules. But if he wants to play the game of being crazy, then he is a paramahansa. He does not care a bit about logic. He can be as absurd as Bodhidharma.

When Bodhidharma entered China, he had one shoe on his foot and one on his head. When the Emperor came to receive him, he was embarrassed because he had heard so many stories about this man – and here comes this man who looks like a clown!

[Osho said that the Emperor had travelled far to meet Bodhidharma, and had spent much time in preparing to receive him. Being a Confucian, the Emperor managed to contain himself until he was alone with what appeared to be this madman, and asked him why he was carrying a shoe on his head.

Bodhidharma said that he wanted the Emperor to have no illusions, no expectations about him. Sometimes he was a philosopher, sometimes a madman. He was not fixed in any role, in any pattern. He said this was a device to shock, so that from the very beginning no one should be deluded about him.]

A perfect man is paradoxical. A perfect man has no character; he is characterless. That’s his holiness, because he’s whole. He has no limitation; he has everything in him. If a person is fixed too much in his sanity and cannot relax even for a few moments and become non-serious, then that man is really mad – if you follow my understanding. A man who is so sane that even when he is with his wife in bed he remains sane, is insane. That man is not alive. That man is just a structure. That man is just a skeleton, just a shadow.

If he cannot play with his children and become a child, that man has no liquidity. His juice has dried up. And if that man cannot shake hands with a madman, cannot hold the hand of a madman, cannot fall into rapport with him; if it is impossible for him, he is very limited and confined. One should be available to all dimensions.

And that is my definition of a really sane man – one who is even so capable, so fluid, that sometimes if it is needed he can become a madman; nothing holds him. If you throw me into a madhouse, I will become a madman, because what is the point of being sane there? What is the point? I will become mad! I will prove myself even madder than the mad! Why lag behind when everybody is mad? [laughter] You have to participate. While in Rome, be a Roman. That is one of the most wise adages. When with a madman, be mad. When with a sane man, be sane. When with a child, be a child. When with an old man, be old.

[The sannyasin then says: Many of the people who are called insane, where I work, I like them better than a lot of the people who run the place.]

They are, because they have never done any harm to the world. In fact because they are better, they have decided to drop out. This world is not for them; hence they have gone mad. They have. started to play the game of being mad. They are simple people, innocent people, and sometimes more intelligent than the ordinary run of the mill. Love them and never judge them. While you are with them, be just like them. Then they will understand you and you will understand them.

And drop this attitude of being serious. Life is a game – play it! Serious people tend to become what you call ‘spoil-sports’. Wherever you put them, they will spoil the whole thing by their seriousness. Your so-called saints are all spoil-sports.

[The sannyasin says: My tendency is to always be serious when it comes to the business of enlightenment.]

Not even there! If you are serious anywhere else, it is not so dangerous. But if you are serious when it comes to enlightenment, then it is absolutely wrong. Anywhere you can be forgiven, but not there, because enlightenment is only for non-serious people.

Nobody has ever heard that any serious person became enlightened. It doesn’t happen in the nature of things, because a serious person remains serious, closed, calculating. He is never available to the wilderness that life is. He is never available to God. Even if he encounters God, he will have his own conditions.

Even God is afraid of serious people. He.still comes and plays with children, and He still comes and talks with madmen. He has stopped communicating with serious people long ago. So don’t make the idea of enlightenment a nightmare. Take it easy.

In fact, if you can take all that life makes available non-seriously, you are enlightened. If you can understand that life is a game, a leela, a play, you are enlightened.

Enlightenment is not something that one has to achieve. It is just a vision that happens to a liquid person. It comes to a relaxed person. It is not that you go to enlightenment. If you are relaxed, collecting seashells on the beach, splashing in the river or just fooling around, it comes to you.

And sometimes it is needed to pretend. If you feel it is going to help somebody, pretend. I allow you even to lie if you feel that yes, this is going to help – because people are in such a state, even lies help them. If you feel that this lie is going to be creative, don’t be worried. This is what I call the whole-hearted readiness to live.

And take life as being more like poetry than like a syllogism. In poetry you have much more freedom than in prose, and you can play around with language too. In fact the greater the poetry, the lesser is the impact of language on it. In real poetry, language becomes almost irrelevant, and the rules of grammar and linguistics become absolutely useless. The higher a poetry rises, the higher it rises beyond rules, regulations, forms, formalities and the same happens in life. The more you understand it, the higher you rise. But when I say ‘the higher you rise’ I don’t mean that you escape from this ordinary mundane life. No – you remain there, but now you don’t take it seriously.

Then you enjoy whatsoever is. You enjoy your failure and you enjoy your success. You enjoy both so tremendously that you cannot figure out which is which. Then it is perfect; everything is going perfect then.

Enlightenment will come seeking you – don’t be worried about it. It never comes to people who are waiting for it, never. It comes only to those people who have completely forgotten about it. One day suddenly they find one morning that they are enlightened.

It is just like lightning. A shudder goes through your being because you have nothing to bar the way, no hindrance now. It can happen in any situation. It can happen in odd postures; it can happen in strange ways. It can happen anywhere. It is not that it happens only under a bodhi tree, or it happens only in temples or in the Himalayas. It has nothing to do with anything outside you. You just have to remain open so that the inside becomes more and more available – and flexible, so whatsoever happens can vibrate in the same frequency, with the same rhythm.

Go happily, relaxed, looking at life as a beautiful game. It is a beautiful game.

[The sannyasin therapist says: But between groups it seems that I don’t seem to be able to find a comfortable space to be in. I don’t have the same relationship with myself that I have in the groups.]

It is very indicative and has to be understood. When you are working with people, you are so much involved in the work that you forget the sense of self. That happens to many creative people. They forget their work. A painter painting, a singer singing, a dancer dancing... there come moments when their whole energy suddenly is flowing into the work, has become a creative rush, and the self is no more there, because the self exists only when the energy is stagnant.

The stagnant energy becomes the self. When the energy is like a river, you have no self. So self is a sort of a block. Whenever there is no flow, energy is not going anywhere, suddenly the block is there; one feels confined. Then you will feel negative. You will feel a little restless because this self is like a rock on the chest. But this happens only to creative people. For uncreative people just the reverse is the rule.

If an uncreative person forces himself into any creativity, he becomes very self-conscious. He becomes very anxious, worried and tense, restless. When he is out of the work he is okay; he is at home.

So the difference between a creative and a non-creative person has to be understood. And it is good that one is a creative person. Your meditation, your growth is through creativity. These groups are not just groups – these are your canvases on which you are painting. These are your poems that you are composing. When you see somebody flowering, somebody radiant, a poem is born and you feel fulfilled. You suddenly feel enhanced. You recognise, you realise your worth, mm? – this man has flowered, this woman is smiling so beautifully. Then you are happy. This is the happiness of a creative person.

A creative person is happy only when something beautiful is created. A creative person’s heaven is in creativity. If you throw Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci into heaven – the heaven of the uncreative people, who are just sitting there doing nothing – they will run out of it! They will say, ’What is this?

This is hell!’ They may even like to go to hell if some creativity is possible – somewhere where their energies can stream, flow, can create new patterns of life; where something can be invented, discovered; where something can be added to existence as it is. Maybe it is a very small thing, it doesn’t matter. A creative person feels good, fulfilled, arrived, when he can make this world a little more beautiful... just a small touch somewhere.

So that simply shows your state of energy and your type. So whenever you are not creative, you will feel a little restless, because the same energy that was moving into creativity will not find anywhere to move or anything to do. Your rest will become restless. In fact, when you will be tremendously deep in your work – howsoever hard – you will be resting. So rest is not always rest for everybody.

For a creative person, his creativity is his rest. Maybe sometimes he can change. He has been painting for the whole week. For one day he simply writes poems, or just goes into the garden and starts working there. A change of activity is his rest. His rest is not no-activity. So if you really want to be rested, change the activity. Rush from one activity to another, and let your river tumble from one place into another. When you are alone write poems, paint, sing, play the guitar, dance – any crazy thing will do – but something; just don’t sit there. Sitting there won’t be of much help to you. You will come out of it more tired than rested. Change of activity – that’s your rest – and losing yourself in creativity is your meditation.

This is something very complicated. In the East meditation has existed for thousands of years, but it seems that only non-creative people became interested in it because it doesn’t give one any creative channel. So science never arose. Everything creative lagged behind. Only people who could sit silently and could lose themselves in non-activity moved into this meditative dimension. And because of them the whole East became a little uncreative.

In the West creative people have never tried meditation because they think it is not for them. Their instinct says to them ‘This is not for you. You have to be creative. This will be an escape.’ So they become more and more tense, more and more worried.

Now it is possible that East and West can meet. The human consciousness has come to a point where vision is more clear, where we can look at the past as a total perspective. For the creative person, meditation has to become a part of his creativity, then only can it be meditative. And for a non-creative person, his silence is his only creativity; his inactivity is his only creativity. He creates himself in that inactivity. Both come to a realisation, but their paths are very different.

So simply go on working, and now work knowing more that this is your meditation. While working don’t simply think that you are helping the group, and that after the group you will rest and meditate for one week. That’s a wrong idea. While working, remember that this is your meditation. And you are not only working on the group and on other people; simultaneously, side by side, you are working on yourself. This is your way of working on yourself. This is just a technique for you to work on yourself.

[Osho said that if he used his work for meditation, then there would be no conflict in the mind about when he would have time to work on himself or to meditate. Without any conflict, his work would move to even higher peaks.

Osho said that in the days that there was no group, he should simply change his activity, because the mind has many centres for many different activities, and when one centre is functioning, others can rest (see Hammer On The Rock, December 13th, 1975, where Osho talks about this in more detail).]

[A newly arrived sannyasin says: I’ll be here when hindi lectures are on so I won’t be able to understand the discourses.]

Sometimes it is good to understand without language, so one month you understand me through language and one month you understand me without language. And sometimes without language, things go deeper. You just have to sit and feel me, and that will do everything.

There is a deeper language than language, and there is a more direct communication than verbal. There is a possibility to commune without any symbology in between. The communion can be immediate. And in fact that is the real communion.

Sol speak only to persuade you to be available for the other communion. But the other remains the goal. Once you start enjoying my presence, once you start moving with my presence and you start falling in tune with me, then there is no point.

Much is going to happen – you are ready. Good.

[A sannyasin came to darshan with his partner, as she was upset and jealous of his demonstrative behaviour and affection for members of the music group of which he is a member. He added that his partner recognised that her feelings were stupid.]

Saying so is not the point. She does not understand it. She says it is stupid because she hears me and reads me and tries to understand. She thinks that it is stupid but her whole being is feeling miserable. So just calling names won’t help. If you care for her, stop these things. Or if you feel that they are more valuable than her relationship, then drop out of the relationship – but decide something.

(turning to the woman) And you have to understand that your jealousy is not only stupid – because just by saying it is stupid, it doesn’t.It is destructive. It is not only wrong – it is harmful. It is killing

your whole relationship. If you can be happy only when he is completely in bondage and a slave, and he cannot even embrace a person, then he will never be able to forgive you, because he is doing it for your love.

He may stop it but he will have a deep grudge against you. His love will become poisonous. He will never feel really happy. You may not feel jealous, but he will lose something tremendously valuable. He may do it for you. That’s what so many people who have a little understanding go on doing. If the woman is too much of a trouble, then the man thinks ‘Okay’. But the woman is losing something very valuable, because you are forcing him by your jealousy; you are destroying his freedom. And he is not doing anything wrong. Nothing is wrong in it. What is wrong in somebody embracing him, whether it is a man or a woman?

It is harmful. You have a very poisonous attitude. And rather than forcing him, you should drop your jealousy. If you love the man, you should drop it, because if you love the man you love his

freedom and you would like him to be free. Any woman who loves her man would like the man to be absolutely free. If you really love him you would like every woman to love him. This is your man and every woman appreciates him. If no woman looks at him, then what have you chosen? If [your man] goes around and nobody, no woman looks at him, no woman says ‘Hello’... just think about it. You will commit suicide. What type of a man will you have chosen?

He is a beautiful person. Everybody feels love for a beautiful person; nothing is wrong in it. So what I have said to him I have not said to you.(to the man) And what I have said to her, I am not saying to you (laughter). Otherwise the greater possibility is that you will hear what I am saying to her and she will hear what I am saying to you. Make it absolutely clear.

(to the woman) Drop it! And it is just that a little understanding is needed. Why should you feel jealous? If you have a beautiful car and somebody appreciates it, you don’t feel jealous. If somebody comes and touches your car and says, ‘Beautiful,’ you feel very good because you were waiting for someone to come and say this. In a better world this will be so. Some woman passes by and she sees that you have such a beautiful man and she comes and touches him – ‘You have such a beautiful man’ – you will feel happy. In a better world this is going to be so, should be so.

But we have been brought up with very wrong, absurd attitudes – harmful, destructive, suicidal. [The woman says: Also part of it is feeling inferior about myself.]

That’s nothing to do with you. It simply proves your superiority – that you have chosen such a beautiful man, and the beautiful man has chosen you. It simply proves your superiority, nothing else. Nothing inferior in it. That’s your wrong notion about it. He has chosen you. He can find another woman easily, but out of all the women, he has chosen you! What else do you want?

In the world there are so many women and he has chosen Mandala. Just think about it. But you are destroying the whole thing. Something is wrong in your attitude. He is not doing anything wrong. Start dropping it, and tell him that he is completely free, that he can do whatsoever he likes.

Possessiveness is not love. I have given you both different methods to work on. I hope you will not misunderstand me but will settle things. After three weeks, both come. (to the woman) And you are not to be worried about whether he is doing what I have said or not. He is responsible to me, not to you. (to the woman) And she is responsible to me, not you. So you need not say to her to drop her jealousy.

[A sannyasin said she felt faint many times, and: I also feel something strange in my head – as if it is empty, as if there is nothing inside.]

That’s perfectly good – there is nothing inside!

Nothing is wrong with you. In fact something very good is happening, but it happens so suddenly that you cannot understand it.

That blankness is just a part of meditation. The feeling of fainting is not fainting – it is just moving into another dimension. Then one becomes so light that one can feel that the floor is going up and down. It is almost a feeling of levitation, but it is very disorienting. So start doing a small exercise.

Every night before you go to sleep, sit and just feel that your spine is joined with the earth and energy is running into your spine and into the earth like electricity. Just as we earth a wire, so your spine is joined with the earth, and the earth and your bodys energies are meeting. Then feel that your spine is becoming bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger; it is becoming solid steel. You will feel within three or four days that the spine has become a very solidish thing. This you have to do for ten minutes in the night, but sit on the floor so that you are closer to the earth. And sit absolutely still – no shaking, no trembling. Just sit like a statue, earthed, grounded.

In Aikido training they have a few exercises for grounding like this. If a person is sitting there doing this exercise, you cannot push him over. Even a stronger person or four or five people cannot push him. You can push the same person over very easily when he is not doing this exercise, but when he is doing this exercise and once he knows how to do it, his spine becomes a steel-like energy. Then it is impossible to push him or pull him. Even very fragile people can prove so strong.

There have been many experiments done on it. It cannot be measured on ordinary scales – the weight remains the same, so it is a miracle. If you are one hundred pounds, you remain one hundred pounds, but just before the exercise anybody can push you over, and just ten minutes after the exercise you are so grounded – as if the whole earth is pulling you and you are joined with it, rooted.

So now they have started experimenting with body energy and electricity, bio-electricity. Now they have come to a point where it is possible that the spine becomes joined, really joined, with electricity. In Yoga, people are trained for many years to sit with a straight spine, unmoving, statue-like. That makes the spine like steel, a very strong force. These things that are happening to you will not happen to that type of person who has practised the lotus posture or others. This is arising only because your spine is not strong enough and gets shaky. When the energy comes in it, it gets shaky and you don’t know how to ground it so it disorients you and you feel like fainting.

Whenever it happens – and it will continue for a few days – immediately sit there and just for two minutes feel grounded. The feeling is that your spine is as if almost rooted like a tree in the earth. The earth is giving you energy and your energy is moving into the earth. You are no more separate; you are a part of the earth. When you get up from this posture, don’t get up suddenly. Very slowly disconnect yourself, otherwise you will go into a very great faint. First feel that you are grounded and are getting your energy back. Then take your energy back slowly, very slowly and move slowly.

Do it for ten days and then tell me. But it is good – there is nothing wrong.

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