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‌CHAPTER 14

3 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says: I don’t know whether I want to take sannyas or not. I’m troubled about the concept of surrender, because I feel for a long time that I’ve surrendered to a lot of people, and only recently I’ve begun to feel centred.]

You must have a wrong notion about surrender, because whatsoever you have been calling surrender was not surrender. If it were surrender you would have grown tremendously. It was not surrender. You may have forced yourself into a certain obedience. You may have become dependent on people, you may have been imitating people, you may have been waiting for somebody to order you to do certain things, you may have been in a sort of a bondage, but not surrender. After bondage, one feels very centred if one becomes free. But if you know surrender, surrender is freedom.

Once somebody has known what surrender is, there is no way to go out, because surrender never takes anything from you – it simply gives you something. It does not make you dependent – it makes you independent. It does not take away your freedom, it does not force you to become somebody else. It simply helps you to be yourself. You must have a wrong notion, but that notion is prevalent.

Surrender, to you, may mean something like imprisonment – as if you are defeated by somebody; as if somebody has possessed you, overpowered you, dominated you. In the West particularly, surrender has only one meaning, and that is the meaning defined by the army. When one country surrenders to another, when one army surrenders to another – that is the only meaning that the West knows.

But here in the East we have a totally different notion about it. It is not that somebody starts dominating you. It is simply that you start trusting somebody. It is simply that you are in love with somebody and you would like to move with them. And love never destroys freedom. In fact

without love, you cannot have freedom. Only love can give you wings to be free. Only love can give you the courage to be free.

You may be feeling a sort of centring because you dropped out of your so-called surrenders, but what I am trying to give you is totally different. By becoming a sannyasin, you are not becoming a slave. You are simply giving a hint that you are ready to learn, that you are ready to receive. It is just a gesture of sensitivity, of receptivity, of vulnerability; a gesture of your being open, that’s all.

So if you feel, you can take the jump. But if you feel afraid, wait. It should come from you.

Prem means love and yuthika means a jasmine flower; a jasmine flower of love. It is one of the most beautiful names.…

[A sannyasin said that she had been doing pottery in Germany but did not care for it very much. Osho said something must be wrong about her attitude because pottery is beautiful work]

. . . it is very meditative work and can help centring. You may not have looked at it that way, but anything to do with hands is good. Anything like pottery can become an inner source of centring. outside you go on centring the pot, shaping the pot, and inside you go on centring with It. It depends.… You may not have understood it. Just be here and meditate and I will make you a real potter.

It is one of the most beautiful things a man can do. Farming, pottery, are very basic. In India we conceive of God as a potter. In all the indian scriptures, they say that the world is like a pot and God is the potter. You must have heard the word ‘brahma’. Brahma means the potter, the creator of the world.

It is a meditative process, but one has to understand it, otherwise it can be boring; one may not enjoy it. Unless one understands what it is exactly, it can become just ordinary work. It can be transformed into almost a ritual. You can move into prayer and meditation through it.

[A sannyasin says: Whenever I get close to anybody, I get a horrible tension in my legs, in the thighs. It happens whenever I want to be near somebody – just the upper part becomes full of tension.]

Do one thing. Every night before you go to sleep, stand in the middle of the room – exactly in the middle – and make your body as stiff and as tense as possible – almost as if you will burst. Do this for two minutes and then relax for two minutes, standing up. Do this – tensing and relaxing two or three times and then just go to sleep.

It has nothing to do with the thighs, really. It has something to do with the brain, the mind. Whenever you come close, you become afraid of really being close to somebody. Maybe your past experiences bring the tension. But it has to do with the mind, and the part that has to do with the thighs is getting affected. So the whole thing has to be made as tense as possible. After it, don’t do anything else, so the whole night that relaxation goes deeper and deeper in you.

One meditation that I would like you to followThe first step: just relax in a chair, make the whole

body comfortable. The second step, close the eyes. The third step, relax the breathing. Make it

as natural as possible. With each breath going out, say ‘One’. As the breath goes out, say ‘One’; breathe in and don’t say anything. Breathe out and say ‘One’; breathe in and don’t say anything. So with each outgoing breath you simply say ‘One... one... one’. And not only say it but also feel that the whole existence is one, it is a unity. Don’t repeat that... just have that feeling – and saying ‘One’ will help. Do this for twenty minutes every day.

Make it a point that nobody disturbs you while you are doing it. You can open your eyes and look at the clock but don’t put any alarm on. Anything that can give you a jerk will be bad, so don’t keep the phone in the room where you are doing it, and nobody should knock. For those twenty minutes you have to be absolutely relaxed. If there is too much noise around, use earplugs.

Saying ‘One’ with each exhalation will make you so calm and quiet and collected; you cannot imagine. Do this in the daytime, never at night, otherwise your sleep will be disturbed, because. this will be so relaxing that you will not feel sleepy. You will feel fresh. The best time is the morning, otherwise the afternoon, but never at night time.

So these two things you continue. There is nothing to be worried about.

[To a sannyasin, who had received word that his former wife, had died, after a sudden illness while in Germany.]

... so [she] has left? Very good. She left in a good state. She was not fighting at all. She accepted and surrendered – and the greatest surrender is the surrender to death. So she has died as a srotapanna. Don’t be worried about it. She has entered the stream.

[Osho has been talking on Buddha recently in the morning discourses. Buddha describes the various stages of a man’s consciousness, beginning with the worldly man and then the religious man. The third stage is of the srotapanna – the man who has left the bank, his security, and taken the plunge into the river that moves towards the ocean.]

But one thing – meditate, because this moment will be of significance for you. Whenever somebody dies, somebody you have been deeply related to, someone with whom you have been very intimate, somebody with whom you have been happy and unhappy, sad and angry, somebody with whom you have known all the seasons of life and somebody who has somehow become a part of you and you have become a part of him or her – when somebody like that dies, it is not only a death that occurs outside, it is a death that occurs inside also. [She] was holding a part of your being, so when she dies, that part in your being also dies. She was fulfilling something in you. She disappears and wounds are left.

We have many holes in our being. Because of those holes we seek the company of the other, the love of the other. By the other’s presence we somehow manage to fill those holes. When the other disappears, those holes are again there – yawning abysses opening. You may have forgotten about them, but you will feel them and the pain. So use these moments for a deep meditation because sooner or later those holes will be filled again. These holes will again disappear. Before it happens it is good to enter those holes, to enter that emptiness that [she] will leave behind her.

So use these moments. Sit silently, close your eyes, go inside. And just see what has happened. Don’t think about the future, don’t think about the past. Don’t go into the memories because that

is futile. Just go in. What has happened to you? [She] is dead – now what has happened to you? What is happening to you? Just go into that process. That will reveal many things in you. You will be completely transformed if you can penetrate those holes. You will not try to fill them again, but still you can love.

One can love without in any way taking the other inside and fulfilling some deep need there. One can love as a luxury – because one has to share and one wants to share. Then love is no more a need. You are not hiding your wounds behind it.

So go into these wounds, go into this emptiness, go into this absence, and watch – that’s one thing. The second thing: remember that life is really fleeting, slipping by... so momentary. We live in a magic world. We go on deluding ourselves. Again and again the delusion drops. Again and again reality erupts. Again and again somebody dies and you are reminded that life is not reliable, that one should not depend too much on life. One moment it is there, another moment it is gone. It is a soap bubble – just a small prick and it is gone. In fact the more you understand life, the more full of wonder you are about how it exists. Then death is not the problem; life becomes the problem. Death seems natural.

It is a miracle that life exists – such a temporary thing, such a momentary thing. And not only does it exist – people trust it. People depend on it, people rely on it. They put their whole being at its feet – and it is just an illusion, a dream. Any moment it is gone and one is left crying. With it is gone the whole effort, the whole sacrifice that you had made for it. Suddenly everything disappears. So watch this... this momentary, dream-like illusory life.

And death is coming to everybody. We are all standing in the queue, and the queue is continuously coming closer to death. [She] disappears; the queue is a little less. She had made space for one person more. Every person dying brings you closer to your own death, so every death is basically your death. In every death one is dying and coming closer to the full stop. Before it happens, one has to become as much aware as possible.

If we trust life too much, we tend to become unconscious. If we start doubting life – this so-called life which always ends in death – then we become more aware. And in that awareness, a new sort of life starts; its doors open. The life which is deathless, the life which is eternal, the life which is beyond time.

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