16

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 16

5 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and bhairava means god – god of bliss. Bhairava is a name of the god Shiva. He is a totally different god to other gods in the world – life-affirmative, celebrating, not in any way life-negating; not in any way against life, but for it. So he is the god of bliss.

Whatsoever you can find out about Shiva, read; that will help you. And make it a continuous remembrance to not deny anything, to not fight with anything. Don’t carry any condemnatory attitude. All is good and everything has to be affirmed.

Love is affirmation. When you say yes to life, you are loving, you are flowing. When you say no to life, you are stuck, frozen. That’s how people have become stuck – by saying no to many things. There are people who cannot say yes. No comes very easy to them. Their whole attitude is based on negativity. No helps the ego to be very strong; it is an ego-enhancer. The more you say yes, the less the ego can exist. And the less the ego, of course the more the bliss.

So start feeling more of a yes attitude. Even sometimes when you feel it is difficult to say yes, then too, try. And if you can manage to say yes, you will suddenly see a release of energy – as if one obstacle has been transcended, one negation has been dropped. You will feel more freedom with yes. That’s what I see in your energy – you are carrying a few no’s, negatives. They have to be dropped. That’s why I’m giving you the name Bhairava.

This god Shiva is a non-aryan god. Before the Aryans came to India he was the god of the pre- Aryans... very life-enhancing. All his statues are of dancing, of love. He is symbolized by the sexual phallic symbol, the shivalinga. People have become almost oblivious of the fact of why the god Shiva is symbolised by the phallic symbol. He is so life-affirmative that even sex has to be absorbed. That is life energy. That too has to be worshipped.

So with the name Bhairava, remember it – become more of a yea-sayer and drop nay-saying. One day you will come to a point where you can say yes to all. That moment is of total release. One is free so nothing confines one, nothing holds one down.

So just remain watchful. Whenever your old mind tends to say no, make an effort to say yes. By and by you will become more and more efficient in saying yes. And the more you say yes, the more you will see how beautiful it is, how much you were missing unnecessarily.

A person who says no all his life goes on crippling himself, goes on denying many parts of his being, disowning them and becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. In the end a no-sayer simply remains a no – doors closed, all contact with life lost. That is actually what spiritual death is – a person just living inside a no.

Spiritual life is living with yes – flying, flowing with yes. So Bhairava is the god of yes, affirmation, love, life. Remember it.…

[A sannyasin says that since Primal Therapy, when he looks into the mirror he sees his father’s face. In response to questions from Osho he answers that he loved his father, but has not relationship with him since seventeen years.]

... The Primal therapy must have brought something from your unconscious to the conscious – but it is still hanging. If it had been brought up completely, it would have disap-peared. The process has not been completed. It is incomplete – and incomplete processes are heavy. It is better not to start them. If you start them, then finish them. Many people in the West are suffering from many sorts of methods that are becoming prevalent. They are not complete methods, so they start something and then you are in a limbo. You don’t know what to do with it.

... You will have to come to a reconciliation, because to be conflicting in some way with your own father is very dangerous, because half of your being belongs to him. Unless you are reconciled to your father, you will never be reconciled with yourself – that’s the trouble.

... So a reconciliation with your father is a must for your own growth.

Your face is bound to reflect your father’s face. It comes from him. It is natural; it is how it should be. And as you grow older, more and more your father’s face will resemble yours, and your face will resemble your father’s face.

[The sannyasin answers: I don’t like that you say that.]

That is not the question. Liking and disliking is not the question. One has to come to a reconciliation. You don’t like it – that’s why the problem is there. That means you will not be able to like yourself. It is your face, and of course it is your father’s face, your grandfather’s face, your great-grandfather’s face. It is the face of the whole history that has preceded you.

You are not alone. You are part of a great chain; you are linked with it. You could not be here if your father were not. You are here because of him, and there is no way to deny that. All denial is dangerous, is at your own risk. That’s what you have been doing.

And more and more you will see that your father’s face resembles your face, because as you grow in age, more and more your face will reflect his. It will become impossible for you to look in the mirror. But even if you don’t look in the mirror, that makes no difference. You will see it in many ways – in your hands, in your body, in your behaviour, in your talking, in your tone, in your sound. He will be everywhere because you come as part of him. So all the old traditions have it that one should find a reconciliation, otherwise one will never be reconciled with oneself.

So I know that you don’t like it, but that dislike can be dropped. Do one thing. It will be hard in the beginning, but you will have to pass through the pain. Make it a point every night, for at least twenty minutes, to meditate on the face of your father in the mirror. Help it to be there and just watch all the resemblances in your own face. Create the whole fantasy in the mirror. Howsoever much you want to recoil back, you want not to look, you want to close your eyes – nothing doing; go into it. Meditate on it every night for twenty minutes and don’t avoid it.

If you can do it, within three months many things will happen. First the face will resemble your father’s face. Then some day suddenly you will see that your father’s face has disappeared and it is somebody else’s face – maybe your grandfather’s face. Because that too is there, I can see right now – faces behind faces. You carry the whole history of a chain, of a heritage. In your eyes, in your colour, in your face, in your hair, in everything. You are not alone here and there is no way to be alone here. The only way is to be connected with a link.

Every cell of your body has come out of a heritage, a long tradition. So just watch. One day you will see suddenly that even the father’s face has disappeared; there is somebody else. If you know your grandfather, maybe you will recognise him; if you don’t, you will see some unknown face. If you recognise that it is your grandfather then one day that too will disappear – some other face... You will be able to go deeper into those faces, and one day suddenly you will see that all faces have disappeared. The mirror is empty and you are looking into it.

This can happen any day between three weeks to three months – but it happens. It is bound to happen if you continue. The day all faces disappear, your problem will be dissolved. Then there is no need to do it. When all faces disappear, you have come to your own being, and that has no face – or call it your face, but it is not a face. Zen people call it the original face. The Bauls call it the essential man, but it is formless.

Hidden behind all these faces is your being. Go on peeling. You peel it – another layer appears; another layer – you peel that and another appears. One moment comes when all the layers are gone and just emptiness is left in your hands. That emptiness will resolve everything. Then you will feel so much love and compassion for your father, for your grandfather, for all those unknown people that made it possible for you to be. You will feel a tremendous compassion, respect, love. And when it comes, go to your father and for the first time you will be able to relate to him.

But this method will be very painful at first because when you start looking into your father’s face, it will become so real that there will be many moments when you will forget whether you are looking in the mirror or it is your father looking in the mirror. Who is real – you or the image in the mirror?

And it is going to be painful because you have a dislike – and I understand your dislike. Whenever love is not fulfilled, hate results. You wanted to love him. You loved him but it was never responded

to. It never bounced back to you; nothing came in return, your love was frustrated. That frustration has become a revengeful thing; it has become a revenge. When love is not returned, it turns sour. It turns bitter, it turns into hate. But your dislike simply shows that you still love the man, otherwise dislike would not be there. Your hate simply shows that you are still waiting – some day he will come and will love you again the way you always wanted him to love you.

But think about his problem. He may not have understood what you wanted, because people have their own problems. He may not yet be reconciled with his own father. For example if you give birth to a child, there will be trouble. Either you will repeat your father’s pattern or you will overcompensate. In both ways there will be trouble, because you can do only to your child the same as your father had done to you It is a repetition.

And two are the possibilities: either you do too much – overcompensation.You love the child too

much because you were never loved and you are still feeling hurt. But that too is not good because too much love can be dangerous for the child. He starts feeling that everybody has to love him. Then he expects too much from the world, and he will be frustrated everywhere. The world is not his father and mother.

So if a father and mother love the child too much, he expects the whole world to love that way. By and by he will become more and more frustrated and angry at you: ‘Why did you love me so much in the first place?’

This is such a problem – to have the right relationship between the child and the parent. Up to now thousands of ways have been tried – all have failed. It seems impossible to find the right way of relating. If you love too much, the child will be angry with you. If you had not loved too much, he would have had a better, a more realistic attitude towards life. He would not have expected too much and there would have been no frustration. He could have avoided much anxiety and anguish.

If you don’t love him too much – as your father did – you are angry. You are still angry – you cannot grow out of it – and you think that he has betrayed you. And when your own father has betrayed you, how to expect that anybody else is going to love you? So you are always suspicious of love. You will always suspect that something else must be there. If I say I love you, you will suspect, because your own father never loved you, so how can you believe this strange man? You cannot believe in God because your own father deceived you, so how to believe in a god who is the father of the whole existence? Maybe He is also the same type. Fathers are fathers. Your concept of your father will be your concept of God also.

So there is a problem, and up to now human understanding has not come to a point where we can find a golden mean. Whatsoever you do goes wrong. If you make it too balancing, that too is frustrating. Then everything looks very calculated. You love – but only so far to keep balance – and then you don’t love; so there is neither more nor less. But then one looks very calculating, mathematical, and the child feels frustrated – because a relationship is not mathematics. It should not be arithmetical, it should not be so calculated. It should be a flowing thing. It cannot be flowing if the father follows certain rules that you have to love fifty percent, and fifty percent you have to give a chance to the child to understand that reality is pain, suffering, competition, struggle and everything else that is implied.

Then the child starts feeling that the father is just a legal father. Of course he is doing everything rightly, but he is doing it so well that the relationship becomes legal, formal. It lacks the informal beauty. Again there is a problem. As I see it, problems are going to be there and everybody has to come to a reconciliation, to an understanding. This will help you tremendously, so start meditating on the mirror.

Always remember that whatsoever you dislike, face it, and whatsoever you would like to avoid, never avoid. Whatsoever you are afraid of, go into it – that’s the only way to finish it, otherwise it will haunt you like a shadow. And your father is still alive so there is still some possibility. Once he is gone – even if you are reconciled within yourself – you will cry that now you cannot go to him and say, ‘Father, I forgive you. You also forgive me. My demands were irrational. I was just a child and I was unaware of the whole world and the complexity of it. Now I understand that whatsoever you did was the only thing you could do, because you were also conditioned by your father, by your mother, by your society. We were poles apart; there was an abyss and no bridge. But for whatsoever you did, I feel grateful.’

The reconciliation with your father will bring a new vision of life to you. You will become more relaxed, more at home, more at ease, and your life style will change. Otherwise, as I see you, you are in a continuous tension, deep tension, because to fight with one’s father is to fight with half one’s self.

So start this mirror meditation as from tonight, then do the Intensive, the camp and then Primal. That will be perfect. Much is going to happen.…

[A visitor says: I really feel that I’m already a sannyasin. I mean, I’m surrendered to you, to the nature, to everybody.]

Then close your eyes and become a sannyasin. Close your eyes. If you really mean that you are already a sannyasin, then be a sannyasin.

... This may be just a trick – it is a trick. By saying that you are already a sannyasin, you think that now there is no need to become a sannyasin. You are not. If you were, I would never say to you to become one. But you are not; this is a clever trick.

[The visitor replies:... then I’m not a sannyasin.]

Then there is no problem. But then know that you are not a sannyasin. You may be something else; I’m not talking about anything else.

But these are clever tricks of the mind. people go on playing games with themselves. They say ‘I am already a sannyasin, so what is the need?’ If you are already a sannyasin, then why not accept it? What is the fear? If you say ‘I am surrendered – surrendered to you as I am to everybody’

You are not surrendered to anybody, because even to be surrendered to one person is so difficult. To be surrendered to everybody is impossible. It happens only when one becomes enlightened, not before.

But it is easy to say, ‘I am surrendered to everybody so there is no need to surrender to you.’ It is better to be dear that you don’t want to be surrendered. Perfectly good – but at least you are true. Why play an indirect trick upon your own mind? Whom do you think you are kidding?

If you are not surrendered, perfectly good. I am not saying to be surrendered. It is not easy for me when you surrender. I am taking a responsibility on. You are not doing anything when you surrender to me. What are you doing in surrendering? What have you got to surrender? I am taking on responsibility. I am taking somebody’s life in my hands, and I have to be careful about it. It is a delicate phenomenon.

For you it may be just a curiosity; for you it may just be because you see so many people surrendered, so you say ‘Let us try’. It may even be just an imitation. But for me it is not so simple. When you surrender to me, I am taking your responsibility. Now if you fail, I am failing with you. If you go to hell, a part of me will be dragged to hell with you. If you are miserable, I will be miserable. Now your life will be my life.

You don’t know what surrender means. You have just learned the word and you think you are surrendered to me as you are to everybody. What does it mean to be surrendered to everybody? Better to say ‘I’m not surrendered and I don’t want to surrender’. At least we are on clear ground.

... If you feel that you are already surrendered, then why worry? Finished! I am not saying that you are not surrendered. But why be worried? Why even think about sannyas? Why ever raise the question? If you are really surrendered, there is nothing to be done about it. There is no point in even talking about it. Why did you start talking about sannyas? You must have read these things in books, you may have heard about them – you don’t know.

Everybody is born surrendered, but you are not the person who was born. The society has corrupted you absolutely. You are no more the person that was born. You are something else, somebody else. Now this somebody else needs surrender so that you can again become the person that was born and that was really surrendered to nature.

That is the whole effort. Sannyas is a rebirth. Recognising the fact that you have fallen apart from nature, that you have gone astray, that you don’t know where nature is, what it is, that you have become artificial and arbitrary – recognising this fact, you come to a man who lives in nature, who lives as every man should, who is absolutely in harmony. You surrender just to learn the ways of harmony. If you walk with the man a few miles, you may get the infection of harmony.

That’s what surrender is – walking with me for a few miles – just to be with me for a few miles... just to know what it is when a man is in harmony. What does it mean when a man is natural? What does it mean when a man is a no-self? Surrender is just to have a taste of it, that’s all.

Once you have the taste of it, that will start working. You will be pulled. Then you have a new vision of life and that will start pulling you inwards. Right now you are not surrendered and you are not natural; you are not in harmony. Think about it. Just remember one thing – never deceive yourself by good rationalisations.

You were born in harmony but you are not in harmony. By becoming a sannyasin you will be making an effort to move towards that harmony. You don’t know what it is. You have forgotten the very language. Just being with people who know something of that world, who live in that world, your own energy starts rising again in a new way, starts flowing in a new way, that’s all. It is just like an infection.

If many people are laughing – you may have been sad, but their laughter catches you; you start laughing. That is the meaning of these orange people. They are mad, they are surrendered. They are living a very crazy way of life. Just looking at them, feeling them, their ways, their music, you also feel it would be good to be with these people for a little while. And one never knows – that ‘little while’ can become your whole life. You may never leave. It may be not just for a few miles – it may become your very destiny. But in the beginning it is just to have a taste of it.

Think about it. If you feel likeBut be clear about it. Don’t talk hocus-pocus rationalisations. If you

feel you are in harmony, perfectly good. Be in harmony with my blessings. I’m not going to disturb you. But if you are not, learn the ways of harmony. Sannyas is just a way. Think about it for a few days, then come back.

Or are you ready right now? If you are ready, then close your eyes, mm?

[A sannyasin says: I wrote you a letter about having recently finished a relationship with somebody, and since then I’ve been feeling very negative towards him.

I don’t understand why I feel so antagonistic to someone I once cared about. My understanding is that perhaps I didn’t express enough negativity during the relationship, but I don’t know if that’s true.]

It can be many things. It can be that you didn’t express your negativity – that happens. When people are in love they avoid many things which look ugly. They go on being collected inside. When the love continues it is okay; you can go on repressing them. But when the love is finished and the person is gone, then there is no point in repressing them. They all explode and one feels very negative.

So if in a relationship you allow both feelings, good and bad, this will never happen. Your insight may be true. This is ninety percent the possibility; there is more possibility of it being this than anything else. But life is never simple. It is very complicated.

Sometimes it happens that when you love a person, your whole energies are involved. When suddenly the love is broken, you don’t know what to do. Suddenly you are stuck – as if somebody was running and suddenly he is paralysed. Now he wants to run but the paralysis won’t allow him. Then everything becomes negative. The same energy that was helping you to run will create restlessness when you cannot run. So maybe you loved the person too much. Your energies were active, flowing, dynamic. Now suddenly everything is broken and you don’t know what to do. Those energies are there, throbbing, but there is nobody to shower them upon, nobody to receive them.

So those throbbing energies can turn into negativity, because positive and negative are both poles of the same energy. If the positive pole is missing, the energy will go on accumulating on the negative pole. If the positive pole is available, that energy will flow and become creative, otherwise it will become destructive.

So if this is the case, find another lover. Why wait? Don’t wait, because that waiting will be negative. Either find some lover or find something that you love so deeply that your energy starts flowing again. Then that negativity will disappear immediately.

So ninety percent is the first possibility, nine percent the second, and there is one percent possibility that you never loved the person very much; you were pretending. Maybe it was a play, a game that

you were enjoying. Now you are feeling negative – not against the person; that may be a projection – you are feeling guilty about why you did it in the first place. That guilt can be projected on the person, so that person looks like the culprit.

It always happens – if you are guilty you will find a scapegoat somewhere on whom to throw your guilt, to put your guilt. Now he seems to be the most vulnerable. The love is broken – there is nothing to protect him.

These are the possibilities, but don’t be too worried about them.

[Osho said that one should not be too concerned with lovers, but should be true to love itself, and it would be helpful if Arti found someone else to love.

He reiterated that she should channelize her negative energy into some activity so that the energy would not become stale.

Osho said that next time she was in a relationship, (she) should make it a point to be absolutely true, expressing both negativity and positivity. A relationship will not be eternal and one should be in it as totally as possible so that there is no lingering grudge and unfinished, unexpressed feelings.

Finally Osho said that women tended to make love their only creative outlet while a man tended to have other things on the periphery... ]

Let the person of your love be the centre, but on the periphery have many more things. Let them all be reflected, enhanced, illuminated by your love, so you are never left feeling empty.

< Previous | Contents | Next >