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‌CHAPTER 18

7 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[To two resident sannyasins returning for a brief visit to the States to see their parents, Osho spoke about how one could introduce one’s parents to sannyas, meditation, and Osho, in a way that would be acceptable. He said one should not try to argue, but simply let one’s being, one’s happiness, be evidence of one’s new life.

He said to meditate and let their parents watch, without enforcing anything on them. Meditation is the greatest gift one can give to one’s parents... ]

... and in fact everybody is in need of meditation. Everybody is starved of it. Particularly as one grows older in life, more and more is the necessity felt. Of course people have completely forgotten the language of it. They cannot even form the right question about what is missing. They simply feel that something is missing; they don’t know what. They are bewildered by it. They may have everything. One may have arrived in worldly ways, succeeded, but by the time that one reaches the age of forty-two, one starts feeling that something is missing.

Forty-two is just like the age of fourteen. At the age of fourteen you start feeling that something is missing. The sexual partner is missing; the man or the woman is missing. Suddenly you feel that you are alone, incomplete. You need somebody to complement and complete you. A great desire arises to move into love.

Exactly the same happens at the age of forty-two. Again one has matured – deeper than the maturity that comes at fourteen. That was physical maturity; one was ready to make love physically. Forty- two is the age when one is psychologically mature, and is ready to make love psychologically.

That’s what meditation is all about. Because in the West people have completely forgotten – and Christianity has never talked about meditation, but at the most about prayer, which is a very diluted

form, which doesn’t work much – when people become older, when they come to the middle of their life, suddenly they feel a haunting, that something is missing; what is it? They cannot even pinpoint it. They cannot put their finger on it: ‘This is what is missing.’

People start drifting at the age of forty-two. They think this wife is not fulfilling because they know only one experience. At the age of fourteen there was a haunting of sexuality. Maybe again this wife is not satisfying, this man is not satisfying. So they swap wives, swap husbands, make group sex. There is only one language, and that is of sex. Or they start thinking that they need more money, a bigger house, bigger cars, because that is the whole logic they have been living by and they cannot find any satisfaction through it. They go on and on and on until they simply fall down dead and die.

But meditation is as natural an urge as sex. It has its own time. So when you go back home, go with this mission. Then you are taking something from me for them. And if they criticise, listen to it very attentively. Don’t try to reply, rather let your whole being respond. If they say what nonsense you have done by taking sannyas – which is a natural thing to say – laugh about it. Don’t take it negatively. Enjoy the idea and tell them it is nonsense.

Very slowly you can make the impact. One has to be very soft, not hard. Don’t forget what has happened to you, and don’t fall into the old pattern. That too is very possible. When one goes to one’s parents, it is very difficult to remain new. Their expectation, your fear, and the difficulty in communication, tends to help one fall into the old pattern. If you fall into the old pattern they will not be able to see what has happened; they will think you have simply changed your clothes. Then it is foolish.

Unless the rainbow has happened inside, just changing the colour of the clothes is absolutely absurd. So remember it. In the beginning it is difficult; one tends to fall into the old pattern and one starts talking to the mother, to the father, in the old way. One starts making old gestures; old body language again erupts. You have got your body from them, you have learned all your body gestures from them. Their very presence is provocative. You have lived in your mother’s womb. You are part of their being – extensions.

When you are close to a parent, suddenly you start vibrating in his tune, and of course he is more powerful and he is going to remain more powerful. He is more experienced, more settled, more authoritative. You immediately start following his rhythm. That is very unconscious. You start vibrating in his rhythm. That’s why children feel very awkward and embarrassed. The more something new happens to a child, the more he finds it difficult to approach the parent, because on becoming closer, he starts vibrating in some past rhythm. His own rhythm is lost.

So for seven days you have to remember it and then you will not be in any difficulty after that. In fact they will start feeling that a new rhythm has arisen in you. They will start feeling the attraction of you, the grace, the beauty, the grandeur. Then you are more powerful. Then they can fall into your rhythm and can have a new taste of life.

[To a sannyasin returning to Germany, Osho suggested that it would be very helpful to make meditation a regular part of her routine. He said sometimes it was permissible to miss a meal – could even be beneficial – but to miss meditation meant to undo months of work.]

It is very delicate work. In months some energy is created, and within days it can disappear – unless you have come to a point which is known as the point of no return. It comes one day.

It is exactly the same as when you heat water to ninety degrees. It is still water; then to ninety-five degrees – it is still water. At ninety-nine degrees it is still water and if you stop heating it, it will cool down; the heat will be dissipated. You will have to reheat it again. But if it comes to one hundred degrees, then it jumps; it evaporates. It has come to a point from where a very radical change has happened.

The same happens with meditation. You go on accumulating it; it is cumulative. You do it every day – you go on accumulating a subtle energy in your being. It comes higher and higher and higher: ninety degrees, ninety-nine degrees. If you stop even then, it will disappear. It will be dissipated, because the whole life is non-meditative and it is easily destroyed.

The whole world is non-meditative. The people you will be meeting, working with, talking to, are all non-meditative. When you carry a high energy, people who are not that high simply suck you – unknowingly. It is just as if there is water – it will start flowing downwards. All energies move downward. People are just like valleys. It is natural that your energy starts flowing towards them. Their level is lower than yours.

Hence regularity is very very significant. Otherwise you create something and if you think ‘Now I have created enough; I am feeling very good’, for a few days you will feel good, but then again the energy will be lost.

If you continue regularly, by and by your level goes higher and higher and higher. One day it suddenly happens that you evaporate. Then meditation is just a natural thing. Whether you do it or not does not matter. Non-doing, you are still in it. WaLking, you are in it; eating, you are in it; working, you are in it; sleeping, you are in it. Then meditation becomes your whole life. Before that happens, regularity has to be maintained.

[A sannyasin says: I was doing buddhist meditation for two yearsI kept falling asleep!]

Mm, that’s possible in a buddhist meditation.very possible. That’s why zen masters have to keep

a staff continuously to hit the disciples, because they are always dozing. The whole method is so silent, so relaxing, that the natural possibility is to fall into sleep. Whenever we relax, whenever we are silent, we fall asleep, so with relaxation there is a deep association with sleep.

That’s what we have been doing for our whole life – and the buddhist meditation depends on relaxation. So once you relax, the mind gets the hint that now you are ready to sleep, because that is the only way it has come to know sleep. It has no other way, no other experience. It cannot figure it out – if you are relaxed, why aren’t you going to sleep?

[Osho said it is a oonditioning – just like the conditioned response of Pavlov’s dogs who were trained to respond to the ring of a bell by the subsequent reward of meat. After a time the meat could be withheld, but the dogs would still continue to salivate at the sound of the bell.]

To fall asleep, relaxation is a must, but relaxation is not necessarily a step towards sleep. It can become a step towards meditation too. But then a great change of your past associations is needed,

otherwise you will fall asleep. But it is good that you tried. With my meditations it will never happen because they are so active. They create a turmoil in your energy, a chaos; you cannot fall asleep. And for the modern mind, that seems to be the best possibility.

In the old days when Buddha was here and when he invented his meditations, people were absolutely relaxed. In India in those days – all over the world in those days – people were sleeping almost twelve hours because there was no electricity, no kerosene, no light or anything. Even now in indian villages, that is the case. Thousands of villages have no light, so the sunset is the end of the day. Then what to do? You gossip a little or sing a little, or dance a little and then go to sleep. By the time it is eight, the whole village is fast asleep – and there is no point in getting up too early.

So people have been sleeping deeply. When a person has slept absolutely, then even if relaxation happens, sleep will not come, because the sleep need is fulfilled. And people were working hard. They were working the whole day as they still do in the East. Technology had not yet replaced their work. So when you work hard and you sleep well, your need is completely

el relaxed, the seou sit silently, relaxation will come, sleep will not follow, and your energy will start moving in a new direction.

Relaxation is a step towards both sleep and samadhi. After relaxation there is a bifurcation. Either you go into sleep or you go into samadhi; these are the two possibilities.

It is very difficult for the modern mind to feel relaxed in the first place. But if you feel relaxed, the second problem is not to fall asleep. People are not sleeping as much as they should, as much as the body needs biologically, and they are not working hard either. Without hard work, sleep is impossible. You have to do hard work, then the body creates the need to relax. So people are not working – hard work has disappeared – and they are not sleeping well.

So whenever they start meditating – any meditation like a buddhist meditation – they start falling asleep. Hence my insistence on active and dynamic methods. Once you start tasting – once that opening has started functioning and a few glimpses of satori have come to you through active methods – then you can again start buddhist methods, and they will be tremendously meaningful.

So do a few groups here – and simply do what I say. It is easier that way!

[The Soma group was present tonight. The group leader said: There were three points felt almost unanimously in the group, so I decided to bring them up for myself.

The first is that we used some Kundalini Yoga in the morning, which was very powerful, but almost everybody was suffering from a tremendous amount of heat in the base of the spine and at the top of the head.

The second thing was that there were several people who didn’t speak English so I had to speak three different languages which was a distraction for the rest of the group.

The third thing was the food. They want purer food. If you think it’s important I could investigate more and plan some menus.]

Mm, the first thing.… Kundalini Yoga methods can create heat. Then the body can also feel uncomfortable, and pains in many parts of the body can come. But it is very good and helpful. So when you do these breathing exercises, tell everybody to imagine simultaneously that the body is getting cool. That will balance – otherwise it can become very very hot. The whole body energy starts moving in Kundalini. It becomes so concentrated there that it is almost fire.

In Tibet they do miracles through it. The tibetan lama can sit under the open sky in falling snow naked – and perspire. Just a certain breathing throws the whole energy into the spine; so it can become too much.

They have to feel that by breathing they are cooling the whole system. Just the idea of coolness should be imbibed with each breath. And if a few people still feel it, then after the breathing exercises just give a sponge massage with a wet towel. Do it seven times and from the top of the spine to the root. When you touch them with the towel, they have to think that the energy is moving into the whole body and that the body is getting its quota. That will relax the energy in the body again.

When the body energy moves into the spine too much, then the other parts of the body miss that energy. That creates discomfort and pain. So if a person goes on doing it for years, there is no problem – the body adjusts – but in a small group for ten or fifteen days, it cannot adjust. So you have to do something. With this massage, both problems will disappear. But continue – it will help the whole group go deeper.

[Osho said that it would be good if she made recordings of instructions in different languages as soon more and more people would be coming from places like Japan and Korea and other countries, and they would need to be able to participate in groups.

He said that within a month the food situation would be changed, and the food would be more pure, which was necessary to help people go deeply into the processes.]

[A sannyasin said he had trouble in astral travelling: I have a little problem. When I’m leaving the body I feel anguish and fear, so I pull back into my body.]

It is natural. It is the fear of death. That is what happens in death. And it has happened many times to you in your past lives, so your mind knows about it. It is actually the process of death, so fear is natural and nothing to be worried about. It will go by and by. The more you go into it, the more courageous you will become.

The only way to learn swimming is to throw yourself into the water. First you move your hands haphazardly. By and by you start moving them more skilfully. And nobody is drowned because buoyancy is natural to the body. People are drowned because of fear, not because of water. That’s why dead bodies float on the water and are not drowned. If you can simply trust the water, you will float.

So simply go into it... try it. Every night before you go to sleep, have a ten-minute trip out of the body. Just practice will make you courageous. And you can do it very easily – that’s why you are so afraid. People who cannot do it are not so afraid. People who cannot do it, who simply imagine that they are going out of the body, will not get afraid because they are simply imagining; they know that they are imagining. But you really go, so that’s why you become so scared. It is natural.

An out-of-the-body experience is such a drastic one. Coming out of the body is disorienting for the whole system of your body. It happens only in death or in such methods. But these methods can bring you to a great realisation. Once you become skilful in going out and coming in, then you know that there is no death. Then you have come to know your own deathlessness. So it is worth it; whatsoever the cost, it is worth it.

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