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‌CHAPTER 5

25 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[An indian visitor says: With so many ideas before me, and having to make a decision, I feel that by making a choice I’m locking myself within a definition. By making a choice, I think I define myself, and in a sense imprison myself.]

Mm, I understand. But whether you choose or not, you choose. Even if you don’t choose, that becomes your definition. If you don’t decide, then indecisiveness becomes your definition. It is difficult to escape from definition. Life does not allow it. If you choose, you choose. If you don’t choose, still you have chosen; you have chosen in a negative way.

The very nature of life is such that one has to define oneself, so it is better to define oneself positively rather than negatively, because in a negative state one can never be happy. One cannot live in negativity. One can live in positivity; one can feel nourished. One can be and grow.

So if this is the problem – that by choosing something you become defined, you become committed, you feel a limitation enclosing you – if this is the only question, then you cannot solve it by choosing. That too defines you. Somebody chooses to be inactive; that is a definition. Somebody chooses to be active; that too is a definition. Even if you close your room and you don’t go anywhere, you have chosen. That will define you. Even a monk who moves to a monastery deep in the Himalayas or in Tibet and chooses nothing, has chosen. He has chosen escape. So choice is in-built.

What Sartre says is, ‘Man is condemned to choose.’ There is no other way. So one has to simply see it – that there is no other way. By being alive you are continuously choosing. Each moment of life is a moment of choice. My suggestion is always choose something positively. Even if you choose inactivity choose it positively, not as a negative to action. Make it your activity, then nothing is wrong in it. But choose it knowingly, fully aware, knowing its limitations, its narrowing. Knowing everything, choose it. One has to commit oneself. Life consists of commitments.

And don’t feel that you are being confined, because every choice brings two things: it confines you in one way, it makes you capable in another. For example you are sitting here. You have chosen to come and see me this evening. You could have gone to the movie, you could have been in the restaurant, you could have gone to a concert. A thousand and one alternatives were there. But choosing to see me, you are confined. You have cancelled those one thousand alternatives; you have chosen one alternative. Now this is a choice, but if you have done it positively, knowingly, fully aware about all the alternatives, all the possibilities, then by choosing it you are growing in awareness.

It confines you, it defines you, but it gives you an intensity also. Otherwise a person will be spread too much, and his whole life will become too thin. A committed person has an intensity. He has a passion. A non-committed person is just spread too much; his layer is very thin. He is all over the place and nowhere. That’s a bad shape. A committed person is not all over the place. He is somewhere, but he is somewhere. You can rely on him. He has an address. If you want to find him you can. You can provoke him, invoke him. You can call him.

An uncommitted person simply goes this way, that way, in a thousand directions together... becomes by and by more and more thin, more and more thin. An uncommitted person is like a river lost in a desert. A committed person is also like a river, but not lost in a desert. He is rushing towards the ocean, and of course is defined because the two banks are there. The river in the desert has no bank. It is spreading all over the desert, all over the Sahara. It has freedom, but to what end? It will never reach any fulfillment.

So the first thing to be understood – life is a commitment. We are already committed. It is not a question for you to decide now. By being alive, you are already committed. It is not a question for you to decide. You are in the middle of the commitment. Nobody is asking you to be committed or not to be committed.

That’s what existentialists say – that it is as if one is thrown into life. Nobody asks whether you would like to go into the world or not. Suddenly one day you are here! And you are always in the middle. The beginning is not known, the end is not known. We are only in the middle.

Now the only possible way for a man who thinks well is to make something beautiful out of this small time that is at his disposal... to make it creative. Do something that gives you a sense of growth, and do it knowingly, positively. Of course it will give you a definition, but it will also give you fulfillment. If you become a poet, that will be a definition. You are not a scientist, you are not a painter, you are not a dancer – you are a poet! But that will be your fulfillment also. You are somebody. Something has flowered in you.

You can play around with things. You can paint one day and become a poet another day, and a third day you can dance, a fourth day you become an actor and on the fifth day something else. You can go on doing this. You will be simply crazy, and in the end you will feel very frustrated.

A committed life comes to a fulfillment, a fruition... it flowers. Maybe it is only one flower, but why hanker for many? One flower is enough. If it has really bloomed and your being is satisfied, one flower is enough. One need not have millions of flowers. In fact if you ask the gardener, he will tell you that if you want a big flower on any plant, you have to cut other buds, leave only one bud so the

whole shape, the whole juice, the whole life rushes towards one flower, and then that flower will be something.

So decide to do something .… Some day decide to become a sannyasin, mm? It will give you a direction.

[A sannyasin who had been asked to leave the ashram asked if he were really to leave or if this was a message to indicate that he should apply himself more to the work.]

Apply yourself more to the work... become a help to Laxmi. There is no need to go, but apply yourself more to the work – and don’t avoid it. Because that is detrimental to your growth also. Once you become accustomed to not working, you will stop growing. I allowed you enough time... for years you were not doing anything. I allowed you into the ashram only because now you should start doing. A point has come in your growth where you need to move into the work. But if you just somehow manage to do it, it won’t help.

Work is not the only consideration. You should do it happily, lovingly, because if you just do it somehow, like a duty, that will not help. The work will be done, but that will not help you. Work is not the only consideration. You are also – and you are more important than the work. Become part of the family. Don’t remain an outsider.

[The sannyasin says:... the best jobs were actually taken away from me before I had a chance to do anything with them.

Now I’m left with... doing security guarding for the therapy bathrooms... there isn’t much scope in it.]

No, don’t think in those terms. Whatsoever work is given to you, do it as lovingly as possible. The point is not whether the work is very important or not. If you do it lovingly, it becomes important, whatsoever it is even if it is cleaning. The question is not what work – the question is that you surrender to the ashram all your energies; and whatsoever is available, or whatsoever Laxmi thinks is right, you do.

Simply surrender to Laxmi. That is going to help very much. Just listen to her, and whatsoever she says, do. This is a meditation for you – surrendering to Laxmi.

[The sannyasin said:... a lot of fear was coming up about the prospect of going back to the West.]

There is no need to go, unless you yourself want to. But if you don’t become a part, an organic part of the ashram, and you remain aloofBecause Laxmi feels that whatsoever she gives you, there

are a few problems. And the basic problem that I have understood is that you would like it to be done your way. That creates trouble. Simply relax and say, ‘Show me the way and I will do it.’ Simply execute it and don’t try to dominate it.

Sometimes you may know better, and your plan may be better, but still, drop it, because you will have to fit with many people and they all feel it is difficult to work with [you] because you have your fixed ideas. I’m not saying that those ideas are wrong. They may be better, but the problem is that you have to fit with everybody. If everybody feels that it is difficult to work with [you], then it becomes difficult for Laxmi to arrange.

So simply drop your ideas. Tell Laxmi that whatsoever she feels like, just to tell you and you will do it. You will put your whole energy into it and will not put forward your ideas, your plans, because Laxmi knows the whole situation better.

For three months simply relax, then we will see. And she is bound to listen to you. If you have some good ideas, she is bound to listen to you. But first become a part. And whatsoever she says, be a yes-sayer. And unless you want to, there is no need to go. Good.

[A sannyasin asks: Today I was reading a german newspaper and there was written in it that in many parts of the world there are earthquakes. I should like to know what is going on.]

Mm... nothing much. It is just that the earth is burdened too much with human beings and wants to get rid of them. We have overproduced ourselves and created too much tension. The earth is really burdened. So it is nothing much. Nothing to be worried about.

[A sannyasin says: I have a voice inside me that keeps me from being happy. I listen to it and have a difficult time staying outside it... It says I’m not good enough... ]

[Osho had talked in the discourse this morning about the three layers of one’s being as described in Transactional Analysis – the child, the parent, the adult – P, A, C – saying that finally one had to transcend all and attain to one’s own being, free of any of these voices.]

[The sannyasin said the voices were from ninth grade.]

Mm mm, it is just an old record – absolutely irrelevant. But it goes on playing. You have to put it off. You cannot erase it; there is no need to erase it. You just have to understand that this is foolish. Who are these school friends? How do they know that you cannot make it? Who are they? And how can they decide? How can anybody else decide that you cannot make it? Except for you, nobody can decide it.

And you also cannot decide it beforehand. First you have to try it and see whether you make it or not, because if you decide beforehand that you cannot make it, you will not be able to. Your decision will affect your life. If will become an auto-suggestion. It will become a seed. It will sabotage your whole life. Even you cannot decide what you can make an,d what you cannot make. You have to do it, you have to see it. Only life decides. So it is simply foolish, childish – but many childish things continue. The tape goes on playing itself, and if you play it too much, it becomes habitual.

And it is a trick of the mind – it is a trick to avoid. Once you decide that you cannot make it, then why bother? Why struggle? Why so much conflict, effort? You know already that you cannot make it. It is the mind finding a rationalisation so that you can avoid struggle. And of course, if you avoid effort, you will not make it, so you fall back upon your decision. You say it was right, it was always right; you knew it beforehand. These are self-perpetuating things in the mind; they perpetuate themselves. They fulfill themselves, and the circle goes on moving, the wheel goes on moving.

I don’t see why you can’t make it. You are alive – why can’t you make it? Life is trying in every way within you to make it – otherwise you would not be here. You cannot be purposelessly here. Life has not yet become hopeless in you, otherwise you would die.

The very thing is enough evidence that life is still alive within you, thriving, kicking, still striving. You are Still breathing and you are still there. Once it is really settled that you cannot make it – that you are doomed, nothing is going to happen to you – you will die immediately, you cannot live a single moment, because then life has nothing to be there for. The destiny is closed. But you are breathing... you are aware.

Life has not become hopeless about you. God still goes on hoping about you, hence He goes on giving you life. Every morning you are awake again. He again tries. He has not become hopeless, otherwise you would disappear. Man exists because God hopes. Man is a hope... a divine hope, a dream in God’s mind. The moment God becomes hopeless about you, you will be there no more; you simply disappear.

You can make it. You are here to make it. But these foolish noises that you have gathered – put them off! Just tell the mind, ‘Enough of this nonsense.’ Let them shout – you go on your way. By and by they will stop bothering you, and by and by you will start achieving things. That will be a proof – and only that proof will make them shut their mouths; otherwise they will continue.

Nobody has the right to condemn you, but everybody carries these voices within, and everybody has to come to understand, otherwise one never grows. So whenever it happens again, just say to them, ‘Shut up!’ and don’t pay much attention. Become indifferent and go on your way. Whatsoever you want to do, do. Only by doing it you will prove them wrong; otherwise there is no way.

Once glimpses start coming to you, and you are on the right track, and you feel that yes, you are arriving, they will disappear by themselves. They will not be able to show their face to you. In fact use them as a challenge that you have to prove them false. This is your life’s work.

Do Vipassana now – and in Vipassana the voices will be com-ing more strongly. Just become a Buddha and tell them, ‘I have already arrived – now it is futile.’ And they will go. Don’t take them very seriously. They are ridiculous – and laughter is the greatest medicine to cure such things.

[A sannyasin comes forward laughing and crying simultaneously. Whenever she comes to darshan, she invariably collapses in front of Osho, overwhelmed by his presence.

She says: I don’t know! [laughter] What’s happening to me?]

Much has happened. Great things are happening to you. I am happening to you [laughter]. The medical name for it is Rajneeshitis [much laughter].

It is a sort of madness [a chuckle] – infectious, but happening only to very courageous people! Mm? Good!

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