‌Chapter 8: Stop, and It Is Here!

The first question:

Osho,

Patanjali has stressed the importance of non-attachment, that is, cessation of desire, for being rooted in oneself. But is non-attachment really at the beginning of the journey or at the very end?

The beginning and the end are not two things. The beginning is the end, so don’t divide them and don’t think in terms of duality. If you want to be silent in the end, you will have to begin with silence from the very beginning. In the beginning the silence will be like a seed, in the end it will become a tree. But the tree is hidden in the seed, so the beginning is just the seed.

Whatsoever the ultimate goal, it must be hidden here and now, just in you, in the very beginning. If it is not there in the beginning you cannot achieve it in the end. Of course there will be a difference: in the beginning it can only be a seed, in the end it will be the total flowering. You may not be able to recognize it when it is a seed, but it is there whether you recognize it or not. So when Patanjali says non-attachment is needed in the very beginning of the journey, he is not saying that it will not be needed in the end.

Non-attachment in the beginning will be with effort, non-attachment in the end will be spontaneous. In the beginning you will have to be conscious about it, in the end there will be no need to be conscious about it. It will be just your natural flow.

In the beginning you have to practice it. Constant alertness will be needed. There will be a struggle with your past, with your patterns of attachment; there will be fight. In the end there will be no fight, no alternative, no choice. You will simply flow in the direction of desirelessness. That will have become your nature.

But remember, whatsoever is the goal has to be practiced from the very beginning. The first step is also the last, so one has to be very careful about the first step. If the first is in the right direction, only then will the last be achieved. If you miss the first step you have missed all.

This will come again and again to your mind, so understand it deeply because Patanjali will say many things which look like ends. Nonviolence is the end, when a person becomes so compassionate, so deeply love-filled that there is no violence, no possibility of violence. Love or nonviolence is the end, but Patanjali will say to practice it from the very beginning.

The goal has to be in your view from the very beginning. The first step of the journey must be absolutely devoted to the goal, directed to the goal, moving towards the goal. It cannot be the absolute thing in the beginning, neither does Patanjali expect it. You cannot be totally non-attached, but you can try. The very effort will help you.

You will fall many times, you will again and again get attached. And your mind is such that you may even get attached with non-attachment. Your pattern is so unconscious, but effort, conscious effort, will by and by make you alert and aware. And once you start feeling the misery of attachment then there will be less need for the effort, because no one wants to be miserable, no one wants to be unhappy.

We are unhappy because we don’t know what we are doing, but the longing in every human being is for happiness. No one longs for misery; everybody creates misery because we don’t know what we are doing. Or we may be moving in desires towards happiness, but the pattern of our mind is such that we actually move towards misery.

From the very beginning, when a child is born, is brought up, wrong mechanisms are fed into his mind, wrong attitudes are fed in. No one is trying to make him wrong, but wrong people are all around. They cannot be anything else, they are helpless.

A child is born without any pattern. There is just a deep longing for happiness but he doesn’t know how to achieve it; the how is unknown. This much is certain: he knows that happiness is to be attained. He will struggle his whole life but he doesn’t know the means, the methods of how it is to be achieved, where it is to be achieved, where he should go to find it. The society teaches him how to achieve happiness, and the society is wrong.

A child wants happiness, but we don’t know how to teach him to be happy. And whatsoever we teach him becomes the path towards misery. For example, we teach him to be good. We teach him not to do certain things and to do certain things, without ever thinking, “Is it natural or unnatural?” We say, “Do this, don’t do that.” Our “good” may be unnatural – and if whatsoever we teach as good is unnatural, then we are creating a pattern of misery.

For example, a child is angry and we say, “Anger is bad, don’t be angry.” But anger is natural, and just by saying “Don’t be angry” we are not destroying anger, we are just teaching the child to suppress it. Suppression will become misery because whatsoever is suppressed becomes poisonous. It moves into the very chemicals of the body, it is toxic. And by continuously teaching “Don’t be angry” we are teaching him to poison his own system.

One thing we are not teaching him is how not to be angry. We are simply

teaching him how to suppress the anger. And we can force him because he is dependent on us. He is helpless; he has to follow us. If we say, “Don’t be angry,” then he will smile, but that smile will be false. Inside he is bubbling, inside he is in turmoil, inside there is fire and he is smiling outside.

We are making a hypocrite out of a small child. He is becoming false and divided. He knows that his smile is false. His anger is real but the real has to be suppressed and the unreal has to be forced. He will be split. And by and by the split will become so deep, the gap will become so deep, that whenever he smiles he will smile a false smile.

And if he cannot be really angry then he cannot be really anything, because reality is condemned. He cannot express his love, he cannot express his ecstasy: he has become afraid of the real. If you condemn one part of the real the whole reality is condemned, because reality cannot be divided and a child cannot divide.

One thing is certain: the child has come to understand that he is not accepted. As he is, he is not acceptable. The real is somehow bad, so he has to be false. He has to use faces, masks. Once he has learned this the whole life will move in a false dimension. And the false can only lead to misery; the false cannot lead to happiness. Only the true, authentically real, can lead you towards ecstasy, towards the peak experiences of life: love, joy and meditation, whatsoever you name them.

Everybody is brought up in this pattern, so you long for happiness but whatever you do creates misery. The first step towards happiness is to accept oneself. The society never teaches you to accept yourself. It teaches you to condemn yourself, to be guilty about yourself, to cut out many parts of yourself. It cripples you, and a crippled man cannot reach to the goal. And we are all crippled.

Attachment is misery. But from the very beginning attachment is demanded of the child. The mother says to the child, “Love me, I am your mother.” The father says, “Love me, I am your father,” as if someone automatically becomes lovable if he is a father or she is a mother.

Just being a biological mother doesn’t mean much or just being a biological father doesn’t mean much. To be a father is to pass through a great discipline: one has to be lovable. To be a mother is not just to reproduce: to be a mother means a great training, a great inner discipline, one has to be lovable.

If the mother is lovable then the child will love without any attachment. And wherever he will find that someone is lovable, he will love. But mothers are not lovable, fathers are not lovable; they have never thought in those terms – that love is a quality.

You have to create it, you have to become it. You have to grow. Only then can you create love in others. It cannot be demanded. If you demand it, it can become an attachment, but not love.

So the child will love the mother because she is his mother. The mother or the father becomes the goals. These are relationships, not love. Then he becomes attached to the family, and the family is a destructive force because the family of the neighbor is separate; it is not lovable because you don’t belong to it. Then your community, your nation…but the neighboring nation is the enemy.

You cannot love the whole humanity: your family is the root cause. And the family has not been bringing you up to be a lovable person and a loving person, it is forcing some relationships. Attachment is a relationship, and love is a state of mind. Your father will not say to you, “Be loving,” because if you are loving you can be loving to anybody. Even sometimes the neighbor may be more lovable than your father, but the father cannot accept this, that anybody can be more lovable than him, because he is your father. So relationship has to be taught, not love.

This is my country, that’s why I have to love this country. If simply love is taught, then I can love any country. But the politician will be against it because if I love any country, if I love this earth, then I cannot be dragged into war. So the politicians will teach, “Love this country. This is your country, you are born here. You belong to this country, your life, your death, belongs to this country” – so he can sacrifice you for it.

The whole society is teaching you relationships, attachments, not love. Love is dangerous because it knows no boundaries. It can move, it is freedom. So your wife will tell you, “Love me because I am your wife.” The husband is telling the wife, “Love me because I am your husband.” Nobody is teaching love.

If simply love is taught, then the wife can say, “But the other person is more lovable.” If the world were really free to love, then just being a husband could carry any meaning, and just being a wife wouldn’t mean anything. Then love would freely flow. But that is dangerous – society cannot allow it, the family cannot allow it, the religions cannot allow it. So in the name of love they teach attachment, and then everybody is in misery.

When Patanjali says non-attachment, he is not anti-love. Really, he is for love. Non-attachment means be natural, loving, flowing, but don’t get obsessed and addicted. Addiction is the problem. Then it is like a disease. You cannot love anybody except your child – this is addiction. Then you will be in misery. Your child can die, then there is no possibility for your love to flow. Even if

your child is not going to die, he will grow. And the more he grows the more he will become independent. And then there will be pain. Every mother suffers, every father suffers.

The child will become an adult, he will fall in love with some woman. And then the mother suffers, a competitor has entered. But this is because of attachment. If a mother really loves the child she will help him to be independent. She will help him to move in the world and to make as many love contacts as possible, because the more you love the more you are fulfilled. And when her child falls in love with a woman she will be happy, she will dance with joy.

Love never gives you misery, because if you love someone you love his happiness. If you are attached to someone you don’t love his happiness, you love only your selfishness; you are concerned only with your own egocentric demands.

Freud discovered many things. One of them is mother or father-fixation. He says the most dangerous mother is the one who forces the child to love her so much that he becomes fixated and he will not be able to love anybody else. So there are millions of people suffering because of such fixations.

As far as I have been trying to study many people, I have found that almost all the husbands, at least ninety-nine percent, are trying to find their mothers in their wives. Of course, you cannot find your mother in your wife; your wife is not your mother. But a deep fixation with the mother, and then they are dissatisfied with the wife because she is not mothering them. And every wife is searching for the father in the husband, and no husband is your father. And if she is not satisfied with the fathering then she is dissatisfied.

These are fixations. In Patanjali’s language, he calls them attachments. Freud calls them fixations. The words differ but the meaning is the same. Don’t get fixed, be flowing. Non-attachment means you are not fixed. Don’t be like ice cubes, be like water, flowing. Don’t be frozen.

Every attachment becomes a frozen thing, dead. It is not vibrating with life, it is not a constantly moving response. It is not alive moment to moment, it is fixed. You love a person: if it is love then you cannot predict what is going to happen the next moment. It is impossible to predict, moods change like weather. You cannot say the next moment also that your lover will be loving to you. He may not feel like loving the next moment, you cannot expect it.

If he also loves you the next moment it is good, you are thankful. If he is not loving in the next moment nothing can be done, you are helpless. You have to accept the fact that he is not in the mood. Nothing to cry about, simply there is no mood for love! You accept the situation. You don’t force the lover to

pretend, because pretension is dangerous.

If I feel loving towards you I say, “I love you,” but the next moment I can say, “No, I don’t feel any love in this moment.” So there are only two possibilities: either you accept my non-loving mood, or you force: whether you love me or not, at least show that you love me.” If you force me then I become false and the relationship becomes a pretension, a hypocrisy. Then we are not true to each other. And how can two persons who are not true to each other be in love? Their relationship will have become a fixation.

Wife and husband are fixed, dead, everything is certain. They are behaving towards each other as if they are things. When you come to your home, your furniture will be the same as when you left because furniture is dead. Your house will be the same because the house is dead. But you cannot expect your wife to be the same, she is alive, a person. And if you expect her to be the same as she was when you left the house then you are forcing her to be just furniture, just a thing. Attachment forces the related persons to be things and love helps the persons to be freer, to be more independent, to be truer. But truth can only be in constant flow, it can never be frozen.

When Patanjali says non-attachment he is not saying to kill your love. Rather, on the contrary, he is saying, “Kill all that poisons your love, kill all the obstacles, destroy all the obstacles that kill your love.” Only a yogi can be loving; the worldly person cannot be loving, he can only be attached.

Remember this: attachment means fixation and you cannot accept anything new in it, only the past. You don’t allow the present; you don’t allow the future to change anything. And life is change, only death is unchanging.

If you are unattached, then moment to moment you move without any fixation. Every moment life will bring new happinesses, new miseries. There will be dark nights and there will be sunny days, but you are open, you don’t have a fixed mind. When you don’t have a fixed mind even a miserable situation cannot give you misery because you don’t have anything to compare with it. You were not expecting something against it so you cannot be frustrated.

You get frustrated because of your demands. You think that when you come home, your wife will be just standing outside to welcome you. And if she is not standing there outside to welcome you, you cannot accept it. This gives you frustration and misery. You demand, and through demand you create misery. And demand is possible only if you are attached. You cannot demand with persons who are strangers to you. Only with attachment does demand come in; that is why all attachments become hellish.

Patanjali says be non-attached. That means be flowing, accepting

whatsoever life brings. Don’t demand and don’t force. Life is not going to follow you; you cannot force life to be according to you. It is better to flow with the river rather than pushing it. Just flow with it, and much happiness becomes possible. There is already much happiness all around you, but you cannot see it because of your wrong fixations.

But in the beginning this non-attachment will only be a seed; in the end non- attachment becomes desirelessness. In the beginning non-attachment means non-fixation, in the end non-attachment will mean desirelessness, no desire. In the beginning no demand, in the end no desire.

But if you want to reach to this end of no-desire, start from no-demand. Try Patanjali’s formula even for twenty-four hours, just for twenty-four hours, flowing with life, not demanding anything. Whatsoever life gives, feeling grateful, thankful. Just moving for twenty-four hours in a prayerful state of mind, not asking, not demanding, not expecting, and you will have a new opening. Those twenty-four hours will become a new window. And you will feel how ecstatic you can become.

But you will have to be alert in the beginning. It cannot be expected that non-attachment, for the seeker, can be a spontaneous act.

The second question:

Osho,

How is it that an enlightened one gives of himself to one only, as Lord Buddha did in the case of Mahakashyapa? Really, this Buddhist tradition of one disciple receiving the light continued for eight generations. Was it not possible for a group to be its recipient?

No, it is never possible, because the group has no soul, the group has no self. Only the individual can be the recipient, the receiver, because only the individual has the heart. A group is not a person.

You are here, I am talking, but I am not talking to the group because with the group there can be no communication. I am talking to each individual here. You have gathered in a group but you are not hearing me as a group, you are hearing me as individuals. Really, the group doesn’t exist, only individuals exist. Group is just a word; it has no reality, no substance. It is just the name of a collectivity.

You cannot love a group, you cannot love a nation, you cannot love humanity. But there are persons who claim that they love humanity. They deceive themselves because there is no one like humanity anywhere, there are only human beings. Go and search: you will never find humanity somewhere. Really, the persons who claim that they love humanity are the persons who

cannot love a person. They are incapable of being in love with a person. So they use big names – humanity, nation, universe. They may even love God but they cannot love a person, because to love a person is arduous, difficult; it is a struggle.

You have to change yourself. To love humanity presents no problem. There is no humanity, you are alone. Truth, beauty, love or anything that is significant always belongs to the individual, only individuals can be recipients.

Ten thousand monks were there when Buddha poured his being into Mahakashyapa, but the group was incapable. No group can be capable, because consciousness is individual, awareness is individual. Mahakashyapa rose to the peak where he could receive Buddha. Other individuals can also rise to that peak, but no group.

Religion basically remains individualistic, and it cannot be otherwise. That is one of the basic fights between Communism and religion. Communism thinks in terms of groups, societies, collectivities, and religion thinks in terms of the individual person, the self. Communism thinks that the society can be changed as a whole, and religion thinks only individuals can be changed. Society cannot be changed as a whole because society has no soul, it cannot be transformed. In fact there is no society, only individuals.

Communism says there are no individuals, only society. Communism and religion are absolutely antagonistic, and this is the antagonism. If Communism becomes prevalent, then individual freedom disappears. Then only the society exists. The individual is not allowed really to be there. He can exist only as a part, as a cog in the wheel. He cannot be allowed to be a self.

I have heard…

A man reported in a Moscow police station that his parrot was missing, so he was directed to the clerk concerned. The clerk wrote, and he asked, “Does the parrot speak also? He talks?”

The man became afraid, a little troubled, uncomfortable. He said, “Yes, he talks. But whatsoever political opinion he expresses, those political opinions are strictly his own.”

A parrot! This individual was afraid because what a parrot speaks means those political opinions must belong to his master. A parrot simply imitates. No individuality is allowed in Communism, you cannot have your opinions. Opinions are the concern of the state, the group mind, and the group mind is the lowest thing possible. Individuals can reach to the peaks. No group has ever become Buddha-like or Jesus-like; only an individual peaks.

Buddha is giving his whole life’s experience to Mahakashyapa because there is no other way. It cannot be given to any group; it cannot be, it is just impossible. Communication, communion can only be between two individuals. It is a personal, deeply personal faith. The group is impersonal. And remember that a group can do many things: madness is possible with the group, but buddhahood is not possible. A group can be mad but a group cannot be enlightened.

The lower the phenomenon the more the group can participate in it. All great sins are committed by the group, not by individuals. An individual can murder a few people, but an individual cannot become “fascism,” he cannot murder millions. Fascism can murder millions, and with good conscience!

After the Second World War all the war criminals proclaimed that they were not responsible, that they were just following orders from above. They were just part of the group. Even Hitler and Mussolini were very sensitive in their private lives. Hitler used to listen to music, he loved music. He even used to paint sometimes, he loved painting. Seems impossible, Hitler loving painting and music; so sensitive, and killing millions of Jews without any inconvenience, without any discomfort in his conscience, not even a prick. He was “not responsible.” Then he was just the leader of a group.

When you are moving in a crowd you can commit anything because you feel, “The crowd is doing it. I am just part of it.” Alone you would think thrice whether to do it or not. In the crowd responsibility is lost, your individual thinking is lost, your discrimination is lost, your awareness is lost. You have become just a part of a crowd. Crowds can go mad. Every country knows, every period knows crowds can go mad, and then they can do anything, but it has never been heard that crowds can become enlightened.

The higher states of consciousness can be achieved only by individuals. More responsibility has to be felt, more individual responsibility, more conscience. The more you feel you are responsible, the more you feel you have to be aware, the more you become individual.

Buddha communicates his silent experience with Mahakashyapa, his silent sambodhi, his silent enlightenment, because Mahakashyapa has also become a peak, a height, and two heights could now meet. And this will always be so. So if you want to reach higher peaks don’t think in terms of groups, think in terms of your own individuality. A group can be helpful in the beginning, but the more you grow the less and less a group can be helpful.

A point comes when the group cannot be of any help, you are left alone. And when you are totally alone and you start growing in your loneliness, for the first time you are crystallized. You have become a soul, a self.

The third question:

Osho,

Practice is a sort of conditioning at the physical and mental levels, and it is through conditioning that society makes man its slave. In that case, how can Patanjali’s practice be an instrument of liberation?

Society conditions you to make a slave out of you, an obedient member, so the question seems valid: how can a continuous reconditioning of the mind make you liberated? The question seems valid only because you are confusing two types of conditioning.

You have come to me, you have traveled a path. When you go back you will travel the same path again. The mind can ask, “The path which brought you here, how can the same path take you back?” The path will be the same; your direction will be different, quite the opposite. While you were coming towards me you were facing towards me, when going back you will be facing the opposite direction, but the path will be the same.

The society conditions you to make you an obedient member, to make you a slave; it is just a path. The same path has to be traveled to make you free, only the direction will be the opposite. The same method has to be used to “uncondition” you.

I remember one parable…

Once Buddha went to his monks, he was going to deliver a sermon. He sat under his tree. He had a handkerchief in his hand. He looked at the handkerchief, the whole congregation also looked at what he was doing. Then he tied five knots in the handkerchief and then he asked two questions: one, “Is the handkerchief the same as when there were no knots in it or is it different?”

One bhikkhu, one monk, said, “In a sense it is the same because the quality of the handkerchief has not changed. Even with knots it remains the same, the same handkerchief. The inherent nature remains the same. But in a sense it has changed because something new has appeared: knots were not there, now knots are there. So superficially it has changed but deep down it has remained the same.”

Buddha said, “This is the situation of the human mind: deep down it remains unknotted but the quality remains the same.”

When you become a buddha, an enlightened one, you will not have a different consciousness. The quality will be the same. The difference is only that now you are a knotted handkerchief, your consciousness has a few knots.

A second thing Buddha asked: “What should I do to unknot this handkerchief?”

Another monk said, “Unless we know what you have done to knot it we cannot say anything, because the reverse process will have to be applied. The way you have knotted it has to be known first, because that will again be the way, in the reverse order, to unknot it.”

So Buddha said, “This is the second thing. How you have come into this bondage has to be understood. How you are conditioned in your bondage has to be understood, because the same will be the process, in reverse order, to uncondition you.”

If attachment is the conditioning factor, then non-attachment will become the unconditioning factor. If expectation leads you into misery, then non- expectation will lead you out of your misery. If anger creates a hell within you, then compassion will create a heaven. So whatsoever the process of misery, the reverse will be the process of happiness. Unconditioning means you have to understand the whole knotted phenomenon of human consciousness as it is. This whole process of Yoga will be nothing but understanding the complex knots and then unknotting them, unconditioning them. It is not a reconditioning, remember. It is simply unconditioning; it is negative. If it is a reconditioning then you will become a slave again, a new type of slave in a new imprisonment. So this difference has to be remembered: it is unconditioning, not reconditioning.

Because of this, many problems have arisen. Krishnamurti says that if you do anything it will become a reconditioning, so don’t do anything. If you do anything it will become a reconditioning: you may be a better slave but you will remain a slave. Listening to him many people have stopped all efforts, but that doesn’t make them liberated. They are not liberated, the conditioning is there. They are not reconditioning. Listening to Krishnamurti, they have stopped, they are not reconditioning, but they are also not unconditioning. They remain slaves.

So I am not for reconditioning, neither is Patanjali for reconditioning. I am for unconditioning, and Patanjali is also for unconditioning. Just understand the mind, whatsoever its disease. Understand the disease, diagnose it, and move in the reverse order.

What is the difference? Take some actual example. You feel anger: anger is a conditioning, you have learned it. Psychologists say that it is a learning, it is a programmed thing. Your society teaches it to you. There are societies even now which never get angry, the members never get angry. There are societies, small

tribal clans still in existence, which have never known any fight, have never fought a war.

In the Philippines, a small aboriginal tribe exists. For three thousand years it has not known any fight, not a single murder, not a single suicide. What has happened to it? They are the most peace-loving people and the happiest possible. From the very beginning their society never conditions them for anger. In that tribe, if even in your dream you kill someone, you have to go and ask his forgiveness – even in a dream! If you are angry with someone and fighting, the next day you have to declare to the village that you have done something wrong. Then the village will gather together, and the wise men of the village will diagnose your dream and they will suggest what is to be done now. Even small children!

I was reading their dream analyses. They seem to be one of the most penetrating people. A small child dreams, and in a dream he sees the boy of the neighbor looking very sad. So he tells the dream to his father in the morning: “I have seen the boy of the neighbor looking very sad.”

So the father thinks over it, closes his eyes, meditates, and then he says, “If you have seen him sad, that means somehow his sadness is related to you. No one else has dreamed about him that he is sad, so either knowingly or unknowingly you have done something which creates his sadness. Or, if you have not done, in the future you are going to do. So the dream is just a prediction for the future. Go with many sweets, gifts. Give sweets and gifts to the boy and ask for his forgiveness for something done in the past or for something which you are going to do in the future.”

So the boy goes, gives the fruits, sweets, gifts, and asks his forgiveness because somehow, in the dream, he is responsible for his sadness. From the very beginning the children are brought up in this way. If this tribe has existed without strife, fight, murder, suicide, there is no wonder. They cannot conceive of it. A different type of mind is functioning there.

Psychologists say that hate and anger are not natural. Love is natural: hate and anger are just created. They are hindrances in love, and society conditions you for them. Unconditioning means whatsoever the society has done it has done; there is no use to go on condemning it, it is already the case. And by simply saying that the society is responsible, you are not helped. It has been done. Now, right now, what can you do? – you can uncondition. So whatsoever your problems, look deep in the problem, penetrate it, analyze it, and see how you are conditioned for it.

For example, there are societies which never feel competitive. Even in India there are aboriginal tribes where no competition exists. Of course they cannot

be very progressive in our measurement, because our progress can only be through competition. They are not competitive. Because they are not competitive they are not angry, they are not jealous, they are not so hate-filled, they are not so violent. They don’t expect much, and whatsoever their life gives to them they feel happy and grateful.

But no matter what life gives to you, you will never feel grateful. You will always be frustrated because you can always ask for more. And there is no end to your expectations and desires. So if you feel miserable look into the misery and analyze it. What are the conditioning factors which are creating the misery? And it is not very difficult to understand it. If you can create misery, if you are so capable of creating misery, there is no difficulty in understanding it. If you can create it you can understand it.

Patanjali’s whole standpoint is this: looking into the misery of man, it is found that man himself is responsible. He is doing something to create it. That doing has become habitual, so he goes on doing it. It has become repetitive, mechanical, robotic. If you become alert you can drop out of it. You can simply say, “I will not cooperate.” The mechanism will start working.

Someone insults you: just stand still, remain silent – the mechanism will start, it will bring the past pattern. The anger will be coming, the smoke will arise and you will feel just on the verge of getting mad. But stand still. Don’t cooperate and just look at what the mechanism is doing. You will feel wheels within wheels within you, but they are impotent because you are not cooperating.

Or if you feel it is impossible to remain in such a still state, then close your door, move into the room, have a pillow before you and beat the pillow, be angry with the pillow. And when you are beating, getting angry and mad with the pillow, just go on watching what you are doing, what is happening, how the pattern is repeating itself.

If you can stand still, that’s the best. If you feel it is difficult, that you are pulled, then move into a room and be angry on the pillow. Because with the pillow your madness will be totally visible to you, it will become transparent. And the pillow is not going to react: you can watch more easily and there is no danger, no safety problem. You can watch: slowly, the rising of the anger and the decline of the anger.

Watch both, the rhythm. When your anger is exhausted and you don’t feel like beating the pillow anymore, or you have started laughing or you feel ridiculous, then close your eyes, sit on the floor, and meditate on what has happened. Do you still feel anger for the person who has insulted you, or it is thrown onto the pillow? You will feel a certain calmness falling on you. And

you will not feel angry now with the person concerned. Rather, you may even feel compassion for him.

One young American boy was here two years ago. He had escaped from America because of only one problem, one obsession: he was continuously thinking of murdering his father. The father must have been a dangerous man, must have suppressed this boy too much. In his dreams he was thinking of murdering his father, in his daydreams also he was thinking of murdering him. He escaped from his home just to separate from the father. Otherwise, any day, something could happen. The madness was there, it could erupt any moment.

He was here with me and I told him, “Don’t suppress it.” I gave him a pillow and said, “This is your father. Now do whatsoever you like.” At first he started laughing, laughing in a mad way. And he said, “It looks ridiculous.” I told him, “Let it be ridiculous. But it is in the mind, let it come out.” For fifteen days continuously he was beating and tearing the pillow. And doing it, on the sixteenth day he came with a knife. I had not told him to, so I asked him, “Why this knife?”

He said, “Now don’t stop me. Let me kill. Now the pillow is not a pillow for me. The pillow has actually become my father.” That day he killed his father. And then he started crying, tears came to his eyes. He became calmed down, relaxed, and he told me, “I am feeling much love for my father, much compassion. Now allow me to go back.”

He is back there now. The relationship has totally changed. What has happened? – just a mechanical obsession has been released.

If you can stand still when some old pattern grips your mind, it is good. If you cannot, then allow it to happen in a dramatic way, but alone, not with someone. Because whenever you enact your pattern, allow your pattern with someone, it creates new reactions and it is a vicious circle.

The most significant point is to be watchful of the pattern. Whether you are standing silently or acting out your anger and hate, be watchful, looking at how it uncoils. And if you can see the mechanism you can undo it.

All these steps in Yoga are just for undoing something which you have been doing. They are negative, nothing new is to be created. Only the wrong is to be destroyed, the right is already there. Nothing positive is to be done, only something negative. The positive is hidden there. It is just like a stream is there, hidden under a rock. You are not to create the stream. It is already there, knocking; it wants to be released and to become free and flowing. Just a rock is there, and this rock has to be removed. Once the rock is removed the stream starts flowing.

Bliss, happiness, joy, or whatsoever you call it, is already there flowing in

you. Only some rocks are there: those rocks are the conditionings of the society. Uncondition them. If you feel attachment is the rock then make efforts for non-attachment. If you feel anger is the rock then make efforts for non- anger. If you feel greed is the rock then make efforts for non-greed. Just do the opposite. Don’t suppress greed, just do the opposite, do something which is non-greed. Don’t just suppress anger, do something which is non-anger.

In Japan, when someone gets angry, they have a traditional teaching. If someone gets angry, immediately he has to do something which is non-anger. And the same energy which was going to move into anger moves into non- anger. Energy is neutral. If you feel angry with someone and you want to slap his face, give him a flower and see what happens.

You wanted to slap his face, you wanted to do something: that was anger. Give him a flower and just watch what is happening within you; you are doing something which is of non-anger. And the same energy which was going to move your hand will move your hand; and the same energy which was going to hit him is now going to give the flower but the quality has changed. You have done something, and the energy has become neutral; if you don’t do something then you suppress, and suppression is poisonous. Do something, but just the opposite. And this is not a new conditioning; it is just to uncondition the old. When the old has disappeared, the knots have disappeared, you need not worry for anything to do. Then you can flow spontaneously.

The last question:

Osho,

You said that the spiritual endeavor may take twenty to thirty years, or even lives, and even then it is early. But the Western mind seems to be result-oriented, impatient and too practical. It wants instantaneous results. Religious techniques come and go like other fads in the West. Then how do you intend to introduce Yoga to the Western mind?

I am not interested in the Western mind or the Eastern mind: these are just two aspects of one mind. I am interested in the mind. And this Eastern–Western dichotomy is not very meaningful, not even significant now. There are Eastern minds in the West and there are Western minds in the East. And now the whole thing has become a mess. The East is now also in a hurry. The old East has disappeared completely.

I am reminded of one Taoist anecdote…

Three Taoists were meditating in a cave. One year passed. They were silent, sitting, meditating. One day a horseman passed nearby. They looked. One of the three hermits said, “The horse he was riding was white.” The other two

remained silent.

After one year again, the second hermit said, “The horse was black, not white.”

Then one more year passed again. The third hermit said, “If there are going to be discussions, I am leaving. If there is going to be some bickering, I am leaving. I am leaving! You are disturbing my silence.”

What did it matter whether the horse was white or black? Three years! But this was the flow in the East. Time was not. The East was not conscious of time at all. The East lived in eternity, as if time was not passing. Everything was static.

But that East no longer exists; the West has corrupted everything. The East has disappeared; through Western education everybody is now Western. There are only a few people, like in the islands, who are “Eastern” – they can be in the West, they can be in the East. Now they are not in any way confined to the East. But the world as a whole, the earth as a whole, has become Western.

Yoga says – and let it penetrate you very deeply because it will be very meaningful – Yoga says the more impatient you are, the more time will be needed for your transformation. The more in a hurry, the more you will be delayed. Hurry itself creates such confusion that delay will result. The less in a hurry, the earlier will be the results. If you are infinitely patient, this very moment transformation can happen. If you are ready to wait forever, you may not wait even for this next moment. This very moment the thing can happen because it is not a question of time, it is a question of the quality of your mind.

Infinite patience, simply not hankering for the result gives you much depth. Hurry makes you shallow. You are in such a hurry that you cannot be deep. This moment, you are not interested here in this moment but in what is going to happen in the next. You are interested in the result. You are moving ahead of yourself; your movement is mad. So you may run too much, you may travel too much – you will not reach anywhere because the goal to be reached is just here. You have to drop into it, not to reach anywhere. And the dropping is possible only if you are totally patient.

I will tell you one Zen anecdote…

A Zen monk is passing through a forest. Suddenly he becomes aware that a tiger is following him, so he starts running. But his running is also of a Zen type, he is not in a hurry. He is not mad; his running also is smooth, harmonious. He is enjoying it. And it is said that the monk thought in the mind, “If the tiger is enjoying it, then why not I?”

And the tiger was following him. Then he came near a precipice. Just to escape the tiger he hung from the branch of a tree. And then he looked down and saw that a lion was standing there in the valley, waiting for him. Now the tiger had arrived; he was standing just near the tree on the hilltop. The monk was hanging in between, just holding a branch, and the lion was waiting for him deep down in the valley.

He laughed. Then he looked – two mice were just eating that branch, one white, one black. Then he laughed very loudly. He said, “This is life. Day and night, white and black mice cutting. And wherever I go death is waiting. This is life!” And it is said that he achieved a satori, the first glimpse of enlightenment.

This is life! Nothing to worry about, this is how things are. Wherever you go death is waiting, and even if you don’t go anywhere day and night are cutting your life. So he laughs loudly.

Then he looks around, because now it is fixed. Now there is no worry. When death is certain, what is the worry? Only in uncertainty is there worry. If everything is certain there is no worry, now it has become destiny. So he looks for how to enjoy these few moments. He becomes aware of some strawberries just by the side of the branch, so he picks a few strawberries and eats them. They are the best of his life! He enjoys them, and it is said that he becomes enlightened in that moment.

He has become a buddha, because death is so near and even then he is not in any hurry. He can enjoy a strawberry. It is sweet, the taste of it is sweet. He thanks God. It is said in that moment that everything disappeared – the tiger, the lion, the branch, he himself. He had become the cosmos.

This is patience, absolute patience. Wherever you are, in that moment, enjoy not asking for the future. No futuring in the mind, just the present moment, the nowness of the moment, and you are satisfied. Then there is no need to go anywhere. Wherever you are, from that very point you will drop into the ocean, you will become one with the cosmos.

But the mind is not interested in here and now. The mind is interested somewhere in the future, in some results. So the question is, in a way, relevant for such a mind – it will be better to call it the modern mind rather than Western – the modern mind which is constantly obsessed with the future, with the result, not with the here and now.

How can this mind be taught Yoga? This mind can be taught Yoga because this future orientation is leading nowhere. And this future orientation is creating constant misery for the modern mind. We have created a hell, and we

have created too much of it. Now either man will have to disappear from this planet Earth, or he will have to transform himself. Either humanity will have to die completely because this hell cannot be continued anymore, or we will have to go through a mutation.

Hence, Yoga can become very meaningful and significant for the modern mind because Yoga can save. It can teach you again how to be here and now, how to forget past and how to forget future and how to remain in the present moment with such intensity that this moment becomes timeless. The very moment becomes eternity.

Patanjali can become more and more significant. As this century comes to its closure, techniques about human transformation will become more and more important. They are already becoming, all over the world – whether you call them Yoga or Zen, or you call them Sufi methods or you call them Tantra methods. In many, many ways, all the old traditional teachings are erupting. Some deep need is there, and those who are thinking – anywhere, in any part of the world – have become interested in again finding out how humanity existed in the past with such beautitude, such bliss. With such poor conditions, how have such rich men existed in the past? And we, with such a rich situation, why are we so poor?

This is a paradox, the modern paradox: for the first time on the earth we have created rich, scientific societies, and yet they are the most ugly and most unhappy. And in the past there was no scientific technology, no affluence, nothing of comfort, but humanity was existing in such a deep, peaceful milieu, happy, thankful. What has happened? We could be happier than anyone, but we have lost contact with existence.

That existence is here and now, and an impatient mind cannot be in contact with it. Impatience is like a feverish, mad state of mind. You go on running, and even if the goal comes, you cannot stand there because the running has become just a habit. Even if you reach the goal you will miss it, you will pass it, because you cannot stop. If you can stop, the goal is not to be sought, it is there.

Zen master Hui-Hai has said, “Seek and you will lose, don’t seek and you can get it immediately. Stop, and it is here. Run, and it is nowhere.”

Enough for today.

< Previous | Contents | Next >