19

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‌CHAPTER 19

20 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, nirvana means enlightenment – enlightenment through love. And that is going to be your way: love, devotion, feeling, through the heart. So don’t bother about the mind; by-pass it. Let it be there, it’s okay. It’s need is there in the world, but it has nothing to contribute in the other world. It is useful in the world when you relate with people and move in the world. It is useful, it is an instrument, a mechanism, but when you go in it is not needed at all; then it is a disturbance, a hindrance.

The same thing that is an instrument for out-going becomes a hindrance for in-going. For in-going there is another instrument – that is the heart. People are very confused about the heart and the head. Use the head for the world, use the heart for god.…

[To a visiting therapist Osho says:]

Much is going to happen so don’t be surprised and don’t he scared! That is the first thing I am telling you, because when things really happen one simply starts feeling tremendously afraid, because god is not only mysterium, god is tremendum too. God is so wild, so terrible: it is as soft as a lotus flower and as strong as a strong storm. It uproots you, it destroys you, recreates you; it is a death and a womb.

So when it starts happening – and we have been working for that and we have been waiting and hankering for that, but when it really starts happening, one gets scared, one starts shrinking away. So remember that: don’t shrink away. When it starts happening feel grateful and remain available. Even if it feels as if it is going to kill you, then it is okay: let it kill you!

Unless one is ready to die transformation is not possible; it never happens. It only happens when you are ready to die. In that very readiness you are transformed. That very readiness is a transcendence, because to be ready to die means that you are ready to move into another plane of life.

That is the meaning of being ready to die – that you understand the futility of it and then you are ready. And then you say, ‘Nothing is lost – if this body is lost, nothing is lost; if this mind is lost, nothing is lost, so why be worried?’ If god wants to take this body and this mind, one feels thankful – take it, the sooner the better.

And in that very moment something simply turns one hundred and eighty degrees. That readiness to die creates such a tremendous energy in you; your whole energy comes to a focal point and from that point is the jump.

I call that point the cross and beyond that is resurrection, but those three days between the cross and the resurrection are very difficult. That is the meaning of the story of Jesus – it is a parable – that he died on the cross, then for three days he was lying dead in a cave: dark, dismal, nobody to look after him. And then he is resurrected, resurrected in a totally new body: the body of consciousness, the body of awareness.

We have a particular term for it in India; we call it dharmakaya: the body of religion, the body of awareness, the body of enlightenment. ‘Dharmakaya’ – the real body, the essential body.

This is a non-essential thing, this is accidental, this comes and goes: that remains, that simply is! It has not come and it will not go. It has been, it has been, it has been... it will be, it will be, it will be, because it simply is!

Those three days are the most difficult and each seeker has to pass through those days. Christian mystics have called those three days ‘the dark night of the soul’. You lose track of the old and the new is not even visible. The old earth simply disappears underneath one and one is in an abyss, falling and falling and falling, and there is no bottom to it. That is the dark night of the soul.

And your energy is ready, so the first thing I tell you is to remember that if something happens, allow it. Whatsoever it is unconditionally allow it, even if it is death!

[The visitor says: I work at community... I lead groups at community (a growth centre in London).

I like people to have an environment where they feel safe with each other and familiar with each other, and then let them go in.]

You can become really a great groupleader; you have that energy. You can create that space where people can go in... but much will depend on you. Mm? the higher you go, the higher you can take people with you. You can never take a person beyond you, but you can go. There is no end; you can go on and on, you can grow. And that is very primary: to grow first, then to help people to grow.

There are many people who are helping people to grow and they are not grown-ups themselves. It is very difficult to come across a person who is really a grown-up person. Growing in age is not growing-up, and a child continues to play games inside even when he is old. So it is not that one becomes a young man and then one becomes old. We go on gathering layers upon layers: the child remains and then we gather another layer of youth upon it, then another layer of oldness upon it. But the child remains there at the centre, at the very core of it.

We are more like an onion and the deepest point remains the most primitive. So when a person is in a formal situation he functions as a grown-up because that is his superficial layer. If he is in the office he behaves well and everything is perfectly good. But if he is in love, he immediately becomes a child because this is an informal situation. If he is angry he is as foolish as any child, as mad as any child. He can kill, he can destroy – for no reason at all; he can fight for trivia. And later on he can ask to be forgiven because he did something in spite of himself, and he is right, that expression is very right.

People go on doing things in spite of themselves. They feel like that because they are identified with the superficial layer. When something comes from the deeper layer they think that it is in spite of themselves.

So this is the misery of man: that the most primitive remains at the core and the most cultured just on the surface. It is not even skin deep: you scratch a person just a little and the child comes up: all grown-up-ness is gone and he will behave like a fool.

This is the misery of all human relationship: you fall in love with a woman – you are a grown-up and she is a grown-up – and everything goes so beautifully. You cannot conceive of things ever going wrong – with this woman? No, not at all – maybe with other women, but not with this woman. And neither can she believe that anything is going to go wrong with you, so grown-up, so mature, but this is the superficial layer.

The superficial layer goes on the honeymoon, but when you live a day to day life with a woman, together for twenty-four hours, the superficial layer gets scratched, the child comes up and the woman simply goes crazy for any small thing, you go crazy for any small thing! The salt is not enough in the vegetables or the sugar is not enough in the tea and you go mad. You can see for yourself that this is a tantrum, the child asserting itself.

A real grown-up person is one who is not like an onion, who has no layers, who is one – from periphery to the centre, just one! You taste him from anywhere and he has the same taste.

Buddha used to say, ‘You go to the sea and taste from this side, from that side, from the shore, go in the boat in the middle and taste there, and you will find the same taste.’

That is the taste of a grown-up person – always the same! Formal, he is the same; informal, he is the same. In love he is the same; in logic he is the same. In society he is the same; alone, in privacy, he is the same. His sameness is his grown-up-ness. His centre has become his periphery, so in or out there is no distinction; he is oneness.

That is the meaning of the english word ‘individuality’. He is an individual. You cannot divide, he is indivisible.

Much is possible. Remain available to me now... I will start working! Good!

Deva means divine, eka means oneness – divine oneness. And oneness is divine; twoness is undivine, manyness is madness!

Ordinarily we are a crowd, we are not one. The worst situation that a man can fall into is to become a crowd or to become a schizophrenic, two. But if you are two, sooner or later you will become many because once the fragmentation has started it goes on, ad infinitum.

So the whole spiritual effort is how to drop schizophrenia, how to become one, how not to be two, how to turn this whole energy – lower, higher, left, right – into one; that is the whole science.

In that oneness one is neither a man nor a woman... in that oneness one is indefinable. And we will work for it. Meditation is a way to oneness.

[A sannyasin says: You say accept everything as it is and I know what you mean, however sometimes one just feels that one can say something that maybe would help the person to just... I don’t know... the way you say things to me. Is this my place or is it my place to just accept totally and not say anything?]

No, no, you are creating unnecessary confusion. When you feel like saying something then acceptance means saying it! When you don’t feel like saying something, acceptance means not saying it; these two things are not contradictory. Whatsoever comes naturally to you is good, nature is good, so sometimes if you feel that some inner urge is there to help somebody, help!

[The sannyasin answers: Even if they don’t want to hear?]

That is not the point at all... that is not the point at all because that is up to them; that is not your business at all. It was your urge to help. If they feel to accept it, good; if they don’t feel like accepting it, that is their acceptance. If somebody does not want to take your advice you cannot force it because then it will be against his nature.

It is natural for you to help; it is natural for him not to accept it if he does not want to. We are not only to be natural, we have to respect others’ nature too otherwise it becomes an interference. You become a do-gooder – and that is dangerous.

Doing good is not dangerous; to become a do-gooder is dangerous because that is a totally different thing. Then you are not worried about the other person: you have to do good! If he doesn’t listen you will put him right, you will force him. Sometimes it has happened that people have been killed by do-gooders because they won’t listen, they are bent upon doing good.

Mm? that’s what happened many people were killed by Christians because Christians were thinking, ‘unless these people are Christians they will go to hell!’ So at the point of the sword they tried to convert. If you had looked into their hearts they were simple people: they thought that without Jesus people would go to hell.

Just think: if you see a person going to jump into a crater you will try to stop him. You see that this man is mad so you will try, even at the point of the sword, to prevent him.

That’s what Christians were doing, because they were seeing hell as very real in the middle ages, too real. The world was not as real as the hellfire. In their imagination, in their dreams, millions of

people were going to be burned in hellfire. People had to be dragged towards Jesus because Jesus says, ‘Unless you come through me you will not come to god!’ So these people were trying – even against themselves; but then it becomes dangerous. Then you kill somebody’s freedom.

Freedom implies the freedom to go to hell too! Freedom implies doing something wrong too. That’s for me to decide whether I want to do wrong or not: if I do wrong then I have to take the consequences; nobody else has the authority to pull me out of it.

Yes, you can give advice because that is coming naturally to you. You can say, ‘Listen, this is a volcano and alive, and if you go into it you will be burned. This is my feeling, but you have to decide.’

Once it happened a friend of mine was bent upon committing suicide, so everybody was advising him but he wouldn’t listen.

His father came running to me and he said ‘Now it seems it is beyond us’. The father had always been against me but now he thought ‘Maybe this is the last resort’. So I said, ‘I am coming.’

I went and I listened to the man, and I said, ‘Perfectly good! I don’t feel it is right, but if still you decide to commit suicide I will help you because I’m your friend! If you want to commit suicide, good! I don’t feel it is right because if I were in your place I wouldn’t commit suicide because it looks foolish! Because a girl has refused you, you want to commit suicide. There are millions of girls and this is not the only woman. Within a month you will forget; you will fall in love again! But if you still think to, it is perfectly good! It is your life!’

The father became very much disturbed. He said, ‘We have brought you to help him not to do it!’

I said, ‘Who are you to help him? – because when you gave birth to him you never asked him if he wanted to be born or not. Now why should you ask? If he wants to commit suicide he should be given all freedom.’

I took the man to my house. I said, ‘Come with me. If you are going to commit suicide, let us enjoy. One night be with me because maybe we will meet somewhere, maybe we will never meet again.’

So he came with me, and by and by he started thinking, because I was not trying to convince him. I said, ‘We will put the alarm on and at four o’clock I will drive you to a beautiful place where you can jump into the river... and I can say good-bye too!’

At four o’clock when the alarm went and I started pulling him out of his bed, he said, ‘Are you my enemy or what? I don’t want to commit suicide!’

I said, ‘This is not right. If you have decided it is perfectly good!’

He said, ‘But I don’t want to commit suicide. Why are you forcing me?’ I said, ‘I’m not forcing!’

And he has not committed suicide! Now he has a wife and children and he avoids me because whenever he comes to see me I say, ‘What has happened now? You were thinking that you would never fall in love again; you fell in love again!’

And he says, ‘In fact I am happy that that woman refused; she was not for me! I would have always been in trouble, her husband is in trouble. And I have found a better woman.’

Our work is to be natural and to help others also to be natural.

So perfectly good – if you feel like helping, advising, give the advice, help with the condition that it is for the other to take it or not to take it. If they take it, thank them; if they don’t take it, thank them; you will not be offended. Never be offended; then you are free to give advice. If you feel offended, it is dangerous because then you can be violent in subtle ways.

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