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CHAPTER 25
27 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[Osho gives a name for a new centre in america]
This will be the name: Mahaprasthana – it means the great departure. Prasthana means departure and mahaprasthana means the great departure. It is a one hundred and eighty degree turn; you are never the same again. Even if you want to be the same, you cannot be, because once your vision has absorbed some meditative energy, your world changes. Your world cannot be the same because you are not the same.
So Buddhists call meditation the great departure. A man who has never thought about meditation is of a totally different kind of species. A man who has meditated looks similar but is not part of the same species. He has moved into a totally different dimension, he lives in a different world, his values are different, his orientation is different: he is almost a stranger in this world.
Things that matter to other people do not matter to him and things that matter to him do not matter to other people. So all down the ages the meditator has been thought to be a little crazy, eccentric, mad, because he has always been in a minority. Although he lives more blissfully, more beautifully, lives in a greater benediction, still people think that something has gone wrong, because they are the majority.
And this is a defence measure: they say about the meditator that something has gone wrong with him – they have to say something has gone wrong to defend themselves; if he is right, they are wrong. And one thing is certain – that he has something. They feel that and they start feeling that they are missing it.
One thing everybody becomes aware of is that he is happier than ever. Now they have to condemn it otherwise his happiness will become infectious... his happiness will be pulling them too. It is a great departure.…
[A sannyasin asks about a dream: In the dream I came across just a piece of wood; in the piece of wood there was a hole or a dot.
I found myself just flowing through the hole, just going right through it and it seemed as if the stars were whirling by me on all sides. It sounds like what you were saying about falling, falling and falling... ]
Sometimes it can happen in a dream. In fact whatsoever happens in a dream has something to do with your inner possibilities. Sometimes it is sexuality that comes into your dream, sometimes it is spirituality that comes into your dream... floats in, changes your dream mind, gives you a glimpse and then disappears.
You can make that experience a beautiful meditation; start doing it every night, consciously. Every night when you go to your bed, sit on your bed, close your eyes and again visualise the same piece of wood. Let the dream come true again: the same piece of wood, the same atmosphere of that dream, the same hole.
Start looking into the hole and you will see that things start happening again, because it happened through your unconscious mind. You have just to give a little push to the unconscious mind and it will start working.
So every night do it before you go to sleep and then go to sleep. You will see within a few days that it starts coming into your dream again and then it will become more and more clear. Sometimes it can become so clear that you cannot believe that it is a dream. Sometimes it can be so real that reality looks pale before it. And then it is not a dream at all... it is not a dream at all! Then it is very intuitive.
You have approached something deep in your unconscious; continue it.
If people listen to their dreams, if their dreams are rightly interpreted, many things can be found through dreams. But in the West dream interpretation has gone into wrong hands. Freudians simply interpret through sexuality, so if you give this dream to a Freudian he will say that this is nothing but a sex dream – mm? this hole is nothing but a vagina, and he will interpret it as a desire to enter into a woman.…
Just start visualising it as it was and don’t try to analyse it, because analysis is of the conscious mind and dream is of the unconscious and they are poles apart. So simply visualise, and once you start being able to see the wood and the hole, just go into it.
Don’t bother about what it is, how it is going to happen, how you are going to do it; just allow as you did it in the dream. You will go still more deep, more deep.
Within two to three months you will be tremendously benefited by it. It can become a meditation... and these meditations are more helpful because they belong to you, they grow out of you; it is your dream. If somebody else tries this he may not succeed.
All the meditations that other people have given to the world are their dreams, their visions; they may work, they may not work. So if one can work out something from one’s own unconscious it is going to work certainly, absolutely. Start doing it, mm?
[A sannyasin says that when she thinks about living with someone she likes, she also sees things she does not like.]
I understand. Two things to be understood: first, a nice person is not enough to live with; the person has to be fantastic! Then only can one be foolish enough to live with someone (with a chuckle) otherwise not! Just nice won’t do! So you find a fantastic person, not nice, because nice means so-so.
It is good to be with a nice person for a time but to be with a nice person for twenty-four hours will be too much; the nice person won’t prove nice. Even the fanstic person, when you live with him for twenty-four hours is no more fantastic; he becomes a nice person. And the nice person becomes simply disgusting! (much laughter)
So your understanding is right! With a nice person things cannot go very far.
And the second thing: when you are feeling that it is good to be with a person, don’t think of all the pros and cons, otherwise nobody will ever be able to live with any person, the whole world will fall apart, because every person has limitations, good things and bad things.
When you are in love with a person look at the good things. Bad things will take care of themselves (with a chuckle in his voice); soon they will come! But this is not the time to think about that because if you start thinking you are being too clever.
Have you heard about Immanuel Kant, one german philosopher? A woman wanted to be married to him so she proposed to him. He said, ‘I will think about it.’ He was really a great thinker so for three years he thought about it, and he really did a great dissertation.
He consulted the whole library, all possible books on sex, marriage, love, good and bad statements, and he accumulated all the pros and cons.
He meditated and meditated. Three years passed, then he decided that it was good to marry because three hundred points were against and three hundred and one points were for! (laughter) He said, ‘One has to marry because one point is for it.’
So he knocked on the door of the woman’s house; the father opened the door and Kant said, ‘Now I am ready. Where is your daughter?’
The father said, ‘She is married and has one child – you are too late!’ (laughter)
So don’t go on thinking too much. Nobody is perfect! If you ask for perfection you will miss; relationship, love, friendship you will miss. Nobody is perfect. To ask for perfection is to ask for the impossible, so be human!
Every person has some drawbacks; accept them. When you love a person you accept all the drawbacks, all the limitations.
If you find that three hundred points are against and three hundred and one points are for, it is enough. Then go head-long into it; don’t wait for three years.
And you are gathering courage. You are looking more energetic, radiant, and things are going to happen, mm?
Soon you will meet a fantastic person; I am going to manage!
[A sannyasin says: I’ve been resisting you in the last month. I’m afraid of your power, afraid you’re going to drop the atom bomb.]
Your fear is absolutely right: I am going to drop it! and there is no way to escape. Wherever you are I am going to drop it, so just stop escaping. Accept it and then the fear will disappear. When one accepts that it is going to happen what can one do? In the escaping one is still hoping that one can escape, but I tell you, you cannot escape from me. You have already crossed that boundary from where escape was possible.
So you can resist and delay the process, that’s all. You can move into non-resistance and allow the process to happen fast. And sometimes it happens that the torture is unnecessary: when you prolong a process the torture becomes unnecessary. A thing can be done in a single stroke.
I can kill you in a single stroke, but if you try to escape I will have to kill you slowly, slowly, and that makes it very tortuous. It is unnecessary. It is better to die in a single stroke and be finished with it!
Your fear is correct. That is my whole purpose here: to kill you! So the mind is suspecting rightly. And the mind is also rightly suspecting the other thing. The mind does not trust you because the mind knows that you would like to be killed. The mind is the thing standing just between me and you. The mind doesn’t trust me and the mind does not trust you.
The mind cannot trust me because the mind is afraid that it may have to lose its grip, its power over you, and it cannot trust you because the mind knows that you can surrender, you are surrendering – slowly, but you can surrender fast.
So this mistrust about yourself is coming from the mind. You have to understand it and don’t be trapped by the mind. When the mind says ‘Escape!’ rather than escaping, move in the opposite direction. If the mind says ‘Go to the East, escape to the East’, go to the West, the opposite direction, immediately go to the opposite direction. If the mind says ‘Escape from Osho’, then surrender to Osho (laughter) so it can be done easily and fast.
[The sannyasin answers: The old thing that comes up all the time is the fear of seeing you as the punishing god that I knew.]
Then you don’t know me and you have a wrong concept, a christian concept. From your very childhood this must have been put in your mind, mm? The christian god is really not very godly!
[She adds: It’s the fear that everything will be taken away from me.]
Everything will be taken away from you – but it is not a punishment, it is a reward – because that everything is your misery. When everything is taken away from you, you will be rewarded tremendously, because in that very emptiness, in that very absence you will start flowering into bliss. It is not going to be a punishment; in fact punishment is just a wrong concept about life.
Sin, punishment – these are the two aspects of the same coin. And Christianity has created both the ideas in peoples’ minds, very deeply conditioned, that you are doing something wrong, that you are wrong, that man is born in sin, that Adam has already committed the wrong and we have nothing to do to go beyond it; we have to suffer it. So it is inevitable, the sin is inevitable; hence punishment is inevitable. So guilt arises and the fear arises.
I am bringing a totally different concept of god into the world – that god is love, that god is joy, that god is celebration and that there is no sin, that all guilt is just foolishness... that nobody has ever done anything wrong because wrong cannot be done at all. All that which happens is good because all that happens, happens through god. It cannot be otherwise. The devil exists not so there is no sin and no punishment.
But you can shrink away from this celebration that goes on and on... in that shrinking you suffer. You punish yourself; not that god is punishing you. Man is free to punish himself.
It is almost like this: you are free to try to get out of the room through the wall and to hit your head against it. The door is open: you call go through the door. But you can try through the wall and if you are hit back by it, it is not the wall that is punishing you; it is you yourself, out of your foolishness.
God is celebration but you can shrink away and then you suffer, because when you shrink away you are no more part of the celebration.
But I feel you are coming to the point by and by. It takes time; nothing to be worried about.
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