19

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‌CHAPTER 19

19 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, leaving for the West, asks about meditation. Should she still keep trying or is it time to let go and drop effort, she wonders. Osho checks her energy.

My feeling is that for a few months more you should continue doing things. Right now, it will not be possible for you to do meditations spontaneously. A time will come, certainly, when you will be able to do meditations spontaneously, but right now it will be impossible. It will be just a trick of the mind to avoid. The mind will say ‘Be spontaneous – don’t try to do’, and then nothing will happen.

There is a layer from your very childhood: you must have been disciplined too much, you must have been told to do this, not to do that, and you have learned the trick. You have forgotten the spontaneity – it is there, just a layer of learning is on top of it. That layer is also being corroded; by and by it will be broken. But right now, if you leave things to spontaneity nothing will happen.

For at least a few months continue working hard at meditation; the very work will break that layer. Once that layer is broken – and you will know immediately the day it happens – then you will see that now the meditation is happening spontaneously. Not that you are doing it – it is happening: you are just a watcher. This is going to happen but it will take a little time. Right now is not the right moment, so while you are away continue meditating as a discipline.

One has to come to a state of no-effort – that is the goal – but sometimes much effort is needed to come to that state of effortlessness. Before one can become natural one has to drop many unnatural things, and those unnatural things will not drop by themselves. You have practised them; now you will have to do something as an anti-practice, as an antidote. You have taken a poison – now you have to take the antidote, otherwise the poison will kill you. Once the antidote is there and the balance is achieved then there is no need to go on taking the antidote.

All these meditations are antidotes – they are just ways to undo your past. Once that past is undone, unconditioned, then there is no need to do anything; things bubble up. One day suddenly in the morning you feel like meditating, good! Some day it doesn’t happen then – it happens in the afternoon or in the night – but that is not a problem then. Some days it will not happen but you will feel perfectly meditative; in fact, it will not happen because you were so perfectly meditative. That’s why there was no need – you were fully satisfied.

Whenever you feel the need it will happen naturally vou Will find yourself meditating, dancing, chanting. That is the goal.

But right now there is a layer between you and that goal. That layer has to be broken. [A sannyasin, who is a pilot, asks Osho if there is a meditation he can do while flying.]

Mm mm, that time can be used in a very very significant way; the whole time can become a meditation. In fact you cannot find a better situation to meditate than while flying at a higher altitude. The higher the altitude, the easier is the meditation. Hence, for centuries, meditators have been moving to the himalayas to find a high altitude.

When the gravitation is less and the earth is very far away, many pulls of the earth are far away. You are far away from the corrupted society that man has built. You are surrounded by clouds and the stars and the moon and the sun and the vast space.… So do one thing: start feeling one with that vastness, and do it in three steps.

The first step is: for a few minutes just think that you are becoming bigger, and within a few days you will be able to feel that you have become bigger... you are filling the whole cockpit.

Then the second step: start feeling that you are becoming even bigger, bigger than the plane, in fact the plane is now inside you – the second step.

And the third step: feel that you have expanded into the whole sky. Now these clouds that are moving on your radar screen, and the moon, and the stars – they are moving in you: you are huge, unlimited.

This feeling will become your meditation, and you will feel completely relaxed and non-tense. Your work will become just child’s play and it will not be any stress on you – it will happen on its own accord. You will get down from the flight more fresh than you had begun. And keep quiet. Tell to people not to talk too much to you unless it is necessary. Make your colleagues alert that you will be meditating, mm ? or you can just put a sign on yourself ‘Now I am meditating’, so they know not to disturb you. It will be great... nothing like it!

In fact in the early days – when the aeroplane was just invented – the thrill of the aeroplane was the thrill of the sky. But we go on losing things because they become too routine. Now you are flying every day, so who looks at the sky and who looks at the sun making beautiful psychedelic colours on the clouds – who looks?

So start looking at the sky that surrounds you there and by and by let there be a meeting between the inner sky and the outer sky... and for this, this will be very good. For a few minutes think that you are becoming big, bigger than the plane, then so big that everything is inside you.

Whenever you can get time, continue to meditate, mm? and this will be very relaxing meditation. [A sannyasin asks about love, because he is not experiencing it.]

Each child is born with great love, with capacity to love and be loved, but somehow, somewhere, the energy gets blocked. Our whole upbringing is wrong: we are not brought up to love – we are brought up to exploit, to be aggressive, we are brought up to be always in conflict with people, for ambition, for power, for money... and love goes against all these things.

Love goes against ambition – a loving person cannot be ambitious, and a loving person cannot be distrusting, a loving person cannot be very clever in doubts, a loving person cannot be very logical and rational. A loving person will not go after money, politics, prestige, pull.

So love goes against all these things – and we have been brought up to do all these things: to be ambitious, to become great, famous, to have much money, a nameSo love has to be curtailed,

cut, almost cut. That’s why you are feeling like this – otherwise love is there. I can see it there mm? just so many layers of nonsense upbringing; they can be broken.

So whenever you can manage, the first group to do is Primal, mm? and then we will see. It will happen.it is your birthright.

Love energy is there – it has to be just persuaded to come out!

[A sannyasin said she is upset about her father, who is ill with emphysema: I feel unclear about my relationship with him. I feel a mixture of guilt and fear.

Osho checks her energy.]

A few things to be understood .…

Yes, there is something .… You have not loved him. But it is nothing special – it happens to every child, to almost every child. And it is not too late; you can still make it. So when you go back home, love him as much as you can. And the best way to love him will be to bring him some meditative energy. That will be the only gift that you can give to him before he leavesIf he has to leave, then

he should leave in meditation. Then you will feel very very fulfilled – you have been able to give him something.

So a few things.…

One: go back, mm? and don’t talk about his illness, don’t talk about his body and the deteriorating lungs – that is meaningless, that is meaningless. Just love him as much as you can. Hug him, hold his hand, sing a song to him, dance around him and help him in any way you can, mm? Whatsoever you can do, do. And whenever he is just Lying down on the bed just sit by his side and go into deep meditation.

This will be the meditation for you to do when you are by his side – a special meditation: I call it emptying. Just empty yourself of everything, like a zero, just a nothingness.

You can keep your hand on his forehead and just feel that you are becoming nothing. Your boundaries are disappearing, your identity is disappearing, your name is disappearing, you don’t know who you are. You are going in and all the boundaries become irrelevant. A moment comes – you are suddenly just a pure awareness.

In that moment your silence will be felt by him. One day he will say that something tremendously new has happened to him; then the silence is transferred.

So just become as silent and empty as possible – and that’s the way to prepare him for his new journey, otherwise you will always feel guilty.

We don’t cry because our parents die – everybody’s parents die – we cry because we could not love them; while the time was there, we missed. So nothing to be worried about. Just go... and you are ready to love! Before you were not even ready to love so there was no point. Now you are ready to love, now you have something to share – you can share me with him!

So dance is his room: just tell him to lie down with closed eyes and do your meditation – Kundalini or Nataraj or just humming – and let him listen silently. By and by fill his whole room with silence and meditation. Read a few books to him, a few passages from my talks. You can take a few tapes – he can listen. Make him ready.

Death can be as beautiful as anything else. The west has completely forgotten how to die – naturally, because it has forgotten how to live . Just the other day I was reading about Aldous Huxley. When he was dying he asked his wife, Laura Huxley, to give him LSD so that he could become silent and could die happily. The LSD was given to him, and Laura Huxley writes that he became very peaceful, very silent, and he died... but this silence and this peace is cheap. This is just a deception. And if a man like Aldous Huxley has to use such cheap things to die then what to say about others? If you die consciously, totally silent, joyful, ready to go on the new venture, then death is tremendously beautiful. It will reveal something that life has not revealed – it will reveal to you god himself – because death is a door.

If you don’t cling to life, then suddenly you become able to see what death is. Because you cling too much to life, your clinging does not allow you to see the reality of death. Otherwise death is not death at all – it is just a change of clothes. You are changing your body, moving into a new vehicle... and good! Your father has suffered so much – he will be having a new body, a better body, so let him go with joy and celebration. Bring with you joy, celebration, meditation, love, mm? You will be able to. And don’t be a miser in loving... never be a miser in loving! At least of one thing we can give as much as is needed, and that is love. There is no end to it. It is not that you will have less if you give more: you will have more if you give more! And when will you be able to come back?

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