23

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‌CHAPTER 23

23 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin asks about becoming a Primal therapist.]

It is always good to find something that you like – because it is your life; it should not be wasted in any way. And if you have the feeling that you don’t like any job and that you have to do it, it becomes destructive. Then you are pushing somehow, dragging yourself... and any kind of dragging is destructive. When there is no joy, there cannot be any creation.

When you are simply doing it for the sake of doing and your heart is not in it, then so much time is wasted. One should not do a job only for a living. A living is a consideration, but is only secondary; life is the most primary consideration. And a job should be such that it gives you a living and life too. One should not sell one’s life for a living. Otherwise one day or other One is bound to be in deep misery about it, and then nothing can be done when the time is lost. Change your work! There was no need to remain in it so long if you were not liking it. It is not too late yet change it.

It always happens: the mind clings to the known, to the familiar, to the secure. Now that your job is secured, changing a job means moving into new difficulties, new situations. One never knows whether one will be able to cope with them or not. Maybe the new job will not pay so much – but these things should never be considered. A little less pay will do, a little more inconvenience will do, but if you are happy doing it then everything should be sacrificed for happiness.

And the work that you do is a major part of your life. It is not only that you do it; by and by it shapes you into a certain pattern. You do it and at the same time it is creating you. So people who are in certain jobs which they don’t like – in fact which they hate – by and by become full of hatred towards life itself. So get out of it. There is no need to be in it any more!

And Primal therapy is good.…

[A sannyasin who spent twenty years in the Gurdjieff movement, says that now she has had a taste here of what surrender really means. She is leaving for the West because she has many responsibilities there, and at the same time feels she is running away.]

Mm mm. That’s true! A few things have to be understood.… One: whenever the first taste of surrender comes, deep down a fear also arises, because surrender means death of the ego – so that fear is also there like a shadow. You have tasted it and now you know that if you go a little further into it you will be gone forever. So the whole past will try to distract you, and the past is very cunning and very argumentative. It is a great lawyer. It will argue with you; it will say that you have responsibilities, involvements, commitments to people, and you have to fulfil them.

But remember one thing – that the basic commitment is towards god and nobody else. If we fulfil that commitment, all other commitments can be fulfilled. If we don’t fulfil that commitment, we can go on trying but nothing will be fulfilled.

I can see you have tasted something – you have had a glimpse, one ray has entered, and now because of the ray, the fear has arisen that if more light comes in your darkness will disappear.… And with that darkness there is much investment, your whole life is invested; not only this life, but many lives are invested in that darkness. So this fear is natural.

But my feeling is: you can go, but you cannot escape – you will have to come back. And whether you come or not, I am coming with you. I am not going to leave you so easily! It is not possible now. You have already crossed that limit from where it was possible to escape; now it is not ppossible but this fear arises only when you have crossed the border, not before it. So everybody, every sannyasin, at this point starts distracting himself here and there.

I’m not saying not to go – I’m saying to go; I am coming with you and I will go on pulling you back. Back home you will see the whole point – that there is no commitment and no involvement, that nobody is there waiting for you. If you die tomorrow the world will continue; nothing will change.

One is never missed; that is the misery. Even people who think that they will be missed, if they come back they will be shocked: the world is going perfectly well, this merry-go-round continues, nobody stops. If even your death is not going to change anything, how can your sannyas change anything?

But you can go – it is good to go once and see. And now you have a new vision and a new insight. With this you will see all your relationships and you will see the whole absurdity of it; they are meaningless. But just go and see it with your own eyes and then soon you will start thinking of coming back. Come whenever you can and continue to meditate and remember me.

[A sannyasin, who is a mother, says: I feel this longing to have another child and I feel very split about it. I feel that it’s crazy and yet there’s this longing inside me to have a child.

Osho checks her energy.]

It is crazy in a way, and yet there is some rationale in it. A few things I would like to say to you – meditate over them.…

The first is: you have not been able to love and you have not been able to be loved tremendously. Something is missing in your love, so you want to substitute it. You are not really fulfilled in your love. It is okay, but nothing like a crescendo, nothing like a peak. You have not been driven crazy by it – that’s why the hankering. You want to project your love onto the child.

The second thing: you feel empty so you want to make yourself full by anything.And these are

the two ways women try: either they start eating too much, stuffing their belly, or they start thinking of pregnancy. That gives a sort of fullness, one feels full.but both are dangerous! One should eat

not because one wants to stuff the belly but because food is needed.

And you have a child, you are already a mother, so there is no point in creating many children. And this will not help – another child and again you will feel.because after nine months again you will

be empty.

And pregnancy cannot be a permanent thing. After nine months the child has to come out and again you will feel empty, and again you will want to fill the emptiness.

That has happened down the ages to millions of women: for their whole life they have been just getting pregnant and getting pregnant and getting pregnant. In india it happens too much: a woman is almost like a factory – she goes on producing; she is just like an assembly line. When she is pregnant she feels okay; when she is not pregnant she feels empty.

So you have a certain feeling of emptiness and this is no way to fill it. It can be filled; it can be filled in such a way that each moment of your life can become full, but pregnancy won’t do it.

It is enough that you have given birth to a child. Now, help the child to become a free man rather than bringing up many children whom you will not be able to take care of, whom you will not be able to help to grow.

[She answers: I already feel my child is leaving. She’s ten years old and she’s growing up.]

That’s very good! It is good, because now you have to do something bigger than giving birth to a child, mm? And the third thing: your mind is very restless so it needs occupation – and a child gives occupation, one is occupied continuously. It is a good occupation so that one can escape from oneself. One can focus on the child and forget oneself, but for how long? One day or other one has to encounter oneself, and the sooner the better.

It is good that you have come. Something can be done, and all these three things can disappear. Once they have disappeared you will find a totally new style of life. My feeling is that you have not really lived as you should have lived, you have not lived with intensity. Yes, everything has been comfortable, convenient, so-so, lukewarm. You have not come to the one hundred degree point where one evaporates.

But you have come in the right moment in a way – before you take some other step in which you again get involved for many years. A child is a long commitment. It is not a play. Mm? – again you will be getting involved for twenty years. By the time the child becomes mature, you will be involved... and! don’t think it is worth it. Something greater is needed.

You can become mother to yourself; that’s what is needed. You need a new birth yourself, you have to become a womb to yourself so you can become twice born .

There are two types of people: once born and twice born. Those once born remain in misery, but those who are twice born become blissful. That’s what Jesus means when he says that unless you are born again nothing is going to happen. A rebirth is needed. You have the capacity and the energy is there, but blocked, fragmentary not one piece. It can come into one tremendous force.

Have you done groups...?

[The sannyasin says: I did Primal therapy and some Encounter.]

But it seems that the Primal didn’t work. Mm? – it didn’t work... not at all!

... because if you still want to give birth to a child the Primal therapy has not worked... otherwise, you would have become a child! That is the whole meaning of the Primal therapy: if it really goes deep it brings a new man, a new woman, out of you. But it rarely works because it is a very difficult thing; it is not just therapy. And in the West everything becomes superficial.

[The sannyasin says she does not have the money to stay longer or do groups.]

You really need a little longer stay, mm? Groups are not that much of a problem. If you can simply meditate and dance and sing and just be here, many things will happen.

But think about it – if it is possible to manage then just stay for at least two, three weeks more, otherwise go and come back again, mm?

And while you are here, join the music group in the night; they are now playing and dancing. They meet every night. Join that group, mm? Do Sufi dancing and both the meditations morning and evening. Do these four things, mm?... And if you are going to stay it will be good, otherwise come back again, mm?

[A sannyasin who has been practising therapy for eight years, says she now wishes to work on herself. She feels a problem with her sexuality, and has recently left her husband of many years.

Osho checks her energy.]

That no-saying is there – very deep-rooted. That has been the undoing of your whole life. You cannot say yes to joy, you cannot say yes to life. You have a very suicidal instinct.

But once it is understood, it can be dissolved; there’s no problem in it. If a person can say no, he can also say yes. It just has to be understood consciously: it is you who have been saying no, and there are certain reasons why you have been saying no.

With no the ego feels stronger, with yes the ego disappears, so all egoistic people – and all are egoistic – find it very difficult to say yes. Yes means surrender – surrendering to life, to joy, to celebration.

When you are in a joyful state you are not! You cannot be in joy. Joy is but you are not. When you are unhappy, miserable, sad, then you are. This mechanism has to be understood.…

You can exist with sadness – you cannot exist with joy: the ego can exist only in an atmosphere of negativity. All negative things help the ego, they support it.

So if somebody is hankering for the ego then naturally he will say no to anything that goes against the ego, but then by and by he starts feeling that life is going slowly out of the hands and he has not enjoyed! He is not happy and he is not really alive! So one starts asking for joy and one goes on saying no.

This mechanism has to be understood: you are split into two parts. Your real life wants to be joyful and your ego has learned a trick – the trick to be miserable – because it can exist only in misery.

Once you understand it correctly, once you look into it deeply, it can be changed. It is your life. And what have you gained by saying no? You have gained nothing – the ego is just an empty bubble, it is just meaningless.

So learn to say yes... slowly. It will take time but it is going to happen. It has to happen because you have come to see one thing – that you are miserable, you are suicidal, you block every possibility and then you cry and weep. In fact you enjoy crying and weeping; it makes you feel good.

With joy, with happiness, you start disappearing. In a real moment of joy you are not – that is orgasmic. Mm? just energy is there – throbbing, dancing – but you are not! You cannot find the dancer; only the dance is. Yes, the song is but you cannot find the singer. The running is but you cannot find the runner; the loving is but you cannot find the lover! That’s where love becomes orgasmic.

Now it is not only a question of your sex. It is basically a question about your personality. Sex is just a part of it, and you cannot change just the part; you will have to change the whole personality, the whole gestalt. So don’t take problems in fragments; they can never be solved!

It is you, and sex is your style. Naturally it is your style in other things also, but in other things you may not be able to notice it so much. In sex it is very very noticeable, because you don’t enjoy, you don’t disappear into it, you don’t melt into it. You remain aloof and cold, you go on standing there like a spectator; you don’t participate.

So in sex it becomes very very clear, but it is everywhere. Whatsoever you have been doing you have simply been doing it, but you have never been in it: you have been an outsider, standing outside of the act.

The whole personality has to be changed. It is not only a question of sex, it is not a local question. And once the personality changes, the sex will change. In fact sex is very symbolic. By knowing a person’s sex style, you can know his whole personality; it is so certain a criterion. If you know a certain person’s sex style, you know his whole life, because there everything is written. It is like a mirror. But by changing the mirror, nothing changes; the mirror simply mirrors. We have to change many other things – the whole atmosphere around you – then the mirror will reflect something else.

Do a few groups mm?

[A sannyasin asks about his Kundalini rising and associated experiences. Osho checks his energy and jokes about Kundalini.]

Allow it, and start doing ‘sirshasan’ – standing on your head sometimes; that will help. It always happens when Kundalini arises. It is against the gravitation, mm? and going upwards is difficult. That’s why in yoga they started standing on the head. When you stand on your head the Kundalini can rise towards the head and the gravitation helps it.

... A woman can be very helpful because she is very gravitational for man! For a woman, a man is very gravitational.

... So start doing headstands, twice a day – five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening; and you will see that the kundalini will not disperse. It will come to your head, to the top of the head. And whenever you feel that it is coming but is not coming to the top of the head, put your hand on the head, mm?

Mm? and press it and rub it, and just feel as if you are pulling it upwards, and that will help. But standing on the head is the best thing to do, mm?

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