8

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‌CHAPTER 8

8 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and hara is a japanese name for the centre just below the navel, two inches below the navel... and becoming aware of this centre is going to help you tremendously, so the more you abide there, the better.

Whenever you have nothing to do, just sit silently and move inside and fall into the stomach – just two inches below the navel – and remain there. That will create a great centering of your life energies. And you have worked on that centre in your past life, that’s why I am giving you the name. It will immediately start functioning – there is no problem about it. You just have to look into it and it will start functioning... you will start feeling that the whole life moves around that centre.

It is from the hara that life begins and it is in the hara that life ends. All our body centres are far away – the hara is exactly in the centre: that is where we are balanced and rooted. So once one becomes aware of the hara, many things start happening.

For example, the more you remember the hara, the less thinking there will be: automatically thinking will become less and less because energy will not move to the head; it will go to the hara. The more you think of the hara, the more you concentrate there, the more you will find a discipline arising in you. That comes naturally... it has not to be forced. The more aware you are of the hara centre, the less you will become afraid of life and death, because that is the centre of life and death.

People are afraid of both: they are afraid of death – that is obvious – but they are afraid of life too. That is not so obvious but is as true as the first. And there is a natural logic in it: if you are afraid of death, how can you be unafraid of life? – because it is life that brings death. Death cannot come on its own; it comes through life – so if you are afraid of death, naturally you are afraid of life too. You may not be conscious of it but it is impossible not to be afraid of life, because life is moving slowly towards death. Death is the culmination of life and life is the beginning of death, so they are

so involved, intertwined, that the fear of one creates the fear of the other. People live in fear of death and people live in fear of life, so they never live at all. Once you become attuned to the hara centre you can live courageously. Courage arises out of it – less thinking, more silence, less uncontrolled moments, natural discipline, courage and a rootedness, groundedness.…

The past is the passage where many people are lost – they never come to the present. So from this moment don’t think of yourself as having a past, don’t think in terms of your biography. This name annihilates your biography.

That’s why in India it has been a old tradition that if you ask a sannyasin his old name, he will not tell you. He will say ‘That man is dead.’ If you ask him to what family he belongs, he will not say. He will say ‘That man is dead.’ If you ask him from what part of the country, from what town and village he comes, he will not say. He will say ‘The man who belonged to that part is no more.’ That is very significant.

If you don’t think about it, if you are not identified with it, by and by the past disappears. Then you don’t hold it – your grip becomes loose... and when you become loose about it and your grip is not hard, it escapes.

The past is not holding you; you are holding the past. The past is not clinging to you; you are clinging to the past. Once you are not clinging, the past simply evaporates... and beautiful is that state when the past is no more. Suddenly you are herenow with your total being, available, open, vulnerable. That’s the meaning of giving a new name – it is a very symbolic thing.

[The new sannyasin says he has done TM, Kriya yoga and Vipassana in the past. He liked Vipassana most but found it hard to maintain a continuity. Osho says that these eastern methods presuppose that one has no repressions – and modern man is the most repressive of any age. While meditating, on the surface you may feel peaceful, but underneath is continual turmoil which gathers more and more energy as it has no outlet.]

Before you pour nectar into your being, it has to be completely cleansed of poison, otherwise the poison will even destroy the nectar. And this is one of the tragedies of life: the higher can always be destroyed by the lower and the lower cannot be so easily destroyed by the higher. This is a tragic fact, but it is so.

If you throw a stone at a flower, the stone will remain intact, the flower is gone. The flower is higher, more delicate, more subtle... the stone is gross. So you create a flower of meditation and deep down is that rock: again and again the flower will be crushed by the rock and your efforts will be in vain.

So first do the camp, and in the camp go as totally into active meditations as possible. You are ready for something like Vipassana, but some cleansing has to be done so these ten days of catharsis will be very helpful. And then I will suggest a few groups; if you are here, you can do them.…

[A new sannyasin from America, says that she gets high meditating but now and then she slips back into drug-taking. Osho says that drug-taking and meditation are polar opposites though they may appear to be similar.]

The drug experience is a forced, phony experience, but because we don’t know the real, the phony seems to be right. If you have not seen the real, then even the phony is too much.

If you compare your life with an ordinary man who has never taken anything like LSD, marijuana, then you feel very high – if you compare it with an ordinary man. Because he has not known any moment, he has not even had a false glimpse; he lives such a mundane life. You have lived the same mundane life – then one day this drug creates a dream, gives you a euphoria, and you are tremendously happy.

But once meditation can give you an experience, then you will see that this experience was just a dream experience. It is as if you have been thirsty and drinking in a dream from a pool of water, a pure pool of water... but in a dream. By the morning you are awake and thirsty again – it has not helped. Of course it was so clear and so cool and it had looked, for that moment at least, as if you would never be thirsty again. But if you go on meddling sometimes with meditation and sometimes with drugs – the problem is that drugs can slowly slowly destroy your capacities to meditate. Otherwise there is nothing in it.…

If it is to be an ordinary straight life, then drugs are perfectly okay. But if you are really interested in meditation, then drugs are dangerous. The drug is not dangerous for the people who think it is dangerous.

The so-called common people think drugs are dangerous – it is not dangerous for them at all because they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to be destroyed! But if you are really interested in search and you want to grow, then drugs are dangerous.

Drugs are not dangerous for politicians – drugs are dangerous for the religious people because something delicate arises out of meditation. It is very delicate and it comes out of much effort. Just a small quantity of a drug and it is destroyed and you will have to start again from abc.

The drug experience is so cheap and the meditation experience is so costly, because you have to go through such effort. Then by and by the mind starts choosing the cheaper one. Mm? it is the path of least resistance, so the mind says ‘Why bother?’ The drug can give you something so easily, then why bother with vipassana – sitting and meditating and struggling hard? Why not the easier way?

The mind is always for the short-cut, and the short-cut is always false. As far as the spiritual growth is concerned there is no short-cut. You cannot cheat... there is no back door.

Each has to follow the arduous way. In fact the real beauty of the peak depends on how hard your struggle has been. When you struggle hard and you lose the track many times – many times even the peak disappears and you are again in the dark valley, again you struggle and again you fall and again you move – this whole effort creates that situation where when the real experience happens, you are in a tremendous bliss.

If you are suddenly dropped on that peak by some helicopter, there will be no joy, there will be no joy at all.

[A sannyasin who is leaving said he had caught a glimpse of his center here, and felt love flowing out of himself. Now he feels closed. In the West he will try for the first time to earn a living by playing music.]

Mm mm. Just remember one thing – that if you love people, then there is no fear.

.… just the experience will help. Before you start playing, bow down to the audience, be as respectful as possible, and just feel that these are beautiful human beings... then there is no problem. The problem arises because you think of them as your judges, as if they are going to judge you. They have come to enjoy – they are not judges.

There may be a few foolish people who sit there like judges, but that is their business; they will miss the whole point. That is not a problem for you. People have come there to enjoy. They are people just like you, with all the limitations that you have, with all the frailties that you have... they are people just like you. It doesn’t matter whether there are a few people or a few thousand – it doesn’t matter, because they are the same people... one or many makes no difference.

And each individual is listening to you directly. Just think: you are playing the guitar with a friend – then you are not nervous. The friend is your audience, you know that he is sympathetic and you are not afraid – he loves you, you love him.

Then there are ten thousand people: you feel nervous because you start thinking of there being ten thousand people together there. Nobody is there together – there are only ten thousand single individuals, and each individual is listening to you directly; he has nothing to do with the other. It is not ten thousand people one upon the other, otherwise they look too big and then you become scared.…

They are just one individual ten thousand times over, not one on top of each other.…

This time try what I am saying. Just bow down to the audience with tremendous respect, touch the earth just in front of them and then start playing...

And there are beautiful people – just keep it friendly and relax. For a few experiences you may feel a little nervous, with two, three minutes when you start becoming warmed up, you will forget. After a few experiences you will know that it works. When you know it works, it works!

The rational is not the problem, but the experiential. You just have to pass through a few experiences, that’s all. People are so beautiful... and nobody is there to harm you. They have come to enjoy their evening – why should they harm you and why should they destroy their evening? They want to be en rapport with you. If you are nervous you will create the barrier, if you are not nervous there is no barrier: you flow, they flow. One thing...

And the second thing: don’t think that you are a perfect musician or something – then fear comes, because if you fall from your perfection, then? Know that you are just a human being fooling around, that’s all! Why think of perfection? If you think of perfection there is trouble. Then even the most talented musician will become afraid. Once you accept your limitations, there is no problem; once you try to pretend that you are perfect, then the fear.

The fear is part of the ego; it is the shadow of the ego. You are afraid that they may think that you are not such a great musician as you think you are. So that is the thing to be dropped. The audience is not the question. You think you are a great musician; that is wrong. Just enjoy playing on the guitar. who knows that perfection is and who bothers about perfection? Enjoy playing, that’s enough. And if somebody wants to share your experience, you are available. And if they choose to come again, good; if they don’t, that too is good.

Once you accept your limitations, your defects, your mistakes, once you think that you are fallible, then there is no problem. But if you keep it in the mind that you are infallible, that you are going to be the best, then you are creating trouble for yourself. and the irony is that one who thinks he is the best never becomes the best, and one who simply forgets about all performances and simply enjoys, some day becomes the best.

Just go and have a few experiences of people’s beautiful presence, their participation, their enjoyment. Don’t think of yourself as a performer. You have invited a few friends and you are playing – you are enjoying playing and they are enjoying listening.

[He says: I would like to get them into it if I could.]

Then you are bound for trouble. If you want to do something to people and it doesn’t happen, there is trouble. Why should you want to get them into it? You just get into it, that’s enough – that’s all you can expect. If you want them to get into it, even you will not get into it because your mind is continuously thinking about whether they are getting into it or not. They have not got into it yet... and you will start perspiring.

You get into it! When they feel the energy of a musician or a poet or an orator – that he is into it, utterly into it – they start falling head-long. What can they do? – the pull is irresistible. When you see somebody disappearing into his work – a musician into his music, a painter into his painting, a singer into his song – when you see somebody disappearing into his work, what can you do not to get into it? You will have to get into it!

Never think that you have to manipulate them, that you would like them to get into it. If you are thinking in these terms then you are creating an enmity: you will drag them in and they will drag themselves out. Nobody wants to be dragged in. And they will start judging you because your effort is political, it has nothing to do with music. You want to create an impact, you want to overpower them.

Forget about all these things. Simply get lost! Lose your head in it – that is more than one can expect. And by the time you come out you will see that many have been in it... but forget about them! When you are playing just let yourself be drowned by your music and then a zero is created around the musician – a hole in which people start toppling down.

That happens, but if you want to manage it, it will never happen and you will be very much frustrated. Each time it is not successful you will lose more confidence; by and by you will see that you have lost all confidence. Just go into it... it is going to happen!

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