14

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‌CHAPTER 14

14 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and swantandra means freedom – bliss freedom. And they are both two aspects of the same phenomenon – on one side is bliss, on another side is freedom; they always come together. Attain to one and the other follows. So either become blissful, then you are free, or become free, then you are blissful.

And these are the only two approaches towards reality. Either start by being blissful from this very moment and freedom will follow, or become free and then there is no barrier for bliss to come.

And I give you the name ‘anand swantandra’ because my feeling is that your approach will be first bliss, then freedom. It will be very easy for you to be happy. Very few people are so fortunate to be able to be happy for no reason at all. You can be!

Something to say to me?

[He replies that he is feeling very emotional so he cannot say anything.]

I know, mm! That is better than asking anything – then you receive without asking. And it is better to receive without asking, because that is the way of a king – to receive without asking. To ask and then to get is the way of the beggar.

There is no need to ask: you will get it!

Ananda means bliss, blissfulness, and asanga means aloneness. But aloneness does not mean loneliness. Loneliness is a negative state – the other is being missed; then you are lonely. A great longing to be with people and no possibility; then you are lonely. When the other is not missed – when there is no longing to be with anybody, when just being yourself seems to be enough unto

itself... when you are tremendously happy alone – it is a positive state. In the dictionary both words mean the same, but in existence they don’t mean the same.

And once a man has known what aloneness is he can be in the crowd and he will be alone, because then he knows that aloneness is not something that he can lose. It is very fundamental – it is absolute. You can forget about it but you cannot lose it. Whatsoever you do, it is there. It is your very nature.

So these two words I give you: blissfulness and aloneness – and you have to learn how to be blissful alone.

[The new sannyasin asks: Can you suggest a practice for that?

In response to Osho’s query he says: I’m a therapist – a body therapist. I do Feldenkreis work and Gestalt work.]

That’s very good. So do a few groups hereSometimes it happens that to work as a leader is

one thing – to be a participant is totally different. And sometimes it is very good to change the role, otherwise one gets fixed.

When you are a leader you function from a different layer of your mind – the layer of knowledge, technique, information. When you are a participant you function from a totally different layer: the layer of ignorance, the layer of innocence. And one can become too much attached to one layer. So it happens many times that you may be helpful to others and you may not be helpful to yourself. Your advice may be of tremendous significance to somebody else who is in trouble, but if you yourself are in the same trouble, your advice may not work at all.

It is very easy to help others – to help oneself is very difficult, because there is no space and one is so much involved.

This is my feeling – that people who have been working at helping people become very much attuned as far as the science of therapy is concerned, but become more and more alienated from their own being.

Psychotherapists commit suicide more than any other profession; the number is double. Psychiatrists go mad more than any other profession – again the number is double – and these are the people who may have helped many.

I don’t suspect their knowledge at all, but what goes wrong?

By and by they become just that layer of knowledge and they lose contact with their being; and knowing and being are two very very different centres. So here, completely forget for a few days whatsoever you know – put it aside. It is a great experience to rest from knowledge.

People go to rest from work – they should go to rest from knowledge, because work is not a problem; knowledge is a problem. Sometimes one should forget whatsoever one knows and start moving as if one is an ignorant person. Then you will come to many spaces within yourself which you have

never come across. Use your knowledge again and you will be very much enriched. This balance is of tremendous value.

So do one or two groups here and then lead one group here. I would like you to function from both your centres. Function as a child – you don’t know anything – and function as a mature person who knows something. And if one can be balanced between knowledge and innocence, then one is balanced.

It is very difficult to bring this balance because this is very contradictory – when we know, we think we know... and that creates trouble.

And I can see you have tremendous possibility. Just put the knowledge aside and you will start moving. There is nothing like knowledge as far as barriers are concerned... nothing like knowledge.

And the biblical story is perfectly true – adam is turned out of the garden of god because he had eaten from the tree of knowledge. And man cannot enter god again unless he eats from the tree of ignorance.

That’s the whole teaching of jesus and the whole teaching of Lao Tzu: be ignorant and innocent... be children again.

[Osho suggested groups and added... ]

In these two groups forget what you know, and in the group that you are going to lead, use whatsoever you know but forget yourself ! Just the opposite: in the groups where you will be a participant, remember yourself, forget your knowledge; in the group that you lead, remember your knowledge, forget yourself. And you will come to new spaces.…

Doing a group here as a participant is a totally different experience to anywhere else in the world because all are sannyasins, part of my family – devoted, dedicated, joined together in a subtle love. They are not strangers.

When twenty strangers are working in a group as participants, the group is moving in twenty directions and the whole work of the leader is more or less to put it together, to bring it together – it is a crowd. Here the group is not a crowd, not a group even – it is a family unit. So ninety percent of the energy of the leader is saved. There is no conflict – they are not moving in different directions.

So it is qualitatively different. As a participant it is different... as a leader also it is different, and you have to experience both. Then I will give you some meditation to work out... but wait. First finish the camp and after the camp continue sufi dancing. In the night join the music group. Dance, sing, or if you want. to play something, you play.

The whole point is: relax in me as much as you can. We are not really working here – we are playing, and all great things happen only when you are in a playful mood. The playful mood is the prayerful mood.…

[A sannyasin describes an experience of meditating by a dead body which had been washed up on the beach. She felt Osho’s presence very strongly at the time.]

Very good... the experience has been really meaningful. Never avoid death – it has to be encountered. Anything that comes on the way has to be encountered in deep love and in deep respect. Because all is divine – life is divine, so is death. Once the fear of death disappears there is no fear left.

All fear deep down is the fear of death. If one can accept the naturalness of death, the inevitableness of death, the great role that death plays in lifeLife cannot exist without death – so death is not

against but is complementary. Life is impossible without death, so death makes life possible.

If life is the figure then death is the field. If life is the painting, then death is the canvas. As the painting will not be possible without the canvas, so life will not be possible without death. One has to be deeply respectful, because your death has made your life possible. If life is so beautiful, one has to be grateful to death.

So whatsoever comes on the wayNow, you were not seeking for it – I am not saying to seek for

it, because that can become a sort of obsession; I am not saying seek for it. You were walking on the beach and it was just a coincidence – a dead body had been brought by the ocean to the shore.

You were not looking for it.… Because a person can become death-obsessed. That is not good, that is pathological. One should not be obsessed either by life or by death – all obsessions are pathological – but whatsoever comes, one has to look into it, one has to be capable of seeing the fact of it.

Good, that you gathered courage, that you sat by the dead body, that you could sing and you forgot all fearThat’s tremendously meaningful.

This is what I mean by natural meditation whatsoever life brings, one starts meditating on it – sometimes it is love, sometimes it is hate, sometimes it is death. Whatsoever life brings there is acceptance. One is not avoiding, one is not escaping anywhere... because there is no escape. Where can you escape ? Wherever you go death will find you, so what is the point?

And this is how by and by one starts learning – and learning liberates! You have taken a great step in understanding life, because you could sing you could accept death. Remember it! Mm? there will be many more possibilities.

Whatsoever face the possibility takes, that is not the point, but whatsoever comes on the way, never run away from it. Cowards never come to truth. A great courage is needed to face. Sometimes it is very painful, but so what? What is wrong in that? Let it be painful. Pain also cleanses, purifies.

Pain is a fire, and only through the fire does gold come to its real shininess – the gold becomes pureGood.

[A visitor, who had come to darshan some days ago (see ‘The Buddha Disease’, January 13th), said that she had been haunted by strange dreams and fantasies for the past year. Osho said she should first become a sannyasin – which she later did – and that secondly she should find a lover, because the problem was caused by pent-up sexual energy that needed releaseNow she reports that she

feels like killing herself, and she has not found a lover.]

Yes, I remember. And do you remember what I told you? Find a lover!...

That is the reason for your headache! And if you say it is not possible then you close the door. Why is it not possible? Millions and millions of people are there – the world was never so populated as it is now and you say that it is not possible? Mm? There is no scarcity of human beings. (laughter)

But the reason is somewhere within you. My feeling is that you don’t want to go into any love relationship – it is not that you cannot find a lover. You are a beautiful person – why can’t you find a lover? If you don’t do anything, simply sit; a lover will come! But I think you are closing yourself against love.

If you close yourself against love the whole energy has no way to move, has nowhere to go. That energy is hurting you; that energy is accumulating in the head, is knocking in the head. It has a message – it is saying to you to release it! It is like a kettle: you go on heating the tea kettle, then a point comes when so much vapour has accumulated in it that if you don’t remove it, it will burst! That’s what is happening to you!

You are perfectly healthy. You are creating too much sex energy and it is not moving anywhere. I know there is a way to move it beyond sex, but the way goes through sex... and somehow you are afraid of that. If you are afraid of it, nobody else is responsible.

You are responsible for this whole trouble that you are going through – and then you are ready to kill yourself. Now that too has to be understood: sex is life energy and whenever one is against sex one becomes suicidal, because against sex there is only death and nothing else. If you don’t love, the idea to kill yourself is bound to come – for what should one live?

I am not saying that sex is all, there are higher possibilities, but if you don’t enter the first door, then how will you enter the second and the third? And there are doors upon doors.

You will be totally relaxed... you need good orgasmic experiences. So if you are really interested in getting rid of this problem – that your head is bursting – then rather than killing yourself, better find a lover. Try it!

Why are you reluctant about it? Tell me.

[She replied that all she was doing was looking for men.]

Then you must have some very absurd idea of a lover. A perfect lover? then you will not find! (laughter) That is almost as if you are deciding not to find.

Have you heard a story? A man was in search of a perfect woman and he could not find, because

how can you find... where can you find a perfect woman? He tried and tried and tried, and then he became very old – ninety years. Then somebody asked, ‘Are you still searching?’ He said, ‘Still searching. I have moved around the world, but I couldn’t find a perfect woman.’

The man insisted, ‘But ninety years’ search is a long search.really you say you never found?’

He said, ‘Once it happened – I found a perfect woman but she was in search of a perfect man!’ (laughter)

So drop that idea. Human beings – imperfect as they are – are beautiful. In fact it will be very difficult to live with a perfect man – his company will be very boring. Imperfect people are very good, mm? They have limitations, they have flaws, they commit mistakes – and that’s how life becomes richer.

A perfect man will be just like a man who knows only one note and goes on playing the same note on any instrument again and again and again. The perfect man is like that – monotonous ! He will drive you crazy!

An imperfect man has all the notes, all the colours of the rainbow. Mm? he is more colourful. Just forget about the perfect. And if you cannot find, come back. Then I am ready – I will keep somebody spare for you! (much laughter)

Anand means bliss, margo means the way – the way to bliss. You have to become the way to bliss... and you can become!

Unless you become blissful you will never be satisfied by small things. There are people who become satisfied with small things, and there are people who cannot be satisfied unless something of the ultimate happens.

The second type of people are the religious people. Their longing is for the ultimate – nothing less than that will ever satisfy them. They have a divine discontent. Even if they have the whole world they will not be satisfied. They need only god, the ultimate, the absolute, the eternal. The temporal is okay – they can play with it, but they can never be satisfied. And they know even while they are playing with it that they don’t belong to it, that it doesn’t belong to them. That’s why I said not to wait, because you have already waited too long.

All waiting is futile. Waiting can become a habit, and once waiting becomes a habit it becomes very difficult to get out of it. Every thought creates a deep channel in the mind. For example, if you wait... you wait... you wait, your mind starts flowing in the channel of waiting. Then even if you arrive you will not enjoy – you will wait.

Just the other night I was reading a book of a mathematician – a great mathematician. He went to visit a friend in some building and he went to the elevator man and said, ‘Take me to the tenth floor.’ The elevator man said, ‘In this building there is no tenth floor; we have only nine floors.’

So the mathematician brooded a moment and he said, ‘Okay. Then take me to the fifth twice.’ (laughter) The questiOn is solved! The mind continuously working in terms of mathematicsIt

happens.

Don’t wait – that’s why I insisted that you don’t wait. It is not only for sannyas – I would like you to break the habit of waiting. You have waited enough.you have already waited more than was

needed. Now start living! And there is only one way to live and that is to start now! There is no tomorrow, the only time is now. All tomorrows are imaginary. The past is memory, the future is imagination. Only this moment is true and only this moment is the door to the divine.

So this is not only about sannyas that I have said ‘No, don’t wait’. This is a message, a key message to you, to stop waiting, to break out of this habit of waiting, and immediately you will see a new life happening to you.

Otherwise one can go on waiting, postponing, preparing. There are people who go on preparing for the trip they are going on. They consult maps and they consult timetables and guidebooks and they never go anywhere – they just go on.…

There is an old tibetan storyA man was a great seeker of knowledge and he accumulated all the

books that were possible. He went to China, he came to India, he went to Afghanistan. Far and wide he travelled, and he collected all sorts of books. It was very difficult in those old days but he made a big library. He had no time to read, he was always travelling. He was always thinking, ‘Next year I will stop – now I have enough books, and I have to read them.’ Then he started becoming afraid also, because life was running out of the hands and he had accumulated such a big library – when was he going to read it?

He became nervous and to avoid that nervousness he started moving even faster and even to faraway lands to accumulate more. When he came back home after his last trip, his physician said, ‘Now you cannot live more than seven days.’

And he said, ‘But this is unfair! I have accumulated all this big library – nearly fifty thousand books! In seven days what am I going to do? Do something!’

Somebody suggested, ‘Find many scholars – they should read the books and they will summarise. Then you can go through the summary.’ But only seven days were left, so the whole country was searched and all sorts of scholars were brought. They started reading and summarising – then too it was difficult.

On the seventh day the one thousand scholars came and they had all summarised it; they brought a big file.

He said, ‘But there is no time to read the file – summarise the file!’ And by the evening, when they had summarised the file, the man was dead!

This is how things happen.… No more waiting. By becoming a sannyasin one is committed to the here and now. There is no other commitment with my sannyas. With my sannyas the only commitment is to life, to existence, to the present, to this moment.…

[A sannyasin says she is in miseryabout whether to be in Poona or running a centre in the West.

She says she doesn’t want to miss]

Nothing to worry about – you will not be missing. Nobody who is in love with me is going to miss. You can rest at ease.

And whether you ask or not, you will be coming here soon. My feeling is that you should work one year more in London – just one year and then you be here – so the work takes roots there; there is nobody else to do the work. So for one year put yourself totally in it so that the centre starts running

well, somebody starts taking care of it. Bear in mind that you have to leave after one year, so do whatsoever you can do there and prepare people who can run it. Mm? then after one year you come.

You are to end up here.…

It is not a question of your readiness – it is a question of my work there, so I have to send you for one year more. Work for exactly one year and come back. And you are not going to miss; don’t be worried.

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