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‌CHAPTER 20

20 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, godly, anila means the breeze – divine breeze. And meditate on the phenomenon of the breeze. There are a few things to be understood about it: there is no way to manipulate it – it comes when it comes. Suddenly it is there, suddenly it is gone.

Exactly in the same way god comes – suddenly he is there, and suddenly he is gone. One has to be tremendously alert, only then is there a meeting with the divine. Otherwise he comes again and again but you are asleep, and by the time you are awake he has gone. It is just like a breeze.

And it is total freedom – god is freedom. Just as the wind is free to move in any direction, in any dimension – there is no goal for it, there is no purpose in it; it is sheer delight – god is not going somewhere, existence is not moving somewhere. It has no goal and no purpose.

A life also becomes divine when you forget about goals and purposes... when you also become like a breeze, like the wind – moving, certainly, but not moving to some addressAs if one has gone

for a morning walk – walking, moving, but not going somewhere.

Then life is more like play than work. It is more pleasure, more leisure, more relaxation and certainly more joy. Once the mind becomes goal-oriented, there is tension. And once you are striving to attain something, you are bound to be frustrated.

Frustration is a by-product of the goal-oriented mind. The universe is so vast and it is not going anywhere, and a tiny individual tries to reach somewhere – the whole effort is doomed to fail. It is as if the whole ocean is not going anywhere and a single wave is trying to reach somewhere. That is nonsense! How can it go against the whole?

And that which does not exist for the whole – how can it exist for the individual? That which doesn’t exist for the whole, cannot exist for the part. To understand this is surrender. Then the part no more

claims to be the whole, is no more worried, no more anxious to do something, to perform something, to be something, to leave a mark on the sands of time. There is no problem – then one simply is. If the existence again allows us, we will be here tomorrow – if not, good!

So whatsoever happens is basically welcomed, because nothing goes against you. If you have a goal, everything seems to be conspiring against you and everything seems to be fighting with you. You have to be constantly on guard. That very constant tension is anxiety, so drop all anxiety.

There is nothing to be done – everything is as it should be. Whatsoever is, is, and whatsoever ain’t, ain’t. So don’t hanker for that which is not and don’t reject that which is. Accept that which is and forget all about that which is not, and then there is tremendous contentment; then there is beatitude. That’s the message in your name.

So become a breeze, going nowhere... just playing around the trees, delighting.…

[A sannyasin leaving for the west says: I’ve been feeling quite crazy lately – more crazy than when I came]

That’s good... that’s how it should be, mm? Because whatsoever is known as sanity is not sanity at all, and a really sane person will start feeling crazy, because the so-called sanity of the society is just a hypocrisy – it is a pretension. Everybody is pretending – things are not like that.

If you look inside the people, you will just find mad people. But on the face. on the surface. they manage, they maintain. Somehow they go on pulling themselves together – but it is somehow! And in small matters sometimes their insanity pours out.

Just a small thing, somebody has insulted or said something, and the person goes mad. Just a moment before he was perfectly sane and in a single moment all sanity is gone: he is ready to kill or be killed. So what type of sanity is this? It is just so-so.

Deep inside, the volcano, and on the surface is peace. So when you start meditating, that volcano comes closer to the surface. That’s the whole effort: to bring the unconscious closer to the conscious so you become more aware of your craziness. Not that you become more crazy – you simply become more aware of things that have always been there but at which you were never looking. You were never courageous enough to look at them. They were there but you were always putting them behind you, escaping from them, avoiding them.

Now you have become a little more courageous – you allowed it. You want to be acquainted with yourself. Anybody who wants to move towards self-knowledge has to go through this period when he starts feeling that he is becoming more crazy. Not that he is, he is becoming more aware. And when you are more aware of your craziness, there is less possibility of your being crazy; because awareness is the only safeguard, there is no other safeguard.

But for a time being, there will be a little shaky state. Don’t repress it again. You have taken the first step – that you have become a little more alert about your inner turmoil, madness. The second step is to become so fully alert about it that not even a nook in the comer is left in darkness.

It is painful, sometimes very painful, almost death-like, because it is very against the ego, very shattering to the self-image. But that is the price the growing person has to pay for growth. The day you have become completely alert – whatsoever craziness is there, you have known it from every nook and corner, from every side, all the aspects of it: apparent, hidden, conscious, unconscious – when you have become perfectly alert about it, suddenly you will be surprised; it has evaporated. It evaporates the same moment that you become totally aware, because to be totally aware is to be totally sane.

It is almost as if the room is dark and you bring light in and the darkness is not there. The darkness was there because the light was not there. The darkness was just an absence of the light. Madness is nothing but absence of awareness.

So the path will be a little arduous, but go into it. Tremendous is the benefit. Whenever you feel it is too much, just close your room, be crazy! There is no need to vomit your craziness onto other people’s clothes – no! That is meaningless and that is unnecessarily creating complexities.

Whenever you feel that the craziness is there, close your room, sit in the middle of the room, and be crazy! Make faces, keep a big mirror, sometimes look in the mirror at what you are doing – look at your faces. This is you! There is no point in hiding it! This is what the process of self-knowledge is.

Then by and by all these crazy tensions will start disappearing. One day suddenly you are at home – all tensions gone. Then is real sanity.

The average man, the so-called normal man of the psychologist, is not normal at all. Otherwise from where come the neurotics and the psychotics and from where come the mad people? From these normal people! And the difference between the normal and the neurotic is just of degree, so it is not of any quality – only of quantity. Maybe you are in the queue a little farther away, but you will be coming sooner or later!

Any accidental thing and you may explode. A sane person is one for whom the possibility of insanity has disappeared. Now no situation can create insanity in him – he has transcended all situational, accidental factors. You can throw him into hell and he will not become insane.

There is a beautiful story.… A priest had said in his sermon, ‘Those who believe in god go to heaven, and those who don’t believe in god go to hell’ And then in the same sermon he had said again, ‘Those who are good, virtuous, go to heaven – and those who are bad and sinners, vicious, go to hell.’

A man stood and he said, ‘You have created a puzzle for me. You say that those who believe in god and those who are good, they go to heaven – and those who don’t believe in god and are bad go to hell. Now the problem arises: there may be a person who does not believe in god and is good! There may be a person who believes in god and is bad, so what about these people?’

The priest was at a loss – must have been a sincere man, otherwise he could have found some way to get out of the trouble. But he was really sincere. He said, ‘I will have to ponder over it – I never thought about it. The question has never occurred to me that way. So please give me seven days. Next sunday, if I have found the answer, I will tell you.’

For seven days he could not sleep. He pondered and pondered, and the problem was such.Yes, a

man can be good, very good, and may not believe in god – because that is not a condition. Socrates was a good man – never believed in any god. Buddha was a good man – nobody can say that he was not a good man; he never believed in any god. What about buddha, what about socrates, what about mahavira, what about patanjali? These people never believed in any god – where are they?

And the problem is complex, because if he says that they have also entered heaven, then the question naturally arises, ‘Then what is the point of believing in god?’ And if people who believed in god... For example, Adolf Hitler believed in god, Genghis Khan believed in god.used to do all five

namas, five prayers, every day; never missed a single nama! The man was really a believer but not good at all. So where is he – heaven or hell? Where?

For seven days he pondered and pondered and couldn’t sleep and could not come to any conclusion. He became more and more puzzled. The sunday came. He came early to the church to pray to Jesus, saying, ‘Help me, because now those people will be coming and I have to answer,’ and while praying he fell asleep – because he had not slept the whole night.

In his sleep he saw a dream that he was in a train and the train was reaching heaven. He became very happy; he said, ‘Good, so it is better that I should have a look.’

But he could not believe his eyes! Heaven was very dull, dusty, no thrill, no joy, no song, no music – almost dead like a cemetery. He asked people, ‘Where is Socrates, where is Buddha? Are they here?’ And the people said, ‘We have never heard about them.’

So he rushed back to the station, he enquired, and there was a train going to hell – so he purchased a ticket and he went to hell. Again he could not believe his eyes. Hell was so beautiful – it was all clean, fresh, flowers all over and fragrance, and it was so alive that he thought, ‘There must be some mistake. Have they put up wrong boards? Or what is the matter? This looks like heaven.’ He went down and he asked a man on the road, ‘Do you know Buddha, do you know Socrates?’ He said, ‘Yes, we know them. Since they came this place has become heaven! It used to be hell, but since they came’

Then he awoke, and he simply related the dream to the audience. He said, ’I don’t know the answer, but this is the dream. And this is my conclusion – that wherever a good man is, there is heaven. So it is not a question of whether Buddha goes to heaven – wherever he goes, there is heaven. It is not a question of whether Nagasai and Genghis Khan go to hell. Wherever they goThey may bribe

and make arrangements to get into heaven, but then heaven turns into hell.’

A man is really sane when his presence can change hell into heaven – that’s my definition of a sane man. He has such tremendous energy, such transforming energy, such presence, such light, that wherever he is, light falls all around. Things start changing in that light. He showers a new light.

So to me sanity and insanity are not just psychological terms – a sane man is a perfectly healthy man, a whole man, whose wounds have all healed... who has no wound. You cannot hurt him – there is no way to hurt him.

Ordinarily the persons who are thought to be normally healthy, normally sane, are not; they are just for the name’s sake. Maybe they are capable of maintaining a face, a facade, but prick them a little scratch them a little and all sanity goes within a second.

So don’t be worried about this craziness – this is good; this is a good symptom. Go into it deeply, fully alert. Remain available to all that is within you. Never escape and never repress and sooner or later you will come upon that space where all craziness disappears in a single moment.

That’s what is known in Japan as satori. In a single sudden moment, when all craziness disappears, that is satori. The man has become sane – he has come home. He has attained to the original face.

So don’t be worried!

[A sannyasin said she helped her boyfriend, a therapist, in one of his groups, and has felt very uncentred since then, especially relating to people socially. The boyfriend comments on her dilemma whether to work through problems or just drop them. Osho checks her energy.]

No, my feeling is that helping the group was not good for her. She was not yet centred enough to help a group. A certain centering is needed before somebody can help a group. Mm? because so much energy is released, and if you are very vulnerable you absorb it. She has absorbed the energy, the negative energy, and she has become shaky because of it. She was not yet protected by her own grounding – that is the only protection.

If you are grounded well you can move in many situations – negative, positive. And a group situation is a very explosive situation – so many people exploding, bringing all negativities, their anger, their madness, their craziness. She was very soft – she soaked it all up.

It is not really her problem; she has taken others’ problems into her being. So it is not a question of assimilation. The question of assimilation arises only when the problem is yours – then you have to assimilate it, and you have to go through it. But the problem is borrowed. So it has to be dropped; it has not to be assimilated.

... it is not her own problem. What happens is that ordinarily a person has to face his own problem, but a group situation is a special situation. Ordinarily people don’t go into a group to help. It is almost like you have been put in a madhouse for a few days and you were not mad. Those crazy people all around are bound to drive you crazy.

But that is not really your problem – you are simply sensitive enough to catch... and those vibrations you can catch. You can catch them because you are not centred, so your problem is that you are not centred, that’s all.

She was porous enough, she functioned like a sponge... and women are like that. Whenever you want to take a woman as an assistant, be very careful, because they are receptive. They are very helpful – a man cannot be that helpful. Their energy brings a softness to the group, their presence brings a coolness to the group, love and warmth – that’s right – but all the time they are absorbing, and sometimes it can happen that they borrow problems. This is a borrowed problem.

(to the woman) You are not to go through it, it can be just dropped. There is no problem in it. Mm? you just do one thing...(Osho passes her a handkerchief)

Tonight you keep it on your heart and go to sleep, and forget about it; leave it wherever it is. In the morning find it again and burn it, and with that burning you will become normal again – as you were before you went to these groups.

And before you want to help again, grow a little more centred, mm? and ask me, otherwise don’t. Help satprem, personally take care of him – he will need much. He will be working hard and he has to work and many people can be helped through him. Help him but not the groups! Mm? Just take care of him.

So the first thing is that it will disappear tomorrow morning... and you have nothing to do about it, because it has nothing to do with you. You have simply taken it from others. That’s why you are feeling weak, because your own energy is obstructed by these borrowed things.

That’s why when you come close to people you become more closed – you have become afraid of people because of these groups. Here the whole ashram is an on-going group, so whenever you go too close to people you will be reminded again and again of the group.

... First get finished with it, and then continue sufi dancing and in the night join the music group. These two things you do and after three weeks see me.

Everything will be okay – nothing to be worried about?

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