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‌CHAPTER 21

21 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, and vimarsho means reflection. It is a special step in prayer. In the western languages, the closest term that can come to it is contemplation, but that too is not exactly the translation – just very close to it.

Reality can only be known when one is a mirror. When you think about it, you go astray. The very thinking functions as a screen. So ‘vimarsho’ is a state of no-thinking, but not a state of sleep. Ordinarily we come to a state of no-thinking only when we fall asleep... even then the dream continues. Only sometimes in the night the dream also stops – but that is not ‘vimarsho’. Thinking has stopped but consciousness has also disappeared.

Two things are there: consciousness and thinking. Both disappear, then it is sleep. Both continue, then it is thinking. Consciousness disappears and only thinking continues, then it is neurosis. Thinking disappears and only consciousness remains, then it is vimarsho. It is the door to reality.

The mind should function like a mirror. Something passes, it is reflected; when it is gone, it is gone. The mirror does not carry, for a single moment, any past image. You come before the mirror, you are reflected; you are gone, the reflection gone. Not even for a single moment is there a hangover – that’s the beauty of the mirror.

Once one becomes attuned to this state, the past hangs not. Then you simply go on moving with time. Each moment you slip out of the past – no trace is left behind and you never look back. There is no hangover – then there is clarity.

‘Vimarsho’ is one of the most beautiful terms.…

Christian mystics have thought about it, naturally, because they have been contemplating for two thousand years. They have three terms: the first they call ‘lectio’ – ‘lectio’ means thinking. The

second they call ‘meditatio’ – that means thinking in a certain direction; the thinking is to become more and more concentrated.

Ordinarily thinking goes on in every direction, goes on spreading everywhere: you think of one thing, and then immediately another thing pops up. One thing leads to another, just by association. You think about your friend, and suddenly you start thinking about a dog, because the friend has a dog, and then you remember your own dog, and then other things. Then you move into your childhood: some dog was there and barking and you had become very much afraid – so one goes on jumping.

When thinking is just at random it is ‘lectio’. When it is very concentrated, moving in a direction, has a particular address, then they call it ‘meditatio’. And when even that direction disappears and there is only awareness, then it is ‘contemplatio’; that is contemplation, that is ‘vimarsho’.

So keep it in mind and sometimes try it. Just sitting looking at the sky, become a mirror. Looking at a child playing, become a mirror: don’t think about it – just see! Hearing the sound of the night, just listen. Eating, just taste... touching, just touch... walking, just walk. Let whatsoever is happening be mirrored, with no thinking, with no judgement – of whether it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

When there is no judgement and no thinking, by and by the stirring of the mind settles and suddenly there is clarity. In those moments of clarity god is very close. And once you start feeling the divine around you, you are really becoming alive. Before it you were simply existing.

When existence becomes meaningful, then it is life. Then there is a poetry to it, a significance to it. You are not just there – something is happening of tremendous import. You are not just accidental – the existence needs you as much as you need existence.

[The new sannyasin says she is bored with the bio-energetics course recommended by Osho.]

But just be really bored – don’t avoid it. This is how the mind functions: if you can touch to the very bottom of boredom, from there you will spring to the other extreme.

... just don’t try to escape. Just do whatsoever you can do. Boredom is there, so boredom is there. If you are thrown in hell, what will you do? There will be no possibility to escape. So it is better to practise! (laughter)

Anand means bliss, and aradhan means prayer – let bliss be your prayer! Whenever you feel blissful, take it as being your offering to god. There is nothing else that we can offer, and the best way to pray is to be in a state of blissfulness – because that is the only way we can show out gratitude to god. If we can dance happily, it is a prayer; if we can sing happily, it is a prayer; if we can love happily, it is a prayer. All the moments of happiness should be offered to god.

Remember, if we suffer it is because of ‘we’, and if we are happy, it is because of god. If something goes wrong, then we must have interfered with the life process. If everything flows together, that means we are not interfering. Happiness is a natural state – unhappiness is one’s creation.

So whenever you are natural you are in tune with god, you are offered to god. Whenever you are unhappy, you are far away.

So prayer is not any ritual that you have to do in the church or in the temple. It is not a ritual at all – it is a tremendous understanding that whenever you are really in tune with life, there arises a happiness in you. And that fragrance of happiness is all that we can offer to god. What else can we offer to god – we don’t have anything else!...

So remember it and become more and more happy. And it is not a question of doing much about it. It is just a decision – if one wants to be happy there is no way to be made unhappy; if one decides to be unhappy, there is no way one can be made happy. And it is absolutely your decision to be this way or that – it is just an attitude.

In the same situation you can find one man happy and one man unhappy – and the situation is the same! There are people who are never happy. They have learned ways of being miserable and they cling to those ways. And there are people who are always happy – they have learned another way – and they are wise people.

So don’t seek happiness – live it! It is not something in the future that is going to happen some day, it can happen right now, this very moment. And make it a point that for at least a few moments every day one has to make an offering to god, so in those few moments one should be tremendously happy.

Whenever you feel very very happy, just bow down your head in deep prayer – offer your happiness to god. And you will find more is coming. The more you offer, the more is coming. The more you bow down, the more your heart becomes fuller and fuller every day.

[A sannyasin says: I feel I have too much energy coming up. I want to dance all day, all night, and then when I get tired there’s more energy coming and I can’t find time to feed myself.

Osho checks her energy.]

Mm, it is perfectly good. Just remember two things.

- One is, dancing is very good but don’t do it too much. You may feel more energy coming, more energy coming, but don’t do it too much, otherwise in the long run you will feel tired. It is coming, it is flowing, but one should not go to the extreme.

It is good that it has happened. Now, dance, sing, enjoy it, but at the same time absorb it also. The whole energy has not to be thrown out. Half of it at least, has to be absorbed – that will give you integration; that will make you more centred. So let it be fifty-fifty.

Half of it can be used – that you can spend. It is beautiful, but half of it has just to be retained. It will be difficult sometimes to retain it, but that has to be learned now, mm? so you become a reservoir of energy. And when you feel more energy and you become capable of retaining it, you will feel tremendously strong – humble and strong, meek and strong, nobody and yet strong – and you will always feel full.

So dance, sing.But it happens ordinarily, whenever this comes to anybody, one wants to spend it.

And it is so beautiful to spend it, but then you will not be preserving any.

And in the long run after two, three months, you will feel tremendously tired. Mm? then the battery is run down. For two, three months you will not feel any effect, so from the very beginning it is better to be alert.

These are the moments when the master is needed, otherwise the natural tendency is to enjoy it while it is coming. When you enjoy it, more comes, when you spend it, more comes, so what is the problem? But half of it has to be retained.

It is almost like a businessman: he earns something and half of it he can spend in luxuries – it is a luxury to sing and dance – but half of it at least, he goes on accumulating.

So be very methodical about it, be business-like about it. And once you have known how to preserve it, you will enjoy the preservation more than the expenditure – because it will give you such a fulfillment, such a deep overflowing, that not even a single space is empty, nothing is needed, one is perfectly at home. So, very good! Something of great blessing is happening.

But now these two things: half of it has to be Preserved and half of it has to be used! Remember, don’t fall a victim of another extreme – that nothing has to be used – otherwise the flow will stop. The flow continues only if you spend. It is almost like a well: you draw water, new water is flowing, but if you don’t draw water at all, new water will not flow in. By and by the springs will dry, mud will accumulate in the springs and the water that is there will become dormant, stagnant, dead – it will lose the quality of life.

So half of it has to be used so the flow continues. But if you use too much the well will become muddy, then the water will not be usable. So don’t move in any extreme – remain exactly in the middle.

But good... I am happy!

[A sannyasin says: I feel that some part of my life-energy maybe has gone. I feel very empty in this area down here (indicating below the navel) – sexually exhausted, although I did not have any sexual intercourse or anything like that for the last four weeks or more.

Osho checks his energy.]

That will do, mm? Mm! It is empty. Sometimes it happens... it happens out of conflict. Your sexual energy was in conflict about whether to be with this person or to be with that, to love this woman or to love that woman. When there is too much confusion, conflict, one comes to this deadlock; it is a deadlock.

... It is as if you are not decisive about whether to force the accelerator of the car and gain speed, or to stop the car by forcing the brake – and you go on doing both. You force the brake and the accelerator simultaneously. Then there is a deadlock in the whole mechanism of the car, because you are asking of it two contradictory things simultaneously. Exactly that has happened to your sexual energy.

It is very dangerous to be always in a contradiction because then the life-energy goes in two directions, opposite to each other, and they cancel each other. With fifty percent going to the north

and fifty percent going to the south, you will never go anywhere – because both will cancel each other and you will become static. Wherever you are standing – you will become rooted there.

Mm? that’s why the thrill has also gone. But nothing to be worried about. I think you can do one or two groups while you are here, mm? and the deadlock will disappear. But next time you have to become a little more mature.

Your life is at a point where it will be good if you can settle with a woman. It will be very helpful for your energy and for your spiritual growth, because if sexual energy is in a deadlock all growth will stop because all growth needs sexual energy for it. So if the sexual energy is flowing, is mobile, spiritual growth is easy. Otherwise it becomes very very difficult.

So it is good to stay with one woman. If sometimes you want to drop out of a relationship, then get out of it one hundred percent; don’t hesitate! But this is bad – riding on two horses is bad; it is dangerous.

My feeling is that if you can stay with dhanya it will be helpful to you and to her too. She loves you immensely and you also love her – just sometimes your mind becomes interested in sensational relationships so you go astray. Those astray relationships are not going to help you, they will disturb.

A sexual relationship is not only a sexual relationship. It is far more than just being sexual, your whole personality will be affected by it. So if you can just settle with [your girlfriend] for a few months and forget that there is any other woman in the world, and do a few groups – it will take a few days – the energy will be coming, and this time it will be of a totally different quality.

If the whole energy can flow in one direction, you will feel very very strong and very full.

[A sannyasin says he is in a bad space because he has been told he has cancer, and his mother is flying out to see him. In primal group a fear came up from the age of three, which he realised was associated with his mother, though he was not really afraid of her.]

No, it is not a question of the mother – you are afraid of something within you and the presence of the mother may provoke it; that’s the fear. Nobody is afraid of the mother or the father or anybody from the outside. Fear is always of the inside, but the presence of the mother may provoke something inside, that’s why you are afraid.

My feeling is that it is good to come to know that thing inside you. The primal has not been complete – something is still lingering. Otherwise you would have been happy that the mother is coming... that now the account can be closed. Something has remained lingering like a wound.

And it is good that the mother is coming, so whatsoever has not been done by the primal, the mother will do (with a chuckle). Don’t be worried – let her come. And I Will take care – things will go well. Something deep inside your unconscious wants to come upand that will come immediately when

the mother is here.

You will be able to go back further. You could not go beyond the age of three; now you will be able to go farther back. So do only one thing while your mother is here.…

Every night before you go to sleep, for half an hour just think of your childhood. Go back as far back as you can go – three years, two and a half, two – and by and by you will start getting closer to your birth day. Your mother’s presence is going to help it. So feel thankful that she is coming... feel grateful that she has come in the right moment.

The outcome is going to be very good. Once your primal is complete and you have reached to the time when you were coming out of the womb, all your hiding will disappear and your continuous phobia – that you don’t want to expose yourself to people, that you want to hide, that you don’t like yourself, your bad spaces of which you don’t want anybody to become aware – will all disappear.

Just wait.

[The sannyasin adds: I have booked for the vipassana because I felt so uncentred by all this.]

No, it is not good to do vipassana right now. When she is here, take care of her, mm? Vipassana you have to cancel. You can do it later on when she is gone. This is a bigger vipassana – to be with your mother! Feel grateful to her.

And if you want to freak out, go into the bathroom and freak out, but don’t say anything to her – you are not to hurt her at all. Just take care of her – this is a meditation. Be respectful, take care of her. While she is here, make her as happy as you can. You become unhappy – that is your problem. But you will be benefited by her visit. Vipassana you have to do later on, mm? Good! Good!

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