#darshan diary

[A sannyasin from Ethiopia said he had difficulty in communicating with friends, as he felt that they tended to make him feel in the wrong, so that he would doubt himself even when he felt himself to be right sometimes]

The first thing: there is nothing like right or wrong. It depends. It depends on the standpoint. There is not something very solid about which one can decide that this is right and that is wrong. There are no such values. The same thing can be right to one person and wrong to another, because it more or less depends on the person. The same thing can be right in one moment for a person, and in another moment it can be wrong because it depends on the situation.

But we all carry a hangover, a hangover which has been implanted in us for centuries, as if there is something right and something which is wrong. You have been taught in aristotelean categories. This is right and that is wrong. This is white and that is black. This is God and that is devil. These categories are false. Life is not divided into black and white. A lot of it is more like grey.

And if you see very deeply, white is one extreme of grey and black is another extreme, but the expanse is of grey. So one can see it as white and one can see it as black. It is as if a glass is there, half full, half empty. Somebody says it is half full and this is the truth and somebody says it is half empty and this is the truth... and they start fighting.

All arguments are more or less like that. Reality is more grey. It has to be so because it is not divided anywhere. There are no watertight compartments anywhere. This is a foolish categorisation, but it has been implanted in our mind. We always say that this answer is right and that answer is wrong.

This whole evaluation is absurd and nobody has the right to decide -- neither you nor your friends. You have to decide for yourself and they have to decide for themselves. So don't interfere in their life and don't allow them to interfere in your life. I am not saying that you will do something today and that tomorrow you won't feel that it is wrong. But I still say that yesterday it was right. You understand me?

Just the moment afterwards you can feel that it was wrong, but this is not you of the moment before. One moment has passed; now your standpoint is different. Now you are looking at it in a different way. You have become more experienced. At least you have that experience that you did not have before you decided. It may look wrong. Tomorrow again it may look right.

So, right and wrong go on changing continuously. Then what to do? If somebody wants to decide absolutely, he will be paralysed, he will not be able to act. If you want that you act only when you have an absolute decision about what is right, you will be paralysed. You will not be able to act in life. One has to act and to act in a relative world. There is no absolute decision, so don't wait for it. Just watch, see, and whatsoever you feel is right, do.

[Osho said that whenever one suggested a way to others, it should be with the understanding that this is only your standpoint and may not be right for others. One should not try to impose anything on anyone. This, Osho said, was what he regarded as the religious quality.

If friends did not accept one s advice, one should not feel offended but be able to allow others to have freedom in their decision. Nobody in fact follows anybody else because the final decision has to be taken by the person himself. Even if one follows one s friend's advice, if things went wrong, the blame could not be put on the friend because it was one s own decision ultimately. When friends offered advice, one should listen carefully.... ]

One of the great things to be learned is listening. Listen very silently. Just don't listen indifferently. Don't listen as if you want them to stop and you are just listening to be polite because they are your friends. It is better in that case to tell them not to say anything because you are not in the mood to listen.

But if you are listening, really listen, be open, because they may be right. And even if they are wrong, listening to them will enrich you. You will know more sides of the same thing, more viewpoints, and it is always good to learn. So listen well but always decide on your own.

Once a person has this relative understanding and drops absolute nonsense, things become very clear and easy. Otherwise people are very absolutistic. They think in terms of absolutes: this is truth and whatsoever is against it, is wrong. This has crippled the whole earth -- Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians fighting because everybody claims the absolute truth. Nobody has any claim on it. It is nobody's monopoly.

Truth is vast. Infinite are its facets and infinite are the ways to know it. And whatsoever we know is limited; it is just a part.

Never claim for the part as if it is the whole and then you will never be in trouble. Watch every word that you speak. Our language is such, our ways of speaking are such, that knowingly, unknowingly, we make absolute statements. Never do that. Use 'perhaps' more. Hesitate more. Use 'maybe', 'perhaps' more, and allow the other every freedom to decide on his own.

Try it for one month. You will have to be very alert, because it is a deep-rooted habit, but if one is alert it can be dropped. Then you will see that arguments drop and then there is no need to defend. And always remember that it is possible that tomorrow you may think something was wrong, but you have changed. That's why I say that repentance is impossible. The person who committed it is not the person who is repenting. They are two different moments, absolutely atomic and unconnected. So there is no point in repenting. There is no point in thinking again and again about the past. What has happened has happened. Whatsoever you think now is not the point.

[Osho said that it was just as when one was sitting for an examination. Once outside the room, when one was more relaxed, collected, one could review and repent for what one had done, but in the moment you were answering the paper, you were doing what was right in that moment.]

So each moment has its own validity. No other moment can cancel it. You cannot cancel the past. Whatsoever you did in that moment was right in that moment. It was meant to be so. It was all that could happen and it happened; otherwise was not possible. You being you it was going to happen that way. So now there is no point in crying and weeping and repenting over it. Now you are more experienced. Next time remain alert so that the old thing is not repeated, that's all. For one month, try, and then tell me. There is nothing to be worried about.

Osho.

Premabhakta (a French-Swiss sannyasin): I enjoyed this group very much but I don’t know if I have changed or if I am any better.

In fact never think in terms of getting better. That’s a wrong evaluation. Always think in terms of enjoying more, of making life more of a joy, more of a play, more fun.

This idea of getting better is very dangerous but it has been planted by the society – ‘Improve yourself.’ If you get that into your head, you will never be happy. These improvers are never happy because whatsoever happens, they are always thinking in terms of getting better and better and better. And there is no end to it. You can never come to a point where you can think, ‘Now the better has happened.’

Enjoy life more. Become capable of enjoying it, that’s all, and the betterment will come on its own accord; you need not worry about it. You can completely forget. Don’t make life a sort of ambition. Rather, enjoy whatsoever is available. Don’t say that ‘When I am better then I will enjoy.’ You will never enjoy. Enjoy and then you will be better – but you need not worry about it. You need not think about it. It is not worth a penny.

Whatsoever is happening in this moment, be capable of being with it – flowing, wondering, loving. Be intrigued by this moment. The next moment you will find that you have become better automatically, because a happy person becomes better. So my evaluation is totally different.

You have been taught, ‘If you become better, you will be happy.’ And my teaching is, ‘If you are happy, you will become better.’ You have been taught, ‘If you are good, you will go to heaven.’ My teaching is, ‘Be in heaven and you will be good.’

If you want to be in heaven by becoming good, you will be in hell. You will be already creating hell for yourself because you will become a condemnatory mind. You will go on condemning. You will become an enemy to yourself: ‘I am not good – not good enough.’ You will start punishing yourself, because how can a bad person be allowed to enjoy life? You will become miserable.

Enjoy life. Nobody is barring your path. Life is as available to you as it is to me. Exactly in the same proportion, life is showering its blessings on you as it is showering its blessings on me. It is just that you are not accepting it. You are looking somewhere in the future to when you are better.

Drop the future completely. Enjoy life. The future will arise out of your present. A happy moment brings another happy moment – happier. The more you taste of happiness, the more you become capable of tasting it. You become a connoisseur. You start knowing all the nuances of it.

So drop that idea of bettering yourself. That’s one of the basics of the neurotic mind. A person who is trying in any way to become better is going to become neurotic. He is neurotic. The seeds are there… the crop will follow. If you enjoy, that’s all. Don’t ask more… and more will be given to you.

If you can learn only one secret key here – that life is an art of how to enjoy more – tremendous possibilities surround you and infinite doors are ready to open for you.

You are standing there, worried, thinking how to better yourself, how to become a saint, how to become a god and how to become heavenly – and heaven is passing in front of you. This is the way to remain in hell. Drop it!

The group has been good. It has brought up something very deep inside you – this idea of getting better. This is a criminal idea. This is one of the most dangerous ideas that a person can get hooked with. Drop it immediately. It is like a disease and it can become chronic.

 The Shadow of the Whip. Wednesday. 1 December 1976

Veereshwar talks about how he came to know of Osho and the changes he feels he has gone through as a  sannyasin in the last month.

Maneesha: Can you talk about your relationship with  Osho? Often people feel that initially it was of a certain nature and that it evolves over a period into something different.

Veereshwar: Yes, I would say initially.. He’s always, always been really wonderful with me. I mean, he’s always given me lots of energy, a lot of love-energy, and I don’t know why that is. The first time I was here-and I was here just for the ten-day camps-I experienced, in a way, that he was courting me.  Courting is a less auspicious word  than I would really use, but he was drawing me to him and giving me a lot of consideration.

I didn’t come to India to find a teacher or to see Osho or anything, I wasn’t coming out of need..  I didn’t feel need at the time. So I think he was aware of that to-you know, that he wasn’t talking to someone who was in a lot of pain and distress. Then in the year and a half that its been since I was last here, I think that a lot of the structures that had been holding me together when I came the first time started collapsing more and more. This time I came out of need and it was a real struggle for me to come. I was definitely coming to see Osho.

I felt this time, although he’s been very loving with me in many ways, that he was much harder on me. He started with, instead of, “No, that’s all right-things will be okay,” he really came down very hard on some very fundamental aspects that he wanted to see reduced-out of the way.

For instance when I first came I just told him that I really felt I had lost all my self-confidence, I had lost my sense of authority, and I was presenting these things to him in a negative way. He was feeding them back to me as positive things-that that was really the beginning of movement for me.

So I feel a little more this time that he’s been like a Zen Master. And I see that when one comes here seriously, the best way to come here is as absolutely nothing, because that’s what is going to happen to you here anyway.  And any expectations you have about being something will soon be eliminated.  

I also have the sense that the more deeply involved I get with him, the harder it will be. Somehow the closer you come to him, the harder and more fundamental the issues are. So I feel a little less comforted, and I feel a little bit more frightened in a way about my commitment to him because I see that it involves this.

It’s absolute in a way. There’s no kind of way out.  I mean, if you’re going to be with Osho, that’s what’s going to happen-you’re going to get more and more immersed, and then you’re going to come to a deeper level of your resistance all the time.

There has always been, in my relationship with him, a level in which I was not relating to a person-I was just relating to a source of truth and I’ve always related to that source of truth. So when I came to Osho for the first time, I had no resistance to becoming a sannyasin even though I was involved with Arica. I’ve never created any problems for myself about that because I just felt like he was a source, and I had no resistance. I mean, I had a deep attraction to that source within myself, a priori, before Osho, but Osho somehow is the mouthpiece of it.        

Another thing was that Osho was really concurrent with the development within myself. When I came to India the first time, I had no reason to come and I decided-I made a conscious decision for the first time in my life-to do something without a reason-and also I had a distinct feeling that my heart was drawing me to India. This was before I even knew anything about Osho. So I came riding on my heart and with no reason...  which was a really appropriate way to come, and that’s of course the first message that he gave me.

I guess I have a fear of being really dependent upon him as a person in the world because he might die. Next time I come he might be in a glass case and you won’t even be able to speak to him at all, and I don’t feel like I can rely on my own personal contact with him at all. Firstly I can’t rely on that; secondly, I can’t rely on him being around very long. So I had this feeling that I want to get more deeply involved with him and, at the same time, be more autonomous from him.

Maneesha: See you feel that you’re learning that balance?

Veereshwar: Yes, that balance, in the West. I mean it’s incredibly difficultly in the West. People go through a lot of things here, but in the West the whole mentality is so antithetical to what’s happening here.. To what he’s propounding.

Another thing which he talked to me about was my need to improve-which is present in almost every moment of my existence. He put me in touch with that and told me to drop it. If I really could drop it, it would drop a lot of my ego. But that’s just totally intrinsic in the West, because their so caught up in it. I mean, it’s fundamental in the West, and particularly to the American mentality-progress, improvement.

Maneesha: See you don’t feel aware of him, or relate to him, as a personality?

Veereshwar: Oh, I find him incredibly beautiful, but that’s not a deep part of my attachment to him. I was looking at his hands last night-how fine..  He’s just an incredible looking man.

I’ve always had a feeling about him that, “Wow! I recognise this man from somewhere!” There’s a deep recognition. I’m sure it has something to do with past lives or something because it feels at that level, at that depth. I mean, it’s almost as if it’s me or something.  It’s difficult to me to say..

There’s something in me that defends against a   personal attachment to him. I’m in love with him at a deep level, but being personally attached..

There’s a story that he relates in one of his lectures about when the Buddha died. There was one of Buddha’s disciples who was just sitting there who wasn’t weeping-everybody else was freaking out and crying, and there was this one who didn’t cry.

He said, “Well, he’s not gone. He’s still here.” Do you remember that story?  He said, “The Buddha is not gone. He’s not any less with us now than he was before“.

That really stuck with me-that I want to be that kind of disciple. When he goes I want it to be all right with me. That two may contain some elements of resistance, but somehow I have this feeling that though I love to talk to him-even though I am greedy about talking to him as you know-I don’t want to base my relationship with him on that.

To me he’s a medium for relating to my own source, and I want that relationship to my own source to be strengthened through him, and not become dependent upon my relationship with him.

Maneesha:  Can you talk about the way you see Osho working on you indirectly-ways he uses other than when he is talking to you directly?

Veereshwar: I see him setting up a lot of things. For instance, with Amit.. I’ll be very careful about what friends I bring from now on! (Laughter). Because I feel that he used Amit, he used our relationship to instruct us. Quite literally he did that, and he also did it in many ways that I was barely aware of, by making me see a lot of things.

I have been living with Amitabh and  Amit and in a sense I feel their extremes and their processes and that has made It almost possible to not have to go through the same things for myself. A lot of things that they are going through, because they are going through them, I don’t have too. So there would be an example of Osho working indirectly.

Veereshwar said that waiting for three months for Osho’s reply to a letter he had written him from West had put him through a lot of changes-first thinking Osho was Ignoring him, and having to make his own decision about the issue on which he had written to Osho. He felt that was another way Osho had worked on him indirectly.

I hear a lot of people talking about certain significant points and coincidences and synchronicity’s, and one person will say, “Osho is doing that.” But my sense of it is that it happens around him as a function of where he’s at..  But it’s not controlled. People want to say that he’s controlling things, but somehow it’s where he is that creates what’s happening.

Teertha was telling me the other day that he felt in some deep way I lacked trust in my self. I feel what Osho gave me to do in those workshops is a distinct way of getting more.. relying more and more on that trust. (In a later Darshan, Osho told Veereshwar to be a vehicle for him, to be empty and allow Osho to work through him.)

Veereshwar went on to talk about what kind of therapy he does

Veereshwar: I’m really a teacher rather than a therapist and I teach in a lot of universities and adult education programmes. I tend to teach a process and in an evening I’ll put people through a certain process. But there are many processes-not just one. It’s like Osho gives many different lectures and in one lecture he will give one map of evolution and in another lecture it will be another map, and so I work with many forms.

Veereshwar was involved with Esalen and  Arica at different times, and had taken part in co-counselling. Before that he was a university professor of philosophy, and earlier still, involved in acting and the theatre.

Veereshwar: When I studied comparative religion I somehow knew that there was one religion, and many scholars have tried to formulate what that one religion is. I mean, the problem is not whether there is one religion but how to formulate it.

As far as that quest has been concerned-a purely academic quest-Osho was kind of a getting in touch with the state being manifest..  The stat at which religion is one.

Maneesha: So when you met Osho, was there no doubt in your mind from the beginning that he was the source of truth as you have said?

You immediately recognised him?

Veereshwar: Yes and I just glided in..  I mean, I just rejoiced.  I took sannyas because I wanted to establish a real connection..  I wanted to manifest the connection that I already felt.

Maneesha: Did the ashram seemed very different to you coming back this time?

Veereshwar: Yes, it did. It’s just bigger, more complex.. The ways of it are more fixed on the whole. I feel like it’s becoming more and more ritualised, the whole thing-of being around him. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when he goes, because he has so explicitly forbidden any kind of religious ritual being built up. It’ll be Interesting to see how we deal with that-with the fact that we’ve been told not to create an institution.

Maneesha: Do you feel that the presence of the groups has added something to the energy of the ashram?

Veereshwar: Yes, definitely.  One thing that attracted me so much to Osho was that all of us in the West who are working in these directions are kind of groping for something that we see “through a glass darkly“, and I felt that Osho was on the other side of the glass. That he really sees it, or that he really  illuminates what’s on the other side of the glass-what all this growth work is moving towards.

I mean all of us are intuitively moving in that direction, and I think that it’s totally right on of him to bring all those things that are moving in that direction and to give them clarification.

That’s what I loved about Teertha’s group-that this wasn’t just an encounter group; it was an encounter group with a really viable sense behind it of what enlightenment is.  Not just a kind of groping but it is really going someplace.

I see all the group work as very important. It’s the kind of median, it’s the half-way point, and it’s necessary for Westerners to have it. I love it. I think it’s the ultimate growth centre-to have the enlightened one there with all the sophistication of the techno.. Osho wouldn’t like that word.. but the existential technologies or whatever they are, around him.

That takes a lot of the strain off him, because when I was here a year and a half ago, he was the only group leader.  Now people get threaded through these processes, and then when they come to him, a lot is already accomplished.

A long time ago when I was in India I envisaged a kind of world university, a centre, an existential university, where people could come to grow. Arica was like that to me in a way, and this is even a little closer to that vision because of Osho.

Maneesha: Can you talk about your experience of the Encounter group?

Veereshwar: I would say that basically it threw me into complete confusion.

Maneesha: (laughing) You mean you weren’t in complete confusion before?

Veereshwar: (grinning):No, not in complete confusion..  Incomplete confusion!  I got in touch with a lot of things that I know about, having done a lot of work on myself and knowing the mind in a very subtle way.  I knew that more or less hypothetically, but I had it really laid on me.

Also a lot more in touch with defences against feelings, and ways that I prevent myself from really being who I am. Actually I thought I was further along..  I thought I was further along than I am, but I also knew that things weren’t right. So to know that things aren’t right in way’s that I thought they were, is a step, a good step.

It was one of the most unpleasant experiences that I have ever had. About half of it was really a nightmare for me. I was hoping that at the end of it I would suddenly emerge feeling wonderful, and that didn’t exactly happened either. Deep in my mind is the sense that it is appropriate, or the best thing is to reach some sort of plateau of feeling good. Again at a different level I realised that that’s not the case.

I got in touch with a lot of violence and aggression in myself of which I wasn’t aware. I used to have temper tantrums as a child and had done some co-counselling where there was a lot of pillow fighting, but I experienced it in a raw way this time, that it was very difficult for me to jump across the barriers-the barriers that keep me from experiencing those things. Sometimes I felt I should have done more in that way, but I just was the way I was and I certainly had the chance to look at it.

Maneesha: Do you think there is anything about the group that makes it different from a group in the West-the fact that group members are all sannyasins, the group is run by a sannyasin and Osho is nearby?

Veereshwar: Well, one has the sense that the ultimate cosmic order is nearby.. That though there is the chaos-as bad as it may be in the proximity of that little cell where you’re working-still the cosmic order is. So I think that it allows you to go further. It allows you to take a bigger jump.

Maneesha: So it felt to you to be a safer environment?

Veereshwar: Ultimately safer, though I felt I spent a lot of time feeling very unsafe! Just Osho’s presence, you know, and the discourses every day-very soothing and even a kind of nourishment of your essence, and then your ego is freaking out all day!  It’s a different kind of balance and juxtaposition of elements from anything I’ve ever experienced In West.

Maneesha: What do you envisage in the future about what is happening through Osho? Do you think that it’s really going to have ripples and expand out all over the world?

Veereshwar: Yes, definitely..  especially through his books. I can see it happening in California. When I first went back there, people hadn’t heard about him very much at all, but more and more people are turning on to him because he’s the real thing.  There are a lot of things that catch on in California, but I feel that Osho is the real thing. I mean he is really enlightened and he’s an infinite source.

I do have this hope that someday Indira Gandhi will become so obnoxious that he’ll have to come to Santa Barbara or something! I Think if it happened it would be incredible. On the other hand I see that his being here has a certain poetry to it-that you have to come all the way round the world to see him..  But he’s so remote, he’s a kind of distant star.

Osho is a master of theatre. I’m a theatre person myself and I refer to it in my letters to him as this God theatre. I mean, it’s   immaculate.

Maneesha: But what’s drawing people from California who are deeply saturated in gurus and spirituality already?

Veereshwar: That he’s a real star.. Because he is really enlightened, because California is tantric. A spontaneous tantric philosophy is happening in California, and people recognise it immediately when they read what he says. Corresponding to that is Osho’s upfront, no-bullshit way of dealing with sex.  That’s the first thing that hits people. “Well, he’s someone who is not brushing it aside.” Everybody is deeply confused about sex because they have passed beyond the conventions and the formalities, everybody has done it and they’ve done everything, and still it doesn’t make sense, but he is somebody who is  copping to all that and taking it further.

So that’s what he is known as in California-as the tantric master, and people vaguely associate Tantra with sex. So that’s the gross attraction that he has. But it’s good-Osho is Infinitely more than that, but even that is really something. Osho is the only one who is not in confusion about it or putting it aside.

That was my sense of him-he really sees that sex is an energy, and we are as ignorant of this as we were in the 17th century before the understanding of steam energy.  

Then as people get more and more involved in him, it doesn’t stop. He’s not just a sex therapist. You get in on that and then you discover another facet of him and another facet.

Maneesha: So you feel that people involved in growth will find their way  here as a natural culmination of the work they are doing?

Veereshwar: Well, the thing that I described to you before is that we are all working toward something intuitively, and that we see that thing “through a glass darkly“. What we see from Osho is a light coming from the other side of that, so the thing that has led us into growth techniques and has made us what we are, is drawing us closer to Osho. It’s just totally natural.

You say that you would like to trust yourself, and you say that you would like to drop fear. You say that you would like to move into relationships with people -- but they are all contradictory. If you really want to trust yourself, you have to trust your fear too. If you say, 'I have to drop this fear,' you have started mistrusting yourself. The fear is coming from your own being; it is not coming from any outer shore. It is your fear... it is you.

There is nothing to be worried about. intellect is also good... it is part of you. I talk against intellect not because I am against it. I have to talk against it so that you don't become just the intellect; so that intellect does not start dominating your whole being. It has to play its role; it has to have its own corner. It is not to be destroyed. It is a very useful instrument, very complex and valuable. Only man has it. It has to be used in the right way; it is not to be misused. It has not to be allowed to become master of your being. It has to serve you.

When you listen to me, you try to understand something. Of course the first ripple will be in the intellect. That's as it should be because intellect is on the gate; it is your guard. Only when the intellect is satisfied does it allow something to enter. And that's okay; there is nothing wrong in it.

The first ripples will arise in the intellect. If you move with them and absorb them, ripples will arise in your feeling. If you move with them and allow them to take possession of you, ripples in your being will also arise. These are the three layers: thinking feeling, being.

Being is the very centre of your being, hidden behind feeling, because it is so valuable, so precious. It cannot be put on the gate. Intellect is the guard. Feeling is just in between. Feeling is more precious -- that's why it is not on the gate. The lowest servant is on the gate. But because intellect is on the gate, it can play games with you and the guard can become the master. Everybody has to come through the guard so everybody has to bribe him, to convince him. Everybody has to be friendly, to butter up the guard. The guard becomes bigger and bigger. And of course if the guard is not convinced, he will not allow anybody in. This is why the intellect has become very powerful.

The basic reason that it is at the gate is because it is the least important part of your being. The more important people are hidden behind. Feeling is more important, softer. It needs protection, otherwise the world will be too much. It can be easily hurt, easily destroyed; it is fragile. And behind feeling, being is hiding.

It is your secret-most part, the most private, where only you can enter. Up to your intellect, the whole world can come and make contact. Up to your feeling, only love and friendship can come and make contact. Up to your being, only you; not even your lover can come.

So there is nothing to worry about. Just create a harmony. if your intellect functions and you are logical, nothing is wrong. Use it more creatively.

And I am coming with you. Don't be worried about this intellect -- I have entered behind it. I have bribed the gate guard and I am already in.

Osho.

Beloved of My Heart Chapter #9

... But always remember, trust in the unknown. The known is the mind. The unknown cannot be the mind. It may be something else but it cannot be the mind. One thing certain about the mind is that mind is the accumulated known. So, for example, if you come across a fork in the road and the mind says 'Go this way, this is familiar' -- that is the mind. If you listen to your being, it would like to go to the unfamiliar, to the unknown. The being is always an adventurer. The mind is very orthodox, very conservative. It wants to move into the track, the trodden path, again and again -- the path of least resistance.

So always listen for the unknown. And gather courage to move into the unknown. That's what I feel -- that you want to move, but the mind says, 'Take your time.' It is not really you who wants to take your time; it is the mind who wants to deceive you.

One can become part of a crowd, and that's not good. Others have taken sannyas, others are taking sannyas, and then you feel that you also should take it and you become an imitator, a carbon-copy. That's not good. But you may resist only because others are taking sannyas; so how can you? Then again you are following the crowd -- in a negative way. If nobody was doing it then you would have done it. Then again the nobody is the point of reference. Others are still in the mind.

So a person can be a conservative or a person can become a rebel. But the real revolution happens somewhere when you are neither. Because to rebel against the crowd is, in a subtle way, being decided by the crowd again. It is more subtle than the first. The first is plain -- one simply follows the crowd. Everybody is going there so you also feel like going. Everybody will be pleased and you will not feel like an outsider; you will be accepted by the herd. That's okay. That's plain and simple that one should not do that --  not at least with me. I would like to relate to you.

If you come to me because of others, that crowd will always be between me and you and it will be impossible to relate to you. I will always have to go via the crowd; you will have to come via the crowd. We will not be in direct communication. The telephone line will not be direct, and it will not be of much help. When the message moves through the crowd it automatically changes. Nothing can be done about it.

So you have to be immediate to me. But remember, the mind can say, 'Don't follow the crowd. You have to be yourself. Because the crowd is doing this, don't do it. Take your time.' Then again you are being decided by the crowd. The crowd is in your mind. You are deciding negatively, but the crowd is controlling you still. Drop that too. Forget the crowd!

... The very effort to be free of the crowd is doomed to fail. The very effort to be free from somebody is going to be dominated by somebody. You can go away, but you can never be free; that is not the way of freedom.

Never think in terms of being free from; always think in terms of being free for. And the difference is vast, tremendously vast. Don't think in terms of from -- think for. Be free for God, be free for truth, but don't think that you want to be free from the crowd, free from the church, free from this and that. You may be able to go far away one day, but you will never be free, never. It is going to be some sort of suppression.

Why are you so afraid of the crowd?

... If the pull is there, then your fear simply shows your pull, your attraction. Wherever you go you will remain dominated by the crowd. What I am saying is, just look at the facts of it -- that there is no need to think in terms of the crowd. Just think in terms of your being. It can be dropped right now. You cannot be free if you struggle. You can drop it because there is no point in struggling.

The crowd is not the problem -- you are the problem. The crowd is not pulling you -- you are being pulled, not by somebody else but by your own unconscious conditioning. Always remember not to throw the responsibility somewhere on somebody else, because then you will never be free of it. Deep down it is your responsibility. Why should one be so much against the crowd? Poor crowd! Why should you be so much against it? Why do you carry such a wound?

The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate. So the question is of your cooperation. You can drop the cooperation just now, just like that. If you put any effort into it, then you will be in trouble. So do it instantly. It is just on the spur of the moment of spontaneous understanding, if you can see the point that if you fight, you will be fighting a losing battle. In the very fighting you are emphasising the crowd.

That's what has happened to millions of people. Somebody wants to escape from women. In India they have done that for centuries. Then they become more and more engrossed in it. They want to get rid of sex and their whole mind then becomes sexual; they think only of sex and nothing else. They fast and they will not go to sleep. They will do this and that pranayama and yoga and a thousand and one things -- all nonsense The more they fight with sex, the more they are enforcing it, the more they are concentrating on it. It becomes so significant, out of all proportion.

That is what has happened to christian monasteries. They become so repressed, just afraid. The same can happen to you if you become afraid too much of the crowd. The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate, so it is a question of your alertness. Don't cooperate! This is my observation: that whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible. Nobody else is doing it to you. You wanted it to be done, so it has been done. Somebody exploits you because you wanted to be exploited. Somebody has put you into a prison because you wanted to be imprisoned. There must have been a certain search for it. Maybe you used to call it security. Your names may have been different, your labels may have been different, but you were hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison one is safe and there is no insecurity. But don't fight with the prison walls. Look inside. Find out that hankering for security and how the crowd can manipulate you. You must be asking for something from the crowd -- recognition, honour, respect, respectability. If you ask them, you have to repay them. Then the crowd says, 'Okay, we give you respect, and you give us your freedom.' It is a simple bargain. But the crowd has never done anything to you -- it is basically you. So get out of your own way!

If you listen to me, I would like you to take a jump into sannyas. That will help. And let that moment be a dropping of the crowd: for, against -- both! From that moment don't think in terms of for and against. Just don't think of the crowd -- think of yourself. The time is short and life is so valuable. Why waste it on foolish things -- fighting with the crowd, escaping from the crowd? It is not worth it! You are giving it too much importance.

But if you want to take time, you can take -- that's up to you. But the mind can go on postponing -- the mind cannot decide. It is impotent as far as decisions are concerned. It can brood, worry, but it cannot conclude -- that is not the capacity of the mind. Always watch: your conclusions come from beyond the mind or below the mind. They never come from the mind.

If you fail in love with a woman and you ask the mind, the mind will say, 'Think, wait, postpone. There may be some other woman better than this, and who knows that you are not imagining things? She may not be so beautiful. Watch out! Take time and be clever, calculating.'

If you listen to the mind it will go on postponing ad infinitum. But you don't listen to the mind -- and it is good that you put it aside. There are moments when you put the mind aside. You say, 'No, I have fallen in love.' The mind says, 'Are you a fool? You are becoming blind You say, 'Accept it. I am blind, but I am going.' And it is good. . .this is courage.

Being with me cannot be a mind relationship. It is falling in love. . .in love with something impossible. . .in love with something absurd.

Have you heard Tertullian's dictum? -- 'I love God because God is absurd. He cannot be -- impossible.' That is his credo absurdum. 'I believe in God because God is unbelievable.' Tremendously beautiful... that's what a lover says.

I found that the aggressiveness I've had before in the form of intense energy, seems to be a cover-up for life. When it's not there I feel a lot of fear. I feel fear sometimes when I see that I have no control over anything at all.]

But what is the need to control? And how can one control? Life is so vast that we can only be controlled; we cannot be the controllers. The fear arises because you ask the impossible. The fear arises because you ask something which is not possible at all, which is not in harmony with the real. How can you control things? Just think of the immensity, the tremendous vastness of existence, and of how everything is so interconnected. How can you control it?

These are the two attitudes. The non-religious attitude is somehow to control, somehow to manipulate, somehow to dominate, somehow to boss. The religious attitude is understanding -- seeing the fact that the total is so vast and you are so tiny that even to say tiny seems to be too big... almost a non-being.

Buddha has called the innermost core non-being, because he said that to call it 'being' is too much; it is almost as if not. Even a drop is bigger. If you compare a drop with the ocean, and you compare a man with the totality, the drop is tremendously bigger than man -- proportionately, relatively. Man is not even a drop in this totality. Just think of a drop of water trying to control the ocean. And we are not even that! So fear arises.

But you are creating the fear -- it is your interpretation. A religious man is unafraid, fearless. Not that he is brave -- no. He is unafraid because he has dropped that whole nonsense of controlling. He allows himself to be controlled. A religious man is possessed by the whole. He says, 'I am nobody, so take possession of me and lead me wheresoever you will. Thy will be done. Thy kingdom come.'

That 'thy' is not a tiny god sitting somewhere, as christians think, with a crown on his head, on a golden throne with foolish angels all around (laughter). That 'thy' is this totality. There is no throne and no crown, no monarch, no king -- nothing: no king and no kingdom. That 'thy' is this vastness, this immenseness of existence ... this isness that surrounds you out and in, within and without. How can you try to control it? What are you asking?

Fear will arise... death will follow you like a shadow, because you know one day or other you will have to fall down and disappear.

But a religious man, in deep prayer, accepts even death. He says, 'I am just a wave. It was your play to have me. I am here, but when you are finished with the game I will retire. I will go back to sleep, deep sleep, into the ocean. Whenever you need me you can raise me again. I will be ready, but it is none of my business to bother about.' That's how one becomes fearless.

So just see the point -- and float, flow, and a deep relaxation will come to you. will surround vou. Your whole being will become graceful, because when there is no fear one is graceful. Then there is no dichotomy. There is no fight, no struggle... one simply accepts. One is in total acceptance. Just try to see that.

And if you want to be afraid, then it is okay. If you choose, then it is okay, otherwise there is no need. You live in total relaxation. Not trying, you become so calm and quiet. But just a tiny part struggling, the old taste continues, haunts you. One has to resist that. The ego enjoys fighting very much -- struggling, conquering. Drop that ego! Drop fighting and the ego drops.

People come to me and they ask, 'How can we drop the ego?' They are asking again for a new fight. They say, 'How can we drop the ego? How can we fight this ego? Then again another ego will arise -- the ego of the humble man, the ego of the simple man, the ego of one who has renounced; religious, prayerful -- but the ego will arise again. And the second ego is going to be more subtle than the first, more poisonous, because it is more pious. And when poison becomes pious, of course it becomes more dangerous.

So simply look at the fact and float... and accept, mm? Then see what happens.

Osho.

We are trying to present a new synthesis between East and West. The eastern methods are more individualistic, more inward-going, and more concerned with solitude, aloneness, and the person. They are meditative methods, more concerned with the person and his integrity. 

They are not group methods.

The western methods are all group methods, and are more out-going, more concerned with communication and relationships; with the group, and integrity in relationships, not in aloneness. So what they can be reduced to is: the western methods are more concerned with love, the eastern methods more with meditation.

These are the two polarities of human consciousness -- love and meditation. Meditation means to be alone, as if you alone exist. And love means that you are not, the other is; as if you exist only in relation to the other, and there is no other existences. These are the two Polarities. and taken separately they both become extremes, and both are dangerous.

The East has tried the first extreme -- of meditation. It became life-negating and escapist -- hence the poverty, the ugliness. There has been no scientific progress in the East, because nobody has paid any attention to society. All those who were interested in any search always escaped

In the West, the society has progressed. There is a better standard of living, more affluence and comfort, more convenience, more health, and more life. But they have moved to the other extreme and the individual has by and by disappeared.

These two things taken separately are dangerous, because life exists in polarity. The whole emphasis here is that there are no opposites, there are only complementaries.

So meditation and love are not opposites, they are complementaries. All religion should be life-affirming, and life should be meditative.

So we are trying to create a synthesis, and it is not only an ideology -- because that is not difficult. This synthesis is really in the being of people who come here. A new synthesis is being tried and much depends on it.

A world psychology has to be given birth to. The East has succeeded in certain ways and failed in others, just as the West has failed in certain areas but succeeded in others. Now there should be no more of this bifurcation of East and West. There should be a unitive psychology, global, in which there is no East and no West, but the polarities meet and dissolve.

Our work is on human beings. It is not academic, theoretical, philosophical. It is absolutely personal and existential.

Osho.

That's all we do here: work towards clarity. The whole work consists of bringing clarity to you, so you can see things as they are. And once you see things as they are, things start changing. The very awareness of them brings transformation. We remain hooked into habits, mechanical habits, because we are not aware of them. And we cannot change those habits because there is nobody to change them either. Those habits are their and at the most you can change one habit into another habit. That's all that can be done, but that makes no sense; the other is as mechanical as the first, it is the same rut. So the emphasis here is not on changing you; the emphasis is on making you alert and aware of where you are, what you are, what things are surrounding you. In that very awareness, in that very light, you start changing.

OSHO

The Sun behind the Sun behind the Sun.