Chapter 7

Anand means bliss, mahakavi means a great poet - a great poet of bliss. Bliss is available only to those who can create great poetry in their being. Bliss is an experience of inner poetics, it is poetry.

The logical mind never knows it; the logical mind is debarred, by its very premises it is closed to bliss. It is calculating, and bliss can never happen to a calculating consciousness. It happens in a childlikeness: when a person is innocent, then it happens.

The calculating mind is clever. To be clever is to be corrupted; then one is no more innocent. And only in innocence can we live in god and can god live in us.

When I say that great poetry is needed in the heart, I mean a non-calculating consciousness; not mathematical, but rather metaphorical, a consciousness that thinks not in terms of concepts but in terms of metaphors, parables. Poetry is an indirect approach; mathematics is a direct assault.

Mathematics is like rape; poetry is cooing, persuading. It is seductive: it goes indirectly, very politely, it goes in very loving ways.

It approaches reality but not like an enemy, rather like a friend; it befriends reality.

So a poet comes to know certain things which nobody else knows. Those things are revealed only in a poetic relationship with reality. The poet is innocent. He is foolish as far as worldly cleverness is concerned. The poet is idiotic because he will never rise in the world of wealth and power. He is bound to remain a pauper, but in his poverty is the great richness that only he or the souls who are moving in the same direction, know; he knows a different kind of richness in life that nobody else knows.

Love is possible. to a poet and god is possible to a poet. Jesus is a poet, Buddha is a poet. Once we start understanding them as great poets there will be a great revolution in the world. Jesus has fallen

into wrong company. The theologian is not a poet, the priest is not a poet. They have destroyed the very beauty of Jesus. He is pure poetry. You cannot find better poetry than the New Testament.

But because of the theologian, the poetry is lost, the beauty is lost. They have corrupted it by their interpretation; they have made such a fuss about it and created such jargon around it that to get through to the meaning of Jesus has become almost impossible. There are so many mediators standing between Jesus and you... and Jesus is a simple man, a mad poet. So is Buddha, so is Zarathustra and so is Lao Tzu.

But they have not been understood as great poets, and that has been a great calamity. Poets don't think that they belong to the same dimension as Jesus, otherwise they would be enriched by it.

Theologians think that they belong to the world of Jesus, and they are absolutely foreign to Jesus' spirit.

Religion is basically poetry, not philosophy, not theology. It is song and dance and celebration. Only one who is innocent enough to enjoy small things of life can understand that god exists, because he exists in the small things of life: he exists in the food you eat, he exists in the walk that you go for in the morning. He exists in the love that you have for your beloved, he exists in the friendship that you have with somebody. He exists when you start falling into sleep, he exists when you start rising early in the morning. He exists in such small things. He does not exist in the churches; churches are not part of poetry, they are part of politics.

So by giving you this name, Anand Mahakavi, I am giving you a direction. You have to search in that direction: become more and more poetic. It needs guts to be poetic; one needs to be courageous enough to be called a fool by the world, but only then can one be poetic. And by being poetic I don't mean that you have to write poetry. Writing poetry is not much of poetry; it is only a small part of being poetic and a very non-essential part. One may be a poet and may never write a single line of poetry, and one may write thousands of poems and may not be a poet.

A poet is a way of life, it is a new vision of life. It is love for life, it is reverence for life, it is a heart-to- heart relationship with life. In that relationship sometimes poetry can be born, painting can be born, sculpture can follow, but that iS not essential and that is not inevitable. It may happen, it may not; it doesn't matter.

And then you will be blissful; then nobody can make you miserable, not even you yourself. It becomes almost an impossibility....

[A sannyasin says that she has been feeling completely split since she's been here, as if she is on the edge of something... and that she's frightened!

Osho checks her energy.]

Your feeling is right: you are on the verge of something very beautiful. But you cannot understand its beauty right now because the understanding comes from the past, and the experience that is knocking on your door and wants to enter into your being is not part of your past. For the first time something new is going to happen, and the new is always frightening... just because it is new. The mind cannot cope with the new. It cannot figure out what it is, it cannot categorise it, it cannot put labels on it; the new puzzles it. The mind loses all its efficiency when it confronts something new.

With the past, with the old, with the familiar, it is very very at ease because it knows what it is, how to do, what to do, what not to do. It is perfect in the known; it is moving in the well-travelled territory.

Even in darkness it can move; the familiarity helps the mind to be unafraid. But this is one of the problems to be understood: because the mind is always unafraid only with the familiar, it does not allow you growth. Growth is with the new, and the mind is only unafraid with the old. So the mind clings to the old and avoids the new. The old seems to be synonymous with life and the new seems to be synonymous with death; that is the mind's way of looking at things. You have to put the mind aside. Let the fear be there, it is natural; in spite of the fear, go ahead.

This feeling that you are on the verge, just close by an abyss, will disappear if you remain too afraid.

Because life never remains static, everything is changing: today it is there, tomorrow it may not be there. You may come across it again; who knows when? Maybe it will take months, years or lives.

So when an opportunity knocks at the door, go with it. Let this be a fundamental law: always choose the new against the old. The old is convenient, the old is comfortable, but there is no growth with the old. The old is old and dead and done; the old is your grave. Life is with the new, god is with the new; god is the name of eternal newness.

Always choose the unknown and you will never be at a loss. Always choose the insecure and you will remain throbbing with life. Always remain adventurous. Never forget for a single moment that life belongs to those who are explorers. It does not belong to the static; it belongs to the flowing. Never become a reservoir, always remain a river. Naturally a river has to move into new territories every day and has to face new problems, new hazards, new situations, new challenges, but that's how one grows. Don't call it a split; it is because of your fear that you are feeling split. The fear clings to the past and your whole life energy wants to go with the new, hence the split, hence you are feeling divided.

Now, there are two ways to avoid the split: one is remain with the old, forget the new - which will be easier. If you go to the psychiatrist, psychoanalyst - or the priest, that is what he will suggest. But my suggestion is: always go with the new. It is dangerous, hence it is valuable. To live dangerously is the only way to live, to live dangerously is the right way to live. And again the split disappears if you go together with the new, you take the jump into the abyss. The mind will flutter a little while and then it will be gone. Once the new has happened, the mind will feel very happy. It will say, 'Yes, that's what I was saying all the time!' And again when something new comes again it will... It always tries to possess anything that has happened. One has to be continuously alert.

[A sannyasin says: I feel very fragile inside. Since being in the West I feel like I've lost something - I've lost my strength, my inner strength. I feel very fragile, very shaken, inside.... I had a surgical operation and I haven't recovered.

Osho checks her energy.]

There is nothing to be worried about. The body is still weak, that's true, and you have to gain a certain energy; the operation may have done it. Take a few acupuncture sessions and you will be back to normal. It happens sometimes because Western medicine is still not in the know about the- electric fields of the body. In operating on a certain part of the body they disturb the electric field.

The operation may be needed, but the electric field is subtle and it has to be brought back to its normal functioning. About that Western medicine is unaware; only acupuncture has been working on it for five thousand years.

Only in recent times in Russia has some work been done on the body's magnetic electric field, and much depends on it.

Your field is broken; it may have happened because of the operation, almost always operations disturb the electric field. But it can be brought to a normal state, so take a few acupuncture sessions.

I think that within three, four weeks you will be perfectly okay. There is nothing to be worried about.

You are not getting old or anything, but the feeling can be there... the feeling can be there, mm?

because that electric field is not functioning well. That's what happens in old age: in many parts the electric field becomes distorted, disconnected. Some wires become loose, in some places the fuse goes off and the body is no more an organic. unity. That's what happens in old age. And because somewhere something is broken in the electric field you can have the feeling that you are growing old. But just a little work is needed, mm? to reconnect.

Human energy is electric energy, a very subtle form of electricity, the subtlest, and it needs very refined work on it. Sooner or later acupuncture will become absorbed into medicine, Western medicine; then it will be a great boon. After each operation a person has to go through acupuncture.

First if the operation can be avoided, it should be avoided. If it cannot be avoided then after each operation acupuncture is a must.

So just a little work, mm? and it will be okay. Within four weeks you will be perfectly okay. First do acupuncture and then we will see. Good... good!

[A visitor, who is a yoga teacher, says he has been doing the meditations, and has quite severe pains in his chest and a numbness in his arms. He has also being doing pranayama and bioenergetics.

Osho checks his energy.]

You should stop; these meditations will not be good for you, they are not good for you. And don't do anything vigorous that brings the pain. You should move to silent types of meditation. You have done too much pranayama, that has created the trouble.

Pranayama sometimes creates the trouble, because there are a few things which have to be understood and which the so-called yogis don't know, and don't tell their disciples even if they do know. They go on prescribing pranayama to everybody in every situation.

The body needs a certain amount of oxygen. If more is given there will be trouble; if less is given then there will be trouble. The body knows how much it needs and it takes it in. When it needs more, it takes more in; when it doesn't need more, it takes in less. Pranayama is trying to control breathing, giving it a pattern it is the mind controlling the body. The body has its own wisdom. And the mind is very very stupid compared to the body, because it is a very late arrival and still childish; the body is very ancient.

If you try something like pranayama too much, you will be absorbing too much oxygen, and you don't need it; that is creating the trouble. And too much work on the chest is also not good. For a few people it is good; it is for those who are starving for more air in a certain way. The best way is not to disturb the breathing but just to watch it, not to manipulate it but just to watch it silently.

So you have done something wrong: and you have always been choosing things which are vigorous:

bioenergetics and Dynamic meditation. These are all on the same lines. So you have a certain tendency to choose that kind of thing and they are not for you, not at least at this moment.

So here do Sufi Dancing; you can join the Music group in the night, and when the camp starts there will be two meditations which will be very helpful for you: one is Nadabrahma and another is Gourishankar. Don't do any vigorous meditation. If you can stay here a little longer then you can learn Vipassana, the silent Buddhist meditation, and Zazen; they will help you immensely. For at least three months completely forget about the vigorous methods; let the body settle back into its natural rhythm.

You have disturbed it, you have been too greedy.

You have been trying to do something with superhuman effort. You have strained your chest muscles too much; they are overworked. So for three months rest completely and do silent meditations. After four to six weeks you will start feeling completely okay. Your health is perfectly good, nothing is wrong. Something is wrong with your head: you have been doing too much! You are an effort- oriented person. You cannot relax easily. You want to do things, you are a doer. So these are the groups I will suggest.

[The visitor says: I used to do a lot of Zazen, then I got wrapped up in Yoga.]

You went into a wrong direction, but it happens: people go on moving from one thing to another thing because nobody knows exactly what his thing is. They think that they are doing their thing but they don't know exactly what their thing is. People are accidental; from Yoga they move to Zen, from Zen they move to Sufism, from Sufism to Yoga, and they go on. America is a supermarket, a spiritual supermarket. It is very rare to find an American who does not meditate... as rare as an Indian who meditates!

But it is how things are. Do these things and then I will see, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: I have some strange pains when I dance. It's as if sound is coming from the music and when I feel to I go away with the sound. But I'm very scared of it and I stop it. I feel I shall disappear or go mad or go insane. It's happened a few times.]

Always remember one thing, that as you are, as everybody is... you are already mad. Humanity is mad, this earth is a madhouse. So you can only go sane, you cannot go mad; that is not a problem.

(a chuckle) If you are afraid of becoming sane that is another thing, but don't be afraid of going mad, because what else can happen? The worst has happened already! We are living in the worst kind of hell. So if you fall you may fall into heaven. You cannot fall anywhere else because this is the last.

Don't be afraid - go with it. That is the call from the divine. Go with it, allow yourself, permit yourself to go with it. And you are not going mad: the first glimpses of sanity are coming to you. But people are afraid, because whatsoever they have been living, they think that is the normal thing.

Nobody is normal. It is only very rarely that there is a normal man like Jesus or Buddha: all others are abnormal. But the abnormal are in the majority, so they call themselves normal; Jesus looks abnormal. And naturally the majority can decide, finally they have the votes to decide who is normal

and who is not normal. It is a strange world: here normal people appear abnormal and the abnormal are thought to be normal.

Just look at people! Watch people, watch your own mind: it is a monkey, a mad monkey.

For thirty minutes just write down on a piece of paper whatsoever comes into your mind and then show it to anybody. Anybody will certify you as mad! If this is your writing, you are mad; but this is your mind.

Don't be afraid. Go with the feeling that comes to you, go' with that call, follow that hint. And if you disappear, disappear! What is there to lose? What have you got to lose? I have disappeared - I have not lost anything!

You also disappear!

[The primal group is present. One participant says that in the group he came to feel that he is very closed and self-controlled, that he feels imprisoned, much more than before, and as a result feels very sad about it.]

It is just that you have become aware. You have been in the prison forever; you were not aware, now you are. With awareness a kind of sadness also comes. When you are not aware, naturally you are not sad about it; when you come to know of it then you become sad. But with knowing, there is the possibility to get out of it.

So there is another part of it which can bring happiness to you: now you know you are in a prison, you can find ways and means to get out of it; and there are loopholes, in every prison. You can bribe... if it is an Indian prison!...

Or you can find a file and file the bars of the window. Or who knows? - there may be no guard on the door! It may be just your imagination that somebody is watching on the door; there may be nobody. Who knows? - there may be no lock on the gate. Start searching!

Yes, it makes one feel sad that one is in a prison; but it is good that you know; now there is every possibility to get out of it. The walls can be broken; you can find somebody who is outside the prison who can be of much help to you in taking you out, who can throw a rope or a ladder inside the prison wall.

That's what Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples: You are in the prison, I am outside the prison; I can help you to come out.

That's what I say to you. You are in the prison, I am outside the prison; I am ready to help you. I have found the way out of the prison; you can also find it. But this is possible only when you know that you are in a prison. If you think this is your home, a beautiful home, then there is no question. It is good; you are in a better situation. Yes, it makes you feel sad because all the time you were thinking, 'This is my home and everything is beautiful.' Now, suddenly you find that this is a prison - you have been deceived by others and by yourself - that this is not a home. You have been decorating prison walls and you were thinking you were making your home more and more beautiful. So one feels sad: the whole of life has been a wastage. But life is still there; you can get out of the prison.

And the prison is of your own manufacture, it is built by you. In fact you are the prisoner and you are the gaoler too. You are the prisoner inside and you are the guard outside. This is how the schizophrenic man lives: he goes on torturing himself, he goes on creating misery and hell for himself. He goes on creating more and more hindrances for his freedom, for his joy.

So you have stumbled upon the first thing, that you are in a prison. Now the second thing which will make you even more sad: you are not only in the prison, you are the prison. You are not only the prisoner, you are the gaoler too. The prison is not somebody else's doing; it is your own doing.

It will make you even more sad, but through that sadness a ray of light will arise in you, that if you are the gaoler too, then it is up to you to be inside or outside it; it is absolutely your responsibility.

You can be out of it instantly; nothing but your habits prevent you from going out. You have become accustomed to the darkness of the prison cell. Just because you have lived in it, you have started feeling comfortable in it. The air is stale, but this is the only air that you know and you think this is very life-giving. Come out of it and have another taste of a fresh air, of flowers and sunlight.

This is a good beginning. The group has done something immensely valuable to you; now it is up to you whether to use it Qr to become even more miserable. Each opportunity can either become a source of more misery or can become a source of a quantum leap. You can use the stone that is blocking the path as a stepping stone, and then you will be happy.