Life is in Movement
Dervish means a sufi mystic, a sufi seeker, and anand means bliss - a blissful seeker.
Sufism is a mohammedan path...
It is just like Zen. Zen is the essence of Buddhism and Sufism is the essence of Mohammedanism, Islam, just as Yoga is the very essence of Hinduism. Only the names are different, but if you try to understand them, they are all one: Sufism, Yoga, Zen. The essential thing is one but their terminology is different.
Sufism has a mohammedan terminology, a very beautiful terminology.
[A sannyasin says: I 'm still getting migraine and I feel it must be something very deep. I don't go into it as much - I keep on working and it often dissolves. But often I long for night-time to just go into oblivion.]
No, it is nothing deep. Even the head is not very deep, so how can a headache be? You have just got into the habit of it. It is really no more a disease but just a learned habit.
It can happen that a real disease may disappear and it will leave just a trace. The mind takes the cue from that trace and starts imagining it again and again and again. But as far as you and your misery is concerned, it is the same; whether it is real or unreal makes no difference. Just by saying it is unreal or mental does not help at all because you suffer almost in the same way. I see it is just a learned pattern.
So you have to unlearn it. Migraine is more or less always a habit. You have much energy. That's why when you are using it, the headache disappears. When you are not using it the energy accumulates and moves into the channel and again the headache is there. So if you are really into the work deeply, the headache may dissolve into it because it will not be getting energy.
Forget all about it. Paying attention to it is bad; even thinking about it is bad. If it happens, it is okay.
Just say, 'Hello, how are you?' and forget all about it. Put your energy more and more into work. You have a tremendous amount of energy, an extraordinary amount of energy. You are not a low energy person; you are a high energy person.
All the energy has to be used creatively, otherwise it will give you trouble. Even energy, something so valuable as energy, can become a curse if you don't use it. So simply use it. Move into work more and more and let work be your meditation. Don't pay much attention to the migraine, and suddenly one day you will recognise that for many days it has not happened. But then don't worry about that!
It may be concerned with your sex because it is concerned with energy. Anything concerned with energy is also concerned with sex. Migraine has its origin somewhere in sex energy. The energy arises too much at the sex centre and you don't know what to do with it, so it takes its roots wheresoever it can. Now, up to your third eye centre the energy is moving in a haphazard way; that's why you get the migraine. If the same energy moves in a right channel, you will start having many yogic experiences, because it is the same energy and at the same place where migraine starts. It is the same place where people start having tremendously beautiful experiences of light, colours, smells. But your energy is moving in a zig-zag way.
Once your migraine has disappeared for a few days I will give you a method to move that energy into a right channel. Right now if you try to move it, it will move into the old channel again, because the old channel has become very very deep. Whenever you try to move the energy, it will move in the old channel and will give you a headache. For a few days those channels have to be stopped completely.
So just be indifferent. Put your energy somewhere else so that the energy moves into the work and the level of energy falls below so it doesn't reach the head. Because this energy is moving so fast and reaches your head so easily, it may prove a blessing later on. When the right channel has been broken, you may be very easily able to bring the energy up. So don't be worried about it.
[The encounter group is attending darshan. One participant says: I got angry and hit the wall. When I found energy did move, it really amazed me. I mean, how can all energy be stopped by fear?]
Fear can stop energy because basically fear is nothing but a shrinking. When you are happy you expand, when you are unafraid you expand. When you are afraid you shrink, you hide in your shell, because if you go out there may be some danger. You shrink in every way - in love, in relationships, in meditation, in every way. You are afraid to go out. You become a turtle and you shrink inside.
Because of that shrinking, fear stops all movement of energy, and if you remain in fear continuously, as many people live, constantly in fear, by and by the elasticity of energy is lost. Then you become a stagnant pool. You are no more flowing, no more a river. Then one feels more and more dead, more and more dead every day.
Life is in contact. Life is in flow... Life is in movement. To be stagnant is to commit suicide. It is just as if you bring your hand near a flame. The moment you feel it is hot, your hand shrinks back. But this is good... this is a natural protection.
One should use fear when needed. When the house is on fire you have to escape. You don't try being unafraid there or you will be a fool. Fear has a natural use. One should remain capable of shrinking also because there are moments when one needs to stop the flow. But those moments should not become one's habitual pattern. One should not start living in that way continuously. One should be able to go out, to come in, to go out, to come in. This is the flexibility: expansion, shrinking, expansion, shrinking. It is just like breathing. You breathe out, the chest falls down, the lungs shrink.
You breathe in, the lungs expand.
People who are very much afraid don't breathe deeply, because even that expansion gives fear.
They start breathing very shallowly. Their chest will shrink; they will have a sunken chest.
So that's right. Try to find out ways to make your energy move. Even sometimes anger is good. At least it makes your energy move. If you have to choose between fear and anger, choose anger. At least it will make you more dynamic, more alive. At least you will have some sort of contact with somebody. You may have a good fight with somebody but at least it is some sort of contact. You will not be frozen, you will have some warmth.
So always remember that... but don't go to the other extreme. Expansion is good but you should not become addicted to it. It should not become again a sort of incapacity so that you cannot shrink.
The real thing to remember is flexibility: the capacity to move from one end to another, from one extreme to another. A man is young in proportion to his flexibility. Watch a small child. He's so soft, tender and flexible. As you grow old everything becomes tight, hard, inflexible. That is the old age.
Remember, a man can remain absolutely young to the very moment of death if he remains flexible.
That will give you a depth of life, a qualitative life.
[Another participant says: This was the first time I've ever done any sort of group with anybody anywhere and it really frightened me. I get so tight that I can't let go. I become tight here (indicating her belly) and when I'm really under pressure I feel sick.]
Your training in Yoga is the cause of it. That's what I mean when I say that Yoga is not enough. It makes you very controlled, and every sort of control is a sort of repression. So you repress and then you forget all about the repression. It moves into the stomach, and near the diaphragm all those repressed things collect. The stomach is the only space where you can go on throwing things; nowhere else is there any space. The english expression is good when people say 'I cannot stomach it'. That is exactly the right expression.
You need many more groups to help you explode. The day your control explodes, you will feel so free, so alive. You will feel reborn, because it will connect your divided body. The diaphragm is the place where the body is divided; the upper and lower. In all the old religious teachings, the lower is condemned and the upper seems to be really something high, something superior, something holier. It is nothing. The body is one and this bifurcation is dangerous; it makes you split. By and by you deny many things in life. Whatsoever you exclude from your life will take its revenge some day.
It will come as a disease.
Now medical researchers say that cancer is nothing but too much stress inside. If you continue holding this, it can give you a certain type of deep stress there. It can become dangerous.
Cancer exists only in very very repressed societies, otherwise not. The more civilised a society, the more cancer is possible. The more people are cultivated, cultured, the more cancer is possible. It cannot exist in a primitive society, because in a primitive society the whole body is accepted. There is no condemnation. Nothing is lower and nothing is higher. Everything simply is.
It will be a little difficult for you because it will go against your whole training up to now, but once it is released you will become for the first time a real yogi. Then you can discipline yourself without repressing. If you can discipline yourself without repression, you will have a totally different type of being .. . a grace, an inner freedom. It will not be in any way an effort to continuously keep something down. There will be no effort involved. The whole stress will disappear and you will be flowing and flowering.
[Another group-member says: I found that I enjoy fighting very much.
The group-leader feels as though she plays a role rather than being the way she is.]
Play, but play knowingly....
Play your games, whatsoever they are; don't repress. If the idea comes, play the game. Play it as perfectly as possible, but fully alert. You are a dramatic personality so enjoy it, and others will also enjoy it.
If you feel like being a child, then be a child and do things a child is expected to do. But be alert that this is a game you are playing and don't bring in any top-dog to stop it. Don't say, 'lt is bad and I should not be playing.' Don't bring any should into it. Just enjoy it as a pure game. It will help much release.
Even if a person plays a role there is some reason in it. That role has some significance to the person. If the game is played perfectly, something from the unconscious will disappear, evaporate, and you will be freed from a burden.
For example if you want to play like a child, that means that in your childhood something has remained incomplete. You could not be a child as you wanted to be; somebody stopped you.
People made you more serious, forced you beyond your age, made you to appear more adult and mature than you were. Something has remained incomplete there. That incompletion demands to be completed and it will continue to haunt you. So finish it. Nothing is wrong in it. You could not be a child that time, back in the past; now you can be.
Once you can be totally in it, you will see that it has disappeared and then it will never come again.