If You Love Me, You are Caught!

If you understand me rightly, never ask my advice for details, because that can become a problem for you. You follow me? Just remain alive and spontaneous and full of feeling. Wherever your sunflower says the sun is, allow the feeling that way. And never listen to any other consideration.

This is courage... and this is authenticity. Authenticity is one of the greatest values in life. Nothing can be compared to it.

In the old terminology, authenticity is also called truth. The new terminology calls it authenticity - which is better than truth, because when we talk about truth, it seems as if truth is something, a thing-like phenomenon somewhere and you have to find it. Truth looks more like a noun. Authenticity is a verb. It is not something waiting for you. You have to be authentic, only then is it there. You cannot discover it. You have to create it continuously by being true. It is a dynamic process.

Let this sink into you as deeply as possible, that all that is beautiful in life is a verb; it is not a noun.

Truth, to be true about it, is a verb; it is not a noun. Language is fallacious. Love is not a noun; it is a verb. Love is in loving. It is a process.

When you love, only then love is there. When you don't love, it has disappeared. It exists precisely when it is dynamic. Trust is a verb, not a noun. When you trust, it is there. Trust means trusting and love means loving. Truth means being truthful.

And the criterion is within you - not in bibles, not in the koran, not in the gita. The criterion is in your feeling, your existential feeling. So whatsoever the feeling says, you move with it. Sometimes

it gives you great insecurity. Say okay to that. Sometimes it leads you into deep pain; say okay to that. Trust that wherever it is leading must be meaningful and significant to your growth.

Thought is very cunning, crude, clever, calculating. Of course it gives more comfortable ideas, more convenient. It always considers everything else except the feeling. But it is dead.

So go there, and just be without any ideas. If you feel like staying there and helping them, help them. If you feel like going north, go north. Or there may be some third alternative - who knows?

All that we can see is very small compared to that which really happens. Nobody knows. Life is unpredictable.

Remain available to the moment. Never decide beforehand, so that you will never feel guilty. Never decide beforehand; you will never feel confused. Never decide beforehand and you will never feel any conflict within you. So whatsoever you do, you do it totally; your act becomes total. And when an act is total, it is beautiful. When an act is total, it gives you peace, silence, harmony.

So just go completely free of any plan and see what happens.

[A sannyasin said that she felt she loved Osho very much, but that she was also very much afraid of him.]

(gently) That always happens with love, mm? If you love a person, you are afraid also. But that fear is good - it is part of love. When fear is there and there is no love, it is a negative thing. When there is love and fear, that creates one of the greatest values in life. That's what we call respect.

When love is together with fear, in the alchemy of the mind, a new chemical arises. That is respect.

Love alone will not give you respect. You love a person - your lover, your friend - but there is no fear; then there is no respect. You fear your enemy. but there is no love so there is no respect.

When you love a person and fear also arises, a totally new quality comes in - that's what respect is.

[Osho went on to say that God is both a mystery and a terror; that you can love God but you have to fear Him also. God creates both values in you - fear and love. This two-faceted aspect of God has created a conflict for many people because they think that God is to be either feared or loved, but that one cannot do both. Osho said that both attitudes miss.... ]

The very idea of God creates in you a new value not ordinarily known in life. You love Him, that's why you fear Him.

Why does fear arise when you love a person? - because you may not prove worthy. When you love God, a fear arises that you may not prove worthy of him. You start trembling. You love Him, you would like to prove worthy, but who knows? - you may not. You would like His love to shower on you, but who knows whether you have earned it yet or not? Fear arises.

Love arises because of God - fear arises because of you. It is very natural - and good. Fear alone is a disvalue. With love, the quality changes completely.

[A sannyasin says she feels sick and she did not know if it was physical or psychological. Osho said that it was not a physical illness, but that she felt sick whenever she had to work, He said that she

was lazy - and there was nothing wrong in that, but that she should be upfront about not wanting to work, rather than trying to work but saying she was sick all the time... ]

You people go on thinking in wrong terms. Work is not work. And without work you will become more rotten, because what will you do? Your whole energy will become just a whirlpool inside and will create a thousand and one problems. Work is needed... it is a relaxation. You create energy by food, by sleep. Where to put that energy?

You have to be creative about it. And work is a very ugly word, and particularly in the West, it is very ugly. That has created a certain subconscious attitude. In primitive societies, work is taken to be almost a play, a game. Everything is thought to be a game.

In a primitive village, even now in India in remote parts, the villagers will get up at four or three o'clock in the morning and the whole village will start singing. They are getting ready for their day's work. From every hut song will arise, drums will beat and somebody will start playing on the flute.

Then everybody will come out and move towards their fields to work, singing together in choruses.

And it continues the whole day. The work seems to be joined with play. By the end of the day they come back, tired. It has been hard work under the hot sun. They will return to their villages and start dancing again into the night. They will go on dancing late, and then fall asleep under the trees.

Again in the morning they are there singing. It is very difficult to decide what separates their work from their play; they overlap.

Once a man came to see me. He was a busdriver. Of course to drive a bus in a city like Bombay or Delhi where the whole traffic is neurotic, brings one to be continuously on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He was very nervous, shaking.

He told me, 'I want to get rid of this work. It is too much! I cannot sleep - it gives me nightmares.

And the whole day on the wheel in such neurotic traffic I cannot relax for a single moment.'

I told him, 'Try a meditation that I will give you, for seven days. Take this as a challenge - that these people are running into the middle of the road and doing everything in disorder. Take it that they are just creating a situation for you in which to test your skill. Take it as a play. Take it as a situation in which your energy is put to test, and your whole skill is to be judged.'

This idea appealed to him and after seven days he came and said, 'It has worked... tremendous!

Now I am not worrying about the road; I am enjoying it! The more disorderly it is, the more I enjoy it.

It is really beautiful how I can avoid all the problems of the traffic. When I come back home, I come almost as a victorious player; like somebody who has won a gold medal in the Olympics!'

Take work as a game and enjoy it. Everything is a challenge. Just don't go on doing it, dragging yourself because it has to be done. Then you will become ill. If you have to work for four, five hours a day and those hours are a continuous sub-current of avoiding it, then you are dividing your being.

It is not a question of work. It is a question of your whole inner well-being. You will become divided doing something for four or five hours which you cannot like or don't like.

So there are only two possibilities: either find work you like or become capable of liking the work, whatsoever it is. The second is the best alternative because it is very difficult to find work that you

like. Sooner or later you will dislike it. In the beginning, maybe you like it. Everybody in the ashram comes and in the beginning they are so full of energy. You also were full of energy.

Once I allow them in the ashram and they become inmates, their energy is gone. They start creating problems and avoiding work and this and that. If nothing works, they are ill. I don't say that they are consciously ill. I'm not saying that they are pretending illnesses - no. They may be getting ill, but that getting ill is also their work, their karma. They have done it.

First people come and they say that whatsoever is the work, they will do it and that just to be in the ashram is enough of a reward. Once the work is given and they are insiders, once they have settled and they know now nobody is going to disturb their settled-ness, then they start creating problems.

So the first alternative is to find work you like. But that is not going to help for long because every kind of work, by and by becomes boring. You have to repeat everything. The other alternative is best. Bring a capability to like anything that you do; whatsoever the work you can like it.

Try it. Find out ways how to like it. People want to find out ways how to dislike it, so of course they find ways. For three weeks, try doing the work and liking it. Enjoy it, and singingly. Let it be just a dance. If you are cleaning, it can be a dance, a singing, an enjoyment, a delight and you will be tremendously benefited by it. And all this illness will disappear.

[A sannyasin says: I m very tired of my mind. I mean, I'm really getting frustrated. When I'm working, I'm just thinking and thinking and pushing the thoughts away and finding them coming and coming.

They're so boring and always frustrating.

Osho suggested that she stop fighting with her mind. He said the boredom came through identifying with it. Just as birds go on singing each day the same song and the traffic noise continues without boring you because you don't identify with it, so the noise of the mind continues.

Osho pointed out that the mind is a very beautiful and intricate mechanism.... ]

There are millions of small nerves continuously working, clicking, giving messages, receiving messages, transforming messages, collecting data for some future use. It is a great office buzzing with much activity. That's what you hear, and you think something is wrong. It is just as if you are driving the car and it goes on humming and you say this is a boring noise. But how is the car going to function? It is not boring. It is just the noise that is created by the mechanism.

The mind is a very complex mechanism. You don't know the tremendous miracles it is doing. It carries in the substratum all the knowledge that the whole of humanity has ever gained. It carries the whole human mind in the collective unconscious. On the deepest layer, all that has happened to the human mind is also collected by your mind. It is not only that which has happened to you, but to your father, your mother, your father's father and mother's mother, and centuries and centuries back - from Adam to Kamal. All that has happened is stored and continuous activity is needed for it, otherwise it will become stale and dead.

Then there is a second layer, your subconscious. All your life instincts are there, continuously working. So much work is going on. If you feel hunger and the mind is not functioning, how are you

going to know? Immediately, much work goes on. Once the mind becomes aware that something is needed - drink, food... that you are feeling thirsty - immediately much communication goes on. It immediately gives you the hint that now you are feeling hungry or thirsty, that the throat is dry.

Just the other day I was reading about a child who died in New York because suddenly he started eating too much salt. Naturally the parents would not allow him to. He would not eat anything else, just salt. They threatened, they punished him, they did everything to prevent him, but the child was almost mad. When he died, the postmortem report said that he had a certain disease in which much salt was needed. If he were allowed to eat salt he would have survived - there was no other way to prevent it. Much salt was needed.

Just think of the brain of the child and what the brain was doing. The very subtle message from the deepest core of the body was coming that salt was needed. So when you are hungry the mind receives the message. When you are thirsty the mind receives the message. When your bowels are full and they want to move, the mind receives the message. And it is not simple things. The ears go on receiving the sounds. The eyes go on receiving the form, the light, the rays. The nose goes on receiving the smell. The whole body goes on receiving much information. The mind has to collect and file everything. The work continues and it is a twenty-four hour work.

Even while you are asleep, the mind continues. If the alarm goes, the mind has to wake you. If a mosquito comes and starts disturbing you, the mind will protect you. It will not let your sleep be disturbed. It will order the hand to remove the mosquito, or to kill it. In your sleep you will do that.

Something starts crawling on your feet and the feet immediately throw it off. The mind is continuously guarding, working, and it is collecting everything for future use.

Tomorrow you will need it. Today you think it is not needed, but it has to collect for tomorrow. Right now when you are listening to me, the mind is collecting because it is useful. Tomorrow you will need it. Some day you will ask what I have said and the mind may simply shrug its shoulders and say, 'I don't know because I was completely silent. I have not heard or collected anything.'

When you are working, the mind goes on rehearsing many things. It is nothing to be worried about.

One has simply to accept it. The antagonism is the problem. Just accept it... it is okay. You don't say that the breathing goes on monotonously, boringly - in, out, in, out, in, out - how many thousands of times a day? You are not bored. The blood goes on circulating all over the body and the heart goes on pumping - how many times a day? You are not bored by anything - just the mind, because you get identified too much with it. You think, 'I am the mind, and because the mind is working, how can I rest?'

You are not the mind! Let the mind work and you rest. Just start creating a distance. It's okay. Mind works - let it work. It does not need your help at all so don't be worried. In fact you are a constant interference.

There is no need to interfere. Let the mind work and you will see - by and by the distance becomes bigger and bigger. The mind is far away working somewhere on another planet and you are perfectly restful.

For three weeks try this. Just accept it and see what happens. But accept totally - no fight. It is okay. . .it is there, and it cannot be avoided.

[The Tao group was present at darshan. The groupleader says: I don't know whether it s good to plan. I often have unstructured kind of plans and it makes for a kind of challenge. But there's a part of me that resists this kind of thing.]

No, no need to resist. Nothing is wrong in planning. If you are not burdened with it, it is perfectly good. The problem arises when it becomes a tension in you. If you are playing it as a game, it is perfectly good. If it is a leela, it is perfectly good. If plans are fulfilled, good. If they are not fulfilled, don't feel frustrated, that's all. While planning, don't become tense about it. Remain relaxed.

The problem arises when you plan and the planning becomes so important that you are lost in it and you cannot keep your coolness. You become so hot and excited that you are almost feverish, ill. Then it is a problem. Otherwise, if you can remain cool, and plan, it is perfectly good.

Just try to remain cool and centred, and if you find it difficult, just leave everything to me. Go on moving and let things happen. They will fall in line.

I have never planned. In fact I don't know how people plan. But everything falls in line. Somehow the whole manifests and things go on happening. The beauty of it is that because you don't have any plan, you cannot be frustrated. You can never be a failure.

In Persia they have a proverb: If you sleep on the floor, you will never fall from the bed. Perfectly good! If you don't plan, there are no problems. All problems disappear. And whatsoever is good, happens, because there is no way to compare It with anything.

Wherever you reach is the goal because you had no goal to reach in the first place.

But that's up to you. There are people who cannot remain without planning. Planning comes naturally to them. If it comes naturally and you can remain cool, perfectly good. I am not against it.

If it comes naturally to you, then not to plan will be against nature. That's how I am contradictory.

The problem is, if I look at you and see that planning comes naturally to you, the real thing is not how to drop planning. The real thing is to make you more cool, that's all, and planning can continue.

One has to feel one's type, and I can see that you are a planning type, so plan, but remain cool.