You are the Master
Hridaya means the heart and deva means divine - the divine heart. And that is the direction for you to grow towards, the height you have to reach.
By a divine heart, I mean a heart which is unconditionally in love - not with somebody in particular, but just in love with anything, any person, anybody whatsoever. Love becomes your climate; not a relationship. A relationship can grow in it, but you have to make it more a climate rather than a relationship.
Ordinarily love is a relationship, and when love is a relationship you breathe only towards a certain person. You breathe him or her, but the passage is very narrow. The universe is so vast and love gives so much; why make it so narrow? Let it expand and be unconditional, because whenever there is a condition, love becomes ruined. When it is unconditional. it becomes divine.
And love is never satisfied unless it becomes divine because that is the deepest urge in every human being: to be so full of love that whatsoever the condition, the love goes on showering.
So from this moment, remember it. You will forget many times, but again remember. And don't move indifferently. You are passing through the garden; don't move indifferently. Touch a leaf, talk to a tree, mm? just say hello; that will do. No need to utter it loudly.
Indifference kills love more than hatred. Hatred is love inverted, but indifference is absolute negation.
People move indifferently. They look at people but they don't look. They touch people but they don't touch.
So let this be your basic sadhana. One day you have to come to the point where you can say to the whole existence 'Beloved of my heart'.
The more you flow towards that, the more you will see that it becomes easier and easier and easier.
A moment comes when you cannot believe how you lived otherwise. To live otherwise is simply foolish. It is unaccountably stupid.
Nobody is barring the path. It is just that inside we are solid like rocks. We don't melt, we don't flow, we don't merge. We go on trying to define ourselves as separate. So try to define yourself as one.
That means become more and more indefinable.
When you are sitting by the side of a tree, don't define yourself as separate from the tree. Let there be a merger. In the beginning it will be subtle; only the psychic energy will be moving. Soon you will feel that it is not only subtle; it has become gross also. Touching a tree you will feel not only a subtle energy has moved; there has been a transfer between you and the tree, and on the gross level too.
Your body is enriched... the tree is enriched.
We have passed through all these states. Once we were trees animals, birds, mountains. We have passed through all these states so a part of us still responds to them very deeply. The past does not simply disappear. It becomes part of the present.
It is just as when a snake is crawling. It pulls its tail; the tail is not left. Again and again it is pulled back, pulled again and again towards the body. Time crawls in exactly the same way. The past that you think is gone, is never gone; it becomes part of your present. Your present carries your whole past, your whole history. And your whole history means the whole history of the universe. Man is tremendously vast. Your present not only carries the past. Your present carries the future also. The past is vast but limited. The future is vast and unlimited.
So this is going to be your basic work: to be more and more loving. It should not be that because somebody has done something for you, you feel love, or somebody is beautiful so you feel love.
Those are charms, attractions; other things.
Love should be your basic attitude so that whenever you approach anybody, even a thing, even a chair, you approach it with love. You treat even things as persons. Soon you will see by and by, a deep urge has started arising, to say silently to the whole universe 'Beloved of my heart'. It will throb, pulsate, vibrate throughout your being.
[The new sannyasin says: The first experience I had of the spiritual was when I was thirteen. A book of yours 'Flight of the Alone to the Alone' describes the experience very well. Something descended on me and cut me from my body and soul and I felt completely alienated from the world.
Since then my path seems to have been very asocial, very solitary, and often I have been in very much conflict with society and even with people I love or who love me.]
Mm mm, I can see that. That's why I have given you the name Hridaya.
A few people reach that way also, but very few. It is unnecessarily hard. What i suggest is very simple, very spontaneous. People who walk alone - not through love but in isolation - will have a beautiful experience only at the end. And that end is not predictable. It may happen, it may not. It may happen today. It may happen after many lives.
But the person who follows the path of love has millions of experiences on the way. One who follows a path which is lonely, solitary, the path of the monk, attains one day, but the whole path is like a desert. with no oasis anywhere. It is unnecessarily sadistic.
When you can pass through greenery and beautiful streams on the way, when you can rest under big trees and when many flowers can greet you on the way and millions of satoris can happen before the ultimate happens why unnecessarily choose a path which passes through desert, through which you have to suffer much hell, much pain, many nightmares? There is more of a possibility that you will turn back because it is so hard. It doesn't lure you; it has no magnetism in it.
The ultimate can be reached but it will be very difficult to stick to the path, because the path in itself is repulsive. There are a few people who have reached through that path but they are exceptions.
They simply prove the rule; they don't prove anything else.
My emphasis is more on loye. Move singing and dancing. Move, making each point a goal and enjoying it as if the goal has been achieved. Why wait for the goal? When we can turn every moment into gold, why wait for the goal? And of course after many mini-satoris, when the samadhi flowers, it is a lotus flower of one thousand petals. But the path was full of small flowers. They greeted you; you enjoyed them. You come with many experiences; you don't come empty. The monk one day suddenly explodes. The devotee grows very slowly, very silently, very lovingly.
I can see that you have a tendency to be alone and that tendency can be dangerous. So you start working on love... and much is going to happen.
[The hypnotherapy group are present. The group leader says: It was beautiful. I'm happy with them and I'm happy with me.]
That's very good. And that's even better, more basic - to be happy with yourself. Then only can you be happy with anything that you can do. There are so many people in the world trying to be happy with others and they are not basically happy with themselves; everything goes wrong.
The first duty is to be happy with oneself. Then whatsoever you do will have a golden edge to it because that comes out of your grace, your silence, your love, and it carries something of your happiness in it.
The question is not what results come out of it. The question is from where it arises; not where it goes. If you are happy doing a thing, you will be happy whatsoever results come. If you are unhappy, then you will be unhappy whatsoever results come. Even if you succeed outwardly but you are not happy with yourself, it will be a failure. And even if you fail completely, utterly, outwardly, but are happy with yourself, contented, it is a success.
Contentment is the foundation, so become more and more happy and contented with yourself and let things grow out of that. They will always be beautiful and they will help others also. The action is not only a certain quantity of energy. Action is more deeply a certain quality of energy. When you do something, two things meet there - the quantity and the quality.
And the quality is more essential. That is the very soul of it. The quality comes out of your happiness.
You can put in the quantity without being happy but then that energy will carry something as a seed of unhappiness and it will sprout somewhere or other as unhappiness. So always remember when you do a thing, whenever you initiate anything ....
In the East in astrology, they call it 'muhood' - the right moment to do a thing. If they are going for a journey, they will ask the astrologer for the right moment. That is foolish to ask the astrologer - one should ask one's inner conscience - but symbolically it is very meaningful. They just don't start deciding to go anywhere. One should enquire inside, 'Is this the right moment to take the initiative?
Am I happy and contented? Am I moving out of a tension or out of a relaxation?'
If there is a certain tension then stop: that is not the right moment. The muhood has not come. Wait.
If you are starting to eat, wait. When you are contented, happy, flowing, then start eating. It is good to say grace. It is good to pray, to thank God, so that you settle in a contented state - and then eat.
The same food has a different quality to it. It will be more nourishing; and not only nourishing to the body but to the soul also.
If you are taking a bath, wait. Just before you go under the shower, collect yourself, calm down.
Then the water and the coolness of it will touch your very heart. It will not just be a shower of water; it will be a shower of grace.
So always remember that you have a basic responsibility towards yourself. And if you are responsible in that way, you will be responsible in all others. Very good... become more and more happy.
[A sannyasin had come to darshan several weeks ago (see 'Get Out Of Your Own Way, April 19th) saying he was surprised to read in a Rajneesh news-letter that fifty percent of seekers who came to Osho were homosexual.
He expressed concern as to whether he should remain in homosexuality or try to move into heterosexual relationships.
Osho reminded him that he was speaking to a certain sannyasin when he had said that and that what was appropriate for one person may not be for another. He said that soon homosexuality will be considered to be avant garde and progressive and people will simply start moving into it for that reason. Osho said that if he saw that someone's being was flowing into heterosexuality and the homosexuality was just a rationalisation, he would suggest that move into heterosexuality.
Osho told him to accept the way be was; and that God wanted him as he was and not to reject that.
Tonight he still expressed confusion over his sexuality.]
That is the cause, as I see it, of your depression. The depression is not the real problem so whatsoever you do with that depression it will not help much. It may postpone it a little but it will not be of any permanent value. You will have to tackle the real problem.
Either accept it or change it, but don't hang in between; there's no point. If there is a possibility that you can become heterosexual, then become. And you will have to do something, otherwise it will never happen. Move in that direction and don't waste time. Find a woman and fall headlong.
If I see that that is impossible for you, that you have no attraction to women, then there is no problem; be homosexual. You have to decide.
What do you feel? Can you become heterosexual or do you feel that it is impossible for you?
[The sannyasin answers: I feel that my greater part is homosexual, but actually I think that everybody is bisexual... I feel only a very little attraction for women, very little.]
... I'm not saying to deny your homosexual part. Let both be there. Become more bisexual rather than one-pointed. Become a little more flexible.
Just move in a few more heterosexual relationships. Even if a small, a slight attraction is there, use it as a jumping board. If you can become a little more flexible you will be able to accept your homosexuality more easily. Because then it will not be a problem. You know you can change any moment. When you know you can get out of the prison any moment, you can rest; it is almost a home. But if you feel that you cannot get out of it, it may be your home but it becomes a prison.
The basic problem is freedom. You feel hooked - as if you are hooked in the homosexuality mentality.
Just become a little more flexible. Once you know you can be both, you have a choice. Have a taste of heterosexual relationships and homosexual relationships and then see which you want to choose.
But then you are the chooser.
Right now you feel that you are being forced by a certain tendency in your mind. You feel crippled, suffocated. That is what is making you depressed. You cannot accept this slavery. It is not really homosexuality you are against. It's this slavery, this burden that you have to carry somehow. Even if you don't want to, you have to carry it.
So my suggestion is that you simply become a little more flexible. Just for a change move with a woman and see what happens. You may not like it; then you can always fall back. Or you may like it and you can go on still further. But one thing is certain you will be free - and that freedom will bring back your happiness.
Something has to be done. If you simply wait you will become more and more depressed. You will have to take the initiative; nobody can take it for you. Otherwise this sadness will become settled and it will destroy you in a very very subtle way. So first try a little movement to help you get out of the rut you have got into.
My whole emphasis is on freedom. One should be capable of being whatsoever one decides to be.
Even if you decide to be a celibate, you can become capable of becoming celibate. But if you cannot change such a small thing, if you cannot direct your sexual energy from homosexuality to heterosexuality, or if you are obsessed too much, you will feel the burden, you will feel loaded as if something is going on that is against your self and you are helpless. Change it. And when you become capable of changing it easily, it is just as one changes a gear in a car; it should be that easy.
One day you can try; for a few months become celibate. That is the best change that one can make:
from sex to no-sex. Then one becomes completely free. Then whatsoever one wants to do, one can do, but there is nobody forcing you, no obsession. You are a free agent.
But try. I don't see that there is any trouble.
[The group leader suggests: He thinks he 's born homosexual.]
No, no. Nobody is born anything. These are just attitudes we learn in life. One is only born with sex energy, and then we learn how to direct it, how to channel it. Of course when you have been channelling it into one direction continuously, it becomes automatic It becomes easy; it flows easily, mechanically. To change it into a different direction feels a little difficult. How to start? I can understand your difficulty.
(to the group leader) Just tell some heterosexual to become homosexual, and then you will understand the difficulty. That is the same problem for him. Tell some heterosexual who loves women, to love a man and he will be repulsed and ask, 'What nonsense are you talking?' Because the attraction is not there, so how to bring it?
But his problem is easier than that. He feels that both the parts are there; maybe minor-major, but both parts are there. That is creating the problem, and that is the solUtion also. There are people who feel one hundred percent homosexual, but they don't dislike it so there is no problem. Rather they are vehemently for it, aggressively for it. If they want to change, it will be almost impossible because they have not even a part in them. But then there is no problem.
(to the sannyasin) Your problem is that you have a little part leaning towards that too. Maybe it is minor - twenty-five percent to seventy-five percent, but that twenty-five percent is creating troubles. It will not allow you to accept the seventy-five percent. The minority will go on insisting that something is wrong. But that can become the solution also. You can move easily. It is your energy; you can divide it again.
And I am not saying to you to become a heterosexual permanently. There is no need. I am just trying to say to you to play with your energy so that you can become aware that it is not the energy that is forcing you in some direction. You are the master, and if you can decide any way, you can go that way. That mastery will give you complete freedom from this depression. Otherwise it will become suicidal. You may not commit suicide, but by and by the depression will slowly kill you. You become so depressed; almost dead. You will lose your sensitivity.
Just give it a try. If you have tried and you find it impossible, then accept the other alternative totally.
There is nothing wrong in it. If you enjoy using your energy that way, perfectly good. It is not for anybody else to decide; it is your private affair. Not even God has any right to decide how you should use your energy; it is simply your fun. No state, no religion, no priest, has any authority to poke his nose in.
You can remain bisexual. And a bisexual is richer in a way because he enjoys two types of food.
A heterosexual, a homosexual, is poor in a way. They can enjoy only one type of experience. A bisexual is freer.
The future belongs to the bisexual. It is a prediction, and it is absolutely certain to happen. After this century the world is going to become more and more bisexual because man is becoming more and more free and he wants to experiment in all sorts of ways.
I don't see that there is any problem or that you should feel depressed or anything - not with me.
With me you can feel absolutely at peace. I am not a priest, not a rabbi.
Try it, mm? You are almost ready to be happy! (laughter)
[A sannyasin says she has had a pain in the shoulder for three years, although doctors say there is nothing physical wrong. The hypnotherapist treated an acupuncture point which helped her relax but the pain came back.]
It is just a habit. (to the group leader) Give her a deep suggestion, a post-hypnotic suggestion will be helpful. But take her as deeply into hypnosis as possible first and then make the suggestion.
Make a combination. Hypnotise her and then suggest to her that you will give her three of these treatments to help the pain. Tell her that by the third treatment it will be completely gone and will never come back. So give the suggestion and then the treatment, mm? Work on her for three days.
[A group participant says that group-leader said he enjoyed being a loser - but he doesn't want to do that any more.]
Enjoy and be a loser! He is right but there is no need to create any trouble for yourself...
You will have to choose between the two. You cannot have the cake and eat it too; you have to choose. Nothing is wrong in being a loser. If you enjoy it, it is perfectly good, but then drop the idea that you are a weakling and have no will. Simply enjoy this. This is how you are. Accept yourself.
If you feel that this is difficult for you, then you will have to pull yourself out of it. Much struggle will be needed and you will have to work hard. I don't see that there is any need. A few losers are needed in the world, otherwise who will win? (laughter) Think of others also!...
Then this is your victory. If you become a perfect loser, this is your winning. Be a perfect loser!
Never win - let that be your goal. And if you succeed in it, you are victorious. You understand me?
Read Lao Tzu 'Tao Te Ching'. Lao Tzu is the perfect man to help you lose more and more.
There are two types of different possibilities - the male and the female mind. The male mind wants to win, to be aggressive, competitive; the will to power. Then there is the female mind, the receptive, passive mind; ready to lose. That's how it feels good.
[The group leader] is right - you have a feminine mind, but it is perfectly good. It has nothing to do with the body. There are feminine minds in male bodies and male minds in feminine bodies. You have a feminine mind. Don't call it a weakling, because there is some condemnation in that word.
Just see the point - that you. want to lose and you enjoy it; so enjoy it more and enjoy it knowingly, deliberately. Up to now you have been doing it unconsciously; now do it deliberately.
And see... soon you will be flowing and flowering. And I think if you try the opposite - which will not be natural to you - you will be in much hardship and trouble. You will become very depressed; it will be almost a torture to you.
But in the West not a single philosophy exists for the feminine mind. So the will to power seems to be the only possibility. The western psychology and everything is full of the will to power. Only the East, and particularly Lao Tzu, developed the philosophy for the other kind - of relaxing and losing; of not fighting at all, of giving way, of no resistance, no struggle. Lao Tzu almost praises the possibility of becoming a driftwood. He praises it tremendously. That too is beautiful. If you can do it you will be more in tune with yourself.
[The group leader] has simply described your state. He has not given you a dictum or a commandment that you do this or that' he simply says this is your state. Now you have to decide.
If you want to be an achiever, a power-maniac, you will have to fight against yourself. That is going to be hard and finally, futile. Even if you achieve it, it will be at such a cost that you will never feel happy. You are not an achiever; you are a loser. But losers are needed. Just as men and women are needed to fit each other, losers and winners are needed to fit each other; yin and yang. The whole tragedy in the West is that everybody is an achiever.
Even women are entering the competition and becoming achievers. The whole of the West is going to become mad sooner or later, because the other part is missing, so who is going to lose? Nobody is ready to lose, but somebody is needed to play that part also.
So be the loser, and feel happy when others win, because you have allowed them to win. This is your gift to them.
Life will take on a totally different quality. You will be able to enjoy it, and your enjoyment will be more subtle, more delicate, more valuable. It is just as if you are fighting with a small child and you fall down and pretend that he has won. He jumps on your chest and feels so happy. And you also feel happy because you know that unless you allowed him, he would not have been able. But he feels tremendously happy that he has become victorious and has defeated you completely. And look how he delights in it! So just delight in it and don't be worried.
[The sannyasin answers: I think I will have to do Yoga and such things to develop my body.]
You can develop your body, but there is no need to do it in a competitive way. Become strong - but not to win. Become strong to lose - and much strength is needed to lose. Weaklings cannot lose.
That's why I don't use that word.
Feminine energy is not weak. It is a totally different kind of energy. It is opposite to male energy but it is not weak. Will you say that the flower is weak and the stone is strong? They are different kinds of energy. Of course if you hit the flower with the stone, the stone is going to win and the flower is going to be crushed. But will you say only because of this, that the flower is weak and the stone is strong? The stone is dead - the flower is alive. The flower has something in it which is very very beautiful and divine... something of the unknown, something of the beyond. It is fragile - right - but not weak.
And it is fragile because it carries something so transcendental. Have you observed that the human child is the weakest in the whole animal world? But that is the glory of man. A human child cannot survive if he is not protected for years. Both other animals and birds are ready to move into the world when they are born. They don't need the father or the mother. That's why the family has not developed in other animals. But in man, it is a must. Without the family humanity will disappear because the child of man is so fragile. But I don't call him weak, because he is the very glory of existence.
Lions and tigers may be strong but what are they compared with a human child who can become an Einstein or a Buddha or a Christ? What are they in comparison? Yes, if the lion jumps on Jesus, Jesus will be killed, but that does not prove that the lion is stronger. It simply proves that the strong is just very low, like a stone, and Jesus is like a flower.
So don't think in terms of weakness. Think in terms of sensitivity, fragility. Never use a word wrongly, otherwise it can change your whole life pattern. Don't be worried - be a loser... be a perfect loser.
Allow people to win and enjoy helping them to win, mm? Good !
[A sannyasin says: I've got a problem with you. When I came to Poona I felt very open towards you and then when I did the groups - Tathata and Encounter - I began to feel some kind of indifference towards you. I'm really becoming afraid of it.]
Don't be worried. It happens. You pass through many phases with me. If you come very open, you cannot remain open. You will become closed, you will become indifferent. Again the opening will come and this time it will be totally different.
The first feeling of openness was your imagination. Now it will come more as a reality. But it happens.... Becoming scared is also natural. One feels nervous and wonder what is happening.
Nothing is wrong. When you first come, you come with all your projections, with all your imagination.
You project and imagine many things and you live in an imaginary world.
Then you come here and start working and walking on the earth. That imagination disappears; those projections disappear. One feels as if One is missing something. You will start feeling a different kind of openness which will not be of imagination and which will not be lost again, mm?
[Osho told the zen saying that at the beginning of meditation mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then all is confusion and mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers, until one day, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers again.]
... but in a different light - luminous. And not seen through imagination but through reality.
So don't be afraid... everything is going well and as it should be.