Every pain can become a satori
[A sannyasin who came to Osho because he has cancer of the foot, has just discovered that it has now spread to the rest of his body. He says he feels strangely at peace. He is returning to the West.]
Mm mm, no, nothing to be worried about; just go. But this time don't be scared of the operation: if they suggest any operation, go through it. If they want to remove anything, let them. Mm? don't be worried, and accept it so totally that you come out of it very much benefitted and enriched.
Every pain can become a satori... satori, a samadhi, it can become a breakthrough, because it is really the points of pain which become breakthroughs. It is through pain that one transcends, never through pleasure, because in pleasure one indulges and one becomes more and more oblivious of one's being. When everything is going well, who bothers? Then one is on a merry-go-round, lost.
But when pain is there, suffering is there, one naturally becomes more alert, more aware - one has to be: the pain is a great challenge.
If you accept pain, if you don't deny it, if you are not scared of it, if you accept it as part of life with no judgement, with no idea of whether it is good or bad - it is simply there, it is a fact, neither good nor bad.... Once you accept the facticity of it you start transcending, you become more alert, more a witness. The pain is there but you are no more identified with it.
The leg may be cut but you will remain intact. Nothing will be cut from you, your consciousness will not lose anything in it... and that is the real thing. The cutting of the leg is almost just as if you cut the sleeve of the shirt - mm? inside you remain intact: you are not your shirt, the sleeve is not your hand. In exactly the same way, the leg is not you, the body is not you. Even if the whole body disappears nothing disappears - one remains. So let this be a great experience.
My whole approach is to accept whatsoever life brings: accept it with gratefulness, with thankfulness.
Don't have a grudge. It is very natural to have a grudge but through having a grudge you miss the point.
You can be very very angry inside: 'Why has this to happen to me? Why not to others? What have I done - what karmas, what wrong have I done in my past lives? Why should it happen to me? I am so young and the whole life is there. The leg has to be cut or something else has to be removed - why am I suffering?'
Don't ask that 'why'. Things are for no reason at all. That is the highest understanding: things are, for no cause at all. There is no karma, nothing... these are just explanations to console people!
They bring consolation, nothing else; they don't bring any understanding.
Now, if you go to some old orthodox indian mind, he will say 'It is because you have done something wrong in your past life.' It explains; an explanation helps you to be consoled a little because somehow the 'why' is answered.
You may have murdered somebody so now you can see that there is no need to be angry: you did something wrong, now you suffer for it. You sow and you reap accordingly, so it is okay; it is just that one has to pay. Then it becomes rational but in fact nothing is explained. Why did you murder in the first place? The question remains the same: Why did you murder? - nobody else did. Then again go to another past life in which you were a criminal or you were aggressive or this and that, but it is just postponing the question; 'why' remains the same. It simply goes one step back and stands there 'Why? Why was I aggressive and others were not?'
So if you look deeply it is simply foolish, the explanation is foolish, because it leads to no explanation.
It only satisfies stupid people who can't see far enough, who don't have a vision to see the whole, so they just push it a little back, saying that in the past life you did something wrong. But why in the first life did you do wrong? There must have been a life which was the first - then how did it happen in the first life? Ultimately the total, the whole, remains responsible.
Then the grudge is there, and with a grudge you cannot grow because you cannot relax. It creates anguish, tension, anxiety, and with all that anger, anxiety, anguish, how can you pray? How can you thank god?
He has given so many things but you will remain confined to the leg. He has given you beautiful eyes - you will never thank him for that but you will be angry about the leg. He has given you a thousand and one things which are functioning perfectly; you will never thank but curse him. The curse can go so deep that in a moment of deep anger one can say that there is no god: 'If there is god, it cannot happen to me because god must be compassion, love... at least just. He is not even just - it is better to drop the belief.' Then everything is accidental: one suffers but there is no need to be angry with anybody because there is nobody.
That too happens to people: when they suffer they deny god or they find explanations somewhere so that the 'why' can be pushed backwards. But neither denying god nor pushing away the 'why' is going to help. The thing that is going to help is to accept that things exist for no reason at all; it is just as it is. It is a mystery - that's what I mean when I say it exists for no reason at all. If there is a reason there is no mystery.
It is mysterious... it is unknown. And all those who claim that they know are just on ego-trips. Not a single thing is known and not a single thing can be known. All our knowledge remains superficial, just an acquaintance; it never solves the mystery. So this has to be understood - this I call understanding - that not a single thing is known and not a single thing can be known... that ignorance is utter and ultimate but it is innocent and very intimate.
Things are as they are, and we have to accept; what else is there to do? In that acceptance is transcendence. Then you don't have any grudge; you are happy the way you are. And who knows?
Life is so mysterious that one never knows.
Once it happened that a young blind man came to me. He travelled from Kashmir - a very poor boy, with no money, with dirty clothes. I was surprised; I asked him, 'You are blind, has somebody come with you?' He said, 'No. I need not have anybody because I am blind so everybody helps me.'
He was so happy! He said, 'Because I am blind, everybody helps me. Somebody gives me food, somebody buys a ticket and this rickshaw-walla has brought me here and he is not ready to take money for it!' He said, 'If I had eyes it would have been difficult for me to come to you - I am blind, so everybody just has compassion for me. I am never in any trouble: wherever I am, somehow somebody starts helping me!'
Now, this I call acceptance. This young man has the capacity to become spiritual. He has found something beautiful even in his blindness. He is thankful to god that he has made him blind.
Just try to understand. Once you accept, doors start opening. So simply go. Not for a single moment be worried, there is no need to worry; there is nothing to worry about. The whole body is going to go one day, mm? - sometimes it goes as a whole, sometimes it goes in parts, that's all! So nothing to be worried about.
Go and surrender to the doctors and tell them that whatsoever they want to do, you will let them, and enjoy this whole trip. Meditate in the hospital: Lying down in your bed, relax, accept and enjoy whatsoever is available. You will come out of it more whole, more healthy, more yourself. And I am with you!
(Osho gives him a box) Keep this with you, and whenever you need me just put it on your third eye, mm? and keep it in the hospital with you. Just keep it under your pillow so I will go on working on you.
[Deva means divine, Osho explains, and veepul means vastness, infinity, unboundedness.... ]
And let this be your discipline: always look for the vast and wherever you can find the vast, become dissolved in it.
Watching the vast ocean by and by become one with it.... Watching, lose the watcher: let the observer become the observed so that you are no more standing aloof, separate from the ocean.
You have become part of it: the ocean is within you and you are in the ocean. Those big waves are arising in you, that roaring sound is your sound.... And you will find great glimpses of meditation through it.
Just looking in the night sky, become it - the whole firmament, all those stars, are within you.
Wherever you have a chance, wherever the vast is close by, invite it to come within you and by and by start losing your boundaries with it.
Those boundaries are just make-believe: we have boundaries because we believe. Those boundaries exist only in our belief; they are not real. Even in this moment you are not separate from me and I am not separate from you.
These trees are not separate from us, and this noise is our noise, because existence is one, it is all together.
But it is so vast and our minds are so small that we cannot conceive it, so we conceive small boundaries, we create very tiny boundaries and we live hidden behind those boundaries. Come out of them!
That's what religion is all about: dropping beliefs in boundaries, dropping beliefs in limitations and by and by allowing a merger, a melting.
Sometimes for a single moment the merger happens and then there is great joy. In the beginning it will be only for a moment but once you have tasted it, it will be coming more and more. Sometimes it will stay a little longer and you will be thrilled you will not be able to believe that this can happen.
When it happens it is incredible, unbelievable, but once it has started happening, then more and more is going to come because you become more and more capable of absorbing it, of allowing it.
God need not be searched for, god only needs to be allowed. He is searching for you; from every nook and corner of existence he is trying to approach you, to find where you are lost.
In the bible there is an old story.... When Adam disobeys god and eats the fruit of knowledge he becomes very much afraid, naturally - sooner or later he will be found. He starts feeling guilty just like a small child who has committed something which the father has said not to do. Mm? just like the small child he is afraid and he is hiding... and because he is hiding he has been found. If he were not afraid, if he were not guilty, it would be possible that god might not even suspect.
But god comes, looks around. Adam is hiding somewhere and god starts searching - where has he gone? All over the garden he goes on calling him, 'Adam, where are you?'
And my feeling is that since that time he has been calling, 'Where are you?' From every nook and corner he goes on calling, 'Where are you?'... and every Adam is hiding.
Come out of this hiding and start merging, melting!....
[A sannyasin, who is setting up a weaving workshop for sannyasins, says: I find that there's a conflict. You talked before about art being between science and religion. My mind starts thinking and then I can't tell it to shut up when I'm working. I have the need to work things out with the head and then it won't stop.]
There is not really any necessary conflict between religion, science and art. We have created the conflict, that's true, but there need not be, and in a real person there is none.
Religion is the goal, science is the technique, art is the way. In a really integrated person that's how it happens: he uses all the science that is possible to move on the way. Science makes it quicker to move; it helps tremendously. If science itself does not become the end it is of great value. When the means start pretending to be the end, then the trouble arises.
Science is not the goal: science cannot give any value to human life but it can enhance values. It can create a better world in which values can exist more easily. It can destroy poverty, it can destroy illness. Just by destroying illness nothing is achieved, but when you remove the weeds from the garden there is a possibility for the roses to grow better.
Just by removing the weeds, roses will not grow - that's true: you will have to bring the roses too.
Just removing the weeds is not enough; it is necessary but not enough Then you have to bring the rose bushes, you have to plant the rose bushes. But once the weeds are removed there is more possibility of bigger roses flowering.
Religion is the ultimate goal. Science can make the earth so beautiful, so happy, that prayer will become easier. When a person is starving it is difficult for him to pray. In fact to expect prayer from a starving person is cruel; it is hard. When the person is well-fed, well-sheltered, lives in convenience and comfort, it is easier for prayer to arise. Prayer is like a rose, it is the ultimate luxury, but the basic necessities religion cannot provide. That's why religious countries have remained poor, the east has remained poor.
That's a great experience for the whole world: why has the east remained poor? Religion cannot provide the basic necessities, it has nothing to do with them; to ask that from religion is nonsense.
If you want to make a house you have to ask the architect, not the mystic. If you want to grow more food you have to ask the agriculturist, not the mystic. And if you want to create factories to produce more things, to help people live better, if you want a better standard of life you have to ask the scientist.
When all have done their work - the architect has made the house and the road, the scientist has made the factory and the technology, the agriculturist has done farming - when all have done their work, then comes the mystic; only then can he come! He is the last! Only then does prayer and god become meaningful and significant.
You don't play a guitar before a starving and dying man. He will kill you, he will destroy your guitar; he is not ready to listen to music. You are offending him by playing music.
So there is not necessarily any conflict, not for me at least. My whole approach is that science is the servant and religion is the master; religion should remain the ultimate value. It is not against science: science paves the way for it. And art should be the middle-man between the master and the servant... the manager.
Art is the bridge. When somebody lives comfortably, when basic necessities are fulfilled, then art is needed. Look at it in this way: science is like the body, art is like the mind, religion is like the soul.
When the body has its desires fulfilled the mind starts asking for something - good music, painting, art, sculpture, novels, poetry. When the body is fulfilled the mind starts asking for new things. When the body is fulfilled the desires of the mind arise, never before it. That is a higher desire, the desire of the mind.
To ask for Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart or to ask for Shakespeare or Milton, is a higher need; to ask for bread is a lower need. That's what Jesus means when he says 'Man cannot be satisfied by bread alone.' Yes, bread is needed - he is not saying that man can be satisfied without bread; nobody can be, even jesus needs bread - but that cannot be enough.
Once bread is there, once your stomach is contented, a new desire, a higher desire, arises in your mind; you start desiring beautiful music and poetry and song and dance. Now what else is there to do? The body is fulfilled; psychological need arises.
When psychological needs are fulfilled - you have Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner and Shakespeare and Milton and Tennyson - then suddenly a still higher need, the spirit, the spiritual need, arises. You start asking, 'What is prayer? What is meditation? What is god? What is the ultimate meaning of life?' Now, even music is not enough, painting is not enough; you want the ultimate meaning of life.
So there is a hierarchy: the science is the base, art is the structure of the temple and religion is the golden peak. There is no need to be worried. Don't look at them as if they are enemies; they are not.
Look at life with a total vision and let everything be absorbed in it; then you have a richness. There are religious people who are against science. They are foolish people - I don't give much value to their standpoint: they have been the cause of the east's misery, starvation, poverty, ugliness. And there are scientists who are against religion. They also are foolish, they are saying that bread alone is enough. A good house is needed, bread is needed, wife, children - finished; there is no higher need. They don't know anything about man, they are utterly ignorant of man's real needs. Both are wrong.
A great synthesis is needed between religion and science and art, between east and west, between man and woman... between all, a great synthesis is needed.
So here, living by my side, being my sannyasin, by and by look with a synthetic vision, mm? and then these conflicts will disappear.
Have you found some other weavers?
[A sannyasin couple say they would both like to do a group together.]
My feeling is that you still should continue to do a few groups separately, mm? Become a little stronger, because to do a group together needs more strength. It can shatter the relationship if you are not strong enough. That's why I don't allow people to do groups together, mm? - because a relationship is a very fragile thing. The most fragile thing in the world is a relationship between two human beings. It is very difficult to have a relationship, it is very easy to destroy it.
A group is a hard thing for a relationship because sometimes what happens.... The whole approach of the group method is that you have to be true and our so-called relationships exist on lies - not deliberate lies, not that you are lying deliberately... poetic lies. They are not deliberate in any way relationships move on these lies: these lies function like a lubricant.
In a group you have to be true or you will miss the group process. You have to be true, you have to be utterly true; you have to be very sincere and honest. Then many things will bubble up, many things will surface which may destroy your relationship. If you are not strong enough the relationship can simply disappear. If you are very strong the group process will help your relationship to become even stronger.
This is strange but this is how it is: a weaker relationship will die, a stronger relationship will become more strong. This is the strange arithmetic of life, but that's what Jesus says - that those who have, more will be given to them, and those who don't have, even that which they have will be taken away.
So if you are really strong then nothing can destroy your relationship: everything that can destroy it will help it to become more strong, each problem, each challenge. You will find you have come out of it stronger, integrated. But if the relationship is fragile, as ninety-nine per-cent of relationships are, then once it is broken, it is like glass broken: you cannot put it together. You can glue it together but a glued mirror is a glued mirror; it will never be the same again.
So why are you in such a hurry to glue it together?
[The couple say that they did primal and marathon groups together in the West, and the relationship was better for it.]
Then you can do a group. I'm not.... That's not a problem for me. If you have done a group before and you feel the relationship becomes stronger, try it again! But here groups are different.
The groups you have done in the West are so-so, lukewarm. Here, things are really strong, because I don't believe in homeopathic doses, I believe in allopathic doses, mm?
But try - nothing wrong. Try them... it is worth trying, so both book for Encounter together, mm?
[Osho suggests some groups they should first do separately.]
And don't be worried - we will see. I will tell [the group leader] to be really hard on you! If you can survive after [his] group, then you are really married! In fact every person who wants to get married should pass through some group like Encounter. If you can pass through the encounter and come out alive and safe, only then should you get married, otherwise not.
In a better world every magistrate will ask first, 'Have you done the Encounter together?' A certificate will be needed, mm? Do it! Good!
[A sannyasin, who is a teacher in the West, feels he doesn't get enough time to himself, so he thinks to leave teaching and find other work. He works five to six hours a day plus many conferences.]
I understand, but in a school you get so many holidays. I don't know how many in Germany, but in India you have at least six months... per year. The reason is that there are so many religions and every religion has its festival days and all festival days have to be.... So the total amount of freedom in a school is more here than anywhere else. But my feeling is that everywhere the total amount of freedom is more in a school than in any other job: you have summer vacations and this vacation and that, and christmas vacations.
Count all that, then you will not find more than six hours or five hours per day. And this much we should not worry about.
The few things that you can avoid, avoid. For example, conferences cannot be a must, many of them can be avoided; at least you can be there but not present. I have been a teacher so I know how to be.... You can simply sit and meditate there and let the conference continue!
If you have a few hours free in the day, then make it a point to move somewhere or to just close your eyes and sit in the staff room and meditate.
Soon people will start feeling that this man is a little eccentric, so allow him... and with this dress (indicating the orange robe) it will be easier, mm?
When you go back just pretend that you have gone completely bizarre.... Berserk!... Mad! That will help, mm?
[If he can't adjust he should seek other work Osho says, but suggests he try to work something out first.]
[A sannyasin asks about writing poetry. After he's done groups and is in a meditative space, he finds that words come to him easily - as if they're not from the head at all. It can happen, Osho nods.
The groups cleanse your inner passage: they flood you with emotion and then you start overflowing.
All the accumulated dust and various blocks leave your system, so for a few days after the group your system is clean, innocent. In such a state, Osho continues, you can receive messages from the beyond. In fact that beyond is your within, the deepest core of your being. The words will be not from your head but from your very centre... the words will have a poetry of their own.]
[A non-sannyasin visitor, wrote to Osho a few days ago because the violence in the group upset him. You're new here, says Osho, that's why you don't understand it. We are born with the capacity to love, but the anger, destructiveness and violence we are forced to repress as children, impedes its flow. It cannot be unblocked unless violence is released and experienced consciously - and the groups provide a setting in which that can happen.... ]
So we have three kinds of groups here. The first kind of groups are hell groups, mm? You passed through hell, and this man, (the leader) is a devil! The second type of groups are purgatory - a little mild. Once you have passed through hell, you pass through those. The third kind of groups are like heaven - relaxing, peaceful, loving: hypnotherapy, vipassana. And these three groups have to be passed through in that sequence: hell, purgatory, heaven. When you have passed these three, I am the fourth and the last: nirvana!
So it is natural that you became disturbed, it is natural a few people become disturbed. But one has to pass through it. It is very deliberately so. mm? Good!