Darshan 26 April 1977

[A new sannyasin tells Osho she is unsure as to whether she should complete the last two years of her psychology degree.... ]

My feeling is, if you can complete it, it will be good. It may not be very beautiful to study, you may not enjoy it very much, but the ultimate result will be good. Studying psychology can be of help.

Even though the psychology is not very correct it still gives you a certain understanding about the mind and how the mind functions. It is not very great, it is not very deep, but it can still give you a framework - and with that foundation you can start working on your own and much can be known.

The mind of man is one of the most unknown things in existence. And psychology is very new, just like a child. It is just the beginning of the science - not even much of a beginning, groping - but this groping will become a science one day. And that's how something becomes a science.

For three thousand years man has been thinking about matter. Now he has been able to enter deeply into it and has come to know about the atom - but man has talked about atoms for many centuries. Democrates talked about atoms two thousand years ago. He had no idea of physics - just a groping. Of course his talk about the atom is just so-so, just talk. Mm? he is simply throwing arrows in the dark. His definition of the atom is not of much value, but that he could even speculate about them two thousand years ago, before einstein, is of great value.

Exactly the same is the case with psychology - it may still take two thousand years for the einstein of psychology to be born. Then freud will simply be a democrates who had been talking about the mind in the dark - but he started it. Democrates started the idea of atoms; it remained an idea for two thousand years, but then because of that idea something happened. Without democrates there would have been no einstein - he is the foundation. Howsoever immature he looks now, democrates is the foundation.

And exactly the same is the case with psychology. It is almost like democratian physics - it will take a long time, but it is good to understand it.

There are many things we live without understanding We talk about love - I have given you the name 'total love' - everybody talks about love, but if you insist on asking 'What exactly do you mean by love?' a person is at a loss. He will not even be able to define it. We love, we know we love - sometimes it is there and sometimes it is not there. We know it, but if we have to pinpoint it, suddenly it is mysterious.

Everybody talks about time, but if you ask what exactly time is, then even the greatest physicist is incapable of defining it. And so is the case with anger, with jealousy, with sexuality, with hatred, with all that we call our mind. Nothing is known.

Our knowledge is almost like a man who drives a car and who knows how to drive it but that's all. So he knows how to push a button and how to sit at the steering wheel, how to push the clutch, change the gear, and he thinks he knows everything about the car! He is not even aware that that is not the car - the car exists under the bonnet, and if something goes wrong then just removing the wheel or changing the gear won't help.

Almost exactly like that we are living - like a driver who does not know anything about the inner mechanism. If things go well it's okay, you can drive, but if something goes wrong you are stuck.

And much has gone wrong as far as man is concerned. So just being a driver is not of much help; you have to be a mechanic, you have to know the technology of the human mechanism.

So, if you are not too much against it, my suggestion is that you finish it. It will pay later on. And then you can enter into your own work upon it. It is one of the greatest adventures - to go in - and this studying of psychology will give you a jumping-board.

But still, if you don't feel like it at all, don't do it. Nobody should do anything which is not one's feeling.

but if you have even a little bit of a feeling for it, it is better to finish it, mm?

[She asks: Maybe I can finish it here, in India?]

That's a far better idea! You can come and study here - so you can be close to me and study also.

That's very good.

Prem Sital. It means cool love - prem means love, sital means very cool. It doesn't mean cold, it simply means cool. and there are three possibilities of love....

Love can be very hot - then it is passion, lust. Sexuality is on top of it; it is very physical, the lowest rung. Opposite to it is cold love - it is wrong to even call it love. It is dead love. It is a corpse, a corpse of lust. Sex has died and a coldness has entered. To call it love is a misnomer, but it is called love. It is very indifferent.

Between these two - the dead love and the passionate love, the hot love - just exactly in the middle is a point of transcendence where love is fully alive but lust is gone. Then it is cool love. It is not cold, because it is fully alive. It is not hot, because it is not lust.

From that midpoint there is a transcendence, and love becomes more and more prayerful. It takes the form of compassion more and more. That has to be remembered - that is one of the great experiences of life, to attain to cool love.

[The new sannyasin describes some experiences which happened to him during meditation.]

Mm mm, that's very good. All the experiences have been good and significant - but don't analyse them. Don't try to know what they are; just remember they have been good, then more and more experiences will be coming. If once you turn upon them and start analysing them, the process will stop.

This is something very valuable to be remembered, that when something unfolds inside you, don't jump upon it intellectually. Otherwise you will kill the flower. You will take the petals apart to see what is inside, what it is, but in that very dissection the flower is gone.

And the irony of it is that if you want to know what a flower is and you take the petals off, you will never know what the flower is. Whatsoever you come to know about it this way will be about something else - maybe about the chemical constituents of the flower, the physical constituents of the flower, the colour and this and that, but it will have no reference to beauty. That beauty disappeared the moment you took those petals separately; the moment you dissected it you destroyed it.

Now whatsoever you have is just a memory of the flower, it is not the real flower. And whatsoever you know through it, you know about a dead flower, not about an alive flower. And that aliveness was the very stuff, the real stuff, that was growing, unfolding, releasing fragrance. And so is the case with the inner unfolding.

Meditation will bring many new spaces. And this has been very good! But if you turn upon it and start thinking about it - what it is, why it happened, what it meant in the first place - you bring in the mind. And the mind is poison. Then rather than watering the flower and the plant, you poisoned it.

The mind is very very good as far as machines are concerned, because it can take them apart and put them together again. That is the difference between a mechanical unity and an organic unity.

Mm? you can take a car apart and put it together again - nothing is lost, because there was no soul to be lost in the first place.

You cannot take a flower apart and put it together again. Even if you put it together again it will not be the same flower - the soul is gone; it will again be just a memory of the old. It may look like the old but it is not, because it will not grow any more.

So the mind is very very clever as far as machines are concerned. That's why in the west where the mind has been developed to its uttermost, mechanisation has developed, technology has developed.

In the East, technology has not developed, mechanisation has not developed, because we never bothered much about the mind. The mind is a mechanic, it is a technician: once you give anything to it, it will take it apart, put it together again and will see how it ticks, will find clues as to how it ticks, and will make it tick.

This is good as far as dead things are concerned, but whenever you come to an organic unity, the mind simply destroys, it is not creative there.

Meditation is just the diametrically opposite dimension to the mind. So please, don't bring the mind in. Enjoy! They have been good experiences. More and more experiences will be coming of far more significance - this is just a beginning. Remain open and available; if you think, you will become closed.

Remember the difference between enjoying a thing and thinking about it. When you are enjoying some food you don't think about it, you don't analyse it; if you analyse, you will destroy all its taste.

When you are loving a woman, when you have fallen in love, you don't analyse love; if you analyse, love will disappear. Then you will be thinking about hormones and chemicals and a thousand and one things, but never about love. And if you say to your woman that your hormones are attracted towards hers and it is just a chemical phenomenon, the woman will never look at you again. Even when a great chemist falls in love he keeps silent about his chemistry and his knowledge about chemistry; that won't help.

So love, beauty, god - they are not things to be thought about, they are experiences to be enjoyed.

Taste them, be drunk with them! Next time when light comes again, dance! Let it fill your whole being from the toe to the head! Let it vibrate through all the cells of your being! From the mind to the body let it resound, let it give you a shower! And it will cleanse you, it will purify you, it will bring back your innocence.

And many more experiences will be coming. Just go into them with great trust - just as a small child, holding the hand of his father, goes anywhere the father is going. Now your hand is in my hand - that is the meaning of becoming a sannyasin. Leave it to me, the analysis part. Simply enjoy and go into it.

[A sannyasin asks about relationships, her marriage, and whether becoming enlightened is more important.]

Love is crazy, so you cannot make it sane. Love is insane - and that is the whole beauty of it! It is not rational, it is not even reasonable. And this happens to everybody: sometimes you feel like being in it and sometimes you don't feel like being in it. Sometimes you want to go away from the love object and sometimes you want to dissolve into the love object. Both are right - you are not to choose between these two. They are both together, two aspects of the same phenomenon.

You have to understand; it is not a question of choice, just a question of understanding. It is like day and night together. You cannot always be in love - that is difficult. Impossible! Sometimes one needs rest from love too.

So both these things will come up and down. Sometimes you are deeply in love and you don't bother about freedom. Sometimes you need your space and you think about freedom, and you don't bother about love. But both are true; one has to come to an understanding.

So if you are living with [him], create understanding, talk to each other, and understand that sometimes he needs his space. And this is a problem: it may not happen at the same time to both of you. Sometimes you want to be with him and he wants to be alone - nothing can be done about it. Then you have to understand and leave him alone. Sometimes you want to be alone but he wants to come to you - then tell him that you are helpless!

So just create more and more understanding. That's what lovers miss: love they have enough, but understanding none, not at all. That's why on the rocks of misunderstanding their love dies. Love cannot live alone without understanding. Alone, love is very foolish; with understanding, love can live a long life, a great life - of many joys shared, of many beautiful moments shared, of great poetic experiences. But that happens only through understanding.

Love can give you a small honeymoon, but that's all. Only understanding can give you deep intimacy. And each honeymoon is followed by depression, anger, frustration. Unless you grow in understanding, no honeymoon is going to be of any help; it is just like a drug.

So try to create more understanding with [him] too. And even some day if you separate, the understanding will be with you, will be with him, and that will be a gift of your love to each other.

Lovers can separate, but the understanding that has been gained through the other, in the company of the other, will always be with you. That will remain as a gift - there can be no other gift. If you love a person, the only valuable gift that you can give to him is some quantity of understanding.

[The Hypnotherapy group is present. One member says that although his physical body is relaxed, inside he feels tense or falls asleep.]

Sleep is a great spiritual activity - don't be worried! It is far better than your waking hours; waking hours are more worldly than sleeping hours. Sometimes in sleep your mind completely stops, there are not even dreams, and you are very close to home.

Patanjali says that sushupti, the dreamless state of sleep, is almost samadhi - almost. Just a little thing is missing, awareness - that's all. If you add awareness, it is samadhi. Everything is ready: the mind has stopped, dreams have gone, thoughts are no more there, the whole body-being is relaxed.

You are ready, just a little ray of awareness....

So don't be worried about sleep - enjoy it! Sleep is divine, more divine than any other time in twenty-four hours. So accept it, otherwise that will create a tension in you.

And continue to do the exercise that I have given to you. Even if you fall asleep, nothing to be worried about. If one falls asleep meditating, the meditation goes on resounding down into the layers of one's unconscious. If doing prayer you fall asleep, the prayer continues in a subtle way.

Have you ever watched one thing? - whatsoever is your last thought in the night will be your first thought in the morning. Watch it - the last, the very last, when you enter into sleep. You are standing just on the threshold - the last thought will always be the first thought when you again stand on the threshold and you are coming out of sleep.

That's why all the religions have insisted on one praying before one goes to sleep, so the last thought remains of prayer, the last thought remains of god, and it goes and sinks into one's heart. The whole night it remains like an aroma around you - it fills your inner space, and in the morning when you awake, again it is there.

Eight hours of sleep can be used as meditation. Now modern man has not much time, but these eight hours of sleep can be converted into meditation. So don't be worried about it. My whole approach is that everything can be used and should be used... even sleep!

And that tension will disappear. You are creating it, it is not really there. Because you want to do certain things - you are too ambitious about spirituality, and that ambition is your tension. Relax about that, too! It will happen when it will happen. When the season comes, when the spring comes, it will happen!

And there is no way to force it before its time. So whenever the time is ripe it will happen. Forget about it and in the meanwhile, enjoy. If you enjoy, the spring comes sooner, because your very enjoyment brings the climate closer and closer.

Ambition has to be dropped and then tension disappears. But I can understand your difficulty.

Everybody is ambitious - about the world or about god or about nirvana, but ambition is there.

Slowly slowly, understanding arises and one drops the ambition. It will happen!