Darshan 10 April 1976

[A sannyasin says: I want to feel more of an intensity with you, but things seem cloudy. Nothing is wrong, and nothing is especially right.]

That's how it should be. Because anything special is not going to last. Anything special is a sort of excitement. No excitement can become a permanent thing. It is a honeymoon... it ends. It has to end. So there is no need to hanker for anything special. Just allow it. This is good.

There is no need to feel my presence too much because that can become heavy... that can be even destructive. One should become more and more normal, natural. And the relationship with me should almost become as if it is no relationship. Then only will you be in tune with me. Then there will be no excitement. There will be a very silent flow, almost invisible, imperceptible. If you would like to pinpoint it, you will be unable to. That's why the mind says it looks like cloudiness. It is not cloudy.

When the mind is absolutely clear one cannot pinpoint where one is. When you are really silent you are not even aware that you are silent; you cannot be. Only a mind which is disturbed can be aware of silence. A silent mind does not know. A healthy person does not know that he is healthy. The problem arises only when you fall ill - then the question of health arises. If the question arses to a healthy person, it simply shows that he must be hiding some illness somewhere which wants to erupt.

Lao Tzu has said, 'When I look around, everybody seems to be talented, so intelligent. I am muddle- headed.' And he was one of the most perceptive men in the world ever. He says, 'I am such an idiot that I have nothing to prove, nothing to say, nothing to be, really.'

So if you feel that everything is flowing silently, the river is flowing silently and there is no noise, it simply shows depth. When a river is shallow it makes much noise. When the river is really deep,

there is simply silence. You cannot see whether it is moving or not because the movement is so subtle. So this is good: don't create a problem.

The mind is a problem-creator. Problems arise in the mind as leaves come out of trees.

If for a few days there is no problem, one starts feeling uneasy. That's what has happened. I have been watching. There has been no problem...

[The sannyasin asks: But what's the point of my moving into the ashram or not?]

This is the point - that if you are out there you will have a certain excitement, this way or that.

Sometimes you will feel too much in contact with me. Sometimes you will feel too far away. I allow people to move into the ashram so that they can forget me completely. Then I become part of their being, and there is no need to remember me.

You eat something. When it is in the mouth you will feel the taste. You enjoy n or you don't enjoy it, but once it is down the throat you forget about it. It has started becoming part of you. Now I am almost down the throat so you will not feel me. But now I will function better inside you. I will become your blood and your bones. One has to forget about eating. Continuously remembering that now it is in the stomach, now it is being digested, now it is moving in the intestine, you will go crazy. You just taste it in the mouth, that's all.

So when people come to me in the beginning there is much excitement, resistance. People move to extremes, then by and by they settle. Once they settle, the real work starts.

That is the point of moving in the ashram - that I become so much part of you that you need not remember me. To remember, a certain separation is needed. To remember, a certain distance is needed. When you are really dose you forget. But nothing is wrong in it. The mind may create a problem, so put the mind aside.

[A visitor says he is afraid; he wants to take his time; he doesn't want to take sannyas just to be part of a crowd.]

... But always remember, trust in the unknown. The known is the mind. The unknown cannot be the mind. It may be something else but it cannot be the mind. One thing certain about the mind is that mind is the accumulated known. So, for example, if you come across a fork in the road and the mind says 'Go this way, this is familiar' - that is the mind. If you listen to your being, it would like to go to the unfamiliar, to the unknown. The being is always an adventurer. The mind is very orthodox, very conservative. It wants to move into the track, the trodden path, again and again - the path of least resistance.

So always listen for the unknown. And gather courage to move into the unknown. That's what I feel - that you want to move, but the mind says, 'Take your time.' It is not really you who wants to take your time; it is the mind who wants to deceive you.

One can become part of a crowd, and that's not good. Others have taken sannyas, others are taking sannyas, and then you feel that you also should take it and you become an imitator, a carbon-copy.

That's not good.

But you may resist only because others are taking sannyas; so how can you? Then again you are following the crowd - in a negative way. If nobody was doing it then you would have done it. Then again the nobody is the point of reference. Others are still in the mind.

So a person can be a conservative or a person can become a rebel. But the real revolution happens somewhere when you are neither. Because to rebel against the crowd is, in a subtle way, being decided by the crowd again. It is more subtle than the first. The first is plain - one simply follows the crowd. Everybody is going there so you also feel like going. Everybody will be pleased and you will not feel like an outsider; you will be accepted by the herd. That's okay. That's plain and simple that one should not do that - not at least with me. I would like to relate to you.

If you come to me because of others, that crowd will always be between me and you and it will be impossible to relate to you. I will always have to go via the crowd; you will have to come via the crowd. We will not be in direct communication. The telephone line will not be direct, and it will not be of much help. When the message moves through the crowd it automatically changes. Nothing can be done about it.

So you have to be immediate to me. But remember, the mind can say, 'Don't follow the crowd. You have to be yourself. Because the crowd is doing this, don't do it. Take your time.' Then again you are being decided by the crowd. The crowd is in your mind. You are deciding negatively, but the crowd is controlling you still. Drop that too. Forget the crowd!

... The very effort to be free of the crowd is doomed to fail. The very effort to be free from somebody is going to be dominated by somebody. You can go away, but you can never be free; that is not the way of freedom.

Never think in terms of being free from; always think in terms of being free for. And the difference is vast, tremendously vast. Don't think in terms of from - think for. Be free for God, be free for truth, but don't think that you want to be free from the crowd, free from the church, free from this and that.

You may be able to go far away one day, but you will never be free, never. It is going to be some sort of suppression.

Why are you so afraid of the crowd?

... If the pull is there, then your fear simply shows your pull, your attraction. Wherever you go you will remain dominated by the crowd.

What I am saying is, just look at the facts of it - that there is no need to think in terms of the crowd.

Just think in terms of your being. It can be dropped right now. You cannot be free if you struggle.

You can drop it because there is no point in struggling.

The crowd is not the problem - you are the problem. The crowd is not pulling you - you are being pulled, not by somebody else but by your own unconscious conditioning. Always remember not to throw the responsibility somewhere on somebody else, because then you will never be free of it.

Deep down it is your responsibility. Why should one be so much against the crowd? Poor crowd!

Why should you be so much against it? Why do you carry such a wound?

The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate. So the question is of your cooperation. You can drop the cooperation just now, just like that. If you put any effort into it, then you will be in trouble.

So do it instantly. It is just on the spur of the moment of spontaneous understanding, if you can see the point that if you fight, you will be fighting a losing battle. In the very fighting you are emphasising the crowd.

That's what has happened to millions of people. Somebody wants to escape from women. In India they have done that for centuries. Then they become more and more engrossed in it. They want to get rid of sex and their whole mind then becomes sexual; they think only of sex and nothing else. They fast and they will not go to sleep. They will do this and that pranayama and yoga and a thousand and one things - all nonsense The more they fight with sex, the more they are enforcing it, the more they are concentrating on it. It becomes so significant, out of all proportion.

That is what has happened to christian monasteries. They become so repressed, just afraid. The same can happen to you if you become afraid too much of the crowd. The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate, so it is a question of your alertness. Don't cooperate!

This is my observation: that whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible. Nobody else is doing it to you. You wanted it to be done, so it has been done. Somebody exploits you because you wanted to be exploited. Somebody has put you into a prison because you wanted to be imprisoned.

There must have been a certain search for it. Maybe you used to call it security. Your names may have been different, your labels may have been different, but you were hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison one is safe and there is no insecurity.

But don't fight with the prison walls. Look inside. Find out that hankering for security and how the crowd can manipulate you. You must be asking for something from the crowd - recognition, honour, respect, respectability. If you ask them, you have to repay them. Then the crowd says, 'Okay, we give you respect, and you give us your freedom.' It is a simple bargain. But the crowd has never done anything to you - it is basically you. So get out of your own way!

If you listen to me, I would like you to take a jump into sannyas. That will help. And let that moment be a dropping of the crowd: for, against - both! From that moment don't think in terms of for and against. Just don't think of the crowd - think of yourself. The time is short and life is so valuable.

Why waste it on foolish things - fighting with the crowd, escaping from the crowd? It is not worth it!

You are giving it too much importance.

But if you want to take time, you can take - that's up to you. But the mind can go on postponing - the mind cannot decide. It is impotent as far as decisions are concerned. It can brood, worry, but it cannot conclude - that is not the capacity of the mind. Always watch: your conclusions come from beyond the mind or below the mind. They never come from the mind.

If you fail in love with a woman and you ask the mind, the mind will say, 'Think, wait, postpone. There may be some other woman better than this, and who knows that you are not imagining things? She may not be so beautiful. Watch out! Take time and be clever, calculating.'

If you listen to the mind it will go on postponing ad infinitum. But you don't listen to the mind - and it is good that you put it aside. There are moments when you put the mind aside. You say, 'No, I

have fallen in love.' The mind says, 'Are you a fool? You are becoming blind You say, 'Accept it. I am blind, but I am going.' And it is good. . .this is courage.

Being with me cannot be a mind relationship. It is falling in love. . .in love with something impossible.

. .in love with something absurd.

Have you heard Tertullian's dictum? - 'I love God because God is absurd. He cannot be - impossible.' That is his credo absurdum. 'I believe in God because God is unbelievable.'

Tremendously beautiful... that's what a lover says.

I found that the aggressiveness I've had before in the form of intense energy, seems to be a cover-up for life. When it's not there I feel a lot of fear. I feel fear sometimes when I see that I have no control over anything at all.]

But what is the need to control? And how can one control? Life is so vast that we can only be controlled; we cannot be the controllers.

The fear arises because you ask the impossible. The fear arises because you ask something which is not possible at all, which is not in harmony with the real. How can you control things? Just think of the immensity, the tremendous vastness of existence, and of how everything is so interconnected.

How can you control it?

These are the two attitudes. The non-religious attitude is somehow to control, somehow to manipulate, somehow to dominate, somehow to boss. The religious attitude is understanding - seeing the fact that the total is so vast and you are so tiny that even to say tiny seems to be too big...

almost a non-being.

Buddha has called the innermost core non-being, because he said that to call it 'being' is too much; it is almost as if not. Even a drop is bigger. If you compare a drop with the ocean, and you compare a man with the totality, the drop is tremendously bigger than man - proportionately, relatively. Man is not even a drop in this totality. Just think of a drop of water trying to control the ocean. And we are not even that! So fear arises.

But you are creating the fear - it is your interpretation. A religious man is unafraid, fearless. Not that he is brave - no. He is unafraid because he has dropped that whole nonsense of controlling. He allows himself to be controlled. A religious man is possessed by the whole. He says, 'I am nobody, so take possession of me and lead me wheresoever you will. Thy will be done. Thy kingdom come.'

That 'thy' is not a tiny god sitting somewhere, as christians think, with a crown on his head, on a golden throne with foolish angels all around (laughter).

That 'thy' is this totality. There is no throne and no crown, no monarch, no king - nothing: no king and no kingdom. That 'thy' is this vastness, this immenseness of existence ... this isness that surrounds you out and in, within and without. How can you try to control it? What are you asking?

Fear will arise... death will follow you like a shadow, because you know one day or other you will have to fall down and disappear.

But a religious man, in deep prayer, accepts even death. He says, 'I am just a wave. It was your play to have me. I am here, but when you are finished with the game I will retire. I will go back to sleep, deep sleep, into the ocean. Whenever you need me you can raise me again. I will be ready, but it is none of my business to bother about.' That's how one becomes fearless.

So just see the point - and float, flow, and a deep relaxation will come to you. will surround vou.

Your whole being will become graceful, because when there is no fear one is graceful. Then there is no dichotomy. There is no fight, no struggle... one simply accepts. One is in total acceptance. Just try to see that.

And if you want to be afraid, then it is okay. If you choose, then it is okay, otherwise there is no need.

You live in total relaxation. Not trying, you become so calm and quiet. But just a tiny part struggling, the old taste continues, haunts you. One has to resist that. The ego enjoys fighting very much - struggling, conquering. Drop that ego! Drop fighting and the ego drops.

People come to me and they ask, 'How can we drop the ego?' They are asking again for a new fight. They say, 'How can we drop the ego? How can we fight this ego? Then again another ego will arise - the ego of the humble man, the ego of the simple man, the ego of one who has renounced; religious, prayerful - but the ego will arise again. And the second ego is going to be more subtle than the first, more poisonous, because it is more pious. And when poison becomes pious, of course it becomes more dangerous.

So simply look at the fact and float... and accept, mm? Then see what happens.

[A sannyasin says: I can feel myself moving from anger into sadness. I don't know whether I should try and get the anger out or just let it explode inside.]

Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger and anger is active sadness.

Because sadness comes easy, anger seems to be difficult. because you are too much in tune with the passive.

It is difficult for a sad person to be angry. If you can make a sad person angry, his sadness will disappear immediately. It will be very difficult for an angry person to be sad. If you can make him sad, his anger will disappear immediately.

In all our emotions the basic polarity continues - of man and woman, yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within won't help much because again you are seeking some way of being passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense, then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.

If you can float between anger and sadness, both become, similarly easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will b able to watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and then you can go beyond both. But first you have to b moving easily between these two. otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is heavy, transcendence is difficult.

Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike, fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody's grip.

Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent. then it is very difficult thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping out.

That forty percent will hang over.

So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies - to always let the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not worry, and you can escape.

Don't bring the mind in. Just make it an exercise.

You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to come. Every day you have to be angry - that will be easier. So jump, jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?

Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples never to start by dropping anything. First start by bringing it in, because only a person who can create anger on demand can be capable of dropping it on demand - simple mathematics. So Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to first learn how to be angry. Everybody would be sitting and suddenly he would ay, 'Number One, stand up and be angry!' Looks so absurd.

But if you can bring it.... And it is always available, just by the comer, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody brings an excuse. Somebody insults you - it is there. So why wait for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can't you bring it yourself? Bring it yourself!

In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable, because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody else whose insult has created the anger. That's not true. Anger has always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come up. You can give yourself an excuse. imagine a situation in which you would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say things, and soon the wail will be talking to you. Just go completely crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where they are exactly proportionate to each other.

They will cancel each other out and you can slip away.

Gurdjieff used to cal this the way of the sly man - to bring inner energies to such a conflict that they are engaged together cancelling each other, and you have the opportunity to escape. Try it, mm?

[A sannyasin said that he was having difficulty sleeping. Osho said that sometimes people think they have not slept, but in fact they have slept most of the night. He recounted a story... ]

I know one man who used to say that he had not been sleeping for years. I was staying with him - it was the beginning of the rains. In the night the roof fell in - and I had to wake him! He was fast asleep and snoring!

[The sannyasin said that when he went to bed at eleven, he was tired but he just couldn't sleep, because he had a lot of energy.

Osho suggested he do several things. Firstly he should go for a long and brisk walk between ten and eleven o'clock each night. Osho said to breathe deeply with the emphasis on exhalation rather

than inhalation. After the walk He should take a shower and then just simply sit on his bed, but not at any cost should he lie down till twelve o'clock when he should go to sleep.

Osho said that he should rise at seven in the morning to attend the discourse, and that he should have no rests on his bed during the day. He told him to try this for ten days and then to report back.]

[A therapist says: For the past few days I have been really happy and high, but it's something I find hard to accept.]

Yes, it is difficult, because we create an image. Sad people create an image of sadness, and it looks so against yourself to be happy that one cannot believe it. But change the image, mm? There is no need to fulfill the old image - no need. Throw it away, but remain happy now. It will be difficult... I understand the difficulty. If you make a poor man rich, he will continue to live like a poor man.

I once used to live in a very rich man's bungalow. A friend of mine came - a very poor man, a vagabond, a wanderer. I managed to get him the best room in the house, the best! It was really royal. Everything was the best it can be in India.

In the morning I went to see him and he was lying on the floor! I said, What are you doing?'

He said, 'I couldn't sleep on such a beautiful bed! I tossed and turned and sleep wouldn't come. It was too soft. I had to come down on the floor, and then I slept really beautifully.'

So we create habits, and habits follow us. So if you have been sad, unhappy, you have created a habit of being unhappy. Try to break out of it. Don't listen to it. It will say many times, 'What are you doing? It is not like you. Be unhappy as you used to be. That was so good.'

[She then says: But I keep, thinking that I want a man to be with and not a lot of men.]

Wait a little. That may just be a trick of the mind to create unhappiness, because it is very difficult to be with a man and happy.

If you want to be more happy, remain alone. When your happiness is really settled, crystallised, when you feel that even living with someone is not going to disturb you, then it is okay. Live with any man you feel like. Otherwise it may be just a trick to fall into another trap so that you can find reasons to be unhappy.

To be with someone and happy is very rare.

[Osho went on to say that when you meet someone else, problems are not just doubled but multiplied. He said that when we are unhappy we tend to attract unhappy people, so it was better that she become happy, and then she would find happy people being drawn to her... ]

... and if you cannot manage to find someone who is happy, I will manage telepathically! (laughter)

[A visitor says: I don't have any trust in myself or in anybody else... ]

If you don't have any trust in yourself, you cannot have trust in anybody else, because the basic trust is lacking. The basic trust is trusting oneself - then you can trust others. If you love yourself, you can love others. If you don't love yourself, you can't love anybody else.

If you are avoiding - and this is an avoiding - if you are escaping and putting yourself at the back, opportunities will never come to you. They will just by-pass you. You have to be a little more courageous, more adventurous. One has to come in the front and take an opportunity - and jump into it. But it happens to many people from a wrong upbringing.

You must have been taught to be a back-seater. To go to the back, be humble, just efface yourself.

That may have been somehow fixed in your mind; any past situation may have caused it.

It will be good if you can go through a few groups. They will be helpful.

... I understand that that problem is there, but that can be solved.

You have to pass through primal-type experiences which will take you back into the past and uncondition the mind from there. It is not a problem right now. Somewhere in the past, in your memory, is the problem.

The memory is entangled; it has to be untangled there. So whatsoever you do will not be of much help. You will have to pass through an experience in which you go backwards and relive your life.

That's why I suggest Primal Therapy.

If you can do Primal, it will cleanse your mind and you will be able to accept yourself, trust yourself.

Then everything grows out of that. One is not worried whether one is going to be rejected.

It is always fifty-fifty. If you make a move there is a fifty percent possibility of being rejected, and a fifty percent possibility of being welcomed and accepted. If you don't make the move, you are rejected one hundred percent. So it is for you to choose: one hundred percent rejection or fifty percent rejection. And that is the risk, all the risk.

If you go and tell somebody that you love him, he can only say that he doesn't love you. But there is no necessity that he will say no; he may say yes. But if you never go, nobody loves you.

So that is for you to decide. What is the point of choosing one hundred percent rejection? Choose the lesser evil, mm?

[The Vipassana group was present. Osho has said of Vipassana:

It is the only ancient method which does not use imagination. It is very austere, pure. The whole emphasis is just on being alert, that's all, so that nothing passes without your knowledge. You don't do anything to the facticity of life: you don't touch it, retouch it. You don't project anything. Life is no more a screen and you no more a projector. You are simply witnessing, whatsoever it is, with no judgement on your part of good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

[A group member says: It was beautiful... and everything was like a celebration.]

Very good! Continue that celebration... don't stop it. One day or other the group ends, but there is no need for the celebration to end. You can make it the very style of your life.

... help it to go on. Help it to go on... because the mind tends to fall into the old pattern. Whatsoever you have learned in the group - the silence, the celebration, the inner joy - continue.

The group is just a beginning, a triggering. Then you move on your own. Continue on your own for a few weeks. And if you feel that the light is getting dimmer, and you are not feeling so much energy, repeat the group once more after a few weeks or a few months. Then it will pay more, and it will go deeper. Vipassana is not a group that one can do once and then be finished. It is a life-long thing.

In buddhist countries, people will do Vipassana almost every year, for three weeks - all sorts of people. It is almost as people go for a holiday in the West to tour this country and that - which is foolish. In buddhist countries - Burma, Thailand, Ceylon - when people have time and they can have a holiday, they will go to a buddhist monastery to do Vipassana.

Every year they will come again and again. And this happens from the lowest, the poorest man, up to the prime minister. The burmese prime minister continued it the whole time he was prime minister; every year he would go. Then he resigned, and now he has become a buddhist monk. He is in India. Nobody would recognise him... he is just a buddhist beggar! The Vipassana experience was greater than his premiership, than all his politics.

So make it a point. When you feel that things are becoming dim, cloudy, and you cannot feel the same energy, the same vitality, then do it again. You can do it alone. Go to a retreat in the mountains and just be there for three weeks doing it on your own, whenever you feel the need.

[A group member says: I felt at times very sensual, very female. And something that is somewhat distressing is that thoughts of violence arise - against you and against myself.]

Just watch it, mm? Don't get distressed by it, because if you get distressed by it, it will continue. It means you are being too impressed by it; you are paying too much attention to it, feeding it.

Just be aloof. Just a craziness of the mind. Watch it... don't pay much attention. Whenever you love a person, you hate him also deep down. If you love me, you hate me also.

That's what is coming up, surfacing. The hate says, 'Kill this man!' and the love says, 'Rather, it will be better if you hit yourself.' But there is nothing to worry about. Just take it as a normal thing; it happens to everybody. Sometime or other this dichotomy of the mind surfaces. Be indifferent.

And in Vipassana it can happen sometimes that one feels very very sensual, because you are so silent and energy is not dissipated. Ordinarily much energy is dissipated and you are exhausted.

When you simply sit, not doing anything, you become a silent pool of energy, and the pool goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. It almost comes to a point where it is overflowing... and then you feel sensuous. You feel a new sensitivity, sensualness, even sexuality... as if all the senses have become fresh, younger, alive... as if the dust has fallen from you and you have taken a bath, and are being cleansed with the shower. That happens.

That's why people - particularly buddhist monks who have been doing Vipassana for centuries - don't eat much. They don't need to. They eat once - and that too a very meagre meal, very small; you may call it at the most a breakfast... and once a day. They don't sleep much but they are full of energy. And they are not escapists - they work hard. It is not that they are not working. They will chop wood and work in the garden, in the field, on the farm; they will work the whole day. But something has happened to them, and now the energy is no more being dissipated.

In the West you eat almost five times. The eastern mind cannot conceive of it. What are you doing - five times? Two times is enough! Buddhists cannot believe it - five times? Once is enough! But the West is so active, so hectic, that the energy is being dissipated. Everybody is boiling and destroying their energy. There is so much worry and tension that everybody is almost always on the verge of breakdown.

Now psychologists say that out of four persons, three persons are somehow mentally ill. Three out of four is too much! Then the fourth also seems to be a little suspicious.

I was reading an anecdote about a great psychoanalyst who was teaching his disciples for months.

He was talking about abnormalities. One disciple said, 'You have been talking so much about the abnormal mind. Please tell us something about the normal.'

The man looked puzzled, and he said, 'If you can find somebody normal, bring him and I will treat him!'

Nobody is normal... normality is almost abnormal. Abnormal has become the norm.

So it happens, if you sit.... And the posture of sitting is very very energy-conserving. The lotus position in which buddhists sit is such that all the ends of the body are meeting - feet upon feet, hands upon hands. These are the points from where the energy moves and flows out, because for the energy to flow out, something pointed is needed. Hence the male sexual organ is a pointed thing because it has to leak much energy. It is almost a safety-valve. When the energy is too much inside you and you cannot do anything, you release it sexually.

In the sexual act a woman never releases any energy. So a woman can make love to many persons' in one night but a man cannot. A woman can even conserve energy if she knows how; she can even get energy.

From your head no energy is released outside. It has been made by nature in a round shape. So the brain never loses any energy; it conserves - because that is the most important, the central management of your body. It has to be protected - so it is protected by a round skull.

Energy cannot leak out from any round thing. That's why all the planets - earth and sun and moon and the stars - are all round. Otherwise they will leak energy and will die.

When you sit, you become rounded; hands touching hands. So if this hand releases energy, it moves into another hand. Feet touching feet... and the way you sit becomes almost a circle. Energy moves within you. It is not going out. One conserves it; one becomes by and by a pool. By and by you will feel almost a fullness in your belly. You may be empty, you may not have eaten, but you feel

a certain fullness. And then the onrush of sensuality. But it is a good sign, a very very good sign.

So enjoy it.

For at least one hour every day, simply sit and let that feeling come to you. It will make you more vital, more alive.

... it is happening. And whenever it happens, you will feel an immediate shift. If you are male you will feel female; if you are female you will feel male. You will immediately feel something strange.

The moment your circle gets together somehow, the other, the denied part, erupts into consciousness. If you are man, then for the first time suddenly you feel woman spreading all over you and you will feel feminine. If you are a woman, then suddenly you will feel something happening as if you are changing. A denied part that has been in the basement and was not recognised....

Because all the societies in the world force a pattern on every child. They teach the boy that he is just a boy. 'Don't be sissy, don't be girlish.'

Every boy is both, and every girl is both. To girls they go on teaching, 'Don't be a tomboy. Don't do this, don't do that. This is for boys - not for you.'

Biologically, the difference is only of emphasis. Man and woman are not two sexes. The division is not so clearcut; they are not water-tight compartments. They overlap... they penetrate into each other. Man and woman are one sex - emphasis is different. Man is more man and less woman.

Woman is more woman and less man, but the difference is of degrees, not of quality.

But the training is such that a boy is taught that he is not a girl at all, so he goes on denying. That goes into the unconscious and goes on accumulating - the other part, the denied part. Everybody has to prove his malehood - that he is a man. Men don't cry, they don't weep so easily because they have been taught that tears are only for women. They miss much.

So when it happens that you become a totality, when even if just for a single moment your circle fits, suddenly the emphasis will change - the denied, fresh part which has never been used, which is brand new.... Your man part is almost used; you have used that part for thirty, forty, fifty years. Your woman is completely fresh, young, virgin. When she erupts, the old man will be completely thrown off the throne; it will be so vital.

So there is no need to worry about it, no need to think about it. Just every day for one hour, sit and enjoy and get into it... let the feeling possess you.

[Another group member said that he had unpleasant sensations and wanted to control his breathing.

Osho said it was that need to control that created the unpleasant sensations of fear... ]

... because whenever you are controlling something which has to be natural - and in Vipassana particularly, it has to be natural; that is the very base - you are creating a contradiction in the energy. So there is nothing to worry about. Continue for at least one hour every day.

[Osho said that natural breathing was when the belly goes up and down and the chest is completely relaxed.... ]

But a wrong notion entered into the human mind, and that was to have a small belly and a very protruding chest. The idea came from the body of the lion. The lion has a very small belly and a very big chest.

Somehow the human ego got identified with the lion, and the lion has a very small belly because he eats only once in twenty-four hours, and he lives only on meat, so much food is not needed. A lion's intestine is very small compared to that of a man; one fourth, not even one fourth. Man is a vegetarian, and if you eat vegetables they need to be longer in your intestines; only then they can be absorbed because they have much roughage.

If you eat meat it has no roughage; it is already digested food. The animal has already done the work for you. You are a sucker. You simply eat it and it is already eaten food, digested, completely digested. So a very small intestine is needed. But the foolishness of man is this - that he has tried to have a small belly like a lion.

Everybody has been taught to pull the belly in and not to breathe from the belly, but from the chest.

So chests have become bigger and bigger - just like Mr Universe's. Then the belly goes in. But they are ill people; they are not natural. They are ugly really. In a better world, when man has become more natural, they will simply laugh. It will look ridiculous that people tried to be like animals.

So man destroyed his very system of breathing. And then women got the idea that they had to have big breasts and a small belly. That started their unnatural breathing. Whenever I say to somebody, if she is a woman, to breathe naturally, after just four or five days she comes back and says, This is difficult because it seems the belly is growing bigger.' It grows bigger - but it is worth it.