Darshan 14 April 1976

[A couple were at darshan together. He said that he felt some frustration in their relationship - over just little things.]

Relationships bring up many things which are hidden in you. A relationship never creates anything.

It can only bring out something which is already there.

So never throw the responsibility on the other. The other is, at the most, a help to show the undercurrents of your mind. And that's how a relationship helps. It is almost a mirror - but you see your face, and Geeta will be seeing her face. Whatsoever we do, we are the source. So whenever you feel angry, remember - it is you who is feeling angry. Never make the other feel guilty.

That's the strategy of the mind. That's how one goes on avoiding one's own encounter.

When you feel angry just say, 'I am feeling angry.' Don't say; 'You have made me angry.' And that is the same with all emotions. You are feeling sad. Say, 'I am feeling sad,' but never say to the other, 'You have made me sad.' Nobody can make you sad; nobody can make you happy. If you decide to be happy, you are. If you decide to be unhappy, you will become unhappy - it is your decision. So use the relationship as a mirror and become more and more aware and alert.

But always fall back on yourself; then it can become a very very great situation for growth. And if you love, love is capable enough of surviving everything: sadness, anger, unhappiness, a little conflict here and there. If love is there it will survive all. And through surviving all these situations it becomes intense... more understanding, more mature.

These things are not against love - if it is there. If it is not there, then there is no point. If you love the other person you are ready to pass through all these dark nights because you know the morning

is coming... it is always there. If you love a person you can be patient. And love is so valuable that anything else is, at the most, a cost to be paid for it. But it is worth it.

The problem arises only when you don't have love. Then there is only anger and sadness and unhappiness. If you see that in some relationship, drop out of it. To be miserable is not only bad for you, it is bad for the other. Just for the other's sake, get out of it. Don't cling, and don't continue in it because that will be destructive.

And once a person learns how to cling to misery - that means once a person starts taking a morbid interest in misery, in fact has learned how to be happy in unhappiness - then it is very difficult. You may change the partner but with the other partner you will do the same. Or you may be alone, but with yourself you will be the same. So just watch, mm? Love and watch and be aware.

[The sannyasin says he is trying to find a reason for the conflict, and is frustrated by his girlfriend.]

No, nobody can frustrate you - that's what I'm saying. Always remember that you are your world. If Geeta is there it is your choice. Basically you have chosen her, allowed her in your world. And if you feel frustrated, just look into it; somewhere deep down you are frustrating yourself. You don't want to succeed in your analysis.

For example when a person is angry, he tries to analyse and go to the very root of it. It may be just a manoeuvre, just a superficial thing. He may not really want to go deep into it, because he may find something which he is not yet ready to face. Because behind every anger, you will find the ego.

So whenever there is anger, the mind doesn't really want to go into it, because if you go into it you will find yourself the culprit. So you will learn a thousand and one things to avoid. You can go on playing the game that Geeta is not allowing you. How can she prevent you? Nobody can prevent you from your inner analysis, nobody. Go into your anger and find the root of it. You must be trying to find the root in her; then she will frustrate you because she will want to find the root in you. There can be no conclusion. When you are angry go into it alone, because it is your question; Geeta is not related to it at all. When she is angry, she has to go into her anger.

My emphasis is that the individual is wholly and solely responsible, and it is all his game that he is playing. If he allows others to participate, that too is part of the game. Always try to find out how you are helping to create the problem - because that's all that you can do. Then drop your participation.

And the remainder is [your girlfriend's]. If she wants to continue to be angry, she will continue. But if she sees that you are not getting angry, not participating, she will start thinking. If you are getting out of it, she will start thinking about how to get out of it. You will give an opportunity to her.

... The problem is not really in the relationship, it is in the related persons, and reflected in the relationship. For example if you are an egoistic person, and you are sitting alone, there is no problem.

How can you create a problem? You need the other to create it. Then somebody passes by you.

He may not pay any attention to you, may neglect you, but now you are angry. He has annoyed you, hurt you, irritated you.

Relationships can bring things out. A relationship is not creative; it is reflective. So just for three or four weeks, whatsoever the problem, immediately go in and find the cause within yourself, mm?

Then we will see....

[A sannyasin reports on a meditation Osho had given her (see April 4th, 'Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle'): I haven't been happy like this for so long. It usually only lasts a day.]

More happiness will be coming, because once you have the opening for happiness, then there is no end to it. It goes on growing. Once you open yourself to unhappiness, that goes on growing. It is just a turning within you, a tuning within you... as if you tune the radio to a certain wave-length and it catches a certain station.

Exactly like that, if you try to tune yourself towards happiness, you will become receptive to all the happiness that the world makes available. And it is tremendous; nobody can exhaust it. It is oceanic... it goes on and on and on. It is wide... knows no beginning and no end. And the same is with unhappiness; that too is unending.

So the question is not how to change unhappiness into happiness; the question is how to turn your face. Ordinarily people are keeping their backs to the source of happiness, and focusing their eyes at the source of unhappiness. They become unhappy.

This I call the conversion, the turning; a complete turnabout, so you live in a totally different direction.

All meditations are nothing but just a help to turn you to something of which you have not been at all aware. It is just so close. You are unnecessarily thirsty, and just by your side a pure spring of water is flowing.

Once you know it you go deeper and deeper into that direction. A moment comes when you forget that unhappiness exists.

[A sannyasin says: I feel I can go deeper into myself when I do meditations at home, alone - not in the ashram.]

Very good... you continue them. There are people who find it difficult to do a meditation with a group, and there are people who find it easier to do it with a group. One has to find one's inclination. If you feel it better alone, do that.

Nothing else matters... only meditation. Howsoever it happens, allow it to happen. If it happens in the day, then the day. If it happens in the night, then night. If it happens in the city, then the city. If it happens in the mountains, then the mountains.

Everything else is irrelevant. The only thing relevant is that it should happen. Techniques are also irrelevant. Whatsoever technique fits you, that is the technique for you. So don't be obsessed that this technique has to fit. Basically, you are the end - the technique is just the means.

Be selfish and always find out in what situation, in what way, by what method, you are feeling better, calmer, more collected, centred - that's all.

[The T'ai Chi group was at darshan tonight. They gave a demonstration.

A member of the group said that if she did the exercises dynamically with confidence, she experienced a lot of tension in her stomach.

Osho suggested that each night, for fifteen nights, she should make her stomach as tense as possible for two or three minutes, bringing the tension to such a climax that she felt like bursting, and then she should relax it.

He said she must also be breathing incorrectly; that she should breathe not from the chest but the belly.... ]

Watch a small child breathing... that's the right and natural way of breathing. The stomach goes up and down and the chest remains completely unaffected by the passage of air. The child is in t'ai chi.

His whole chi, his whole energy, is concentrated near his navel.

By and by we lose contact with the navel. We become more and more hung up in the head and the breathing becomes shallow. So whenever you remember during the day, take the breath in as deeply as possible, but let the belly be used.

[Another sannyasin said that she had been trying to breathe in her belly, but that when she did she felt she wasn't getting enough air.

Osho told her to not worry about its being not so deep. The main thing was that breathing should be natural. He said the breathing should not be forced in any way... there was no need to make any effort... ]

Everybody breathes rightly in sleep because the interfering mind is not there. The belly goes up and down and it automatically becomes deep; you need not force it to become deep. Simply remain natural and it becomes deep. Depth is a consequence of its being natural, and if you insist for depth, it will never come, and your breathing will remain unnatural.

[The group leader says now she is doing T'ai Chi most of the time her energy oscillates between being really chaotic and open, and feeling blank and dull.]

It is something that is very complicated... and the complication is that T'ai Chi, or methods like that, are taoist. And the whole tao attitude is that the mind has to be dropped. One has to become as mindless as an idiot. So dullness in fact is not bad on the path of Tao. The problem is arising because the very word dull is condemnatory in the western mind.

In Tao, to be dull is perfectly good ! Lao Tzu says that everybody is so intelligent; he is so muddle- headed. 'Everybody seems to be so clever and I am just a stupid man.'

I could see that you have the capacity... you can become as dull as Lao Tzu (chuckling). But your western upbringing is contrary. To be clever is a talent in the West. To be clever on the path of Tao is foolishness. To be intelligent, bright, sharp, is a sacred value in the western world.

Lao Tzu will laugh. He says, 'Just be like an idiot!' The values are so different that when a western mind starts doing T'ai Chi or things like that, this trouble arises.

Whenever your energy is flowing, a certain dullness is bound to come; the sharpness is bound to be lost. You will look idiotic, but your upbringing comes into it. You are tom apart between two things.

So drop the western mind completely. Be dull, and be happily dull. The whole effort is to drop the mind so completely that you exist like trees, like clouds, like rocks, and you have no mind of your own; that's the whole effort. That's why the movements are so slow, because the mind is in such a hurry. These movements are against the mind. The mind wants speed. That's why the western world has invented more and more speedy vehicles. All these movements are so slow that the mind cannot cope with them. By and by it gets fed up and drops - 'This is foolish. I cannot work with [you]!'

You are going so slowly and the mind says, 'Be in a hurry! Run fast!' If a taoist competition is to be made, the one who can walk the slowest will be the first. That's what Jesus means when he says, 'In my kingdom of God the last will be first, and the first will be last.' The idiots will be the geniuses and the talented will prove dull.

But the mind is speed, because the mind is afraid of death - and the fear of death creates speed.

The mind says, 'Time is short and you have to do so many things - do them fast! Run! Death is coming!'

If you slow down in your movements completely, your mental movements will also completely slow down. It is working through the body for a no-movement state. The body moves so slowly that the mind has to slow down with it. If for two, three hours every day one goes on doing T'ai Chi, then the mind cannot go on moving at such a mad speed; it will have to slow down. It will become more and more in tune with the body. Then worry will stop and you will be able to sleep deeply. But you will feel a certain dullness. That dullness is felt because of your comparison with the western mind.

The East looks dull, so lazy; nobody is trying to do anything. Somebody says to you, 'I will be coming at two,' and he will not come even at six, and when he turns up at eight or even the next day, he is not worried at all that he was not in time. Nobody worries about time. Time is a western concept...

eternity is the eastern concept. The East says that life is so eternal, why be in a hurry? Move, don't move - it makes no difference. In this vast eternity why be so worried about time? Where are you going? The East is simply sitting.

So these movements are a strategy to help the mind to calm down, lose its speed ... come back to earth. Become a perfect idiot! If you can become a perfect idiot, you have attained, and there is nothing more to attain. One simply enjoys! Logic is not needed, reason is not needed; mathematics is not needed, so why be bothered about intelligence?

And you will have those blanks. Those blanks are good. You call them blanks because of the conditioning. They are not blanks, they are deep restful spaces. They will be coming, so enjoy them, cherish them, nourish them, and help them to come more and more. Pray for them and be grateful for them. They will be coming more and more, and it will come one day that you simply become a long blank. Then they are not like intervals. They become your very life... a deep emptiness, abyss-like.

This is what Lao Tzu says is the peak. This is a totally different orientation. That's the eastern way.

The West dominated the East for three, four hundred years. The East never even gave a good fight, never. Just think! India's such a vast country, and it was ruled by England, such a small country.

Such a great mass of people and dominated by a small group of people. But India has its own ways. It will not give you a fight, but it will sabotage you. The fight will not be direct; it is indirect.

Now through meditation, through religion, through spiritual technique, the East is exploding over the West. Suddenly the West is feeling uprooted.

This is the way of the weak, the way of the feminine, the way of the child - the passive way. And the West is going to be in deep trouble. This infiltration of taoist and eastern attitudes in the West is going to create trouble because your whole training is for speed, intelligence, calculation, this and that. And these are totally, absolutely opposite values.

But they are becoming more and more attractive because the wheel is turning. The West is fed up with its speed, fed up with its material progress... fed up with its technology... fed up by this and that, and reaching nowhere. And that is what Tao has always been saying - 'Where are you going?

There is nowhere to reach. Just be here and enjoy.'

And what do you need intelligence for? All intelligence becomes exploitive. You want intelligence so that you can dominate others... you can dictate... you can own and possess. But if you don't want to possess, and you don't want to dominate anybody, if you are not in search of finding and creating slaves, life does not need any intelligence. Trees are perfectly happy, birds are perfectly happy, animals are perfectly happy.

Intelligence seems to be almost superfluous.

So these techniques will bring your sharpness, by and by, to a point where you will lose it. So allow it. Don't try both ways, otherwise you will be in conflict and you will be divided.

Forget all about intelligence and this and that, and be a blank. I will help you so you become an absolute blank. In that absolute blankness everything is possible. It is not negative; it is the most positive thing in the world, because out of nothingness, everything manifests. That nothingness is God.

So when that blank comes, enjoy it. Dive deep into it... dissolve yourself in it... become one with it.

Then you will know much which is higher than intelligence. Be nothing, and then for the first time you will be.

Teach T'ai Chi and go on developing it on your own, because you have enough basic understanding.

Just go on moving further and further into it. For at least one hour practise on your own so you can go on developing higher and higher and deeper and deeper.