Chapter 9
[Osho recommended that a newcomer undertake the course of Rolfing, saying:]
When the mind is melting and changing, it is very simple to go into Rolfing, and great is the benefit because the body can change very easily with the mind. Something changes in the mind and, parallel to it, the body has to readjust, or if something changes in the body, the mind has to readjust.
They both keep a very subtle harmony. So if you are in a certain state of mind, the body has a certain structure. When the mind changes, the body needs a new structure.
And Rolfing is nothing but restructuring. It tries to melt the old musculature and helps the body to create new musculature. For example if a man is very angry, he has a certain musculature in the hands, in the arms, in the shoulders, in the teeth. An angry person is bound to have a very deep and subtle layer of tension in the jaw, in the teeth, in the hands. When you drop anger, or you release it, cathart it, suddenly there is no need for the old structure. So if you don't do Rolfing, that old structure can exist for months, even for years. That old structure can force you into old ways, into old habits, even though the mind has changed, because the body has its own weight.
Many times you do things and later on you say, 'I did it in spite of myself.' How can a person do something in spite of himself? But it happens. It happens because the body has its own way and sometimes it is too much. The mind knows it is wrong. The mind doesn't want to do it, but the old habit is such that the body forces you and you are just pulled into the old habit.
So when the mind is really changing through meditation, Rolfing is a great support and it changes the structure very easily. But if the mind is not undergoing changes, then Rolfing is very painful because the mind is not ready and you are forcing the structure to change, and that structure has an existential necessity. Even if you do Rolfing, the body will accumulate the same tension again.
For a few days you will feel very good, but again, because the mind is still there, it will create its own field.
[A visitor from the States said that she had done EST and had found it quite helpful.]
It can be very helpful. It is one of the most powerful things going in the West and very meaningful.
Though it is not yet a complete system, it is a beginning and a good beginning...
It is just technology and a sort of brainwashing, but it is good if you can use it and you are not stuck in it; then it is very beneficial. If you get stuck in it, it can just be a wastage because the real thing is how to go beyond techniques and how to reach to love.
All techniques are good if they help you to go beyond, beyond them. Everything is good but basically it should make you capable of living your life from your innermost core. For example, a person is ill and you give him medicine. But medicine is not health, and if he becomes dependent on medicine, it is a new sort of illness. Sooner or later he has to drop the medicine. It is just to help his own healing powers. Once that healing power starts functioning, the medicine has to be reduced and dropped.
But the real thing is to go beyond it and to find your own source.
All the techniques that are very prevalent in the West are just techniques. Techniques are good if they lead you to the heart, to love, to a flowering of your own innermost being. But one can get stuck in them, and there is every possibility for the modern mind to get stuck because the modern mind is technological. Mind as such is technological. So do a few meditations here....
[Another visitor said he had been with spiritual master who seemed to 'possess' him - he could feel his presence when he was alone meditating. He was still very confused about this.
Osho checked his energy.]
Nothing was wrong in it. You simply became afraid. There is nothing like evil, but because you became afraid you interpreted it as if something was wrong. It always happens that if you become possessed by somebody's presence - even if the presence is good - you feel very frightened because you are losing your own space. One feels good on the one hand because one's being is being nourished. On the other hand one feels very much deprived because one's freedom is lost..
But nothing was wrong in it. It happened naturally and it has helped you. Even the disconnecting was good, because if it was not disconnected, it may have killed your freedom. So it is good that you moved at the right time. This is a very subtle problem and the West is still not acquainted with it.
A master has to work on the disciple in a very skillful way. He has to possess him but he has not to destroy his freedom. He has to nourish him but he has not to make him dependent. On one hand he has to help him to surrender and on the other he has to give him more will. The function of the master is very paradoxical. And this is the paradox: on one hand he says 'Surrender', and on the other hand he says 'Beware of me'.
In Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Zarathustra', the last thing that Zarathustra says to his disciples is, 'Now I am going to leave you, but even when I am gone, beware of me. I have to leave you because I have
to make you completely free, totally free.' So in the beginning the master helps you, persuades you to surrender. Once you have surrendered, his functioning completely changes. He starts helping you to stand on your own.
I think that is missing somewhere. The surrender is there but the other part is not there. Then the possession can be almost destructive. Up to a certain extent it will be nourishing and then you will start feeling that now it is too late because you are losing your own roots. You will become a zombie.
He [the visitor's guru] wants to come here; maybe he will come sometime.
Just a few days ago he wrote that he wants to come. So sometime in October, November, somewhere, if he comes I will talk with him also. It is good but only half good. The other half is missing.
But you have not been in any way harmed by it. You escaped in the right moment. And of course when the connection was disconnected, you started feeling a little empty because that presence was gone. But good; there is nothing to be worried about. Finally you have to attain to your own presence. Nobody else's presence is going to help you. It can indicate the way, just the beginning. It can be a support, a supportive climate at the most. But the journey is long and one has to go alone.
It is the flight of the alone to the alone.
The master can give you courage, he can give you the confidence that it does happen. You can feel that it has happened in him. That very feeling is enough to keep you on the way, because the goal is very distant and hazards are a thousand and one. Each step can lead you astray, and on each step there will be frustration and hopelessness. Many times you will decide to go back and many times you will feel that you have gone into an imaginary world - illusions, dreams. Many times you will feel that it was better to remain worldly and not to have chosen this path, because where is the goal? The goal is behind many layers of clouds.
If you have been with a master, that will help you. When hope-lessness surrounds you, his love, his presence, experiences with him, will give you hope. It will hold you to the path. But finally you have to attain to your own being. That's where things have gone a little wrong.
[The visitor answers:... now I'm coming to you and I'm running the same pattern and it's depressing me because I'm still not standing on my own.]
That will come. You just have to get a little further away from the experience that has happened. It will happen. Just a little time will heal the wound. And nothing has been lost. It has been good; on the whole, a good experience. But it was dangerous. If you had remained in it, it would have sucked you of your very potentiality.
[The visitor continues: The thing that's confusing me is this. If there was love between us, then how could it have been destructive?]
Love can be destructive in many ways, because love is not necessarily enlightened, not necessarily.
A mother loves the child and the whole world is suffering because mothers love their children. Ask
the psychiatrists, the psychologists. They say that every neurosis can be reduced to the mother- child relationship. Many people in the mad asylums are suffering from nothing but love. Fathers love their sons, priests love, politicians love. Everybody is loving but love is not necessarily enlightened.
When love is enlightened, it is compassion. Then it is of a totally different quality. It gives you freedom. Its whole function is to give freedom, absolutely. And not only that it talks about freedom - it makes every effort to make you free and it makes every effort to destroy all the hindrances that come on the path of freedom.
So love can be, but it may not be very alert. Then it is destructive. Love plus awareness is equal to compassion. Love alone is not enough, otherwise the world would already have become a paradise.
You love your woman, your woman loves you, but what happens finally? Nothing but destruction.
Your love is okay but you are not okay. Something is there deep down in the unconscious which goes on creating things that you are not aware of. So one can be very loving - and that's the danger of love.
A person need not be a Buddha to love; that's the problem. One can love, and sometimes love is more harmful than hate because you cannot defend yourself against love. If I love you, how will you defend yourself? Even the idea to defend yourself will make you feel guilty. You will become vulnerable and because I love you, I will be dominant. Love can become a very subtle politics, and it does. It becomes very dictatorial.
So love is not necessarily freedom. It should be - that is the ideal. So always remember, if you love somebody with awareness, only then is it going to be a blessing. Otherwise, nobody knows - you may talk, you may even desire, you may intend it to be a blessing, but that doesn't matter. The total result is going to be wrong because somewhere you are wrong.
Once you understand that it is very easy to become powerful through love, once you have understood the politics of love and you have become efficient in it, there is a great technique in your hands and people will just be victims. They will not know how to escape because even the idea will make them feel guilty. The man loves you so much - where are you going?
You cannot find a worse mother than a good mother, can you? It is impossible. A good mother is so good that she kills you completely. Even a bad mother is better because at least with a bad mother you can fight and through fight you can become yourself. With a good mother there is no chance; with good parents there is no chance. You are doomed.
So love is not necessarily a blessing. Out of one hundred cases, in ninety-nine cases, love is a curse... sweet poison. And when the poison is sweet, one tends to forget that it is poison.
Awareness is the most important thing. The presence of an aware person, even if he is not loving, is going to be a blessing. He may not bother about love at all. He may not be loving at all; he may be very very hard. A zen master will be very hard, almost cruel. He can beat you. He can throw you out of the window. He will not show any love whatsoever, but he will show awareness and his awareness is going to be a blessing.
I don't say that love should be denied, but love should not be the first. Awareness should be the first.
Love has to follow like a shadow.
Whenever you are eating something, nourishment should be the first thing, taste, second. If it has good flavour and good taste, very good, but one should not think that taste is enough to make anything nourishing or that good flavour is essential. That's how synthetic food, false food, is becoming more and more prevalent in the world, because now people understand what taste is liked, what flavour is liked and what colour is liked. These are not essential things.
You don't eat colour, you don't eat flavour, you don't eat taste. They are good if they are there, but if you eat something which has nothing to do with them and that something has vitality, the aliveness of the food, the organicness of it, that is the most essential thing.
So awareness is first and love is second. Good, if a master can manage to be loving and his lovingness does not become a substitute for his awareness. Otherwise it is better to drop love and just be aware because then you will not harm anybody.
Now, in the West, people are missing love. You have to understand that. Family life is almost gone.
The old days of a loving atmosphere are no more there. Everywhere is conflict and violence, struggle between the children and parents, between husband and wife, man and woman, this class and that, between white and black. Everywhere there is conflict, struggle, violence, aggression, anger. Love has disappeared - and love is a basic need of humanity.
So anybody who shows a little love, people become mad after him. Now there will arise many people who will show love and will dominate you. Love is now going to be the politics of the future, because people are missing love so much that anybody can put his hand on your head and you feel tremendously thrilled. That's how gurus have become so dominant and prominent in the West. It has almost become a great traffic from the East. People who were of no value here have become great masters there, like M...juststupidpeople.Buttheyaregreatmastersbecausetheyjustshowyoulove.
The West is in a great turmoil and some basic ingredient is missing. Somebody has to fulfill it, and many people are fulfilling it. I have seen many people who have no value in the East becoming great masters there. They are nothing, but your need is very much.
When one is hungry, one starts eating anything. When one is thirsty, one can drink dirty water. In deserts it happens sometimes that a person has to drink his own urine. No water - what to do? It is unthinkable ordinarily; but when you are dying, one doesn't bother whether it is urine or water.
Anything will do. People kill their animals, their horses or camels, and drink their blood.
That's what is happening: love is missing and people are in search of love. Whomsoever can patronise you, whomsoever has known your need and can just give you an idea of a father and mother.... You have missed your mother, you have missed your father, so anybody can come and say, 'I am your father.' So, father-figures will arise, mother-figures will arise - and they're all substitutes. They're not going to help very much. They are temporary arrangements and can be destructive if one clings to them for very long.
So even when you see the facticity of one person, you start moving to another guru. From there you will go somewhere else, but look deeply into what you are searching for. If you are searching for love, then love has to arise in your heart. Whatsoever is your need has to come out of your being.
And find a man, find a community, where love is not given to you but ways and methods are given to you so that you can grow into love yourself. Consolations are not given to you. These are very simple. I can be loving to you and can console you, but this is not going to help. The only thing that can help is something to help your growth.
Somewhere you are stuck and you have not been yet able to find your heart. So how to help to find your heart ? That cannot be done by becoming dependent. Surrender is good to learn, very good to trust, but one should always remember that surrender is just the beginning. Freedom is the end.
Be here, meditate, do a few groups, and let us see what can be done, mm?
[An older sannyasin reports back on the advice Osho had given her (on June 28) to be like a child again.
She said on the third day she was teasing someone who became angry with her: I started to watch how I became conditioned again, watching how it happened. The result was that by and by I lost the childhood and now I'm back in the same boat.]
No, no, you are not in the same boat. You can never be in the same boat. The boat may be the same but you are not the same. A few more things have to be done. I was aware that it would be difficult. It is bound to be difficult, because it is not only a question of you; others get involved in it.
So now do one thing: with others, just play a game of being adult. Don't get identified with it... as if you are just playing a role of being adult but in fact you are a child and are playing a game of being adult because adults think that you are old. So with others just go on playing the game of being adult, and continue your friendship with small children. With them become a small child, and whenever you are alone, think in terms of your being a child. Sometimes just sing small songs that children sing or just talk to the wall or play with words, say gibberish as small children do; sitting alone, be a child. In your room, in your bathroom, be a child.
When somebody else comes in, just change your role. And do it consciously and deliberately so that deep down you remain a child. On the surface you play the role because others expect certain things. So, good - we are not to disturb anybody. If they expect, then their expectations can be fulfilled easily - but do it deliberately.
When for the first time you started feeling like a child, you were identified with your old age and you were going into childhood. Now reverse it. You are a child, and whenever you need to be old, you have to deliberately, consciously, be old. Nobody will be offended then and nobody will be angry and your work will not be disturbed. You will find this more convenient and helpful.
With adults just play a role, because they are identified with their bodies and they think of you also as your body. They cannot see that something deep down has changed, is changing. They cannot see, so it is not to be forced on them; there is no need. So for this camp, for ten days, just move between these two roles. Try, and see how it works. It you have any difficulty, come back and tell me.
[A sannyasin asked about her relationship problems. Osho said she should not do anything but allow things to settle by themselves. If she made a decision to leave her boyfriend or to stay with him, the part in her that was resistant would create trouble.]
... so it is always good to let things settle on their own accord. Whatsoever we do creates more trouble than it solves. And there is no hurry. Why bother that it is not going anywhere? What is going anywhere? Who is going anywhere? Nobody has ever heard of any relationship going anywhere. Nothing goes anywhere. Everything is here.
When you feel good, be together. When you don't feel good it is better to be frank. And there is no need to feel guilty that you are using him, because you can tell him that if he does not feel like being with you, perfectly good. When you both agree to be together and both agree to move into some space, good. When even one is not willing, then don't force it. Then nobody is using anybody. The relationship remains free. You come close, you go away, but nothing is being forced.
[Osho said if one started trying to settle things, the venture was doomed from the start, because the mind is a great planner but it knows nothing of the future. Rather, Osho said, it was better to live moment by moment.... ]
When loving, then be really loving. When non-loving, forget all about it. One day or other the world is going to accept this fact - that lovers should not live together. They should live separately, and whenever they want to be together, they can be together. Whenever they don't want to be together, there is no need for them to be.
Marriage and divorce should both disappear. They are both together; divorce exists because of marriage. Once marriage disappears, divorce will also disappear. People should be free to be together or not and each moment should decide its own truth. Why should we decide ahead? why decide for tomorrow? Tomorrow will come and decide. Let tomorrow have its own say and then you will always be happy and you will never be fighting against the current. You will always be relaxed, moving with the current, floating with it.
And existence is not going anywhere; that you should remember. It is just being here. Nothing is going anywhere. All coming and going, all arrival and departure is just a dream world. All that is, is simply here. Nothing is going anywhere. It has never gone anywhere and it will never go anywhere.
So simply relax, and don't feel guilty. Enjoy...