Chapter 10

[Osho speaks to a sannyasin:]

Much is going to happen. Just allow it. That is the greatest thing. It is very easy to do something because one remains the doer and the ego is fulfilled. But the greatest problem arises when you have to allow something. It is simple but it becomes complex because of the ego. So that's the only thing you have to remember: to allow it.

In this camp, just move very simply. No need to force, because all force is violent and all force is against God. Surrendering, the knack of it, comes by and by. It is not a science; it is just a knack.

In the camp you allow, and the eleventh [Guru Poornima Day] will bring you to a very strange space within yourself, but allow it. Just feel as if you are a sponge soaking up existence. Everything is ready. You just have to soak it up.

Fear makes one hard. Trust makes one soft. And that is the meaning of 'tanmaya'. The word means to be totally absorbed so nothing is left behind... as if an ice cube is melting, melting, and is gone; nothing is left. That is the meaning of the name I have given to you. So melt and be gone.

When you are no more there, then you are for the first time. When you cannot find yourself anywhere, suddenly you are at home. When you cannot find yourself, God is. The more you are, the less God is. That is the proportion. If you are ninety-nine percent then God is only one percent. And of course it is difficult to find Him because you are ninety-nine percent and He is one percent; impossible to find Him.

You start melting... ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six... and God starts growing more and more.

A moment comes when He is ninety-nine percent and you are one percent. Then there is no need to seek. He is. Suddenly He is revealed in everything. Then it is tremendously beautiful when lastly

that one percent disappears, when not even a trace is left behind. That is the meaning of tanmaya.

So remember that. Be absorbed and allow.

I am going to do many things to you, but just allow.

[A sannyasin says: I'm split between the world and the spiritual life - totally split. It's a problem. I've been completely in the world, living and enjoying. No meditation whatever... guilt - that I should be meditating, that I should be spiritual, or should be this and that.]

That guilt creates the trouble, not the world. And there is no division between the world and spiritualism. But the division is in the guilt. So that guilt has to be dropped. Not that you have to bring spirituality and the world together; they are together. There is no way to separate them. You have to understand your guilt and drop it, otherwise guilt always creates schizophrenia. And it can; if it goes very deep, it can create a real split. A person can really become two - so much so that one may not be aware of the other at all. The other may not be aware of the first. The split can become so much that they never meet; there is no encounter.

So sometimes you live with the one person as one person, and sometimes you live with another person, but that is dangerous. That effort to bring spirituality and the world together is, from the very beginning, wrong. You have to understand your guilt. These groups will help, so in them just move as naturally as possible and don't categorise that this is spiritual and this is worldly. The very categorisation is wrong because then division starts. Once you label something as spiritual, suddenly you have condemned the world. When you say something is worldly, the division has come in. There is no need.

If you enjoy food, if you enjoy the sunshine, if you enjoy the flowers and you enjoy meditation and prayer, in fact it is all one enjoyment. It does not matter that it is food or flowers or friends or prayer or meditation. It is one phenomenon - enjoyment. It is joy. There is no need to divide it because objects of joy are different - they are immaterial. The most essential thing is that you have joy and delight.

You don't divide when you see the moon in the night and you enjoy it and then one day you see a child smiling and you enjoy. Which is spiritual and which is material? You see a flower opening and something opens in you and you delight in it. The food is being cooked and the flavour comes and suddenly there is joy in it. Which is spiritual and which is worldly?

If you ask me, I will say that joy is spiritual and the incapacity to enjoy, to celebrate, is worldly.

If you have been enjoying, perfectly good. The basic thing is that one is happy. If you are happy, these things won't last for long because the very search of happiness will take you beyond them, but not against them. Going beyond them is not going against them. Going beyond them is a totally different process.

You enjoy drinking. There is nothing wrong in it. By and by you will see that there is not much enjoyment in it. More is possible. So you start searching through meditation and prayer, and if more happens then it is not against drinking. In fact drinking showed you the way.

So always seek happiness. Where you seek is irrelevant. If one is really passionately in search of happiness, then nothing can hold. By and by things which cannot give you happiness or real happiness will wither away by themselves. But there is no need to condemn them and no need to say that something is wrong.

Just accept it; it is perfectly good. This whole year has been a meditation for you. In these groups, bring out your mind as much as possible. Go through acting it out. Whatsoever are the problems, don't hide them; bring them out. If guilt is there, bring out guilt. Once you bring something out, it starts getting resolved. But I don't see that there is anything wrong. Everything has been good for you, mm? Good!

[The Soma group is present. The leader said she found her group low in energy. Osho said she should use the first few hours of the group to assess its nature, its energy type, and that as she herself was high energy, she had to come down to their level and speed of moving.... ]

When you feel that the energy is low, slow down. Don't go too fast, but move slowly, more smoothly.

Always feel the group's energy, its style, how fast it can walk, and never walk faster than it. Otherwise you will be tired and the group will not be benefited, because just by getting, nobody is benefited unless one is allowed to give too. It has to be reciprocal, then only there is growth.

If in a relationship one person goes on giving and the other goes on taking, both suffer. Not only the giver - because the giver feels cheated - but the person who is the receiver is also suffering because he cannot grow unless he is allowed to give. He becomes a beggar and his self-image falls low. He needs to be strengthened and he needs to be given an opportunity where he can also give.

Then he feels human; he feels confident.

Growth is possible only when give and take is proportionate, otherwise both will miss. You will miss because you will see that nothing has come back. You will feel tired, exhausted, spent, and the group will not feel very good about you because you never gave a chance to the group to give something back, whatsoever it is. So you have to come down lower when the energy is going low.

There are two types of people: low energy and high energy. There is nothing good in being high energy or bad in being low energy. That's how two types exist. The low energy people move very slowly. Their growth is not jumpy. They don't leap. They don't explode. They simply grow as trees grow. They take more time but their growth is more settled, more certain, and falling back is difficult.

Once they have reached a point, they will not easily lose it again.

The high energy people move fast in speed. They jump. They leap. With them, work is very fast.

That's good, but there is one problem with them: whatsoever they achieve, they can lose as easily as they achieved it. They fall back very easily because it has been jumping, not a growth. Growth needs very slow ripening, seasoning, time.

Both types have their benefits and weaknesses and in fact if one has to choose between the two, the low energy people are more capable of spiritual growth than high energy people. High energy people are more powerful as far as worldly achievement is concerned.

Low energy people will be defeated in a worldly competition. They will always lag behind. That's why they have become condemned. There is such competition in the world. They will fall out of the rat-race; they will not be able to remain in it. They will be pushed out, thrown out.

But as far as spiritual growth is concerned, they can grow more deeply than high energy people because they can wait and they can be patient. They are not in too much of a hurry. They don't want anything instantly. Their expectation is never for the impossible. They only hanker for the possible. And when you desire the possible, the impossible can also happen. When you desire the impossible, even the possible becomes difficult. So don't be worried.

[The leader said that as they started their day earlier than everyone else, rising at four in the morning, they found that if they did active techniques, the noise disturbed the neighbours, but if they did more passive work, group members went off to sleep again!

Osho suggested they tried post-hypnotic suggestion, saying that ashram hypnotherapist would be able to suggest suitable wording, which should be confined to about three sentences and repeated seven times, and should be a suggestion that they would wake at four every morning and would feel energetic and happy.]

This is post-hypnotic suggestion. Once a suggestion reaches into the unconscious, it helps, because from there one comes back to awakening. The sleep is moving into the unconscious and the suggestion also goes into the unconscious. If the suggestion has reached deeper than sleep ever reaches, there is no problem. That suggestion will work and it is autonomous.

This has been the traditional way of the monks, recluses, in the Himalayas. They don't have any clock, watch, nothing. They simply suggest to themselves that they will awake at three or four o'clock, and that becomes by and by so deep-rooted that it becomes a body alarm. Suddenly you are awake and not only that, but more widely awake, all lethargy gone.

So make a suggestion and tell everybody to repeat it as deeply as possible, every night, seven times. The same words have to be repeated and very definite, not hesitantly. If the suggestion is hesitant, it will not help. It has to be an absolute statement.

[Osho said that then, on waking, it was good to do pranayama, but without music - which the group had been using up to now. He stressed that it was important to start with exhalation, not inhalation....]

When you exhale deeply, the body inhales automatically. A deep inhalation comes rushing inside bringing more oxygen. Sleep needs carbon dioxide in the lungs. That's how sleep functions chemically. If your lungs are full of carbon dioxide you will sleep well. If the room is very small and many people are sleeping in it, the carbon dioxide quantity is proportionately more than ordinary.

It can happen that if the door and windows are closed and people are sleeping in a small room, sometimes even death happens. People move into such a deep sleep that they can never come back.

But carbon dioxide is a must for sleep. For waking, oxygen is a must. So if you change the balance, it helps. Exhale deeply. Exhalation means that you are throwing carbon dioxide out. Remember never to start with inhalation because carbon dioxide is inside. If you inhale deeply that carbon dioxide is pushed in deeper but not thrown out, so that will not help.

Once the oxygen is more than the carbon dioxide, one is awake. That's what, chemically, awakening is, so nothing is better than pranayama. So just two or three minutes of exhalation and they will be perfectly awake.

[A group member said: And there was a difficulty in astral travelling. The first night I didn't go back into my body and it didn't feel nice.]

No, it has been good. It happens sometimes that for the first time that you go out of the body, you don't know how to get in and it can create a very panicky state. But there is no problem about it.

Just the idea - 'I want to get back into my body' - is the key, nothing else. Just the very desire is enough.

We are in the body because of our desire to be in the body. Nothing else is holding us in. That is the whole philosophy of rebirth.

When you die, you are so full of desire for the body that you again enter into a womb... again another life. When a Buddha dies, he simply dies. He has no desire to enter into another body again. There is no desire so he goes on floating, far out, and he never comes into another body again. He becomes part of the invisible existence. That's what we call 'nirvana', freedom.

But you have desires still, so if sometimes you move out of the body, you wonder about how to enter it again. You get very frightened, but accidents have never happened because the very desire is the key. Next moment you find yourself in the body. Just one moment before it was so difficult. In fact there is no way to enter into the body. There is no gate, no lock, no key. Just the desire is all.

So if you are afraid, whenever you try astral travelling again, just give yourself a suggestion that after fifteen minutes of travelling, you will go back into the body, that's all. Repeat it three times and go travelling, and after fifteen minutes you will immediately find yourself back in the body. There is nothing to worry about, but the first time it can be very scarey. Just continue.

[Osho said that to feel insecure was natural because everyone is insecure, life is insecure, but the urge to be secure is absurd. Accepting insecurity, one lives in security.... ]

Man is a fragile flower. Any stone can crush him. Any accident and you are gone. Once you understand it.... Even if you feel very afraid, what to do? The night is dark, the path unknown, no light to light the path, nobody to guide you, no map, so what to do? If you like crying and weeping, cry and weep, but that helps nobody. Better accept it and grope in the dark. Enjoy while you are.

Why waste this time for security, because security is not possible. This is the wisdom of insecurity.

Once you understand it, accept it, you are freed from fear.

It happens always on the war front, when soldiers go to fight, that they are very afraid because death is there waiting for them. Maybe they will never come back again. They tremble, they cannot sleep, they have nightmares. They dream again and again that they have been killed or crippled, but once they reach the front, all fear disappears. Once they see that death is happening, people are dying, other soldiers are dead, their friends may be dead, bombs are falling and bullets passing, within twenty-four hours they settle; all fear gone. They accept it; they start playing cards and bullets are passing. They drink tea and they enjoy it as they have never enjoyed it before because this may be their last cup. They joke and laugh, they dance and sing. What to do? When death is there, it is there.

This is insecurity. Accept it, then it disappears. And continue astral travelling. That will be very very good for you.

[A sannyasin who had left the group and then returned to it on Osho's advice (see July 4th), said she had gained something from it. She did not want to do more groups: I've been thinking that life is enough of a process.]

It is enough if you understand. Groups are needed because we don't understand that life is enough; otherwise it is. A group is nothing but trying to focus your mind upon certain problems which you are missing in your life. Because life is a long-range phenomenon; we have lived it for so long that by and by we have become oblivious of many things.

A group is nothing but to force a few important problems, to. concentrate on the important problems, so they are not lost in the details of life, and then to work them out. It is just a piece of life but more flooded with light. If one understands, there is no need for a group, but because people don't understand, there is a need. Otherwise the whole life is an encounter, a continuous encounter. But we have become so accustomed to that life and we act so mechanically in it, repeating patterns.

Then in life there are many other things at stake. Nobody is ready to tolerate your anger, and sometimes it can be too costly so you have to repress it. Sometimes you have to smile and you never wanted to smile; inside you were cursing. But if you don't smile, that may cost you too much.

It is not worth it so you smile.

Life is such that pretension is very difficult to drop. A group is just a special situation in which everybody is ready to accept whatsoever you are - your anger, your hatred, your madness - and nothing is at stake. Out of the group nobody will call you mad.

They will understand that that was just a group situation. And when everybody is relaxing, catharting, acting out, you can also do it. It becomes simple. But in life everybody is not catharting; they are repressing. So repression is a normal mode of life. In a group, expression is the normal mode so it is tremendously valuable. But if one understands there is no need.

But where is that understanding? If you understand, life is more than enough. It is a continuous on-going process, but it is difficult. Groups can make you more alert about life, and after a group you can see life m a new light, with new vision. You can change a few things here and there. Sometimes a few changes make the whole of your life different.

So if you feel like doing some groups, do. Otherwise just do the camp.

[A sannyasin says: Words are very important to me, and your words are very important. How do you feel about me singing your words?... I have tapes of you and I sing with you and the birds.]

[chuckling] You enjoy it. It's very good. And words are important. Sometimes a change of a small word, just replacing it by another word can change your whole life.

... because words are not just words. They have moods, climates of their own. When a word settles inside you, it brings a different climate to your mind, a different approach, a different vision. Call the same thing a different name and see: something is immediately different.

So one of the most important things to remember is: if it is possible, live an experience and don't fix it by any word because that will make it narrow. You are sitting... it is a silent evening. The sun

has gone and the stars have started appearing. Just be. Don't even say, 'This is beautiful,' because the moment you say that it is beautiful, it is no more the same. By saying 'beautiful' you are bringing in the past and all the experiences that you said were beautiful have coloured the word. Your word 'beautiful' contains many experiences of beauty. But this is totally new. It has never been so. It will never be so again.

Why bring in the past? The present is so vast - the past is so narrow. Why look from a hole in the wall when you can come out and look at the whole sky? So try not to use words, but if you have to, then be very choosey about them because each word has a nuance of its own. Be very poetic about it. Use it with taste, love, feeling.

There are feeling words and there are intellectual words. Drop intellectual words more and more.

Use more and more feeling words. There are political words and there are religious words. Drop political words. There are words which immediately create conflict. The moment you utter them, argument arises. So never use logical, argumentative language. Use the language of affection, of caring, of love, so that no argument arises.

If one starts feeling this way, one sees a tremendous change arising. If one is a little alert in life, many miseries can be avoided. A single word uttered in unconsciousness can create a long chain of misery. A slight difference, just a very small turning and it makes a lot of change. One should become very very careful and use words when absolutely necessary. Avoid contaminated words.

Use fresh words, non-controversial, which are not arguments but which are just expressions of your feelings.

If one can become a connoisseur of words, one's whole life will be totally different. Your relationships will be totally different because ninety-nine percent of a relationship is through words, gestures - and those are also words. The same word has created so many troubles for you and again you blurt it out. If a word brings misery, anger, conflict, argument, drop it. What is the point in carrying it?

Replace it by something better. The best is silence. Next best is singing, poetry, love.