Chapter 11

[As Guru Poornima day was only two days away, Osho's family, friends and relatives, came to visit and pay their respects to their son, brother, nephew, uncle, friend, colleague - and guru. Most of Osho's immediate family - and he has nine brothers and sisters - are sannyasins, his father and mother included.

Present at darshan tonight were two of Osho's sisters - one a plump, handsome-looking woman in her early forties, another in her early twenties - a younger brother, and his maternal uncle, as well as his parents. Friends who had known Osho from Gardarwara, where he was brought up, from Jabalpur, where he attended university, and from Sagar, where he undertook post-graduate studies, were also present. Osho spoke with them for some time.]

[A sannyasin, who has returned from a visit to the West, says he had problems with his wife there because he is not fulfilling her desires: She thinks that I am childish and too feminine, not responsible, not adult.]

A relationship is always problematic and when one spouse starts changing, then more problems arise. She's right in a way; you are becoming more and more childlike. That's the whole effort here:

to make you more childlike. But her interpretation is wrong. She calls it childish. It is not childish. It is childlike.

'Childish' is derogatory. To be childlike is to be a saint. To be childish is to be immature. But both look alike and it is very difficult to demark the boundaries clearly. She is right, so don't fight. Just accept that that's true. That's what is happening, that's what is longed for. That's the goal: to become childlike; to be so innocent, so virgin, that one can trust unconditionally.

Something of very great import is happening to you, and whatsoever she is saying is right in a way, so don't argue with her. There is no need to fight. Whenever she says something, listen to her, meditate over it. If it is true, accept it.

Childlikeness is bound to come if you meditate. A little meditation and you will start feeling more childlike, more fresh. And with it comes a sort of irresponsibility - irresponsibility in the sense that you don't consider other people's obsessions any more.

As I see it, it is a great responsibility. you start becoming responsible towards yourself, but you start dropping your masks, your false faces. Others start feeling disturbed because they have always had expectations and you were fulfilling those demands. Now they feel that you are becoming irresponsible. When they say that you are becoming irresponsible, they are simply saying that you are getting out from under their domination. You are becoming freer. To condemn it, they call it 'irresponsibility'. In fact freedom is growing.

And you are becoming responsible, but responsibility means the ability to respond. It is not a duty that has to be fulfilled in the ordinary sense. It is a responsiveness, a sensitivity. But the more sensitive you become, the more you will find that many people think that you are becoming irresponsible - and you have to accept that - because their interests, their investments will not be satisfied. Many times you will not fulfill their expectations, but nobody is here to fulfill anybody else's expectations.

The basic responsibility is towards oneself. So a meditator first becomes very very selfish, but later on when one has become more centred, rooted into one's own being, energy starts overflowing. But it is not a duty. It is not that one has to do it. One loves to do it; it is a sharing. That will come; don't be worried.

One thing you have to remember: accept these things. Then there is no fight. You must be fighting.

You must be saying, 'No, I am responsible.' You must be saying, 'No, I am not childlike.' You must be saying, 'No, I am the same as I was before.' Don't insist. You are not - and it is good that you are not the same. Something is growing, something is changing.

If she loves you, she will settle with your growth; she will also grow. If she does not love you, then there is no problem. The world is so wide; she can separate. But don't carry on any false pretensions any more. And I feel that she loves you.... But accept whatsoever she says and tell her, 'This is what is happening and I am helpless. I am enjoying it so I am going to go into it more and more. Now it is for you to decide. If you want to be with me, then be with me... then be happily with me. If it has become miserable and you feel that now it is not possible for you to be with me, then you are free.

Goodbye !' But be clear about it.

This continuous anger, being together and hating each other, being in anger and rage, is destructive.

It poisons the whole system. It will kill you, it will kill her. So while you are here, completely forget her. Just write a letter to her accepting whatsoever she says, because once you accept a certain thing, the whole point of a quarrel is gone. What can the other do? You've accepted what she said so there is nothing to prove to her. Tell her it is open to her to choose you or not to choose you. Be courageous and things will settle on a higher altitude.

You cannot go back. There is no going back. It never happens; it is not possible. You cannot be the same. You will be growing continuously. And it is better she knows that now changes will be happening.

An alive relationship is always changing. It has many climates, many moods. It has many surprises.

A dead relationship remains stagnant. It is repetitive, it is the same, but then it is no more a relationship. Then you are not two persons, you are two things together. Of course two things never quarrel. The quarrel arises when two persons enter.

[Osho concluded by saying it would be good if he could persuade his wife to come here, and helpful for him if he did some of the groups while he was here.]

[The leader of the Tao group says: There's been so much happening with me, with the groups. I don't know. I just don't know.]

That's good. Whenever something really happens, one never knows, because whatsoever happens is always inexpressible. When nothing happens, you can talk much about it. But when something really happens, then to talk is almost impossible. One simply feels helpless.

So, blessed are the moments when something happens and one cannot say what is happening and what has happened, when one is at a loss and one loses all articulateness.

Good! Something has really happened!

[A sannyasin says: I'm just confused - but happy.]

[chuckling] That's good! Happiness confuses, because we are so accustomed to misery. Misery is clearcut. We know every nook and corner of it. We are great experts in being miserable. When happiness comes, everything collapses. One is simply confused. One does not know what is happening, why it is happening.

Happiness is so unknown that it is natural to feel confused. Misery is very superficial. You can manage it just on the surface, manipulate it; it is under your control. That is the key word to be remembered about misery: it is under your control. And happiness is just the opposite.

You are under its control, hence it is confusing. Nobody can control happiness. When it comes, it is too much. It is bigger than you. It is so vast and you are so tiny... as if an ocean has dropped into a drop. It brings great confusion. But it is very blissful to be confused so.

It is better to be confused with happiness than to be clearcut with misery. It is better to be controlled by happiness than to be in control with misery.

That is the cause of why people go on clinging to misery. They can control it more easily. It is their own creation. They are the masters, so the ego remains on the throne like a king - suffering, but still, on the throne. That's why people don't leave misery easily. They suffer but they will cling. They will say that they want to get rid of it, but nobody is barring their way. They say they want to drop it, but they go on clinging to it like a treasure. Misery is not against the ego. It is all for it. It is very ego-enhancing. It feeds the ego, nourishes it.

But when happiness comes, it is as if the heavens are open for you and it is raining cats and dogs, and your small hut is just in a flood... all boundaries are lost. It is maddening.

So don't be worried about confusion. Just move in the direction that happiness is indicating. Accept confusion. It is just temporary, transitory. Once you have become acquainted with the ways of happiness, again confusion will disappear. The guest is very new.

You don't know who this guest is and how you are to behave with him. But by and by you will become more acquainted and confusion will disappear.

So don't seek clarity, otherwise you will start clinging to your misery, because misery is very clear.

You go to a doctor and if you have any disease he can diagnose it in a very clearcut way. He can diagnose if you have TB or cancer or this and that; a thousand and one diseases. But if you are healthy, he has nothing to diagnose.

In fact medical science has nothing to define what health is. At the most they can say that you are not ill, but they cannot be very definite about what health is. Health remains undefined. It is so big that no category is big enough. It cannot be pigeon-holed. Happiness is bigger than health. Health is happiness of the body. Happiness is health of the soul.

So don't be bothered about clarity. What is one to do with clarity? We are not doing arithmetic here.

Only fools are doing that. Forget all about clarity. Confusion is chaotic, certainly... frightening - but the adventure is there and the challenge. So take the challenge and go headlong. Don't pay too much attention to confusion. Focus more on happiness.

Wherever there is happiness, there is God.

So listen to it. If it leads to confused states, okay. If it leads to unmapped, uncharted territories, okay. If it leads to chaos, okay. Welcome it, because wherever it leads, it leads towards God.

Clarity is of the mind. Happiness is of the total. All that is alive is always confusing. Only dead things are clear and non-confusing. They can be categorised. You can say that this is a chair and this is a table. But is it so easy to say that this man is good and this man is bad? Not so easy, because the good man can turn into a bad one in a single moment, and the bad can turn into good in a single moment.

But that is the beauty of humanity, of personality; the dignity of man not being like a chair. You cannot categorise him. The time you take in categorising him may be enough for him to change.

A saint can become a sinner in a single moment - because it is his decision - and a sinner can become a saint. So man remains open. Chairs are closed. The chair was a chair yesterday. The chair is a chair today. The chair is going to be a chair tomorrow. A chair has no growth. It is just stuck. That is the definition of a thing.

A person is an opening. Tomorrow who knows who you will be? Even you cannot say who you will be, because you have not known tomorrow yet and what it brings. So people who are really alert never promise anything, because how can you promise? You cannot say to somebody, 'I will love you tomorrow also,' because who knows? Real awareness will give you such humbleness that you

will say, 'I cannot say anything about tomorrow. We will see. Let tomorrow come. I hope that I will love you, but nothing is certain.' And that is the beauty.

If a man can promise and can fulfill his promise, he is a thing; he is not a person. He is predictable.

He has a character but he has no soul. A man of soul has no character. He is freedom and very confusing. A man of character is very clear, but a man who lives in freedom is very confusing to himself and to others also. But it has a beauty in it because it is alive, throbbing always with new possibilities, new potentialities.

So forget about confusion because confusion is bound to be there. You are moving in new territory that you have never tasted before, so your old patterns will be confused. Listen to happiness; let that be the indicator. Let that decide your direction and move into that. Whatsoever the stake, never lose track of happiness. If you can really be a hedonist, God is not very far away.

Once you lose track of happiness, you may be very clear, philosophically very clever in labelling things and categorising things; you may become a great expert, but you will remain poor. Your soul will not be there. That is the difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy seeks clarity.

Religion seeks reality. These are totally different dimensions. If something is real, it is going to be confusing because the real is so vast that it contains contradictions. And if something is very clear, beware! - it is going to be something false.

Mathematics is very clear. The most clearcut science is mathematics because it is completely man- oriented. If man disappears, mathematics will disappear. It is just a man-manufactured thing. It is clear. Man has made it - it is not from God. It is from man, it is from the mind. It is the most clearcut science in the world because it is the most bogus science. It corresponds to no reality. It is simply symbolic, just in the mind.

But if you seek reality, you will find it very confusing. You love a man and you find that you also hate him. It is very confusing and books don't say that. They say if you love a man, you love him; you never hate him. But that's philosophy. If you love a man, you hate him also. If you are happy with a man, you are also unhappy with him. Otherwise with whom are you going to be unhappy? Books say that when you love a man, you love. When you are happy with a man, you are always happy.

That is nonsense. It is not a real thing; it is just a concept.

Reality is chaotic. It is wild... it is very stormy.

So just allow it, mm? The group has been very good for you.

[A group member said: I feel a bit like a coward in approaching my problems through Encounter-type groups. I seem to always get to the same space and then fall back.]

One never knows in what moment your courage will burst forth. Even when it happens for a single moment, it clarifies the whole life. These groups are just devices. Sometimes the right moment will come for you, but nobody can decide when that will be.

Somebody asked Rothschild, 'How did you become so rich?' He said, 'I always waited for my opportunity, and when it came I simply jumped over it.' The man said, 'I am also waiting for an

opportunity, but I only know when it has gone! It is such a rare moment that it comes and by the time I am ready to jump over it, it is gone.'

Rothschild laughed and he said, 'Keep jumping, otherwise you will miss! That's what I have been doing all my life - jumping. An opportunity may come or not - that is not the point; I keep on jumping.

When it comes, it finds me always jumping. It comes and goes in a moment, and if you are thinking about it....'

So keep jumping! That's all that meditation is about. Some day the coincidence will happen. You will be jumping and the right moment will be close by. Something clicks and something happens. It is a happening; it is not a doing. But if you are not jump-ing, you will miss it. It is difficult and sometimes boring too, because you come again and again to the same space and it becomes circular. But keep jumping.

One day it is going to happen. I can see it, just below the horizon. Any moment the sunrise is possible. But keep jumping, don't fall asleep. Otherwise sometimes it happens that a man has been awake the whole night waiting for the sunrise, and then he becomes so tired and exhausted that it has not come, still not come, that he falls asleep - and then the sunrise comes. In the morning most people fall asleep and miss again.

There is an indian parable that moksha is like a great palace in which there are millions of gates, but only one gate is true and all the other gates are false. The seeker is like a blindman who goes on groping in the dark. Sometimes he gets fed up. Again and again the false gate comes and nothing happens again and again. Sometimes it happens that he jumps a few gates; he doesn't grope for them. He knows thousands of gates that he has touched and they have been false. And there is only one gate that is true. Some-times he jumps that gate also because it looks just like the other gates.

Once you have passed it, you know it is different. But as I see it, things are going perfectly well.

Good!

[A sannyasin said he had been through an economic crisis lately and since then had been finding it difficult to meditate, because of outside pressure.]

Whenever there is something like pressure from the outside - and there will be many times in life - then direct entry into meditation becomes difficult. So before meditation, for a fifteen minute period, you have to do something to cancel the pressure; then only can you enter meditation, otherwise not.

For fifteen minutes, simply sit silently and think that the whole world is a dream - and it is! Think of the whole world as a dream and that there is nothing of any significance in it. One thing.

The second thing. Sooner or later everything will disappear - you also. You were not always here, you will not always be here. So nothing is permanent. And thirdly: you are just a witness. This is a passing dream, a film. These three things remember - that this whole world is a dream and everything is going to pass, even you. Death is approaching and the only reality there is is the witness, so you are just a witness. Relax the body and then witness for fifteen minutes and then meditate. You will be able to get into it, and then there will be no trouble.

But whenever you feel that the meditation has become simple, stop it; otherwise it will become habitual. It has to be used only in specific conditions when it is difficult to enter meditation. If you do it every Day it is good but it will lose the effect, and then it will not work.

So use it medicinally. When things are going wrong and rough, then do it so it will clear the way and you will be able to relax.