Chapter 25

[A sannyasin says: I'm leaving tomorrow and I hope to come back as soon as possible.]

If you have the desire, it always happens. The desire becomes the seed. That's why one should be aware of wrong desires because they also happen. A desire is sowing a seed; then sooner or later it sprouts. You may have even forgotten about it, but it sprouts. So one should be very alert to first drop wrong desires and to desire only right. And when the wrong has been dropped and the right has become natural, then drop even desiring. Then the ultimate happens - because the ultimate cannot be desired.

So when you sow the seed of desirelessness, the ultimate happens. And that is the whole purpose, the destiny, and unless it is fulfilled, one remains constantly in search, thirsty, hungry. So if you desire, you will be coming.

[A sannyasin says: I feel it s good for me to go back. At the same time I had such fantastic moments here. I have the feeling that there will he good moments there too and I would be grateful to know you are with me.]

I will be with you... and you have entered the fantastic world. Wherever you are, fantastic moments are going to happen - because they don't happen because of anything outside you; they happen because of something within you. So it is not a question of geography. It is a question of your inwardness, so whether you are in India or France, it makes no difference.

The only thing to remember is, be yourself; then they will happen anywhere. Whenever you are yourself, you are living in a fantastic world. Then everything is just miraculous, unbelievable, beautiful. So go....

And it is always good to go into the old world. There you will feel more easily the changes that have happened to you here, a contrast. Just remember one thing: don't forget the new. The past is heavy; quantitatively, the past is very big. The new is very soft and tender... has just arrived. It is fragile.

It is like a roseflower and the past is like a rock. The flower has to be protected against the rock.

Nobody else can destroy your flower but if your past falls over it, the flower can be crushed.

So it is good to go to the world where you have been totally different, another man. You will see yourself more focused, will see more clearly what has happened to you. But when everybody you know expects you to be the old that you have always been, the mind has a tendency at least to pretend that yes, you are the same. So don't be deceived by that, because once you start pretending, the rock will fall on the flower.

When you meet an old friend, it is psychological. He thinks of you as he used to know you, and that's natural. If you left him two years ago, then for him these two years have no existence. They have existed for you but not for him. He will start talking to you from the moment you left him; he will continue from there and your mind will tend to support him. That's where one needs deep awareness.

Even if it feels a little awkward just go on reminding him that you are totally new... and there is no need to fulfill anybody's expectations. Within hours the person will know that you have changed and he will start looking at you with new eyes..He will become acquainted with you. If you don't become a victim of his expectations, soon he will settle with you. Then he will drop the old past. He has no investment in it. It is just a psychological pattern that he carries a picture of you as you had been, and he will start from there.

Just watch it and tell him that you have completely changed. Say, 'You can almost think of me as if I am a totally new person, a stranger. The old is dead and that's what I have come to convey to you - that physically I may look the same, but deep inwards I am a totally new man and I have come to share something that has happened to me.'

So resist the temptation to continue from the past. Resist the temptation to fulfill the expectations of others. When you come to meet your father or your mother or your family, it is very simple; they expect the old. In the beginning it is very embarrassing, but let it be known, because what can you do? If the old is gone, it is gone. And it is only a question of one week and then everyone will know that you are not the same, so they start shifting their expectations.

And that will give you beautiful experiences - when your father looks at you not as his son, but as a stranger, when your mother looks at you not just as a part of herself, but something new. Then for the first time you meet face to face. Encounter happens there. Otherwise the mother never thinks in terms of your having a personality or that you are independent or something separate from her.

She goes on believing that you are just a part, an extension at the most. So just beware of this.

These two months will be great work and you will come back much enriched. Go happily!

[A sannyasin says: I have a lot of energy at twilight and it s very beautiful. I sing and I play the tamboura... it just comes.]

Very good... enjoy it.

Everybody has a period in twenty-four hours, a special period. People don't know about it, but once you know about it that will become your door to existence... so maybe twilight. Many people have entered into existence through twilight.

In India, the word 'sandhya' - it means twilight - has become synonymous with prayer. If you go to an orthodox Hindu and he is praying, he will say 'I was doing sandhya - I was doing my twilight.'

When there is a change... in the morning, in the evening; when the sun rises, just before sunrise, there is a great change. The whole passive existence becomes active. Sleep is broken, dreams disappear. The trees and birds and life everywhere arises again. It is a resurrection. It is a miracle every day.

If you allow yourself to float with it in that moment, you can rise to a very high peak. And the same change happens again when the sun sets. Everything quietens, calms. A tranquility, a deep silence pervades the whole existence. In that moment, again if you allow, you can reach to the very depths.

In the morning you can reach to very great heights; in the evening you can reach to very deep depths, and both are beautiful. Either go high or go very deep. In both ways you transcend yourself.

So if it is happening at twilight, it is very good. That's your sandhya, your prayer. So be completely mad in it and put aside all reason. Reason is not very reasonable. Put it aside and just enjoy, delight and let things happen. Be possessed as if a great power has possessed you and is doing things and you are helpless and cooperating. A great torrent is taking you away to the ocean and you are going. No fight, no upcurrent effort... just going downcurrent, with the current.

[A sannyasin says: I just arrived yesterday. I've done lots of hard work and I feel very good about the work I did... and I got very strong... I feel very cut off. I feel like a stranger to you.]

You have first to re-enter; there is nothing to worry about. Sometimes it happens that even becoming stronger can give you the feeling of being cut off from me, because what you call strength makes you a little hard also and the connection is possible only when you are soft. So strong people always become like islands. That is their misery, and they are cut off.

To be connected with me simply means to be vulnerable, not strong. But whatsoever you have done has been good for you. This connection will arise again; don't be worried. Just start meditating here again.

When you are here with me there is no need to be strong because that strength will be nothing but the strength of the ego and that strength will make you hard. That strength will be a sort of defence, a resistance. That strength will be of the will - and the will is the barrier.

So when you are in the world, struggling, be strong. But when you move into my world, drop all your strength, because here, blessed are the weak - they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, because the whole method is how to surrender.

A strong man finds it very difficult to surrender but only a strong man can surrender. A weak man finds it very easy to surrender, but then the surrender is impotent. There is nothing worthwhile in it; he has nothing to surrender. So you have to understand the paradox. I am not against strength and I am not against will because only a man of very strong will is capable of surrendering totally. It is

the greatest will - to surrender totally. If you don't have will, you cannot surrender because you have nothing to surrender.

Only a king can renounce. How can a beggar renounce? What has he to renounce? So the whole process is paradoxical: become strong to surrender. Attain to great reason so that one day you can drop it. Struggle hard, fight hard in the world so you learn that fighting is not the way to reach the ultimate. Maybe you can attain tiny things through it, but they are of no use. In the final reckoning they mean nothing - but that comes only to a person who has been struggling. Never say that the grapes are sour just to hide your impotence. Fight hard, get the grapes, have the taste and then say something.

I can see it has been good for you. You look sharp, more settled, stronger, grounded. Your feet seem to be rooted in the earth for the first time. You are not wobbly. It is good. But you will find it a little difficult to relax with me, to relax in me. A little work will be needed, but when it comes this time, it will have a totally different flavour to it. It will have depth, it will have significance. So there is nothing to be worried about.

[The sannyasin then asks about doing Vipassana.]

It is Buddha's special method that he gave to the world. It is through Vipassana that he became enlightened. It is through Vipassana that thousands of people became enlightened, so it is one of the greatest routes to the ultimate. But one has to do very hard work. It is arduous.

So put your total energy into it; don't be wishy-washy - just so-so, lukewarm, won't do. Put at stake whatsoever you have - only then you will have the taste of it.

Then immediately after it, do Hypnotherapy. That will be a rest and you will have earned that rest.

It will take you to another dimension - just the opposite - of relaxing, of completely relaxing and surrendering, no effort, no hard work. That will give you both the extremes in one continuity.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group are present. The leader says: They started holding back a bit but then after they were pushed harder - like you said before to push them harder - it was beautiful.]

One has to be hard. People need pushing. People have completely forgotten that things can be done without being pushed. From the very childhood everybody has been pushed so much that they are waiting to be pushed - for anything.

From the very childhood they have been pushed for the toilet, pushed to eat this, to do that, to go to sleep. Even for sleep - a thing which is almost non-voluntary - they have been pushed. The whole toilet-training is just a coercion. But they have been pushed for small things for which no coercion is needed, so they have learned one thing - that they have only to do things when they are pushed, otherwise not.

They have lost all control of their life. They need somebody to tell them to do this, not to do that.

They have lost all direction. If there is nobody to tell them, they are at a loss; they don't know what to do! And if there is no mother- or father-figure forcing them, they will simply sit and won't know what to do.

So if you see that people are not working on their own, wait for a few hours and see. Those who are working on their own, good, leave them; but otherwise, force them.

[A group member said he had vivid dreams and nightmares which affected him.]

You have to learn to befriend your dreams. Dreams are a communication from the unconscious.

The unconscious wants to say something to you. It has a message for you. It is trying to create a bridge with the conscious mind.

Analysis is not needed because if you analyse the dream, then again the conscious becomes the master. It tries to dissect and analyse and forces meanings which are not of the unconscious. The unconscious uses poetic language. The meaning is very subtle. It cannot be found by analysis. It can only be found if you start learning the language of the dream. So the first step is to befriend the dream.

For example, you see your dream. The next morning sit for one hour and relive the dream consciously, with no effort to analyse. Don't say that this means that; don't bother about the meaning.

What is the meaning of a roseflower? The roseflower in itself is the meaning. It is not a symbol for something else. It is a symbol for itself. What is the meaning of stars in the night? Nothing. They are their own meaning... the meaning is intrinsic. So simply enjoy, delight in it. Be excited with the dream consciously.

So when you see a dream that seems to be significant - maybe violent, nightmarish, but if you feel that there is some import in it - then in the morning before you forget the dream, sit in your bed and close your eyes; or even in the night if you awake, sit in your bed and befriend the dream. Just tell the dream, 'I am with you and I am ready to come to you. Lead me wherever you want to lead me; I am available.' Just surrender to the dream. Close your eyes and move with it, enjoy it; let the dream unfold. You will be surprised at what treasures a dream is hiding and you will see that it goes on unfolding.

Don't be distracted by analysis; don't create any interference. Don't try to manipulate it, because if you manipulate it, you miss the message. Simply go with it wherever it leads and you will be surprised that even when you are fully aware, the dream starts unfolding, with all its colours and all its vagueness and mystery. Go with it and when the dream is finished, go to sleep. Don't try to consciously think about it. This is what I call befriending a dream.

By and by you will see that you and your unconscious are coming closer and closer. The closer you come, the less dreams you will have because then there is no need for the dream. The unconscious can deliver its message even when you are awake. There is no need for it to wait for when you are asleep. No, it can give you its message any time.

The more and more close you come, the more the conscious and unconscious start overlapping each other. That's a great experience. You feel, for the first time, one. That's what Yoga is - to become one. You feel a unity arising. No part of your being is denied. You have accepted your wholeness. You start becoming whole.

By and by your unconscious becomes conscious and your conscious becomes unconscious. They both become one. And it is one of the greatest symphonies when the unconscious becomes

conscious and the conscious becomes unconscious. That means that your male mind and your female mind are moving into a deep orgasm. That means that your man and your woman, your yin and yang are meeting, copulating: A great energy arises... great energy is released. Then you are no more a man or a woman, because man is conscious and woman is unconscious in you. In a woman it is just the reverse.

So allow it to happen. Ordinarily we have been brought up to deny. A man has been brought up to be just a man and to never be like a woman. A man has been taught always to be conscious, rational, logical, so we have been denying the illogical, the irrational. Because of that denial, we have thrown much of our being into darkness. That's what the unconscious is... and the unconscious is our source of life. It is there that we are rooted. It is our earth.

So whenever your mind is doing something that goes against your nature, the unconscious gives you the message - first politely, but if you don't listen, nightmarishly. Then it becomes violent, very agitated, because you are moving in danger and it has to be violent and agitated. A nightmare is nothing but the shouting of the unconscious, a cry of desperation that you are going too far away and you will miss your whole being. Come back home! It is as if a child is lost in the woods and the mother screams and shouts the name of the child. That is exactly what a nightmare is. So start befriending your dreams.

For three weeks drop all barriers between you and dreaming consciousness. It is your consciousness. It is a different dimension but it is yours and you have to reclaim it. It is no ordinary consciousness. It is very significant - more significant than your waking consciousness - because in dream you are closer to your being than in waking. In waking you're farthest away, in dream you are a little closer, and in sleep, very close. In samadhi, you fall to your centre.

In India we have four states of consciousness: waking conscious-ness, the farthest; then dream consciousness, a little closer; then sleep consciousness, even closer; then 'turiya', the fourth state The word 'turiya' simply means the fourth, because there is no nam. for it.

The fourth is a great meeting, a communion of sleep and waking. In a way it is like sleep, absolutely silent, not even a ripple of thought. In another way it is like waking - absolutely alert. That is what we call 'God-consciousness'. But to go towards it you will have first to befriend your dream, then you will have to befriend your sleep, and then only will you be able by and by to reach the fourth stage.

So for three weeks, work on it. Love your dreams. Good, bad, don't evaluate, don't judge. Don't even use the word 'nightmare' because in that very word, we have denied. Simply love your dreams, come closer to them, learn the language of their message, feel for them, and allow them to unfold.

By and by they will become courageous. When you allow them, they will be ready. One day you will suddenly see that you are sitting fully awake and a dream has opened. Then you will remember it well because you are fully alert. You can see all the nooks and corners and you can penetrate to the very depth of it.

It is simply wonderful to watch a dream, fully aware, but that is possible only when you are in a deep sympathy with the dream. If you are antagonistic, it hides. This denied part has to be replayed. This dispossessed part has to be repossessed. And remember, don't analyse. Just enjoy the poetry of it, the colourfulness of it, the fantasy of it. Don't analyse.

It is just as you watch a Picasso painting. That is dream consciousness. That's why Picasso cannot tell you what the meaning of it is. There is no meaning. It does not symbolise anything - it itself is the symbol. Either you can understand it directly or you don't understand it. It is like a joke. Somebody tells you a joke and you say, 'I missed it; please explain it to me.'

If he explains, the joke is destroyed. If you get it, you get it. If you don't get it, please don't ask what the meaning is, because that is not the way to understand a joke.

[Osho recounted an incident in Picasso's life when a very' wealthy customer came to inspect the almost completed portrait that Picasso had done of him. He liked it but made one comment - that he didn't care for the nose and would like it changed, to which Picasso agreed.

Once the man had left, Picasso was in a great turmoil, so much so that the woman with whom he was living asked him what was wrong. If it were the painting, he could easily change the nose.

Picasso said; 'I can change it - but I don't know where it is!']

Now this type of painting is a dream consciousness painting. Everything is overlapping everything else. Things are running in all directions simultaneously and there is no logic. It is an explosion. It is absurd. So never analyse.

In the West this psychoanalysis has become a great barrier. Each dream has to be psychoanalysed.

That destroys the beauty of it. It is as if you take a flower and go to the chemist, and he dissects it and tells you of what ingredients this flower is made, of what chemicals. But then the beauty and the flower are lost. You may have some labels that say that these are the things of which the flower is constituted, but all that was beautiful is gone. Only a few words are left, and instead of the flower, a few chemicals labelled in bottles. If you ask where is the beauty, the chemist will say, 'There was nothing. This was all. The flower was just the total of all these chemicals. There was no beauty.'

Psychoanalysis destroys the whole beauty of a dream. So I use the word 'befriend'. Just embrace the dream... go with it. It wants you to go somewhere. Your unconsciousness wants you to reach to some deep experience. Hold the hand and tell the unconscious, 'I am ready. I am coming with you.'

Do this for three weeks and then tell me how you feel.

[A group member said that while listening to people in the group structure, he was continually judging people.] That's good. This judging has to be dropped. It is an illness and it will never allow you peace. It is a devil.

When you judge, you can never be in the present - always comparing, always moving ahead, backwards or forwards, but never herenow. Because the herenow is simply there; neither good nor bad. And there is no way to tell whether it is better, because there is nothing with which to compare.

It is simply there in all its beauty.

But the very idea to evaluate it has something of the ego in it, the very idea. The ego is a great improver; it lives on improvement. It goes on torturing you: 'Improve, improve!' And there is nothing to improve.

... Whenever the judgement comes, immediately leave it then and there. Drop it. It is a habit. Don't torture yourself unnecessarily. Enjoy.

[The group member continues that he has been listening to A talking about psychicthings: the desire is there to be comea psychic.]

He can help you to become more ill, so be aware. That's how the whole world goes on in a very absurd game of self-improvement. And there are people who go on talking about things and they go on dividing.

This AhaslearnedfromSriAurobindo,andhewasagreatclassifier--mind,super- Anybody who is giving you ideas about improvement, sooner or later will start exploiting you, because then you will need his help. You will need somebody to guide you because this is a big journey. Then gurus and the whole business starts.

My whole effort is that you have to enjoy herenow. This moment is as absolute as any other moment, and you are as perfect as you will ever be. If you cannot enjoy this moment, you will not be able to enjoy any other. Even if you reach to the supra-mind - if there is something like that - you will find another A waitingtherewhowillsay, T hisisnothing.Iknowhigherplaces.

In India we have so many scriptures, and clever and cunning people always dividing and creating maps. One sect of Radhaswamis have divided the whole life process into fourteen stages. Man stands on the lowest so you have to cross thirteen stages. And they have not only decided that.

They have decided that Buddha has reached only to the sixth, Mohammed has reached only to the fifth, Krishna has reached only to the seventh and Christ only to the fifth. Mahavir is just hanging somewhere near the fourth - and their guru has reached to the fourteenth. They call the ultimate the fourteenth, the world of truth. Only their guru has reached there and nobody else has yet.

This is just a game. Why fourteen? You can divide it into one hundred and forty or fourteen hundred, there is no difficulty One needs just a little articulateness so one can go on dividing. But these are just verbal games. A mature person is finished with all this nonsense. A nature person knows that 'This moment is here and I have to enjoy it as totally as possible. The next moment will come; I will see.'

So drop this disease of self-improvement. My whole message is this - that you are already gods.

This looks intellectual right now because of that self-improvement knocking inside. It remains intellectual. If you stop that, n will become immediately existential. You will be able to see that it is so. Then one lives in a totally different way... Life is a celebration. Otherwise look at monks and ascetics and monasteries and people who are trying to improve themselves and doing all sorts of nonsense.

Somebody is standing on his head, somebody fasting, somebody forcing celibacy, somebody destroying his body, committing slow suicide, somebody lying on thorns and somebody standing in the sun, somebody sitting naked in the snow; all masochistic. If you are too mad after self- improvement, one day or other you will become a masochistic person. You will start torturing yourself. You will see death coming and nothing is happening.

There are fools around who have been befooled by others. They may not be bad persons but they are fools. They can tell you, 'Do this and you will start improvement.'

The whole thing is to be, not to do. Relax into your being and enjoy the moment that has already been given to you. And don't waste time. This way you become chronic.

Don't listen to such things. Tell Atokeephisknowledgetohimself,andbealertaboutwithwhomyouarehanging,mm?Mm!Good!

[A group member says: The question's very good for centring and just slowing down.]

You can continue doing it. It is very good. It has given you something. So do it for at least one hour every day.

[The group member adds: I felt perhaps I wasn't quite serious enough about it, but it didn't seem really necessary to be beating my head against the wall.]

There is no need to be serious but one has to be sincere - and both are different. Seriousness has something sad about it. Sincerity simply means authenticity.

Be authentic. When you are doing something, then really do it. That's what sincerity is. When you are participating in a group, then why waste time? Why participate in a lukewarm way? Go in headlong, so if something is there, it happens. If there is nothing, then you attain to an experience that there is nothing in it. But whatsoever happens - whether something happens or not - you come out of it richer, more experienced.

So when you do a thing, really do it. If you don't want to do a thing, then don't do it. But people are very funny. They want to do both things together. They want to do a little and they don't want to do, so they waste time and nothing happens. They are losers.

But, good. A little glimpse has come to you. Continue that for one hour every day. That question is very good. Raman Maharshi had only that meditation. Through that meditation he attained his enlightenment: asking 'Who am I?' That was his whole Yoga, nothing else. That meditation is tremendously powerful, but one should go as deep as possible. One should allow it to sink to one's innermost core. It should penetrate you like an arrow going on and on and on, and suddenly one day, a moment comes as if you are drilling a hole and suddenly the drill has passed to the other side.

It is a drilling exactly like that: 'Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?' Go on drilling and then suddenly you see you have drilled the hole, you have reached to the core, and it is tremendously beautiful.

[A group member said that two things happened to him: a flowering in love and repentance about his mother; and secondly a feeling of being very cool and unfamiliar.]

Both have been good. The first was back in your childhood, and the second was a glimpse of your second birth, your second childhood. So the first felt familiar, at home. The second felt unfamiliar, strange, because the second is yet to happen.

The first was a recognition, a remembrance of the flow you must have felt in the very beginning of your life with your mother, so it is not a conscious memory, it is a biological memory. It is nothing in your mind. The first day that the child is born he is just lying on the breast, resting. That is at- homeness. But that your body remembers so it was released by your body, not your mind. You felt flowing and that you were again in the womb of the mother and hence you felt so sorry for your poor mother.

All mothers are poor in that way. And whenever one recognises one's own being, one feels sorry for the mother because she has really done much and there is no way to pay it back. On the contrary, rather than paying it back, everybody is angry with the mother. So when this feeling arises, immediately one feels a sort of repentance. So it was your first childhood.

And the second is your future. The first was your past. The second is a glimpse of that space, emptiness, coolness, that happens when one disappears completely. The ego gone, the knower, the doer, gone. Nobody is left, just pure space. That is what rebirth is - being really born.

So both have been very very significant experiences. You can continue this meditation. For one hour, any time, just sit and by and by you will see that both experiences will start mingling into each other. That emptiness will also start feeling like at-homeness, and that at-homeness will also start feeling like emptiness. Then something really is getting crystallised, a synthesis arising. It has been tremendously beautiful.