Chapter 26

[A sannyasin asks :I came to say that I'm going back to Scotland. The question comes to me of whether I should make this sort of decision myself or should I come to you and ask?]

When you cannot make the decision, when it seems impossible, only then. If you can make the decision, there is no need. You make the decision. One has to learn by and by to be on one's own and one has to trust oneself more and more. My help should not become a dependence. It should help you to become really more alert, more trusting of your own life, of your own heart's voice.

So when you come to me and ask, it is not that I answer. I have to search into your heart to see what really would have been your decision if your own heart were functioning. I never give any decision on my own because that would be destructive. It would be something from the outside. So when you ask, I look into you; I don't decide. I look into you, I feel you, I see your own heart which you cannot see, and I let that heart decide. So at the most I interpret your heart to you. I am a midwife.

So if you can decide, good. By and by you will start listening to your own inner core and what it is saying. And that trust has to arise. Otherwise trusting in me can become dangerous to you, because then you're always depending on some outside agent. It can become a habit, so that when you are alone or when you have gone far away from me you will be at a loss as to what to do.

So even while you are here, whatsoever you can decide, decide. When you feel that it is almost impossible for yOU to come to a decision, the pros and cons are almost balancing, you are divided half and half, then only come to me. And then too, I can help you; I don't impose anything on you.

At the most I become a bridge between you and yourself. That's my function.

So by and by you can see the bridge, and you can go on moving from yourself to your real self; my need is less and less. One day there is nothing that you cannot decide. Then you have come of age. You become mature and ripe.

So the first effort should be to decide on your own, otherwise people start coming for small things; that's bad. That is dangerous, a very harmful practice, because then you will lose all direction and you will always depend on some outside authority to tell you what to do and what not to do. That's what has happened to the whole of humanity. Every child is being directed by the parents, the society, by the teachers, the authorities, the priest, the state. There are so many people leading you so you lose all sense of direction. Whenever these authorities are not there, you are simply stuck.

You cannot move; you are paralysed. So if your father is not there, you seek a father-figure.

If your belief in one religion is gone, you immediately turn to another religion. If you stop going to one church, you start going to another church, but somewhere or other you are seeking the priest, somebody to tell you what is right, somebody to give you the commandment: 'This is right'; somebody to give you a sense of certainty that he knows. If you stop going to churches, you go to a psychoanalyst to tell you something, or you go to the politician. But you always go to somebody and you never come home.

A master is not an authority, and whenever you see that a master has become an authority, he is not a master; he has become poisonous. A master is at the most a very polite hint, not an authority.

He simply cares about you. He has no ideas to impose, no directions to give. He has no commandments. He is not in any way an expert. He simply loves you, cares about you, and under his care you start growing.

Now it is a very paradoxical thing: you have to be helped but in such a way that the help does not become a habit; that is the paradox. Help can be withdrawn completely but then you are not helped.

Then your freedom will become licence. You will move not knowing where you are going. You will stumble here and there almost like a drunkard, or you may start moving in a vicious circle.

So to be left totally alone is dangerous and to depend totally on somebody is also dangerous.

Somewhere between the two is the golden mean - to depend and yet not to depend. Take as much help as you can from me, but the help is to make you more mature. The help is to make you so alert that less and less help is needed; the help is not to make you more helpless. So, increasingly less and less help should be needed. That should be the basic effort. So always decide.

Whenever you see some problem has arisen, it is a good opportunity, a challenge, a critical moment.

Use it creatively, find out ways and means. Listen silently to your own heart and if a certainty arises from there, good; you have taken my help already. But only in rare moments when you cannot decide, when the darkness is too much and you are absolutely confused - if you decide this and the mind says that, if you decide that and the mind says this, and you go on hanging between the two; you cannot even see that one voice is the voice of your major being, you are divided fifty-fifty - then only come to me. Then too, remember always that it is not my advice that I am giving to you. It is your innermost heart that I am handing over to you. Soon you will start seeing it.

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I have sorrow because [my partner] is staying, and I'm excited too because I've never spent much time alone and so that's good, I guess.]

Aloneness has in it both a sort of sadness, a sort of sorrow, and yet a very deep peace and silence.

So it depends on you how you look at it.

Look at it as a great opportunity to be alone. Then the vision changes. Look at it as an opportunity to have your own space. It becomes very difficult to have one's own space and unless you have your own space, you will never become acquainted with your own being, you will never come to know who you are. Always engaged, always occupied in a thousand and one things - in relationship, in worldly affairs, anxieties, plans, future, past - one continuously lives on the surface.

When one is alone one can start settling, sinking in. Because you are not occupied you will not feel the way you have always been feeling. It will be different; that difference also feels strange. And certainly one misses one's lovers, beloveds, friends, but this is not going to be forever. It is just a small discipline.

And if you love yourself deeply and go down into yourself, you will be ready to love even deeper, because one who does not know oneself cannot love very deeply. If you live on the surface, your relationship cannot be of depth. It is your relationship, after all. If you have a depth, then your relationship will have a depth.

So take this opportunity as a great blessing and move into it. Enjoy it. If you become too sorrowful, the whole opportunity is wasted. And it is not against love, remember. Don't feel guilty. In fact it is the very source of love. Love is not what is ordinarily known as love. It is not that. It is not the tohu-bohu of sentimentality, emotions, feelings. It is something very deep, very foundational. It is a state of mind... and that state of mind is possible only when you penetrate your own being, when you start loving yourself.

That is the meditation when one is alone: to love oneself so deeply that for the first time you become your own love object.

So in these days when you are alone, be a narcissist; love yourself, enjoy yourself, delight in your body, in your mind, in your soul. And enjoy the space that is empty around you and fill it with love.

The lover is not there - fill it with love! Spread your love around your space, and your space will start becoming luminous; it will glow. And then for the first time you will know when your lover comes close to you, that now it is a totally different quality. In fact you have something to give, share. Now you can share your space because you have your space.

Ordinarily people think that they are sharing, but they don't have anything to share - no poetry in their heart, no love. In fact when they say they want to share, they don't want to give, because they don't have anything to give. They are in search of getting something from the other and the other is also in the same boat. He is searching to get something from you, and you are searching to get something from him. Both are in a way trying to rob the other of something. Hence the conflict between lovers, the tension; the continuous tension to dominate, to possess, to exploit, to make the other a means for your pleasure; somehow to use the other for your gratification. Of course we hide in beautiful words. We say, 'We want to share,' but how can you share if you don't have?

So enjoy this space, aloneness. Don't fill it with past memories and don't fill it with future imagination and fantasy. Let it be as it is - pure, simple, silent. Delight in it; sway, sing, dance... a sheer joy of being alone.

And don't feel guilty. That too is a problem because lovers always feel guilty. If they are alone and they are happy, .they feel a certain guilt. They think, 'How can you be happy when your lover is not

with you?' - as if you are cheating the person. But if you are not happy when you are alone, how can you be happy when you are together? So it is not a question of cheating anybody.

In the night when nobody is looking at the plant, at the rosebush, it is preparing the rose. Deep down in the earth the roots are preparing the rose. Nobody is looking there. If the rosebush thinks, 'I will show my roses only when people are around,' then it will not have anything to show. It will not have anything to share, because what you can share has first to be created and all creativity is in dark aloneness.

So let this aloneness be a womb, and enjoy and delight in it; don't feel that you are doing something wrong. It is a question of attitude and approach. Don't give it a wrong interpretation. It need not be sorrowful. It can be tremendously peaceful and blissful. It depends on you.

[A sannyasin had recently returned from England. Osho asked after her father. She replies: He's okay. He thinks what I'm doing is rubbish.]

[chuckling] That's perfectly right! He is right. Write to him that my master says that it is all rubbish [laughter] and that he invites you to come and enjoy. But it is worth enjoying, tell him. All rubbish is not rubbish. Some rubbish is spiritual!

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: I find that I have an extremely violent streak in me. I wondered if I should do some more groups or the Dynamic meditation.]

[Osho said that on his return he should do some groups, and for the moment should continue Dynamic meditation... ]

It will go. Violence is never part of nature. Nobody is born violent; one learns it. One is infected by a violent society, by violence all around and one becomes violent. Otherwise every child is born absolutely non-violent.

There is no violence in your being itself. It is conditioned by situations. One has to defend oneself against so many things and offence is the best method of defending. When a person has to defend himself so many times, he becomes offensive, he becomes violent, because it is better to hit first than to wait for somebody to hit you and then reply. The one who hits first has more chances of winning.

That's what Machiavelli says in his famous book 'The Prince'. It is the bible of the non-religious or the anti-religious; the bible of the politicians. He says that attack is the best method of defence.

Don't wait; before somebody attacks you, you attack. There is no need to wait. When he attacks, Machiavelli will say that it is already too late. You will already be on the loser's side.

Hence people become violent. Very soon they come to understand it - that they will be crushed. The only way to survive is to fight, and once you learn this trick, by and by your whole nature becomes poisoned by it. But it is nothing natural, so it can be dropped. It will go; nothing to worry about.

[A sannyasin who works in the mala shop asked about a problem with his coordinator, Asheesh: I just don't like to be dominated, and I started screaming back at him just because I felt humiliated and defensive.]

So the problem is inside you. When a person is not humble he feels humiliated. When a person is humble there is no humiliation. It is the ego that feels humiliation.

[The sannyasin answers: But it felt that it wasn't true, and that he was just screaming at me.]

Sometimes it is possible that the other may be just finding an excuse to throw his anger, but that's no reason for you to get disturbed. If Asheesh gets angry or screams at you, that is his problem.

And you see clearly that there is nothing to scream about. It is ridiculous, so you can enjoy it. What is the point of getting angered? There are only two possibilities: either he is right, then you feel humiliated; or he is wrong - then he is being ridiculous, so the whole situation is humorous and one can enjoy it.

If you feel humiliated and he is right, there is no need to get angry. Rather, start looking for the ego and drop that ego, otherwise again and again you will feel humiliated. The ego is very touchy. So drop it. Being here with me if you cannot drop it, where will you be able to drop it? So drop it and tell Asheesh and everybody that whenever you have a chance to humiliate me, humiliate me, so that I can drop it sooner.

If you feel that they are right, accept whatsoever they are saying and be humble. If you are humble you can never be humiliated; that is the point. A humble person is beyond it. You cannot humiliate him. He is already standing in the last row; you cannot throw him backwards. He is already defeated; you cannot defeat him. He says, 'I am the last,' so where can you throw him out? He is already the last. He is not trying to become the first, so nobody can obstruct him.

That is the whole taoist attitude towards life. Be humble, then nobody can humiliate you. Be egoless, then nobody can hurt you. There is no point in being defensive, because defences won't help. You go on carrying the wound and just go on hiding it, but again and again something will hurt it because the wound is there and anything can hurt it. The ego is like a wound.

So when you see that somebody is right, wait, don't get angry, don't immediately get into a rage.

Wait, close your eyes, meditate over it. If Asheesh is right, tell him, 'You are right and I was wrong,' and correct whatsoever he is talking about. Or if he is absolutely wrong and is throwing something at you which has nothing to do with you, then it is his problem. Feel sorry for him; he is being ridiculous.

If you can remain silent and laughing, he will have to understand it. He will take note of it - that he has been a fool.

We are here to help each other, and all these situations are good. These situations are human situations. This ashram is not to be a monastery where all situations have to be left outside the door.

No. This ashram has to be a miniature world where every situation that exists in the world has to exist here also. Only then can I prepare you for the world, otherwise I will be destroying you. So anger, love, hate, fight, everything has to happen in this ashram.

This ashram is not against the world. It is a miniature world, a small world, a community where we are preparing everybody to be able to cope with the world, to be able to live in the world and live positively and affirmatively... to live and enjoy. Whatsoever the situation, our whole effort is to make you capable of passing through that situation unaffected, uncorrupted by it; in fact benefited, enriched by it.

There are monasteries in the world which are against the world. They create an alternate world; no fight, no anger, everybody is polite and everybody is nice, everybody is goody-goody. But everything is false, everybody is pretending, forcing. No, I am not for that.

I want real people here. And if grace comes, it has to come through being real, not through being hypocrites, not by pretending.

So thank Asheesh. He is good, he is giving you great chances. So when you go back, tell him.

'Continue, Asheesh,' mm?

[The sannyasin answers: He can be very heavy.]

He can be, but you have to enjoy it. He's a great taskmaster! You have to enjoy it. Drop your ego.

When it is a question of ego, always drop it. And if he is wrong, then laugh. Then give him an opportunity to grow.