Chapter 28
Prem means love and vatya means whirlwind - a whirlwind of love. It is a beautiful word and it gives the sense of the wildness of love. Love is wild, and the moment one tries to domesticate it, it is destroyed. It is a whirlwind of freedom, of wildness, of spontaneity. You cannot manage it and control it. Controlled, it is already dead. Love can be controlled only when you have already killed it. If it is alive, it controls you, not otherwise. If it is alive, it possesses you. You are simply lost in it because it is bigger than you, vaster than you, more primal than you, more foundational than you.
So remember it, because in the same way God also comes. The way that love comes to you, God also comes. God also is wild... wilder than love. A civilised god is no god at all. The god of the church, the god of the temple, is just an idol. God has disappeared from there long ago because there is no way to imprison God in a temple or in a church. Those are graveyards of God.
If you want to find God, you will have to be available to the wild energy of life. Love is the first glimpse, the beginning of the journey. God is the very climax, the culmination, but God comes as a whirlwind. It will uproot you, it will possess you. It will crush you to pieces. It will kill you and resurrect you. It has to be both - the cross and the resurrection.
To remember these things I have given you the name Prem Vatya. Allow life energy to take possession of you. When you sing, you should not sing. Let life energy sing through you. When you dance, you should not dance. It's okay that you start, but sooner or later relax and let the life energy possess you and let it dance through you. That's how one becomes religious. It is a surrender to life and its unknown paths.
Nobody knows where it is going to lead. Perhaps it is not leading anywhere. Perhaps it is not a movement but just a sheer dance... no goal, but sheer enjoyment... just energy overflowing.
Perhaps there is no meaning in it. Perhaps there is no need for there to be any meaning in it.
Meaning is a mind-imposed thing; it is mind searching for meaning. Life seems to be absolutely meaningless - and there is its beauty, there is its unlimitedness. Meaning has to be limited. Anything that can be defined cannot be unlimited. And anything that can be understood, cannot be infinite.
So one thing is certain - life in its totality cannot have any meaning. It is just a whirlwind... beautiful, wild, almost mad. And if you can dissolve into it, you enter the shrine of God.
So remember from this moment that you have to erase yourself more and more. You have to put yourself aside and let life happen. And move with it, sometimes even against your will. But always decide in favour of life, not in favour of the mind. And go wherever it leads because in that very going is fulfillment.
[The new sannyasin is a dancer based in Delhi, and wonders if she should move to Poona.]
That will be very good. You can study music here. Poona is a very good centre for music and it is a good cultural centre. Poona has its own university, so you just enquire.
[A sannyasin said he opened up in groups and is afraid he will close up when he leaves.]
No, it will continue. I can see it. There is no problem; it will continue. Even going to the West will be a situation to grow. And in fact one should not become attached too much to anything whatsoever because the very attachment functions as a barrier. So sometimes it is good to go away from me also and then come back. That going and coming will enrich you, because by and by you will start feeling more confident about yourself when you go back and still find me close to you - and sometimes even closer than you find me here.
First there will be apprehension and a little fear, but when you go and see that there is nothing to fear and that you can face the world without losing any growth that has happened to you, but on the contrary, the more you face the world, the more growth and maturity comes to you, it will be a centring experience. So it is always good to come and go, come and go. Make it a rhythm so that you don't become attached too much to being here.
Otherwise even beneficial things can become harmful. One can become attached too much to a sort of shelter, protection, but that will not give you strength. Strength always comes when you face situations which are hard, are against one, distracting.
In the old days people used to move to monasteries and to the Himalayas and to the far away caves and they attained to a certain peace there, but that peace was very very cheap, because whenever they would come back to the plains, in the world, that peace would immediately be shattered. It was too fragile, and they would become afraid of the world. So that is a sort of escape, not growth.
My whole insistence is to learn to be alone, but never to get too much attached to your aloneness, so you remain capable of being, relating with others. Learn to meditate but don't move to the extreme so that you become incapable of love. Be silent, peaceful, still, but don't get obsessed by it, otherwise you will not be able to face the world, the marketplace.
So, sitting here near me, being dose to me, you are under a shelter, protected from the hot sun, protected from the world. But it is part of my work to send you back so that you become capable of facing the heat also. And it will be a sort of test of whether you have really learned something.
If you have learned anything in the West, the East cannot destroy it. If you have learned anything in the East, the West cannot destroy it. The East and West are polarities, just like a silent monastery and the hustle and bustle of the world, the marketplace... a person living alone and in the world of too many relationships and too many concerns... a person living with nature with almost no distraction, everything in rhythm, and then a person living in the world with millions of distractions, destructive forces all around.
It is easy to be silent when you are alone. It is difficult to be silent when you are with people, but that difficulty has to be faced. Once you are silent with people, you have attained to it; now nothing can destroy it. So whatsoever you have learned here, carry it like a treasure.
And I am coming with you, because once you are in tune with me, you cannot lose me. You can again and again fall in line with me wherever you are, because it is something of the inner. It has nothing to do with the physical presence. Any moment, anywhere, you can close your eyes and remember me, and you will find me just close by.
[A sannyasin asks: How best to spend these two months I have here.
Osho suggests groups.]
The experience will be very helpful in your work also, because really the old concept of psychoanalysis has almost failed. It has helped very little. And there are reasons, because Freud himself had to work against too many odds, and against the whole society and establishment. It always happens that when somebody starts some work, pioneers it, nobody ever completes it, nobody.
But when a school is created, people start thinking that things are complete, perfect, and now there is to be no change. Then an orthodoxy arises. The orthodoxy has arisen and that is killing the whole spirit, the whole spirit of adventure. Many more things have happened since Freud, and they have happened very fast. Everything within these thirty, forty years, has gone at such a speed that if Freud comes back, he will not be able to understand what has happened to the world of psychology.
These humanistic groups have brought almost a revolution.
With the old orthodox psychoanalysis, whatsoever can be done in years can be done in weeks in these groups. Of course psychoanalysts are not in favour of them because their whole trade, their whole business will be destroyed. Psychoanalysis has become a big concern, one of the richest professions in the world now, so too much investment is there. They go on guarding but the citadel is almost on the volcano and any moment it will explode.
So those who are a little avant-garde, those who can see a little ahead, should start absorbing all that is happening all over the world. These groups are basically different from psychoanalysis and yet complementary. They are more active; psychoanalysis is a passive thing.
The psychoanalyst remains almost an outsider, watching, observing. He is a voyeur. He will not touch the patient - touch is the taboo - and he will not relate to the patient as man-to-man. He sits on a high citadel, and the patient is down there. He sits like a judge, infallible, and he goes on throwing judgement He remains an observer; he is not human. He does not participate with the
patient; he does not make a bridge. He does not allow the patient to have a loving atmosphere around him. He is afraid because he has his own problems. If a too loving atmosphere is allowed, he will be himself, lost. So he goes on rationalising and creates a wall around himself. That wall has to be broken because the very humanity is a healing force.
[See 'Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle'. Monday March 29th, where Osho talks about therapy and love.]
When you come by the side of the patient and you don't look at him as a patient but at the most as a person who is in trouble, a person like you, just like you... and you have the same problems as he. It is not a question of you being the healer and he the healee; in fact both are struggling in life and both need healing, and if both join together, all that they know, all that they feel, can come into a unity, into a certain symphony. Then not only will the patient be healed, but the therapist will also have a sort of healing happen to him. Whenever one person is healed, the other is also healed because healing is something beyond both.
So learn from these groups and introduce them. You will have more deep-going results and you will be able to touch the depths of persons. In fact it is not analysis that heals; that which heals is a loving attention. The therapist just lovingly listens and that helps. If you can lovingly participate with the person, with his on-going process, the healing can have a very deep result and faster.
Then it becomes more religious, more poetic, more alive, more throbbing. Otherwise the old concept of pyschoanalysis is almost stale, stagnant. The therapist sits stiff-necked, surrounded by his concepts and philosophies. In fact he is not listening to the person there, he is simply continuously interpreting.
Listen as a human being and participate. Don't judge. We are all in the same boat. You also will be healed and each healing session can be of tremendous benefit. Each person when he comes to you and opens his heart to you is as if opening a dark corner of your being to yourself. Because he is you. Whatsoever has happened to any human being can happen to you. Whatsoever can happen to any human being is also potentially possible to you. So learn, grow, participate, help and don't condemn, don't observe, because a person is not a thing.
Come closer and let the other not be humiliated. In fact we are to help him to stand erect, grounded, centred in the earth. In fact we have to give him the dignity that somehow he has lost. Somehow he has fallen, slipped out of the glory that a human being is. We have to bring back the glory to him.
We have to remind him of his tremendous possibilities. That very reminding becomes a healing, that very hope immediately starts changing the person.
While you are here, do as many of these groups as you can. Just see how they affect you, how they change you, how they can do miracles in a very short span of time, and then start introducing these methods, start introducing meditations.
[The sannyasin answers: I have tried already and I had some results.]
Many more will be coming... many more will be coming, Then it becomes not just a profession; it becomes more alive and playful, more inventive and adventurous. It becomes a vocation.
[A sannyasin recently returned from a stay in England, said that she had enjoyed herself but had not meditated at all.]
No need to worry. You have been meditating.
Meditation is not a question of doing. Once you understand it, then it is a simple thing that becomes part of you. It is not that you meditate, but whatsoever you do has something of meditation-in it.
That's the very goal - that meditation should become a very simple, spontaneous, unselfconscious milieu around you. You simply carry it with you as you breathe, as you see. Only then it goes to the very core of your being.
[The Encounter group is present. The leader said it was good... a little lazy but... ]
Lazy people are always good! They have never done any harm to anybody, because to do harm, one cannot be lazy; one has to be active.
[A group member said he had just been watching during the group: But I feel that I've learned a lot through watching.]
I understand. But much more will happen if you participate, because if you can learn so much out of watching, just think how much you can learn if you participate.
There are things which you can only know if you participate. From the outside you know only superficial things. What is happening to the inside person? Somebody is crying and tears are flowing.... You can watch, but it will be very superficial. What is happening to his heart? Why is he crying? And it is difficult even to interpret - because he may be crying out of misery, he may be crying out of sadness, he may be crying out of anger, he may be crying out of happiness, he may be crying out of gratitude.
And tears are just tears. There is no way to analyse a tear chemically and to find out from where it comes - from a deep gratitude, from a blissful ecstatic state, or from misery - because all tears are same. Chemically they don't differ and they look the same rolling down the cheeks.
So it is almost impossible as far as deeper realms are concerned. It is almost impossible to come to any deduction, to conclude from the outside. Man cannot be observed. Only things can be observed. That's why science goes on failing with man.
You can know from the within. That means that you have to know those tears yourself, otherwise you will never know. Much can be learned by observation, and it is good that you watched, very good. But that is nothing compared to that which comes through participation. So in the next group, participate more, mm? Good.
[The next sannyasin said that he too had been observing rather than taking part, and said that he had a sensation, somewhat painful, around the region of his third eye.
Osho said that the watching must be creating the pain, the tension around that area, because all the energy was being focused through watching - which is not a passive exercise but a very subtle aggression.]
... You try to penetrate something or someone through your eyes. Your eyes function like knives and your whole tension comes into the head. You must be watching very concentratedly. so drop that.
Participate.
Participation is total; your whole body is involved. It is not a question only of head or eyes. Your toes are also involved, everything from toe to head, each cell is involved. So you need something total. If somebody is crying, sit by his side and you also cry rather than watching. If somebody is laughing, participate in the laughter. Be a part and enjoy it. Use eyes less and the body more.
[The leader of the Tathata group was a participant in this Encounter group. He said: It's good to be a participant rather than a leader, but I seem to be holding my energy somehow.
I feel a lot of warmth and sensitivity but somehow I'm not fully letting it out.]
No, completely forget about it. If you pay attention to it, you create a block. There are things that one should never pay attention to. They move on their own. The very attention becomes a disturbance.
Forget about it; it will work on its own. It is beneficial but don't be too conscious of it, otherwise the very consciousness goes there and becomes a block.
It is as if you have eaten food and then you are constantly thinking about whether it has been digested or not - thinking of the stomach, of the intestines. If you think too much you will disturb the stomach. One has to forget. Once you have swallowed the food, forget about it. Your concern is finished. Now it is taken over by the body; the body will look to it.
So meditate and try to be alert, aware, silent, loving, and then forget. Many things will happen in the body energy but the body will take care of it. You need not be worried about it.
And this is good. Sometimes when you feel that it is too much leading a group, you can do a group and participate. Good.
[A group member said: Every time that I do a group people tell me that I'm cold and untrue, that I have no feeling for them... sometimes I feel that they are right.]
Always listen to your own heart. What people say may be right, may not be right, because they look from the outside. They cannot look from your inside. And that is the reality, your reality. So one can listen to them and try to understand what they are saying, but the truth, the final decision, has to depend on you.
And I think you are right - sometimes you are cold, sometimes you are not. But that is the way you are; don't create a problem out of it. When cold, be cold, and don't feel guilty for it. There is no need to remain warm for twenty-four hours; that would be tiring. It would be as if one is awake for twenty-four hours. One needs a little rest also.
When you are cold, the energy is moving inwards; when you are warm, the energy is moving outwards. Of course people will always like you to be warm, because your energy moves towards them only when you are warm. When you are cold, your energy is not moving towards them so they feel offended. They don't feel good, so they will tell you again and again that you are cold. But it is for you to decide.
My feeling is that it is perfectly good. There needs to be a balance. When you feel like being warm, be warm. There is no need to be universally warm. That is the mania, that is the modern mania of the new generation - that one has to be loving universally and one has to be loving every moment of one's life; Sometimes one needs to be cold also.
In those moments you hibernate, you go within your being. Those are meditative moments. So this is my suggestion - when you feel cold, close the doors from relationships and moving with people.
Feeling that you are cold, go home and meditate. That is the right moment to meditate. With energy itself moving in, you can ride on it and go to the very interiormost core of your being. It will give you an interiority, and very easily. There will be no fight. You can simply move with the current. And when you are feeling warm, move out. Forget all about meditation. Be loving.
Use both, and don't be worried about it. Never decide by what others say. Listen to them, listen to them carefully; they may be right, they may be wrong, so the final decision is always with you.
Always move with your inner feeling. Cold - meditate; warm - move in relationship. Do this for these three or four weeks and then tell me.
[A newly arrived sannyasin says: Your love has been with me. And... it's been a miracle just being alive.]
Many more miracles are going to happen.
Life is a miracle, and not one miracle but a continuous miracle. Many more miracles happen each moment but we are not aware; we miss. Whatsoever is surrounding us we are not even aware of, conscious of. And every moment blessings are showering with each breath, but they pass and our hearts remain hard and dry. So just a little more alertness, a little more love, is needed.
Love is even more important than alertness because sometimes the person can become very alert and lose all capacity for love. Then his awareness will be almost ice-cold. He will become very silent, nothing will disturb him, he will remain unperturbed in any situation, but bliss will be missed by him. So alertness is an ingredient, but not all - love is more basic.
In the buddhist scriptures they mention the name of a very great enlightened person, Arya Asangar.
He's one of the greatest buddhist masters after Buddha. For three years he meditated in a himalayan cave. He devoted his whole energy to becoming aware. For three years, day in, day out, he did nothing else; just every effort that he could make to be aware. He became aware but something deep down remained unsatisfied. It was very difficult to feel from where this discontent was coming, because he was absolutely silent, still, alert, but something was frozen. Warmth was not there, it was not cosy. It was alien, as if one was lost in a desert.
After three years he left the cave and wanted to go back to the world. The whole effort towards meditation seemed futile, fruitless. Outside the cave he was waiting to move, deciding whether to go or not and what to do. He saw a small bird bringing straw and leaves to make a nest. The leaves and the straw kept fa11ing down and there was no possibility to build a nest in that place; it would not hold the nest. But the bird was continuously going away and bringing more leaves, putting them there, and they would fall down. It was almost impossible but the bird was happy and enthusiastically he would go and bring more leaves again.
Watching that bird, Arya thought, 'Three years is not enough; maybe a little more effort. And if this bird is hopeful, why not me? And the mind has millions of lives' conditioning, so three years cannot be too much!' He went back into the cave and for three years again meditated. He tried even harder than before... became even more silent, became full of light, but the warmth was missing.
This happened again and again. After three years he would decide to leave and then something would happen outside the cave again and he would come back.
After twelve years he decided that this was foolish. 'I go outside and some bird or squirrel or sparrow or something gives me a new hope and then I come back again. This time I am not going to look at all. I will simply run back to the world.' So he ran, not looking around him, and arrived on the plains outside his village where he rested. He saw there a dog almost dying. It had many wounds on its back and there were maggots, and he felt much compassion for that dog.
For twelve years there had been no situation in which he had felt any warmth for anybody. There was nobody; he was, and his cave was, cold... a himalayan coldness. He washed the dog's wounds and tried to help it, and suddenly all that he was missing was there. He looked inside and Buddha was standing there.
He said to Buddha, 'Master, where have you been for twelve years? When I was really working hard, meditating continuously day in, day out, year in, year out, for twelve years, where have you been?
And why are you suddenly here now?'
Buddha said to him, 'I have always been there, but you can see only when you melt in love.'
Meditation is good but not enough - compassion, love. Said Buddha to him, 'I have always been here with you just waiting, but you wouldn't look' - because this vision of deep fulfillment is possible only when there is compassion and love flowing.
So remember that. Meditate, but never get frozen. Be alert, but never get cold. Meditate, but continuously remember that the fulfillment is love - that love is going to be the criterion of all meditation, that love is going to be the flowering.