Chapter 8

[The Aum Marathon group leader, said about the group: ... it was... fantastic.

I kept leaving the door to the group room open so you wouldn't have any trouble coming in!

I think what happened is that last time, in the last darshan when you said like, that we're all your family... I figured I'm your family too, and therefore the group is my family and I have a right to say that. So I went in with that attitude, and it was just... beautiful.]

(with a laugh) It becomes .... Everything depends on the attitude.

If you take it as a family it is a totally different thing. The distinction and the division and the separation between the leader and the led disappears, and more love becomes possible.

Therapy is a function of love. In fact if the doctor loves the patient, healing happens; it is not a function of medicine or technological knowledge. They are secondary. They may be of help, but they are not essential. The essential thing is love. If the doctor loves the patient, prays for him, thinks of him, a deep welling of energy happens in himself for the welfare and well-being of the patient. He becomes a blessing, and out of that blessing, healing happens.

If you love, you will see that people are growing around you. Without much effort much happens.

Without love you have to make much effort and nothing much happens. Then there is much ado about nothing.

So just drop yourself completely in love . . . forget yourself completely, and then you will never be tired. This time you aren't tired, but last time you were. Last time it was as though you had been passing through a very difficult phase, a struggle; as if there was a constant fight between you and

the group; as if you were trying to prove something and the group was trying to prove something else.

Now you are relaxed, and next time you will be more relaxed. When you are relaxed you can help others to relax - there is no other way. If you are tense, you help others to be tense, because people have learned from their childhood only one thing, and that is how to imitate - and that has become unconscious. They simply imitate, so if you are tense, they will become tense. If you love, they will be in love. If you are not trying to perform, prove anything, they will not try to either. They will be true and flowing, and they will be more easily available. If you are not trying to lead them, they will be ready to be led... and when out of their own will they surrender, surrender has a beauty. Then it is a different flowering, not of this world, unearthly.

So make it more and more like a small family - everyone related, and everyone trying to help everyone else. In fact we are all in the same plight, in the same boat - and the boat is sinking. It is not a question of saving anyone in particular - it is to save us. You are also in the same boat, so it is not just a question of saving them.

Never think in terms of they and them; always think in terms of us and we. When I say that it is a family, I mean us. They, them, don't exist. Merge more and more, and you will see that when you are ready to merge, you take one step and the group can take a thousand and one steps towards you. And the whole thing becomes so easy. Love makes everything so easy, because love knows no differences.

[Another sannyasin, who did the group, said she was still troubled by a tension that she felt to be in her neck, and a little in her upper arms.

Osho checked her energy.]

Good... but you have to allow more; you are controlling.

It seems that aU your life you have been controlling, not allowing things to go wild; afraid of being wild. It is natural, that is how everybody is brought up.

My whole work is to destroy you completely so that the new becomes possible, because only when you vacate yourself is there space available for the new to come. Once you stop controlling you are possessed by something greater than you. And the fear of being possessed creates the trouble.

People become afraid of love, because in love you are possessed. People become afraid of meditation too. They become afraid of anything that goes deeper than their control, beyond their control. Life is beyond your control. You can enjoy it but you cannot control it. You can live it, but you cannot control it. You can dance it, but you cannot control it. It controls you.

Ordinarily we say that we breathe, and that's not true - life breathes us. But we go on thinking ourselves as doers, and that creates the trouble.

You just sit here. You come here Asseema.

(addresses Gatha again) See how energy can be uncontrolled and wild.

(addressing Asseema) Just sit and close your eyes. Raise your hands and allow your energy to go wild.

[Asseema, a sannyasin who had just returned to Poona after several months away, sat in front of Osho as instructed. For a minute or two she was quite still, then a trembling of energy spread through her body and steadily built up to become an almost violent, thrashing movement. Her body jerked and trembled while grunts and groans were heard. The movement rose to a peak, and then fell away to a long slow 'aaahhh'... ]

You have not been far away from me... you have been continually close. Good, come back, come back in control.

(addressing Gatha) Mm this way you have to allow, and then much will be possible. Energy is coming up and somehow you are controlling it. And this is the centre from where the control starts.

Below it is the unconscious mind; above it, the conscious mind. This is the centre just in the middle, so a little control is possible there.

Drop the control and then suddenly the energy will have an upsurge, a breakthrough. It will penetrate like a sharp knife, and may even be painful the first time it penetrates you.

But then everything becomes so beautiful. Life is so tremendously beautiful. One has only to allow, and it is there just waiting for you, just for the asking.

[Another groupparticipant: I learned a lot about my control. I control, and I find it very hard to let go.

Today I've just been digesting that.]

Don't get back into the old habit of controlling yourself. Once you become controlled, too controlled, you don't allow life to happen to you. You have too many conditions, and life cannot fulfill any.

Life happens to you only when you are unconditionally accepting it; when you are ready to welcome it whatsoever shape it comes in, in whatsoever form it takes. But a man who has too much control is always asking life to come in a certain form, fulfilling certain conditions - and life doesn't bother; it just passes these people by the side. They remain almost dead, vegetating.

The sooner you break out of the confinement of control the better, because all control is from the mind. And you are greater than the mind. So a small part is trying to dominate, trying to dictate.

Life goes on moving and you are left far behind, and then you are frustrated. The logic of the mind is such that it says, 'Look, you didn't control well, that's why you missed, so control more.' The truth is just the opposite: people miss because of too much control. Be like a wild river, and much, much that you cannot even dream, cannot even imagine, cannot even hope, is available just by the corner, just within reach. But open your hand; don't go on living the life of a fist, because that is the life of control.

Live a life of open hand. The whole sky is available, don't settle for less. Never settle for less. The whole sky, the whole sky is our birthright... to fly to the farthest corners of existence, and to enjoy and delight and celebrate all that life has given.

So if an insight has come, keep hold of that thread so that it doesn't slip out of the hand.

[Another groupmember says: The group more or less summed up what I am by the name they gave me... in the last darshan when I played the guitar for you, you brought it out too... they gave me the name 'bullshit.']

No, they simply exaggerated. A little you have... chickenshit! (gales of laughter)

[Another participant says: I felt really alive today.... I felt angry and happy, sad and crying.]

When you really become alive, everything becomes alive: love, hate, anger, sadness - everything, because they are all your facets.

People have been trying to choose that only good things should be alive, and bad things - whatsoever they call bad - should be forced to die. In this absurd effort everything has died. People think that when all unhappiness, jealousy, possessiveness, has been dropped, you will be more happy, more loving - but just the reverse happens.

When all these things have been repressed, your love, your happiness, has also been repressed, because man is a totality, individual - that's why we call him individual. You cannot divide him. If you try to kill one thing, the poison spreads all over. It is just as if you inject poison into my hand. It cannot remain in the hand because blood is circulating all over; within seconds the whole body will be poisoned. If you hurt my feet, it is not only that you hurt my feet, you hurt me.

We are undivided, and the whole absurd effort of the centuries has been this: to cut man to pieces - to welcome a few things and to condemn a few things, to call a few things sins and to call a few things virtues. Virtues have to be nourished, strengthened, and the sins have to be completely uprooted.

In this effort, the whole of man has become dead.

So for the first time when you become alive again, everything will become alive. So don't be afraid, because the fear will come soon. More anger will come, more hate will come, and you will wonder what is happening,.because they are parts. The more intense your love, the more intense will become your hate. In fact you will become intense, that's all, so whatsoever you do will be intense.

If you hate somebody you will really hate; if you love you will really love.

Right now man lives in such a way that he is never intense. He loves only so-so, lukewarm; he hates so-so, lukewarm. There is not much difference between the enemy and the friend - both are lukewarm. When you really become alive, polarities exist with infinite tension in them - hate and love, and both alive. You feel torn apart. . . and that's why man has become afraid.

So if you have touched that layer, don't become afraid, allow it. This is the beginning, and in the beginning everything will explode, and everything will become alive. Go on living them unafraid. Live them, and if you live them really, by and by you will see a new change coming. Love and hate will become moods, and you will start feeling that you are far beyond both. And then the witnessing self arises.

First a man has to become alive, and then a man has to become a witness. Only when you are alive can you become a witness. How can you become a witness when things are dead? Of what will you become a witness?

There is nothing - just an emptiness, an impotence surrounds you, nothing worthwhile.

Now your anger will be alive, fiery, and your love will be intense, will have a romance in it. Everything will be at the peak, and nothing will be lukewarm. So first you will be as if thrown in a chaos; enjoy it, enjoy the chaos.

All your structured life will disappear. The patterns won't be able to contain you, you will become bigger and bigger. You will find yourself more and more naked because your clothes won't fit, and you will be growing so fast that you cannot manage to change your clothes.

A real man is always naked - naked in the sense that by the time the clothes are ready he has grown. But if you dare, soon you will find that only nakedness is beautiful because we hide that which we know or feel is ugly; we hide the ugly. So thrown into the chaos, the next possibility opens.

You have become alive like an animal, and only by becoming alive like an animal the door opens to become an angel, to become divine.

To become God, one has to pass through animality. Nobody else will say this to you. They have been teaching that you have to kill your animal, then you become God. But that God is dead, that God will stink of death. Go into your churches - you will find death, not God.

First become alive like an animal - chaotic with tremendous possibilities exploding, a volcano in action. Then by and by you will see that you are rising higher than your moods: you are rising higher than your hate, you are rising higher than your love. Life is so powerful, and once it is alive it goes on and on, higher and higher, and nothing can contain it.

In fact skies are not big enough to contain a single man. If he really rises higher and higher there is no limit to it. There are climaxes and climaxes, but no climax. . . peaks and peaks, but no final peak. So allow it and enjoy it. There may be many troubles, many anxieties - they too have to be accepted. And don't go back; don't try to hide again in the old structures. Be angry, and suffer; love and suffer; hate and suffer. If you remain alive, soon the witnessing self arises.

So the first effort of meditation is to make you alive, and the second effort is to make you a witness.

Then you can be thrown on your own. You have become a star on your own.

[Another participant says: ... The group was a nightmare and a torture.]

It has to be that way! The group is a nightmare because it brings all your nightmares to the surface.

It has to be a nightmare. All the groupleaders are there just to facilitate the process - they are just there to help you so you don't become discouraged.

The nightmare is within you, but you are hiding it so deep that you may have even forgotten everything about it. It has been repressed, and you have created many barriers in the consciousness so that it never comes in. But in the night, sometimes in dreams when the censor is not so hard and you are not so alert, when your ordinary structure is no longer functioning and there are loopholes, it smuggles in. That's why people have nightmares and dreams. Those nightmares are coming from their own unconscious, from their own mind. You won't allow them in the day, so they come at night.

A group is a process in which the nightmares have to be allowed - not only allowed, but helped to come while you are awake. Once a nightmare comes while you are awake, then you are finished with it. The process is hard, it is almost a torture, because it is surgical, and the operation is such that anaesthesia cannot be used; it has to be done fully consciously. There are many wounds, many complex growths inside. Everybody is carrying many cancers, and they have to be brought out. One becomes afraid because the experiences are horrible.

The whole effort is to give you courage so that you can pass through it. Once you pass through it, you come to a totally new ground in your being. Nightmares will cease and I will stop manipulating you from backstage.

[A sannyasin says: I don't understand what is happening lately... things are happening so fast....

I see that by letting everything happen... I become a part of the overall... the way the universe is going And yet somehow it always manifests as concepts that I have, as good, peaceful blissful; it seems one-sided.]

Mm, it is natural... I understand.

The mind goes on labelling things, but accept that too - it is okay. The mind is addicted to labelling, so allow the old fellow to do things; just don't be too involved in it, don't be identified with it. The mind goes on playing around but you remain aloof.

You see a rose, and you see the mind too that is saying 'beautiful'. Don't be worried about it. The rose is natural, and the mind that says beautiful is also natural. Accept the fact, and by and by the mind disappears, because it is pointless for it to label things if you are not there to listen - so why bother? One day suddenly you will see the rose is there and the mind is not saying anything - and that is tremendously beautiful.

That beauty can never be known by any concept, by any concept of beauty. It is something which cannot be labelled. All labelling corrupts, and all concepts become confinements, limitations. But you just watch....

[Osho spoke to one of the sannyasins who had assisted in the Aum marathon about the differences between doing groups in the West and here with him.]

Here it is going to be totally different. The basic point is that I am here, and that is going to make a lot of difference.

Techniques don't do much - they are just ways for you to become available to me, and me to you, mm? They are indirect ways. You can do the techniques in the West, but then they are only techniques, so whatsoever the technique can do will happen, but here it is going to be totally different.

[Another sannyasin says: I felt like I was in an insane asylum - and it was wonderful... because I've never allowed myself to be insane before, and everything was right there. My mind was saying no, but then it would go away, and everything was just crazy!]

Very good. To be really sane one has to allow insanity. You have to be voluntarily insane if you want to remain sane, otherwise one day or other insanity explodes, and then you aren't in control.

All these groups are voluntary insanity groups, mm? - willingly, and not only willingly, you even have to pay for them! (laughter) Yes, good, it has been good.

[The other groupleader, said: The group was good, liked it, and I didn't get so tired this time.]

No, you will not be. Next time you will be perfectly okay, and then after that you will get energy out of the group.

In fact the group should give you energy. If you are fully there, loving and open, you will get energy, because so many people are releasing so much energy. One just needs to know how to use it, how to take it in. The groupleader should really be ready to use even negative energy.

After a few months I will start working on groupleaders....

Mm, because the first thing to learn is how to use so much negative energy, because if you don't use it, it can become heavy. It can be turned into positivity.

Energy is neutral. If somebody is releasing energy and you don't know how to make it positive, your own anger will arise. Watching an angry person you will feel restless and angry. If vou know how to use it - and tremendous energy is being released - you can absorb it.

But just now, this will be enough - that you don't lose energy, and you come out of it without being tired.

[She said that she had felt tired halfway through the forty-eight hours. Osho said this was not because of the group but because of her. He said she was still resisting the idea of having to lead the group alone when Veeresh returned to England in several months.

He said she should drop the resistance because leading this group was going to be very helpful for her - and that was why he was insisting she do them.... ]

Leave things to me so that I can decide what is to be done. It is better to be a puppet in my hands than in your own mind's hand. So just drop that idea, and do it happily... enjoy it as much as you can.

It is such a beautiful phenomenon: so many people working, and so many people being enriched; coming to breakthroughs, and coming to contact something they have never contacted before. And you become the midwife - be happy about it!

[She answers: I don't understand what's happening to me... ]

You understand perfectly...

You are clever enough - and that is your burden. Drop all cleverness. Just be simple, almost idiotic, and then enjoy life. Only idiots can enjoy life. So you just try to be an idiot.

Lao Tzu says that the whole world is clever, only I am an idiot.