Chapter 12

[Osho spoke first to a woman, a mother of a sannyasin, saying that her leaving was premature because she had just started to move in from the periphery and things would have started happening.

She asked wasn't it possible for things to happen anywhere, if they were going to happen at all, but Osho said for the first glimpse one needs a suitable situation, and after that 'you have a thread in your hands. Then the journey may be long, and the goal far away, but you live in the certainty that it is going to happen, that it is happening.' He pointed out that even after all this time it had not happened to her.... ]

As I feel it, you were just coming in a little. But it happens... the mind is very defensive. And good, mind's function is that - to remain alert and not to fall into any trap. But because of it you can miss, too.

[She answers: Well, this is certainly the message I've been getting all the time - that my mind is too much there.]

I know, you have cultivated it for so long, and that's why it is there. You have nourished it, enjoyed it - that's why it is there. Now the only thing is to start enjoying something which has nothing to do with the mind.

[She answers: I do, I enjoy music. It's my life so to speak.]

Mm, that's good, but still I feel you enjoy it from the mind. You are not lost in it. One can intellectually enjoy music, the subtleties of it. Then it becomes a beautiful intellectual effort; very subtle, but intellectual.

But to enjoy music as a madman is totally different. Then you are lost in it; it takes possession of you.

As I feel it you have always avoided anything that can possess you, that can go beyond your control.

You are happy up to a certain extent; when everything is in your control and the mind remains the manipulator and sovereign in you.

And that has happened to many people. This whole age is mind-obsessed. And it is not without reason - mind has achieved so much, and particularly in the West. The East has to learn from the West of the ways of the mind. Right now the West is too enthusiastic about the mind - its ways and achievements. The mind has almost conquered nature; travelled to the moon, and reached into the secrets of nature. Mind has proved its metal. So whenever you have to move away from the mind. vou start feeling hesitant. Now you are moving into ways which are not of the mind, and mind becomes alert.

You have not done anything without the head; the head has always been the vehicle. You have loved, but through the head. You have enjoyed music, but through the head. You are not even aware of it, because you means your head. Unless you start moving away from it and do things that are irrational and irrelevant to the structure of the mind, things with which the mind cannot cope, you will not become aware of it.

[She replies: I understand what you mean... but how?]

That how is the question of the mind. The mind says, 'Then what is the technique?' - so then it can again control. Any technique can be controlled by the mind. Mind is the creator of all technology, and with it, mind is perfectly happy. It can possess the technique and use it; it remains supreme.

If you ask how, you again move from the same dimension. It is not a question of how, rather it is a question of understanding what the mind has given you - what peace, what blessings it has showered upon you. If you feel contented, if you feel that this is the end, then there is no problem, don't be worried about it. But if you feel that something is still lacking, that the harmony is not complete, that you have not arrived, then start doing something that is not rational.

For example, next time you listen to music, become a participant in it, start dancing. In the beginning it will look awkward, because in the West people have become completely passive. You listen to music, you read a book, you see a film - you are never a participant anywhere; just a watcher, a spectator. The whole of humanity has been reduced to being spectators. It is as if somebody else is making love and you are watching - and that is happening. The whole of humanity has become peeping toms. Somebody else is doing the things and you are a watcher. Of course you are out of it, so there is no involvement, no commitment, no danger. But how can you understand love by watching somebody else make love?

My feeling is that people have become spectators so deeply that when they make love they are watchers. In the East, people have been making love in the dark, but in the West they have started making love in the light - all lights on, mirrors all around, so you can watch yourself making love. There are people who have fixed cameras in their bedrooms so that pictures can be taken automatically, so later on they can see themselves making love.

Pornography has become so significant, almost the bible of the day. What is the appeal of it? You

can watch. A man making love to his woman is not thinking of this woman at all; he is thinking of some playboy girl. the real woman is almost nothing.

When you participate, something irrational starts working. Make love and just be like wild animals.

If you listen to music, dance... because unless the music becomes a dance in you, the head will go on functioning. Once the music has become a dance, reason is put aside. Reason can only be a spectator - it can never be a participant. It is always on the safe side, watching from somewhere where there is no danger.

The mind is the eyes, and the totality is neglected; only the eyes have become important. Your eyes are almost ninety-eight percent of you. Touch is no longer meaningful, smell and taste are no longer meaningful; they are just neglected parts. Sometimes the mind allows you to enjoy them, but the control remains with the mind.

So when you ask me, I will not say how. I am simply saying be aware that the mind cannot be the last fulfillment. It cannot be, because it is only a part. The whole cannot be fulfilled by the part. You are more than your mind, infinitely more, so don't go on locked in the mind, imprisoned in the mind.

Laugh, weep, dance, cry, sing, run, jog, jump, do whatsoever - but don't think about it.

Every day find something you can do for a few hours without thinking about it. Dig a hole in the earth, that will do. Perspire in the hot sun, and dig... just be the digger. In fact not the digger but the digging. Forget yourself completely in it. Become a participant and suddenly you will see a new energy arising.

You have claimed your whole being; now the head is not the only thing. Suddenly your dead parts are becoming alive, and you will feel, you will actually feel hands, legs, the whole body coming alive as if a paralysis has disappeared. Mind is a paralysis, and hung up in the mind one is living a bogus life of words, concepts.

The whole effort here is to change your spectator-obsessed state into a flowing participant state.

You will have to come once more... and I will be waiting.

[A sannyasin says: I feel that I cannot breathe completely. I feel that I'm holding a lot here (indicating lower belly) inside.]

Then Rolfing will be good. Through Rolfing breathing will become natural, and then you can continue it.

Breathing is one of the things to be looked after because it is one of the most important things. If you are not breathing fully, you cannot live fully....

Then almost everywhere you will be withholding something, even in love. In talking even, you will be withholding. You will not communicate completely; something will always remain incomplete.

Once breathing is perfect everything else falls into line. Breathing is life. But people ignore it, they don't worry about it at all, they don't pay it any attention. And every change that is going to happen is going to happen through the change in your breathing.

If for many years you have been breathing wrongly, shallow breathing, then your musculature becomes fixed - then it is not just a question of your will It is as if somebody has not moved for years: legs have gone dead, the muscles have shrunk, blood flows no more. Suddenly the person decides one day to go for a long walk - it is beautiful, a sunset. But he cannot move; just by thinking it is not going to happen. Now much effort will be needed to bring those dead legs to life again.

The breathing passage has a certain musculature around it, and if you have been breathing wrongly - and almost everybody is - then the musculature has become fixed. Now it will take many years to change it by your own effort, and it will be an unnecessary waste of time. Through deep massage, particularly through Rolfing, those muscles relax and then you can start again. But after Rolfing, once you start breathing well don't fall into the old habit again.

Everybody breathes wrongly because the whole society is based on very wrong conditions, notions, attitudes. For example, a small child is weeping and the mother says not to cry. What will the child do? - because crying is coming, and the mother says not to cry. He will start holding his breath because that is the only way to stop it. If you hold your breath everything stops - crying, tears, everything. Then by and by that becomes a fixed thing - don't be angry, don't cry, don't do this, don't do that.

The child learns that if he breathes shallowly then he remains in control. If he breathes perfectly and totally as every child is born breathing, then he becomes wild. So he cripples himself.

Every child, boy or girl, starts playing with the genital organs because the feeling is pleasant.

The child is completely unaware of the social taboos and nonsense, but if the mother or father or somebody sees you playing with your genitals they tell you to stop it immediately. And such condemnation is in their eyes you become shocked, and you become afraid of breathing deeply, because if you breathe deeply it massages your genital organs from within. That becomes troublesome, so you don't breathe deeply; just shallow breathing so you are cut off from the genital organs.

All societies that are sex-repressive are bound to be shallow-breathing societies. Only primitive people who don't have any repressive attitude about sex breathe perfectly. Their breathing is beautiful, it is complete and whole. They breathe like animals, they breathe like children.

So many things are involved. First go through the Rolfing and then tell me.

[A sannyasin had come to darshan two weeks ago saying that he was overeating. Osho suggested he chew his food more carefully, at least forty times for each mouthful, and that he spend a certain time each day having food fantasies.

He reports to Osho: I have chewed the food very slowly, and at first I was very sad, but now that has gone and I think that food is not so much the problem.]

Very good. If you chew well, food is never a problem, because the body is really satisfied. When you don't chew and you go on stuffing your body, it is not nourished, so it goes on demanding more and more - and you go on stuffing. Don't use your body like a bag; it isn't a bag - respect it.

Chewing is possible only in the mouth. There are no teeth in the stomach, so once you have swallowed, the food can never be chewed again. So it is an unnecessary burden on the stomach, and by and by it becomes a problem. People who don't eat well eat much. People who eat well, with deep respect, never eat more than is needed. Then the body functions perfectly, and it immediately gives you an indication that now you are full and there is no need to eat any more.

When you chew well, the time process is prolonged. The same food you were eating in one hour now will take four hours because each bite has to be chewed forty times. Nobody can give that much time - that's why you became sad. Eating for three, four hours, one will just feel fed up with the whole thing!

And one more thing is involved in it. When you go on throwing things inside yourself it is a sort of aggression, a violence. Teeth are the most violent part of your body, and part of the animal heritage. When animals are aggressive they will bite. They only have teeth and nails, so it is with these that they do violence. That has remained with man too, because man comes from animals.

So whenever you are chewing a lot, much violence will be satisfied. A good chewer will become less violent because through the exercise of the teeth, violence is released. A person who goes on stuffing, without chewing, will become violent. So you became sad.

Remember that anger is one phase of violence, the active phase; and sadness is another phase, inactive, passive. Have you watched? Anger can immediately become sadness, and sadness can immediately become anger - they are not very far away. So when you were throwing things inside, the anger was there, violence was there. Now you are chewing, the violence and the anger relax and sadness will settle. But if you continue, by and by the sadness will disappear and you will feel really fulfilled and happy. So continue.

And the visualisation?

[He replies: When I chewed well I didn't have any fantasies.]

That's very good. But if even chewing well you have a mad urge to eat, just sit and close your eyes and eat in fantasy as much as you want - but then too you have to chew forty times!

[Another sannyasin says: A lot of things hare been happening - like opening and feeling that I'm going inside. And energy's coming from here. (indicating navel) My head still talks a lot but sometimes it isn't there...

But the main thing is a lot of anger is coming up]

Allow it to come up, but don't be angry with anybody. Whenever you feel anger coming up, close the room, put a pillow in front of you, and be angry with the pillow. Pillows are almost buddhas:

they don't react, mm? and they will not take any revenge. When you have beaten the pillow well and you are satisfied, then bow down to the pillow and ask his forgiveness. Even things should be respected. Respect should become your very style of life, and it should not make any distinction between persons and things.

So use a pillow, don't be angry with anybody. Anger is coming because when energy arises, when energy starts coming up, many things that you have repressed deep down in the stomach will start coming up....

Primal Therapy will be very helpful... but anger has to be thrown out with a pillow. Don t just go on holding it, throw it out. The moment you become aware of it, throw it out.

In a month, when the anger is completely gone, one will feel a new life; one becomes almost weightless Anger is your weight - it is on your head like a rock, heavy, crushing you. Once it is removed you will start moving, almost flying....

[A sannyasin said several weeks ago in darshan that she had come in contact with a new lease of energy, to which Osho had said she should find a new channel through which to release it. Tonight she said she felt out of touch with that energy... numb...

Tonight she said she has lost it, and she is having trouble with the meditations.]

Don't be worried, let that numbness be there... it will go by itself. You have always been too occupied.

That occupation has become like an addiction, and it should not be so. Work is good but it should not become an addiction. Many people have made their work like a drug so they can forget themselves in their work - just like a drunkard forgetting himself in alcohol.

Your work has become alcoholic, and that is why I have not allowed you to go and work... I'm waiting.

Let this numbness go. One should be as capable of non-doing as of doing - then one is free. One should be capable of sitting, not doing anything, as perfectly and beautifully and blissfully as when one is working hard and doing many things; then one is flexible.

There are two types of people: a few who are glued into their lethargy, and the other extreme who are glued into their occupation. Both are in prisons. One should be capable of moving from one to another with no effort, effortlessly. Then you have a certain freedom, a certain grace and a spontaneity to your being.

I am not against work, I am not against anything - but nothing should become an addiction.

Otherwise you are in a very very confused state.

So let this numbness be there. It will go by itself after again - without any work - and you are happy, then I will tell you to move into work. Then it will never be a repetition; something new will always be coming out of your flexible being. Otherwise, if it is an occupation and one is just hiding oneself in it, then it becomes a repetitive thing, a mechanical thing. It is more like an obsession, you are possessed by a demon, and that's not good.

So just wait, and enjoy numbness too!

[another sannyasin says: It is hard to surrender!...

I realise that my mind is saying no, and my heart is saying yes. There is a lot of confusion.

Listen to the heart - the head is not going to lead you anywhere. The head and heart are always in conflict. But it depends on you - if you listen to the heart the head cannot do anything. In fact it is not a question of the head - you go on listening and cooperating with head. Why not cooperate with the heart?

[The sannyasin asked if he could join the music group. Osho said it would be good.... ]

... but before you join... the heart! Otherwise music won't happen.

All music is of the heart. The head can only make noise, not music. The head is a marketplace...

the heart is the shrine of being. All that is beautiful and true arises out of the heart, never out of the head. Out of the head comes the Hiroshima, Nagasaki - destruction. Creativity comes out of the heart. So first cooperate with the heart so you become capable of participating in music. That's the only way - the way goes through the heart. Then music can become prayer, music can become meditation.