Chapter 15

[A sannyasin, recently returned from the West, said he was experiencing difficulty in maintaining a relationship as well as meditating and moving deeper into his 'inner world'.]

When you move on an inner pilgrimage, the energies turn inwards, the same energies that were moving outwards, and suddenly you find yourself alone like an island. The difficulty arises because you are not really interested in being yourself, and all relationships look like a dependence, a bondage. But this is a passing phase; don't make it a permanent attitude. Sooner or later when you are settled inside again, you will be overflowing with energy and will want to move into a relationship again.

So for the first time that mind becomes meditative, love appears to be like a bondage. And in a way it is true because a mind that is not meditative cannot really be in love. That love is false, illusory; more of an infatuation, less like love. But you have nothing to compare it with unless the real happens, so when meditation starts, the illusory love by and by dissipates, disappears. Don't be disheartened, one thing. And the second thing, don't make it a permanent attitude; these are two possibilities.

If you become disheartened because your love life is disappearing, and you cling to it, that will become a barrier in your inner journey. Accept it - that now the energy is seeking a new path and for a few days will not be available for the outward movement, for activities.

If somebody is a creator and he meditates, all creativity will disappear for the time being. If you are a painter, suddenly you will not find yourself in it. You can continue, but by and by you will have no energy and no enthusiasm. If you are a poet, poetry will stop. If you are a man who has been in love, that energy will simply disappear. If you try to force yourself to move into a relationship, to be your old self, that enforcement will be very very dangerous. Then you are doing a contradictory thing: on one hand you are trying to go in, on the other you are trying to go out. It is as if you are

driving a car, pressing the accelerator and at the same time pressing the brake. It can be a disaster because you are doing two opposite things together.

Meditation is only against false love. The false will disappear, and that's a basic condition for the real to appear. The false must go, the false must vacate you completely; only then are you available for the real. So for a few days forget all relationships.

The second thing, which is also a very great danger, is that you can make it a style of life. It has happened to many people. They are in the monasteries - old monks, orthodox religious people who have made not being in a love relationship a life-style. They think that love is against meditation, and meditation is against love - that's not true. Meditation is against false love, but is totally with true love.

Once you are settled, when you can go in no further, you have reached the core of your being, the bottom rock, then you are centred. Suddenly energy is available but now there is nowhere to go.

The outer journey stopped when you started meditating, and now the inner journey is also complete.

You are settled, you have reached home This energy will start overflowing. It is a totally different type of movement, the quality of it is different; because it has no motivation. Before you were moving towards others with a motivation; now there will be none. You will simply be moving towards others because you have too much to share.

Before you were moving as a beggar, now you will be moving like an emperor. Not that you are seeking some happiness from somebody - that you have already. Now the happiness is too much.

The cloud is so full it would like to rain. The flower is so full that it would like to ride on the winds as fragrance and go to the very comers of the world. It is a sharing. A new type of relationship has come into existence. To call it a relationship is not right because it is no longer a relationship; rather it is a state of being. Not that you love, but that you are love.

So don't be disheartened or make it a style of life; it is just a passing phase. Renunciation is a passing phase - celebration is the goal of life, renunciation is just a means. There are moments when you have to renounce; just as when you are ill and the doctor says to fast. Fasting is not going to be a style of life. Renounce food, and once you are healthy, enjoy it again - and you will be able to enjoy it more than ever. Don't make fasting your life. It was a passing phase, it was needed, mm?

Just fast a little with love and relationships, and soon you will be capable of moving again, again overflowing, and moving without motivation. Then love is beautiful. And it is never beautiful before that; it is always ugly. Howsoever you try, it always turns sour. Both people may be trying hard to make a beautiful thing out of it but it is not in the nature of things; something ugly comes in. Every love affair is always on the rocks.

Just wait....

[The Vipassana group were at darshan. The groupleader, Paritosh, said that at the seventh day things looked bad but then picked up again, though somebody had run away. Pradeepa, who was assisting, came forward bearing the staff, a zen stick, that is used as part of the technique to help people to maintain an alert and aware state of consciousness.

Osho took the staff and demonstrated on Pradeepa's head how to use the stick and the correct place to hit that would be most beneficial. Pradeepa said that people had actually asked her to hit harder than she had been initially. Osho agreed that this was needed... ]

In a certain moment when a person is falling asleep, if you hit hard suddenly the energy surges up, and that's a beautiful experience. If you just do it very mildly it won't stir the energy.

And when you hit, first just wait and become completely silent. Because it is not just a question of a stick hitting; it is a transfer of energy. So first stand, be very prayerful, very silent. A deep compassion should come, you should feel much for the person in front of you and then hit.

[Osho went on to talk about the changes that would appear around the seventh day, and the significance of them.]

It will happen many times that after the fifth, sixth day, or near the seventh, it is the most tense day, because seven days is the limit the mind can tolerate anything. And when it becomes intolerable it is the right moment, if you can persist, for something to happen... you can escape and miss it. So it may differ with each person. Some may come to this point after four or five days, but as a general rule the seventh day is the point where you will feel that the whole process is intolerable; so heavy that you would like to escape.

So make people aware that this is natural; that it is not just them but a natural process of the mind.

In the beginning tell them that around the seventh day this point will come when they will feel like escaping. But that is the point that there is a breakthrough, if one persists.

After the seventh day things relax, and near the tenth day things become perfectly good again. The tranquillity that is attained near the tenth day is totally different, but one has to persist to reach it. The same happens if somebody does the course for twenty-one days. Near the fourteenth day, trouble will arise again; now on a deeper level and even more anxiety-creating than the first week. The end of this second week will be more trouble-creating, but if one persists then a deeper silence will happen.

And this goes on. After each seventh day it will happen, so just let people be aware of it, otherwise one starts feeling guilty - as if one is not worthy of doing it. It should be remembered that nobody should be allowed to feel guilty. Guilt is the only guilt in the world, and once you feel guilty, things shrink. That is the tendency: that if somebody is doing something that is not to be done, the whole group will make him feel he has done something wrong - never do this.

If somebody says he would like to stop, tell him to rest for an hour - to go into the bathroom and relax in the bath or sit under the shower, or to go outside and sit under a tree; to take rest and not be worried. After one hour he will be able to continue again.

We are not in favour, in any way, of regimentation. People are there of their own will, voluntarily.

Nothing is to be forced and nobody is to be condemned. If somebody escapes that too is good - maybe it was needed.

So remember that, because Vipassana is such a method that it can create guilt in many people.

When they cannot stay in it for such a long time they start feeling something is wrong with them; that

everybody is going so beautifully, only they are condemned. This has to be completely wiped out - this possibility of guilt and condemnation. Accept - if somebody escapes, if somebody comes back, okay, welcome him and keep the doors open.

[The group leader says: You said originally not to have any questions and answers - and there seems to be problems coming from this.

I wonder if it would be possible to have half an hour at night, and I could be available for anyone who wants to come - because they just want encouragement really.]

Yes, but tell them not to bring any intellectual questions or create any discussion. You also simply say what is absolutely essential. Let this just be an encouragement. Otherwise once the mind gets the kick, it continues. Good... half an hour every night will be good.

But when they come to you, teach them how to bow down; teach them the Vipassana method exactly. Whenever they come to you they are coming to a teacher. With deep respect they have to bow down three times. (chortles from Paritosh) You have to be serious enough to receive that bowing! That too is part of the game. Once a person bows down three times, he will not create any discussion, he won't be intellectual. And it is good, it creates atmosphere. And Pradeepa will be there with her stick!

[The assistant leader says: I'd like more respect for the stick! I felt strong resentment when I hit people - which did change after, sometimes.]

No, that will change. These two things have to be told in the beginning: that this is to help the meditators and they should receive the hit in deep gratitude - it has nothing to do with Pradeepa. If somebody says that they don't want to be hit they can be left alone but they are missing much.

[The group leader says: When you say to hit them when they're falling asleep - I mean, they're not literally asleep?]

No, no, just when they are getting sleepy....

Yes, the body immediately shows - the face, everything shows that they are ready to fall asleep.

They are not asleep - it is difficult to fall asleep sitting in that posture...

And remember, you have to be very deeply loving when you hit, because resentment is a two-edged thing. If you simply hit without any love, there is more possibility for resentment to be felt. It may be particularly so for Westerners who have never thought that you can be hit and be grateful to the person who hit you - but they will start feeling it.

Your staff will have the message of love. Hit them with deep love and they will accept it in deep gratitude. By and by they will learn this new language, mm?

[A member of the group told Osho that she had a tension in her head like a tight band all around it, which she had had since first meditating six months ago. She said it occurred on and off during the day but was at its most intense when she closed her eyes during meditation. Then she would be aware of a great deal of tension, and her eyes would begin to flicker.

Osho told her that whenever she went to the bathroom - six or seven times a day - she should rub her hands together until they were hot, just half a minute or so. She should then immediately place them over her eyes, then throw cold water over her eyes. He said it would settle within a week, and that when one meditates too much the inner eyes become tired and need new exercise.

The sannyasin said she had also had a sore throat during the group and a sensation of fever though she didn't actually have a temperature. She had also felt sick in her stomach. Osho said these things could be due to the process.

Another group member said that she too had felt a sickness in her stomach and a pain like an open wound in her stomach which she noticed after the sixth day. She said that when it became worse and it was difficult to continue sitting, she felt like leaving. But then something seemed to happen each time and it would settle.]

At that moment when you want to escape remember to persist, because it is exactly at that moment when it is almost impossible to bear, that the door opens, and suddenly energies are transformed.

If you escape in that moment, you miss.

The stomach goes through changes when the mind changes because they are deeply connected.

We go on suppressing emotions - anger, sadness, all negativities - in the stomach. In fact in the body we have no other place; it works like a basement into which we go on throwing all rotten things, and they accumulate. It is the only empty space in the body, so we not only stuff it with food; we stuff it with all our negativity.

Even in language we have the expression 'I can't stomach it'. It means it is too much, that you will vomit it.

... so if vomiting comes it has to be allowed. Remember Paritosh, that to a few people vomiting and dysentery will come, because when the stomach changes it releases all that is there; it tries to throw it away. Constipation is also possible.

It depends on the person what things will happen - but accept them.

[Another member of the group described some of his experiences, saying that after the seventh day the time seemed to pass very quickly, the hour of sitting seeming to be just a few minutes. He said he felt his body to be like the stump of a tree which was cut open, and he felt himself to be the air inside that hole.

At one stage he heard the crying of a child which became a cry of pain after its mother had reproved it. He said this affected him very deeply; he felt it to be representative of the basic pain and suffering of humankind.

He asked Osho about his having experienced his head as being in two pieces.]

Mind is divided in two parts. You don't have one mind, you have two, and there is a very small bridge connecting both.

Sometimes in deep meditation the bridge is broken and you suddenly feel two. But this is not like schizophrenia, because in schizophrenia you not only feel two, you become two. In deep meditation you remain a witness far away; you see yourself as two minds and a third point of awareness is there. li you lose that third point of awareness it is schizophrenia, you have gone mad. If that third point of awareness remains alert, it is tremendously beautiful... you have seen a reality within the mind.

Sometimes it can happen that a person falls from a train in an accident and the bridge that connects the two brains is broken; it is very delicate. Then the person becomes two: sometimes he is one person. sometimes the other. It also happens in deep meditation, but with a difference. There is a transcendental consciousness looking at these two brains functioning absolutely separately and in deep harmony, with no conflict. It is as if two parallel lines are in deep synchronicity, in harmony, and you are a watcher - it is very beautiful. It has been an experience of witnessing.

[The sannyasin said he found it very difficult to accept the basic suffering of humanity.]

It is difficult, very difficult, but once you accept that too you will become absolutely calm. It is easier to accept one's own misery than to accept another's. It is even possible to accept another's suffering, but the misery of a child - innocent, helpless, suffering for no reason at all; he cannot retaliate, cannot even protest or defend himself. It seems so unjust, so ugly, horrible, that it is difficult to accept.

But remember that not only the child is helpless, you are too. Once you understand your own helplessness, acceptance will follow as a shadow. What can you do? You are also helpless. I am not saying become hard like a stone. Feel it, but know that you are helpless. The world is vast and man is helpless. At the most we can feel compassion. And even if we do something, there is no.

certainty that our doing is going to help - it may cause even more misery.

So I am not saying to lose your compassion. Only lose your judgement that this is wrong. And drop the idea that you have to do something about it, because once the doer comes in the witness is lost.

Compassion is good, helplessness is good. Cry, there is nothing wrong in it.

Let tears come, but allow them knowing that you are also helpless; that is why you are crying. The very idea that we can make any change is very egoistic, and that ego goes on disturbing.

So drop that ego and just watch. It has been beautiful, mm?

[An indian visitor said his mind was very very active all the time, working or meditating, and that he suffered from sleeplessness too. Osho suggested that he try to attend at least a camp.... ]

I understand the difficulty, but constant thinking is so deep-rooted, it is such a long habit of many lives, that it needs hard work to drop it.

It is not impossible to drop it - it drops, but work is needed. In India we have the wrong notion that some miracle will happen and it will stop. It will not stop that way - it will take years of work.

So come for one camp and do all the five meditations we do here. In those five meditations you can tell me how you are feeling. I can feel what type of energy you have and what type of method is

going to suit you. There are one hundred and twelve methods, so the basic problem is to find the right method. That is possible only if you come here, do meditations and start feeling.... If in some meditation you feel that even for a few moments thoughts stop, then that meditation will suit you.

These five meditations are general meditations. There are five types of people so out of these five, one is going to fit you. Once that one fits I can think about better methods on the same line that will be helpful to you.