Chapter 2
[A sannyasin asked just what was happening here, with Osho, in relation to human psychological growth.]
We are trying to present a new synthesis between East and West. The eastern methods are more individualistic, more inward-going, and more concerned with solitude, aloneness, and the person.
They are meditative methods, more concerned with the person and his integrity. They are not group methods.
The western methods are all group methods, and are more out-going, more concerned with communication and relationships; with the group, and integrity in relationships, not in aloneness.
So what they can be reduced to is: the western methods are more concerned with love, the eastern methods more with meditation.
These are the two polarities of human consciousness - love and meditation. Meditation means to be alone, as if you alone exist. And love means that you are not, the other is; as if you exist only in relation to the other, and there is no other exiStence. These are the two Polarities. and taken separately they both become extremes, and both are dangerous.
The East has tried the first extreme - of meditation. It became life-negating and escapist - hence the poverty, the ugliness. There has been no scientific progress in the East, because nobody has paid any attention to society. All those who were interested in any search always escaped In the West, the society has progressed. There is a better standard of living, more affluence and comfort, more convenience, more health, and more life. But they have moved to the other extreme and the individual has by and by disappeared.
These two things taken separately are dangerous, because life exists in polarity. The whole emphasis here is that there are no opposites, there are only complementaries.
So meditation and love are not opposites, they are complementaries. All religion should be life- affirming, and life should be meditative.
So we are trying to create a synthesis, and it is not only an ideology - because that is not difficult.
This synthesis is really in the being of people who come here. A new synthesis is being tried and much depends on it.
A world psychology has to be given birth to. The East has succeeded in certain ways and failed in others, just as the West has failed in certain areas but succeeded in others. Now there should be no more of this bifurcation of East and West. There should be a unitive psychology, global, in which there is no East and no West, but the polarities meet and dissolve.
Our work is on human beings. It is not academic, theoretical, philosophical. It is absolutely personal and existential.
[A sannyasin says:
I find it very difficult to be open to you.
I hear you talking in the lectures, and you say that you are available to all of us.
But I find it difficult to be open enough to be available to you.]
There is no problem. You have not tried, that's all.
Whenever you want to open, try the opposite first. Remember, this is one of the basic things. If you want to relax, first make yourself as tense as possible. Then automatically you cannot remain tense.
Once you have gone to the extreme, then you have to relax. So start cooperating and relax, mm?
This is the posture that will happen when one is closed. This is the womb posture - the head falls down, and you are again in the womb. In the womb you are completely closed, and when you are born you start opening.
So every night you can try this. Just before you go to sleep, for five minutes close yourself completely.
You will become just like a small child in the womb, with absolute darkness all around - nowhere to go, no door available, no possibility to relate to anyone, all connections cut. Remain in that state for a few seconds, and when it becomes unbearable, think of the flower opening in the morning. Then remain in that opening and go to sleep. Report to me after one week. And there is nothing to worry about!
[I feel I'm getting somewhere. I've done the Encounter group and the Tathata and now I'm meditating.
I'm relating to people openly and with trust.]
Very good. Always remember that at no cost should mistrust be allowed. Even if your trust becomes a possibility that people can deceive you, that is good. Even if you are deceived because of your trust, it is better than not to trust.
It is very easy when everybody is loving and beautiful and nobody is deceiving you - then to trust is easy. But even if the whole world is deceptive and everybody is bent on deceiving you - and they
can only deceive you when you trust - then too, go on trusting. Never lose trust in trust, whatever the cost, and you will never be a loser, because trust in itself is the ultimate end. It should not be a means to anything else, because it has its own intrinsic value.
If you can trust you remain open. People become closed as a defense measure so that nobody can deceive them or take advantage of them. Let them take advantage of you! Just think of the beauty of it. Let them take advantage, but if you insist on going on trusting, then a beautiful flowering happens, because then there is no fear.
The fear is only that people will deceive, but once you accept that, there is no fear, so there is no barrier to your opening. The fear is more dangerous than any harm anybody can do to you. This fear is a poison and can poison your whole life. So remain open, and just trust innocently, unconditionally.
I'm not saying that nobody will deceive you or take advantage of you. They will, that is accepted, but it is worth it. You will laugh at their foolishness, and that they could not destroy your trust. You trust somebody's humanity so tremendously that it is irrelevant what a person does. You trust them ultimately, so what they do doesn't make any difference.
You will flower, and you will help others to flower once they become aware that they have not been deceiving you a bit, but that it is themselves they have deceived. You cannot go on deceiving a person endlessly if he continues to trust you. His very trust will throw you back to yourself again and again.
Just watch it, allow it, and enjoy it. Cherish the very idea of trust, and then there is no need for any god. People say 'Trust in God.' I say 'Trust is God.' It is not that people have lost their trust in God.
They have lost their trust - and that is why they have lost their God. Trust is God. It is not a question of trusting some power called God. Trust itself is divine. So, good !