Chapter 21

[A visitor says she is a painter.]

Very good. Things will go well with me!

Religion is the greatest art... and unless you understand religion something will be always missing in your art, something will remain incomplete, because whatsoever you do without religion, you are the doer. Once religion enters your life you are no longer the doer. then something greater than you, vaster than you, enters you, starts functioning through you. You become more and more a medium, a possessed being - and then something of the unknown penetrates into the known.

All great works of art are religious, are bound to be religious. Anything that is great has to be religious. something of the divine, something of the sacred will be there in its climate.

Your are meditating?

[She answers: On my own.... I don't know if I'm doing it right, but I have felt painting a medium.

One time I needed a wave and I couldn't think of the right wave so I asked God for help, and a wave appeared on the door. And I had to run and get a pencil and paper because I thought it would go away. But it was still there, so I copied it down!]

Mm, good! It was a hunch but it worked! Sometimes hunches work more than reason. And particularly when a hunch comes to a woman it works better than when it comes to a man, because the feminine mind remains irrational. That is the polarity: the male mind is rational, the female mind is irrational; nearer the heart than the brain. If you can trust hunches then much is possible.

And in fact prayer should be unlearned. It should be spontaneous - and that's why it worked. There are many people who are praying in the churches, in the temples, and nothing happens... nothing is going to happen. They can go on praying for lives together and nothing will happen, because the prayer is not spontaneous. They are managing it; it is through the mind. They are too wise, and for a prayer to function you have to be a fool, mm?

That was foolish - you even felt awkward when you said it, that you talked to God. It was foolish, but it worked. There are things where foolishness is wisdom, and wisdom is foolishness. So continue to use that; whenever you feel a moment when it is needed, use it. The more you use it, the more it will become available. And out of these meditations your prayer will deepen. You have come in the right moment to be trapped!

Come a little closer and close your eyes. You pray inside, and if something happens in the body, allow it, whatsoever it is. If any movement comes in the body, energy starts waving in the body, or if you become like a small leaf in a strong wind, just pray and allow it.

[Osho started to write her sannyas name as she sat in front of him, her eyes closed.]

Now I am going to be with you. this will be your new name: Ma Anand Tushita. Tushita means paradise and anand means bliss.

[A sannyasin says she feels sad at the thought of leaving.]

Don't feel sad... but it's natural. Soon you will be back.

You will feel sadness but it is good; that too is part of growth. Sometimes one needs sadness too.

Remaining just happy by and by becomes shallow. You need to move to the opposite polarity. The day should become the night too. And height is good but depth is also needed.

Somehow humanity has missed the beauty of sadness. It is tremendously beautiful, because the pain that it brings is a growth pain, a birth pain. So it is good to be here with me, and happy; then to go and be a little sad. Then you will come again with more possibility to grow.

It is going to be just like a little fast, mm? The fast helps the hunger to come back. If you are here with me too long, by and by there is every possibility that you will start forgetting me, because that which is too close, that which is too obvious, is forgotten. That's how we have forgotten ourselves - we are so close to ourselves, and a little distance is needed.

I know you will be sad, but accept that sadness and be grateful. That too is good. Go with total acceptance of whatsoever is. Say yes to everything, whatsoever happens, and then each moment brings infinite possibilities for growth.

And I am coming with you. You will just have to learn how to feel me when I am not physically close; that's a learning. Once you know the knack of it, it is very simple. And you can feel even closer than when you are physically near me, because when the hunger is deep and you miss me, the urge is greater. When the urge becomes intense, the distance, the physical distance disappears, and the distance in time also disappears.

People who still love Jesus become contemporaries of him, and he of them - after two thousand years. People who love Buddha suddenly can move into a different world; suddenly they are walking with him after twenty-five centuries - they can be with him.

But very great intensity is needed, mm? So if you are really intense - and the intensity will come the more you will be there, far away - when you really feel the urge to be near mc, keep this box hl your hand this way, (Osho places the small wooden box in his left hand with the right one covering it) as if you are protecting something tremendously valuable, delicate, fragile. . . a flower. Then close your eyes and just remember me. Just remember as I am sitting here, just the same way. And immediately the whole climate will change. Either I will have to be there, or you will be here, but the climate will change. Good.

And go happily....

[A sannyasin says: I'm beginning to realise that I've been here a long time, but I've never really let myself get close to you, or to feel you.]

Mm, you keep far away. You hold yourself too much, and it is time now to relax and come close...

because it is a sheer wastage. We miss much unnecessarily. It is just that the ego goes on insisting to keep away, because if you can keep yourself away, because if you can keep yourself away, the ego can remain. The fear is that if you come closer, the closer you come to me, the further away you will be from your ego - and you have to choose....

Now you cannot stay away! One has to decide one day that now the moment has come.

[A sannyasin says: I've just been hiding myself all my life... I don't want to hide.]

Once you decide not to hide yourself, all the skies are available. People live in dark holes because of their own stupid decisions - and then they cannot celebrate life.

Fear cannot celebrate, and it is fear that is trying to hide. Once the fear is dropped everything becomes possible, because fear dropped, you attain to freedom. Freedom is the quality of God, the quality of a man who has tasted of God, and fear is the quality of a man who has not yet tasted of God. These are the only dimensions - fear and freedom. Either you move in fear or you move in freedom.

Good! Come out of your hole!

[An Encounter group member says she is full of anger. The group leader said she had had many opportunities to throw her anger but had not used them.]

You are missing opportunities... in this group too, you are keeping yourself a little away. Get involved.

Be angry - there is nothing wrong in it. You have some condemnation of anger. Accept it, and not only that, enjoy it. (she looks a little dubious) Yes, enjoy it!

Anger is beautiful if one enjoys it... it is a sort of cleansing inside. So be totally angry these remaining two days. Go completely mad and be angry. Don't be afraid. These people are here and they bring the opportunity to be whatsoever you are. If angry, then be angry.

When anger disappears then love will arise. Mm? But you still look a little hesitant about accepting and enjoying anger....

[To the groupleader]

Help her to go deeper into anger... force her, really.

Language may be one of the causes....

[Her translator says that she speaks German as well as french.]

French is the language of love. German is perfect for being angry!

[Another group member says: I experienced a lot of anger. I had been ashamed of it before.]

Never be ashamed of anything, because then the mind tends to suppress it. Whatsoever we are ashamed of and don't want anybody to know, we go on hiding inside, in the unconscious. It moves deeper into your being, circulates in your blood, goes on manipulating you from backstage.

So if you want to repress, repress something beautiful. Never repress something you are ashamed of, because whatsoever you repress goes deep and whatsoever you express will evaporate into the sky. So whatsoever you are ashamed of, express so you are finished with it. Whatsoever is beautiful keep as a treasure inside, so it goes on influencing your life. But we do just the opposite.

Whatsoever is beautiful we go on expressing - in fact too much; we express more than is there. You go on saying, 'I love, I love, I love,' and you may not even mean it much. You go on suppressing anger, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness, and by and by you find that you have become all that you have suppressed, and then deep guilt arises.

These groups just bring you to face your reality. Use that opportunity and change your old patterns and attitudes.

There is nothing to be ashamed of; everything is perfect as it is. There cannot be any more perfect a world than this. Right now, this moment is the climax of the whole existence, the very matrix on which everything revolves. Nothing can be more perfect, so simply relax and enjoy. Once you learn how to accept everything, you have transcended. then nothing disturbs, in fact nothing corrupts you then. You always remain like a lotus flower - in the water but untouched by it. You live in the world, but the world never lives in you. So just accept whatsoever is there; bring it out.

Open your doors to the sun and the air and the sky... never close them. Then new fresh air is always passing you, new sunrays are always passing you. Allow the traffic of existence to pass through you. Never be a closed road, otherwise only death and dirt gathers.

Just drop all notions of shame, and never judge anything. Never judge anything. Anger comes - what can you do? Let it be there. While it is there be totally in it, and suddenly you will realise that if you are totally in it even anger becomes beautiful. Whatsoever is of the total becomes beautiful.

The partial is ugly, the total is beautiful. Let that be the definition: the total is good, the partial is bad.

God is total, devil is partial.

So whatsoever is you, be total in it, and just your being total will transform the very quality of it. This is the alchemy of transformation, of inner transformation. Accept and move with the moment. If you

really move there will be no hangover. If you really go into anger you finish with it, because when you go into it totally it is finished. And then you are out of it, completely out of it, uncorrupted by it.

Watch a small child who is not yet corrupted by the society. When he is angry, he is really angry; he explodes. A tiny child, but he becomes so powerful - as if he will destroy the whole world. He becomes red, hot-red, as if he is on fire. Just watch the child, how beautiful he is - so alive. And next moment he is playing and laughing - the anger is no more there. You cannot even believe that he was angry just a moment before. You cannot even suspect - this child, and angry? So loving, so flower-like - and just a moment before he was a flame!

This is the way to live life. One day suddenly you have been repressing, it just never occurred. You are, so totally, that there is never any hangover left from any moment. You are always fresh and young, and the past is not like a load on you. You are not tired, frustrated by the past. This is what is meant by dying every moment to the past and being born anew... a rebirth, a resurrection every moment.

This is what I call a spiritual life. A spiritual life is not a life of discipline. It is a life of spontaneity.

Of course spontaneity has its own inner discipline, but to call it discipline is not good. It has its own order, but to use the word order is not good because the word is misused too much. Good.

[another group member says: I feel like I just want to be in the group - and not do anything.

The group leader comments: He has come a couple of times to the middle but hasn't worked. Things seemed to have changed in him, but he hasn't actually taken the decision to work.]

(to the group member) You follow your inner feelings.

(to the group leader) Allow him to follow. If he feels like not doing anything, perfectly good.

(to the group member) Then that is your way. If you feel like not doing anything, then just be. But if you feel any moment that you would like to do again, don't make it a bondage that you have said you don't want to do anything.

Move with the moment. If one moment you don't feel like doing anything, wait, just be. If next moment you feel like doing, do. Just feel and float and don't create any problem out of it; it is perfectly good.

You don't have much to throw out, so don't feel depressed because you are not doing anything.

Just feel happy. This is the goal of all doing - that everybody comes to the point of being, just being. Perfectly good, be happy about it. This is a possibility that when the whole group is doing something, a person who does not feel like doing anything may start feeling a little strange, out of line, not moving with the group, not flowing with the group. But don't be worried.

There are two situations in which a person falls out of the group he may be suppressing something and he will not allow it because he has much investment in his suppressions - the habit has gone too deep and he has become almost incapable of relaxing; that is ninety-nine percent. One percent is the possibility that you don't have anything to throw out - and I see that is the case with you.

The group has to follow the rule for the ninety-nine; it has no rule for the one percent. That one percent is exceptional; rarely it happens. So don't be worried - and don't force anything, otherwise it will be a repression in the other direction. You may not feel like doing anything but you go on doing because everybody else is, and the whole climate is of doing, and people are doing fantastic things - and you are simply sitting there. The mind tends to say, 'Do something. Why are you sitting there?

You look like a fool!' Be a fool and follow the inner voice. Ninety-nine percent of the time the inner voice is not there - just the tricky mind - but that is not the case with you.

[Another group member says: There have been a lot of tears.]

That's very good. People have almost lost the dimension of tears. They allow tears only when they are very much in deep pam or suffering. They have forgotten that tears can also be of happiness, tremendous delight, of celebration.

Tears have nothing to do with suffering or happiness. Tears have something to do with anything that is too much inside and wants to overflow. It may be happiness, it may be unhappiness. anything that is too intensely there, unbearably there, overflows; the cup is too full. The tears come out of too muchness. So enjoy them.

The whole world has to learn again the beauty of crying and weeping and tears, because if you cannot celebrate through tears it means you never overflow with happiness. It means you only overflow when you suffer, when you are in deep pain. The logic is simple. It means that you have lost the dimension of happiness - being so happy that you come to a point where the cup is overflowing.

Very good. Allow it and enjoy it.

[Another group member says: I feel so much confused. The group seems to have broken my whole life into little pieces.]

Very good. They have done well! But they have not done it yet completely, otherwise you would not have been confused. Still a few walls are standing, a few rooms are still intact; the building has not yet been demolished completely. Once demolished, all confusion disappears.

This has to be understood: that you can be, that you can be recreated only one way, and that is that you are first destroyed completely. I don't believe in renovation. First you have to be killed.

... I am almost a butcher. (smiling)

[The group member continues: I seem to have gone through so much pain in this group. I cried for the first time in seven years.]

The pain was there... you were hiding it. They cannot create pain, they can only bring it out.

It is just like the pus is inside the body and they force it out. It is painful, but they cannot create it; it is there inside the wound. You go on believing that there is no wound but the wound is there,

and whether you believe it or not the wound is there and goes on destroying you inside; it goes on creating poison. The pus has to be brought out. It is almost a surgery, painful....

[The group member asks about his relationship: we did the group together, and have been together for over a year - seems to have fallen entirely apart.]

Let it fall. A new start will be there. Just wait, and don't be afraid, because once you become afraid and you cling, you will remain the old.

If it has worth, it is going to be there; you will renew it and it will be a new lease of life. If it has no worth, only then it will disappear. So in fact there is no problem to be worried about.

If something has worth, it comes through all fire, all destruction, all chaos. And whenever something passes through chaos and fire, all that is rubbish is burned. Only the real gold comes out.

Just finish the group. It has to be done. Nobody wants to do it - it is such a thankless job - but it has to be done. Once you allow it completely, once your parts are separated and you are unstructured, then the rest is very simple. But right now I can understand - your confusion is natural. You cannot see any future, and your whole past is destroyed.

[The group member adds: I want to surrender so much.... ]

It is not a question of wanting, because if you want, the surrender will be your surrender... you will not be surrendered in it. It will be your decision. Surrender is going to happen. Just don't escape, that's all. You just face whatsoever is happening, that's all.

The surrender is going to happen... it is on the way. You cannot see the future - I can see the future - and you can only see the destroyed past. I can see - it is coming closer every moment. You will be surrendered.