Chapter 23

[A sannyasin returned to darshan after having over-eaten consciously for seven days as Osho had suggested, as she was concerned that she was stuffing herself. She says: Well I'm not interested in food anymore!]

Good. That's how the mind works: if you want not to eat, then the desire arises to eat too much. If you suppress something, then you create a problem. If you say no to the mind, then the mind resists and rebels. So whenever you see that there is some problem, the best way is to go with it, not to fight it.

If you feel you are eating too much, then eat as much as you can, go beyond the limit. If sex is the problem, then move into it as much as you can, simply get exhausted.

Fighting creates attraction and anything that becomes a sin becomes immediately very pleasurable.

Many things that are thought to be very pleasant are not pleasant, but because society has condemned them, they have gathered a glamour around them. This is where the whole humanity has been missing for so long.

All the religions of the world have tried to fight against sex, and they have created a very sexual, pervertedly sexual world. Except for Tantra they all missed... only Tantra found the key. It allowed sex, and it not only allowed it, it insisted for sex. It not only insisted, it makes sex the very door, the very path.

Suddenly, moving with the desire and going beyond it, a repulsion arises and you start seeing the foolishness of it. It is not the mind that says it is foolish; that won't help. It is the existential realisation.

From your very being you realise that it is foolish, and then there is no need to make any effort, it imply drops. the very realisation becomes the transformation.

Seven days ago you were saying that it is difficult, impossible, and you were obsessed with food. I told you to eat as much as you can, and just within seven days you say you don't want to eat, that there is no liking, the desire has disappeared. So remember this for any other problem: go to the rock-bottom of it - and there is a change.

[The sannyasin adds: One thing that I realised... why I was stuffing myself was not sex, but an overwhelming loneliness that comes over me every now and then on a physical, material level.

I have plenty of friends and love and affection, but I don't know what to do with it, to feel it more.... ]

Feel it more, and not only feel it, delight in it. These are just wrong notions. People think that when they are lonely they have to be sad. This is just a wrong association, a wrong interpretation...

because all that is beautiful has happened always in loneliness; nothing has happened in a crowd.

Nothing of the beyond has happened except when one is in absolute solitude, lonely.

But the extrovert mind has created conditioning all around which has become very ingrained - that when you are lonely you feel bad. Move, meet people, because all happiness is with people. That's not true. The happiness that is with people is very superficial, and the happiness that happens when you are alone is tremendously deep. So delight in it. Just the very word 'lonely' creates a certain sadness in you. Don't call it lonely, call it aloneness; call it solitude, don't call it isolation. Wrong names can create trouble. Call it a meditative state... it is.

And when it happens, enjoy it. Sing something, dance something, or just sit silently facing the wall and waiting for something to happen. Make it an awaiting, and soon you will come to know a different quality. It is not sadness at all. Once you have tasted from the very depth of aloneness, all relationship is superficial. Even love cannot go so deep as aloneness goes, because even in love the other is present, and the very presence of the other keeps you closer to the circumference, to the periphery.

When there is nobody, not even a thought of anybody and you are really alone, you start sinking, you drown into yourself. Don't be afraid. In the beginning that drowning will look like death and a gloom will surround you, a sadness will surround you, because you have always known happiness with people, in relationships.

Just wait a little. Let the sinking go deeper, and you will see a silence arising and a stillness which has a dance to it... an unmoving movement inside. Nothing moves, and still everything is tremendously speedy... empty, yet full. Paradoxes meet and contradictions dissolve.

So for one month you delight in it, and just wait for something to happen. Sit silent, relaxed, yet tense because you are waiting, something is going to descend on you. And I am going to do something.

Bodhidharma sat for nine years just facing the wall, doing nothing - just sitting for nine years.

The tradition has it that his legs withered away. To me that is symbolic. It simply means that all movements withered away because all motivation withered away. He was not going anywhere.

There was no desire to move, no goal to achieve - and he achieved the Greatest that is possible.

He is one of the rarest souls that has ever walked on earth. And just sitting before a wall he achieved everything; not doing anything, no technique, no method, nothing. This was the only technique.

So whenever you sit, just sit facing the wall. The wall is very beautiful, mm? There is no way to move anywhere you look and there is the wall. There is nowhere to go. Don't even put a picture there; just have a plain wall. When there is nothing to see, by and by your interest in seeing disappears.

By just facing a plain wall, inside you a parallel emptiness and plainness arises. Parallel to the wall another wall arises - of no-thought.

Remain open and delight. Smile, sometimes hum a tune or sway. Sometimes you can dance - but go on facing the wall; let it be your object of meditation.

I don't see that there is any problem. One has to come to terms with one's loneliness one day or another. Once you face it, loneliness changes its colour, its quality; its taste becomes totally different. It becomes aloneness. Then it is not isolation; it is solitude. Isolation has misery in it; solitude has an expanse of blissfulness.

If this desire arises to eat again, immediately stuff as much as you can. Don't wait until tomorrow, immediately stuff. That may be just part of your feeling of loneliness. Whenever one feels empty and lonely, one wants to stuff oneself with anything, because whenever you feel empty, the stomach is the only place emptiness is felt. So one misinterprets it; one feels as if one is hungry when one is not. By stuffing the stomach, that emptiness is not going to disappear - that's why you go on stuffing. You go on stuffing but you never feel satisfied.

So go on stuffing; there is nothing wrong in it. Stuff so much that it becomes almost nauseous. Let that stuffing be associated with nausea, then there is a natural repulsion. It is going to disappear....

[Osho has said before that over-eating can also be a side-effect of meditating. Through meditating, much that has accumulated is thrown out, leaving a sensation of emptiness. As Osho said to her, the emptiness is experienced in the stomach, and there is a desire to fill that space. Over-eating is perhaps the commonest way of doing this. Some female sannyasins discover a desire to become pregnant which can also be attributed to the need to fill the emptiness that arises through meditation.]