Darshan 16 March 1976

... this will be your name: Ma Anand Soma.

Soma means the moon, and anand means bliss - blissful moon.

Meditate on the moon more and more. Whenever the moon is in the sky, just sit looking at it, but with very empty eyes. Looking, and yet not concentrating. Just looking, but with no strain. Do you follow?

The look can be of two types. One look is what we call attention... you focus, mm? and there is a strain in the mind, as if somebody is going to hit the target with an arrow. Then you concentrate. But that is not right. Just look relaxedly, as if you are looking by the way, and the moon is there.

Look at the moon with empty eyes. Watch my eyes . . this is the way....

[Osho stares fixedly into Soma's eyes]

... this is attention, mm? I am focusing. Now...

[Osho gazes softly at Soma]

... I look at you, and yet not at you. And that's the way to look, mm? Good.

[A sannyasin asks: What am I doing to myself? I haven't been healthy for a year. It's just... one thing after another.]

Mm mm.... It will continue unless you become aware and drop out of the vicious circle.

One misery leads to another... one conflict leads to another... one sadness into another sadness - because whatsoever you are passing becomes more easy to go into again. Your whole being becomes channelised, mm? One day you are angry - another day, anger comes easily. The next day it comes almost automatically. You need not do anything - it will come. And if you go on getting into the habit of it, you go on feeding it.

You may like to come out of it, but liking is not enough. You may like to come out of it, but you will still continue with the old pattern unless you take a very very aware decision to come out of it. That means that after that moment, you have to do something which is the opposite.

If you have been angry, then do something which is just the contrary to break the habit. Not only that - when you break a habit, energy is released. If you don't use that energy, again the habit will have to be formed by the mind; otherwise, where will the energy go? So always move to the opposite.

If you have been sad, try to be happy. It is difficult, because the old path is the way of least resistance - it is easier - and to be happy you will have to make an effort. You will have to consciously give a fight to the dead mechanical habits of the mind. So you will have to re-condition it. That is, you create a new habit of being happy.

Unless a new habit is created - of being happy - the old habit is bound to persist, because the energy needs some outlet. You cannot simply remain without any outlet. You will die, you will suffocate. If your energy is not becoming love, it is bound to become sour, bitter; anger, sadness.

Sadness is not the problem - neither is anger or unhappiness. The problem is how not to get into the old rut.

So live a little more consciously. And when you find yourself getting into the old habit, just do the opposite immediately - don't wait for a single moment. It is easy - once you know the knack of how to do it. You are getting set... just do something!

Anything will do. Go for a long walk, start dancing. Let the dance be a little sad in the beginning, mm? It is bound to be - you are sad, how can you suddenly become happy? Start dancing in sadness and the dancing will divert the sadness. You have brought something new into the sadness which has never been there before. You have never danced before when you were unhappy and sad, so you will puzzle the mind. The mind will feel at loss - what to do? - because the mind can only function with the old. Anything new, and the mind is simply inefficient - and that's the problem.

Habits are efficient, so you do them again and again, and the more you do, the more capable you become. Almost everybody has become a certain type of expert - one part of your mind expertises, and then through expertise, it dominates the whole mind.

I was just reading an anecdote....

One school teacher told the famous story of the elephant and the five blind men to his children - but he didn't mention the word blind. He wanted to give them an opportunity to find that out for themselves.

So he told the whole story - that five men went to see an elephant and then they reported back.

One said 'The elephant is like a pillar' - because he had touched only the legs. Another said 'He

is like a very big fan' - because he had touched the ear - and so on and so forth. The story was simple, and everybody knows about it.

Then the teacher said, 'What type of men were these?'

One small boy said, 'Experts!'(laughter) Everybody by and by becomes expert - expert in sadness, expert in unhappiness, expert in anger.

Then you become afraid of losing your expertness, because you have become so efficient.

Feeling sad - dance, or go and stand under the shower and see sadness disappearing from your body as the body heat disappears. Feel that with the water showering on you, the sadness is being removed just as perspiration and dust is removed from the body. And see what happens.

Try to put the mind in such a situation that it cannot function in the old way. Anything will do.... In fact all the techniques that have been developed through the centuries are nothing but ways of trying to distract the mind from the old patterns.

For example, if you are feeling angry, just take a few deep breaths. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply - just for two minutes - and then see where your anger is. You confuse the mind; it cannot correlate.

'Since when,' the mind starts asking, 'did anyone ever breathe deeply with anger? What is going on?'

So do anything - but never repeat it; that's the point. Otherwise if each time you feel sad you take a shower, the mind will get into that habit. After three or four times, the mind learns that this is okay - so you are sad; that's why you are taking a shower. Then it becomes part and parcel of your sadness. No, never repeat it. Just go on puzzling the mind every time. Be innovative... be imaginative, mm? Bhikshu (her partner) says something, and you feel angry, and you have always wanted to hit him or throw something at him. This time, change - go and hug him. Give him a good kiss, and puzzle him also (laughter). Your mind will be puzzled... he will be puzzled. Suddenly things are no more the same. Then you will see that the mind is a mechanism; how with the new it is simply at a loss, that it cannot cope with the new.

So the whole methodology of Yoga, Tantra - all religion as such - is to always bring in something new... a new breeze into the room. Open up the window and let in a new breeze.

One man who used to be a colleague of mine in the university, was a very angry man - angry with the wife, angry with the children, angry with the vice-chancellor - and for nothing. And he knew it! Who does not know it? He was really in trouble because he was creating so many problems unnecessarily.

One day he asked me what to do. I said, 'Do one thing: whenever you feel angry, just clench both your fists. You can do it anywhere. Even if you are talking to the vice-chancellor and you feel angry, clench your fists - and see.' He said, 'What will that do?' I said for him to just try it. So he went to the vice-chancellor and when he started feeling angry - because the vice-chancellor was thinking to throw him out because he was doing so many things - he clenched his fists, and suddenly the anger was gone.

He came back and said that it was miraculous. But I told him not to do it again, otherwise the whole miracle is gone!

So do this for a few days... and you will enjoy it tremendously.

[Karuna, a recently arrived sannyasin, said that she was feeling ashamed of herself, because shortly before Vipassana was taken ill (see 'Nothing To Lose But Your Head'), she had said to Karuna that she, Vipassana, was mad, and Karuna had felt that she was indeed mad, and had felt superior to her.]

Vipassana has done many things for many people.

Just watch the mind... it goes on finding many many ways to feel superior. Mind is the ego trip, a deep ego trip. So that is the subtlest part of the mind - to feel superior. But if you feel superior, sometimes you are bound to feel inferior - and that creates the trouble, because then one feels hurt.

So if you really want to drop all conflict inside, then never compare.

Comparison has to be dropped - not superiority. Comparison implies both - superiority/inferiority.

So don't compare. Karuna is Karuna. Vipassana is Vipassana. In fact no comparison is possible.

Comparison is possible only when both are exactly the same - for example, one Ford car and another Ford car. Ego says this is functioning better than that. You can compare because they come from the same assembly line.

Man is unique. No other man is like anybody else. And God doesn't function in the way assembly lines function. You cannot find two men alike. You can find millions of cars alike. That's the difference between man and machine.

Once comparison is dropped you are neither superior nor inferior. Just think: if you are alone in the world and there exists no other man or woman - only Karuna exists on this earth - will you be superior or inferior? You will be simply you. And that is how things are: you exist only like you. There is nobody else like you. In a way, each man exists alone, directly alone, absolutely alone. There is no way to come out of that aloneness.

These claims of the mind have to be cut by and by. So just watch out. Whenever you start comparing yourself with anybody for anything, immediately relax the mind and ask what nonsense it is up to.

Stop in the middle; don't follow the old track of comparison. And suddenly one feels a flowering, because when there is no comparison to make, there is no competition. Then compassion arises.

That is the meaning of your name - compassion. Compassion arises only when you see how lonely man is, how tremendously lonely; that there is no way to reach him, no way to be together.

The aloneness is ultimate in a subtle way, in a certain way. When you would like to fill someone's aloneness, that is compassion. You would like to help somebody to feel that you are there. You would like to hold somebody's hand and to say to him, 'Hello, I'm here... don't feel alone.' But still you know that at the ultimate core, one remains alone. We can help each other, we can love each other. We can help each other in many creative ways, but still, we cannot penetrate each other.

Somewhere a point comes beyond which nobody can enter. That is your soul, your being.

So don't compare, don't compete. And rather than listening to words! listen to people's being. For example, Vipassana told you that she was mad. You simply listened to her words, and you started feeling superior that you were not.

[ Yes, I feel ashamed.]

No, no, don't feel ashamed. It is again the same thing. First you felt superior because you simply heard the words. You should have looked into Vipassana's eyes. She was one of the sanest persons around here, hence she could realise and say that she was mad. Only a sane person can say that.

If you doubt it, go to a madhouse and ask mad people. Everybody will try to prove that he is not mad. Everybody will insist that the world may be mad but he is not. A madman never accepts that he is mad. If he does accept it, he is already getting out of it. This is a tremendously sensitive understanding, tremendously sane - to feel that you are mad. Only a sane person feels that he is mad.

Socrates says, 'Only a man of deep knowledge understands that he is ignorant.' The same is true about madness also.

You should have looked into her eyes. You should have held her hand, felt her being. Listen to the vibes, don't listen to the words. Then you commune, communicate. You would have laughed at her understanding. You would have thanked her. Then, rather than feeling superior, you would have felt that you are also mad. To be sane is so rare. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Socrates... a rare phenonemon when somebody becomes sane. Otherwise the whole humanity lives under deep hypnosis, neurosis.

The madness is normal. That's why we never detect it unless somebody goes abnormally mad.

Everybody is born mad - and few people get out of it.

So next time somebody says something so beautiful, try to feel the presence of the other person...

don't listen to the words.

Gurdjieff used to behave in a very mad way with people - particularly with new people. He would say nonsensical things, and people would leave him immediately because he seemed to be mad or stupid. And then he would have a good laugh! His disciples would say, 'Why do you say such things?' And he would say, 'If they cannot look at me, and if they only understand the words, then I am not going to waste my time with them. If they can understand only words, then they will never be able to understand me, because there is something beyond words that I am trying to convey. So that's a test for them.'

Listen more to the being. Listening to the being, you will never feel superior or inferior, because being is simply being - neither superior nor inferior. Listening to the being you will never feel any remorse - otherwise you will feel ashamed .

Because Vipassana died, you started feeling ashamed and that it was not good of you to feel superior. Now your ego is saying, 'Feel ashamed. You are such a beautiful being - feel ashamed.

It was not up to your standard; you did something below you. You are such a superior being, you should not feel superior. You should feel humble.' This is how mind goes on.

There are many persons who force humility just to feel superior; who feel ashamed just to feel superior; who go to a priest and confess their sins to feel saintly. Now don't feel ashamed, otherwise you are in the same trip. There is no need to feel ashamed. Simply feel foolish - and see the difference. The very idea of shame and guilt is ego-oriented. Simply feel that you were foolish, and then you will not help your ego.

If Vipassana were alive, you would not have felt ashamed; the death created the trouble. Suddenly she died, and now you cannot forgive yourself. The death shocked you, so now you would like to go to her and say 'Sorry, Vipassana. It was not good of me to say that to you'. But there is nobody to whom you can say it, so now it will always remain a weight.

To destroy that weight, you are trying to balance it by feeling ashamed. That's what's happening to many people. While alive, they won't love each other, and when somebody dies, they repent their whole lives - that they should have loved, and they missed.

But remember that everybody present here, everybody present in this moment in the whole world, is going to die. So let it become a deep remembrance in you. Behave with each and every person as if this meeting will be the last. And just see the beauty of it. If you are holding somebody's hand, hold the hand as if.... And that 'as if' is not just an 'as if'. It is going to happen some day or other.

This may be the last meeting.

We may be talking for the last time... who knows? You may not be here, I may not be here. Or we may both be here but the possibility to meet may not be there. If one goes on being aware that this moment may be the last to meet with me, to talk with me, to listen to me, then one will become very alert. You will become very very aware - and you will act out of that awareness. Your response will be total and whole. And you will never repent, because whatsoever you do, you have done.

We cry and weep when a loved one dies because in fact we feel guilty. The whole life was there and we never loved. There were so many opportunities and we never used them.

In fact, on the contrary, we were quarrelling, nagging each other, fighting with each other. And now the person is gone. Now for infinities you may not see the person again. There may be no meeting.

Each moment is so tremendously ultimate. Each moment is such that it can never be repeated again. It is unrepeatable.

So live it totally and intensely. And live it as if you had known that this is going to be the last moment.

Then you will never repent, never feel remorse. And if somebody dies, you will go deeply grateful to him to say goodbye, because whatsoever you could do, you have done. Whatsoever you had, you had given. Whatsoever was possible, you had turned into the actual. So there is no guilt, no shame, no nothing... one feels clean...

Everybody is helping everybody else. The whole world is a help. If one knows how to use it, everybody is helping. Even those who are hindrances, they also help. Even those who go against you, they also help. Without them it will be difficult to grow. Even enemies help, so what to say about friends?

But let it be a lesson, so that your whole life changes into a new dimension of non-comparison, non-competition... Living each moment as if this is the last, mm?

[Sudha, the assistant leader of the Aum marathon says: You told me in the last darshan to be crazy, and I was trying to watch that during the marathon. It turned out to be just my own fear of my aggression and the rejection of it, and then an acceptance... so I just let it happen. And I had a lot of fun. It just wasn't like I'd thought it would be.

Osho replied that out of a hundred fears and anxieties we have, ninety-nine percent never actualise, so there is no point in worrying about them.

She asked what she could do about herself.]

There is nothing to do. One simply understands that things are as they are, and accepts. The very concept of doing something is wrong. Doing brings the doer... and doing is nothing but a mask for the ego. There is nothing to do.

Things simply happen on their own. You are not running the world... it is running on its own. And when you are gone, nobody is going to miss you. People will say that Sudha is gone and we miss her - but that is just a way of speaking. The world was running when you were not there. It will still be running when you go, so why worry for the few days that you are here? Take it easy, enjoy it.

Whatsoever is given, accept it and enjoy it - and let it happen... cooperate with it.

The problem arises the moment you start doing something... the moment you start doing anything.

Then the liquidity, the flexibility is lost. You become frozen, blocked.

[The assistant leader answers: This is what has been happening in the lectures and it's getting worse and worse and worse. I can't get into meditation any more... I feel I'm not letting it happen.]

Accept that too. The problem remains the same.

Now you are saying it is going from worse to worse. You are condemning it. You are saying that you never wanted it this way; you wanted it in some other way - and you are comparing with your ideal.

The problem is created by your ideal. Drop the ideal - and then it never gets worse. How can it?

There is no relativity; you cannot compare notes with anything. You compare the imaginary with the actual, and because the actual is not like the imaginary, you condemn it. And then the problem arises of what to do so that you can attain the imaginary against the actual. But who has ever attained the imaginary against the actual? The actual is the only thing that can be attained - and it is already there, so there is no problem. The problem is only because of that ideal. Drop that ideal!

Just see my point. If you drop the ideal, then how can you say that this is getting worse and worse?

Against what will you compare it?

[She answers: Against my own experience.]

That is again your ideal. That is again from the past, or from the future. Yesterday you were feeling something. Today you are not feeling it - so now you are comparing with yesterday. But why do you

want yesterday to be repeated again and again and again? You will be fed up with it! You will be like a broken gramophone record - repeating the same line again and again and again. Today is different... why compare it with yesterday? Today has nothing to do with your yesterday. Today is so totally different that you also are not the same. Yesterday is just a hangover in the mind. And it was not so beautiful as you are thinking today - because I knew you yesterday also. Then you were comparing your yesterday with the day before yesterday. And I know that tomorrow you will compare again with today - which will become yesterday. And you will say that things are getting worse and worse.

So either you have an ideal in the future and you compare your today with the tomorrow, or you have an ideal in the yesterday and you compare today with yesterday. But you don't allow today its being - and that is the only reality there is.

What is wrong with today? It is perfectly beautiful. Meditating or not meditating, feeling good or bad... but this is the only day there is. Once you understand this, problems simply evaporate. Not that they are solved - because there is no need to solve them; they need no solution.

They simply evaporate like dewdrops in the morning when the sun rises.

It is a question of simply understanding. It is not really complicated. Stop improving yourself - you have done enough harm. Don't be a perfectionist. And just live this moment. I don't see any problem. In this moment there is never any problem. The problem either comes from yesterday or from tomorrow. Today is always pure.

Bring your mind to this vision again and again. Nothing else is to be done. Everything is so beautiful and perfect that more is not possible.

[An indian sannyasin said that he wanted 'a divine remedy for willpower', as his was too weak.]

Kill it completely! What is the need? What do you need willpower for? It is weak - so kill it! If it is strong it will create more trouble.

[The sannyasin answers: No, it is creating trouble, sir. I want more strong willpower.]

For what? Do you want to become Adolf Hitler? (laughter)

[The sannyasin then asks: How to be happy?]

How to be happy? Who has told you that willpower is needed for being happy? Happiness has nothing to do with willpower. Drop that idea completely!

You must be reading some hocus-pocus religious literature - Vincent Peale 'Positive Thinking', Dale Carnegie 'Willpower' (laughter). You must be reading nonsense, so they have put some wrong ideas in your mind.

Willpower is not needed at all - that is the whole problem. Drop your will, and surrender to God.

Then everything is perfect and beautiful; one is happy. People with these ideas are never happy because they are always tense. Power corrupts; willpower also corrupts.

Willpower is a desire of the ego. You want to be strong and powerful and dominating, and a great leader of men - all foolishness. Just be ordinary and happy. Trees are happy without any willpower.

Birds are happy without any willpower.

What do you need willpower for? You should be happy it is weak. If you want to be unhappy, then willpower... then I can show you methods how to increase it, but then you will go to hell directly (laughter). That's the path for hell.

Drop this nonsense - just enjoy life. Vivekananda seems to be in your head - willpower, strong willpower. These are all ideas against God... irreligious ideas. You just surrender, mm?

[Another member of the group said that since doing the Tao group she had felt more in-going, while now that she had completed the marathon, she felt more outgoing. She asked if she should make an effort to go in one direction rather than another.]

No, don't make any effort to go inside... just float. If you feel like being outside, be outside and enjoy it. If you feel to be inside, be inside and enjoy that. Otherwise we are always creating contradictions.

When the mind is going out, you start forcing it inwards - and a forced inwardness is not going to be beautiful. Let it go outside as far as it wants to go. Then it swings on its own. It is a rhythm, just like day and night.

It is just as when in the morning you are feeling cold, you go outside and sit in the hot sun. The sunlight is beautiful and soothing. But then by and by it becomes hotter and hotter, and you start perspiring. Suddenly you realise that now it is time to go in. You move into the house, in the coolness, in the shade.

Out and in are just like that - and both are needed for a true life. Any life with a fixation - either with the outside or with the inside - is a lopsided life, a crippled life; a life which has suffered some sort of paralysis. There are people who are fixed with the outside - they cannot go in. There are people who are fixed with their inside, and they cannot go out. Both are ill.

True health is the rhythm between the in and out. In fact never get identified with the out or with the in. Remain between.

The flow is the swing of the energy from the out to the in; from the in to the out.

And there is a certain inner law which brings you back whenever you need to go in. It is just as when you work the whole day, and by night, you sleep; Sleep comes naturally if you have worked well. Then in the morning, after sleep, you are again rejuvenated, again fresh and vital; the zest has come back, and you want to do something. Action and sleep - that is the rhythm.

So never get obsessed with any polarity. In between being with people and alone is a rhythm. And a rhythm can only exist between two opposite-looking poles - which are not really opposite but are complementary.

[Another group member says: The group was pretty painful for me at times, but it was good.]

Pain is part of growth.

And remember, whenever something hurts, something inside vou is repressed. So rather than trying to avoid the pain, move into it. Let it hurt like hell. Let it hurt totally so the wound is opened completely. Once it is opened completely, the wound starts healing. If you avoid these spaces when you feel pain, they will remain inside, and you will come across them again and again, because they are part of you.

There is one method I would like to tell you about. Whenever you feel any pain - even an ordinary headache - just sit silently and focus your whole mind on the headache. Listen to it... almost touch the texture of it. And intensify it;- make it more and more tense, and pinpoint where it is. The more you concentrate, the more it will go on shrinking. Then it will come to a point, a needle-point. It will not be the whole head. First you will feel just the front part, then you will feel that it is shrinking just in the middle. Then it becomes just a needlepoint - but a very sharp pain. Just remain with it.

If you can remain with that sharp-pointed pain, suddenly you will see that it has disappeared. Try it with ordinary pain - headache, stomach ache, or anything. And by and by try psychological pain.

Somebody has insulted you and you feel hurt, or you have come across something inside you and a pain arises, a memory, a wound from the past. Just go into it. Accept it and go into it totally, and when it has become just a needle-point, suddenly it will disappear.