Darshan 23 March 1976

[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I'll try to be back in the winter, but I've no plans.]

There is no need to plan for the future. But if you have just a nucleus in the mind - that you have to do a certain thing - leave it there. Just put the thought there and it creates its own energy. It crystallises. It becomes a seed. It evolves and creates and brings about situations in which it can sprout.

Thoughts become things - once you leave them alone. And that's a great art. If you put a seed in the earth and you go every day in the morning and take it out and see whether it is sprouting or not, it will never sprout. Leave it. You have given it the right soil; now forget all about it. In its own time, its own season, it will come. One day you will be surprised; you had completely forgotten it, but it was working underneath, underground. It worked hard, and now it is there:

And it is the same with thoughts. Each thought is a potential possibility. Just drop it inside your consciousness and forget about it. In the right time, the right season, suddenly it will surprise you.

It has been collecting energy, momentum, choosing, directing, and suddenly one day you see it is there. It has become a realised fact.

So when I ask when you will be coming, I don't mean plan for it. I simply mean let there be a simple thought about it. Because if you don't have any thought, your mind becomes vagrant. You become accidental. Then anything goes - and anything takes you away from your situation. One thing leads to another, another thing leads to another, and there is no sequence.

Life becomes haphazard - as if a book has lost its cover and the papers have got mixed. Then you can go on reading, but it makes no sense; no meaning comes out of it.

In the West this is happening too much. In the name of spontaneity, the accidental is being praised.

That's not right. Planning is wrong, and being accidental is as wrong as planning. Just between the two somewhere, there is a balance - no planning, but no drifting also.

And to catch that point is to catch a great key. Otherwise, millions of things are happening all around.

If you move accidentally, with no idea as a seed in your being - to choose, to judge, to leave this and not leave that, to decide, to commit - if you have nothing, no criterion inside, then you fall into pieces and you start moving in many directions together. You will fall apart.

And that creates a sort of madness. Integrity is lost. A mad person is one who has lost his orientation; one who has lost his roots, the sense of direction.

So never plan and never drift. My message is difficult, because both these are simple. Planning is very simple. The orthodox mind goes on planning; the square mind goes on planning. Drifting is simple - that's a reaction. You don't plan. You simply drift wherever; whatsoever leads you, you are ready. Somebody says 'Come here'. You go, because you don't have anywhere else to go - so what to do? Let us try this.

Between these two one has to come to a tranquil balance. And that's what I mean when I say put the idea in the mind, relaxedly, with deep respect - and allow it to grow on its own.

[A sannyasin who is returning to Italy to run a macrobiotic restaurant, said, through an interpreter, that he had found it difficult to meditate while he was here, and felt that perhaps that was because he had been unable to maintain his usual macrobiotic diet.

Osho replied that this could be the reason, because once you have become accustomed to a certain diet, any other food could become a disturbance. He added that he was thinking to have soon a small restaurant here in the ashram for people who prefer macrobiotic foods.]

[An elderly sannyasin said that when she had been ill recently with an infection, she had had a very clear vision, on two occasions, of a painted human eye. She asked what the significance of this might be.]

It is your own third eye, so you cannot recognise it. It always comes that way because you cannot see it directly. It can be helpful.

You can start bringing it by and by. Sometimes when you need it, you can just imagine it. You will become more capable of bringing it more easily. Then it will become more and more real; it will actually become alive. You will have to give more imagination to it. It has been good.

[Another sannyasin says: My meditations have been going well, and sometimes I go astral travelling.]

Mm, very good! Go! Have I given you a box? (he hands her one) You need it now!

[A sannyasin said that whenever he did work, he felt consciously or unconsciously rejected by his superiors, and that he was not appreciated.]

So don't expect! You must be expecting too much. The problem is always with you; it is never with anybody else. You must be expecting too much appreciation.

... Otherwise there is no question. You have done your job - you liked it, you enjoyed it. Why be bothered by attitudes?

[The sannyasin answers: But they are not satisfied with the work.]

That is their problem! If you are satisfied - finished. Let them remain dissatisfied, and let them come and take sannyas and ask for solutions (laughter).

Do your job the best you can do, and don't expect any appreciation. Appreciation is result-oriented.

And the person who is hankering for appreciation can never never do good work; never - because he is half-hearted. He is looking to the result and what others will think. He is not totally in the work.

Be total in your work. The prize is in it; the award is intrinsic. You enjoy - that is your award. If they enjoy, that is their award. If they don't enjoy, that is their misery. So let them be miserable. Don't be worried about it - just do your work as best you can.

Nobody is worried because of anybody else. You are not worried because of them; they are not worried because of you. You are worried because of you, and they are worried because of them (laughter). It is that simple. Just enjoy and see. Next time you come you will be totally different!

[A sannyasin said that though he felt a lot more open since doing groups here, he hadn't solved any of the problems he started with.]

In fact no problem is ever solved - you grow out of them. This has to be very very deeply understood.

Trying to solve problems is almost futile, because no problem is ever solved. Problems exist because of a particular consciousness. When the consciousness changes, they drop.

For example, in the morning a small child cries and weeps because in a dream he had a beautiful toy, and now he has lost it. So in the morning he cries for his toy. How can you solve it? You cannot make him understand that it was a dream, because at that time dream and reality are not separate departments; they are not water-tight compartments. The child moves between these two worlds so easily. He floats from dream to reality, from reality to dream. He does not know what is what.

But one day he grows, and he comes to understand that it is a dream. The problem is not solved yet - but now the problem is no more. He has come to understand it is a dream, and that the problem doesn't exist. Do you follow me?

It continues the same way for the whole of life. Whenever you are bogged down by problems, the ordinary attitude is to find some answers, some ways, some means to change them, to solve them.

But that never helps. That is the ordinary way of humanity.

Here religion gives a totally new dimension. Religion says that problems will exist if you remain the same, because you create them in the first place. Your particular consciousness creates them as a shadow. So don't be bothered about the problems - raise the consciousness to a higher level. Once

the consciousness is on another level, these problems simply become meaningless. Not that they are solved. They are not even worth solving - they don't exist. They simply recede and disappear.

So as I see it, if you feel a little open, perfectly good. One day, at a certain point the balance changes.

You are so open that the problems that exist with a closed mind cannot exist; they simply drop. You will start laughing about your having been worried.

Let this opening be a little more clear, otherwise it can close again. You must have a real feel of it so that it becomes part of your consciousness and you don't lose it. The moment the real feeling comes, the problem will be meaningless, and suddenly you will be able to laugh. And that's what growth is all about.