Darshan 28 March 1976

Marpa is one of the greatest tibetan mystics... one of the rare geniuses. You cannot count more than ten of his equal in the whole world. And anand means blissful - blissful Marpa. Rad his life, teachings, and everything about him.

... Milarepa. That is another tibetan mystic. Read him - all the books are translated into English - particularly his 'A Thousand Songs of Milarepa'; they are tremendously beautiful. And anand means bliss - blissful Milarepa. Get in tune with it, mm?

[A sannyasin says one part of her wants to stay and the other to go: I feel I always make one step towards something, I feel very enthusiastic about it, and then so much fear arises that I run.]

Mm mm... because going is not bad - if you are going somewhere. But if you are only going from somewhere and there is no direction where you are going, then it is moving in negativity.

It is good to go somewhere, there is nothing wrong in it - life should always be a reaching, reaching towards the unknown - but if you just start escaping from somewhere, it may look like you are going on a journey, but it is not. It is an escape - because you are not going anywhere. And whenever you feel that you are coming to a point where something is possible, you will again start moving away.

This can become such a deep-rooted habit and become so powerful that you feel almost impotent against it. But the power is given by you; no habit is powerful in itself. You cooperate, it becomes powerful. Drop the cooperation and suddenly it is empty.

I understand what is happening. There are many people, almost millions, who are in that trap.

Whenever something is possible, they become afraid because they have become accustomed to living in a wasteland. Now they are afraid that if something sprouts, then their whole past, their wasteland, will disappear. People become accustomed to living in misery, so that whenever they

feel that something is possible and misery can be dropped, their whole mind will recoil; they will shrink away. And this is automatic, robot-like. It is not that you do something - but your mind begins to shrink because it feels that death is approaching. The death of the mind is your life, and the life of the mind is your death .

Do whatsoever you like; there is no hindrance from my side. Go wherever you want to go - Nepal or to the moon (laughter); there is no problem about it. But go somewhere, always seeking, searching, positive. Don't escape from situations, otherwise all effort will be useless.

Do one thing. Just go a little back and put both your hands on the navel. This is a small experiment you have to do to feel certain things. You have to feel yourself centred near the navel - almost two inches below the navel - that is the point called hara. People who are negative in their life are too hung up in their head, and people who are very very positive, almost cursed by their positivity, are too much in their feet. If you are too much in the feet, you will have to move towards the head, and if you are too much in your head, you will have to move towards your feet. It is like a pendulum, a constant swing. Exactly at the hara, the centre exists - the middle of your body and your being.

There is the balance and the deepest core of experience, of feeling, and of everything that life is.

[Osho gives her an 'energy darshan']

[A sannyas couple talk about their relationship; he says: There's an old saying: The loving is easy, it's the living that's hard - and that's what's happening.]

Living is hard, loving is harder. But fantasising about love is easy - that's what people misunderstand for love.

So whenever people say that they have fallen in love, they are just fantasising, projecting.

Whatsoever they need, they go on projecting onto the other. They make the other to look as they would like, they paint the other's face in their own colours. Falling in love is not a real phenomenon - it is dreamstuff. You both create two ideal natures which are unreal and which cannot bear up long enough. The moment you start settling, reality starts asserting itself and problems arise. Now you are not alone - the other is there.

The problem arises when you have to make concessions for the other and his reality, his way of being. In the beginning each lover is alone and the other is just like a screen onto which he goes on fantasising; the other is passive. But by and by you come close, you settle; the honeymoon is over. The other has to be real otherwise he will start feeling phoney, and when the reality comes, it is hard: then there is conflict.

You would like her according to you, and she would like you according to her... and these are unconscious things.

So every love is, in a way, doomed. If it is love it is doomed, and the greater it is, the greater is the danger. If you have been on a very big flight, if you have moved really high, you will fall to the very bottom, to the very lowest point of your energy - and then miseries and crying and weeping. In this state, if you become a little aware, if you see the whole thing a little aloof, as if it is not happening

to you but to two characters... not to you - and if you try to be a little detached, this painfull period will pass. You will never go tot hat height which was possible in a romantic moment, but that is not needed, because each high brings a low, and life has to settle somewhere in the middle, in a balance.

That's where, if love continues in spite of all the problems, it finally settles; a balance, a baseline, from where you start operating - neither high nor low, a tranquillity, a stillness. Of course there is not going to be that excitement. If you hanker for excitement then love will never settle. You will go on changing lovers, because only the first part of the affair is beautiful. And if you go on changing you have more first parts, and whenever the second part starts, you escape. That's what is happening in the West.

You eat just the cookie - but that is not nourishment. By and by if that becomes a habit, your whole being will be destroyed by it; it will destroy the whole appetite. One day or other, one has to come down from the flight, walk on the earth, be rooted in the earth, and let reality be there. We can have dreams sometimes, but one has to live with reality.

So this point is coming. And [the boyfriend is right not to take any decision; there is no need - just watch the process. In fact the very witnessing of the process will give you a very very deep integrity.

It will be more difficult for you because women are more emotional. Watching is more difficult for them. They cannot get aloof from themselves; they cannot make that distance. But if you can make it - and it can be made - the integrity that comes to a woman is deeper than when it comes to a man, because a woman is more earth-rooted. Once you spread your roots into the earth, a woman attains to a better balance than any man can ever attain.

Man is a wanderer. If you create too much trouble, it is very easy for a man to escape from you. In fact he will be thankful to you that you created so much trouble that he escaped; you created the situation and forced him to escape! Man is a wanderer; he would like to move to another woman.

So be a little more alert. If you feel like crying, weeping, cry and weep, but cry and weep alone; no need to burden him. He has not done any wrong to you, so why make him miserable? Let him face his own reality, and you face your own. Everybody has to come to encounter himself, and nobody can be there - not even your lover. You have to be alone.

So just a little more awareness will be needed. Love alone cannot last long. Love plus awareness can become an eternal phenomenon... something so deep that even death cannot destroy it. But then you have to pass all these negative states. You have enjoyed the high; now you have to enjoy the low also! And don't try to escape from the low - live it. That too is part of growth. And if you love each other then whatsoever happens, all helps finally; eventually it helps. These are all growth pangs, pains.

So this is all that I would like to say to you: that the mind would like to change or to live again and again in the same fantasy, and if the fantasy is not possible, then it would like you to change partners. This is how mind functions . . mind has no patience, so don't listen to it.

You have both changed partners enough; that is not going to help much. this time make awareness your concentration, rather than love, and love will follow.

(to the woman) And don't create unnecessary problems. If you can watch them, drop them - good. If it is absolutely impossible to drop them, have a little fight, create a little trouble, but remain conscious.

At least you can do one thing: when one is getting into it, the other can remain conscious. Make it a contract that when [your lover] gets deep into it, you have to be conscious; when you get into it, he has to be conscious. Help each other to be conscious.

In fact that is the greatest gift that love can give - the gift of awareness.

And one more thing I would like to tell you is that in the beginning when two persons fall in love, they are interested in each other. Sooner or later that starts fading because you become known to each other.

You were curious to know each other because you were unknown territories. Sooner or later you become known territories - the whole topography of the body and the mind is known; by and by one becomes acquainted. Then the problem arises of how to remain continuously interested in the other.

Either you can pretend - as in the whole world marriage goes on pretending, both partners knowing that it is not true and is humanly impossible.... And pretension is not good. Nothing destroys love more than pretension. Once two partners have decided to pretend, their love is already dead. So never pretend. Then what to do? If the interest is already fading and you don't pretend then nothing can be done about it. Create an interest which transcends you both.

In the beginning, lovers are interested in each other. If they really want to go on a journey deeper into love, they should become interested in something which is beyond both. In the beginning, lovers look into each other's eyes. That cannot continue forever. The day has to come when they look towards the moon together. Meeting at first is like meeting each other directly. By and by you meet each other indirectly.

You can see if two lovers are just at the beginning of their affair - you will see them facing each other; they are still in the honeymoon phase of it. But if they have settled and the honeymoon phase is over, the excitement is gone, and they have become quiet, tranquil, you will not see them facing each other. They will be facing something else - the moon, a flower... they may be listening to a poem. Something, a common ground, in which both are interested. This is now the way that they are interested in each other - an indirect way.

So before the interest in each other fades, create indirect ways. Otherwise, this is my observation - that many couples sooner or later are bored with each other.

First they are in ecstasy, then conflict. That too is good - at least there is something to do. When that too is gone, then emptiness... just facing each other's emptiness. One becomes very much scared, afraid to death. Then they want something - and if they don't create something in which they both can share, it will be difficult for them to be together. So the first phase is the phase of ecstasy, now of agony; and the third stage will be coming soon.

Before the third comes, be prepared! Move away from each other but together. If you can find a common goal, a common destiny, then you can love forever and forever, mm? Good! but in spite of everything, carry it to the very end.

[A therapist said she was only leaving to accompany her man, Veeresh, as he had commitments to fulfill. Also in the community community in which they lived was a man there with whom she, and all the others, found it very difficult to get on with peacefully.]

It may not be a direct commitment for you, but always think of Veeresh's commitments as yours.

Don't think of yourself as separate from Veeresh - and that will help you to merge into each other more deeply; it will drop many barriers.

Our attitudes are always there around us. If you feel that it is Veeresh's trip and you have to go, then you are going reluctantly, and you will not forgive him. Deep down the resistance will be there and you will take revenge in many ways. Women are very efficient at taking revenge in subtle ways.

They are so clever and efficient that they may deceive themselves.

So always remember that when you love a person, you merge, you lose boundaries. Then his commitments are your commitments. His successes are your successes; his failures, your failures.

This is something which has gone completely out of fashion in the West, but in the East for thousands of years, men and women have been thinking this way. The moment you love each other, you drop your barriers, defences, and you become responsible for the other also. It is a great commitment and many other unknown commitments are involved in it.

So you go, but without any resistance. Drop these barriers in the mind.

[Osho went on to say not to create any unnecessary fights at home, and that once she dropped her resistance to the person she felt antagonism for, she might find him not so tough.... ]

... because this is my experience - people who are tough on the surface are very very delicate on the inside. In fact people who are very delicate on the inside have to be tough on the outside otherwise everybody will exploit them, and sooner or later in life they learn it - that they will be nowhere if they are not tough because they are so delicate. They become tough - they become too tough in fact, to compensate. So always remember it as a rule; it is an almost universal rule.

If you can get an entry into a person who is very tough on the outside, you will find him one of the most delicate persons. Try to find a clue of how to enter him. This is a very basic psychological insight. He is tough because he feels that he is delicate and if he is not tough he will be vulnerable, so he has created a hard shell around himself. There is no need to fight with the hard shell. Just look around him, circle him. Somewhere there must be a loophole. There always is, because if there is no loophole he will die - the toughness will become a grave. He must have some holes from where he gets air. So don't be worried about his toughness - that must just be his facade. Tough people are beautiful people, if you can enter them.

If you enter people who are not tough, you will not find them delicate, because they have nothing inside to protect - that's why they are not tough. They are very hard inside, so there is no need to be hard on the outside. So life is very paradoxical ! People who are very delicate, butter-like, inside are very hard, stone-like. Their butter-likeness is just a deception; they know their toughness on the inside. They put their butter on the outside to attract people because there is no other way.

So next time when you go back to this person... he is a potential sannyasin, don't be worried... find a loophole, and convert him to sannyas!

[Chinmaya said that in his work as a goldsmith he found that he could only work spasmodically, in spurts, and that he would like to be able to change that.]

But that may be your type.

There are two types of people. One type goes on working continuously. His production may not be of great quality, but it is constant. It may not be of very high quality - it may be mediocre - but you can rely on him; he goes on working every day.

And then there is another type. This type is really the artist type. If the work is going to be of high quality, you cannot produce it continuously; it is impossible. It is only on and off. Sometimes you are feeling high, flowing, and then you produce something beautiful, but then the energy is gone. Then you feel low and you don't feel any creativity. any challenge. But all the great artists are of that type.

The first type is the worker, the production manager, the producer, the mediocre. He makes things of utility, but not of great art. The second type is the artist. Sometimes he brings a jewel out of his being, but then months pass and nothing comes. You cannot produce jewels every day.

In India they have a proverb about it - that a bitch gives birth to ten, twelve pups at a time, and goes on every year, but a lion gives birth to only one cub.

The second type has been always facing that trouble - a Picasso, a Van Gogh. One day they produce something tremendously madly - they will not sleep, they will not eat. They will go on and on for weeks. Then for weeks nothing is coming and they will lie down and be lazy.

An indian poet, Rabindranath, whenever he writes poetry, he closes his door - no food, no bath, no tea, nothing. For three days, four days, five days, he will be mad, just manic - shouting and singing and dancing and writing... he will not sleep. And his whole family will be worried about what is going to happen. He will not even open the door, because any disturbance is enough to bring him down.... A frenzy of creativity ... as if he has become possessed. And then for months he will not write anything; he will be just a normal being.

So I will not suggest that you change it. Why? You have lived perfectly well, so why be bothered?

Rather than change your pattern, when your moment comes to create then go completely mad, and ecstatically do something. And when it goes, enjoy its going, relax. If you force yourself to change it, you may be going against your nature - and I never suggest anything that goes against anybody's nature.

[The sannyasin says: I just feel strange because somebody will give me something to do, and I just don't do it. It just sits there for months - a simple thing, and I can't do it.]

So you can't do it! So what is the problem? That is his problem! (laughter) Simply tell him that this is the way you work - in fits. If he catches hold of you in a fit - good! If he doesn't, that is his lot!

No, never be unnecessarily troubled about these things. He can go to somebody else. You cannot be an ordinary worker, and it is good that you cannot be - a few people are needed to be more creative than ordinary workers. You cannot be just a technician who knows the know-how and just does it.

You love whatsoever you do, so you can do only when there is that energy, that space. But I will not suggest you change - there is no need. This type of person is also needed in the world. Be happy.

This is how the mind functions....

I know the other type also. They come and they would like to be creative. They are ready to sacrifice anything - just to become creative. They don't want to create a thousand poems - just one poem, but worth a nobel prize. But they cannot do it because they are of the other type. They are also needed. The whole world will be in difficulty if they are not there. Ninety-nine percent they are needed, but not one hundred percent. One percent the work of the artist is needed.

So accept this and more will be possible. Once you accept yourself - that this is how you are, this is the way God wanted you to be - many more beautiful things will be coming from you. And when they are not coming, they are not coming. There is no problem... don't be worried!

[A sannyasin asked about his music-making: I tend to find themes and then elaborate on them.

Should I do this or should I try to surprise myself at every note?]

If you can do that - if you can surprise yourself at every note - you will go deeper into it because that theme and whatsoever you work around it, is intellectual. It gives a framework, and the framework remains in the conscious; it doesn't allow the unconscious to function.

If you move without any frame, not knowing where you are going, if you just al!*ow yourself to be led somewhere, if you leave the conscious behind and the unconscious takes possession, you may come to discover many things inside yourself, and you will go to deeper layers of your being....

When I say be spontaneous, I don't mean let it be chaotic. I mean let it move by feel, not by thought.

It will not be themeless, but the theme will arise out of your feelings. It will have more of the quality of the heart. Of course it will be more incomprehensible.

Music has to be incomprehensible. Music is the language of the heart. One should not try to be logical and mathematical about it. But that doesn't mean that you have to be chaotic - that everybody goes on his own, and the whole thing becomes just a chaos. Everybody feels where the whole thing is moving... moves, but very indirectly - as a shadow moves. You start playing, and by and by you start feeling where it is moving, and rather than you forcing it to go somewhere, you feel it is taking you... you have given your hands to it.

[Osho went on to describe the phenomenon of automatic handwriting, and how one allows oneself to become as if possessed. The writing may not be comprehensible, just doodles, but it has a different quality - the unconscious is doing it.]

The conscious has become too dictatorial. So put it-aside and let the greater mind behind it take possession - it will surprise you.

And it is not that all that you know will be of no use, but your playing will not be dominated by the technique. You cannot drop what you know - it will be there - but it will be used by the spontaneous feeling. If somebody who does not know how to play an instrument plays it spontaneously, it is going to be different from one who knows. Both will be spontaneous, but the one who knows, his

knowledge, his training, his experience, will be used by the unconscious, and it will have a beauty of its own. One who does not know will be simply making a noise... it cannot be music.

So don't plan, don't make a theme. Use all the knowledge that you have, but don't use it directly.

Simply move by the feeling and then everything follows.