Darshan 1 April 1976

[A sannyasin said that she was feeling sad because she had separated from her man recently, and she found it difficult to stop thinking of him.]

Sadness can become a very very enriching experience. You have to work on it. It is easy to escape from your sadness - and all relationships ordinarily are escapes; one simply goes on avoiding it.

And it is always there underneath... the current continues. Even in relationship it erupts many times. Then one tends to throw the responsibility on the other, but it is not the real thing. It is your loneliness, your own sadness. You have not settled with it yet, so it will erupt again and again.

You can escape in work. You can escape in some occupation, in relationship and society, this and that, in travelling, but it is not going to go that way, because it is part of your being.

Every man is born alone - in the world, but alone; comes through the parents, but alone. And every man dies alone, again moves out of the world alone. And between these two lonelinesses we go on deceiving and befooling ourselves. It is good to take courage and enter into this loneliness.

Howsoever hard and difficult it may look in the beginning, it pays tremendously. Once you settle with it, once you start enjoying it, once you feel it not as sadness but as silence, once you understand that there is no way to escape, you relax.

Nothing can be done about it, go why not enjoy it? Why not go into it deeply and have a taste of it, see what it is? Why be unnecessarily afraid? If it is going to be there and it is a fact - existential, not accidental - then why not come to terms with it? Why not move into it and see what it is?

We are just standing on the periphery, and we go on trying to avoid it. From the very beginning we are prejudiced against it.

It comes by social circumstances. A child is born... he is continuously helpless. The whole childhood is a long helplessness. He has to depend for each and every thing, small things, on others - the mother for food, for clothing, for a bath. If he is feeling cold then he has to cry... somebody has to bring a blanket. He cannot do anything - so he learns that his happiness depends on others.

And it is natural to feel that way too, because whenever he is alone he is unhappy. If he has made his clothes wet, then he is Lying there in wet clothes and he cannot do anything. If a small pebble is next to his skin, he cannot even remove it. And for a small child, a small pebble feels like a hillock.

His body and his skin is so delicate, so he suffers. He cannot do anything, he cannot even move, so he learns that his happiness depends on others. When they are there he is happy. When he feels he is alone he becomes panicky. And that is natural - a child is helpless.

The childhood goes but the conditioning remains. One day or other, one has to drop that conditioning. Now you are a grown-up; now you are no more a child. You can be on your own...

now you can be happy alone. Just the conditioning has to be dropped. And this is the beauty of it - once you start being happy and alone, you become capable of relationship. Before that you are not capable of a relationship, because how can a person who cannot be happy alone, be happy in relationship? In the first place, happiness does not exist in him.

So I am not against relationship - I am all for it, but before you can relate, you have to be. And if you are miserable and you relate with someone, you are going to create more misery. The misery is bound to be multiplied; not only doubled but multiplied. He is miserable, you are also miserable. He cannot be alone, you cannot be alone, so you depend on each other. And whenever you depend on somebody, you can never forgive that man. He makes you dependent, he makes you feel helpless.

He becomes powerful and dominates you.

So deep down, every lover is against, hates, the person he loves - because nobody can love slavery.

You can love only freedom. But freedom is possible only when you are free to be happy, and when you can be happy absolutely alone. If there is nobody, then too you can enjoy, dance, sing. That becomes your very quality of being. Then you can relate... then your happiness relates. Your music relates... your singing and dancing relates. Of course you multiply your happiness. Whatsoever you have will be multiplied in relationship. If you have misery, misery will be multiplied. If you have happiness, happiness will be multiplied.

In relationship you will be reflected in millions of ways - but you will be reflected.

And one more thing - if you are unhappy, you will always make a relationship with an unhappy person. We tend to choose somebody with whom we feel a similarity of wave-length. A miserable person tends to find a miserable partner. And a miserable person can be chosen only by a miserable person. Even if you choose a person who is happy, he will not choose you unless you are happy.

Why should he get into trouble? Who wants to get into hell?

So this is my suggestion, that before you start choosing a person, moving into a relationship, try to learn to be happy alone, otherwise you will choose a wrong person. And between two wrong persons a relationship is impossible. That is what is happening all over the world. People relate in search of happiness and just the opposite happens: more misery, more tears, more agony, more anguish.

So be here... start meditating. Whenever you feel sad, sit silently and allow sadness to come; don't try to escape from it. Make yourself as sad as you can. Don't avoid it - that's the one thing to remember. Cry, weep... have the whole taste of it. Cry to death... fall down on the earth... roll - and let it go by itself. Don't force it to go; it will go, because nobody can remain in a permanent mood.

When it goes you will be unburdened, absolutely unburdened, as if the whole gravitation has disappeared and you can fly, weightless. That is the moment to enter yourself. First bring sadness.

The ordinary tendency is not to allow it, to find some ways and means so that you can look somewhere else - to go to the restaurant, to the swimming pool, meet friends, read a book or go to a movie, p!ay on the guitar - but do something, so that you can be engaged and you can put your attention somewhere else.

This is to be remembered - when you are feeling sad, don't lose the opportunity. Close the doors, sit down, and feel as sad as you can, as if the whole world is just a hell. Go deep into it... sink into it. Allow every sad thought to penetrate you, every sad emotion to stir you. And cry and weep and say things - say them loudly, there is nothing to worry about.

[She answers: I'm very inhibited around other people.]

Don't be worried. These other people are also in the same plight. And my sannyasins are not in any way... mm? They will understand - and even if they don't understand, why be worried about their misunderstanding?...

Mm mm, it is an excuse. Understand it and drop it.

So first live sadness for a few days, and the second thing to remember is, the moment that momentum of sadness goes, you will feel very calm, peaceful - as one feels after a storm. In that moment sit silently and enjoy the silence that is coming on its own. You have not brought it; you were bringing sadness. When sadness goes, in the wake, silence settles.

Listen to that silence. Close your eyes. Feel it... feel the very texture of it... the fragrance. And if you feel happy, sing, dance.

Continue these two things, and after two weeks tell me, mm? Everything will be good. Good.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group are present. A participant from says: it was the hardest group for me. I experienced a lot in my body, having to sit in one place for so long - and I went back to where that all came from.

When I was a boy I was brought up in an orphanage, and I had to go to church every day for eleven years. I sat there and was a good boy, but I was very rebellious.]

I understand, mm .... Childhood conditioning falls very deeply, and... church can create that.

Sitting itself is a great experience, and if you don't destroy this conditioning - it is just an accident - you will miss a beautiful, a very very beautiful experience of just sitting.

That's why in all the other groups you were feeling very very happy: they were all active, and you were moving and saying things and doing things, and much was going on. This group has brought you up against your conditioning. In fact this has been the most valuable. You enjoyed the others more, but that is not the ultimate value. This has been the most valuable. It has brought up something which exists as a barrier in your unconscious. It has hit hard exactly at the centre. Now you have to unlearn that conditioning.

Two things can be done. One is, the Primal group - that will be helpful. Once this conditioning is dropped and you can sit and enjoy without any rebelliousness, a new dimension will be opened into your being.

All meditations deep down are nothing but sitting. These other groups are all western. This group is not... it is basically Zen. This is what zazen is. Zazen simply means sitting, not doing anything.

You are allowed to do a little in this group - the asking of questions - even that is just because it is only a beginning Later on I am going to have another group, zazen. For three days, not even a question to distract you - just sitting looking at the wall. Nothing to do at all, not even a question, not even a query inside... just gazing at the wall. Nothing leads you deeper than that.

When the body is really in a sitting position, really with no tendency to movement, when the body is almost as if dead, the mind stops completely, because the mind can only move with the help of the body. They are not two; the mechanism is one. The body is the outer part of it, the mind is the inner part. You are psychosomatic - not body and mind; you are body/mind. If the body is completely still, absolutely still, the mind simply disappears. The mind cannot be - it needs a corresponding tense state in the body.

Bodhidharma sat for nine years just gazing at the wall. That was his whole meditation. When disciples came and asked what to do, he would say 'Just sit and gaze at the wall'. Many would disappear within hours - because what to do? Just sitting and gazing at the wall ! But those who remained, those who trusted, attained to the highest peaks that have been available to humanity.

And on Bodhidharma's insight the whole zen tradition stands. There is nothing to do....

If you allow the body to sit and settle, and if the energy is unmoving, has become a pool, a silent pool, suddenly the mind disappears. The mind needs a corresponding body; movement in the body is movement in the mind, and no movement in the body is no movement in the mind.

So you will be missing unnecessarily, just because you were in an orphanage. That is just accidental.

And it just happened that you were born in a christian country and you had to go to church and sit there; you were forced to sit - that too was an accident. And of course an orphan cannot be really rebellious. Inside he may boil, but on the outside he has to be obedient. So that boiling is still there...

you are still heated up.

This has to be dropped, otherwise you will be able to enjoy active meditations, but you will never be able to enjoy inactive meditations. And active meditations can only lead you to the porch. You only reach inside the palace by inactive meditations. Activity can only be on the circumference - the centre is still, unmoving.

Primal will be good, mm? It will bring your childhood back, and you can be finished with it! And this is one thing to be understood: something from the childhood goes on continuing in the mind if it has not been completed. If you were rebellious there would have been no problem. You were obedient, and of course every obedient child has to face this problem, because on the surface he carries something, and inside he is against it. So a division is created, and that incomplete experience is continued.

In the Primal it will be brought back. You will have to relive it... you will have to pass through the whole misery again. But it is worth it, because once you pass through it and you do that which you always wanted to do when you were a child and never did, things will be completed, finished.

Finished with the orphanage, finished with the church, finished with Christianity - finished with the past. So you do it.

And after the Primal I will give you the Bodhidharma meditation - to sit and just look at the wall.

It has been good. It was difficult, it was hard - because to break any conditioning is hard - but I am happy that you came against something which is a barrier. Now it can be broken. Good.

[Another group member says: I found the group really difficult. I've done marathons before and came out of them feeling really high, but in this group I became aware of how angry I am.]

This has to be understood. All the group therapies in the West are cathartic. You are allowed to act out; not only allowed - you are really forced to act out. So whatsoever is there, pent up, is released.

One feels good, unburdened, but nothing basically changes. Again you will accumulate the same, because you remain the same. You just take the lid off the kettle so the vapour is released, the steam is released. For a time being the kettle becomes silent, but the lid is on again, because you cannot move in the world with the lid off. You will be too vulnerable, and it will be very difficult to live.

So in the group you take the lid off - you feel good. Out of the group you again act, start behaving in the old way, the steam again gathers. That's why there are many people who have become almost addicts for groups. They live from one encounter group to another, from one marathon to another - as if life is just meant to go from one group to another. And just in between they feel sad. It is as it groups become an alternative life. That is dangerous because groups are therapy, therapeutic, and they should not become a style of life.

You can release things a thousand and one times, but if the basic pattern doesn't change, you will accumulate again. There is nothing wrong in releasing it - it is good, but there is nothing permanent about it.

Eastern methods are totally different. They are not cathartic. On the contrary, they bring you up against your pattern. They are not worried much about the pent-up energy. They are concerned about the pattern, the inner mechanisms that create the energy, repress it, and make you angry, sad, depressed, neurotic. The pattern has to be broken. To release the energy is very simple... to break the pattern is difficult; it is hard work.

So it is good that you came against the pattern. Now try to do something to change the pattern. I will suggest you do three things. One is: every day for fifteen minutes, any time that you feel good,

choose a time and close the room and become angry - but don't release it. Go on forcing it... go almost crazy with anger, but don't release it, no expression... not even a pillow to hit. Repress it in every way - do you follow me? It is just the exact opposite of catharsis.

If you feel tension arising in the stomach as if something is going to explode, pull the stomach in; make it as tense as you can. If you feel the shoulders are becoming tense, make them more tense.

Let the whole body be as tense as possible... as if almost on a volcano - boiling within and with no release. That is the point to remember - no release, no expression. Don't scream, otherwise the stomach will be released. Don't hit anything, otherwise the shoulders will be released and relaxed.

For fifteen minutes get heated up, as if one is at one hundred degrees. For fifteen minutes work to a climax. Put on an alarm and when the alarm goes, try the hardest you can. And as the alarm stops, sit silently, close your eyes and just watch what is happening. Relax the body, mm?

This heating of the system will force your patterns to melt. So do this for two weeks...

This is the first thing, and the second thing I suggest is that you take Rolfing. This will dissolve the innermost part of your pattern, and Rolfing will dissolve the outer part of the musculature.

[Another participant says: I experienced a very deep thing in the group. There was a kind of a tension below my stomach on the second day, and on the third day I started to cry as I never have before, with my mouth wide open... there was no anger or sadness in it. Then I started feeling like a baby, and wanted to find my mother.

He adds that he felt the centre above the navel.]

Very good... excellent. This is really good... symbolic and meaningful....

So continue sitting for at least one hour every day... just sitting facing the wall with half-closed eyes, just looking at the tip of the nose.

You will notice by and by that the centre you felt above the navel will slip downwards... it has to go below the navel. If it slips down, just go on watching - you need not do anything. When it comes below the navel, come and tell me. Then it will be at the hara - just two inches below the navel.

This is going to settle many things for you. It has been a good experience.

[Another group participant says: I've realised that the desire, the very wanting, is the barrier.]

It is... the very desire is the barrier. The desire to be desireless is the barrier. If you go on desiring you will get more and more frustrated, unnecessarily. You sow the seeds. So just don't desire.

If you can simply sit without any desiring, without asking for anything, it is tremendously beautiful.

The desire makes everything ugly. Everything happens when the desire is not there, because when the desire is not there, you are not there. You are the desire. Through desires you cling. Through desires you remain.

Desire is a projection of the ego, so when you cut out the desires, the ego drops. When the meditator is gone, meditation comes in. When the seeker is not, then God seeks you.

So it is good that you have understood that desire creates the problem and becomes the barrier.

Remember this, because once you understand that desire creates the barrier and the trouble, the mind creates a new desire - the desire to be desireless. Beware of that. Just understand that the desire creates the trouble. This very understanding will become the dropping of the desire. You will not create a new desire for desirelessness... otherwise that desire is again the same. Only the name has changed, but the disease continues.

Just looking into the desire one understands. One says, 'Right, so this is what is causing the whole trouble.' Stop there. Don't say, 'Now I will not desire,' because again the desire will come. Just that is enough - 'I have understood'. A full stop. In that very understanding desire burns out, is reduced to ashes and disappears. And you are left without a trace.

Good... this group has been very good.