Become Part of my Family
[A sannyasin says: I've really enjoyed being here. I haven't really bothered to become integrated with the ashram but I enjoy your lectures very much.]
Next time, try to get in tune with the ashram also. You can enjoy my lectures, you can meditate, but if you are not in tune with all that is going on here and if you don't mix in totally, you will miss many things. You will miss many things that were easily available. The quality of your understanding of my lectures will deepen if you get in tune with the activity that goes on here. Then you are not an outsider. You become part of the family, and that helps. Resistance is dropped.
That's the whole whole meaning of sannyas - to become part of my family, so you don't think in terms of your own ego or in terms of your individuality. Rather you start thinking in terms of me and sannyas and-the work that is going on.
By and by you put yourself aside, and the work becomes more important, more valuable. That will deepen your understanding and will help many blocks inside your being to drop. Otherwise one goes on defending in subtle ways. These are all defence measures. One is afraid of being lost so one goes on holding, controlling, not mixing, but these are all ego-strengthening ideas - and the ego has to be dropped.
So it is good that you understand me, but if understanding me does not help you to drop your defences and resistances, then it is not going as deep as it should go. Listening to me can be enjoyed, but then it will remain just an enjoyment. Just as you enjoy a movie or TV of music, you can enjoy listening to me. But that will come like a wave and then go and you will remain unchanged.
Good... enjoy it, but let it not be just an enjoyment. Let it become a growth, because the more you grow, the more you will be able to enjoy it. It depends upon your sensitivity.
It is like classical music - the more you understand, the more you enjoy; the more you enjoy, the more you understand. A moment comes when you are completely lost. Only the music remains, throbbing, vibrating, pulsating all around you, and you are nowhere to be found. Remember that.
One day let it happen that you disappear and only I am vibrating around you - throbbing, pulsating, echoing and re-echoing. And you are at a loss... you cannot see where you are. You cannot pinpoint where your being is. You are completely lost as if a drop disappears into the ocean.
But that will happen only when you become part of my work. So next time when you come, drop all resistance.
[A sannyasin said he was feeling frustrated and imbalanced in his relationships with people. Osho asked him if he were currently in a relationship, to which he replied that he was not. Osho suggested it would be helpful for him to move into love.... ]
You need some relationship... it will settle you.
Love is a very basic need... as basic as food. Without food and without love, you will start shrinking.
Without food, the body will start dying. Without love, your innermost being starts dying.
You need some very very warm love relationship. You need a woman who can love you like a mother, and immediately your energies will settle. Otherwise there can be very great trouble... you can split into two personalities. Love brings you together. Without love, everybody has two minds - the right and left hemispheres, which are separate. Just a very small bridge exists between the two.
When you love a person deeply that bridge becomes more and more strong... becomes wider, bigger. In a really deep, intimate relationship, a moment comes when right and left hemispheres are no more two separate things. They become one whole. That's why love looks so irrational. Love looks so absurd and blind to people who are too much hung up in their heads. It is irrational because both the polarities meet and mingle and become one.
It is a tremendous chaos but very beautiful. And all that is beautiful comes out of chaos. All the stars are born out of chaos. These groups are really to create a chaos in you... to bring to your focus whatsoever is the real situation. They don't lie - they make you aware of the truth. These groups are really like a diagnosis - and that is half the therapy, more than half.
So passing through these group experiences, you have come to feel your inner conflict, the division.
Sometimes you are one person and sometimes you are another. Whenever energy moves into one direction, you are one. When energy moves into another direction, you are another. Now a synthesis is needed, a unification, a yoga. Union is needed... and the inner union becomes easily possible if you are moving in some outer union also. Then the outer union become just a milieu in which the inner milieu can happen. The inner can also happen without the outer, but it is going to be a very hard way - and there is no need. That is the way of the monk, who tries to create an inner synthesis without creating any outer harmony around him.
He lives in a desert as far as the outside is concerned, and inside he creates an oasis. But it is difficult to protect an oasis in a desert. It is easier to protect an oasis in green and wild scenery, because the whole scene will help you. That is the path of the devotee. These are the two basic paths: the path of the monk and the path of the devotee, the bhakta. The bhakta never goes any- where. He uses his love situation for an inner transformation.
So move in a love relationship, but remember, don't be lost in it. As there is a problem that without love it is very difficult to come to an inner synthesis, with love there is also a problem. You may get involved so much in it that you can be completely lost. You can lose your moorings and your roots in it. Then outside there will be a very green land and inside there will be a desert. You understand me? These are the three possibilities.
The best is that inside also you have a flowering world, and outside a corresponding synchronisity with it, a deep harmony... a love world. That's my whole effort - to bring love and meditation together to you. The meditation will give you an inner beauty, grace, and love will help that inner beauty and grace from the outside. It will become a protection and a help.
Move into a relationship with the idea that out of love you have to attain to meditation. And love can help tremendously if you are rightly aware. Otherwise love is very destructive. It destroys many people. It simply gives trouble, anxiety, anguish, sadness, depression, frustration. But nothing is wrong in love. Something is wrong within, the person, in his attitude. He couldn't use love.
You can use fire to warm your house, to heat your house. You can also burn the house. But nothing is wrong in fire. It can be your friend; it can be your enemy - it depends on you. So don't be lost in love.
And always remember that the inner synthesis is needed. The outer is just a means to the inner but the inner is the goal.
[Primal Therapy group is present. Osho describes Primal Therapy thus:]
Once something is exposed, it evaporates. Hide a thing and it remains with you. It is just like taking the roots out of the earth. Once you have exposed the roots to the air and to the sun, the tree is dead. If the roots remain deep down in the earth, you can go on cutting the tree again and again, but again it will sprout.
Never fight with branches. The whole effort in these groups is to make you alert not to fight with branches and leaves. It is futile. Bring the roots up and see exactly where the problem is.
[A visitor says: I have been practising the art of living in the ways of cooking and eating and trying to do well what I was doing. I felt myself growing this way.
I have heard many people talking about groups here, but I don't feel I need them.]
But you have not done anything like a group, so how can you feel that they are not for you?
No, that cannot be. But if you don't want to, there is no need to do groups. But if you listen to my suggestion, I will say that you do one so that you can really feel whether it is for you or not. That will be an experience. It is never good to decide beforehand, because it may be just a fear deep down.
What you are calling your feeling that it is not for you, may be fear. I rarely come across a person for whom groups are not helpful - and never a person who comes from the West.
Centuries of repression are there. You may not be aware but it is in the unconscious. And that creates a fear, a fear of explosion. You are afraid of becoming aware of certain things which you have taken for granted are not in you. You can live blissfully oblivious of them but one day or other you will have to face them, and the sooner you face them, the better. There are a few things which can only be solved at a particular age. When the age has gone, those problems cannot be solved.
For example if somebody becomes aware of a deep sexuality at a much later age, it becomes very problematic. It is better if he had become aware when he was young.
Just the other day I was reading about a christian missionary who went to a dark corner of Africa.
He was hard at work trying to convert a native chief. Now the chief was very old and the missionary was very 'old testament'. His version of Christianity leaned heavily on 'thou-shalt-nots'. The savage listened patiently....
'I do not understand,' he said at last. 'You tell me that I must not take my neighbour's wife.'
'That's right,' said the missionary.
'Nor his ivory or his oxen.'
'Quite right.'
'And I must not dance a war dance and then ambush him on the trail and then kill him.'
'Absolutely right!'
'But I cannot do any of these things,' said the savage regretfully. 'I am too old. So to be old and to be a Christian, they are the same thing!'
Always remember that there are problems that belong to a particular age. Solve them then and there, and it is good. But otherwise, this is my experience, that there are many people, millions of people, who have not solved their childhood problems. They need Primal Therapy.
Primal Therapy simply means bringing their childhood back to them. They will relive it in imagination and whatsoever has remained incomplete will have to be completed in imagination. Then those problems will disappear. It is sometimes very hard to go back to the old wounds and to let them again overpower you; to again suffer those things which you have been thinking had completely disappeared. For example someone has insulted you when you were a small child. That wound is there. You have forgotten it but it continues to function inside your unconscious, and it has to be healed.
A child is born; it is a very critical moment, very traumatic, and he suffers much because his whole world in the womb is destroyed. That was the only world he knew... that was his whole life. Then he passed through the birth canal, which is a painful process, almost suffocating. Then he is outside in the world on his own, absolutely helpless... many painful experiences, and there is no way, ordinarily, to erase them.
A Primal Therapy group will take you back on an inner journey. It will help your unconscious pains to bubble up, to surface. Of course it is going to be painful, but once you are relieved of that pain you will feel a certain cleaning; you will become bathed and cleaned. Your energy will be flowing more easily. Those wounds have disappeared, those blocks have been dropped. You will find fresh life coming to you. You can never know unless you go through it.
And all these groups are for particular problems. This is my feeling - that you are afraid of things which may surface: anger, sex, greed, or whatsoever. You have maintained yourself somehow and you have maintained well; you have made a beautiful house on a volcano. Now you are afraid to think that there is even a volcano. You are living so comfortably and conveniently so why bother?
Why dig a hole and see whether there is a volcano or not? Even if it is there, better not to think about it. But this is a very ostrich-like attitude, and I don't think it is going to help.
I will suggest you do only one group - and do it really so you can come to feel. Maybe you are right, maybe there is no need, but don't decide that beforehand. This is the way we lose many opportunities of growth, many opportunities in which some unfamiliar thing might have happened.
But we say we don't need them. How can you decide?
Always decide something by experimentation. Never decide anything a priori. Do the experiment and if it is not useful, you are finished forever with it. But still, think about it. I think Encounter will be very good. It is a very soft group... it will not disturb you too much. Then if you feel certain that you don't need groups, very good. Then there is no question, no problem.
[The visitor replies: Well, I think that in day-to-day living I can express my feelings very much. I wonder if I can experience emotions stronger in the group than I do in daily life.]
I also wonder, but we have to see that through experimentation; there is no other way. Maybe you are right - and it will be good if you are right. If I am wrong it will be good! But there is no way to decide it beforehand. First do the camp. The camp may bring a feeling to you to do something.
My suggestion always is never to lose an opportunity which can give you something unfamiliar.
Never cling to the past and always remain open and experimentative... always ready to walk on a path which you have never walked before. Who knows? - even if it proves useless, it will be an experience.
Edison was working on a certain experiment for almost three years continuously and he failed seven hundred times. All his colleagues, his students, became completely frustrated. He would come every morning happy and bubbling with joy, and ready to start again. It was too much: seven hundred times and three years wasted! Everybody was almost certain that nothing was going to come out of it. The whole thing seemed to be useless... just a whim.
They all gathered together and said, 'We will become mad! This man goes on being happy and every day he comes and starts again as if he has completely forgotten that three years have been completely wasted.'
They talked to Edison and told him, 'We have failed seven hundred times. Now it is a complete failure. We have not achieved anything. We have to stop.'
Edison laughed uproariously. He said, 'What are you talking about? Failed? We have succeeded in knowing that seven hundred methods won't be of any help. If there are one thousand possibilities, we have closed seven hundred. Now there are only three hundred there. We are coming closer and closer to truth every day! Who has told you that we have failed? We have knocked on seven hundred doors and they were not the right doors, but we have learned one thing. There was no other way to learn that they were not the right doors. If we had not knocked, we had no way of knowing. We may have been standing on the first door continuously thinking that this is the right door, but now we are certain that seven hundred doors are false. This is a great achievement!'
This is the basic scientific attitude: if you can decide that something is false, you are coming closer to the truth. Truth is not available in the market so that you can go directly and order it. It is not ready-made, available. You have to experiment.
So what I suggest is, always remain experimentative. And never become smug. Never think that whatsoever you are doing is perfect. It is never perfect. It is always possible to improve upon it; it is always possible to make it more perfect.
[A sannyasin said that she seemed always to fall in love with people who were not available, and that she would like to fall in love with someone and have them fall in love with her, but that she seemed to always be attracted to people she couldn't have.
Osho said that unconsciously she did not really want to fall in love, so she chose people with whom her love could never be fulfilled. He said she chose people not for themselves but for their inaccessibility, and that if they became available she would drop the idea of pursuing them.
She said she felt she either tried to keep people away or would simply go and grab at them - and that didn't work either.... ]
Go and do that! Do something. And I'm not joking when I say to go and do it. Do it! I mean business!
You will be very happy once you get out of this circle you have created for yourself, this very self- destructive structure which is almost suicidal. If you don't love you go on destroying your life. Love is life, and through love all other doors of prayer and God and everything, open. If the door of love is closed, you are left alone like a desert island and then there is no way to go anywhere. Then you get more and more fed up with yourself.
People take pride in being suicidal - drop that pride. Just look at the fact. And every human being is beautiful. Don't ask the impossible - just find someone who is available.
There are women, I know, who will become interested only in a married person, because then they can create trouble. If the person is not married they are not interested. This is their mathematics:
if he were worth something, some other woman would have got hold of him before. Nobody has bothered about him - he is still a bachelor - so it certainly proves that he is not worth worrying about. At least he is not of the standard they would like.
Once the man has a woman then other women start becoming interested. He must have something!
They are more interested in creating jealousy in the other woman than love in the man.
They are more interested in defeating the other woman. Their whole seduction, their whole coquetry, will be concerned with the woman: how they can defeat the woman; how they can prove themselves to be better looking, more loving, more beautiful, more charming, and that the other woman is nothing. Once the woman has broken away from the man they will not be interested in the man at all. The whole purpose is finished.
So never do that... that is ugly. And it is not going to help you, because you are moving in a wrong direction. Find someone, or allow someone to find you. It is good to play the game of hide and seek, but don't hide so much that the other gets fed up with the game and goes home! Then there will be no point.
Children play hide and seek but they always hide in such a way that the other can find them. It is never made almost impossible. It is a challenge and they go on making noises so the other knows where they are. The other goes on playing the game of seeking them, knowing where they are. But if you hide so much that it becomes impossible to seek you, then the whole game is finished.
Nothing is wrong with you - it is just an old habit. It will melt with a little more understanding. Do something against it... that is the only way to break a habit.
[A sannyasin participant of the Tathata group says: I lost my frightened streak - it was really unbelievable. But also I found that I am dead. I don't feel anything towards people... ]
That will come. There is nothing to worry about.
You have put your life in certain fears too much. Because those fears are gone you will feel as if you are dead for a few days, because the old channels for the life to flow are no more there. Many people love only because they are afraid. They think that they are loving but deep down there is fear - fear of being left alone, fear of isolation.
But if fear disappears, suddenly they will see that their love has also disappeared because basically, deep down it was fear, not love. Many people pray because they are afraid. They go to the church and temple and pray. If their fear really disappears they will stop going to the church because the fear was the base of their prayer; their god was nothing but fear personified. Now the fear is no more there, they will become godless.
This happens to many people because we don't know exactly what we are doing with our life. We call it love... maybe it is something else. We call it prayer; maybe it is something else. We call it meditation; maybe it is something else. The mind is such a confusion that it is very difficult to know exactly where the problem is. Once you start changing one thing, you will become aware that the mind goes on deceiving you in many ways.
The dropping of fear is not enough. It is a negative thing. It is good to drop it but not enough. Now you will have to bring love to your heart... and it can come only when fear is dropped.