I Give You a Capacity to Know

[A new sannyasin says: I am confused - about everything. I cannot ask questions; there are so many.]

As I see it, you have so many answers. You think that already you know much. Your confusion is not created by so many questions, but by so many answers.

A question is innocent if it comes out of ignorance. It is pure... it is tremendously beautiful. When a question comes out of an already concluded answer, it is ugly and it creates confusion. A question in itself never creates a confusion because there is nothing to be confused about. If you have an answer already, and the question arises out of the answer that you have settled upon, then disturbance, confusion. What to do? There is doubt.

You are loaded too much with knowledge and the whole of that knowledge is simply rubbish. You will have to look into it. Questioning is very good, but out of knowledge it is useless. I only answer people who don't have any answers. Then it is simple to communicate; it is direct. They can see me and feel me and understand me. But if you have an answer already, then you are continuously comparing what I am saying with your answer; whether it fits with you or not. If it fits, okay. If it doesn't fit, confusion.

And it is not going to fit with your answers - hence confusion - because I am saying something which is my existential experience and you are carrying conclusions which are just intellectual. It is not going to fit. Existence never fits with any concept, in any theory.

If a Christian comes to me there are problems, confusion, because he has Christianity there. He is listening to me continuously through that screen and continuously screening what fits and what does not fit. He already thinks that he has arrived. Now he is evaluating whether I am right or not.

Confusion arises.

If you have not arrived, if your knowledge is just borrowed and you understand the fact that it is not really knowledge but information that you have collected and deep down you are ignorant, then push that information aside. I am not giving you certain knowledge. I am giving you a certain capacity to know.

My whole effort is to make you capable of knowing. I am not concerned with knowledge.

Today's knowledge will be useless tomorrow. All knowledge is already out of date by the time you have acquired it. So my effort is not to transfer knowledge to you, but to create a receptivity, a vulnerability, an openness, a capacity to learn... a readiness to respond to life, so that each moment you don't act out of your knowledge but simply out of your understanding. And that's totally different.

An understanding is a quality of consciousness. It has nothing to do with the mind. Knowledge is just a mind thing, memory, accumulation, conditioning.

The problem as I see it in you is that you are deceived by your knowledge. You have many things you think you know - and you don't know at all. If you become a little alert you will be able to see that which in fact you do know.

Let this question become your meditation: What really do you know? The first step towards knowledge is to know what you know and what you don't know. Make a clear-cut distinction and don't try to deceive yourself. Just see whether you know it. Do you know anything about God? Do you know anything about consciousness? Do you know anything about love? Do you know anything about yourself? Who are you? From where do you come? Where are you going? Be very very sincere and go into these questions.

If you come to feel that you don't know, then drop all that you have been believing you know; put it aside. It is to be thrown into a rubbish heap. If you know, then there is no problem and I cannot confuse you. Nobody can confuse you.

Once you know, then whatsoever happens and whatsoever others say, nobody can confuse you because you know it. You are rooted in your knowing. But if you are not rooted in your knowing, it is just an assembled facade of knowledge and anybody can confuse you. You believe that God is good and somebody says something else; you think that God is like this and somebody says something else. Again and again you will be confused. You will remain in confusion for the whole of your life, but you will be the cause. Nobody confuses you.

Just meditate over it. In the time you are here, meditate over what you know, and if you come to see that you don't know this, discard it. Go on discarding. Hindus call it the process of neti-neti: I don't know this, I don't know that. Go on discarding and unless something is left that you know, even if it is nothing, don't be worried. Out of that nothing, out of that pure innocent ignorance, you will be able to commune with me, and there will be no more confusion; never again any confusion. Who can confuse you if you don't know anything?

You were thinking that the sun rises from the west and suddenly I say that it rises from the east - confusion. What to do with your belief? For whole of your past you have believed that way and now suddenly I say the sun rises from the east. A thousand and one questions arise.

But if you don't know, you will listen and this listening will be innocent. You simply listen and think, 'This man says the sun rises from the east, so let us go and see whether it does or not.' There is no question of confusion, rather a curiosity, an enquiry; a call, an invocation, an adventure arises.

If the sun rises from the east there will be no confusion. If it does not rise from the east, then too, there is no confusion. You will have come to know the truth - that it does or does not rise. You follow me? In this way, one comes to live an unfocused life.

Just meditate over it, mm?

[Osho talks to a sannyasin, who is going to start a centre, about helping others, saying that it is a help for one's own growth.

Osho said that when someone comes to you with a problem, you are sufficiently detached from it to be able to be of help, but when that problem is your own, the issue is too clouded with anxiety which prevents you having such a clear perspective.... ]

And meditation always grows in deep accompaniment with compassion. It never grows alone.

It is as if you are trying to help a tree to grow without watering it. Compassion functions like watering.

Of course just watering is not going to help. A seed is needed, a sprout is needed. A sprout is needed to have its own life and potentiality and destiny - the flower. Then the watering can be helpful.

There are a few religions, in the East particularly, which have the seed. Sometimes the sprout comes up above the earth but they don't water it with compassion. Sooner or later it dries and dies.

They have become too self-centred. Christianity is doing just the opposite. There is too much of compassion and service, but the meditation has gone. There is no seed there, no plant - they simply go on watering. They create nothing but a muddy place.

Meditation plus compassion... then you have both the wings to fly into the sky of God.

So while you are there, forget your problems for the time being and help others to meditate, to grow.

Then the centre will start functioning on its own. It takes its own life.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group are at darshan. Osho commented on the method:]

It is a zen method and tremendously helpful. It is more concerned with going within than going without. You have to seek a virgin point within your being which has never been travelled to before.

Nobody can enter there except you. And you too can only enter up to a certain extent. Your whole identity is lost. Your whole address is no more there. You don't know who you are. You enter only when you don't know who you are. And then suddenly you are inside the shrine and you know who you are. But this has nothing to do with your previous identity.

[The groupleader said: It was a heavy group. There were ten men and two women. I don 't know if that had anything to do with it.

I had the feeling that they were all working hard and still somehow, it was very heavy for them.

When I was doing these groups in the West, very often people would have really beautiful break- throughs. Somehow people here either can't discover something simple because they don't believe that its possible... ]

There are many things implied. One thing - each group has its own individuality, so no other group will be the same.

[Osho went on to say that each group will be a completely new experience, so one should not have any expectations.]

The second thing. In the West it is very easy to experience simple experiences. Here it will be difficult because here expectations are very great. Listening to me, just being close to me, people start having a very deep desire for the ultimate. Simple experiences happen to them, but they won't take any notice of it. When you are not expecting the ultimate, simple things are also good.

It is just as if you were expecting one million dollars and suddenly you come across a ten dollar note.

You fall flat. But if you were not expecting anything and suddenly by the side of the road there is a ten dollar note, you are so happy. It is the same ten dollar note, but if the expectation was of one million dollars, it is nothing. Who bothers about ten dollar notes? If the expectation was none, then even a ten dollar note is almost like ten million dollars.

In the West when you worked with people in growth groups, they didn't expect anything like enlightenment, so even small experiences look like enlightenment; every small experience - a ten dollar note. Nothing is wrong in them; they are very beautiful. Even a small flower, a grass flower is beautiful. To be happy, there is no need for a lotus. One can become happy with a small grass flower. But when you are expecting and searching for the lotus flower, these small flowers will come on your way but you will not take any note of them.

So this will happen more here. And there is nothing wrong in it - it is natural. Their expectations are very high.

The third thing is that whenever a group is working hard and is not able to reach a soft space, force it to work harder. It simply shows that this type of group can achieve greater experiences. The experience happens only when you come to a peak in your energy.

For example, somebody boils at thirty degrees; he has very low energy. At a thirty-degree effort he boils and evaporates - and then the experience. Another has greater energy and boils at seventy degrees. Don't wait for thirty degrees. He has to be pushed to the seventy-degree point. Another is going to boil at one hundred; push him still harder. He will pass the thirty-degree point without any experiences - and also seventy degrees. Don't feel hopeless. Don't start thinking that this is a failure. No. This simply shows that the man has a higher energy possibility and that his experience is going to be a very great experience. But it will take a little longer and harder effort.

The thirty-degree experience is going to be a thirty-degree experience. It will be achieved sooner but cannot be high. It is going to be like seasonal flowers. Within six weeks they are there, and within six weeks they are gone also. A person who achieves his satori or a part of a satori at the hundred-degree point, will achieve more and the experience is going to become a permanent thing in him.

So there are benefits with low-energy people and benefits with high-energy people. And both are good.

One of the causes may have been because there were too many men. The group will be hard.

Women bring softness to the group; the group becomes more balanced. When there are only men, they work hard but simple experiences will not be so easily possible. When the group is mixed - half men, half women - more possibility of simple experiences are there.

Sometimes it will be so but don't make it an insistence that it should always be half and half; there is no need. Sometimes let it be hard. It is good sometimes to travel on a hard, rough terrain. The hilly path is also beautiful.

With women the group will be softer but the experiences will be closer to the sex centre. That's why they will be simple. If there are twelve men working, the energy will rise higher. It will be difficult, but the experience will be closer to the sahasrar. If twelve women are working, then again the difficulty will arise because they soften each other. But they soften each other because of the sexual energy.

If twelve men are sitting together and a woman enters the room, immediately a change of climate happens. Those same twelve men relax; they are not so hard. They start laughing a little; they are not so tense. A woman had entered - now they are not fighting with each other. They are all focused on the woman. Otherwise they were fighting with each other; there was an inner conflict between male egos. Now the woman has come and the energy changes. If there are too many women and a man enters, there is a different change; a single man will make a difference.

So it is good if it happens sometimes half and half, but don't insist for it. In the West it is easier.

People are not really seeking samadhi there - they are seeking sensation. In fact they are more interested in discovering their sensuality, their sexuality, than in discovering their samadhi. If the group has a balance of men and women it is easier. If they can be allowed sexual freedom also, it is easier.

That's what's happening in Esalen-type institutes. People work, but the whole of the work verges somewhere on sex. They have worked hard, and then the whole group goes and sits in a hot bath.

The men and women are touching each other and just playing. The hot water all around creates a womb situation and the vapours rising ....

You feel you are achieving something but it is very dream-like. That achievement is not going to last.

The moment you have come back from the hills to the town, it is gone. It is not going to become an integrated part of you.

When you feel that things are going hard you have to put in more energy. People are almost to be pushed towards that extreme. Ordinarily they don't go to the extreme. When people say that they are making an effort, a total effort, even then they are not making a total effort.

This is my observation: when people make an ordinary effort, it is about fifteen percent of their energy. When they say they are making a total effort, that is about thirty percent of their effort, but it looks total because it is double. Ordinarily they are working with fifteen percent of their energy and now with thirty percent, so what more can you expect! But that is not total. Go on forcing them... go on forcing them. If they can come to about fifty per-cent - which will be about half their total - things will start happening.

[A group participant said that though he worked hard, nothing happened. Osho said that he needed to work perhaps just a little harder... ]

For the first time, the break-through has nothing to do with you - you simply go on groping in the dark. When it happens, it happens, but it is almost a happening. You simply grope. You don't sit still, because if you sit, it will not happen.

The door is there, it is a dark night, and you start groping. Maybe you had just reached to the side of the door and you stopped, thinking it was hopeless. 'I have been groping so long and the door has not been touched. Maybe it is not there, or maybe I am not worthy of it.' You stop.

One has to go on groping; don't stop. One day or other you will just stumble upon it. Once you have stumbled, things become easier. The first stumbling is the greatest thing; then things become easier because you know. Even if sometimes you cannot find it, you know the door is there and you know you can find it. Maybe today you missed, but tomorrow.... You never feel hopeless again.

You should have forced yourself a little more, because things happen only when you have come to a peak in your energy. You cannot do anything more, and suddenly something clicks - a door opens.

The key has found the lock. It is just like the click of the key opening the lock... you can almost hear it.

[A group participant said he was resentful that the Soma group had been extended and the price doubled. He said the anger was completely irrational and the change would only mean a bit of inconvenience for him if he went ahead and booked for the group, but still, the anger was there.

Osho advised him to get the anger out on a pillow as it was not good to carry it around. He said that in fact the anger had nothing to do with the soma group... ]

It may have something to do with the group that you have just done. It always happens that if you have a certain understanding of alertness, immediately the mind will start creating many things to make you fall again into the old trap so the understanding is clouded and lost.

This always happens; so next time be alert. You can find any excuse. If the Soma had not been the excuse you would have found something else. Life is so big - you can always find something.

Once you have some energy there hankering to be angry, you will find any excuse. Sometimes it can happen that you can become angry because you cannot find any excuse to be angry. But it has nothing to do with anything outside.

Always remember that whatsoever is happening to you, is happening within you, and whatsoever you are doing, you are doing with yourself. Even when you are angry and hitting somebody else, you are doing something with yourself. The other is just a screen on which you project.

After small gaps of alertness, the mind tries to pull you back down to the old pattern. The mind feels apprehensive about what has happened. With the slight understanding of what alertness is, the whole mind is afraid. You are going out of your mind. The mind will bring all that it can: anger, greed, sex, food - anything... anything to dope you, to make you heavy again, to cloud you, so that smoke arises around you and the flame is lost.

[Another group participant asked if he might continue the question of 'Who am l?' as he felt he hadn't nearly reached his own limit.]

Leave it right now... it won't be of much help. Do the camp first and then sometime I will tell you to repeat the group again. Continuing just now will not be helpful.

Sometimes the mind gets into a rut. You go on doing and it will go on moving in the same rut.

It is very helpful sometimes to drop the whole effort. It is just as if you are trying to remember somebody's name and you know you know it, but it is not coming up, not surfacing. You make much effort, and the more effort you make, the more you feel that somehow you go on missing. You go on narrowing your consciousness; you become very tense. You know it is just on the tip of the tongue but it is not coming and you get frustrated.

You drop the whole effort and go into the garden and start digging or you go for a morning walk or take a shower. Suddenly it is there... it bubbles up.

Forget all about this group and just do the camp. Some day during the camp, suddenly you may have the glimpse that you were feeling was coming during the group and that somehow you missed.

If any time you feel like that, tell me after the camp, the exact day and time when it happened.

You have done whatsoever you could so don't feel worried. You got into a rut, mm? Like a whirlpool, and went round and round and round. Just relax now for a few days and then we will see.

[The assistant group leader said that because she had not been talking during the group she had built up a tremendous amount of energy. Osho gave her a box to hold on her head while he checked her energy. Then handed her the box to keep, and described how she could transfer energy to another person:]

Put this box on his head, on the seventh centre, hold it there and tell him that if something happens he has to allow it. Just pour your energy into him. Stand in front of him if it is a man; behind if it is a woman.

Start feeling the energy and the movement and the vibration and let him also move if he feels like moving. When energy is dynamic, it is easily transferred. When it is static, it is very difficult to transfer.

This can be a very beautiful experience for you and for the group; a great help. Once you know how to pour energy, you will be able to collect more and then you can pour it. You can become almost a transmission.

I need many people like you soon because many people will need energy.

[Another participant said she felt some very high moments - especially after the Dynamic meditation.

I feel very centred and very silent... But I felt more and more frustrated with the question.

Osho said it is good to just pay attention to the positive moments. Negative moments do come and one should just take note of them but give them no more attention.... ]

Focus your energy on the positive moments, because wherever you focus your energy, you feed.

Focusing energy is a tremendous nourishment to the object you focus upon. That's why we hanker for attention so much.

If nobody pays attention to you, suddenly you start feeling starved. People do a thousand and one things just to get attention. There are even people who are ready to become buffoons just to get attention. If somebody laughs and looks at them and pays attention to them, they feel good. All fools are not really fools. Ninety percent of them are very wise people. Through their foolishness they are attracting attention.

When politicians are in power, they always remain healthy. They should be the most unhealthy persons in the world but they are not. They remain very healthy. Even if a world war is going on, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt all remain healthy and happy. From where do they get this nourishment? It is through the attention that is being paid to them.

Once a politician is out of office, he starts starving. Sooner or later he is gone. He becomes crippled, paralysed, ill. Nobody pays any attention to him. This happens to people after retirement. Somebody was a tax collector, a commissioner or a governor, and everybody was paying him attention. Then one day, out of the blue, he retires. Now he passes through the same streets but nobody even says hello; nobody bothers to look at him. He is no more thought to be important. When others are not thinking that he is important, how can he believe that he is important? He feels almost thrown out of life, discarded. He starts dying.

Psychologists say that almost ten years is cut off one's life after retirement. If a person was going to live eighty years, he will live seventy years - and that too only if his children and grand-children take care of him and give him attention. In the West even that has become impossible. He is thrown to a dung heap, to some home for elderly people where everybody is starved and hankering for attention and nobody is ready to give it. He dies even sooner. People simply shrink, cave in and die.

It happens to small children. If the mother is not there they simply cave in. You can give them food, you can give them vitamins, you can give them all that is needed, but something basic - attention - is not given. They remain ill, retarded. Even if they survive, they survive very half-heartedly and for the whole of their life they are in a sad mood; they are never happy.

Attention is food. When people pay attention to you they nourish you. And the same happens inside. If you pay too much attention to your illness, you nourish it. That's what the hypochondriacs do; they continuously nourish their illness. A slight headache and their whole energy moves there; their whole mind becomes focused on the headache. Now nothing is important in the world - only their headache. Even if a world war is going on they are not concerned; nothing distracts them. Only their headache becomes their god, so they nourish it. It becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and spreads.

Never pay attention to thorns. They are there, but pay attention to flowers, because whatsoever you pay attention to increases. Even if you can sing only one song in twenty-four hours, bring your total energy, love and attention to it. By and by you will see that that song has become your reality. The thorns that were on the path and that you never paid much attention to, that you neglected, by and by have died, have caved in and died by themselves.

Just look for the stars. Don't be bothered about the darkness that is in between, and your life will be full of stars and flowers. Soon darkness disappears. Then even darkness starts shining. Even darkness becomes luminous.

[A sannyasin asks about learning mime]

Mime is one of the most beautiful arts and can become a very significant base for spiritual growth.

You have to become a witness; then only can you become a great artist in mime. You have to be very alert and aware. You have to remove yourself from your body so much, so far away, that you can do whatsoever you want with your body. You have to attain to a certain mastery.

I am going to start a school soon. Learn and you may be one of the teachers!

[A sannyasin says: My desire for love and attention is so big that it rules my whole life.

No, no, nothing is wrong. It is natural... a natural desire to be loved. And of course when somebody wants to be loved, one wants to be loved as nobody else in existence. That too is natural. There is nothing crazy in it. If it is crazy then the whole earth is crazy...

No, no, don't be worried. They are all doing the same - they are all trying also!

Go on searching for a person; you may find one. It is not such a crazy idea; it can become an actuality. First you try and then we will see. But this is my feeling, that everybody finds someone eventually.

Drop the idea that this is crazy. These concepts create trouble and you create a dichotomy between you and the idea. You say that this is crazy. Who are you to say that? You create a separation. This is you. If it is crazy, you are crazy. What can be done? You are crazy and there is nobody separate from that craziness. Once you understand that this is you, you have to accept it.

In that very effort many things will happen to you. You will become more alert, aware, and that same energy that is moving into craziness starts moving into alertness. One day suddenly you find that the craziness is gone.

And this is how life surprises. Once the craziness is gone, the same day you will find the person.

[Osho went on to say that in going after a man, one needs to be a little artful, otherwise the man will be frightened off. 'Men are to be caught, not to be haunted.']

Become a little more aware. Nothing is wrong - this is natural. I am not saying that it is not crazy.

To be human is to be crazy. But there is a point where humanness disappears and craziness also.

Yes, that has to be attained, but it cannot be attained by fighting the craziness. That can be attained only through understanding. It will happen.

[Another group participant said that he felt something had happened, a change had come about, but his mind still continued.]

Mind will continue going on. It is an old companion and it goes very slowly. But something has happened.

It is just like a drop in the ocean of the mind, but that drop is very strong and once it starts growing it becomes the ocean.

It is just a small seed, a mustard seed, but once it falls into the right soil, it starts growing.

[A sannyasin says: I always feel that I'm creating doubts in my mind of looking at things logically.... ]

There is nothing to be worried about. intellect is also good... it is part of you. I talk against intellect not because I am against it. I have to talk against it so that you don't become just the intellect; so that intellect does not start dominating your whole being. It has to play its role; it has to have its own corner. It is not to be destroyed. It is a very useful instrument, very complex and valuable. Only man has it. It has to be used in the right way; it is not to be misused. It has not to be allowed to become master of your being. It has to serve you.

When you listen to me, you try to understand something. Of course the first ripple will be in the intellect. That's as it should be because intellect is on the gate; it is your guard. Only when the intellect is satisfied does it allow something to enter. And that's okay; there is nothing wrong in it.

The first ripples will arise in the intellect. If you move with them and absorb them, ripples will arise in your feeling. If you move with them and allow them to take possession of you, ripples in your being will also arise. These are the three layers: thinking feeling, being.

Being is the very centre of your being, hidden behind feeling, because it is so valuable, so precious.

It cannot be put on the gate. Intellect is the guard. Feeling is just in between. Feeling is more precious - that's why it is not on the gate. The lowest servant is on the gate. But because intellect is on the gate, it can play games with you and the guard can become the master. Everybody has to come through the guard so everybody has to bribe him, to convince him. Everybody has to be friendly, to butter up the guard. The guard becomes bigger and bigger. And of course if the guard is not convinced, he will not allow anybody in. This is why the intellect has become very powerful.

The basic reason that it is at the gate is because it is the least important part of your being. The more important people are hidden behind. Feeling is more important, softer. It needs protection, otherwise the world will be too much. It can be easily hurt, easily destroyed; it is fragile. And behind feeling, being is hiding.

It is your secret-most part, the most private, where only you can enter. Up to your intellect, the whole world can come and make contact. Up to your feeling, only love and friendship can come and make contact. Up to your being, only you; not even your lover can come.

So there is nothing to worry about. Just create a harmony. if your intellect functions and you are logical, nothing is wrong. Use it more creatively.

And I am coming with you. Don't be worried about this intellect - I have entered behind it. I have bribed the gate guard and I am already in.