Love Yourself

[A visitor says that he had a problem about sannyas. Osho asked him why the question of sannyas arose... ]

... because if you don't feel like taking it, there is no problem. And if you feel like taking it, there is no problem. The question arises only if you are feeling a conflict within your heart. The problem arises because you want to take it and something in your mind is preventing you. A question is always indicative of a conflict.

The problem is not sannyas; the problem is an inner conflict, a division. And as I see it, it is not only sannyas; this will be your whole life's problem. Whenever you have to decide something, you will always feel a conflict, a wavering. It has nothing to do with sannyas as such. It has something to do with you.

And it has to be so because the problem arises because of a certain pattern of the mind. There are people who simply want to take sannyas; there is no problem with them. They feel they would like to move with me as deeply as possible. They feel they would like to surrender their egos to me. They have lived with their egos and suffered long. They have decided in a sudden insight of love that now no more! They are finished with the ego and they want to surrender it.

Sannyas is a surrender. It is a gesture - that now I put my ego at your feet, so whatsoever you say I will do. It is simply a let-go. It is saying I will not resist you, I will not fight you. It is a faith, a trust.

When somebody trusts, he surrenders. Problems never arise to him. Then there are others who are sceptical; who are not yet finished with their egos; who still hope that something is going to happen through their egos; who still hope that their mind is going to deliver some paradise, some happiness, some bliss to them; who still think that through logic, reason, they will arrive at knowing what truth is. Then there is no problem for them; the idea of sannyas simply does not arise. Both these people - people who have trust and people who don't have trust - are clear in a way.

Your problem is that you are neither totally irrational nor totally rational. Half of your mind is argumentative and half of your mind is ready to trust. What I am indicating is that the question is not sannyas; the question is always you. You are divided; a split is there, half-half. Nothing bad in it. If you understand it you can become a very very rich personality; richer than one-sided people.

One who simply has faith is simple - like one-note music. An orchestra cannot be created out of it.

One who is simply sceptical is again simple. He may be argumentative but he has no complexity about it; he is clear-cut. You are ambiguous, vague. If you don't understand this you will become more and more confused. If you understand it, you can become a mystic...

So this is the dilemma, the dichotomy in you. You have to understand it otherwise you will fall into a chaos because these two polarities will pull you apart, will tear you apart. If this type of mind goes on and on and on without any meditative understanding, the ultimate result is going to be schizophrenia. Then a person becomes two persons.

Right now those two divisions are not separate; they are together. Somehow you are managing, but any day you can be in a great crisis. The left side can go to this side and the right side to another side; then you become two persons. And that is the whole problem of the modern mind:

schizophrenia. Everybody is split.

You love the same person whom you hate. Now there is no possibility of coming to a blissful state of affairs. If you satisfy your love, your hate remains unsatisfied. If you satisfy your hate, your love suffers. So whatsoever you do, you remain miserable. With one hand you put a brick down to make a building, and with another hand you pull it away - so the house is never built. You are working hard for your whole life and nothing comes out of it.

The danger is that if you don't go deep in meditation and understanding, you will be accumulating a sort of neurosis. If you go deep in understanding, meditation, then this conflict of polarities can become a very enriching experience. You can become simple with a great richness, because when polarities are together, meeting in a synthesis - what Hegel calls the dialectics of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis....

Right now you have thesis, you have anti-thesis, but you are missing any synthesis. So these are the two possibilities. If you don't create a synthesis out of this polarity you will fall apart. A man who becomes mad was potentially destined to become a mystic. A man who becomes a mystic was always in danger of becoming a madman; that's the risk. So mystics always have a certain similarity with mad people and mad people have a certain similarity with mystics.

In the western world, many people, at least mystical people, are living in the madhouses, being treated by electric shock and insulin shock. A thousand and one things are being done to them unnecessarily. They can grow beautifully. They can become beautiful flowers... flowers of humanity.

But they are being wasted because the whole attitude is that they are mad.

In the East just the opposite has happened. Sometimes it has happened that a man was mad but people worshipped him as a mystic, because in the East the interpretation is that madness is accepted. In the West mysticism is not accepted; that too is a sort of madness. So this is the problem.

Sannyas is not the problem. Sannyas may be the solution.

If you can decide anything, any decision will bring the two parts in you together. Any commitment will bring you together; whatsoever the commitment. But it has to be so deep that your innermost core is involved in it. Then a synthesis will come out of it. Sannyas is exactly for people like you. It is a jump into the unknown.

I am not going to explain to you what it is. I am simply explaining to you what you are. Sannyas can become an opportunity to jump out of this duality, to attain to a higher synthesis.

And to me, madness is not a bad thing. If it can be used it is a great opportunity, a blessing. All those who are great have something of madness in them. Poets, painters, musicians, artists, all have something of the madman because they all have that richness, that affinity. They are not simple beings - they are very complex - but they are not in conflict. They are complex and yet are in a synthetic whole, integrated.

Sannyas is just a jump into the unknown.

If you can take that jump into the unknown, you will attain to a certain integration. Your two personalities will come closer and overlap each other. There will be a meeting inside you.

So don't ask what sannyas is, because if I convince you and then you take it, the reason part will be convinced. If I don't say anything to you and keep quiet, that too will not be good. So I have to say something, and I am saying something to you. But I am speaking in such a way that no part is in any way convinced.

You just have to look at me. You just have to feel me. If that feeling gives you an urge, a desire, a passionate desire to be with me in some inner relationship, then it's okay. Take the jump. There is no need to think around and around it; no need to think about it. The door is open. You can enter the shrine and see what it is. Why ask from the outside?

Why be a beggar when I invite you to be a guest?

Anand means bliss and vidaya means bodiless, unembodied - bliss unembodied. In fact bliss has no body because it has no definition. It has no body because it has no limitation. It is as infinite as existence. It is as beginningless and as endless as existence.

In the East we have called God satchitanand - one who is true, one who is conscious, and one who is bliss. Bliss is the inner-most core of being.

[A therapist visitor says: It is very difficult for me to listen to myself. I can see problems for other people but I cannot for me.]

That happens always to people who are helping others - groupleaders, psychoanalysts, therapists.

It happens to all such people because by and by they become too much other-focused. They listen to their problems and they try to solve them, but this whole effort may be just an escape from their own problems. This is my understanding because so many psychoanalysts, therapists and groupleaders have come to me.

This is the problem for almost every therapist. You may have chosen the therapy as a deep occupation, a preoccupation; as an escape from your own problems. It is very easy to get involved in others'problems; very easy to become a messiah, very easy. And when others are in misery, in trouble, in anxiety and anguish, you become so concerned that you forget for a few moments that you have your own misery still unsolved. This can become such a focusing that when you want to turn your light inwards, it does not turn. Or even if it turns inwards, you will think about yourself as if you are somebody else.

So you will need certain eastern techniques; western methods won't do. The whole western methodology is concerned with the other. The whole thing seems to be as if you have to help the other and others have to help you. So one psychoanalyst goes to another psychoanalyst for his own psychoanalysis. And this goes on! It is a game, a beautiful game! Everybody is benefited out of it; nobody is at a loss. And nothing happens - a merry-go-round.

The eastern methodology is totally different. It insists that nobody can help you; that you are the patient and you are also going to be the therapist. Nobody can help you.

In zen monasteries in Japan they have a treatment for all sorts of problematic people. They simply put them in the furthest, most distant corner of the monastery. They supply their needs but nobody talks to them. They are allowed to do whatsoever they like; their time is theirs. If they want to talk to themselves, they can. If they want to dance, they can dance. If they want to sit, they can sit; whatsoever they want. Their physical needs are cared for and nobody bothers about their spiritual or mental needs.

Left alone to themselves, they start growing in a very subtle way. In a three-week separation, left to yourself in isolation, what will you do? By and by you will start searching inwards and all preoccupations will drop. All the problems that you have been escaping from will bubble up, will surface. You will go into an almost critical state; it will be a crisis. You will almost become mad. But that has to be passed through; it is very therapeutic.

You are hiding a certain madness in you and you are escaping from it - and the best way to escape is to become a therapist. When people come to you and they are more mad, you feel a certain happiness; unconsciously one feels that one is not alone. Everybody is mad - and worse than you are - so there is nothing to be worried about.

That's why people enjoy others' miseries very much. When they come to know others' miseries.

their miseries look smaller - comparatively, relatively, they feel good.

[Osho suggested it would be good for her to go into isolation for one month, in which time she could allow whatsoever was there to come up.]

You are not allowing it - and you know it. You are suppressing it in a subtle way; sitting on it. It has to be provoked, and once it comes up you will lose all performance. For a few days you will become almost helpless.

In helping others, leading groups, you have learned a certain performance. Technically you have become skilful, but that is not going to help. That will be almost a suicide to your innermost potentiality.

[Osho said that when a doctor is focused on the illnesses of his patients, he himself is never ill. Once there is a shortage of patients then a doctor can become ill.

When politicians are in power, campaigning, warring, they are perfectly healthy, but once out of office, illness strikes.... ]

Richard Nixon's illness is very much psychological. He was healthy; there was no problem. But once the power started slipping out of his hands, he became ill and crippled. He was thinking many times in those days to commit suicide. Not only that - once the thought even passed through his mind that he could push the button for atom bombs to be dropped on Russia. Why die alone? Let the whole world die with him.

Mad people. But when they are in power, everything is good; they are all smiles. So continue your work but watch it, mm? Because the first duty is towards oneself. And remember this too as a basic dictum: you cannot help anybody else if you are not really healthy. It is impossible. You can play the role and people can be helped a little bit, but that help is not going to do anything permanent for them. How is it possible?

That's the difference between the western psychotherapist and the eastern master. The eastern master has to be himself, totally whole, holy; totally rooted and centred. Only then is he allowed to help anybody, otherwise not. But in the West now...

[The ashram hypnotherapist says: When I was in the West I was able to do my work realising that I was feeding my ego a lot, but it didn't feel as if it was any real problem. Here its hard for me to see the borderline between my ego - things I do to strengthen my ego - and things I'm doing because of my responsibilities, or what I feel is love for others... But I must say, I think you've answered that already.]

No, I have not answered you. That answer won't help you. So always remember that when I am answering somebody else, you should not take that answer as being always for you; it may not be.

The question may be the same, but if it is asked by different individuals, it is a different question.

And I am not answering in a vacuum. I am answering persons. Your question is different and my answer is going to be different.

Don't create this split between ego and love of others. Reduced to the basic elements, it is love; love of oneself and love of others. Once you call it ego, you create trouble; you misname it.

Love of yourself is not against others. In fact love of yourself is the very base. If you don't love yourself, you cannot love others. So don't use the word ego; That word is dangerous and irrelevant in your reference. That's why you were not aware of it in the West. But here you will become more and more aware of a subtle ego, of the very subtle nuances of the ego. But always remember that the ego is dangerous if it is against the love of others. If it is helping you to love others, it is no more dangerous. And poison can be used as medicine; the ego can also be used. There is nothing in the world which cannot be used creatively.

So call it love of yourself; that's what it is. If it goes mad it becomes the ego. If the ego becomes sane, it is nothing but love of oneself. You love yourself; that's your first responsibility. If you don't love yourself, how can you love me?

Only when you flower in your own love can the fragrance reach me. It can reach to others... it can go to the farthest end of the world, but it should come from your centre first.

So call it love of yourself. Sometimes a false word can lead you to such problems that it becomes almost impossible to solve them.

But I don't see that you are an egoistic person. An egoistic person is one who hates others, and his ego is destructive to others. A non-egoistic person is one who loves others and his ego is not against others. Then his ego is nothing but his self-love. And the self-love is the basic background out of which love for others arises. And you have to love yourself and love others.

Jesus says, 'Love your neighbours as yourself.' But loving yourself is the basic necessity.

And remember, when a problem is arising, always ask yourself if it is really a problem or just a mind game. Is it really something that has to be solved, or can you neglect it? Sometimes by neglecting a few problems, they die automatically. Sometimes ignoring them is the only way to kill them. Sometimes paying them attention feeds them.

But don't be worried. My whole teaching is to be selfish. Love yourself so tremendously that you become flooded with love and it overflows from you and reaches to others.