The Ultimate Criterion is Your Heart
I [A sannyasin says: I find that when you tell me to do something... I guess it's a cop-out because I won't do what you say because I feel I should do the opposite of what you say because that seems to be more to the heart of my problem. It seems to work sometimes.]
Sometimes it can be like that. If you feel good doing the opposite, do the opposite. The whole point is to remember what brings the feeling of blessedness to you. One should continuously go on checking inside to see whether it is bringing a well-being, whether you are feeling healthier, whether it is bringing a harmony. If it is, it is good. Then don't worry - just follow it.
The problem arises only when you start feeling a discord; when you feel that some tension is being created; because tension is just an indicator that some anxiety is being created. Tension never comes to the mind if everything is going well. So tension is not your being. It is just an indicator; a very beautiful mechanism inside you which immediately gives you the hint to stop. It tells you that you are moving in a wrong direction, that you are going against your nature.
So if you really want to listen to me, listen to your heart and just follow it.
I am not here to impose any discipline on you. I am here to make you free of all discipline so that your natural being starts flowering.
One should not have any structure, any character. One should be simple, characterless, structureless. And listen to the heart - that is what real obedience is. The word obedience comes from a root which means the art of listening, but the word has gone very far away from the root. The basic art of listening is to listen to the heart because that is where fulfillment is going to happen. So remain alert; very delicate alertness is needed.
Eat that which suits the body and the body immediately feels a well-being. Eat that which doesn't suit the body and the body immediately feels ill. The body is simply saying that you have taken something wrong; vomit it, get rid of it. You have put something poisonous into the system, something which is not in tune with the body. The mind feels tense when you have taken in some idea which does not fit into the harmony. Your heart feels tense when you go against your nature.
So, listen to your body when you are doing something with your body. In that mood, never bother about the mind because the mind has nothing to say about the body. The body is autonomous. It knows itself what is good and what is wrong. So when it is a question concerning the body, listen to the body. When it is a question concerning thinking, planning, ideas, dreaming, logic, reason, listen to the mind. When it is a question of your totality, listen to the heart.
And learn how to listen. It is not very difficult because indications are coming continuously, although if you don't listen to them by and by they become feeble. Continuously neglected, by and by their functioning is no more as it should be. If you don't listen to them again and again, that mechanism starts getting rusty. Then you are very far away from your own roots.
So just listen. That is what obedience is. And don't be bothered about what I say literally, because sometimes I say the opposite. That opposite creates a situation. If I would like you to go to the right, sometimes I say go to the left. If I feel that just by telling you to go to the left, your mind will create an idea to go to the right, then I always say go to the left. It depends on the person to whom I am talking. So never take it literally.
Nothing is literal with me. All is poetic.
So the ultimate criterion is your own heart. Whatsoever I say, listen to it, absorb it, remember it, but not in a literal way, otherwise you will miss the point. I don't want to create a belief. I want to give you a trust - and that is totally different. Belief is literal. Trust is just the significance of it, the fragrance of it; not literal.
You can read poetry and you can read it literally. Each word in that script has a meaning. You can look at it and get some meaning but you will miss something which is real poetry. That has to be read between the words, between the lines. It has to be read in the gaps. It is not something that you can grab. If you grab poetry, you will miss it. Then you will have only prose - poetry is killed.
You have to feel it. You have to play with it. You have to sing it. By and by you will start feeling the significance which has nothing to do with the dictionary; which has nothing to do with the arrangement of words; which is something subtler that hovers around the words but is not exactly in the words. It is just like a fragrance surrounding a flower... the halo which surrounds a holy person.
That is the poetry. So never look directly to the words; rather go around and around - circumlocution.
In India they go into the temples and go around and around the image. That's very significant, very significant. You cannot go directly to God; you have to go around and around. Then you catch the halo of it, the light that surrounds it. The flower has not to be touched directly. Rather smelt...
experienced by the fragrance. Then you show taste.
So whatsoever I say is symbolic... it is not literal. And you cannot guess what I really mean if you just catch the word and carry it in a dead way. You will be able to open the word only if you play with it, sing with it, and continuously keep in contact with your heart.
The word that I throw in you is just like a stone thrown in a lake. Those ripples arise. That is the real work.
The stone is not the real thing. That is just a device to create those ripples. So go with those ripples.
Forget that stone; don't cling to it. It has done its work; now move with the ripples. It has started a chain. Don't stop at that. That will only be a beginning. The end is going to be very very far away.
And the end will have nothing to do with the beginning. By the time you have an end result, you will not be able to relate it to the stone. It will be com-pletely irrelevant. You will not be able to fit them together as cause and effect. That's what Jung means by synchronisity.
When I am talking to you, I am not giving you a cause so that a certain effect follows it automatically.
No. I am just giving you a situation in which many things are possible. If you take it literally, something else will become the result. If you take the significance, something else. If you read it with the mind, something else again, and with the heart, again something else.
And if you listen to the music of it there will be something else absolutely different. There will be inner layers. So whenever I say something, listen to it, keep it in your memory. Again and again chew it. Again and again digest it in different situations. And see how it feels to you - and then move with your feelings.
The word has done its work. It has created ripples in you. Now follow those ripples!
Anand means bliss and devendra means god - god of bliss. Devendra comes from the same root as divine.
Forget the old name, mm? The change of the name can be very significant. It can almost be a quantum jump, because if you really drop the old name, the whole past disappears.
The name carries the whole past. It is the nucleus of the past, of all that you have done or all that you have been, all that you have been desiring and hoping. The past, and the future projected through the past are both contained in your name. If you really consciously drop it, suddenly you get out of a pattern, a continuity. Something of the unknown enters. You rise above the stream of the past and the future. You come to realise the moment of the present. And that's the meaning of changing the name: to help you have a quantum jump.
It is not a continuity. Sannyas is not something that is being added to you. That will not be of much use. It will be a decoration. It will be just changing one part of the whole mechanism, but the mechanism remains the same. And the mechanism is so big that it will change the part; the part cannot change the whole.
Sannyas is not something being added to you. It is something totally new, unconnected. It is a discontinuity... it is a jump. That's why I call it a quantum jump - the greatest jump that is possible.
Suddenly you wash away the whole of the past. You clean the whole slate. With a new name it becomes very easy because you will have to be acquainted with the new name. It will be a strengthening.
And change to orange. That will remind you that the old is gone, dead. After a few weeks you will see easily that your own past looks as if you had read about it in some novel or had seen a movie or had dreamed about it. When the new crystallises, suddenly you can have a distance and the freedom that brings.
[A sannyasin says: I'm feeling very negative, closed. I can't seem to be open to [my boyfriend], to you, to me.
I feel very superficial and dissatisfied but for no reason! I mean everything is perfectly all right.]
Mm mm... it happens only when everything is perfect.
When something is missing, one is preoccupied. You don't have a house; you think when a house is there everything will be good. You will have a good rest and will relax. You don't have money and you think that when you do, everything will be okay, and that right now everything is not okay because of the money.
So the mind can find some cause and can remain preoccupied with it. But when everything is okay and all that you need is there, suddenly an emptiness comes. One feels now what to do? Everything is as you would like it and there still seems to be nothing.
Only the richest people come to know the deepest poverty. The poor man cannot. He is poor but he dreams of riches and he remains rich in his dreams. He can hope; there is a possibility for him to hope. But when a person becomes rich, he becomes hopeless because there is no point in hoping anymore. He can see the whole futility of it. Whatsoever he has he can go on multiplying it, but now he understands that it is futile. Whether you have this amount of money in the bank or double, what is going to happen? And whatsoever he needs is there so the bank balance can go on increasing but that is not going to help. Suddenly he becomes hopeless. Hopelessness always comes when everything goes okay.
And this is a good situation. It can be used... it is very beautiful. You are freed from causes. Now you can work right on your mind. When causes are there, one goes on working on the causes.
When there is no cause to be unhappy, no cause to be miserable and suddenly one is sad, then you can encounter the mind as it is.
Mind is sadness. Mind is frustration. Mind is unhappiness. Mind is hell.
But you cannot see because the mind always says 'I am not hell. The situation is such that it is making us suffer. Change the situation'. The mind goes on postponing through the causes: find a beautiful man or a beautiful woman, a good house, this and that. But the mind itself is the cause; there are no other causes. So that's why you are feeling so sad and depressed. Try to understand it. Now the moment has come when the mind has to be dropped. And unless you drop the mind you cannot get out of it. And there is no going back....
So I push people to a point where the abyss arises. You are standing there... a cul-de-sac. Now going back is not possible. That I make impossible. The moment you go on, I withdraw the stairs.
They are not there, so you can look back but you cannot go back. And there is no future. Suddenly - a great abyss. One step more and you are gone.
Back you cannot go. The future is an abyss and you are afraid. There are only two possibilities: you can go on standing where you are and that will become more and more difficult every day because you will become more and more miserable and closed. Take the jump!
It is very very scarey but there is no going back. Just take the jump. And when I say take the jump, I simply mean that there is no need to live through the mind now. Just live moment to moment.
[She replies: I m so in my mind... ]
Yes, you can go on standing there... you can go on standing there. So this is my suggestion - just a polite suggestion - (laughter) that you start living moment to moment. Eat well and enjoy it; dance and love and enjoy it.
The mind disappears whenever you stop planning for the future. The mind is nothing but a projection of the future. It disappears when you start living moment to moment.
Live moment to moment. For three weeks, try. Whatsoever you are doing, do it as totally as possible.
Love it and enjoy it. Maybe it looks silly. If you are drinking tea it is silly to enjoy it too much - it is just ordinary tea.
But ordinary tea can become extraordinarily beautiful - a tremendous experience if you enjoy it.
Enjoy it with deep reverence. Make it a ceremony. Making tea... Listening to the kettle and the sound. Then pouring the tea... smelling the fragrance of it. Then tasting the tea and feeling happy.
Dead people cannot drink tea; only very alive people. This moment you are alive! This moment you are drinking tea. Feel thankful! And don't think of the future. Next moment will take care of itself.
Think not of the morrow. For three weeks live in the moment and then tell me, mm? Good.
[To her boyfriend, Osho says:]
Help her. She's going very very well. But these are critical moments when one passes from one gestalt to another, one pattern to another. It is a difficult thing. Once you learn it, it is very simple; just like a snake slips out of the old skin.
But in the beginning it is very difficult, so just make her happy!
[A participant from the Enlightenment Intensive group says: The group was beautiful but it was hard.
In the beginning I felt that we had to obey just like at school. But on the last day I could see that they were not against us but trying to help us.]
I can understand. Schools have done so much wrong to everybody that any discipline and one feels suspicious. Any sort of discipline reminds one of the school, the master, the headmaster and obedience and all that nonsense. In fact schools have not helped people to be obedient. They have made people disobedient because they have forced obedience and it creates a reaction and people start resisting.
But these disciplines are not the disciplines of a school, and they are not forced on you. You accept them of your own accord. It is you who takes the initiative to accept and enter the group. Once you enter the group you have to play the game, you have to follow the format. It is just as when you play cards and you have to follow certain rules. A certain card is the king and another card is the queen.
You don't argue about it and say I can't believe that this is a queen. You know that this is the rule.
In the group, the leader is just playing a role and the led is also playing a role. Out of the group, Amida is not the leader and you are not the led. In the group you have to decided to play a certain game; she will be playing the game of the leader and you will be playing the game of the led. These two parties are needed otherwise the game will be difficult. The game is very paying, once you accept and move into it.
But this was your first group and it is always difficult in the first group because of the old associations in the mind. And you are still young enough not to have forgiven the school yet.
[the sannyasin continues: I wanted to ask you another thing. There is a place where my mind explodes inside. It implodes towards the centre and it is not very nice, because to explode is better.]
No, both are good and both are part of one rhythm. Explosion and implosion are just like in-breathing and out-breathing. Both are good. And the deeper your implosion will go, the bigger will be the explosion.
Nothing can exist alone. The opposite is needed. So your mind is imploding and you are converging on your centre; allow it totally so you become just like a seed. Become smaller and smaller and smaller, just like a seed. That is what is happening to the tree. When the seeds come to the tree, what is happening? The tree is imploding. So it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and then the seed will fall into the earth and then explode. Again the tree will arise.
So the whole life is a rhythm between explosion and implosion. You breathe in. If you take deep breaths, if you inhale well, you exhale well. Then again you inhale. Every inhalation will help exhalation. Every exhalation will help inhalation. These are two polarities but complementary and helpful to each other. So don't be afraid of it. When it is happening, allow it. Soon you will see that the explosion will be happening.
There are very few people to whom implosion happens so easily as it is happening to you. Explosion is easier to people because more people are extroverts, outgoing. Ingoing people are rare. Feel happy... you are a rare type; you may be a very rare type. People come and are very worried about their explosions; they want to implode. They want to go to the centre but they cannot. The more they try, the more they go outside somewhere. They never come home.
So don't create trouble. It is good. Enjoy it and help it to go as deep as possible. After two or three groups, explosion will be coming. Encounter will help you to explode and hypnotherapy will help you to implode because it is an ingoing process. So you book for both, mm?
[A sannyasin says: I have come to feel in the time I have been here a great strength of attachment to memories of the past which carry very beautiful emotions, or I am attached to ideas about home.
I understand that they have to disappear sometime, but I cannot see how I can ever have the courage to renounce them.]
No, no, you need not. They will go by themselves.
Nobody can renounce anything because in the very renouncing you will show that you are obsessed with them. Nobody can forget anything by effort because if they try to forget it they will go on remembering it.
They will go by themselves when the time is right. When you have gone a little higher in consciousness, the lower attitude disappears automatically. It is just as when you were a small child and you used to play with toys. You could not have believed then that one day you would leave them. But now you don't remember them, and if somebody gives you a toy, you will be surprised at why he should give you a toy.
When you grow a little mature, toys disappear. They belong to a particular state of mind. This attachment with home, with the family, is also part of growth. That too shows a subtle immaturity, nothing else. A childhood state has remained somewhere in the mind.
Jesus says to his disciples, 'Unless you hate your father and mother, you will not be able to follow me.' It looks very uncivil and very hard. And it doesn't fit because he says that love is God, and what is he saying? - 'unless you hate your father and mother...'
But he simply means this: unless you become capable of being without them, if not even in your dreams they haunt you, then you have become mature; you have come of age. So there is nothing to be worried about. You are not to renounce them. If you renounce them they will follow you for your whole life. Never renounce anything. Experience everything and never renounce anything.
Experience as deeply as possible.
Once something is experienced, you go beyond it. Even if you want to go astray, go. Let that also happen so that it is finished. Whenever something is completed the mind forgets it automatically.
So don't be worried, mm?
[Another group participant says: It was a very powerful group I'm feeling very much more open, but I'm also aware very much that it's just a very slight beginning.]
On this path everything is always a beginning - always. Because much more is still there and remains so. You will attain much but there never comes a moment when you can say 'I have arrived'.
And it is good that the moment never comes, otherwise you would be dead.
Life goes on. It is an eternal pilgrimage, non-ending, and every end is always a beginning. When you have passed through one door, another immediately opens. When you have climbed one peak, suddenly you become aware that a higher one is waiting for you. And this is endless - that is the beauty of it.
Never be satisfied with anything. Always remember that much more is waiting. This I call the divine discontent. Always feel thankful for whatsoever has happened, and always remain alert that much is going to happen. Go on making all the effort you can.
[Another group-member says: When I was going for a walk in the group, at one stage I felt the wind against my skin and I suddenly felt that there wasn't any barrier between myself and the outside world.
But then when I had to return to the question of who am I, again I was back in my mind and my old self.]
It will happen many times. Many times one enters into the old pattern again and many times one comes out of it. The old pattern never disappears; it is always there. You can enter into it again or you can leave it. You may be aware that it is just like a house.
If you want to come out, you can come out under the sky. And whenever that sky is too much or the sun is too hot, or it is raining, you come inside the house. The mind is just a structure to be used when needed. When it is not needed you can come out of it. You will become aware of this by and by, but the experience has helped very much.
So don't be worried that you went in again. Just remain available to move... flexible. Sometimes try it. Just walking in the street or in the garden and the wind blows and touches you. Again remember that moment and fall into that state. Soon you will be able to. That moment will come again because it is within you; you just have to bring it out. Then slowly move into the mind and out; in again and then out, so that you become capable of moving in and out just like in breathing.
In the beginning a few glimpses will come when you will feel out of the mind. They will be tremendously beautiful. An infinite grace will surround you. There will just be moments and again they will go. The old pattern will settle in again, but by and by you will be able to slip out of it more easily. Then one becomes capable of slipping out whenever one wants to.
That is mastery of the mind. The mastery of the mind does not mean that the brain has been destroyed. The mastery of the mind means that the prisoner is no more a prisoner; he has become a jailer. He has the key now. Whenever he wants, he comes in; and whenever he wants, he comes out. Then the prisoner is no more a prisoner, the prison no more a prison. It has become a house, a home.
So walking, just walk, sitting, just get into it. There is no how to it. Just remember it and slip into it.
It is a knack... it will come.