Darshan 28 July 1976

[A sannyasin says: I'm not sure which direction to take - whether to go out more to people or to go inside myself more. I'm not sure which is best for my growth.

Osho checks his energy.]

Good, come back. The energy is really good.

You have to do both. Choosing won't be good. These are not alternatives - whether one should go out, meet, mix with people, or should go in. Both are needed together. If you move towards one, you will become lopsided. So sometimes go out, mix with people, forget yourself. Then really go out.

And make it part of meditation that going out is good. Balance is needed; choice is not needed. All choice is wrong, because these are are not alternatives; they are complementaries. Together they make the whole, and together they make you holy and healthy. Together they will heal you.

[Osho went on to say that people who are like monks could not be whole and healthy because they were living just half lives, were rejecting life and other people.... ]

Even if they are silent, their silence is very poor. It is the silence of beggars. It is empty. It is simply negative. It is not a fulfillment, it is not a benediction. It is not an overflowing ecstasy. They cannot dance... they cannot sing.

And unless you can dance your way to god, you can never reach.

So this is what I would like to say to you: dance your way to god. And dance comes by balance. One cannot dance on one leg; both legs will be needed. And one cannot dance by choosing the inward

or the outward, by becoming the introvert or the extrovert. Dance will need continuous coming and going. It is a movement. You have to reach others. And it is helpful; it is not contrary to meditation.

When you go to somebody and you are lost in the world, suddenly a need arises to be alone. It is an appetite. Then you come home and you sit alone, and now you can enjoy. Now this is not loneliness, this is aloneness. If you don't go out and you sit there, it will be loneliness,. not aloneness, and there will be no appetite. You will be bored by it. It is as if one is full and still sitting at the table and trying to eat. It will create nausea. You need a few hours in which not to eat - six, seven or eight hours fasting - then suddenly you are hungry again.

So when you go into the world you become hungry for aloneness. It creates an appetite for meditation. When you are alone it creates an appetite for relationship. These are like two wings. No bird can fly with one wing, and no dancer can dance with only one leg.

So balance is my whole message, summum bonum. Always remember, never choose anything which is going to disrupt your balance. Do whatsoever can be done to bring more balance into your life. Whatsoever brings balance is good, healthy, and whatsoever makes you lopsided is unhealthy and dangerous. So sometimes go out and enjoy it. Don t go reluctantly. Don't go because I am saying. Go in deep delight because outside god is also waiting for you in so many forms.

Find, search for him there also. And when you are tired of the outside and tired of relationship, tired of people, come home,.close your eyes, sit alone, meditate, go in. There also, god is waiting for you as your own self. He is everywhere so there is nothing to choose. One has to be choicelessly aware. So just try balance.

It will take a little time. It is very easy to choose one because then there is no problem. It is simple arithmetic. If you choose one, you drop out of the world, you forget all relationship; you close all your doors and windows and you shut yourself in. Simple - no polarity, no challenge - but by and by you will shrink and die.

Or you can choose relationship and the world, and never come home... always being with others. If nobody is there, then in fantasy, but still with others. If nobody is there, then put on the radio or the TV, but never be alone. There are people who are alone only when they are fast asleep, and then even it is not certain that they are alone; they may be dreaming of people. These are both wrong attitudes.

I am neither for the world nor against it. I am neither for a monastery nor against it. Hence I have made this monastery deep in the world. We could have chosen the himalayas, but that would have been unbalanced. This noise of the railway, the aeroplane and the traffic, is enriching. It gives polarity, it gives shape and sharpness. It gives tone.

Anand means bliss and sahajo means spontaneous; spontaneous bliss. And sahajo is the name of one woman mystic, a great indian saint; one of the very rare woman mystics.

I give you the name so that you can remember continuously that you have to be spontaneous. Live moment to moment. Don't think of the past and don't think of the future. Both are non-existential.

The past is gone, the future is not yet. Only the present is.

So to be in the present is the only way to be. Be responsive to the moment. If somebody asks something, don't answer from your mind. Put the mind aside - because the mind can never be spontaneous, and that which cannot be spontaneous is not you. When you put the mind aside, your spontaneous being surfaces. So don't bother to be consistent; there is no need. There is no need to have a character because character means that the past decides the present. You have been doing something in the past, now you have to be consistent with it; that's what character is.

The society wants you, and everybody, to be with character, because a man of character can be manipulated very easily. A man of character is predictable. A spontaneous man is unpredictable because he is basically freedom. One never knows what he is going to do next. Not even you know what is going to happen in the next moment. If you know what is going to happen in the next moment, what you are going to do, you are already dead. Then that moment cannot be alive, fresh, young; you have already prepared for it. So, no preparations. Just wait for the next moment to come, and respond with your totality, whatsoever the consequence.

To think about the consequence is to be worldly. And to drop thinking about consequences is to become a sannyasin.

You follow me? That will be the meaning, and it is not only going to be your name - it has to become your very being.

[The new sannyasin says she has been studying music since she was a child and has been giving big concerts playing the organ, but now she has some conflict. She doesn't know whether to continue or not.]

Music is such a beautiful thing that one should never leave it - it is a sort of meditation. So rather than leaving it, go deeper into it. I will help you to go deeper into it. I can understand where the problem is. The problem is not in the music; the problem is in being a performer.

... that performance is the problem. There are a few things which cannot really be performed. If they are deep in you, you cannot do those things before others unless a very sympathetic, loving audience is available - which is not. Doing a concert before the public is like making love on the street. It is so intimate, and one feels embarrassed to bring that soft heart to such a public gaze.

... The deeper you go in meditation, the more the quality of your music will change. Your capacity will change; you will feel more rooted in it. So right now, meditate here, do a few groups. We have a music group here also, so participate in it. And it is not a performance; it is a meditation.

(to radha) And one day she has to come and play here, just whatsoever she wants, so that I can feel where she is. And playing here before me, (to sahajo) forget yourself completely. For half an hour you just go as deep as you can so that I can feel where the block is and then things can be done.

[A sannyasin says he practiced the mantra 'I am not afraid' until his fear disappeared. Then he felt very fragile and shakey: I have been crying a lot.]

Enjoy crying...

Tears are one of the most beautiful things in the world, so enjoy them and remain fragile, because if you are fragile then you are available to god. You are soft, you are porous. You function like a sponge and god is soaked in. When you are hard, nothing enters - and we have been taught to be hard so that nothing enters. The hardness is part of our defense. We are afraid: that's why we are hard. So when you start feeling not afraid, you become fragile.

It is fear that has made people like rocks - very stiff, hard, non-vulnerable - because they are afraid that somebody may enter, somebody's love, and some tenderness may surface. They have been taught not to allow anything to enter, because if something enters, you are no more in control. You become pregnant, so you protect yourself.

By and by, because of fear and continuously defending ourselves, we have shrunken. Drop the fear and you start expanding. Become fragile and you start expanding. When there is no fear, there is nothing else but god. When there is no fear only love is left, because there are only two orientations - fear or love. If fear is there, love cannot exist. If fear is not there. Love suddenly erupts, explodes, and then you will sing out of love and you will dance out of love. You will cry and you will laugh. You will be almost mad with love. And this love is unaddressed... not to anyone in particular.

In fact it is not a relationship. It is a state of mind. When you are afraid, you are simply afraid. It is not that you are afraid of this man or that woman, or this night and this darkness. You are simply afraid; all others are just excuses. When you are loving, you are simply loving. Then you love whatsoever comes on the way. So allow it and continue that meditation.

Each night it will be very good. Do it just before you go to sleep. At least in the moment when you are falling asleep, if you are completely unafraid it will give a totally different quality to your sleep.

And sleep is a small death, so in fact we are afraid of it. That's why sleep is not so deep - disturbed.

People go on turning from this side to that. In fact it is nothing but fear, because in sleep you are not in control. You don't know what is happening, you don't know who you are, you don't know where you are.

All the control of the world that you had while you were awake is lost. Some people turn and toss, and again and again sleep is broken. When people become too much afraid, insomnia is natural.

When you are not afraid, insomnia disappears. You sleep so deeply - as if you had really died. And in the morning you come back from the world of death. You resurrect every morning.

[The Tao Group is present. A group leader says:... can a leader die in the group? I think it would be hard for me as a participant, but it's especially hard for me as a leader.]

No, it is the same. The problem is arising because the dying of you is not really the dying of the leader. In fact the more you are, the less you are capable of leading. The less you are, the more you are capable of leading. When you completely disappear, there is only a function of leadership; you are not there.

The leader is not going to die. In fact the leader will be more there when you are not. It is the ego of the leader, it is the doer, that disappears. When the doer disappears then the leader is in tremen-dous spontaneity. The leader becomes a vehicle, a vehicle of the unconscious forces of the participants. Then the leader becomes a mirror and reflects those depths which the participants

cannot penetrate themselves. Then the participant is not really being led by somebody else - the participant is being led by his own unconscious forces, and the leader has just became instrumental in it.

Everybody is carrying his own inner searchlight, but nobody is aware of it. The whole effort is to make the participant aware that all that he's seeking is already the case, that it is not really that he has to solve problems; the only problem is to understand that he has not to create them. And life is not a problem. To look at it as if it is a problem is the beginning of stupidity. Life is not a problem. It is a mystery to be lived.

So when the leader is not a doer, he himself becomes a mystery Suddenly he will feel that when he was there people were resisting, the participants were in a sort of resistance, because when you are there the participants feel defensive. There is a subtle underground fight between your ego and the ego of the participant. He does not want to surrender. Why should he surrender? Who are you?

On the surface he may try, but deep down he goes on resisting. Even if he tries, he tries reluctantly, and that dissipates much energy unnecessarily. When you see a leader who is not there at all, immediately the resistance in the participant disappears - because there is nobody to surrender to, so now you can surrender easily. There is nobody who is going to enjoy your surrender, who will feel very enhanced in his ego by your surrender, so what is the point of resisting?

In your bathroom you don't resist. In your drawing-room you don't resist. Even small things make a difference. When you go to a psychoanalyst in his office, you resist more because it is his territory, it is his kingdom, and you have to be alert because otherwise he will simply gobble you up, he will swallow you. That's why psychoanalysts don't like to go to the patient's house - because there they will not be so powerful. It will be the patient's home and they will have to fit in. When the patient comes to the psychoanalyst he has to fit, but a subtle conflict continues.

So when the leader is not there, he has become a guru. That is the difference between a leader and a guru. It is a very subtle difference. If the leader is there, he is a leader. If the leader is not there, he is a guru. Then there is nobody to whom you are surrendering. He is simply symbolic. In fact you are surrendering to yourself. Via the guru you are coming to your home.

So the problem is there because you think that if you are not there, then how will you be able to lead?

You need not be worried about it. Only then will you be able to lead - and the leadership will have such a beautiful quality. It will have no violence in it. Otherwise there is violence - when you look at somebody as being a participant and you are a leader, there is violence. Then you are to interpret, you are to judge, you have to show the way. He is the ignorant one and you are the know-all; then you have the upper hand. It is you who is going to decide whether he is moving rightly or wrongly, whether he is following the right path or not. It is you who is going to evaluate. The patient is just nobody and you have to put a label on him. You can call him a schizophrenic, you can call him a neurotic or a psychotic or whatsoever you like, and he is just to comply with it. He has no say in it.

If he tells a dream, you are the interpreter. He's just an object. The person is reduced to a thing.

You are the manipulator, and you have to cut and change and polish and repolish, and make a man out of it; to make him adjust, to make him grow or whatsoever, but you become a manipulator.

When you are not, you don't judge. You are not an observer and you have no authority. When you don't have any authority you help tremendously - because authority is destructive. You are simply love, not knowledge - that is the difference. When the leader is, he is knowledge. When the leader is not, and only a function of leading is there, then there is simply love. Then you go on showering your love.

People grow through love, not through knowledge.

They are not mechanisms - they are people, real people, as alive as you. They are hidden gods.

One should approach them with a deep reverence. It is sacrilege to call a person a patient. To say of a person that he needs psychoanalysis, or he needs this or that, is to degrade the person, is to humiliate him. And that is the difference between a guru....

The guru is an eastern concept, a feminine concept. A guru is one who is not. It is a very paradoxical function: one who is not, is a guru. A slight ego and the guru will be poisonous - no ego, then he is nectar, he is simply nectar showering on you. You can surrender to him because he is not. You are surrendering to yourself via the guru.

And it is going to be totally different here because these are sannyasins - they are not patients. And they are in an authentic search. They are devotees. They are not just fooling around. They are not just curious about what this tao group is, they are not just curious, they are not onlookers. They are involved, committed.

When you do a group in the west, there are twenty participants, and they are all just participants; there is no inner link between them. When you are doing a group here, there are twenty sannyasins.

I am the inner link running between them and through you, so you are all part of a garland. And that thread which is not visible on the surface, is a deep connection, gives you a deeper intimacy and makes many more things possible.

So by and by let the leader disappear. Just be a leading function and allow me to work through you. Whenever you are in trouble, whenever you are facing a problem you cannot solve, there is no need to become tense about it. Just close your eyes, relax and remember me. Hold the locket and suddenly you will see you are full of me and something has started.

You were surprised by the spontaneity of the participants - sooner or later you will be surprised by your own spontaneity and your own unpredictableness. Some answers will start flowing through you which you were never aware were there.

[The group leader says that she feels her resistance is in the limitations of her body which she has neglected.]

No, nothing to be worried about. Nothing is ever lost. Even if the body is neglected, you can again reconnect it. There is no problem, not at all. Nothing is ever lost. You may have forgotten it - it can be revived. You may have forgotten the meaning - it can be decoded.

We have such tremendous reservoirs of energy that one is never, in any way, limited. If we believe we are limited, we function as limited human beings. Once we drop that foolish belief, we start

functioning as unlimited beings. It is just a belief. You have drawn your own circle. It happens with gypsies....

Gypsies are continuously moving - they are wandering people. So when the older people go into the town, they draw circles around their children and tell the child, 'Sit here. You cannot get out of this. It is a magic circle.' And the gypsy child cannot get out of it - impossible! Then he grows and grows and becomes an old man; and even then, if his father draws a circle, the old man cannot get out of it. Now he believes - and when you believe, it works.

Now you will be surprised at what foolishness this is and will say that this cannot be done to you.

Somebody draws a circle and you will immediately jump out of it; nothing will happen. But an old gypsy man cannot even get out of it. From the very childhood he has been conditioned for it. It functions for him, it is a reality for him, because reality is that which affects you. There is no other criterion for reality.

So limitation is a concept. Nothing is wrong with your body, nothing is wrong with any body. People have wrong beliefs and then they function wrongly. When they function wrongly they search for a reason as to why.

They come across the belief and go on emphasising it: 'I am functioning wrongly because of this.'

This becomes a vicious circle. Then they are more limited. Drop that idea completely. It is just a circle that you or others have helped you to draw around yourself.

That is the whole function of my being here - to make you unlimited, because you are.

Limitations exist only in your belief. It is a suggestion, an auto-hypnosis. It is very real when it is there, but drop it and suddenly you will laugh. It is very ridiculous. Start working and soon it will disap-pear. Don't be worried about it.

[A sannyasin says: For the first I find that I'm not dependent on the care of a woman. But there's a small boy inside me who doesn't like to be shouted at, who doesn't want to be blamed.]

... tell the hypno-therapist about your problem so he can work on it. Then we will decide. It will go; there is nothing to be worried about.

One day one has to become independent of a constant need of being cared for by a woman. That is the day that one becomes mature. That is the day when you are finished with your mother, and that is the day you can start loving a woman. Otherwise in every woman you will go on searching for your mother. Then it is going to be false love. It is going to be political. Because you need the care, you pretend to love, but that is not mature love. You are like a child hanging onto the mother's skirt.

If you continue that you will never know what love is.

One has to finish with this dependence. When you are finished with it, for the first time you will be able to decide whether you love this woman or not, because now there is no need; now you can share. When there is no need, love flowers.

Love flowers only when needs have disappeared. A love happens only between a king and a queen - neither is in any need.

Love is the most luxurious thing in the world. It is not a need - it is the last luxury, the ultimate in luxuries. If you are needing it it is just as other needs; one needs food, one needs shelter, one needs clothes, one needs this and that. Then love is also part of this world.

When there is no need and you are simply flowing with energy and would like to share with somebody, and somebody is also flow-ing with energy and would like to share with you, then you both offer your energies to an unknown god of love.

And it is sheer luxury because it is purposeless. It has no business to do. It is intrinsic - it is not a means to anything else. It is a great play.

[A sannyasin says: I enjoyed the group very much. I feel that I'm becoming more soft. My sexual energies seem to be drying up since being in poona.]

Just let it be, allow it. When energy is rising upwards, many changes happen and one should not disturb those changes. Simply allow it. Just be with the energy wherever it is going, whatsoever is happening. Don't force anything against it, that's all. Accept it, trust it.

I can see that it is going beautifully - you need not worry.

[A sannyasin says that he has separated from his girlfriend but The other night we spent the night together, and we didn't have intercourse but just lay together. The energy that moved between us was much deeper than it has ever been before.]

Mm, it happens sometimes. Particularly for the modern man it has become almost impossible to lie down with the woman you love and not to make love. People have forgotten completely that sex is nothing compared to that merger which happens when you are simply Lying together in deep love, in deep reverence, in prayer.

When the physical energy is not sexually involved, it rises to higher altitudes. It can reach to the very last, to samadhi. But people have forgotten completely. They think that sex is the end. Sex is only the beginning. So remember it.

Whenever you love a woman, make it a point to first lie together in deep love, and you will reach to higher orgasms, subtler, deeper. That's how, by and by, real celibacy arises. What we call in india 'brahmacharya', real celibacy, is not against sex: it is higher than sex, it is deeper than sex. It is more than sex. Whatsoever sex can give, it gives, but it gives more also. So when you know how to use your energy on such a high level, who bothers for the lower spaces? - nobody. Then it is not against sex.

I'm not saying to drop sex. I am saying to sometimes allow yourself pure loving spaces where sex is not a concern. Otherwise you are pulled back to earth and you can never fly into the sky.

That's what happened. It has been a good experience. Remember it and feel grateful to her. Don't create any problem out of it. If she loves, she will come to you, you will go to her. If we love each other we come again and again to each other. If we don't love, it can't be helped. Then we say goodbye. There is no need to make it a permanent, enforced relationship. No need to make love a marriage unless it itself becomes a marriage; then it's okay.

[A sannyasin says through a translator: She says that she has difficulties because she doesn't speak any english, but nevertheless she feels and she understands.

She says she feels much freer to express herself since being here in the ashram.]

Very good. In fact language is not needed too much. It is not always a medium of communication. It more or less hinders communication. If you can feel, that's good. Don't be worried about language.

Move by feeling.

Feeling is the universal language. And particularly to understand me. No language is needed. I can find a way in from the back door!