Darshan 9 August 1976

[A sannyasin who bakes said that because of his work he was unable to do the meditations, and should he do anything else. Osho said that when he had time he could meditate alone... ]

... and baking is a good meditation. Put your love into it, your whole awareness into it. Just don't do it for the money - do it for love also. Do it with care, and then there is no need for any other meditation.

If you can change your work into meditation, that's the best thing. Then meditation is never in conflict with your life. Whatsoever you do can become meditative. Meditation is not something separate; it is a part of life. It is just like breathing: just as you breathe in and out, you meditate also.

And it is simply a shift of emphasis; nothing much is to be done. Things that you have been doing carelessly, start doing carefully. Things that you have been doing for some results, for example, money.... That's okay, but you can make it a plus phenomenon. Money is okay and if baking gives you money, good. One needs money, but it is not all. And just by the side if you can reap many more pleasures, why miss them? They are just free of cost.

You will be doing your work whether you love it or not, so just bringing love to it you will reap many more things which otherwise you will miss. So that is the plus thing. And it depends on you how much you can reap out of it. A very small work like baking can be of tremendous joy because food is very deeply connected with love. Love is food, and food is symbolic love. When a child starts his life, food and love start together. From the same breast of the mother flows love and food. In fact, it is very difficult to divide them, and the child knows love as food and food as love.

That's why all over the world, whenever you love a person, you like to invite him for food, because it is a love gesture. The host becomes the mother, he becomes motherly. It is very easy to approach

people's hearts through food. Mm? business people understand it - so the business lunch. It is easy to convince the person, it is easy to sell something, very easy, when you invite a person for food. Things happen easily. He is no more defensive. He is no more argumentative... a sort of rapport, mm? because the very food reminds him of his mother; unconsciously he again becomes a small baby, more innocent, more vulnerable.

When a woman loves you she will prepare food for you with tremendous care, and that food will have a spiritual value to it. It may not be possible scientifically to make any distinction between food prepared by love and food prepared carelessly, but spiritually there is a distinction. So when you are eating food that has been prepared with love, you will feel a certain rhythm between you and the food, a rapport. It somehow synchronises with you; it somehow melts easily and becomes one with you, it cooperates with your system. Food prepared carelessly is cold, it will take a longer time to absorb it, and food prepared with anger, hatred, jealousy, is already poisoned.

So do one thing: prepare whatsoever you are preparing - cakes and that - with deep love. Money is secondary. It comes anyhow, that's not the point at all. By the way there are beautiful flowers to be plucked; why waste the whole scene? People become too narrow in their vision and they simply look for results. There are many things just by the side, freely available, nobody asking any price for them, but people are so narrow they cannot see. They go on running like horses with blindfolds. If you can make that, it is beautiful. So make it your meditation. Good!

[A visitor said that for the past two years she had been doing a meditation which was based on breathing - stopping the voluntary system so that spontaneity could happen. She said she felt good doing it and bhagwan suggested she try the meditations here, just to see how she felt... ]

... and one should not be in any way imaginative about it. Just see the fact of it. This has to be understood. Sometimes something does not fit; just to be polite we say, 'Yes, it is good.' That is not going to help. Or sometimes saying, 'Good, fine,' has become just habitual; you don't mean anything. Somebody asks you how you are, and you say 'Fine!' You don't mean anything, and there is also no need to talk about all your miseries that you are passing through, but by and by the words lose their meaning.

So be absolutely factual. When you come to see me on the fifteenth, be factual, very observant, about whether something is happening and you are really feeling something is going deep in you.

Then it will be easier for me to plan the future growth and how you should proceed. Many people come and they say - somebody has been doing tm for five years or four years - and I say, 'How do you feel?' They say, 'Very good,' and then by and by after two or three days, they say, 'In fact, nothing is happening, and nothing has hap-pened.' Then why did you say, 'Good'? They don't know, it simply came out.

Because there is something involved in it. If you have been doing something for five years and you say that nothing is happening, you look a little stupid. Then why have you been doing it for five years? So when a person has been doing something for five years it becomes an investment of the ego. Now to say or recognise that nothing has been happening, or nothing has happened, makes one look a little foolish.

The ego says, 'Everything is good. Much has happened.' This is just saving the face - so never do that with me. Whatsoever happens, be factual about it; be almost scientific about it. So go on doing

the meditations and do them as totally as possible. When the meditation is over, sit silently and just recall the whole thing and try to figure out whether something has happened or not, because a small iota of fact is more helpful than a big mountain of fancy - because that is leading nowhere.

Sometimes people say that something is happening because they really want something to happen.

Because of their wanting, they hope that something must be happening. It looks very hard to feel that nothing is happening. That looks hopeless. So they go on hoping... a sort of wish-fulfillment.

So drop all these things.

And don't get depressed or elated. Just simply make a note - 'This meditation fits me well.

Something inside of me falls in tune. I feel more collected, centred, grounded. I feel more joyful, more alive, more happy.' Or nothing may happen, or sometimes the meditation may do just the opposite; you become more sad, you become more fragmentary, split, you lose your centre. You lose your grounding and you don't know where you are standing and what has happened. You fall into parts. Then, too, watch and make a note.

So about all these five meditations, report three things. One, which meditation you liked most, second, which meditation you hated most, third, which meditation seems to be helping the most. It is not necessary that the one you like will help most. Sometimes we like very foolish things. We are just like children. A child likes ice-cream, but that is not going to give nourishment. Maybe he enjoys it, but it can be harmful. Sometimes a bitter medicine can be helpful, but the child resists and wants to throw it. Even if you force him, he will vomit it.

So that is for me to decide. Simply report without any strings attached, without any judgement, mm?

Good.

[The hypnotherapy group was present. Osho talked a little time ago about how hypnotherapy works, saying:]

Hypnotherapy touches the fourth body, the body of consciousness. It simply puts a suggestion into your mind. Call it animal magnetism, mes-merism, or whatsoever you like, but it works through the power of thought, not the power of matter. If your consciousness accepts a certain idea, it starts functioning.

Hypnotherapy has a great future. It is going to become the future medicine because if just by changing your thought pattern your mind can be changed, through your mind the vital body, and through the vital body your gross body, then why bother with poisons, gross medicine? Why not work it through thought power?

[The leader says: It was a bit scattered. People were far apart at the beginning and I once considered whether we should do an encounter, more of an encounter-type thing, to get people more together.

Then I decided that it is more your wish that each technique stays the way it's designed to be, so I explained to the people that I had something to offer, the group had something to offer, and if they could connect, fine. If not, then I couldn't do much about it. So it worked out fine.]

This has to be remembered - that the purity of the technique is very primary. Even if you sometimes feel that some other technique will be helpful, you can suggest to the person that after the hypnotherapy group he can do that group.

But if you start doing this - looking around at persons and what their need is - then the whole thing will become just a mess and you will not be able to help at all. So you have to be an absolute puritan You have to remain in a defined space, and you have to insist that they fall into that space. If they are incapable or there is something that is hindering them, then suggest that they should do some other group. But never go out of the way, because people's minds are very tricky: if you start going out of the way, they will start going even further away. Then you will not be able to bring them together.

They are behaving almost unconsciously; they don't know what they are doing, so don't leave it to them.

You have to be very strict about it because hypnotherapy and encounter are, in a way, two very opposite things. It is like allopathy and naturopathy. A naturopath has to insist on his own vision.

Even if sometimes he feels that the headache can be helped by a tablet of aspirin and immediate help is possible, he is not to use the aspirin because that immediate help is against the whole standpoint. He has to go the long way, the hard way.

If he sees that there is a headache, then aspirin is just going to repress it. According to his vision, aspirin is just a repressive thing. He has to work on the stomach. There must be some constipation, some toxins hanging about inside the body. They have to be cleaned out. It is a long process, but once the intestines are cleaned, the headache will disappear. A headache is just an indication in naturopathy. In allopathy, a headache is an illness, not an indication.

So encounter and hypnotherapy are just as far away from each other. In encounter you have to be very expressive; you have to act it out. In hypnotherapy you have to relax so much that all acting by and by subsides. In encounter you have to throw your mind as forcibly as possible; bring it out in a clear focus so that you become aware of it, and some reconciliation is possible.

In hypnotherapy the whole process is to relax into your unconscious, because the problem exists in the unconscious. Encounter functions in the conscious mind. Hypnotherapy says that the prob-lem is in the unconscious. If you drop a little lower to a different layer of your being, then the problem simply disappears because it is attached to a particular level. With a change of consciousness, an altered state of consciousness, the problem will disappear. And once you know that altering the state of consciousness changes all the problems, then you have become a master. Then you can change your state of consciousness any moment.

For example somebody is feeling angry. Encounter will say bring it out, don't repress it. Good - because repression has been taught for so long that everybody is boiling with it and it does. not allow spontaneity. So encounter says throw it out, vomit it out, be relieved of it. Hypnotherapy says that anger is in the unconscious. You move towards deeper levels of your being and from there look again Suddenly, because you are on a different plane, things appear in a different light.

Something looks very big when you are looking through a microscope. When you look with the naked eye it is very small. When you look at a certain thing just standing on the earth, it has a different definition. Flying in a plane and looking down, it has a different meaning because the whole gestalt has changed. A very big house from a higher altitude looks so small and so meaningless, and fighting for a few feet of ground looks just absurd.

Hypnotherapy does not change the problem. It changes your attitude, your being, your vision, and

from the new vision the problem either looks simply absurd, or simply drops out of existence, or looks meaningless, irrelevant. You transcend the problem.

And groups are going to be different each time because different people will bring different consciousnesses, different worlds, different centuries, different ages. Just because people look like contemporaries on the surface, they are not. Somebody lives before buddha and somebody is already somewhere in the future. Two persons chronologically may be just herenow, but they are not really. Existentially they may be worlds apart. Somebody may be a primitive, a cannibal, and somebody may not even belong to the present... may be part of some future century.

So when different people come they will bring different centuries, different beings, different attitudes.

Go on insisting on your own purity. They have to drop their individualities and enter your space.

Don't run after them, otherwise you will go mad and they will enjoy the whole game. Never! Simply go on insisting on your method. They have to follow you and listen to you - then you will be able to be of more help. Good.

[A group member said: It feels like I had a good rest. It's been a long time since I allowed myself to stop seeking, begging and asking. trying.

But just at this moment it seems that soon I'll be leaving to go back to being a political journalist.

That was my old job two and a half years ago. It seems like a terrific shift.]

No, it will be good. Such changes are good, such polar opposites are always good. It is just like a sauna bath.

... from hot to cold. It gives such a sharpness to the being, such a thrill. For twenty, thirty minutes you are perspiring, and it is so hot that you feel you will explode. Then suddenly you jump into ice- cold water and everything seems to be freezing. This gives you a sharpness of being. The change is so fast and so big that you cannot immediately adjust. In that moment of non-adjustment you have a freedom. Suddenly you are no more the mechanism - you are the watcher. That's the beauty of the sauna bath, or any sudden change. The mind takes time to adjust and the change is so sudden and so fast that it cannot keep pace with it.

So, very good. Simply go there and you will feel very new. The work will be old but you are no more old. The same person isn't going to the same job. The job is the same, but a different person is going to it, and because a different person is going, the job cannot be the same.

You have become very restful. Something has stopped. It may not be very dramatic - that's why you think it has not been a change of being or a change of plane - but real changes are never dramatic.

Real changes are so ordinary that sometimes it takes many months and years to recognise what has happened.

[The sannyasin answers: I feel I've become more and more ordinary.]

That's the thing that I am insisting for. Because the very idea to become extraordinary is in, it is neurotic, it is a sort of madness. It is the very base of all tensions and all anxieties. It is the root cause of all madness. We are ordinary. And when I say we are ordinary I mean that the whole existence is extraordinary. There is no way to become more extraordinary than one is already.

When I say we are ordinary I simply mean that everything is already extraordinary and there is no way to improve upon it. You are already at the top of the world; there is no other top. You can never be higher than where you are, so the whole thing is just to recognise that one has already arrived.

The change is not dramatic because from a molehill you don't become a mountain.

Suddenly you recognise that whatsoever you are, you have always been. Now you are the same.

The only change that has happened is awareness. Now you know who you are, and then there is no desire. One starts delighting in one's own being.

This is the only world and this is the only way you can be. There is no other world and you cannot be otherwise. This recognition makes one absolutely ordinary, but when I use the word 'ordinary', I use it with a totally different meaning. I mean that god is ordinary. I mean that beauty is ordinary, truth is ordinary. Extraordinariness is only illness; health is ordinariness. It is just the way things are... it is tao.

The moment the desire arises to become somebody exceptional, you are going crazy. You are creating such a mad whirl in your consciousness that now you will never be happy again. You will always be more and more unhappy. And the more unhappy you will be, the more you will think, 'Now I am unhappy because I am ordinary.' The logic is very suicidal. Whenever you think you are unhappy, you will think you are ordinary. Become extraordinary and then you will be happy - and one can never become extraordinary because one can only become oneself; there is no other way.

You are the only way you can be. Nothing else is possible. One relaxes into it, one accepts it, and then simply all unhappiness disappears. One never becomes happy - only unhappiness disappears.

Then suddenly one finds that happiness has always been there but you were never allowing it because you were creating so much unhappiness around it.

Happiness is a natural thing; nothing to be achieved. It is not an achievement; it is the way things are. Look at the trees - they are simply happy. Unhappiness is created; happiness is natural.

Unhappiness is a by-product of the ambitious mind; happiness is simply there if you can rest and relax.

So, good, something beautiful is happening. But all beauty is ordinary. Look at a lotus flower... it is ordinary. A rose is ordinary. Stars and moon and everything is ordinary, except this mad human mind. It, too, is ordinary - but just a notion, an idea of becoming something else, always trying to become somebody else, creates unnecessary unhappiness. So rest in it.

This is the only transformation that is possible. This is the revolution religion is. It is nothing dramatic.

One day, one simply becomes a buddha. It is not dramatic. Dramatic things never happen in life.

They happen only in drama. Dramatic things are only for stories, fiction, disneyland.

[The sannyasin adds: Or newspapers?]

Mm, newspapers! So go into the world and remain yourself. Work and enjoy your work. Enjoy it as a fiction. Be skilful about it but never lose yourself in it. Work as a political journalist but don't become a politician, that's all!

[A group member says: I got in touch with some very deep blocks in myself.

Osho asks where in her body she feels those blocks. She answered that she was not aware of where it was, but rather in the fact that, in whatever she does, she only goes so far and then gives up.]

Good... this experience has been good. Next time you feel any block, try and locate it in the body, because no block can exist without its location in the body. And if you really become aware you can find where exactly in the body the block exists. Then it is very much easier to remove it, because then you can work from both ways - from the mind and from the body. You can attack the block from both sides. Otherwise, what happens is that if you attack it from the mind side, it slips deeper into the body and protects itself there. If you attack it from the body side, it slips into the mind and protects itself there. These are the two sides, and they are very close. In fact, they are not two. We are psychosomatic - body/mind, not body and mind.

They are both overlapping, so if you force any block to melt, the first thing a block will do is to slip into the mind or into the body. The attack has to be from both fronts so the block can be caught just in the middle, and from both the energies it can be crushed.

So always remember that whenever you feel that you have come across a block, try to find out where it is in the body. You will always find it. It will be a little difficult in the beginning because we don't think in that way. But whenever you feel love, you put your hand on your heart. Somehow the very idea of love corresponds to the heart centre.

The moment the word 'sex' is uttered, somewhere near the genital organs you feel a slight sensation, a slight thrill. Everything in the mind corresponds to something in the body, and something in the body corresponds to something in the mind, so always try to find out the correspondence. That's how yoga psychology came to discover the chakras, the centres.

A block is a negative chakra. (See 'the cypress in the courtyard', june 17th, where Osho talks about negative chakras.) Sometimes the block may change. In the morning you feel it is in the stomach. In the evening you may feel it is not there, because it is like a flux. The body is continuously changing; it is not a fixed entity. So for seven days, simply make a note. After seven days tell me where you feel more that the block is located. In seven days of watching you will be able to find out the right place. Then much can be done and more easily.

First do the camp, and in the camp work hard. Particularly the nataraj is going to be very helpful - the dancing meditation - so dance madly - because I can see where the block is, but I'm leaving it for you to note, because that will show me whether you can become alert or not. I can tell you where it is, but that will not be good. I will wait.

... Just watch for seven days... Find one place where you feel it more persistently, more often.

... With total energy, which inhibits let-go. Because that is the basic; other blocks will be just minor.

If you can experience anything totally then all blocks disappear, because to be total means to be blockless. Not to be total means too many blocks are there. So just that one you have to remember.

Whatsoever inhibits your totality, your spontaneity, your let-go, find where you feel it.

In the camp, dance madly, because in deep dancing energies melt very easily, blocks disappear very easily. One becomes total in dance more easily than in anything else because the whole body as an organic unity becomes involved. Dance is the most total act on the earth.

[She adds: It's a very big contrast between being in the ashram and letting go and then when I go out feeling that I can't let go at all.]

Mm, I understand. You will become capable of that too, the more you will be able to let go in the ashram, because a person who allows let-go becomes capable of not allowing it at any time. It is not that once you allow yourself to be in a let-go, you will have to allow it everywhere. Then that will become a bondage. No, a real person of let-go is always capable of withdrawing within a second. If he wants to withdraw, he will withdraw totally. That's one thing.

If he wants to let go, he will let go totally. Whatsoever he is going to do will be total. A person who cannot let go totally will not be able to withdraw totally either. He will always be half-half... in bits, in fragments. Even if a person who is not capable of letting go wants to withdraw, he will find that he cannot; something still remains. He does not know how to withdraw. Withdrawal and let-go are part of one rhythm - contracting, expanding, contracting, expanding. If you exhale deeply, automatically you will be able to inhale deeply. It is not that if you exhale deeply you will become incapable of inhalation No, inhalation will become very deep if your exhalation is deep.

Let-go is like exhalation, withdrawal is like inhalation. A man has many moments when he has to withdraw completely, when he has to become like a rock. And then there are moments when the rock has to flower like a lotus. And one should be capable of both. Then I call one perfect. If one thing is possible and the other is not, then you are lopsided; you don't have balance.

So don't be afraid. Simply learn to let go and then I will teach you how to withdraw - and that is very simple, that comes easily. So outside the gates of the ashram, if you want to withdraw, you can withdraw so totally that people will not even be able to see that you are; they will not notice you.

They notice you because you are continuously throwing yourself out, mechanically, unknowingly.

But wait. First learn let-go.

[A group member says: I don't think I have any problems.]

You don't have. Nobody has really. People pretend because they don't know how to live without problems. Problems give them occupation, something to worry about, something to do. Problems give them engagement, commitment. Without problems they don't know what to do. They cannot enjoy life as a sheer joy, that's the trouble. So they have to create some problems in it.

Very good. Remain alert and never allow any problem, never support any problem. Then life will bring tremendous gifts to you. Each small thing can become such a joy, an incredible joy. Just walking, breathing, looking at the sunlight or at the trees... or doing nothing, just loafing. Or just Lying down on the bed... daydreaming. Anything can give you tremendous joy. The only thing is, don't bring in problems. Let it be as it is. Relax and co-operate with it. Don't have any idea of how life should be. Let it unfold and go with it in deep trust. Wherever it leads is good.

[The group member adds: I was sick for a while after I took sannyas.

Enjoy that too - sometimes it happens.

... Next time it happens, just enjoy. Sickness has its own beauties, health has its own. And both are so beautiful that they cannot be compared.

If you start enjoying sickness, you will simply be surprised that sickness has its own joys, as significant as health. It is just as if you are walking and suddenly it starts raining. Now, you can make a problem out of it or you can enjoy it. Both are dependent on your attitude.

You can start thinking, 'My clothes will become wet. Now I am in new shoes and they will be destroyed.' Or, 'I am going to meet someone; now it will be a problem.' You become worried - and you are missing something tremendously beautiful. Or you can just relax and let the rain fall. You can start enjoying the music, the raindrops falling on you... the touch, the coolness and the freedom - and a totally new scene surrounds you. You relax and start enjoying it... you cherish it. Something inside your heart starts opening and you are not worried about stupid things like shoes getting wet or that you may catch cold, or this and that... just stupid things.

Such a beauty is pouring on you. So much is available if you can relax and simply watch what is happening and can start tasting the joy of it. Suddenly the whole vision has changed. Now you may come across the pleasure that you have never known. Then you may start waiting for it - for when it rains and you can go out, and walk in the rain. Sometimes you may even catch cold; that's nothing.

It is worth it. And if you are not thinking about catching cold, you may not catch it. So just start looking at things in a very very happy way.

Try to find, in whatsoever is happening, the something beautiful that must be there. Uncover it, discover it. A person who never asks for anything always gets many gifts from god.

[A group member says: I just realised that I've been making a big problem out of the whole of my life, out of existence.

You are... and it is not a problem at all - not even a small problem. Don't seek the solution, drop the problem.

... There is no answer. Just drop the question - all questioning is nonsense, because the question in itself is wrong. Then you get wrong answers. Then out of wrong answers more questions arise, and so on and so forth, ad absurdum. Just drop the basic question. Life is not a problem; it is a mystery to be lived. Nobody has found any answer. Nobody is ever going to find any answer. There is none.

Life is not a question. It is not a problem. It is simply there. Live it or leave it, that's all. Either live it and delight in it, enjoy it, or leave it and commit suicide. But nothing else can be done, so when only these two alternatives are there, why not live it?

Start living... and you have energy, that's why your body creates trouble. It is not really a trouble.

Because you are simply forcing some discipline on yourself, the body resists and revolts. The body says, 'Go and dance, swim' - and you are doing hypnotherapy! (laughter) You are torturing poor [therapist] unnecessarily!

[The sannyasin replies: You told me to! (laughter)]

If you ask me (chuckling) - I have to tell you. That's why I have these torturers here. They torture you and you torture them! Some day you understand the whole nonsense and you drop out of it.

[The sannyasin says: I arranged to have postural integration with satyarthi.]

That's again the same thing. But do it. Nothing is wrong in it. Enjoy it, but don't take it as a therapy.

What I am insisting is that you could have enjoyed hypnotherapy if you had no problems. Then it is simply a beautiful experience, a great relaxing, but you are not coming as a patient. You come simply to enjoy as a guest. It is a beautiful dimension. You enter into the unconscious. It is good in itself, not as therapy. Good as a game.

[He answers: I was looking forward to it. I was expecting... ]

That's the trouble. If you are looking for something, some result, then you miss the whole experience and then you come out of it frustrated. So at least do this - with this massage, enjoy it and don't look for any results. Simply enjoy it.

... You have some karma to fulfill, so... some karma with satyarthi, so finish it!