Darshan 16 September 1977

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says she has a lot of fear, and perhaps she is running away.]

No, it is not escaping. It is not running away; it is part of the process. If you want to come close to me, sometimes you have to go away. Then next time you will come even closer. Then again you will have to go away. Slowly, slowly, one proceeds. After each time of being away from me you will gather a little more courage to come closer.

It is just like when you want to take a big leap: you go back so that you have enough space to leap forward. It is happening to everybody. And it is very very significant to go away sometimes so that you can be alone, far away from me. That too is a very necessary ingredient in growing, mm? - just like a small tree needs to go away from the big tree, otherwise it will not grow.

So sometimes it is very good to have your own space, your own world, nobody to advise you, nobody to direct you, so that you can feel more how you feel, so that you can try to find out your own direction. Nothing wrong if you commit a few mistakes; they are perfectly good. It can be dangerous sometimes to always be guided, even if the guidance is absolutely right. You will become weaker, you will not be on your own, and you will become more and more dependent. I would never like any sannyasin of mine to become dependent on me. I would like every sannyasin to be as strong as possible.

Take all of my advice but never become weak and dependent. So it is good sometimes to be far away for a few months. You will have to depend on yourself. You will have to find your own way, your own direction. A few times you will go astray and come back again. That's perfectly good. Then you will come back stronger, more rooted in yourself and then you will come into me more deeply. When you are strong, you don't resist much.

It is my experience that weak persons resist very much. They are afraid! Only a strong person can surrender. Weaklings don't know what surrender is. They can become dependent but they can't surrender. For surrender, a very very integrated will is needed. Surrender is the last act of will, the highest act of will. It looks paradoxical, but that is how it is. To surrender totally you will need great will, great individuality, integration, rootedness, centredness. Only then can you take that great jump.

Otherwise if you are weak you can become dependent but not surrendered. And there is a trick in dependence: any person who is dependent wants to manipulate.

There is a famous chinese saying - that wherever you find one slave there will always be two. And that has great wisdom in it... because a slave cannot be alone. The person to whom he has become a slave has also become a slave to him; it is a mutual understanding. The master, the so-called master, also becomes a slave of his own slave.

That's how it is happening in every relationship: the husband thinks he is the master of the house and the woman knows far better who is really the master, who is really the boss. But the woman pretends to play the role of the dependent. And through dependence she manipulates; that is her politics. And the man thinks that things are going perfectly well because he is the master and the woman is surrendered to him. But the woman goes on manipulating and controlling him in subtle feminine ways, soft ways that he is not even aware of.

The feminine strategy is very very indirect. If she she wants to hit the husband she will not hit the husband; she will hit herself. This is very subtle and very diplomatic. If she is angry she will start crying. In fact she wanted to hurt the husband and wanted to see him cry but she will not hurt him. She will start crying. Now she is playing the role of the dependent, and when you see that the person is so much dependent on you, you have to concede, you have to compromise.

I don't want anybody to be dependent on me because I don't want to become dependent on anybody.

Wherever there is one slave there are two. So I don't want to be anybody's boss! At the most I am a friend. You have all the advice that you need and you need not even feel thankful. There is no need.

You need not even feel obliged.

It is my joy to give you advice. Just in giving it. I am delighted; there is no need for any return. So remain independent and take out of your independence, not out of your dependence. You choose - your surrender is also your will. It is your decision to become a disciple. It is your decision to listen to me. It is your decision to go according to my advice. In the final analysis you remain independent.

Sooner or later the day will come when you will not need to go anywhere because then you can be independent just here with me. That is the real meeting of the master and the disciple: when they disappear into each other. You are surrendering and there is nobody who is surrendering. Two nobodies meet, merge, and disappear.

So you go - nothing to be worried about!

[A sannyasin says she can't sleep at night. In the encounter group she was sent out running because her energy was too perverse for the group. Her head won't stop.]

I will make it stop! You don't be worried. Then don't say to me that now it has stopped! Will you be able to cope without the head ? I can do it right now but I think you need it still... mm?...

There is nothing. Energy is there, and [the group leader] is right. Whenever energy is there, if you don't become creative it becomes perverse. Perversion is not really any abnormality; it is unused energy. If it goes on accumulating in you it creates wounds. You have more than you ordinarily need.

And this is good! You are rich, but with richness there always comes the danger that if you don't use it it will destroy you. If you use it you will be immensely joyful, extraordinarily joyful - very few people can be as joyful as you.

So it depends on you. If you become more creative - if you sing and dance - if you become more creative in any way then there is no problem at all. Then sleep will come very beautifully and your meditations will be better and your mind will not go on rushing round and round. It is not the mind that is rushing, it is the energy that is rushing in the mind. That's why you cannot sleep - because it goes on working and you are feeling crazy.

All creative people are crazy. In fact, sigmund freud has a theory about it - that creativity is abnormality. He thought that creativity itself is abnormal because normal people are not creative.

Normal people are not creative. He had this idea that all poets and all painters and all musicians are mad people, abnormal. They have to be treated, psychoanalysed, and brought back to the normal fold.

And although he was wrong his observations have some truth, partial, but the truth is there. The insight is correct, in the right direction. It always happens that creative people go crazy. But it is not that creativity is crazy. It is the unused creativity that drives them crazy, not that they are creative.

Not all creative people are crazy, but in the west it is so. Buddha is immensely creative but not crazy; nietzsche goes crazy. He is as full of energy as a buddha but he goes crazy. The west does not allow that superb creativity that creates a buddha, that auto-creativity of giving birth to oneself.

Van gogh goes crazy and murders himself, but in the east that is not so. In the east great painters have lived and have lived more beautifully than ordinary people. Naturally they should live more beautifully because they create beauty and they have that sense of beauty, that sense of splendour.

In each small thing they see something immensely, tremendously fantastic. They are not mad - they are really the natural people; others are below normality.

Others may be in the majority - that does not make them normal. They are below normal. Only buddha is normal and unless one is a buddha one is below normal, abnormal.

Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Nietzsche, people like these, have great energies but they don't know where to put it and how to use it. God goes on pouring into them and they are unable to use it It accumulates and they become afraid. It starts becoming shaky. Their whole being starts feeling as if it is exploding; then one day or other they are thrown to bits. But it is the same energy that becomes explosion. It could have become implosion. If it becomes implosion, only then will you feel that you are in the right direction and your life is becoming more and more meaningful and fulfilled.

So I understand.... When you came here you were not aware of your creativity; now you have become aware so you are more disturbed. This disturbance is a good indication. It simply shows you are being born. There will be turmoil. There will be chaos, but if you can pass through it joyously, understandingly, much is waiting in the future for you. But it will depend on you how you take it.

My suggestion is that you become more creative - whatsoever direction you choose; go into it. Put your madness into creativity. Then madness is the most precious thing in the world. All great people are mad people. Not to be mad means just living a dull and stupid life.

So rather than trying to solve problems - for example, you are more concerned how to sleep... I'm not concerned with that. I am concerned that you should play your flute, you should sing more, you should dance more. Sleep will take it own course. It will come; you need not bother about it. If you are not feeling sleepy then play on the flute, paint something. What is wrong in it? The night is so beautiful and everybody has gone to sleep and the noise has disappeared. Now, play on the flute, have a little dance, sing a song - do something! What is the need of sleep? If sleep is not coming that means sleep is not needed. Don't be worried about it. Get exhausted through creating and then you will find a great sleep coming, and that will be totally different.

Ordinarily, the people who think they sleep well are simply in a kind of coma. It is not really sleep.

The real sleep comes after you arc exhausted in creativity, when all your energy is used and you arc empty, spent; then you fall in a deep, deep sleep.

We have two names for sleep in India - in english you don't - because we make a distinction. The ordinary sleep we call 'nidra', and the extraordinary sleep we call 'sushupti'. 'Sushupti' means a sleep which comes only to creative people. It is so deep that patanjali has said that sushupti is just very close to samadhi. Just a little effort more, a little awareness has to be brought into sleep, and that sushupti becomes samadhi.

You will have a good sleep but not by trying to bring more sleep - no, not by any technique; it will come indirectly. You forget about it; it is not a problem. It is not the problem - that there are so many thoughts - because I don't see so many thoughts in you. And if you watch, you will be surprised.

There are only a few thoughts but the same energy turns them over again and again. Again and again, like a whirlpool, the same water goes on moving. It is the energy that is creating the problem.

You don't have many thoughts; you are not a thinker. Once the energy is used you will find your mind is getting silent on its own accord.

So you go, but go with this idea - that you have to become more creative. Mm? - and whenever you feel like coming, come back. And it is not perversion. You have energy. It can become perversion if you don't use it. It will become heavier on you. Use it! And I don't think that there is any problem because one has energy.

It is better to have problems with energy than to have problems with impotence. A dead man has no problems. The more alive you are, the more problems, and they have to be faced, encountered; one has to grow beyond them.

My approach is that rather than solving the problems, grow beyond them. Take the challenge, use them as stepping stones, and grow beyond them.

And this is my observation - a very fundamental observation - that not a single problem is ever solved. People only outgrow them - that is the only solution and salvation. I don't help you to solve your problem, I help you to grow beyond it so it remains no more a problem. When you are in it then it is a problem. When you are above it - you have gone a little higher, your consciousness is a

little bigger, greater than the problem - you can look at the problem there in the valley and you are standing on the hill. It is no more a problem. You can laugh with it, you can play around with it.

And that is the real meaning of growth: growing beyond problems. And I am not saying that when you grow out of these problems there will be no problems. There will be other problems, far more complicated, far more subtle. They will be higher; grow beyond them. And this is the way one goes on and on. One day certainly it happens that one has grown out of all the problems. One is simply standing there, a watcher on the hill, with no problem.

That's what enlightenment is. But before one reaches to that gourishankar, that everest, one has to climb many peaks, and each peak will be bigger than the preceding one, and the succeeding one will be still bigger. But take them as challenges. They are god's gift. Don't be antagonistic to them.

And things will change....

[A sannyasin, who has been working on a book in the Himalayas, said it was heavy being away.]

It is good - you have come, mm? There is no need to go anywhere North or South, East or West.

But sometimes you have the urge of a wanderer. That is there so it drives you somewhere. But nothing to worry about - more and more you will feel that you need to be here. But don't repress that urge. When it comes, one has to suffer it and one has to go. It is some karma one has to finish!

[The sannyasin says he felt very negative about the places he went to, Ladakh and Kashmir, so he is having difficulty writing the book. Osho encourages him to write the negative things.]

It will help many other wanderers not to go anywhere!...

There are more negative people in the world than the positive. Positive things people don't like. It will sell! You write it! Make it really hot!...

Yes, the truth about it! Mm mm, that's nothing to be worried about. You write it and enjoy writing!

And you have to write out of your feeling and out of your experience. No need to make it lukewarm.

Be true; whatsoever you feel, you have to write. So go into it, otherwise this by and by will disappear and then you will start writing cliches. That will not be of much use. You jump into it! And four-letter words are beautiful words!

[A sannyasin says she is getting headaches in morning discourse. Osho checks her energy.]

Nothing to be worried about. It is energy rising - you have to allow it. It happens in the talks because you are so close to me, and constantly listening to my voice, it goes on hitting you.

Do one thing: every night at least for one hour, sit silently and just try to listen to me. My voice will start coming to you and then the same energy will rise. It will be better, because here you are with so many people; you have to control yourself. the headache comes because of the control.

Energy comes and then you start controlling it, unconsciously and naturally, because others will be disturbed.

So alone in the night, listen for my voice and it will start coming to you. If you feel like talking, talk too. You will be really in a great experience.... So do this every night, at least for two weeks.

This headache will disappear, and when the headache has gone, you will find your head light for the first time.

Energy is moving perfectly, moving rightly. Mm ? nothing to be worried about!

[Osho explains the meaning of archan.]

It means prayer. Prayer has to be evolved in your being, mm? And prayer has a different, a little different quality than meditation. It is meditation plus - plus love. Meditation has no love in it. The other is not involved in it. You can meditate all alone. In fact, you can meditate only when you are all alone. It is solitude, aloneness. It is the beauty of being alone.

Prayer is the beauty of being together. It is the highest peak of love. So even if the devotee, one who prays, is alone, he is not alone. The god, the beloved, is there surrounding him. Prayer is an I-thou dialogue. Meditation is solo music; there is no dialogue, there is no other.

Prayer is far easier for women than meditation. Meditation is more male. Prayer is more female. It is just unnatural to a woman's being to think that something without love can be fulfilling. Love has to be there as an essential part of anything that can be fulfilling. Even meditation has to have some love in it. Meditation plus love is prayer - that is the meaning of archan.

So start growing prayer. Meditate - that is one part of it - but start having a prayerful mood.

Sometimes in the morning or in the night sit silently with deep love, gratitude, towards god. And you don't know what god is but still the gratitude can be created. You don't know where god is, you don't know the address but still you can raise your eyes towards the sky and have a little dialogue.

By and by the dialogue will grow.

And after a few months you will be able to see the difference - that is not only imagination: existence responds. In the beginning it is imagination, but that is only in the beginning. Once your imagination has come to a point from where existence can relate with you, it responds. Prayer really done is always heard by existence, and not only heard - there is a reply, and you will be able to listen to that.

Meditation is silence... nothing is heard, nobody to relate to. Prayer is dialogue...