Darshan 17 September 1977
[A sannyasin who is leaving for Goa says: Thank you.]
Meditate in Goa, mm? Goa is very related to me! Either the sannyasin has first to go to Goa then come to me or has to come to me and then go to Goa! This way or that but Goa is related. It is a beautiful place, so be on the beach in the sun and meditate, mm? And always remember that being in nature is being in god. Nature is the visible god, so be very respectful. It is not only beautiful - it is holy, it is sacred! That very idea becomes your surrounding, becomes a milieu, and in that milieu things start happening. So watching the sea and the sun and the sand, you remember god, you remember me, you remember the beyond. Remain always available to the beyond and use every opportunity for the beyond; then only some day the blessing, the benediction....
[A sannyasin, newly returned, says that while he was away he had experiences where he was completely dissolving. He was afraid he was going crazy, that it would happen to him in the street and he would be institutionalised.]
Mm mm... you should have dared! Now you can dare here; no need to worry....
Mm mm... crack up anywhere, and you will meet god there. Just crack up! I can understand - it is very frightening. I know it is frightening, and when for the first time it happens nobody has courage enough to continue it. So you have not done anything abnormal; it is normal, mm? But now how are you feeling? Is some disorientation still there?...
You meditate again and things will be okay. Disorientation happens and it will happen many times.
Disorientation only means that you are being transported from one plane of being to another plane of being. You have become rooted in one plane, at a certain plane, at a certain stage of mind. That's
where you know you have been in your past. You are well-acquainted with it, you are comfortable with it. Then a new plane is brought by the meditation and you are transported to the new plane.
It is as if a tree is being transported to another plane. So the tree is disoriented; the whole tree is shaken. It is being uprooted, and naturally the tree cannot believe what is going to happen. The tree will think it is going to die. It will cling to the soil, to the earth - it will not like to be uprooted. But sometimes the tree has to be uprooted from the old place and moved to a new place where it can have more space and more sun, where it can grow more.
So in meditation many times this will happen. This is the first time, but the first time is the most difficult. The second time it happens you will know; then you can be more at ease with it. It will come again. This time when it comes, don't become afraid. Celebrate rather than becoming frightened.
Use the energy in celebrating it. It is going to happen.
[The sannyasin says: I kept telling myself that in more lucid moments. But when it really started coming on strong my mind wasn't there to give me any courage.
Osho checks his energy.]
It is still lingering, it is still there. You have to just start meditating and soon it will come. It has not left you yet. The space is just close by, by the comer. That's why you are still a little disoriented. But it is good. You are fortunate - it is still there; you have not lost track of it. It can explode any moment.
So continue to meditate....
Do Vipassana and you join Sufi dancing also, mm? - that will be helpful. That will teach you a little celebration. That is one of the problems with Vipassana: it is a non-celebrating meditation. It is a buddhist meditation; they don't know anything about celebration. It is absolutely ascetic, dry, desert-like. It is immensely powerful, but one thing is missing in it that is missing in Buddhism itself - that is the greenery, the flowers, the rivers, the mountains, the joy. That's what is there in Sufism:
great joy, celebration, jubilation.
But Sufism has not that great meditation of Buddhism. So this is one of the basic problems in the human mind: Buddhism has the greatest meditation but without celebration: Sufis have great celebration but don't have that great meditation.
My effort here is to give you both together because if you only meditate and you don't know how to celebrate, you will become sad - silent, but sad; that's what buddhists become. Very silent - no comparison to their silence - but very sad. Their silence has no dance in it, no song - just silence.
But sound has its beauty.
Silence is good, but if it can be a dancing silence then it will be far better. Sufis have the dance and the sound but that silence that comes through vipassana is missing. So you can dance, you can sing, but it will remain a little superficial. It will not go to your very roots, to your very depth.
My work here is to create such a situation where you can go to the deepest core of meditation and yet remain available to celebration. Then you will be silent and happy. You will be silent and there
will be a joy suffusing your silence. Your silence will not be uncreative: your silence will have great creation arising out of it. It will not be dull - it will be very shining. It will have a kind of gusto, verve, otherwise it can become the silence of the cemetery.
Let it be the silence of a garden where birds sing and trees bloom and peacocks dance and rivers flow and waterfalls have their own song and the winds blow... and yet there is silence! The silence is not disturbed by it - it is enhanced by it.
All these sounds - the whispering wind and the swaying trees and the river - all these sounds become the background, and in the background of this sound silence comes more clearly, more loudly.
It is easier to be silent without celebration; it is easier to be celebrating without silence. That's why sufism has chosen another. But I am not for the easy... I am for the rich. The richest should be tried. When you can have both, why have one ? Why miss the other ? And the coming religion of the world is going to be this kind of synthesis.
So start sufi dancing and continue vipassana - that will help, mm? And everything is okay. Good!
[A sannyasin says: I don't seem to be able to make close connections with people in the ashram....
I don't feel anything to speak to them about. They feel pushed away by me.]
My feeling is that you shouldn't try anything. Whatsoever happens, let it happen. If you allow it to happen things will settle. If you are not in a space where you can relate very intimately, closely with people, then there is no need. Why force anything on yourself? Just be casually related. There is no need to be very deeply related. And when the need arises, when you start feeling that now the time has come to relate deeply, then it will be natural. And these two things always happen; they are periodical.
When you don't feel like going into deep relationship, if you force yourself to, it will be ugly; it won't make any sense. If you don't force and still go with people because of what they feel, then they will feel rejected. There is no need!
If you are not feeling in that space, just be with yourself more and more, meditate more.
These are the two things - meditation and love - and they are like day and night; each is followed by the other. In the night you go to sleep, you don't bother about work, you don't think about how to do more work. In the day you work and you don't bother about sleep.
When you are in a meditative space be alone and enjoy your aloneness. And when you are in a loving space enjoy relationship. And don't try to mess things up, otherwise you will be in difficulty and others will be in difficulty.
You must be trying... you must be trying because you feel that one should relate deeply. That seems to be your idea deep down - that something is wrong if you are not relating deeply. This has come to the modern mind very much. The modern mind... particularly encounter and the therapies like that have created the idea in people's minds that you have to relate very deeply and very sincerely
and very authentically. And when you are not feeling like it then what to do? You start feeling guilty, that something is wrong. Why are you not relating? Why are people feeling rejected by you? And people will feel rejected because they have also the same idea that you should relate very deeply.
There is something very strange about man - that he always creates something or other to feel guilty about. In the old days if you were not meditating, if you were not praying, it was guilt. Now, if you are not loving, not relating, it is guilt, but guilt remains. And both are human parts: to be alone sometimes and to relate sometimes. If you are really alone then you will have energy to relate one day, and if you relate then one day you will have the energy to be alone.
And they are just like a rhythm. Don't force! Just enjoy your aloneness. And do a few groups which need this kind of space - Vipassana, Zazen; do those groups....
This is the right time to do! This will be the right time when you can enter them. This is the time to do Zazen. It is a Buddhist meditation - being absolutely alone, with nothing to relate to.
[She says she feels lost; she needs energy; she goes cuckoo alone; she needs to care for her child.]
You are creating it! Right now you don't need any company. If you force company on yourself then....
You will go cuckoo if you force something which is against your space. You are not yet gone but you are on the way. But if you feel like it then do tantra and see what happens. Go cuckoo, mm?
Energy does not come from people. Energy comes from people only when you give energy to them, and right now you cannot give, so how can you take? Who is going to give you? Energy docs not come from people - it comes only when you give. It is a response, but the giving is the basic thing: if you give then you get. You cannot give; in fact your whole idea is to relate with people to get energy.
They will feel suffocated by you and they will feel you are exploiting and they will avoid you....
What I am saying is to please avoid them. It is good for you and good for them! Right now there is no need. Use this opportunity of being alone for zazen and vipassana, and then later on do encounter and tantra.
[The sannyasin who started the ashram school says: I just don't understand what it means to be a teacher to children here... ]
Yes, that is right - it will be a totally different thing! It will be a totally different thing....
It can't apply here. A few things to remember, and then you can work them out.... The first and the most basic is that we are not to enforce any pattern on the children. We have just to help them to be themselves. So there is no ideal that has to be enforced on them. You just have to be a caring atmosphere around them, so whatsoever they want to do you can help them to do better. Just help them to do it better. And they are not in any game, ambition-game.
We are not trying to make them very very powerful, famous, rich, this and that, in their life, no. Our whole effort here is to help them to be alive, authentic, loving, flowing, and life takes care. A trust in life - that's what has to be created around them, so they can trust in life. Not that they have to
struggle but can relax. And as for education, just help them to be more creative. Painting is good - they should try painting - or creating something else, but let it be creative; let them do things on their own. And don't bring in your criterions.
For example, when a child paints, don't bring in adultish criterions; don't say that this is not Picasso.
If the child has enjoyed it and when he was painting he got absorbed in it, that's enough. The painting is great! Not because of any objective criterion - the painting may be just nonsense; it may be just colours splashed, may be messy.... It has to be because a child is a child; he has a different vision of things.
For example, if a child makes the face of a man he has a different vision. He will make very big eyes; the nose will be very small. The ears may be missing - he has never looked at them - but eyes are very important for him. If he makes a man he will make the head and the hands and the legs and the torso will be missing - that is his vision. For you it is wrong but from his standpoint that is how he looks at a man: hands, legs and head.
So it is not the question that you have to judge whether the painting is good or bad. No, we are not going to judge at all. Judge ye not. Don't make the child feel good or bad about it. If the child is absorbed in painting it, that's enough. He was in deep meditation, he moved with the painting utterly... he was lost in it! The painting is good because the painter was lost.
Help the child to be completely lost, and whenever a child is painting on his own, he will be lost. If you force him to paint then he will be distracted. So whatsoever the children want to do, let them do; just help them. Mm ? you can help in many technical ways. You can tell them - if a child wants to paint - how to mix colours, how to fix the canvas, how to use the brush; that you can help with. Be a help there; rather than being a guide, be a help.
Just as a gardener helps the tree... You cannot pull the tree fast; you cannot do anything in that way, nothing can be done positively. You plant the seed, you water, you give the manure, and you wait!
The tree happens on its own. When the tree is happening you protect it so somebody does not hurt it or harm it. That is the function of a teacher: the teacher has to be a gardener. Not that you have to create the child; the child is coming on its own - god is the creator.
That's what socrates means when he says, 'I am a midwife.' A midwife does not create the child.
The child is already there, ready to come out; the midwife helps.
So help them to be creative, help them to be joyous, because that has disappeared from the schools.
Children are very sad, and sad children create a sad world. They are going to inhabit the world, and we destroy their joy. Help their joy, help their celebration, make them more and more cheerful.
Nothing is more valuable than that. If they are not doing mathematics it is perfectly okay, because mathematics is not the point. The point is joy!
If they are not learning language, forget about it; they are learning something far more valuable.
In this atmosphere of joy help them to learn two things - language and mathematics. History is meaningless bunk!
Just two small things - a little mathematics will be needed in their life. And about that too: we are not to make them great mathematicians, just a little mathematics so they can figure out things. And language it needed so they can communicate. They can read poetry, they can enjoy the great works.
And there is going to be no examination. There is going to be no gradation of who is first and who is second. Everybody is just the same. We make the space available for them to learn - they all have learned according to their capacities but who are we to judge? So no gradation, no examination.
And when children are a little grown up let them learn practical things - carpentry, pottery, weaving - and they will enjoy all those things. When they are still more grown up let them learn something about electricity, cars, mechanisms, technology, but practical things.
That's why the other day I said the university that is going to be will be rajneesh international anti- university. We will make everything anti: no examinations, and the vice chancellor and the chancellor will not have any degrees. Only sweepers and cleaners will have degrees!
And you have to work it out soon because when we move, then at least one hundred children will be immediately available....
Start working so it takes some shape before we move. Because there you have to start a full-fledged school. But it is going to be a totally different kind of school, because I am all for de-schooling society.
Man can be saved only if society is de-schooled or if totally different kind of schools which cannot be called schools are evolved; then only humanity can be saved.
So no ambition should be there, no comparison ever. Never compare a child with another and say, 'Look, the other has done a better painting!... That is ugly, violent, destructive. You are destroying both the children. The one you say has done a better painting starts getting the idea of the ego, superiority, and the one who has been condemned starts feeling inferior. And these are the illnesses - the superior and the inferior - so never compare!
It will be difficult for you and other teachers because comparison is so much in us. Never compare.
Each child has to be respected on his own. Each child has to be respected as unique - no comparison, no marks, no gradations. Because we are not going to create clerks or ugly things like that. We are going to create men and women.
Yes, they will need a few things in life so they are practically helped. Those things we should give them - and then they have to choose their own. In the new place we will make everything available - painting, music, dance - so wherever they want to join in, they can; whatsoever they want to do, they can do. They can have their own combinations. There will be no syllabus - there will be only opportunity.
And the teachers will work because of their joy... because they enjoy the company of the children.
So only choose teachers who are not teachers, because ordinarily teachers are people who are a little sadistic. They want to torture, and the best way to enjoy torture is to become a teacher. A teacher is a torturer, and that is the most legal situation in which to torture: school.
Parents are in favour of the children being tortured - for their own sake; the government is in favour, everybody is in favour. Everybody is for the teacher because he is doing a good job. So all the people who arc sadists by and by start moving towards particular professions the teacher, the policeman.
These are the professions where they can torture and still remain respected.
And children are so helpless: you can torture them no end and they cannot retaliate. So remember, choose teachers who are not teachers, not torturers, but people who love small children. Choose gardeners, so they can create a space for children to grow in. And they should be happy, they should not be sad and long faces. They should be able to see the humour of the children, the sense of humour. Children have immense sense of humour and teachers are very dull. They should be able to laugh with them and dance with them and hug them. They should be human.
So be very careful about choosing. In the new place, I will choose; right now you start working, but be very careful. No sadist has to be allowed there; nobody who is a disciplinarian has to be allowed there.
And I am not for order at all. Disorder is perfectly beautiful. So let there be disorder - nothing wrong. Order is one of the most dangerous calamities that has happened and obedience is one of the greatest blocks man has suffered from. They should not be forced to obey and they should not be forced into order. They should be allowed all chaos, and in chaos there is creativity, growth.
Order and discipline are needed when you have certain ideals to impose upon them - that there is a nine month or six month session and you have to go through all this. You have to pass, otherwise you will be a failure; then order is needed.
We have an eternity available! Let children enjoy - there is no hurry; there is no need to have a programme of enforcement. Just let things happen; let it be a growing nursery. And be very careful, because out of this school will come a bigger school, then a college and a university, and everything will follow. This will be the seed.
And whatsoever I have said about education and about things you just go through so you have some idea about what has to be done. But it is going to happen.
And we have beautiful children around here - you just start, mm ? Good.