Darshan 30 September 1977

[A sannyasin says his wife, a non-sannyasin, wants to study psychology.]

Where can she study psychology better than here? Just tell her!...

Anywhere else you can study psychology as a dead subject - here it is alive. Here people are opening up, growing, and that's what psychology basically is: the science of the soul.

The western psychology is yet not worthy enough of being called psychology. It is still struggling with behaviour - not what man is, but how he acts, and that too the western psychology decides by the behaviour of the animals: rats and pigeons and... because man's behaviour is complex; even to study it is difficult. And there is something in man which cannot be studied, something elusive - and that is his very soul.

The rat can be understood, studied, observed. The rat is simple because he is almost like a mechanism. He has no freedom of choice, he has no dignity of being a soul. He is absolutely unconscious; there is nothing conscious in him. So you can figure out how he behaves.

In man something has become conscious; a part, a very minute part has evolved beyond behaviourism. Man has a kind of will and man has a potential to be free. That freedom is the trouble; that is the very crux of the matter. That freedom cannot be studied because it is unpredictable. It cannot be reduced to laws, to logic. You cannot predict man; that is the problem. And that's what western psychology has been continuously doing for these hundred years - trying to find a way to predict man, to find a way to prove that man is not more than a machine.

So in fact western psychology is against psychology. The very word means the science of the soul, and they are denying the soul. They still go on calling it psychology, which is a misnomer.

Tell her she can study psychology here, mm ? All kinds of unpredictable people are here and all kinds of freedom and all the kinds of problems that freedom naturally brings. She will have a real vision of man, and it will not be through the books. It will not be bookish; it will be existential. So if she comes that will be the best thing.

No need to force sannyas on her. Tell her to come just to see what is happening here, and she will never think again to go to a university and study psychology. Just make me available to her, and if she still wants to study then help her, mm?...

So if she comes, that will be very good, mm ? And then leave it to me, mm ? - within three, four days she will be a sannyasin!

[The sannyasin then says whenever he comes into a new group of people there's a sense of deja vu - it's just exactly how it has to happen. He need not have any sorrow... like a dream unfolding... ]

Deja vu is a reality... and for you it is not a mind thing. For a few people it can be, mm? because wherever there is reality there can always be a misunderstanding too. You can project some idea; you can interpret some situation in such a way that it starts feeling like a deja vu. But deja vu in itself is a reality, because you are not here for the first time; nobody is here for the first time. All are eternal pilgrims, journeying, journeying, from one life to another. And all that you have experienced, you have experienced many times; it can't be new. Existence moves in a circle, not in a line.

It is like the rotating wheel of seasons: you have seen many springs and again the spring comes.

Again you hear the sound of the birds and it reminds you of other springs. You see the flowers blooming and it reminds you of other bloomings. And they were almost alike. I say 'almost' - I don't say that it is an exact repetition; nothing is ever repetition exactly. But it is so approximately alike that it is very difficult to make a distinction - hence deja vu. You again see the clouds floating in the sky and the sun and the birds and the trees. The spring has come again with all its joy... and you have seen those springs many times!

So somewhere deep in your unconscious you are carrying all the memories of all the past lives. It is very, very possible that again and again you will come to situations which are alike and suddenly you feel as if it has happened before. And it has happened before! Maybe the actors were different, but how can they be very much different ? Human beings are human beings after all.

For example, just listening to me, you can be surrounded by a sense of deja vu: you can start feeling you have listened to me before, the same way. I may not have been with you before but you may have listened to some other master. And they have all the same look in the eyes, the same scent to their being, the same song to sing. Words differ but the rhythm, the constantly running underground rhythm is the same. So right now you can be caught in a deja vu.

You have listened to many more people before. It is not possible that you have come for the first time to a master.... How is it possible? For millenia you have been searching. It is impossible not to have come across... You may have come across a jesus or a buddha or a krishna or a rinzai or a bodhidharma. Down the ages in so many lives how can you avoid not coming across a buddha? It is not possible!

You may not have met me before - that's possible; that's not a problem - but someone very much like me. You may have looked with the same love at some other master, with the same trust, with the same open heart, and again it is happening! You may have drunk from some other master in the same way with such sensitivity and receptivity... and again it is happening! It can bring to your memory the floating fragrances of past lives, the nostalgia.

And my feeling is that you don't have a very very strong division between this life and your past lives; that's why deja vu happens. Deja vu happens to everybody but how strong it can be depends - the strength depends on what type of barrier exists between this life and the past lives and other lives.

If it is a china wall, very thick, it is very difficult for things to cross over. And even if they cross, they become distorted. The wall distorts them and by the time they reach you the moment is lost.

You don't have what you call 'an iron curtain'. Mm? - you have a bamboo curtain, so things can slip from one life into another very easily. It is perfectly good. Enjoy it and it will become more and more possible.

And it can be very very weird sometimes because when you go into it you can start feeling as if you are in a dream. You can start feeling as if you are living a fantasy, not reality... as if those people around here are not there; maybe it is just a memory. And that makes for a kind of weirdness. It can be scary too, it can frighten too; it depends on your interpretation.

So accept it, welcome it, and when it comes, enjoy it, and you will become more and more capable of it. My feeling is that you can easily remember your past lives sometimes, and that's a great experience. So allow this phenomenon more and more accessibility to you. It is coming on its own, mm? - you have just not to hinder it. And don't think whether it is a projection, whether you are just imagining it - because these are barriers.

If this idea gets very settled in your mind - that this is a kind of imagination - then those deja vu's will stop. If you think it is just a mind thing then you will start dropping it. You will become resistant, defensive against it. No, deja vu is a reality, because we have lived so many lives and we have loved in so many ways.We have been angry in so many ways with so many people. We have been friends and enemies, and all that is happening to you now has happened many many times before.

Sometimes two similar things - not exactly alike but almost alike - get hooked with each other, and suddenly there is deja vu. And I am not saying that everybody who thinks it is a deja vu is really experiencing a deja vu, but about you I am certain. It is deja vu - go into it! Good!

[A visitor tells Osho he has done primal therapy for two years in the West. Osho says, but I don't think it really went deep. The visitor agrees with him.]

Mm mm... because it has not changed your aura. Your aura is still adultish. When somebody has really gone into primal his aura becomes childish. And to be childish is beautiful; to be adultish is ugly. From that point when one has become a child again, things start moving in a different direction, in a different dimension. Then you really start growing.

Otherwise people are stuck: they go round and round in circles but no progress as such happens.

They do a thousand and one things but nothing seems to be fulfilling. They rush from one thing to

another but life remains empty and hollow. And that hollowness is the misery, that hollowness is what pain is... and that is there in you.

A few groups will be of immense help, mm?... Do these... groups and in three months we will go slowly, slowly towards primal again. The last group to do here is primal.

Primal should not be done in the beginning; one should prepare for the jump. The process is of immense value - there is no doubt about it - but in the west what happens is that people start by primal. That cannot be done. Even janov thinks that it is enough unto itself; it is not.

Many things are needed to be done before it, and many more will be needed after it. It is just a fragment - immensely valuable but still a fragment. It is not the whole philosophy of man.

[The visitor says: I feel problems about the outside society and here... too much antipathy between the Indians and what is happening here.]

That has nothing to do with you... that has nothing to do with you! If you want to take on other people's problems, then you can. If you are searching for problems you can have as many as you like. First solve your problems! What do you have to do with those things? That is their problem. If indians have some antipathy, that is their problem. What does that have to do with you? You have not come to solve their problem, and you have not come to solve the problem of the ashram and the people. That is none of your business.

You have come here for your problem. Solve it first, and by solving it you will be able to see that that is nothing unnatural, that antipathy. That has always been there, otherwise why was jesus crucified?

Because people loved him too much? Is that why they crucified him ? Why was socrates poisoned?

Because athens was very worshipful towards him ? They were antipathetic - they could not tolerate socrates. How can they tolerate me? They could not tolerate jesus. They cannot make an exception of me.

This has always been so and this is going to remain so. Now think of a young man, think of yourself.

Go back two thousand years and you go to Jesus. You say to him that you are very much disturbed because people are very antipathetic towards him. That will be wasting your time and Jesus' time.

Those moments are rare. Drink of him as much as you can! Hold his hand. Walk a little way with him; then you will know what walking is. Then you will know how far one can go with him. Just have a taste of it. But you will be worried about this - that because others are antagonistic towards him, you are puzzled. But that is wasting energy, opportunity.

Forget about what Indians say! I am not an Indian and I don't exist here. I belong to people who belong to me. I belong to the orange world... wherever it is. They are my people and I am theirs....

And I am not worried about others - there is no point in it. This is not their trip, so it's okay. They don't want to be benefited; that is perfectly okay. They don't want to take this opportunity, use this opportunity. That is their decision and I respect their decision. They are antipathetic because they feel the attraction but they are not courageous enough to take the jump - hence, they create a barrier of antipathy. That barrier keeps them away from me; otherwise sooner or later they can be pulled in.

They are not really against me - they are defending themselves. They are finding excuses why not to come to me, that's all. But that is their business, that is their life. They are masters of their life.

They have missed Buddha, they have missed Jesus, they have missed Krishna. If they want to, they can miss this opportunity too.

But you have not come to solve their problems. Don't become a saviour. Just first solve your problems and then you will have a clear vision. Then you will see what the problem is.

There is no problem really. This is a natural tendency in the mass mind. The mass mind cannot allow anything revolutionary to happen in the world. It is very dangerous for the mass mind and its investments.

People want to huddle together like sheep; they don't want to become individuals. And my message is to be an individual. It is asocial. My whole emphasis is that this is your life and you have to respect this. You have to be responsible towards your life - nobody else has the authority to manipulate you.

To allow somebody else to manipulate you - the society, the religion, the state - is to betray yourself, is to betray god.

So my message is individualistic. No society will like it. The society lives with lies - ancient, old lies, so ancient that people have completely forgotten that they are lies. They have been repeated so often and for so long that they have become truths.

Adolf Hitler has said that if you repeat a lie continuously it becomes a truth sooner or later... just go on repeating it. People live with this repeated lie they call truth. Whenever you declare the truth they are antagonistic because it goes against their truths, so-called truths. They are lies - because in fact no truth can go against ally other truth; that is not possible. Two truths are always friendly. It is impossible to find a dichotomy between two truths.

Two lies are always friendly; it is difficult to find any dichotomy between two lies. So when you speak one lie you will have to speak many lies to support it, to protect it, to defend it. If you speak one truth you will have to speak many truths, but truth and lies are two worlds apart, like light and darkness.

When jesus is crucified it is darkness crucifying a light. When socrates is killed it is the social lie destroying the individual truth - and truth is always individual.

So simply forget about it; otherwise you will be wasting time. Just start moving. They are there and perfectly okay - don't listen to them. Start meditating, go into groups, and within a month you will start becoming clear about things. Then you will know that whatsoever they are doing, that's all that they can do. That's why Jesus says - his last statement is - 'God, forgive these people because they don't know what they are doing'....

So we can only forgive them, that's all; nothing else can be done. Forgive and forget! Good, mm?

[Another visitor says she feels many emotions.]

That's good! That is very good! Emotional people are good people; intellectual people are just useless. They make too much fuss about nothing, much ado about nothing. Emotional people are real people, authentic people, and much is possible for an emotional person because he functions through the heart.

The head is very dull, unintelligent, mediocre. The heart is very original. All that is original comes from the heart, and all that is courageous comes from the heart. The heart knows how to take risks.

The head never knows; it knows only how to calculate.

[The visitor says she has done primal therapy in the west. She doesn't want to do groups here - she would rather do something more playful.]

Mm mm, but you don't know what groups are going on here - they are playing groups! Just try two, and then you will decide. Then if you want to do more you can do more, otherwise no need, mm?

But try at least two groups so you have a feel what is going on here....

Then we will see - if you like to do any more... Because they are of immense value. You are just not aware what is going on here. You must be thinking about your primal. There are many kinds of groups here. I see what a person needs - then only do I suggest. You need something playful. You go into it!

[A visitor has previously written to Osho to say he runs a million-dollar-a-year business in India, and at the same time is looking for himself.]

Much is possible - your energy is perfectly good and flowing. You just have to learn the knack of growing... and it is a knack. Otherwise one can go on stumbling for one's whole life and will not find the door. Sometimes it happens the door has always been in front of you but it is so obvious that you became oblivious of it.

[Osho checks his energy.]

You are in a very very ripe space from where things can start growing. My feeling is that you have been avoiding, somehow escaping from it and getting involved in things so that you can forget about your inner self. There is nothing wrong in doing things but one should not escape from one's own being because that is our ultimate home. We have to come to terms with it. And the right time has come to come to terms with it. Why don't you become a sannyasin?

Deva means divine, manoj means beauty. You are carrying a great possibility of flowering in divine beauty, and it is your responsibility to help it, not to hinder it. The greater potentiality, the greater is the responsibility. Your success in the world, in the business, is not ultimately going to prove you successful, no. Do it - it is perfectly good in its own place - but don't for a single moment be deceived by it. That is not going to become your fulfillment. The fulfillment comes only from inner riches. And you can be as successful in the inner as you are in the outer, because it is the same energy that you put into the outer when you start succeeding there; it is the same energy you put in when you start succeeding there. It is only a question of dimension; the energy is the same. It happens almost always that the richest people in the world are the poorest as far as their inner being is concerned. It is not so difficult to find a poor man who has a rich soul, but it is very very difficult to find a rich man who has a rich soul.

Why does it happen? - because it is the same energy. You can buy the inner riches or you can buy the outer riches. You have only a certain amount of energy; you can purchase anything. But outer riches finally don't prove riches. They will be taken away, and with them the whole energy goes

down the drain. The inner riches will never be taken away - nobody can take them. Even death cannot take them away.

In the eastern scriptures we define riches as that which cannot be taken away from you. That is our definition of richness. That which can be taken away is just borrowed. You can befool yourself for a time being but sooner or later it will be taken away. Death takes everything away except meditation, except your inner experience of ecstasy, so that is the only kingdom. Hence jesus goes on saying, 'The kingdom of god is within.'

I see a great future for you. And you are courageous too - you can simply move into the inner.

[The new sannyasin says he loves to chant.]

Good. Chanting is very good; it will suit you. Start chanting: every day for at least one hour chant and go mad in chanting. It should not be done in a lukewarm way; it should not be done in a ritualistic way. It should be wild; only then will it help. You should be completely lost in it. It should be so total that not only are you chanting by the throat - your whole body starts chanting it. You will start feeling the vibration. Chanting done totally vibrates every fibre of the body from the head to the toe. Chanting has to be from the guts.

Chanting is perfectly good. Devote one hour to chanting, but make it a wild joy! And there is no need to have any form. Even if the chanting becomes absurd, nonsensical, becomes gibberish, it is perfectly okay; that is not the point. The chanting has not to be meaningful.

Chanting is the meaning; there is no other meaning in it. What you are chanting is irrelevant - that you are chanting is relevant. So you can chant 'ram, ram...' or 'allah, allah...' or anything. Or you can change as the feeling moves you. Sometimes you can simply start uttering wild noises. And you will be transformed by it - it will change the very chemistry of your body - so chanting is good.

And one thing - if you can do it before you come - is Vipassana. It is a Buddhist meditation course.

Otherwise, when you come here do it. Chanting will do for these two, three months. Good! And help my people there! Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says she was sick and wanted to return to the West, but now she is well she wants to stay but has doubts - fear.]

Fear is not a doubt! Mm? In illness it is possible to have doubts because doubting is also an ill state of affairs. When you are healthy you have trust; when you are unhealthy you have doubts. So people who have doubts never become healthy... healthy in the sense of being whole. The doubts go on feeding their pathologies. A really healthy person, a really whole person, is one who has absolute trust in life, whose doubts have completely disappeared... just as darkness disappears when you bring a lamp in.

But it is very natural - when you are weak and the body is ill, you are suffering, you are in pain and anguish, all kinds of doubt come; they come in weakness. It is just as if you are Lying down underneath a tree and the animals feel that you are dead. Then they will all jump on you and start devouring you. But if they know that you are alive they won't come close by.

It happens in exactly the same way in the mind. When you are feeling depressed, sad, not in a good space, negative, all doubts start penetrating you from every door, nook and comer. You become a collection of doubts. So that was nothing to be worried about. As you are becoming again healthy, those doubts will disappear. They were part of your illness; they have nothing to do with you really.

But if you have some other reasons to go, you can go and come back. If there are other reasons - you would like to visit your parents or friends or you would just like to go, just a desire to be there - then there is no need to repress it. Because this love affair with me is strong enough, so there is no problem. You can go away for a few months and you will come back closer to me; that is not a problem. You can afford it. This love affair is strong enough - it can survive ail doubts and all separations. You can go for a few months, you can enjoy it there and then come back.

But if there is no special reason to go - just a vagrant idea in the mind - then why waste time? Your body will be okay within a month, perfectly okay. And continue working, mm? Would you like to stay permanently here, finally?

Mm, so... before finally deciding to be here you can go and say good-bye to your friends there. And you can always hook a few people for me! Right! Good!

[The new movement group is present. The leader says sometimes the group got stuck and he took the responsibility on himself and sometimes he thought participants caused it.]

You have to drop that idea. You have to remember that it is your love, not your duty. It is your love for me that you work; it is your love for people that you help. But it is not your duty, it is not a performance. You need not worry about it. If something happens, good; if nothing happens, good. Nothing is there to worry about it... but the worry comes; in the beginning it comes to each groupleader. By and by you will learn to leave everything to me.

When something good happens, let me enjoy the joy of it. Don't say that it is happening because of you. And you will not be a loser, because when nothing happens then I am responsible... and nothing happens more often so you are not a loser really! Just drop every responsibility on me. Here you represent me, that's all. Here, be anonymous... just a vehicle for me. Then you will never feel these ups and downs. And if you feel ups and downs, the group will too.

The leader decides the direction - unknowingly, unconsciously - because you are the leader;that is the meaning of being the leader. If you are going down, they all go down. Where else can they go?

- they follow you! If you are going up, they all go up. And the beauty is that you think because they are all down you are going down. They are going down because you are down! It can be a very vicious circle - and you have to break out of it!

The people who come to the group are new. By and by they will become related to me more and more, but you have to be absolutely related to me.

Whenever this idea of responsibility comes, always remember it is ego. It is a love offering, not a responsibility. When you feel nothing is happening, your ego feels hurt. Why in the first place should you expect that something should happen? Just create the space - if something happens, good; if nothing happens, good. Nothing, too, is a valuable happening! Maybe that is what is needed for the people in that moment. Don't start forcing.

This is an ego need: you want to be supported in your ego by the group. You want them to go very high so that they can say, 'Yes, you are a great leader, a great groupleader.' You have to understand this: this need has to be by and by understood and dropped. And if you drop this need you will find things flowing more easily. You will not find so many moments of being stuck, because when you don't have any expectations how can you be stuck? in what? Expectations are the rocks where we get stuck and the flow stops. Deep down somewhere you must be hankering for the attention - that people should give you feedback that you are great.

You are great - there is no need to hanker for it. Nobody can make you great. You are great as everybody is. I have never come across a man who is not great; it doesn't happen in nature. All is great because all is from god. God creates only great people. But we have a very wrong notion that we have to prove ourselves great. That is the beginning of madness!

Then we constantly hanker that everybody should give us certificates. We go on gathering certificates, piles upon piles, and we sit on top of them feeling that we are great. But you have been great from the very beginning! Not a single moment have you been anything else!

The very idea 'I have to be great' means that you have accepted that you are not great. That's why a very very strange thing happens in life: people who reach to the height of their success are more polite and humble than the people who are not at the peak.

The story is told of a private in world war one who shouted, 'Put out that damn match, you son of a bitch,' only to find to his chagrin that the offender had been general 'black jack' pershing. When he tried to stammer out his apology, general pershing patted him on the back and said, 'That's all right, son. Just be glad I'm not a second lieutenant.'

I liked it! He said, 'If I had been your second-lieutenant you would have been in trouble. Be glad that I am your general,' he said, 'and not your second-lieutenant.'

When people are at the peak of their career they become humble because there is nothing left to prove. A small fry is always arrogant; in fact the arrogancy shows how small he is. A policeman is more arrogant than the superintendent, and so on, so forth. The emperor is always very humble and polite because there is no need to prove anything: he is the emperor.

My whole approach here is to declare to you that you are emperors from your very birth; you need not prove it. And your being an emperor does not depend on somebody else being lower than you, no. It is non-comparative. Others are also emperors, just as you are. Your uniqueness does not depend on somebody else being mediocre. Your uniqueness exists in the uniqueness of all, with the uniqueness of all. This whole existence is unique and superb. It is the most perfect world possible.

With this understanding and acceptance all fear disappears. Then you are no more nervous; you are not proving anything. Then things move so smoothly that miracles start happening.

So drop that idea. The next group you do, just leave it to me. And whenever you feel stuck, just remember that it is Osho's business; you are just a representative. If he wants people to be low, let them be low. If he wants people to be high, let them be high. You become a vehicle, and the next group will have a different quality.

[A sannyasin tells Osho that a year and a half ago he told her to finish her studies. It will take another two and a half years, which means coming and going from here. Her heart wants to stay here, the mind says she should finish the studies.]