Darshan 5 April 1977

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: It's bothered me for a long time that I feel I never meditated... I opened a lot but I never go inside at all.

Osho checks her energy.]

Mm mm, just come closer. Raise your hands, close your eyes, and if something starts happening in the body energy, allow it. I would like to see where your energy is moving.

... Good! Nothing to be worried about. Simply go on opening, that's your meditation, and forget about going in. Your energy needs to go out. In fact you have always remained closed - so your real problem is not to go in, your real problem is to go out.

Basically you have remained in, so this is not the moment to go in. The energy has to go to the outermost periphery. Only from there will it start travelling in, not before that. Before that you can force it, but anything forced is useless, meaningless. It is violence, it is ugly and it cripples one - it doesn't help growth.

So one very fundamental thing to be remembered: follow wherever the energy is going, rather than forcing the energy to follow you. You are secondary, the energy is primary. The energy is bigger than you; you are just the tiny mind. The energy has existed eternally; this tiny mind has come just now. It may go off again and the energy will Continue. You have attained to many minds in your past, as everybody has. Those minds are being used and then dropped, and the energy goes on.

It is like a wave, a great wave moving, and the mind is just like a small straw. The mind is very tiny, but our whole effort in life is to make the wave move with the tiny straw. We want the dog to wag with the tail. The tail wags with the dog - vice versa is not possible.

So simply listen to what the energy says: if it is going out then that is right, if it is opening then that is right. That is what is needed, that is what should be. Go with it, and go with it whole-heartedly.

If you start shrinking and you start thinking about how to go in, you will create a division in the energy - a part will have started moving against the whole. Then there will be conflict, friction, tension anxiety. Simply go with it.

One day suddenly you will see that when the opening has come to its perfection, the energy starts moving inwards on its own accord - not that you move it in. It is just as when you exhale deeply:

you throw all the air out, then the next step, to inhale, is going to be automatic. What can you do?

When you have really exhaled, the whole of the air has been thrown out, the necessity is created to inhale; now your whole body will be hungry and thirsty for air. You need not inhale - you can simply wait and watch and you will see: the body has started inhaling. With a great rush the air goes into your being.

The same happens in the energy: you go to the outermost periphery, go on opening, then one day you come to the last point from where there is no going ahead. Then the tide turns in, the same energy starts moving homewards.

So simply go with it. Don't create any anxieties and don't create any problem, mm?

... When you come next time I have the feeling your energy will start moving. But don't force: simply go on as it is. Just enjoy this opening, mm?

Keep this box with you and whenever you need me, just lie down, put this box on the heart, remember me, and if something starts happening in the body, allow. Mm? not that you have to do something - just go with the body. If the hand starts moving, go with it, or if nothing happens remain with that nothing - no interference. And things are going well. Good!

[A sannyasin therapist says: For about the last five years I've been doing the same kind of work, group work, and in the last year or so it's felt old to me, it's felt stale... I love the work that I do and I want to keep doing it, but I feel that I need something new to do with it. I was wondering if you had anything to say.

Mm, it is a good feeling, it is a very good feeling - don't take it negatively. It simply says that you have to be more inventive, innovative, that you have to discover new ways of work, of caring, of helping, that you have to be more creative.

It always happens - when you start work, new work, you are very creative, you are deeply involved in it, your whole being is in it. It is a kind of honeymoon: energies flow and each small thing seems to be beautiful; whatsoever happens is a great reward and one feels thrilled.

Then by and by you become acquainted with the territory. Then rather than being inventive and creative you start being repetitive. That too is natural, because the more skilled you become in any work, naturally the more repetitive you become. Skill is repetitive.

So all great discoveries are made by amateurs, never by skilled people - because a skilled person has much at stake. If something new happens then what will happen to his old skill? He has learned for years and now he has become an expert. So experts never discover anything; they never go beyond the limit of their expertise. On the one hand they become more and more skillful, on the other hand they become more and more dull and the work seems to be a drag. Because now there is nothing new which can be a thrill to them - they know already what is going to happen, they know what they are going to do; there is no surprise in it.

So learn a lesson, that it is good to attain to skill but it is not good to settle with it forever. Whenever the feeling arises in you that now the thing is looking stale, change it, invent something, add something new, delete something old. Again be free from the pattern - that means be free from the skill; again become an amateur. That needs courage and guts, to become an amateur again, but that's how life becomes beautiful.

So never get fixed. Of course to be fixed has much security, because you know where you are - you can depend on it, it is dependable, reliable. When you start something new it is not dependable.

One never knows whether it will turn out right or wrong, whether one is going in a direction which will bring fulfillment or is moving into a cul-de-sac - one never knows!

This path may not lead anywhere, you may just come to the end of the road. The old is known - you have travelled on it, you can go easily, you can go with closed eyes. It does not create any anxiety; you are well-skilled in it.

So skill has something in it, and that is security. It misses something, and that is adventure. So all secure lives will be non-adventurous and all adventurous lives will be insecure.

If you really want to live, then remember: life is with insecurity, life is always when you are moving into something unknown, when you are always risking. It is a gamble! Then there is thrill, again and again there is thrill, and each day brings something surprising.

And that's how one should live - because security means you have already died before your death.

Look at experts - famous, world-famous experts - you will always see that their eyes are dull and dead and that their faces have no glow. They go on doing things like robots. If they are replaced by a robot they will not be missed - they were just mechanical.

So don't become mechanical. Your work is good. Find new ways in it, try new methods in it - at the risk of being an amateur, at the risk of being laughed at, at the risk of being a failure. Sometimes you may fail. I am not saying that you may not fail - with the new there is always danger - but then there will be thrill. And that thrill is worth the risk - at any price it is worth it.

So just look into your work and find out how you can go beyond the boundaries that you have made in these five years.

And there is so much to be brought into growth work, into group work, there is so much: infinite is the possibility. And all that is already available is nothing, it is just a beginning! The east has been working for thousands of years and it has invented so much. One feels that there is no end to it. one can go on inventing.

So just look around: whatsoever you have been doing, that is not the end. Open it up again, let the journey start again. Bring in new things - sometimes bizarre, eccentric, sometimes almost crazy:

they all help.

In fact all inventors are thought to be crazy people, eccentric - they are, because they go beyond the limit. Mm? they find their own pathways. They never walk on the superhighway, that is not for them; they move into the forest. There is danger: they may be lost, they may not he able to come back again to the crowd, they are losing contact with the herd....

So the urge is perfectly good, the impulse is beautiful. Don't try to crush it and don't try to repress it - allow it. This is the life impulse - it is asserting itself against your dead pattern. This is you, this is your future. which is saying 'Nonsense! Now stop it! Enough - you have done enough! Now do something else.'

So either bring something new into the old work so it becomes new and growing, is not mechanical but becomes organic - or change: change the whole thing and start doing something new, absolutely new. But that is a second choice: if you cannot change your work, then change it altogether, drop it.

Learn from ABC and become a potter or a musician or a dancer - anything! I'm not saying what to become. Anything will do: a painter, a vagabond, a beggar - anything will do!

First try to bring something new into your work. If it cannot be done, if your habit has become too dead, then drop the whole habit; then it is not improving. But I don't think it is so. Mm? it can be improved: you can bring new visions, new doors, windows, into it - new spaces can be opened.

Always remember this impulse - this will come again and again - and always trust it: it is your life!

It is life saying to you that this habit is too dead now - either leave it or life will leave you.

A really authentic man goes on changing; that's why a really authentic man can never be consistent.

Consistency belongs to death, not to life. A really alive man goes on moving from one extreme to another. He implies all contradictions and he is available for anything; wherever his life impulse leads him he is ready to go.

Ordinarily the mind will say that this is wrong - you are now established, you are a groupleader, you are this and that; you have a certain name, a certain fame and so many people know you, your work is going well and it is paying you well, things are settled, why bother? Your mind will say this. Never listen to the mind, the mind is in the service of death.

If you listen to the mind it will say, 'Better that you commit suicide - then you will be perfectly safe.

Life is dangerous, accidents are possible if you are alive. If you are dead, resting in your grave, there is no fear, no accident is possible. Today you have name and fame and prestige - who knows about tomorrow? So it is better to die and your name and fame will always be there. If you are alive you may destroy something, things may go wrong.'

The mind is in the service of the past, and this impulse that is arising in you is in the service of the future. So there will be a conflict - but always trust this small, still voice within you.

This is god's voice. It never allows you to become dead, it always pulls you out. If you don't listen for a long time, by and by you forget about it. It goes on knocking, but the knock becomes smaller and smaller and almost inaudible.

And I am here to change everything! Good!

[A sannyasin leaving for the West, asks Osho if the names he gives sannyasins are an indication of how they were or what they can become.... ]

The name can say many things, and I give names to different people for different reasons. I have given it to you as your goal. It means divine homelessness. And homelessness, the space we call homelessness, is a space where you don't belong to anybody and nobody belongs to you. It is utter unattachment.

Ordinarily we are all seeking homes - home means security, safety. Homelessness means insecurity - and when you are really happy in being homeless, your happiness cannot be destroyed. Nobody can take it away, because it is not caused by anything.

When one is really homeless, one lives moment to moment. Then one is not planning for the future, one cannot plan for the future. So all this is implied in homelessness.

It is the ultimate goal. That's what buddha calls 'nirvana' - an absolute space with no centre at all, a centreless space.