Darshan 18 April 1976

[ A sannyasin says: When I am by myself I feel I can let go in some ways and love people but as soon as I come into their presence, the shutters go up.]

Mm... mm. It is difficult to love real people because a real person is not going to fulfil your expectations. He is not meant to. He is not here to fulfill anybody else's expectations. He has to live his own life. And whenever he moves somewhere which goes against you or is not in tune with your feelings, emotions, your being, it becomes difficult.

It is very easy to think about love. It is very difficult to love. It is very easy to love the whole world.

The real difficulty is to love a single human being. It is very easy to love God or humanity. The real problem arises when you come across a real person and you encounter him. To encounter him is to go through a great change and a great challenge.

He is not going to be your slave and neither are you going to be a slave to him. That's where the real problem arises. If you are going to be a slave or if he is going to be a slave, then there is no problem. The problem arises because nobody is here to play a slave - and nobody can be a slave.

Everybody is a free agent... the whole being consists of freedom. Man is freedom.

So remember - the problem is real. It has nothing to do with you personally. The problem has to do with the whole phenomenon of love. Don't make it a personal problem, otherwise you will be in difficulty. Everybody has to face the same problem, more or less. I have never come across a person who has no difficulty in love. It has something to do with love, the very world of love.

The very relationship brings you to such situations where problems arise... and it is good to pass through them. In the East people have escaped just seeing the difficulty in it. They started denying

their love, rejecting their love. They became loveless and they called it non-attachment. By and by they became deadened. Love almost disappeared from the East and only meditation remained.

Meditation means that you are feeling good in your loneliness. Meditation means that you are related only to yourself. Your circle is complete with yourself; you don't go out of it. Of course ninety-nine percent of your problems are solved - but at a very great cost. You will be less troubled now. The eastern man is less anxious, less tense... almost lives in his own inner cave, protected, with eyes dosed. He does not allow his energy to move. He makes a short circuit... a small energy movement inside his being and he is happy. But his happiness is a little dead. His happiness is not a jubilation...

it is not a joy.

At the most you can say that it is not unhappiness. At the most you can say something of the negative about it, as if you say that you are healthy because you don't have any illness. But that is not much of a health. Health should have something positive, a glow of its own - not just absence of disease. In that way even a dead body is healthy because it has no illnesses.

So in the East we have tried to live without love, to renounce the world - that means to renounce love - to renounce the woman, the man, and all possibilities where love can flower. Jain monks, hindu monks, buddhist monks, are not allowed to talk to a woman when they are alone; not allowed to touch a woman, not really allowed to even see face to face. When a woman comes to ask something they have to keep their eyes down. They have to look at the tip of their nose so they don't see the woman even by mistake. Because who knows, something might click... and one is almost helpless in the hands of love.

They don't stay in people's homes and they don't stay long in one place because attachment, love, becomes possible. So they go on moving, wandering, and avoiding - avoiding all relationships.

They have attained a certain quality of stillness. They are undisturbed people, undistracted by the world, but not happy, not celebrating.

In the West just the opposite has happened. People have tried to find happiness through love and they have created much trouble. They have lost all contact with themselves. They have moved so far away from themselves that they don't know how to come back. They don't know where the path is, where their home is. So they feel meaningless, homeless, and they go on making more and more love efforts with this woman, with that man - heterosexual, homosexual, autosexual. They go on trying every way and again they feel empty, because love alone can give you happiness but there will not be any silence in it. And when there is happiness and no silence, again something is missing.

When you are happy without silence your happiness will be like a fever - excitement... much ado about nothing. That feverish state will create much tension in you, and nothing will come out of it, just running, chasing. And one day one comes to realise that the whole effort has been baseless because you have been trying to find the other, and you have not yet found yourself.

Both these ways have failed. The East has failed because it tried meditation without love. The West has failed because it tried love without meditation. My whole effort is to give you a synthesis, the whole - which means meditation plus love. One should be able to be happy alone and one should also be able to be happy with people. One should be happy inside and one should also be happy

in relationships. One should make a beautiful house inside and outside too. You should have a beautiful garden surrounding your house and a beautiful bedroom too. The garden is not against the bedroom; the bedroom is not against the garden.

So meditation should be an inner shelter, an inner shrine. Whenever you feel that the world is too much for you, you can move into your shrine. You can have a bath in your inner being. You can rejuvenate yourself. You can come out resurrected; again alive, fresh, young, renewed... to live, to be. But you should also be capable of loving people and facing problems, because a silence that is impotent and cannot face problems is not much of a silence, is not worth much.

Only a silence that can face problems and remain silent is something to be longed for, to be desired.

So these two things I would like to tell you: First start doing meditation ... because it is always good to start from the nearest centre of your being, and that is meditation. But never get stuck in it.

Meditation should move, flower, unfold and become love. So for the second thing, do a few groups here.

And don't be worried... don't make it a problem - it is not. It is simply human; it's natural. Everybody is afraid - has to be. Life is such that one has to be. And people who become fearless, become fearless not by becoming brave - because a brave man has only repressed his fear; he's not really fearless. A man becomes fearless by accepting his fears. It is not a question of bravery. It is simply seeing into the facts of life and realising that these fears are natural. One accepts them!

The problem arises because you want to reject them. You have been taught very egoistical ideals - 'Be brave'. What nonsense! Foolish! How can an intelligent man avoid fears? If you are stupid you will not have any fears. Then the bus driver goes on honking, and you stand in the middle of the road unafraid. Or a bull comes charging at you and you stand there unafraid. But you are stupid! An intelligent man has to jump out of the way.

If you become an addict and start looking everywhere for the snake, then there is a problem. If there is nobody on the road and then too you are afraid and start running, there is a problem; otherwise, fear is natural.

So when I say that you will get rid of your fear, I don't mean that there will be no fears in life. You will come to know that ninety percent of your fears are just imagination. Ten percent are real so one has to accept them. I don't make people brave. I make them more responsive, sensitive, alert, and their alertness is enough. They become aware that they can use their fears also as stepping stones. So don't be worried, mm?

Saurabh means a very great lake, a very silent lake, and deva means divine... a divine lake. And become one, mm? Become more and more silent, and always keep this image of a deep silent cool lake inside.

Remember it, and when you go to sleep at night just feel as if you are sitting by the side of a very great lake... you cannot see the other shore. It is so silent that there are no ripples on it. Just go on remembering it, feeling it - the coolness of it, the peace, the silence - and fall asleep. Do that every day, just for two or three minutes before you go to sleep, and much will happen through it.

[A sannyasin says: I feel I'm dying.]

Very good! Accept it, allow it.

Death is the door. If you can accept it and allow it, for the first time you will become alive through it Death can only destroy that which is not you. It can never destroy that which is you. It always purifies that which is you; the essential is purified. It is as if gold is passing through fire. It is difficult because one thinks oneself to be that which one is not. One clings.... Allow it.

If you can see death, death cannot see you. So see it, and enjoy it. Don't be worried! And laugh at it - there is nothing serious about it.

[Osho touches his head. The sannyasin says that since a man died in front of him while he was working he cannot feel the fear that was in him.]

It has gone - very good.

When your energy starts moving upwards and it passes through the moon centre, one feels as if death is happening. The lowest centre is the sun centre and higher than that is the moon centre.

When you pass through the moon centre.... The japanese call it hara; that's why they call suicide 'hara kiri' - destroying the hara centre. So when the energy starts moving just below the navel, you feel as if death is coming. It is nothing.

Once it has passed the moon centre you will feel more alive than you have ever felt. You will feel as though you are being born for the first time... as if your whole life up to this moment has been a dream. That is going to happen.

So just feel my hand on your head, because that is the last centre, sahasrar. If you can feel my hand there, the energy will be sucked up more and more.

And there is no need to remember my form because my form is not me.

[A sannyasin, who is a film star, says: I see the futility of it all.]

I understand. It is futile. Understand that it is futile... but everything is futile. If you start dropping out of things, then by and by you will see that everything is futile. The wife is futile, the children are futile; the family is futile. Then one goes on shrinking, because wherever you go, everything is futile. One day one feels, 'What is the use of eating? Why get up every day in the morning?' That will become a suicide.

Die - but don't commit suicide because that will be a slow type of shrinking in. If you see that something is futile, understand it is futile and don't get disturbed by it. Whether you succeed or fail you know it is futile, so success and failure become the same. But now you are no longer worried.

One goes on doing the same things; knowing it is a dream, one goes on enjoying it. What is the point of disturbing it? It is just a dream so why disturb it?

The very idea that something is meaningless is a deep desire for something meaningful - and there is nothing meaningful. Everything is meaningless except the witness. So the witness can be anywhere.

I don't see that there can be any better profession for witnessing than acting. Actors can move into meditation better than other people because their whole art consists of just creating a dream and being someone, knowing you are not that person.

You are playing the role of Rama. You know you are not Rama; you are acting it. The witnessing remains there spontaneously. So whatsoever you are doing on stage, bring the same quality into the world also. When you come home, then too remember that this is acting. Be a husband and remember that this too is acting. Be a father and remember that this too is acting.

If the twenty-four hours of your day become an acting, your quality as an actor will become superb and your witnessing will increase.

Have you heard about one actor who looked like Abraham Lincoln? When they were celebrating the one hundredth year of Abraham Lincoln, this man was called to act as him. For one year he travelled continuously all over America acting as Abraham Lincoln. It got into his head. He started walking like Abraham Lincoln, stuttering like Abraham Lincoln... the dress and everything.

When after one year the job was finished, he continued to be Abraham Lincoln. People tried to persuade him, the family tried to persuade him that this was foolish and he was becoming the laughing stock of the country. But it got so deep in his head that he started saying, 'What do you mean? I am Abraham Lincoln!' He almost went crazy! Everybody tried to persuade him. He was psychoanalysed, this and that; hospitalised - nothing happened.

Then one psychoanalyst tried the lie detector that they use in America in the courts. The person stands on the mechanism and if he says something untrue, the machine gives the hint. When you say something untrue, your breathing is different, your heartbeat is different. Your whole inner system changes and the machine catches the jerk.

A few questions have to be asked: What is the time? - and you say nine o'clock or ten o'clock or whatsoever and there is no need to lie. And then you are asked what colour the tree is and you say green; there is no need to lie. Many questions are asked in which you cannot lie and the detector goes on giving the rhythm. Then suddenly you are asked, 'Who are you? Abraham Lincoln?' If you are Lying the detector will show that the rhythm has been broken; suddenly the graph has jumped and it is no more rhythmic.

This man had become so fed up with everybody trying to persuade him that he decided that today he would say he was not Abraham Lincoln. When he was standing on the machine, he was asked, 'Are you Abraham Lincoln?' He said, 'No, I am not' - and the detector said he was lying! (laughter) He had got so identified. That is what is happening to everybody. But an actor has to change roles.

A business man has to remain in the same role for his whole life; a doctor has to remain in the same role - but an actor has to change every day. Even in one day he changes twice, thrice. This is very good. One remains mobile, liquid, and one never gets an identity of who one is.

This is my observation from working with so many people - that a good actor can become very easily meditative. People are sometimes surprised that actors become so interested. The reason is their profession. Their very work by and by will give them the feeling that they are separate from their roles. One day or other they will see everything as a role.

So I would like you to remain there (in the film world). Don't get disturbed - enjoy the whole thing. It is nonsense but why not enjoy it? It is futile but why ask for more? Why shouldn't it be futile?

Whatsoever it is, enjoy it as a gift. The day I feel that now there is no growth for you there I will tell you to get out of it. But be there, because much is possible there which will not be so easily possible outside.

[A sannyasin says: I never thought that I was afraid of anything, but at home when I was meditating, I just couldn't do it. I tried again and again and I failed three times.]

Fear is there with everybody, but ordinarily we live just on the surface of the mind and have repressed the fear deep down. If it is there on the surface one will not be able to function well, so one has forced this deep down. When you move in meditation you move deep, and then the fear which is suppressed, is stirred. It comes up, surfaces. Many more things that you have suppressed and of which you have become completely oblivious will all surface.

It is as if a house has remained uncleaned for many years. Nobody has moved and the dust has settled and gathered - layers of dust. Then you go in and just by your movement the dust is stirred.

Otherwise everything is okay. If nobody moves, everything seems to be silent; there is no dust, nothing.

Meditation is a movement into the unconscious, and the dust of this life and the dust of many lives is there, piled up, layer upon layer. So everything will come up but don't be worried, and don't brood on it. Accept it - it's good... a good indication that you are moving in.

It is as if you are swimming just on the surface and everything is good. Then you dive deep and suddenly at the bottom, fear arises, and you want to come back again to the surface.

It is exactly the same with meditation. It is going into your unconscious... diving deep. One feels suffocated, perspiring, and then suddenly a trembling and you are back. That's why you tried that day again and again and you could not get it, because once you are afraid, it is difficult These problems will come. Just go on reading my books and listening to my tapes, because I am talking about all these problems to everybody. Sometimes your problem will be there and it will be solved, and you will feel okay, mm? Good.

[A sannyasin says: When I sit before you my questions seem... ]

So always keep me before you! There is no need to be anywhere else - you can always keep me before you. I am available.

Whenever a question comes, immediately bring me, remember me, and the question will go.

You have found the key, so now there is no problem.

[She answers: My heart starts beating fast when ... ]

That's good, very good. The problem is when you sit in front of me and the heart doesn't beat at all (laughter).

... Just feel me - nothing more is needed. I am the answer - don't worry about other answers.