Darshan 9 September 1978

[Osho reminds someone who is leaving of the importance of meditating regularly so that it becomes one's climate; then only does it go deep. Through whatever you do a subtle current of meditation has to continue; only then does meditation become a transformation. So by the time you come back the thread will be there; then higher planes can be made available to you, He reminds her.]

I can give you insights only if you are ready for those insights. And there is no end to its planes - it is a non-ending work, and the higher one goes, the higher one can go. Each door is just the beginning of another mystery, and beyond that mystery, again a door. Each peak leads you to another peak which is higher than the first. But at one single time you can see only one peak, and it always seems, "If I reach that peak the goal is attained"; the moment. you reach the peak, another peak is waiting for you, challenging you, ahead of you. But this is beautiful - so life never dies, remains an eternal pilgrimage. And the greatest thing to create in life is a subtle thread of meditativeness...

[A sannyasin says: I tried to kill my girlfriend a few nights ago, says he, but you saved her. I am going through a lot of changes. Been fighting you... I never did what you told me to do - any of the groups or meditation camp - but I sure do love hanging out in your presence.]

Nothing to be worried about. These are all pains of growth. Negativity comes, comes first. These are indications that you are no more static. Life has started moving, hence you will find many rocks.

When the river does not move it finds no rocks, no mountains, no waterfalls, nothing - no problem arises. When the river is non-moving there is no problem at all. That's how millions of people have decided to live, without problems, but they are stagnant people - getting dirty, dull and dead every day. They only evaporate. Only mud will be left in the end, and they will never know the joy of meeting the ocean. They will never know the joy of expansion and they will never know the joys of the journey that a river passes through: the mountains and the valleys and the plains and so many climates and so many people. They will never know life as an adventure. And the reason why they have decided to remain static is that this is the best way to avoid problems. Avoiding problems one never grows. One grows by facing problems, by encountering them, by taking the challenge, by risking. "Risking" is one of the most important words to remember in life - nothing is more important than that.

In my vision of religion, risking is as important as prayer, or even more, because only those who risk can pray. And risk means remaining ready to face new problems every day. Risk means leaving the old, the convenient and the comfortable status quo, leaving the old security and moving into spaces into which one has never moved, so one knows nothing about them. It is taking a chance. You may come out better, you may come out worse - that is the risk. But my observation is that those who can risk that much always come out better... even if they come off worse, it is still better, because the flow has started.

The value is not in the outcome; the value is in the process, the flow, liquidity, movement. The outcome may not be so good. You may not find life more comfortable than it was before; in fact you will find it less comfortable, less convenient but more alive. The depth will be deeper. You will be able to be joyous more and you will be able to be sadder more. You will be able to reach higher peaks of ecstasy and deeper depths of agony. When you are happy you will be really happy and when you are unhappy you will be really unhappy; heaven and hell grow together.

Growth means growing into heaven and hell together. If somebody wants to remain always in heaven he will never grow; he will remain juvenile, stuck, dependent. His life will be very shallow. He will not know anything of value. His life will be non-essential. He will live in the non-essential; he will never come across the essential.

So risking is very important; risking is sannyas. It means dropping the known, the well-founded, the well-acquainted, for something one knows not how it is going to turn out, dropping the house in which you have lived long, and in which you have known many beautiful moments, and the security, and the safety and the shelter... dropping that house and going into the open, under the sky, becoming a vagabond, a gypsy.

That is risky, but through that risking, integration arises. And because I force you to risk, the mind resists. So I will say, "Do this," and you will not do it; you will try to resist. You are avoiding some risk.

You are avoiding some hazards of growth. But fighting with me is really pointless, because I am not your enemy. In fighting with me you are fighting with your own future. So sooner or later one starts understanding that this is just absurd. I am not a father to you. I am not trying to make you into a certain kind of person. I have no investment in you, nothing at all. This is my joy, not my investment in you. This is sheer joy that I want to share and I want to help you to become yourself. I have no idea of what you should be, not at all.

But every child comes across a father figure in the beginning and that becomes a stereotyped fixation... and the teachers and the priests. Finally you have Come to me after all these experiences... and these were the people who were all trying to make you a certain kind of person.

I am not trying to make you any kind of person; I am simply helping you to go beyond personality, to be essential and not to be accidental. I am simply helping you to have a release from your past.

I am not creating a prison for the future; I am leaving the future open. Hence it is more risky to be with me. But your ideas of the priests, of the father, of the mother, of the teacher, of the professor, are all such that they were all trying to manipulate you, so one learns to say no. When you come to me, naturally, that no arises; it is because of your past experience. But I am a new kind of person whom you have to become acquainted with. You have never come across me before, so your past cannot give you any clues about me.

You will have to learn slowly slowly that I am not that kind of person; I am not trying to impose anything on you. Even if I suggest "Do this," that is just to help you to become unburdened. All these groups and all these meditations are not creating a structure for you; they are simply trying to destructure you so that you are again free, again naked, again like a child. Whatsoever the society has been doing to you, I am trying to undo it so that you can be yourself again. Then it is your life:

then you move on your own.... But in the beginning everybody finds a little negative mood arising.

And when you start growing then all the repressed violence will come up, all the anger will come up; these are the problems. And they have to be thrown out - hence in the groups sometimes violence erupts.

Now, rather than following my suggestion, you tried to kill your girlfriend. That may not have happened at all if you had gone through some groups. Your violence would have been dissipated, and it would have been dissipated under guidance, under care. Now, it exploded on your girlfriend - with no guidance, with nobody caring. You could have killed her and then you would have repented your whole life; you could have killed her and you could have killed yourself too in it. Then you would have remained stuck with guilt. Then with no other woman would you have ever been able to connect really deeply. Forever you would have lived in a kind of loneliness. Even if you loved another woman you would have always remained afraid of yourself: you can do it again! This need not have happened if you had gone through a few groups.

People are so much against violence and ask why violence is allowed in Encounter or in Leela or in Primal Therapy. It is allowed because people are carrying it, and it is better to release it, cathart it, in a certain structured atmosphere, rather than letting it erupt in some moment of unawareness. Once it is released you are unburdened; once it is released you become more loving, more compassionate.

So next time you come, do a few groups. Things are happening and much more has to happen.

Just drop this negativity - that is just fighting with your Own future; it has nothing to do with me.

[A sannyasin asks what "Sadhana" - the name of a new center means.]

It means practicing truth, practicing love. One can think about love - then it is not sadhana, it is poetry. If one lives love, then it is sadhana. One can talk about truth; then it is not sadhana, it is philosophy. When one lives truth, it is sadhana. Sadhana means transforming values of beauty, goodness and truth into life, making your life a great experiment in truth, love, beauty. Not just speculating, not just contemplating, but making it existential. There is no single word which can carry the meaning of it.

That's why I am trying to explain to you what it actually is. One thinks about water, then it is not sadhana; but when one drinks, it is sadhana. One can have a beautiful library of books on cookery; that is not sadhana. One can be very learned about foods; it is not sadhana. But to cook is sadhana.

To practice, to bring things into life, to invite heaven onto earth - that is sadhana.

It is one of the most potential words. It has not existed in the West, nothing like it has existed, that's why Western languages don't have a particular word for it. The difference is actually like... there are two kinds of physics - one is called theoretical physics, pure physics. It needs no experimentation, no lab, nothing; you simply speculate, you think and you create hypotheses. Then there is another part to it - the practical physics - which implements, experiments, and unless a thing is proved through experimentation, it is not thought to be true. Logically it may look true but unless existence supports it, it is simply a hypothesis.

Philosophy is a hypothesis, religion is sadhana. It has to be practiced, it has to be tasted to be known, it has to be lived to be known. So help people to live meditation, help people to live prayer, help people to live love.

[A sannyasin says he feels a conflict between being with his three children, aged eleven to fifteen, and being here. He is not living with his wife, whom the children stay with.]

I don't think there is a problem. Unless you want to make it a problem there is no problem. Whenever you want you can go and see your children and whenever they can come for some holidays, they can come and be with you. That will be far more enriching to you and to your children. So once in a while they can come here and be here for a few weeks with you. That will be sharing something with them, giving something to them to live for in their lives.

So you can go and finish things and come back. Let this be your home and whenever the children want to come, they can. And you can always go whenever you feel like being with them - you can always go. So I don't think there is a problem; or, there is a choice. There is no question of choice either; you are not renouncing the children.... And if you are there just because of the children, you will never be able to forgive them. That will be more dangerous to them than your coming here.

This is something to be understood: whenever you sacrifice something unwillingly, because you have to, you carry a wound in you. Almost all parents carry the wound, because they say, "We have done this for the children and now see what they are doing to us." And whatsoever you did was done from your side - the children had not asked for it; they may not even be aware of it!

In your mind you have made a great sacrifice, certainly. If you decide to be there you will be continuously thinking in your mind that you have made a great sacrifice for your children, and they will never know about your sacrifice. You will always carry a wound and you will never be able to forgive them. You will be really angry at them, feeling, "It is because of you that I missed an opportunity, an occasion. Where I really wanted to be I could not be because of you." And sooner or later they will desert you, because children have to desert the parents; otherwise they will never grow. Sooner or later, just like birds leave the nest and never come back, the children will have to go; they will find their girlfriends and boyfriends and they will move. They will not think that you have done something great for them or anything. In fact, if they can forgive you for giving birth to them, that's more than enough, more than one can ask. Then you will feel very bad: "I have made so much sacrifice - my whole spiritual life I have sacrificed for you; this is ungratefulness." To you it will look ungrateful. All parents feel it, and the responsibility is not of the children at all; it is the parents' own mind game that they go on playing within themselves.

My own observation is it is very essential to see that you don't sacrifice anything for the children.

Then your love for them will remain intact, and your love is all that they need. Their love will remain for you because they will never feel your anger, they will never find anything in you that hurts them because of them, and they will not find that you expect anything of them. Then it will be easier for them to love you.

And they can always come - this is the place for them too. Once they come they may decide not to go at all! So you can come - there is no problem in it.