This is the situation of your head: I see cycle-handles and pedals and strange things that you have gathered from everywhere. Such a small head and no space to live in! And that rubbish goes on moving in your head; your head goes on spinning and weaving - it keeps you occupied.

Just think what kind of thoughts go on inside your mind. One day just sit, close your doors, and write down for half an hour whatsoever is passing in your mind, and you will understand what I mean and you will be surprised what goes on inside your mind. It remains in the background, it is constantly there, it surrounds you like a cloud. With this cloud you cannot know reality; you cannot attain to spiritual perception.

This cloud has to be dropped. And it is just with your decision to drop it that it will disappear. You are clinging to it - the cloud is not interested in you, remember it.

Osho The Sun Rises in the Evening Chapter 9

Commentary:
This is what happens when we forget that the mind is meant to be a servant, and start to allow it to run our lives. The head is filled with mechanisms, the mouth is ranting and raving, and the whole surrounding atmosphere is being polluted by this factory of arguments and opinions.

"But wait," you say. "The mind is what makes us human, it's the source of all progress, all great truths." If you believe that, try an experiment: go into your room, shut the door, turn on a tape recorder, and give yourself total permission to say whatever is "on your mind." If you really allow it to all come out, without any censorship or editing, you'll be amazed at the amount of rubbish that comes spewing forth.

The Page of Clouds is telling you that somebody, somewhere, is stuck in a "head trip." Take a look and make sure it isn't you.

Loneliness is pain, alone-ness is peace; hmm?
    
 
    Every time I am on my own, I feel separate, lonely and miserable. I love myself only when I am with others. If I am alone I feel ashamed and dislike myself. It seems as if I judge myself through the eyes of others.

 
It is one of the basic problems. Every human being has to face it. It is not only you. The way children are brought up is the cause of this whole misery. No child is accepted as he is. He is rewarded if he follows the directions of the parents, the teachers, the elders. Those directions may go against his nature, because those directives were not made by him or for him. Somebody five thousand years before made those principles, and they are still being used in raising the children.
Naturally, every child is displaced. He is not in his own self. He is not himself; he is somebody else. That somebody else is given to you by the society, by others.
So when you are lonely, and there is nobody to dictate to you, you simply relax in your nature. There is no need to perform anything, because there is nobody who is seeing. That relaxing into your own nature makes you feel guilty. You are going against your parents, against the priest, against the society; and they have told you that you, in yourself, are not right. You have accepted it. It has become a conditioned thing in you.
Whatever you do on your own is always condemned, and whatever you do following others is always praised.
In your aloneness there is nobody else there. Naturally, you need not act; you need not be a hypocrite. You simply relax into what you are; but your mind is full of the garbage given by others.
So when you are with others, the others are dictating to you; and when you are alone, the mind that has been created by the others is making you feel ugly, guilty, unworthy.
That’s why people don’t want to be alone. They want always to be with someone else, because with someone else they cannot relax into their nature. The presence of the other keeps them tense. The other is there, judging every moment, every action and gesture that you are going to make.
So you simply perform a certain act that you have been told is right. Then your mind feels good: it is according to the conditioning. Your mind feels happy that you did well; you are great.
People need crowds. This is the psychological reason why they always want to belong to Hinduism, to Christianity, to Mohammedanism, to this country, to that country, to this race, to that race. Even if that does not suffice, they create rotary clubs, lion clubs.
They cannot be alone. They have to be surrounded by people continuously. Only then, they can keep the tension alive, the act alive. In the crowd, they cannot be themselves.
Alone, why do you feel afraid? To be alone is one of the most beautiful experiences. You are no longer bothered by others; you are no more forcing yourself to do something which is expected. Alone, you can do what you want to do. You can feel what you want to feel. All that you need is to become detached from your mind.
Your mind is not your mind. Your mind is only an agent of the crowd you belong to. It is not in your service; it is in the service of the crowd. The crowd has put a detective in your mind who goes on forcing you, even if you are alone, to perform according to the rules.
The whole secret is to witness the mind; allow your nature and say clearly to the mind, “You are not mine. I came into the world without you. You have been given to me later on by education, by example. You are something alien; you are not part of my nature. So at least when I am alone, leave me alone.”
You have to learn to say, “Shut up!” to the mind, and allow your nature full freedom.
You will be immensely surprised what beauties you have, what innocence, what perceptiveness. Once you have learnt that the mind can be put aside, and you can be really alone — because with the mind you are not really alone; all those voices of your parents and teachers and priests and the politicians are recorded in the mind; the mind simply goes on repeating them.
It is a very great strategy played by society against the individual.
One psychologist, Delgado, has been working his whole life on a project — and he has succeeded in the project — which will give you some insight into yourself.
In your brain there are seven hundred centers. All that you do is done through one of the seven hundred centers He has figured out — working for his whole life — which center controls what kind of activity in you; with anger, hate, murder for example — which center is active when somebody gets angry. He has made very small electrodes. Of course, he is not allowed yet to experiment on human beings, but he has a great gift. The whole humanity can be changed by it, and he has worked on animals.
For example, in Spain he showed this. He put the electrode in the brain of a bull, and was standing his ground as the bull was rushing towards him to kill him. Just one foot away from him, the bull suddenly stopped, frozen. What has happened? The people could not believe it. They have never seen such a scene.
They were not aware that it was an experiment. He had a remote controller. He could stop any activity of the bull just by pressing a button in his hand. He allowed the bull to run so close; up to one foot; it could have killed him. But as the button was pressed, the activity completely stopped.
Delgado’s experiment is of immense importance. If it gets into the hands of the politicians, it is going to be very dangerous to humanity, because as the child is born....
For example, in Russia, no child can be born in your own house; every child has to be born in the hospital. Now that is the right moment to put any kind of electrode into the child’s brain — for example, any electrode that stops him from revolutionary activity against the government, any electrode that prevents him feeling miserable, full of suffering, tortured. The central board of the communist party would have all the remote controls.
They can have a system that if somebody is thinking in terms of anti-communism, on a board a light will show suddenly. And then they just have to push a button, and all his revolution, anti-communism will disappear.
What Delgado has done and proved, has been done to you by society in a more primitive way. But it has been successful up to now. They don’t put an electrode in your mind — they had no idea of it — but what they do functions in the same way.
They go on telling you what is right. And continuous repetition of what is right and what is wrong goes on making a spot in your mind without putting in an electrode. By and by, you start thinking that it is your mind which is deciding what is right and what is wrong. It is not so. The society has conditioned you.
That you can see in different societies, because different societies have different conditionings. For example, the American flag has meaning for the American, because from his very childhood he has been told, “Even to sacrifice your life for the flag is something great.”
And what is the flag? Just a piece of cloth. It has no intrinsic value. For an Indian, it means nothing; for an American, it means everything. The Indian flag means everything to the Indian; to the American it means nothing.
So it is not your mind that is deciding. It is the mind of the society that has imposed upon you certain ideas. In whatever crowd you happen to be, the crowd gives its mind to you. Slowly slowly, you completely forget that this is not your real self.
My sannyasins have to make a clear-cut distinction. The mind is part of society, not part of you. What is part of you is your awareness, your consciousness, your witnessing. Then you can be alone and immensely happy. In fact, you can be happy only when you are alone.
One who knows how to be ecstatic being alone can be alone in the crowd. Who is going to find out that inside you are completely centered in your witnessing, and you are not at all bothered by the mind?
It takes just a little time but as you go on disidentifying with the mind, the mind loses control over you, and finally it starts disappearing.
That is the beginning of freedom, the birth of a new man, the birth of an authentic man. Now you will act out of your awareness not out of your mind. You will act moment-to-moment, seeing the situation clearly. There is no problem to worry about what is wrong and what is right.
Your clarity will decide what is right, your clarity will take you towards the right. It may not coincide with the right of your society. That’s why society is afraid and wants to put a mind in you.
The old method is a long process. Delgado’s method is simple, can be done within seconds, but it is more dangerous too. You can disidentify yourself with the mind that the society has given, but the electrode is a different matter.
Even if you disidentify, the electrode will control your body. You may not like to do something, but the electrode will force you to do it. You are absolutely incapable.
In a way, the discovery can be a blessing, because we can stop all that is ugly in man, all that is inhuman in man with such a simple methodology — just a small operation in your skull, and placing a small electrode.
If you are too much of a man of anger, you can just go to the scientist and tell him that this is your basic trouble: small things make you angry. He can put an electrode at the exact point from where anger arises. He can give you a remote controller to keep in your pocket. Whenever you don’t want to be angry, just push the button and anger will simply disappear.
It is good in a way, but spiritually it is not something that I will support. For society it is good, but if you can manage just by a remote control all your emotions, feelings, actions, you will never think of being aware. You will never think of becoming meditative.
Strangely enough, in those seven hundred points in your mind, there is not a single point which can create meditation in you. So it is something beyond the mind, above the mind.
If a man is clear about the whole situation, he can use electrodes, but he should not forget meditation, because he is not only the body and the brain; he is also a luminous being. That experience is possible only through meditation.
So my suggestion to the questioner is: when you are alone, tell the mind, “Shut up! You are not part of me. Leave me alone!”
There is a Sufi story.... A young seeker came to a great Sufi master. As he entered his room and saluted the master with great respect, the master said, “Good. That’s perfectly good. What do you want?”
He said, “I want to be initiated.”
The master said, “I can initiate you, but what about the crowd that is following you?”
He looked back; there was nobody. He said, “What crowd? I am alone.”
The master said, “You are not. Just close your eyes and see the crowd.”
The young man closed his eyes and he was surprised. There was the whole crowd that he had left behind: his mother weeping, his father telling him not to go, his wife in tears, his friends preventing him — every face, the whole crowd. The master said, “Now open your eyes. Can you say that people are not following you?”
He said, “I am sorry. You are right. The whole crowd I am carrying within myself.”
So the master said, “Your first work is to get rid of the crowd. This is your problem. And once you are finished with the crowd, things are very simple. The day you are finished with the crowd I will initiate you, because I can only initiate you; I cannot initiate this crowd.”
The story is meaningful. Even when you are alone you are not alone. And a man of meditation, even though in the crowd of thousands of people, is alone.
When you are alone, nobody can see the crowd, because it is within you. And when a meditative man is in the crowd and yet alone, nobody can see his aloneness, because that too is within him. To know your aloneness is to be acquainted with existence, nature, your reality. And it gives such blissfulness that there is no comparison with any joy that you have felt in the past.
You are saying that, when you are with people you are perfectly happy. It is not happiness, it is an hallucination of happiness, because your mind is in tune with the people. Alone they are also in the same trouble as you are. So together there is a certain harmony in the mind, and that harmony gives you the sense of happiness. But the sense is very superficial; it has no roots.
Unless you can be blissful in your total aloneness, remember, anything that you think is happiness is only a deception.
Once the thing is clear, it is not difficult to do it. Find time — even for a few minutes, once in a while — just to be alone.
In the beginning you will be miserable, because nobody is there to say how beautiful you are. Nobody is there to say, “What a great artist you are!” There is nobody, just silence around you. But a little patience, and a little alertness not to get identified with the mind, will bring the great revolution which will make you really a sannyasin.

Avoiding the Void
    
      
 
    The more you possess, the less you can love. And love is the door. Or, the less you can love, the more you start possessing things. Things become a substitute.
Let us try to understand it. A child is born. If the mother loves him...psychoanalysts have been studying, much research has been done — if the mother loves him, the child never drinks too much milk; never, because he knows, it is a tacit understanding, that the mother is always available and she’s always ready to share. So what is the fear? If the mother loves the child, the child will drink only as much milk as is needed. If the child is loved, you will never see a big belly in the child.
The child will be proportionate. In fact the mother will be constantly worried that the child is not eating or drinking or taking as much food as needed. But the child has understood that whenever the need arises, the mother is there. He can rely on love.
But if the mother does not love the child, then he is afraid for the future. Love is not there, the tacit understanding is not there, so whenever he gets the opportunity he will eat as much as he can, he will drink as much milk as he can. Now he is already becoming a miser; he has already started accumulating things — in the body. He’s afraid. Who knows about tomorrow? This mother is not reliable; he has to accumulate for emergencies. So he will accumulate fat, eat more.
People who have not been loved in their childhood continue to eat more. No dieting can help unless love arises. They will eat; eating has become a substitute for love. If somebody loves them, they will immediately see that their overeating has stopped.
Love and food both come from the mother’s breast. The first experience of love is from the mother’s breast and the first experience of food is also from the mother’s breast. So love and food become associated. If there is less love, it has to be substituted for by more food.
If love is enough, you can afford not to eat much. There is no need. Have you watched it? Whenever you fall in deep love, hunger disappears. You don’t feel hungry. Love fulfills so deeply that you feel full. Then one starts eating less and less.
One woman was talking to me. She was very puzzled. Her husband had died and she told me, “One thing I have been keeping a secret. I have not told it to anybody because nobody will understand. But you may understand, so I’m telling you. And I will be unburdened whether you understand or not. But please don’t tell this to anybody.”
I said, “What has happened?”
She said, “When my husband died, at night I felt so hungry. The corpse was lying in the house. ‘What will people think if I go to eat?’ The whole family was awake, relatives had come and many friends were there together. And I felt such a deep hunger, such as I have never felt.”
So she had to go in her own kitchen like a thief! In the darkness, she ate. And now, since then, she has been feeling guilty. “My husband had died. Was that the time to feel hungry? His corpse was lying there. I was like a thief, eating in darkness in my kitchen.” She asked me, “What happened?”
I said, “It is a simple fact. The person you loved died. Immediately, you felt empty. Now that emptiness had to be filled by something.”
Since then I have been talking to many people and I have come to the conclusion that whenever you are sad, you eat more. Whenever you are in a deep sorrow, you feel more hungry. Whenever you are happy, flowing, cheerful and loving, and love is showering on you, who bothers to eat much? Even a small amount of food is enough nourishment then, because love is giving so much nourishment.
People who can’t love will always become misers: possessive, accumulators of things.

Something to Get Your Teeth Into
    
      
 
It is bad for anger to move within, because that means your whole body-mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time...as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation.
Society says, “Control yourself,” and through controlling all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not; you are simply angry. Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don’t explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!
You are angry. Because you have suppressed so much anger, now there are no moments when you are not angry; at the most, sometimes you are less angry, sometimes more. Your whole being is poisoned by suppression.
You eat with anger...and it has a different quality when a person eats without anger: it is beautiful to watch him, because he eats nonviolently. He may be eating meat, but he eats nonviolently; you may be eating just vegetables and fruits, but if anger is suppressed, you eat violently.
Just through eating, your teeth, your mouth release anger. You crush the food as if this is the enemy. And remember: whenever animals are angry, what will they do? Only two things are possible: they don’t have weapons and they don’t have atom bombs, what can they do? Either with their nails or with their teeth they will do violence to you.
These are the natural weapons of the body: nails and teeth. It is very difficult to do anything with your nails, because people will say, “Are you an animal?” So the only thing remaining to you through which you can express your anger or violence easily is the mouth...and that too you cannot use to bite anybody. That’s why we say, “a bite of bread,” “a bite of food,” “a few bites.”
You eat food violently, as if the food is the enemy. And remember, when the food is the enemy, it does not really nourish you, it nourishes all that is ill in you. People with deep suppressed anger eat more; they go on gathering unnecessary fat in the body. And have you observed that fat people are almost always smiling? Unnecessarily, even if there is no cause, fat people always go on smiling. Why? This is their face, this is the mask: they are so afraid of their anger and their violence that they have to keep a smiling face continuously on themselves — and they go on eating more.
Eating more is violence, anger. And then this will move in every way, in every arena of your life.
In taking food, you become angry: look at a person eating. Look at a person making love — the anger has gone so deep that even love, an activity totally opposite to anger, even that is poisoned; eating, an activity absolutely neutral, even that is poisoned. Then you just open the door and there is anger, you put a book on the table and there is anger, you put off the shoes and there is anger, you shake hands and there is anger — because now you are anger personified.
Through suppression, mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious. This division is not natural, the division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects — but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat. Now psychologists say that almost eighty percent of diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.
Why? Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? Because the society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different. For one thing, it is not the way of control at all, it is just the opposite.
First thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the ‘somebody else’ is just irrelevant. Next time you feel angry go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else — because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you — if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.
Don’t throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don’t go and vomit on somebody. Anger needs a vomit. You go to the bathroom and vomit! It cleanses the whole body — if you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy. Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejects it. Don’t go on forcing it inside.
Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody. Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.
There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk. It means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.
The first thing in transformation then is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You may like to kill, but it is not possible; you may like to bite, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow. A pillow means ‘already enlightened’; the pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court, and the pillow will not bring any enmity against you, and the pillow will not do anything. The pillow will be happy, and the pillow will laugh at you.
The second thing to remember: be aware. In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism — suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful control may not be so easy.
Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful, he is wide open. That is part of awareness; one is open, and if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory, it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in. Don’t allow even a small window for anything to go out.
But remember: when nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in; you look at a flower, nothing goes in: your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person — nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.
Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead. That is part of the mechanism of control: if you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as if the body has become a citadel, a defense. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.
But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost; then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself — and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die.
Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine.
No control, no expression on others, more awareness — and then consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center.

Don’t be angry at life. It is not life that is frustrating you, it is you who are not listening to life. And this I call a criterion, a touchstone: if you see a saint who is against life, bitter against life, know well he has not understood... yet. Otherwise he will bow down to life in deep respect and reverence, because life has awakened him out of his dreams. Life is very shocking, that’s why. Life is painful. The pain comes because you are desiring something which is not possible. It doesn’t come from life, it comes from your expectation.

Emotional Incontinence


You once suggested to me that I keep my energy inside and bring it to my Hara, my lower belly. Since doing this, I notice that my Hara has become like a mirror for all my feelings.
I feel that behind this sma...ll suggestion of yours lies more than I can imagine. Could you please comment?

The hara is the center from where a life leaves the body. It is the center of death. The word hara is Japanese; that’s why in Japan, suicide is called hara-kiri. The center is just two inches below the navel. It is very important, and almost everybody in the world has felt it. But only in Japan have they gone deeper into its implications.

Even the people in India who had worked tremendously hard on centers, had not considered the Hara. The reason for their missing it was because they had never considered death to be of any significance. Your soul never dies, so why bother about a center that functions only as a door for energies to get out, and to enter into another body? They worked from sex, which is the life center. They have worked on seven centers, but the Hara is not even mentioned in any Indian scriptures.

The people who worked hardest on the centers for thousands of years have not mentioned the Hara, and this cannot be just a coincidence. The reason was that they never took death seriously. These seven centers are life centers, and each center is of a higher life. The seventh is the highest center of life, when you are almost a god.

The Hara is very close to the sex center. If you don’t rise towards higher centers, towards the seventh center which is in your head, and if you remain for your whole life at the sex center, then just by the side of the sex center is the Hara, and when then life ends, the Hara will be the center from where your life will move out of the body.

Why did I tell you this? You were very energetic, but not aware of any higher centers; your whole energy was at the sex center, and you were overflowing. Energy overflowing at the sex center is dangerous, because it can start releasing from the Hara. And if it starts releasing from the Hara, then to take it upwards becomes more difficult. So I had told you to keep your energy in, and not to be so expressive: Hold it in! I simply wanted the Hara center, which was opening and which could have been very dangerous, to be completely closed.

You followed it, and you have become a totally different person. Now when I see you, I cannot believe the expressiveness that I had seen at first. Now you are centered and your energy is moving in the right direction of the higher centers. It is almost at the fourth center, which is the center of love and which is a very balancing center. There are three centers below it, and three centers above it.

Once a person is at the center of love, there is very rarely a possibility for him to fall back down, because he has tasted something of the heights. Now valleys will be very dark ugly; he has seen sunlit peaks, not very high, but still high; now his whole desire will be.... And that is the trouble with all lovers: they want more love, because they don’t understand that the real desire is not for more love but for something more than love. Their language ends with love; they don’t know any way that is higher than love, and love does not satisfy. On the contrary, the more you love the more thirsty you become.

At the fourth center, of love, one feels a tremendous satisfaction only when energy starts moving to the fifth center. The fifth center is in your throat, and the sixth center is your third eye. The seventh center, the sahastrara, is on the top of your head. All these centers have different expressions and different experiences.

When love moves to the fifth center then whatever talents you have, any creative dimension, is possible for you. This is the center of creativity. It is not only for songs, not only for music; it is for all creativity.

The sixth center, which we call the third eye, is between the two eyes. This gives you a clarity, a vision of all your past lives, and of all the future possibilities. Once your energy has reached your third eye, then you are so close to enlightenment that something of enlightenment starts showing. It radiates from the man of the third eye, and he starts feeling a pull towards the seventh center.

Because of these seven centers, India never bothered about the Hara. The Hara is not in the line; it is just by the side of the sex center. The sex center is the life center, and the Hara is the death center. Too much excitement, too much uncenteredness, too much throwing your energy all over the place is dangerous, because it takes your energy towards the Hara. And once the route is created, it becomes more difficult to move it upwards. The Hara is parallel to the sex center, so the energy can move very easily.

The Hara should be kept closed. That’s why I told you to be more centered, to keep your feelings inside, and to bring the energy to your Hara. If you can keep your Hara consciously controlling your energies, it does not allow them to go out. You start feeling a tremendous gravity, a stability, a centeredness, which is a basic necessity for the energy to move upwards.

Your Hara center has so much energy that, if it is rightly directed, enlightenment is not a faraway place.

So these two are my suggestions: keep yourself as centered as possible. Don’t get moved by small things: somebody is angry, somebody insults you, and you think about it for hours. Your whole night is disturbed because somebody said something.... If the Hara can hold more energy, then naturally that much more energy starts rising upwards. There is only a certain capacity in the Hara, and every energy that moves upwards moves through the Hara; but the Hara should just be closed.

So one thing is that the Hara should be closed.

The second thing is that you should always work for higher centers. For example, if you feel angry too often you should meditate more on anger, so that anger disappears and its energy becomes compassion. If you are a man who hates everything, then you should concentrate on hate; meditate on hate, and the same energy becomes love.

Go on moving upwards, think always of higher ladders, so that you can reach to the highest point of your being. And there should be no leakage from the Hara center.

Energy should not be allowed through the Hara. A person whose energy starts through the Hara you can very easily detect. For example, there are people with whom you will feel suffocated, with whom you will feel as if they are sucking your energy. You will find that, after they are gone, you feel at ease and relaxed, although they were not doing anything wrong to you.

You will find just the opposite kind of people also, whose meeting you makes you joyful, healthier. If you were sad, your sadness disappears; if you were angry, your anger disappears. These are the people whose energy is moving to higher centers. Their energy affects your energy. We are affecting each other continually. And the man who is conscious, chooses friends and company which raises his energy higher.

One point is very clear. There are people who suck you, avoid them! It is better to be clear about it, say goodbye to them. There is no need to suffer, because they are dangerous; they can open your Hara too. Their Hara is open, that’s why they create such a sucking feeling in you.

Psychology has not taken note of it yet, but it is of great importance that psychologically sick people should not be put together. And that is what is being done all over the world. Psychologically sick people are put into psychiatric institutes together. They are already psychologically sick, and you are putting them in a company which will drag their energy even lower.

Even the doctors who work with psychologically sick people have given enough indication of it. More psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession, more psychoanalysts go mad than any other profession. And every psychoanalyst once in a while needs to be treated by some other psychoanalyst. What happens to these poor people? Surrounded by psychologically sick people, they are continually sucked, and they don’t have any idea how to close their Haras.

There are methods, techniques to close the Hara, just as there are methods for meditation, to move the energy upwards. The best and simplest method is: try to remain as centered in your life as possible. People cannot even sit silently, they will be changing their position. They cannot lie down silently, the whole night they will be turning and tossing. This is just unrest, a deep restlessness in their souls. One should learn restfulness. And in these small things, the hara stays closed. Particularly psychologists should be trained. Also, psychologically sick people should not be put together.

You have done well. Just continue whatever you are doing, accumulating your energy in yourself. The accumulation of energy automatically makes it go higher. And as it reaches higher you will feel more peaceful, more loving, more joyful, more sharing, more compassionate, more creative. The day is not faraway when you will feel full of light, and the feeling of coming back home.