Wait Twenty-Four Hours

“Whenever the mind begins to flow downward, become aware as early as possible — as early as possible!
“Someone has insulted you. For you to become angry, a little time is needed because it is a mechanism. You will get angry, but after a gap. Things will happen like a flash. First you will feel insulted. The moment you feel insulted, the second current will begin to flow: you will become angry. At first the anger will not be conscious; first it will be just like a fever. Then it will become conscious. Then you will begin to express or suppress it. So when I say ‘the earlier the better,’ I mean when someone insults you, become aware as soon as you begin to feel that you have been insulted. And whenever you become aware, just make an effort to stop. Don’t fall into the automatic track even for a single moment. Even a single moment’s stop will help much. Longer stops will help even more.
“When [the Russian mystic] Gurdjieff’s father was dying he called his boy. He was just nine, and Gurdjieff remembered the incident all his life. The father called him. He was the youngest child and the father said, ‘I am so poor, I cannot give you anything, my boy. But one thing which my father gave to me I can give you. You may not even be able to understand what it means now, because I myself was not able to understand what it meant when my father gave it to me. But it proved the most precious thing in my life, so I am just giving it to you. Preserve it! Sometime you may begin to understand it.’
“So Gurdjieff just listened. The father said, ‘Whenever you feel angry, never reply before twenty-four hours. Reply, but let there be a gap of twenty-four hours.’
“Gurdjieff followed his dying father’s advice. It became deeply impressed in his mind the very day his father died, and Gurdjieff said, ‘I have practised many, many, many spiritual exercises, but that was the best. I never could be angry in my life, and that changed the whole flow, the whole current, because I had to stick to the promise.
“‘Whenever someone would insult me, I would create something, some situation. I would just tell him that I would come back after twenty-four hours to reply, and I have never replied because it proved such nonsense to reply.’ Only a gap was needed. And the whole life of George Gurdjieff became something different.”

 

The Way of the Sly Man

Osho, I can feel myself moving from anger into sadness. I don’t know whether I should try and get the anger out or just let it explode inside.
Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger and anger is active sadness. Because sadness comes easy, anger seems to be difficult. because you are too much in tune with the passive.
It is difficult for a sad person to be angry. If you can make a sad person angry, his sadness will disappear immediately. It will be very difficult for an angry person to be sad. If you can make him sad, his anger will disappear immediately.
In all our emotions the basic polarity continues — of man and woman, yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within won’t help much because again you are seeking some way of being passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense, then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.
If you can float between anger and sadness, both become similarly easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will be able to watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and then you can go beyond both. But first you have to be moving easily between these two. otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is heavy, transcendence is difficult.
Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike, fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because they are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody’s grip. Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent, then it is very difficult. Thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping out. That forty percent will hang over you.
So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies — to always let the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not worry, and you can escape. Don’t bring the mind in. Just make it an exercise.
You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to come. Every day you have to be angry — that will be easier. So jump, jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?
Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples never to start by dropping anything. First start by bringing it in, because only a person who can create anger on demand can be capable of dropping it on demand — simple mathematics. So Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to first learn how to be angry. Everybody would be sitting and suddenly he would ay, “Number One, stand up and be angry!” It looks so absurd.
But if you can bring it.... And it is always available, just by the comer, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody provides an excuse. Somebody insults you — it is there. So why wait for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can’t you bring it yourself? Bring it yourself!
In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable, because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody else whose insult has created the anger. That’s not true. Anger has always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come up. You can give yourself an excuse. Imagine a situation in which you would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say things, and soon the wall will be talking to you. Just go completely crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where they are exactly proportionate to each other. They will cancel each other out and you can slip away.
Gurdjieff used to call this “the way of the sly man” — to bring inner energies to such a conflict that they are engaged together cancelling each other, and you have the opportunity to escape. Try it, mm?

The Psychology of Anger

The psychology of anger is that you wanted something, and somebody prevented you from getting it. Somebody came as a block, as an obstacle. Your whole energy was going to get something and somebody blocked the energy. You could not get what you wanted.

Now this frustrated energy becomes anger...anger against the person who has destroyed the possibility of fulfilling your desire.

You cannot prevent anger because anger is a by-product, but you can do something else so that the by-product does not happen at all.

In life, remember one thing: never desire anything so intensely as if it is a question of life and death. Be a little playful.

I am not saying, don’t desire — because that will become a repression in you. I am saying, desire but let your desire be playful. If you can get it, good. If you cannot get it, perhaps it was not the right time; we will see next time. Learn something of the art of the player.

We become so identified with the desire, then when it is blocked or prevented our own energy becomes fire; it burns you. And in that state of almost insanity you can do anything, for which you are going to repent. It can create a series of events that your whole life may get entangled with. Because of this, for thousands of years, they have been saying, “Become desireless.” Now that is asking something inhuman. Even the people who have said, “Become desireless” have also given you a motive, a desire: if you become desireless you will attain to the ultimate freedom of moksha, nirvana. That too is a desire.

You can repress desire for some bigger desire, and you may even forget that you are still the same person. You have only changed the target. Certainly, there are not many people who are trying to get moksha, so you will not have any great competition. In fact, people will be very happy that you have started going towards moksha — one competitor less in life. But as far as you are concerned nothing has changed. And if anything can be created which disturbs your desire for moksha, again the anger will flare up. And this time it will be far bigger, because now the desire is far bigger. Anger is always proportionate to desire.

I have heard....

There were three monasteries, Christian monasteries, very close together in the forest. One day three monks met at the crossroads. They were coming from the villages back to their monasteries; each belonged to a different monastery. They were tired. They sat down under the trees and started talking about something to pass the time.

One man said, “One thing you will have to accept is that as far as scholarship is concerned, learning is concerned, our monastery is the best.”

The other monk said, “I agree, it is true. Your people are far more scholarly, but as far as austerities are concerned, discipline is concerned, spiritual training is concerned, you don’t come anywhere near to our monastery. And remember, scholarship will not be able to help you realize the truth. It is only spiritual discipline, and we are the best as far as spiritual discipline is concerned.”

The third monk said, “You are both right. The first monastery is best in learning, scholarship. The second monastery is best in spiritual discipline, austerities, fasting. But as far as humbleness, egolessness is concerned, we are the tops.” Humbleness, egolessness...but the man seemed to be absolutely unaware of what he was saying: “As far as humbleness, egolessness is concerned, we are the tops.”

Even humbleness can become an ego trip. Egolessness can become an ego trip. One has to be very aware. You should not try to stop anger. You should not, in any way, keep the anger controlled, otherwise it will burn you, it will destroy you. What I am saying is: you have to go to the roots. The root is always some desire which has been blocked, and the frustration has created the anger. Don’t take desires very seriously. Don’t take anything seriously.

It is unfortunate that no religion in the world has accepted the sense of humor as one of the basic qualities for the religious man. I want you to understand that a sense of humor, playfulness, should be the fundamental qualities. You should not take things so seriously, then anger does not arise. You can simply laugh at the whole thing. You can start laughing at yourself. You can start laughing at situations in which you would have been angry and mad.

Use playfulness, a sense of humor, laughter. It is a big world, and there are millions of people. Everybody is trying to get to something. It is very natural that sometimes people may get into each other’s ways — not that they want to, it is just the situation, it is accidental.

I have heard about one Sufi mystic, Junnaid, who every day in the evening prayer used to thank existence for its compassion, for its love, for its care.

Once it happened that for three days they were traveling and they came across villages where people were very antagonistic against Junnaid, because they thought his teachings were not exactly the teachings of Mohammed. His teaching seemed to be his own, and, “He is corrupting people.”

So from three villages they had not got any food, not even water. On the third day they were really in bad shape. His disciples were thinking, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to existence, ‘You are compassionate to us; your love is there. You care about us, and we are grateful to you.’ ?”

But when the prayer time came, Junnaid prayed the same way. After the prayer the followers said, “This is too much. For three days we have suffered hunger, thirst. We are tired, we have not slept, and still you are saying to existence, ‘You are compassionate, your love towards us is great, and you take so much care that we are grateful to you.’ ”

Junnaid said, “My prayer does not depend on any condition; those things are ordinary. Whether I get food or not I don’t want to bother existence about it — such a small thing in such a big universe. If I don’t get water...even if I die, it does not matter, my prayer will remain the same. Because this vast universe...it makes no difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”

This is what I mean when I say, don’t take anything seriously...not even yourself. And then you will see anger simply has not happened. There is no possibility of anger. And anger is certainly one of the great leakages of your spiritual energy. If you can manage to be playful about your desires, and still be the same whether you succeed or you fail.

Just start thinking about yourself at ease...nothing special; not that you are meant to be victorious, not that you have to succeed always in every situation. This is a big world and we are small people.

Once this settles in your being then everything is acceptable. Anger disappears, and the disappearance will bring you a new surprise, because when anger disappears it leaves behind it tremendous energy of compassion, of love, of friendship.