Being lost is the beginning of finding oneself

[A sannyasin, who is returning to the West, says he is feeling emotionally exhausted since he completed the primal group two months ago: I feel there's just big wounds inside me, and I'm just a bit afraid that they won't heal when I go back to the west. I feel very vulnerable.]

Wounds heal only when they are open - wounds never heal when they are protected, defended.

It is painful; to have an open wound but that's the only way it heals. So don't try to close it again.

Remain vulnerable, mm? - let the wind and the sun rays touch it, play with it. Yes, many times it will hurt, but remember only one thing: this time let it hurt but don't create a wall to protect it. Those walls ultimately become our imprisonment.

First we create them so that we are not hurt. It looks very rational to create a wall around oneself, an armour, so one is never hurt. Good - it feels very reasonable, logical - but by and by they not only protect you from being hurt; they also protect you from being communicative. Then nobody can communicate with you: you become unapproachable, unavailable, and then you are a prisoner inside.

Yes, you will not feel much hurt but you will not feel blissful either; how can one feel blissful in a grave? And this is a self-created grave. It is suicide... a slow, gradual, suicide. That's why you can't see it, because it comes so slowly and so logically that you never become aware of what you have been doing. If for your whole life you have been protecting your wounds and then suddenly they are open, one feels exhausted; hut it's natural. It is such a new phase: you have again become a child, vulnerable in exactly the same way as when you were a child. You don't feel strong enough, you feel helpless.

But remain that way this time - don't miss this opportunity - then you will start growing from your childhood towards maturity... and that is a totally different route. The maturity that you think you had was just a false maturity: hidden behind the wall was a child - that's how it has come out. If you were really mature then by destroying your walls, your protections, why should you feel such a situation? Why should you feel so much like a wound and vulnerable?

Hidden behind was a child and you were wearing the mask of an adult man. Now the mask has been torn apart and suddenly you look in the mirror and you are a child - helpless, exhausted, afraid, scared of the world. How are you going to manage? Because you don't know how to manage the world without the mask... you don't know how to talk to people directly, immediate, without the mask.

You are afraid people will cheat you because they will see that you are a child. You can again start wearing the old man but you will be back in the old rut. It has not helped... it is not going to help.

This time be vulnerable; don't commit this mistake that you had to commit when you were a child, because that was not done consciously, you had to do it. The whole society and the family and the whole system that surrounds a child helps to create it. The first time you did it unconsciously.

You were not at fault, you can be forgiven. But if this time you do it you are at fault, you cannot be forgiven.

Let it be so. If you feel helpless, say 'Okay, so I am helpless but I will not create a wall. This time I Will grow in my inner strength.' These are two different things. To grow in inner strength is one thing; to remain weak inside and just to create an iron wall around yourself is a totally different thing. It simply gives you the feeling that you are strong because the wall is there and you are protected and nobody can come and hurt you. But if nobody can hurt you, nobody can love you either because hurts come from the same window, from the same aperture, as love, as joy, as friendship, as celebration.

If you are too much afraid of thorns you will miss the roses too because they are there together...

and what is life without a rose?

I was reading a book in which the author plays with the word 'eros'. He says, 'If something goes wrong, the same word "e-r-o-s" becomes "sore", "s-o-r-e". If everything goes right the same word becomes rose, "r-o-s-e"; those letters remain the same'. I liked the play with the word... it remains eros, those four letters.

If you go on protecting yourself and your energy, your eros energy will become sore. That's what has happened: it has become a wound. The same wound can become a rose, it can become a flower, it can bloom with great joy, but then you will need open sky and winds and the sun. Yes, there is danger. You can put the rose in your protected home under the shelter; it will die! It needs all the challenge of the open world; all the dangers are needed. Those are nourishing dangers: they are nutritious, they are essential vitamins.

Something very essential has happened, I can see it: you are like a wound. This is the same energy that can become a flower but for that you will have to be courageous enough to remain open whatsoever comes. Accept it if sometimes you feel hurt. Nothing is wrong in feeling hurt: it simply shows that one is alive. To feel hurt shows that you are not dead.

It is very very good and indicative that the person is still alive. Many people have become dead. The only way they know how to protect themselves is to become completely insensitive so nothing hurts; they grow a thick skin around their consciousness. They become thick, dense, mm? but nothing hurts. Then you remain protected, certainly, but you are no more living, you are no more celebrating this life. This eternal celebration goes on and you remain far away stuck in your fear, stuck in your defence, stuck with yourself.

My suggestion is: be courageous. This time don't protect... and if you don't protect you will start growing because the same energy that you put into your protection and into creating the wall will fall into your being and will start helping you grow and you will become mature.

That's what the difference is between right education and wrong education: wrong education gives only a false idea that you are strong and behind it you remain weak. Right education will really make you strong without creating an armour around you. You will not need the armour because you will be strong. Only weaklings need armour - why should a really strong man need any armour? He will trust himself and he will trust life and he will play a thousand and one games with life. Sometimes it will be dangerous too but he will be adventurous.

So, this time don't fall back into the old pattern. And this is good, that you are going, mm? There you will be really hurt by many people... and this is going to be a blessing to you. Accept those hurts...

respond!

If sometimes you feel hurt and you feel like crying, cry like a baby; what can you do? And sometimes you feel angry, then be angry. Don't hide it: be true to your feelings.

I don't see that your emotional energy is exhausted, no, only your repressive energy is exhausted...

and these are different things. Emotional energy is there, really coming up for the first time, and that's why you are so afraid. You are not only afraid from the outside, that is a secondary fear; you are more afraid from the inside, and you have not even mentioned it.

You are more afraid from the inside because if all these emotions.... The armour protects you from the outside and the armour protects you from the inside too: it does not allow anything to enter in you so there is no need to respond. Somebody insults you and you are dense; it does not reach you. Somebody dies and you are thick, it does not penetrate you so you remain perfectly okay; no emotional response is needed.

Now if somebody dies you will feel almost like dying. If you love somebody and he dies or she dies, for a few days you are going to be really in death. When a beloved dies, for a few days at least one has to go with the beloved into deep depth, into deep death... into those gloomy nights, into that shaken, shocked, uprooted world. And you will feel a thousand and one things, small things:

sometimes just a bird crying in the trees and you will feel so full of joy that you will cry - for no visible reason.... Sometimes just a breeze comes and you are surrounded by the cool breeze and you feel so joyous that tears come.

These are the basic fears, more primary than fears from the outside. This is what you really mean when you say you have become like a wound. Everything is going to hurt, but by and by through those hurts, through your real response for the first time without any mask, you will start growing in strength; you will become more integrated.

And I don't mean that when a man becomes really integrated he is never disturbed - I'm not saying that He is disturbed but that is momentary... he is totally disturbed, but that is momentary. He is innocently disturbed but he is total in it: it comes and it goes and after one second he is out of it.

These disturbances disappear only when you are no more.

These are the three stages of human life: the disintegrated human being - a crowd, split... a polypsychic state, many minds, many selves, not one self. Then there is the second state - the integrated human being: one self has arisen, strong, really strong, self-confident, trustful, loving, alert, aware. All those small selves have dissolved into it; a big self has arisen. Those small selves are no more there; a new self with a capital 'S' has arisen. This is the second state - that has to happen to you if you allow: if you give this gift to yourself this will happen.

And then the third state is when the self disappears and no-self arrives; then there is no disturbance, nothing. There is no outside, no inside: all has disappeared... the whole drama has disappeared.

This is the total end... this is what nirvana is, but on the way to nirvana, from the third stage one cannot jump to this highest state of no-self. From many selves one cannot jump to no-self - from many selves one has to come to one self and from one self to no-self.

... Really be courageous and allow this wound to heal on its own - don't create any armour for it!

[A sannyasin says she is feeling weak and helpless and lost like a child, and feels that she is rejected.

This causes a lot of pain which she finds difficult to simply sit back and watch. Osho says that sitting back and watching won't help; that will just be a trick. When you really start growing, he explains, First you regress to the point where natural growth stopped.... ]

If you really want to grow, you will have to move back to the point where you stopped being natural.

That is the whole point of primal therapy. And my family is a primal family - the therapy is on-going; you may know it, you may not. And this is only the beginning: soon, when things will really take shape, you will see incredible things happening for no reason at all. Just the vibe of the commune will create those things.

So, if you are doing primal therapy you know why it is happening. But you are not doing a primal therapy, you are just working in the garden. But it is going to happen in the garden - it is my garden!

It is going to happen to everybody whether they are doing groups or not. If you become associated with me, to become associated with me, you will have to fall back to your reality. Now this is the beginning....

All those years that were false are a barrier between me and you, and you think those years are of wisdom, strength, knowledge, hence you are feeling weak, otherwise you are not weak at all; this is just a wrong interpretation.

But naturally, a four, five year old child, seems lost because he does not know anything. All that has been imposed on you is disappearing; all conditionings are being washed away so you will feel lost.

But this is the beginning of real search, the beginning of finding oneself. Being lost is the beginning of finding oneself... so don't be worried.

And if weeping and crying comes, which is natural to a child, allow it. It will disappear when is work is finished but till its work is finished you need not stop it. That stopping is harmful, it will stop your growth.

So first you will fall back, you will regress, and then by and by you will start growing again - from five to six, from six to seven... and it is not going to take that much time. Mm? you can just jump years in months because your body is grown-up; the mind just needs to come up and be with it. The mind is hanging somewhere around the age of four and the body has become forty; that gap has to be fulfilled. Once the mind comes close to your body age and both are synchronised you will feel tremendous joy and health. That's why you are feeling ill and you are feeling weak and exhausted:

it is the gap, the yawning gap, and it seems unbridgeable.

Right now it is unbridgeable but it will be bridged, so just relax; continue working. And that's why the feeling - that you feel rejected, unworthy, unaccepted; that's how every child feels because a child has no utility in the world. He is not an engineer, not a doctor, he is not a bread-earner. He is just dependent on others for everything; he demands and demands and he is nothing and not doing anything for anybody. He is a dictator, and he feels 'I go on demanding but I don't do anything'. He suspects that everybody hates him... that is your suspicion - but nobody is hating you.

Here at least in this community nobody is worried about anybody else. People are working on their own growth - they have their problems; who bothers about [your] problems? Only I can bother because I have no problems so I have to create some problems for myself to hang around a little bit more, otherwise who bothers? They have their problems to solve. And my whole teaching is be selfish - first solve your problems.

Nobody is rejecting you, this is your idea, but it comes to a four, five year old, child; it feels 'I am rejected. Nobody loves me.' No proof is enough proof for a child that people love him because deep down he understands he is useless, just a nuisance around the house. That consciousness is there in the child so he himself feels he is unworthy but he projects it onto others, that others think he is unworthy... and that's what you are doing. But it is natural at that age, at that age it is natural.

So you will project that nobody loves you, everybody seems to be against you; everybody is rejecting you and you are left alone. Nobody is left alone - I am with you and that's enough!

Nothing to be worried about. Just enjoy this space and soon vou will start growing. Good!

The Happiness that comes from Within EMPTY HANDS

We come with empty hands and we will go with empty hands, so what is the point of claiming so much in the meantime? But this is what we know, what the world tells us: Possess, dominate, have more than others have. It may be money or it may be virtue; it does not matter in what kind of coins you deal– they may be worldly, they may be otherworldly. But be very clever, otherwise you will be exploited. Exploit and don’t be exploited– that is the subtle message given to you with your mother’s milk. And every school, college, university, is rooted in the idea of competition.

A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are the first– that is sheer nonsense. You can’t be happy just by being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.

By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature. You don’t know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You don’t know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does not change your inner quality at all.

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone. You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born.

Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result– that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto– then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can’t paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t "be"– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why he said to Arjuna: "Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there."

Krishna says to Arjuna, "Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it."

Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law– he has given you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth. You can start trying to be the last– but then you miss the whole point. Then another competition starts: "I have to be the last"– and if somebody else says, "I am the last," then the struggle, the conflict, begins again.

I have heard a Sufi parable:

A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, "I am nobody. I am just a servant– a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants."

A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying to God, "I am nobody, a servant of your servants."

The king said, "Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant of God’s servants– who are you to say that you are the servant of his servants?"

Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: "I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last." The mind can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very intelligent.

Never try to be happy at the expense of another man’s happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy… That’s what your holy people are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory. And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything– so it is impossible to feel that you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You don’t get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you don’t go to bed early in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.

Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early in the morning… in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems to be impossible.

My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness in a totally different way. Don’t live at the expense of others’ pleasures– that is holiness. Don’t destroy others’ happiness, help others to be happy– that is holiness. Create the climate in which everybody can have a little joy.

Meditation is a state of total relaxation; not of concentration, not of contemplation, but of relaxation. When one is so absolutely relaxed that there is no tension either in the body or in the mind, then suddenly there is an opening of the heart. Only in total relaxation does the heart open, it becomes a flower. Without its opening one remains unfulfilled, discontented.

The opening of the heart as a flower is the ultimate ecstasy; there is nothing more than that. One has come to the highest peak, one’s life has blossomed. And that is the meaning of Teresa. Teresa means a reaper, a harvester. When one has come to the blossoming, the flowering, the ripening, then one can reap the crop. Then life is tremendously significant, a gift of god. Otherwise it is just a possibility, and nobody can be blissful with only a possibility. It has to become actual, it has to become a realisation.

Being with me means only one thing: learning how to relax. The moment you relax you are in the present. The past is a tension. Relaxation is going beyond time — no past, no future. One simply disappears into the infinity of the now and the here. And that is springtime as far as the inner ripening, flowering, is concerned.

If you really want to get rid of misery and suffering then you will have to understand — you don’t have a self. Then it will be not just a small relief but a tremendous relief. And if you don’t have a self, the need for the other disappears. It was the need of the unreal self to go on being nourished by the other. You don’t need the other. And listen carefully: when you don’t need the other, you can love. And that love will not bring misery. Going beyond needs, demands, desires, love becomes a very soft sharing, a great understanding. When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable. You know that they are suffering from an unreal self, and they are throwing their misery on anybody who is close by. Your love will make you capable of helping the person you love to get rid of the self.

THE VITAL BALANCE

An interview with Acharya Rajneesh by Dr. Jean Georges Henrotte, Paris (France) and Ma Yoga Maitri (Mme. Yuki Fujita) Tokyo, (Japan). on 6-1-1971



Dr. Henrotte: There is a problem with people like me, in our civilization and especially in our profession. We make too much use of our intelligence, so much so, that we tend to view life through the intellect only, thus negating all other means of doing so. This tends to make life boring and dull and robs it of its lustre.

Acharya Rajneesh: No one can use his intellect too much. It is such a great force, with so much potentiality that you cannot use it too much. Not only too much, we never even use it totally - never. Ordinarily, we do not use more than 10 to 15% of the total potentiality. Another thing, when you do intellectual work, it does not necessarily mean you are using your intelligence. Intellectual work too, is mechanical. It does not require any intelligence at all! Once you get the know-how, no intelligence is required at all. Then the mind works just like a computer.The real problem is, not the use of too much of intelligence, but the non-use of emotion. Emotion is completely discarded in our civilization and the balance is lost. Our whole civilization is anti-emotional. So a lopsided personality develops. If emotion is also used then there is no imbalance. An emotion-intellect balance must be maintained in the proper ratio; otherwise, the whole personality gets diseased. It is just like using your one leg only. You may keep on using it but you reach nowhere. You will simply tire yourself. The other leg must be used. Emotion and intellect are two legs - they are like two wings. When we use only one wing, the only outcome will be frustration and then the Bliss that comes by using both the wings, simultaneously, in balance and in harmony is never attained. So do not fear to use intellect. Only when intelligence is used, then you touch the depths. You are stimulated in your potentiality. Intellectual work is merely superficial. No depth is touched, nothing is challenged. That gives rise to boredom. That creates
lustreless work - work without enjoyment. Enjoyment always comes - when your individuality is challenged
and you have to prove yourself or when you have to respond to a challenge, intelligence or emotion when
challenged create their own bliss.A person becomes schizophrenic if only one part of his personality is working and the other is dead. Then even the part that is working will not be really working well due to overwork. It cannot work because personality is a totality, it is not divided - it has no division at all. Actually the whole personality is a flowing energy. When energy is used logically, it becomes intelligence and when used, not logically but emotionally, it becomes the heart. These are not two separate things but the same
energy is challenged through different channels.When there is no heart but only intellect, then you can never relax. For relaxation means the same energy working in a different channel. Relaxation is never nowork.
It is work in another dimension, so that the dimension which is already overtaxed relaxes. So a person, who
follows an intellectual pursuit continuously, never relaxes. He has not diverted his energy to other dimensions, thus causing the mind to go on working unnecessarily in one direction only. This creates boredom. The thoughts just come and go and energy is diffused, wasted. You cannot enjoy it. On the contrary, you will be disappointed and disgusted with this unnecessary burden. However, the mind or the intellect is not at fault, because an alternate dimension has not been provided. The energy is veritably ruined, and it keeps circling round and round, as no other door is open to it. Energy can never be stagnant. Energy means - that which
is not stagnant - that which is always flowing. So relaxation does not mean energy-stagnant or energyasleep.
Relaxation scientifically means energy in another channel, another dimension, in another room. Even if the room is different but not the very opposite, the mind will not relax. You work on a scientific problem, and then you can relax by reading a novel. The work is different. As to deal with a scientific problem is to be active - a very masculine trait - to read a novel is to be passive - an absolutely feminine trait. The work is different, and although the mind is used, all the same you will be at ease, as another and opposite pole of
the mind is used. You are not solving anything, you are not active. You are just a receptor - receiving something. The dimension is the same, only emotion - the opposite polarity is brought into use. Similarly when we love, the intellect does not come into play at all. Rather, quite the opposite; the irrational part of your personality comes into action. Intelligence must be balanced by love. But ordinarily this balance is not found anywhere. If someone is loving and he is not intelligent this too becomes a case of boredom. Even love becomes a tension if it is a twentyfour hour business. It will create its own boredom. Once the challenge is lost, the enjoyment too will be lost. The `play' will be lost and it will become - just work. The same happens with the intellectual. These two parts, two polarities of the human individuality must be in balance. Only then the integrated and individuated being is born. Otherwise, it is the same disease; whether from the part
of emotion, or from the part of the intellect.The East became warped with the heart. Now the West has tried the other polarity. Both have achieved disastrous results. There is rebellion in the West's new generation against intellect, against reason. The whole mind of the new generation is leaning towards the irrational. Nature takes its own revenge - always. Nature is very revengeful. It never pardons, it never forgets. If some part of it remains suppressed or unfulfilled, it will have its revenge. So the irrational in the West is taking its
revenge. In the East, the rational has got the appeal, the scientific has got the appeal and communism has got the appeal. Religion has lost - it no longer appeals to the East, as reason has been all along suppressed. So to me, neither a human being nor a human culture can be healthy without an inner balance between the rational and the irrational. I do not take these two as two different parts; I take them as the two poles existing in the same energy. All energy exists between two opposite poles. Otherwise, it can never exist. Energy requires an inner tension to create itself - to be. It could be the negative and the positive, as in electricity. It could be one pole and another, as in magnetism. It could be the male and the female, as in biology. Energy cannot exist in one pole. The other - the opposite is needed to challenge, to stimulate, to create the necessary tension. But in the human society, the other is always suppressed - either the intellect or the emotion. Therefore, the total culture has not come into existence yet. There has only been civilization either of the intellect or of the emotion. Culture as such is yet unborn. Culture means the polarities functioning simultaneously. So always balance one by the other. The more the other is put to use, the more the one for which it proves to be a relaxation brightens, is illumined. So the mind must be capable of changing poles, just as easily as waking and sleeping. One must be able to close one dimension and open another. When this happens, life is no longer dull. It becomes bliss. Unfortunately we become addicted to one polarity. Why this addiction to one? We become addicted to one, because the one which is in use, and for which we are trained, is easier to do. You can do it without any conscious effort. Consciousness is not required. When you change the pole, when you change the total perspective, you become an amateur. Then you are not an expert in this realm. You are not trained in it. So, you try to escape from it. Then in the realm in which you are proficient you tend to overdo. This over-doing is the problem. One must not be an expert all the twenty-four hours! One must also do something in which one is `no-one'. One must also do something about which one knows nothing. One must be a child, sometimes playing, immature, unknowing and ignorant; and that will be a help to the expert part of the mind. So every genius has the child in him. No genius can exist without the child in him. And the child is the source of all his energy. He can, in moments, be a novice. He can, in moments, be totally ignorant. He can touch realms of which he knows nothing. A mathematician turning to
poetry is never the loser. He comes back to his mathematics with a purer mind, with new experiences
unknown to the mathematical realms. All that has been invented and discovered has never been done by the professional. It is always the outsider, because he comes with the mind of a child. Only a child is inventive - never an old man, for he is an expert! But he cannot invent. He will go on repeating the same thing - doing it, and over-doing it. He will make it more perfect but never new. So a professional cannot contribute
anything new to knowledge. He knows too much. He cannot touch anything which is new. So persons who
know, who are professionals, are always orthodox. They are never revolutionaries. They cannot be. Their very being is heavy. They cannot see the new. They are always oblivious of the new. So whenever it happens that a scientist turns to poetry; or a poet turns to mathematics, or a businessman turns to painting; or a painter comes to be a sannyasin, then something new is born. And to give birth to something new is blissful. Otherwise, your every work will be dull and boring. Man cannot work like a machine. He cannot just go
on producing the same things mechanically, repeating the same routine endlessly. If he goes on doing this, he will be completely dead, long before he dies. He will only know that he has been alive when death comes. In a mechanical routine, there is every danger of the human machines being replaced by `machine-humans'. These human machines can be replaced because whatsoever they can do, can be more efficiently done by a
mechanical device. One can never be at ease if one has just turned into a mechanical device. Society does not need individuality, it needs efficiency. So the more a person becomes a person, the less useful he becomes to the society - and more dangerous. So the whole pattern of our civilization, and in fact of all civilizations that have existed in this world, is to turn the human being into an automaton. Then he is obedient, efficient, and, not dangerous! Otherwise, a mind which is inventive, inquiring, searching for the new, seeking the new and always trying to give birth to something unknown is bound to create disturbances. The establishments cannot be at ease with him. So they begin to kill individuality as soon as a child is born. Before he is seven they kill his individuality completely. If by change they are not successful in doing this, then only a person becomes his own individual self. But this is rare. Every type of social institution is a means to kill the individual and convert him into a machine. All our universities are factories to kill the spontaneous - to kill the spark, to kill the spirit and change man into a machine. Then the society feels at ease with him. He can
be relied upon. He knows what he can do, what he will do. He can be predicted. Man becomes predictable as soon as he be-comes a machine. We can predict a husband, a wife, a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist. We know who they are and how they will react. We can be at ease with them. But with a person who is living, spontaneous, it is impossible to be at ease. Because we do not know what he will do! He is unpredictable; and unpredictability is always a source of insecurity. A wife will not be at ease with a husband who is unpredictable. The moment he is unpredictable, he is unmanageable. He cannot be managed, he cannot be manipulated. No one is at ease with an unpredictable person. Not even a father with an unpredictable son. And only the unpredictable can feel happiness - can feel life, no one else. Life itself is unpredictable, unmanageable. Life as such is from moment to moment - towards the unknown. It is an opening into the unknown - nothing more, nothing else. So if you are open, just like life itself, then you necessarily live in all your dimensions - the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual. Then you live totally. Then there is no bifurcation, no division. Your energy flows as if from one room to the other, and then to another. There is no barrier to your energy. It is not pulled from anywhere. It is a flowing river. You have just to switch on to any realm. You are always fresh and relaxed. And, whenever you return to your particular
field of work, you approach it with newness, a freshness that comes only from relaxing in the opposite fields.
So the problem as I see it is not excessive intellectual work, but too little or no work in the other dimensions - specifically the emotional. Reason is balanced by emotion. If you can do an exercise in logic but cannot
weep, then you are bound to be in trouble. If you can only argue and not laugh, you are inviting trouble. But
whenever a person appears, whose life is like a flowing river, it is difficult to understand him, because he cannot be categorized.  There is a Zen story. A famous monk died, he was a great teacher. He was well known, however, because of his chief disciple. Thousands of people came to pay homage to this monk. To their amazement, they found the chief disciple weeping. They were at a loss to understand him. An unattached person should not weep,especially he, who had always said that the spirit never dies! One comes and asks, “Why do you weep?”The monk replied, "I cannot live with the `Why' always. There are moments when there is no `why'. I am weeping and that is all." They still insisted, "You always say that the soul is immortal. Then why do you weep?" He replied, "I still maintain that the soul is immortal. But that does not check me from weeping"! This sounds illogical - 'the soul is immortal so one must not weep'. But the monk says, "The soul itself is weeping and I cannot do anything about it. I have never done anything myself. Whatsoever comes to me, I am with it. Tears are coming and I am one with them." This attitude cannot be
categorized. We can understand someone weeping if he believes the soul to be mortal. If one believes the soul to be immortal and does not weep, that too is understandable. It is alright. The soul is immortal, for whom to weep? No one has died; but this man says that the soul is immortal and yet he weeps. There is no `why'. The tears just flow. They ask, "Then do you weep for the body?" The Monk says, "Yes, it must be for the body that I weep. The body too was beautiful and it will never be seen again. I weep for the body." "But you are a spiritualist," they say. And so the arguments go on. They accuse him of confusing them. "I myself am confused - Life is such. The soul is important but so also are the tears! Such is Life - so contradictory! It exists in contradictions. I myself am confused. But I am at ease with my confusions. I am at ease with my contradictions. So I am not tense. See my tears! See me weeping, I am at ease; I am relaxed. I am blissful."
The other part must not be denied. The more you use reasons, the more you must use the irrational to balance it. The moment it is balanced, you become weightless. You feel free. The weight of one is set off by the weight of the other. The balance is achieved. You are free. Otherwise you will feel the burden, the weight, more till a moment comes when there is only burden and you are no more! You will feel only the burden; that is the only reality you will be conscious of. This burden will be so much with you always that you cannot conceive, what it is to be without it. No one is without burden. But burden can be balanced by another burden - from the opposite pole. When the two burdens are balanced, there is no burden. Thus a mind which has no burden is not a mind without burden. Rather, it is a mind with balanced burdens. So I
am in favour of reason and `no-reason' at the same time and I advise a perpetual balance between the two. As soon as the burden is felt, you should know that the balance is lost. You must set about to restore it, by
adding the necessary weight, wherever it is required. If the intellect is heavy, do something irrational - meditate. Meditation is not reason. It is irrational. So when someone asks me to explain meditation, I am at a loss! Simply because you cannot understand meditation. You can do it and know it. It is not at all concerned with logic, reason, arguments and understanding. There are people who have been studying meditation all their lives, and still not understood it. They cannot. Krishnamurti talks about understanding it and makes
understanding equivalent to meditation, as if meditation is something to be understood! Rather, understanding
must be balanced by meditation. It is the opposite pole. So, once you try not to understand meditation you can do it. If one goes on trying to understand meditation, there is less possibility of practising it. And because
understanding is intellectual, there are people who say they understand Krishnamurti perfectly. Intellectually we understand him. And even though he says intellectual understanding will not do, he still equates understanding with meditation. If intellectual understanding will not do, then I say a non-intellectual JUMP will do. There is no understanding which is not intellectual. Whenever you go into meditation, it is less like understanding and more like feeling. It is felt. It is never understood. Philosophy and science are intellectual processes. Religion and art are non-intellectual processes. Philosophy must be balanced by religion and science must be balanced by art. Otherwise, a topsy-turvy, lopsided world is created in which everyone is diseased. I have not come across a single individual who is at ease. Something or the other is always disturbing him. It does not matter what! All that matters is that he is disturbed. Everyone is disturbed. Then there must be something in our very conception of a human being which has gone  wrong. In the very structure of our society something has gone wrong. Therefore, persons who are diseased in the mind are only symptomatic. There is a very surprising fact. In the 30's, all the mental patients who visited the psychoanalysts were  basically disturbed by violence. Then came the Second World War. The same thing happened in the early 19th century and this was followed by the First World War. So as I see it, the mental patients are the forerunners of us all. They herald that which is to come. In a way they are more sensitive. They perceive things beforehand. The same happens with the artist. Everything that is to happen first happens in poetry, painting, music, etc. If we look deep in the art of Picasso we will find the indication of a diseased civilization. In his painting `Guernica', or for that matter in any of his other works, he never portrays a human figure as it is. He never paints all his parts together, nor in the right context. The head will be in one place and the neck somewhere else. The eyes are under the head. Such is his painting - schizophrenic, schizoid! He is an extra sensitive person who sees the shape of things to come, the plight of the human being in time to come.A society basically philosophic only, will be lacking in religion. A society basically scientific only, will be lacking in aesthetic art. Art will become ugly. Thus the whole Western art has become ugly. Rather, the
grotesque and the absurd has become the criterion. Ugliness is appreciated as greatness in art. The uglier a
painting, the more distorted, the better it is appreciated. There should be no harmony, no rhythm, no music -
everything should be deranged and decayed like the present human mind. These are indications and symptoms. They are symbolic expressions. The other part of the human mind is taking revenge. It is demanding attention. When a society becomes less and less religious, religion takes its revenge. It will become ugly, ritualistic. Priesthood will come up, religion will go down. The Church will come up. The Church is religion turned ugly. The priest is the revenge of the prophet. The prophet has no place, so the
priest comes in. He fills the vacuum. We have not yet even conceived a total culture, a total personality, a total mind. The totality is the sum total of both the opposite polarities. Therefore, a totally consistent personality is an imperfect and partial personality, and is in a way on the path to madness. This is dangerous. The part that has been denied expression, denied attention, because of a consistent mind, will take its revenge. The irrational will become aggressive. It will come with a revengeful force and shatter all reason.
You must not only understand, but also feel this. This is not difficult to understand intellectually. The problem comes only with the question of feeling. You must also feel it. This can only be possible when you do something irrational. Just jump and dance for an hour and see how relaxed and refreshed you feel - and how bright! The mind gets purified because the irrational is satisfied. Now reason can work freely without any enemy behind. There is now a freedom in its working. Thus give an opportunity to both sides of the mind to express freely. Always balance the two. Live in these two complementary compartments. They are not
contradictory. They look so, because we have been living only in one and become fixed in it. When you dream, you do not feel the contradiction, the inconsistency of the dream. You see a friend approaching. Suddenly he turns into something else. But you take this as a fact in the dream. You feel no inconsistency, no contradiction. You do not ask how man can change into an animal. This is because a dream has no logic. Dream has still to know its Aristotle. In a dream you cannot say that, if A is A, then he cannot be B. If A
is A, he cannot be `not-A'. In a dream, A can be `not-A' and `not-A' can be A. No logic is taken into account, nor is any contradiction imposed. So there are realms totally lacking in logic. All the same they are part of you. Rather, you are part of them, for they are greater. If this balance is achieved between the rational and the irrational, boredom vanishes. There is moment to moment bliss. Then every moment comes with bliss of its own. Otherwise, life becomes a burden. But life is not responsible for this. We alone are responsible, for the choice lies with us.

Dr. Henrotte: If one tries to balance oneself, he will not fit into a category. Then he will be rejected by society. He will become redundant.

Acharya Rajneesh: It is better to be rejected by society than to be rejected by life!

Ma Yoga Maitri: How should I plan to proceed in this method of yours when I go back to Japan?

Acharya Rajneesh: Do not plan anything. Just go on digging. Things will take their own course. Planning always presupposes frustration. When you plan you create seeds of frustration. Do not plan. Just go on digging. Let it come. It is always beautiful when it comes by itself. It is always fulfilling, never frustrating, because there has been no expectation! Where there is no expectation, you are never disappointed. The less you are disheartened the more you can do. The more you are disheartened, the less you do! So I say again: "Do not plan." Just go on. Let it come by itself. Let it come. It WILL come. When we plan, we hinder the way of its coming. Because of our plans, the plans we have made, life cannot work. Our plans come in
the way. I have made my life without plan and I have never been frustrated. There is no question of  frustration.So, I am always successful! I cannot be a failure as there is no plan against which I calculate.
No failure is a failure, no success is a success, only our conceptions and pre-determined plans make them so. If you fail in your plan you feel disappointed; the ego is hurt. If you succeed, the ego is strengthened and it will plan more, ceaselessly, causing perpetual strain and burden on the mind. The ego is always in fear of life. In life we never know what is going to happen, so we make plans for our security. Life disturbs them, as we are not whole and sole. We are only a negligibly small part of the infinite existence.

Ma Yoga Maitri: The plan I was following in Japan, seems to be identical with yours.

Acharya Rajneesh: Yes, it will be so. The moment you start planning, you begin to compare and contrast. Doubts and fears will catch hold of you. "Will I succeed? Is it possible? What will happen? What will people say?" The moment you plan, the seeds of frustration take root. Now anxiety follows. We normally plan to be free from anxiety but the plan itself is an anxiety! We become anxious! The anxiety comes because of planning. So do not plan. Just go on. You do not plan your breathing! You just go on breathing. So let it come easily. And all that comes easily becomes Divine. And all that comes with effort cannot be divine. The divine comes effortlessly. It is in fact coming all the time. So let it come. Just let go of yourself and see; things will begin to move. You will find yourself in the midst of movement, but there will be no anxiety. Then there will not be any trouble created for the mind. If something happens, it is alright. If nothing happens, then too it is alright. Everything is alright with this type of a mind. Only then you can do something for meditation,
otherwise not. Because meditation is not a business, it should not be made a business. Then you will not be
helpful to others towards meditation; much less to yourself. Rather, you will be suicidal to your own meditation, as it will be a burden to you.

Ma Yoga Maitri: So I should not plan!

Acharya Rajneesh: But if you plan for not to plan, then again the same thing will happen. Do not plan - just go on. If meditation has come to you, if something has flowered in you, the perfume will spread. It will work in its own way. Something has happened to you. You are calm and at ease. Tranquility is achieved. It WILL work. You will not have to work. It will gather people there. They will come by themselves. They will ask. Let them plan. You just go and meditate. Things will begin to happen. They must happen. Only then they have a beauty of their own - a beatitude, otherwise not. Business is always tiring. It has no beauty, no joy.
Meditation is not a business. Yet it has been converted into a business in India - a flourishing business. There are shops and there are factories. Do not take meditation in this way. You have experienced meditation. You have come to a door. You have seen something. You have felt something. Let it go on. Let God work.
Go completely without planning. Do not think about it at all. You just be there. Your very presence will begin
to work. Only then it will be my work. If you plan, then it will not be my work at all. That way, you will be merely distracting yourself and others. You will not be a help to others in meditation if you yourself are tense. You cannot help. You will be helpful only if you go without planning. Just go. Sit there. Meditate and see what happens. Things are bound to take their own course.

SunRise

Deva means divine, and aruna means early morning, dawn… the sun is just going to rise, just before sunrise. Mm? the East becomes red but the sun is not yet on the horizon – it is coming; it is very imminent, just within a second it will be there but it is not there yet. That is the most precious moment in twenty-four hours. The night is no more, it has gone, and the sun has not yet appeared. Between the two there is a different quality of light in existence. Darkness is not there, and because the sun is not there the light is not coming from the sun; it is a very diffused light, a very cool light. With the sun things will become hot; more energy, more heat will be there. So this cool light is very symbolic of the inner experience of light. Sooner or later you will understand the meaning of your name. It is light with no heat in it, it cannot burn. It can only enlighten; it cannot burn. It is almost like moonlight but still with a difference: the moonlight is a reflected light; it is not original. The moon has no light of its own: it simply reflects the sunrays. The sun has its own light, it is original. This inner light is also original: it is not a reflected light; it is not the reflected glory of anything else or anybody else. It is your own, authentically your own, but it needs no fuel. The sun needs fuel, so every day the sun is becoming exhausted and tired, every day its treasure is being spent. Sooner or later, one day – scientists say in somewhere around four thousand million years time – the sun will be spent and will become a dark hole. 

No more light will be coming: it will have given all its heat to the world and it will die. Stars are born and stars die. Whenever there is some source it cannot be infinite. This inner light has no source, hence it is infinite; it does not depend on any kind of fuel so it is inexhaustible. It has been there for eternity and it will remain there for eternity. We may look at it, we may not look at it, but it is always there. When one starts turning inwards one starts feeling it. 

Because of this inner experience, in the east the early dawn became of tremendous importance, the most auspicious moment… very symbolic of the inner. The night is no more and the sun has not come yet: it is an interval, a gap, where gears change, where day is born and night disappears.

Because of this gap, this moment is for prayer, for meditation. The same happens inside, a gap arises, and the outer gap can be of help for the inner gap, because outer and inner are not really two; they are joined together. So whenever it is possible, get up early in the morning and meditate on the early dawn. Once the sun has come up there is no need, but just before the sun is coming up look to the east and be filled by it, be possessed by it, dissolve into it. Drink it and become it….

We don´t need a better man, we need a new man. Betterment has gone on for centuries and nothing has happened. Now we don´t need any better man — enough is enough! Now we want a totally new man, discontinuous with the past. We want to begin again as if we are Adam and Eve, just now expelled from the Garden of Eden.