WESTERN MYSTICS
The New Alchemy 34
ThirtyFourth Discourse from the series of 34 discourses - The New Alchemy by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
I have been here, and you have been meditating very courageously. Back at home, you will feel alone, but don’t feel – don’t feel that loneliness. If you are ready I can be with you there too. Just remember me, feel my presence, and then meditate.
Space, distance, is meaningless if there is love.
You may be sitting just by my side and there may be a distance of miles, thousands of miles. You may be thousands of miles, far away from me, but if there is love, the distance disappears: you are just by my side.
Love is nearness. Love is closeness. Distance in space or nearness in space is physical and meaningless. Wherever you are, it makes no difference. If you have a love, a deep love for me, and if you can remember and surrender, I will be there working with you, within you. Remember this, and then you will never be lonely and never alone.
Certainly, when one penetrates deep into meditation, fear grips. Sometimes one encounters death, one feels that now one is going to die. One returns, hurries back to the surface. That is bound to happen. Before you are reborn you will have to pass through death. Don’t be afraid. And if the moment comes in your meditation when you feel “Now this is the last moment, I will not be able to come back again to the world, to the body,” feel thankful.
Feel a deep gratitude and welcome this moment because this rare moment comes only when your meditation has gone very deep. It is a good sign – welcome it! Don’t be afraid, because you can miss it if you are in fear, and once missed it will take a very long time to get that rare moment again. Sometimes even lives pass before one comes again to that rare moment because once the fear takes hold of you, you become deeply, unconsciously afraid, and never again come to the point where death is encountered.
Remember this: many have missed many rare moments. Know it well. Death is going to be there – not of you, only for your ego, but because you are identified with your ego you feel “I am going to die.” You are not going to die at all! You are immortal, you are deathless. There is no possibility – death is the only impossibility. You cannot die, so don’t be afraid.
If you feel fear you can remember me. I will be there even in that moment of death. You can feel assured that I am there and you are not going to die; someone is there who will be helpful.
Thirdly: meditation needs tremendous effort. You have to be doing it continuously. Make it a point to do it every day. If you can chose a certain time, and do it at that particular time, it will be very good. If you can chose a particular place also and can do it regularly at that particular place it will be more helpful.
But if it is not possible, then do it any time, any place. But if you can create a place, a special place – a small temple, a corner in the home where you can meditate every day – then don’t use that corner for any other purpose, because every purpose has its own vibrations. Then use that corner only for meditation and nothing else. Then the corner will become charged, and the corner will wait for you every day. That corner will be helpful for you – every day the milieu will create a particular vibration for you, a particular atmosphere in which you can more easily go deeper and deeper.
That’s the reason temples, churches, mosques were created – just to have a place for only prayer and meditation. And if you can chose a regular time it will be very helpful, because your body, your mind is a mechanism. If you take your lunch at a particular time every day your body starts crying for food.
And sometimes, you can even play tricks on it. If you take your lunch at one o’clock and the clock says now it is one o’clock and the clock is not right – it is only twelve or eleven – you look at the clock and it says one, suddenly you feel hunger. Your body is a mechanism. Your mind is also a mechanism.
Meditate every day in the same place at the same time, and you will create a hunger within your body and mind. Every day at that particular time your body and mind will ask you – they will actually cry to go into meditation. It will be helpful.
A space is created within you that becomes a hunger, a thirst. In the beginning it is very good… Unless you come to the point where meditation has become natural and you can meditate anywhere in any place at any time – up to that moment, use these sources of body and mind mechanism as a help.
Fourthly: this meditation is chaotic because catharsis is needed. It will be difficult for you – you will feel awkward, embarrassed. Back in your family, your neighborhood you may think, “How can I scream and go mad? What will people think?”
Don’t be too concerned with what people think – because if you are too concerned with people and what they think, you will never transform yourself. Then you are just a slave of people’s opinion. Then they will not allow you to move in any way beyond them. They can allow you only to be just like them, never different from them.
Once you think of transforming yourself, remember now, you are going beyond the crowd, beyond the society. And there is no other way. If you are interested in transforming yourself you are going beyond the crowd mind, the collective mind.
But this is only a problem in the beginning. If you go on doing your meditation, without being worried about what people say, at the most people can say that you have gone mad – and they are not wrong! You are going mad! You are using madness as a method.
But if you can continue for at least three months they will start seeing differences in you: something new is happening. Wait for three months and they will have to change their opinion, and they will have to come to you for advice because they are also mad… And you are now becoming saner, the madness is disappearing.
Your eyes are changing, they have become more silent. Your attitude, your approach, your relationships – everything will be changing. You will be less angry, less hateful, less jealous, more loving, more compassionate, more non-violent. They will feel it. And just this feeling will change their opinion.
Wait for the right moment. Just now, at the most they can think you are mad – let them think it! It makes no difference. Basically they already think that you are mad. No one thinks very good of you because no one thinks good of anyone except himself. What’s your opinion about your neighbors? What is your opinion about your wife? What is your opinion about your husband? Deep down everyone knows that the other is neurotic.
The wife knows the husband is a little bit crazy, neurotic. The husband knows the wife is mad, and thinks, somehow, to send her to an analyst. This is how everyone thinks about others – and everyone is right because everyone is mad!
So don’t be too worried about others. You can become individual only if you go beyond the opinion of others, if you go in your own way without being worried about what others think. Only then will you become an individual.
This word individual is beautiful. It means indivisible. If you follow the crowd you will always be fragmentary, divided. You cannot become a unity because the crowd is so big.
I have heard about a boy…
I was staying with a family, and they brought the boy to see me. He had become a little neurotic. I asked him “What is the matter?”
He said, “I am not neurotic, but my whole family is creating neurosis in me. My father thinks I should become a doctor, my mother thinks I should become an engineer. My uncle says, “This is nonsense. There is no need to become a doctor or an engineer. Become a scientist”– and they are all forcing me in different directions. I don’t know what I have come here to become, what my destiny is. Too many people are pulling me in too many directions. That is what is creating neurosis in me.”
If you follow the crowd you will be neurotic, fragmentary, because the crowd is big and everyone is pulling you in their own way, in their own direction. So you have many directions in your mind, in your being, you are being pulled in many directions. You are fragmentary.
Forget the crowd. Don’t allow anyone to pull you and push you. You are an individual, a free unit. Remain authentic to yourself, and sooner or later the crowd will recognize the change, the transformation, the mutation that has happened to you. Then they will follow you. Then they will ask for your advice.
This is the way of the crowd. First they will decry you. If you insist, secondly they will tolerate it. And if you still insist, thirdly they will worship you. That’s what always happens. So don’t be worried about it.
Now get ready for the night meditation.
Space, distance, is meaningless if there is love.
You may be sitting just by my side and there may be a distance of miles, thousands of miles. You may be thousands of miles, far away from me, but if there is love, the distance disappears: you are just by my side.
Love is nearness. Love is closeness. Distance in space or nearness in space is physical and meaningless. Wherever you are, it makes no difference. If you have a love, a deep love for me, and if you can remember and surrender, I will be there working with you, within you. Remember this, and then you will never be lonely and never alone.
Certainly, when one penetrates deep into meditation, fear grips. Sometimes one encounters death, one feels that now one is going to die. One returns, hurries back to the surface. That is bound to happen. Before you are reborn you will have to pass through death. Don’t be afraid. And if the moment comes in your meditation when you feel “Now this is the last moment, I will not be able to come back again to the world, to the body,” feel thankful.
Feel a deep gratitude and welcome this moment because this rare moment comes only when your meditation has gone very deep. It is a good sign – welcome it! Don’t be afraid, because you can miss it if you are in fear, and once missed it will take a very long time to get that rare moment again. Sometimes even lives pass before one comes again to that rare moment because once the fear takes hold of you, you become deeply, unconsciously afraid, and never again come to the point where death is encountered.
Remember this: many have missed many rare moments. Know it well. Death is going to be there – not of you, only for your ego, but because you are identified with your ego you feel “I am going to die.” You are not going to die at all! You are immortal, you are deathless. There is no possibility – death is the only impossibility. You cannot die, so don’t be afraid.
If you feel fear you can remember me. I will be there even in that moment of death. You can feel assured that I am there and you are not going to die; someone is there who will be helpful.
Thirdly: meditation needs tremendous effort. You have to be doing it continuously. Make it a point to do it every day. If you can chose a certain time, and do it at that particular time, it will be very good. If you can chose a particular place also and can do it regularly at that particular place it will be more helpful.
But if it is not possible, then do it any time, any place. But if you can create a place, a special place – a small temple, a corner in the home where you can meditate every day – then don’t use that corner for any other purpose, because every purpose has its own vibrations. Then use that corner only for meditation and nothing else. Then the corner will become charged, and the corner will wait for you every day. That corner will be helpful for you – every day the milieu will create a particular vibration for you, a particular atmosphere in which you can more easily go deeper and deeper.
That’s the reason temples, churches, mosques were created – just to have a place for only prayer and meditation. And if you can chose a regular time it will be very helpful, because your body, your mind is a mechanism. If you take your lunch at a particular time every day your body starts crying for food.
And sometimes, you can even play tricks on it. If you take your lunch at one o’clock and the clock says now it is one o’clock and the clock is not right – it is only twelve or eleven – you look at the clock and it says one, suddenly you feel hunger. Your body is a mechanism. Your mind is also a mechanism.
Meditate every day in the same place at the same time, and you will create a hunger within your body and mind. Every day at that particular time your body and mind will ask you – they will actually cry to go into meditation. It will be helpful.
A space is created within you that becomes a hunger, a thirst. In the beginning it is very good… Unless you come to the point where meditation has become natural and you can meditate anywhere in any place at any time – up to that moment, use these sources of body and mind mechanism as a help.
Fourthly: this meditation is chaotic because catharsis is needed. It will be difficult for you – you will feel awkward, embarrassed. Back in your family, your neighborhood you may think, “How can I scream and go mad? What will people think?”
Don’t be too concerned with what people think – because if you are too concerned with people and what they think, you will never transform yourself. Then you are just a slave of people’s opinion. Then they will not allow you to move in any way beyond them. They can allow you only to be just like them, never different from them.
Once you think of transforming yourself, remember now, you are going beyond the crowd, beyond the society. And there is no other way. If you are interested in transforming yourself you are going beyond the crowd mind, the collective mind.
But this is only a problem in the beginning. If you go on doing your meditation, without being worried about what people say, at the most people can say that you have gone mad – and they are not wrong! You are going mad! You are using madness as a method.
But if you can continue for at least three months they will start seeing differences in you: something new is happening. Wait for three months and they will have to change their opinion, and they will have to come to you for advice because they are also mad… And you are now becoming saner, the madness is disappearing.
Your eyes are changing, they have become more silent. Your attitude, your approach, your relationships – everything will be changing. You will be less angry, less hateful, less jealous, more loving, more compassionate, more non-violent. They will feel it. And just this feeling will change their opinion.
Wait for the right moment. Just now, at the most they can think you are mad – let them think it! It makes no difference. Basically they already think that you are mad. No one thinks very good of you because no one thinks good of anyone except himself. What’s your opinion about your neighbors? What is your opinion about your wife? What is your opinion about your husband? Deep down everyone knows that the other is neurotic.
The wife knows the husband is a little bit crazy, neurotic. The husband knows the wife is mad, and thinks, somehow, to send her to an analyst. This is how everyone thinks about others – and everyone is right because everyone is mad!
So don’t be too worried about others. You can become individual only if you go beyond the opinion of others, if you go in your own way without being worried about what others think. Only then will you become an individual.
This word individual is beautiful. It means indivisible. If you follow the crowd you will always be fragmentary, divided. You cannot become a unity because the crowd is so big.
I have heard about a boy…
I was staying with a family, and they brought the boy to see me. He had become a little neurotic. I asked him “What is the matter?”
He said, “I am not neurotic, but my whole family is creating neurosis in me. My father thinks I should become a doctor, my mother thinks I should become an engineer. My uncle says, “This is nonsense. There is no need to become a doctor or an engineer. Become a scientist”– and they are all forcing me in different directions. I don’t know what I have come here to become, what my destiny is. Too many people are pulling me in too many directions. That is what is creating neurosis in me.”
If you follow the crowd you will be neurotic, fragmentary, because the crowd is big and everyone is pulling you in their own way, in their own direction. So you have many directions in your mind, in your being, you are being pulled in many directions. You are fragmentary.
Forget the crowd. Don’t allow anyone to pull you and push you. You are an individual, a free unit. Remain authentic to yourself, and sooner or later the crowd will recognize the change, the transformation, the mutation that has happened to you. Then they will follow you. Then they will ask for your advice.
This is the way of the crowd. First they will decry you. If you insist, secondly they will tolerate it. And if you still insist, thirdly they will worship you. That’s what always happens. So don’t be worried about it.
Now get ready for the night meditation.