How can I become more open and available without doing?

Osho, what is being open?

Devena, BEING OPEN SIMPLY MEANS being without mind. If the mind is there you are closed. Mind is a wall surrounding you. It is a transparent wall, hence you can see through it and you can go on living behind it without ever becoming aware that you are living in a prison cell. Prisons should be made of glass, then very few people will suffer so much in prisons. They will be able to see the people walking on the road, talking; they will be able to see everything, and they will believe that they are free. If they are not going out and mixing with the people, that is simply their own decision that they don't want to mix with the crowds. They are "aristocrats," they are not ordinary people, they are "special" people. And these walls which cannot be seen will not be thought of as walls, they…

Beloved Osho, I am such a doer. How can I become more open and available to you without doing? How to find the balance between doing and non-doing, to reconcile your two statements: "you have to act without will," and, "effort is also needed"?

You will be surprised to know that when I entered the university, I was doing so much exercise -- running, swimming, jogging and other exercises -- that a few other students became interested. They started following me, to go for a run. I had never thought that there was any problem in it, but the man who owned all the restaurants and the mess at the university came to see me and said, "I will give you a totally free pass as far as food is concerned, but please don't help these people to run and jog and swim, because I am going to be bankrupt! "Before you came I had never seen people eating thirty-five chappattis at a time -- and your followers are doing that. At the most four chappattis are enough. But if everybody starts eating thirty-five chappattis at a time, seventy chappattis in a day, then…

Question: OSHO, EXACTLY HOW DO YOU NOT DO IT? So there are only two types of non-doers in the world: one who by sheer understanding relaxes and finds the state of non-doing, of peace, of silence; and the other type, who will go thousands of miles, torture themselves in every possible way, do yoga exercises, stand on their head and fast, starve, renounce, repress, pray, go into the monasteries and do all kinds of stupid things. And finally, simply by being tired, exhausted, they sit down -- and suddenly it is there. Perhaps they may think it has come because of all their doing. That is not the case -- it has come in spite of all their doing. Otherwise, they are such practiced doers that it was possible they might have continued still, because the more you run, the better your running becomes.

I see that. But it seems to me that if we are really going to look at it as being no technique... I mean we do nothing. Just coming up to the mountain and doing anything -- like meditating, or sitting, or anything -- is a technique of a sort.

Osho: They are all techniques, so they are not spiritual. They are all things projected by the mind. You cannot go beyond through any ceremony, any puja. That cannot do it. QUESTION: YOU SAY, IN OTHER WORDS, THAT A SITUATION HAS TO ARRIVE WHERE THE MIND IS BY ITSELF FOR A PERIOD OF TIME WITH NO THOUGHT OR NO MOTION. AND YET YOU SAY THERE IS NO WAY TO REALLY DO THAT, IT JUST HAPPENS. SO IF YOU ARE WORKING IN A SHOP, WHY COME TO THE MOUNTAINS, WHY SIT DOWN, WHY DO ANYTHING? Osho: I tell you, there is no question of that. It can happen anywhere. But it can only happen in a mind which is totally unoccupied totally vacant. This is not a method rather this is an understanding of the total situation of life If you understand it, then one thing becomes clear. If you have…

Beloved Osho, being with you I feel so blissful and liberated, and there seems to be no end to it. You must have tricked me. What is your secret?

And in fact the no seems to be more rational, more loving, more meaningful, more humane. Rather than arguing with that man, Arjuna had just to say: "I have accepted your idea that whatsoever happens, happens according to God" -- and then should have left for the Himalayas. He wanted to be a sannyasin, a meditator in the Himalayas. Krishna would not have been able to stop him -- just because of his own argument. Arjuna could have said, "If war is to happen, God will bring me back -- but you keep quiet." Hence Hindus would not like anybody else to be accepted as a prophet of God. Mohammed talks nonsense. You cannot expect anything better from an uneducated man who could not write, who could not read, who had never been in any way a meditative man. He married nine women. Now, I cannot support that, because in…