You book for [three groups] and then I will tell you what else to do. The camp will reveal many things about you -- how your energy is moving and where, and what is needed.
In fact all techniques are good. All techniques are good -- but not for everybody. With some personalities some technique fits, with some personalities the same technique may not work. So once you have found a right track, and once it is exactly known how your energy is moving, things become very simple. Then you can move in a progression, one group after another.
Otherwise sometimes it happens that you can move in a circle, and finally you find you are back in the same place where you have always been, so you have not moved at all. Sometimes you can do groups in such a way that they contradict each other. That too is dangerous, because one group sets your energy in one direction, another group sets your energy in another direction, and then you are pulled apart, then you have a split.
Many people are suffering because in the western spiritual market everything is available, so whatsoever is available one wants to try it. And when one has tried one, then one wants to try another and another and there is no clear-cut guidance on how one should proceed, step-wise and gradually.
The groups should not be contradictory. They should create a linear progression in you so that you can see something growing, otherwise great confusion can result.
For example, if you are doing some old eastern techniques, which are in a subtle way repressive, and then you do Encounter and cathartic techniques which are expressive, then they move in opposite directions. Both are good, but for different people. If you don't have any repression, eastern groups can be of tremendous value, but if you have something repressed already, then first it has to be released -- a cathartic group is needed.
So groups are like medicine: all medicines are good, but that doesn't mean that you have to take all medicines. You have to take only that medicine which fits with you, which is for your illness. Otherwise medicine can prove more fatal than the illness itself, because it will be poison. If it has to kill something in you -- your enemy -- it will. If it has nobody to kill, it will kill you -- it has to kill somebody!
If there are germs to kill, it will kill those germs. If they are not there, it will kill some other germs which are very essential for your life and for your body. So here we are trying to make a scientific approach -- not in a haphazard way and not in a circular way, and never contradictory.
Sometimes it happens that some group which today is contradictory for you may not be contradictory after a few groups -- you may come to a point from where it fits.
So you do these three groups and the camp. The camp will decide many things. In the camp do all the five meditations, and after the camp you tell me which meditation you liked the most, which meditation you hated the most, and which meditation went deepest in you -- these three things.
Sometimes it happens it is the same meditation that goes the deepest, that you love most, and that you hate most. Sometimes these are three different meditations -- one never knows. But if you can feel it clear-cutly, then it will be very decisive.
Ordinarily human beings exist in a nebulous state -- like a cloud -- and it is very difficult to see their form. Not that the form cannot be seen -- I can see it right now, I am seeing what form your energy has -- but it is a nebulous form. In a moment it will change. It is just like a cloud: one moment it is like an elephant, another moment the elephant has disappeared. By the time you decide it is an elephant, it is not there -- the form has changed; the form is not fixed.
So ordinarily the human mind is like a nebula, a very clouded state, and by and by with meditations and with a few groups, you will start taking a certain shape -- a shape which is not just a style but a stability. And with that you become an individual -- never before it.
Before it you have personality. Personality is a style, individuality is a stability. Personality is just on the surface, like your dress. Stability is something deeper, that persists in you, and by and by that tends to become a crystallised form. And in fact that is what everybody is searching for -- an integration, something integrated, something about which you can say, 'This is what I am!' Right now you cannot say who you are. But in the four months that you will be here, much can be done.
Anand means bliss, and akshara means the eternal -- that which is, was, and will be. And in the eastern search the eternal is true, and the momentary, the temporary, is just an illusion, a dream. That which happens is not true. That which remains, only that is true.
Anand Akshara will mean eternal bliss -- and it is there in you right in this very moment. It is not something that you have to achieve. It is not something that you have to invent, create. It is you! Just a turning, just a leaning back into your own being. That is the exact meaning of the christian word 'conversion' -- to turn in, to turn back, to look into one's own self. Suddenly it is there, and one starts laughing because it has been always there, and it was just foolish to go on looking.
[Another visitor says: I'm studying acupuncture.]
That's very good... very meditative. It will be helpful. And if by and by you start feeling your own energy, or the working of the energy in your own body, acupuncture will not remain just a technique -- it will become an instrument.
And it is an insight. You can learn the technique -- nothing will come out of it. Rather it is more a hunch than an art. That is one of the most difficult things about ancient techniques -- they are not scientific, and if you approach through the scientific outlook you may get some inkling, but the major part will be missing. And whatsoever you will be able to get hold of will not be much, and it will be frustrating.
The whole ancient approach was totally different -- it was not logical at all; it was more feminine, more intuitive, more illogical.
One was not thinking in syllogism as the scientific mind thinks. Rather one was in a deep participation with existence... more in a sort of dreaming state, in a reverie, and allowing nature to release its secrets and mysteries. It was not an aggression on nature -- a persuasion at the most. And the approach is from the interior.
If you go to study modern medicine, the approach is from the outside. You dissect a dead body -- it is there as an object. You can study it, but you are studying a dead body -- and a dead is qualitatively different from an alive body. With the alive body, something of tremendous value exists which has left the dead body. A dead body only looks like a body -- it is no more a body, because it embodies nothing. So even to say it is a body is not right. Even linguistically it is wrong, because it embodies nothing.
It is as if the god of the temple has disappeared, and you still go on calling the house a temple -- it is no more a temple. It was a temple only because God was in residence.
And when you cut a body you come to know certain facts which are of the dead body. Even modern medicine is becoming aware of the fact that we will have to find out some way to know more about the living body. But it is easier to approach from the outside. Mm? students can stand around the table and the professor can teach.
Now it is not the same way for acupuncture. One has to approach one's own body from the interior-most core. Those seven hundred points were not known objectively -- they were known in deep meditation. When one goes deep inside and looks from inside -- a tremendous experience -- one can see all the acupuncture points surrounding oneself, as if the night is full of stars. And when you have seen those energy points, then only are you ready. Now you have an inner grasp, and you will be able, just by touching the body of the other person, to feel where the body energy is missing and where it is; where it is moving, where it is not moving; where it is cold and where it is warm; where it is alive and where it has gone dead. There are points from where it responds, and there are points from where it has no response at all.
Meditation can be of tremendous value -- and both are parallel growths. You have chosen something good, but simultaneously you will have to grow. You will be able to know acupuncture only to the extent that you become capable of knowing yourself... and when both coincide there is great light. In that light you can see everything -- not only about yourself -- about others' bodies. A new vision arises as if a third eye has opened. What about your sannyas?
[She replies: I don't know.]
Mm mm! Then you are ready for it (she laughs). One should be adventurous enough to go into the unknown.... Because there is only one way of knowing, and that is by going into it. There is no other way. So go into it and see what it is, mm?
... You are holding your energy deep down, so something will have to be done about it. You may not be even aware, mm? but you are controlling. Control is very bad -- but we have been taught to control. So you may not be responsible at all for it. Everybody has been taught to control. Control is thought to be the great value -- it is not. One should be more spontaneous than controlled.
And spontaneity has its own discipline, but it is not control -- it is very flowing. If you remain controlled too much it will be very difficult for you to go inside, because when you control something, the first need is go outside. Just think of it in this way.
If you are controlling air inside -- if you inhale and you control it inside -- then you cannot go in because the whole breathing wants to go out. You will have to control it and you cannot go in. The air wants to go out, so first it has to be released. When you have really exhaled, you are ready for inhalation. Then it goes in naturally, and with that natural in-flow, you can also go in. There is a rhythm, in and out.
So here we have both types of groups -- and I have suggested a few to you. A few groups are such that take you out, and a few groups are such that take you in. You will need both, in a rhythm. You are holding much energy, and that holding can become very heavy -- it can become almost like a rock. There is no trembling... the energy is not vibrating. So much has to be done -- but it will be done. Change to orange -- that will be helpful. This will be your name: Ma Deva Chandan.
Deva means divine, and chandan means sandalwood. In India the perfume of sandalwood is one of the most respected, revered perfumes -- it is divine. So divine sandalwood perfume -- that will be the name. And I feel you have a certain affinity with sandalwood -- that's why I am giving you this name. That perfume will help you very much. So you can have sandalwood around you, you can use sandal perfume, sandal oil. You can burn sandal incense and it will take you very far -- it can take you far out! It has been chosen for particular people... and small things are of tremendous value.
Just the other day I was reading.... There is a bridge in London where people used to commit suicide in big numbers. They have changed the colour of the bridge from grey to red, and since they changed the colour, the suicide rate has fallen very low. You see the point of orange people? (Osho chuckles) The colour grey is suicidal -- red is more alive, red is the colour of life. So even colour can be of such importance. They were simply surprised!
They could not figure it out -- that just by changing the colour it happens... but it happens!
Colour enters your eyes, changes you. Mm? just looking at green suddenly you feel peaceful -- something happens inside. It is the same with smell: a certain smell and you start floating into a certain space. And this is my feeling -- that sandal perfume will help you tremendously. It will make you more alive, more throbbing, more vibrating, more pulsating....
Anand is bliss or blissful, nisheetha means the hour of midnight, the most empty hour. And whenever you can manage, midnight will be your best time for meditation. For people who like emptiness, the midnight hour is the best -- it simply corresponds with nothingness. Just as in the midmorning activity is at its peak -- opposite to it, at midnight activity is as low as possible; inactivity is at its peak. It is the most passive moment. So all people who have been following the path of nothingness -- what Buddhists call shunyata -- their hour for meditation has been the midnight hour. Nisheeth means midnight. Just to remind you, I'm giving you that name, Nisheetha.
And whenever you can manage, never miss. You can just sit in your bed at midnight when everything has become silent, the traffic has stopped and people have fallen asleep. When millions of people fall asleep, their very sleep is a help for a person who is moving into nothingness, because they are no more creating turmoil, they are no more creating vibrations, they are no more creating neurosis all around. All neurotic people are asleep -- all politicians, all mischief-mongers, all are asleep. Mm? they have fallen into oblivion. At that moment the climate, the spiritual climate, is the purest, and one can simply use that space and move into it.
If you can keep awake, get up and go to the terrace -- just look at the stars, sit silently. Just twenty minutes will do, and you will feel so calm and so quiet. If you want to repeat the same experience in the middle of the day it will take at least three hours. It is very easy at midnight. It is almost as if you are moving with the tide, so you don't need to make much effort... you can ride on the tide. And change to orange.
'Sound is the vehicle to move to the other. Become absolutely deaf and dumb -- suddenly you will find that you are standing within. That is why silence was practised so much -- all the bridges to the other were broken.'
[There follows a description of the 21-day silence and isolation technique. A sannyasin reports on her experience after completing this. She found that she went through several changes; some of the time it was easy, and later more difficult.]
It always changes when you have touched the rock-bottom of misery; only then it changes, never before. And remember -- it is one of the most fundamental things: if you are sad, become as sad as you can. And when you have come to the last point where you think that it is impossible to bear it, just a little more and then suddenly you will see the turning point -- you are no more sad; the same energy is becoming joy. If you had stopped then you would have remained hanging in the sadness.
And in silence this always happens -- the beginning few days become very heavy because it is so new.
[The sannyasin says she enjoyed being outside and playing with children during the silence. But at night was afraid of the darkness.]
This has been good. Next time when you go into silence, the whole day also, don't play with children because that is not good. Mm? that is a sort of communication. And if you enjoy hills and trees and animals and birds, then it is no more silence. These trees are people...
Just close the room the whole day... just lie down on the floor, look at the room. For seven days, day, night, no communication with the outside world -- and you will fall in love with darkness.
At first it may become very very difficult, but then the turning point will come. And once you can love darkness you have achieved something valuable, because darkness is more primal than light.
Darkness is more fundamental than light. Light comes and goes; darkness always remains. Light is limited; darkness is unlimited. Light can be created; darkness cannot be created. You can bring light here and there; darkness you cannot touch even, it is so beyond. In the day there is light, the sun is there, the sun comes and disappears, but the darkness continues eternally; it is always there. So light is momentary, darkness is eternal.
There is only one occult school... in which Jesus trained and John the Baptist was trained; the school is called the Essenes... that is the only school in the whole world that defines God as darkness -- and I love it. Their definition is far better than god as light. You will have to learn to love darkness. With that love many things will grow in you.
With darkness one becomes very silent. In fact darkness is more like silence -- light is more like words.... But fear arises, that's true, because darkness is more like death too.
So next time just take your food... if you want to walk, walk in the room, but close all the windows so you remain in the room absolutely alone -- no book to read, nothing to write on, no tape to listen to -- nothing! Just for seven days, absolute zero. But not now -- sometime later.
Osho's Commentary
You book for [three groups] and then I will tell you what else to do. The camp will reveal many things about you -- how your energy is moving and where, and what is needed.
In fact all techniques are good. All techniques are good -- but not for everybody. With some personalities some technique fits, with some personalities the same technique may not work. So once you have found a right track, and once it is exactly known how your energy is moving, things become very simple. Then you can move in a progression, one group after another.
Otherwise sometimes it happens that you can move in a circle, and finally you find you are back in the same place where you have always been, so you have not moved at all. Sometimes you can do groups in such a way that they contradict each other. That too is dangerous, because one group sets your energy in one direction, another group sets your energy in another direction, and then you are pulled apart, then you have a split.
Many people are suffering because in the western spiritual market everything is available, so whatsoever is available one wants to try it. And when one has tried one, then one wants to try another and another and there is no clear-cut guidance on how one should proceed, step-wise and gradually.
The groups should not be contradictory. They should create a linear progression in you so that you can see something growing, otherwise great confusion can result.
For example, if you are doing some old eastern techniques, which are in a subtle way repressive, and then you do Encounter and cathartic techniques which are expressive, then they move in opposite directions. Both are good, but for different people. If you don't have any repression, eastern groups can be of tremendous value, but if you have something repressed already, then first it has to be released -- a cathartic group is needed.
So groups are like medicine: all medicines are good, but that doesn't mean that you have to take all medicines. You have to take only that medicine which fits with you, which is for your illness. Otherwise medicine can prove more fatal than the illness itself, because it will be poison. If it has to kill something in you -- your enemy -- it will. If it has nobody to kill, it will kill you -- it has to kill somebody!
If there are germs to kill, it will kill those germs. If they are not there, it will kill some other germs which are very essential for your life and for your body. So here we are trying to make a scientific approach -- not in a haphazard way and not in a circular way, and never contradictory.
Sometimes it happens that some group which today is contradictory for you may not be contradictory after a few groups -- you may come to a point from where it fits.
So you do these three groups and the camp. The camp will decide many things. In the camp do all the five meditations, and after the camp you tell me which meditation you liked the most, which meditation you hated the most, and which meditation went deepest in you -- these three things.
Sometimes it happens it is the same meditation that goes the deepest, that you love most, and that you hate most. Sometimes these are three different meditations -- one never knows. But if you can feel it clear-cutly, then it will be very decisive.
Ordinarily human beings exist in a nebulous state -- like a cloud -- and it is very difficult to see their form. Not that the form cannot be seen -- I can see it right now, I am seeing what form your energy has -- but it is a nebulous form. In a moment it will change. It is just like a cloud: one moment it is like an elephant, another moment the elephant has disappeared. By the time you decide it is an elephant, it is not there -- the form has changed; the form is not fixed.
So ordinarily the human mind is like a nebula, a very clouded state, and by and by with meditations and with a few groups, you will start taking a certain shape -- a shape which is not just a style but a stability. And with that you become an individual -- never before it.
Before it you have personality. Personality is a style, individuality is a stability. Personality is just on the surface, like your dress. Stability is something deeper, that persists in you, and by and by that tends to become a crystallised form. And in fact that is what everybody is searching for -- an integration, something integrated, something about which you can say, 'This is what I am!' Right now you cannot say who you are. But in the four months that you will be here, much can be done.
Anand means bliss, and akshara means the eternal -- that which is, was, and will be. And in the eastern search the eternal is true, and the momentary, the temporary, is just an illusion, a dream. That which happens is not true. That which remains, only that is true.
Anand Akshara will mean eternal bliss -- and it is there in you right in this very moment. It is not something that you have to achieve. It is not something that you have to invent, create. It is you! Just a turning, just a leaning back into your own being. That is the exact meaning of the christian word 'conversion' -- to turn in, to turn back, to look into one's own self. Suddenly it is there, and one starts laughing because it has been always there, and it was just foolish to go on looking.
[Another visitor says: I'm studying acupuncture.]
That's very good... very meditative. It will be helpful. And if by and by you start feeling your own energy, or the working of the energy in your own body, acupuncture will not remain just a technique -- it will become an instrument.
And it is an insight. You can learn the technique -- nothing will come out of it. Rather it is more a hunch than an art. That is one of the most difficult things about ancient techniques -- they are not scientific, and if you approach through the scientific outlook you may get some inkling, but the major part will be missing. And whatsoever you will be able to get hold of will not be much, and it will be frustrating.
The whole ancient approach was totally different -- it was not logical at all; it was more feminine, more intuitive, more illogical.
One was not thinking in syllogism as the scientific mind thinks. Rather one was in a deep participation with existence... more in a sort of dreaming state, in a reverie, and allowing nature to release its secrets and mysteries. It was not an aggression on nature -- a persuasion at the most. And the approach is from the interior.
If you go to study modern medicine, the approach is from the outside. You dissect a dead body -- it is there as an object. You can study it, but you are studying a dead body -- and a dead is qualitatively different from an alive body. With the alive body, something of tremendous value exists which has left the dead body. A dead body only looks like a body -- it is no more a body, because it embodies nothing. So even to say it is a body is not right. Even linguistically it is wrong, because it embodies nothing.
It is as if the god of the temple has disappeared, and you still go on calling the house a temple -- it is no more a temple. It was a temple only because God was in residence.
And when you cut a body you come to know certain facts which are of the dead body. Even modern medicine is becoming aware of the fact that we will have to find out some way to know more about the living body. But it is easier to approach from the outside. Mm? students can stand around the table and the professor can teach.
Now it is not the same way for acupuncture. One has to approach one's own body from the interior-most core. Those seven hundred points were not known objectively -- they were known in deep meditation. When one goes deep inside and looks from inside -- a tremendous experience -- one can see all the acupuncture points surrounding oneself, as if the night is full of stars. And when you have seen those energy points, then only are you ready. Now you have an inner grasp, and you will be able, just by touching the body of the other person, to feel where the body energy is missing and where it is; where it is moving, where it is not moving; where it is cold and where it is warm; where it is alive and where it has gone dead. There are points from where it responds, and there are points from where it has no response at all.
Meditation can be of tremendous value -- and both are parallel growths. You have chosen something good, but simultaneously you will have to grow. You will be able to know acupuncture only to the extent that you become capable of knowing yourself... and when both coincide there is great light. In that light you can see everything -- not only about yourself -- about others' bodies. A new vision arises as if a third eye has opened.
What about your sannyas?
[She replies: I don't know.]
Mm mm! Then you are ready for it (she laughs). One should be adventurous enough to go into the unknown.... Because there is only one way of knowing, and that is by going into it. There is no other way. So go into it and see what it is, mm?
... You are holding your energy deep down, so something will have to be done about it. You may not be even aware, mm? but you are controlling. Control is very bad -- but we have been taught to control. So you may not be responsible at all for it. Everybody has been taught to control. Control is thought to be the great value -- it is not. One should be more spontaneous than controlled.
And spontaneity has its own discipline, but it is not control -- it is very flowing. If you remain controlled too much it will be very difficult for you to go inside, because when you control something, the first need is go outside. Just think of it in this way.
If you are controlling air inside -- if you inhale and you control it inside -- then you cannot go in because the whole breathing wants to go out. You will have to control it and you cannot go in. The air wants to go out, so first it has to be released. When you have really exhaled, you are ready for inhalation. Then it goes in naturally, and with that natural in-flow, you can also go in. There is a rhythm, in and out.
So here we have both types of groups -- and I have suggested a few to you. A few groups are such that take you out, and a few groups are such that take you in. You will need both, in a rhythm. You are holding much energy, and that holding can become very heavy -- it can become almost like a rock. There is no trembling... the energy is not vibrating. So much has to be done -- but it will be done. Change to orange -- that will be helpful.
This will be your name: Ma Deva Chandan.
Deva means divine, and chandan means sandalwood. In India the perfume of sandalwood is one of the most respected, revered perfumes -- it is divine. So divine sandalwood perfume -- that will be the name. And I feel you have a certain affinity with sandalwood -- that's why I am giving you this name. That perfume will help you very much. So you can have sandalwood around you, you can use sandal perfume, sandal oil. You can burn sandal incense and it will take you very far -- it can take you far out! It has been chosen for particular people... and small things are of tremendous value.
Just the other day I was reading.... There is a bridge in London where people used to commit suicide in big numbers. They have changed the colour of the bridge from grey to red, and since they changed the colour, the suicide rate has fallen very low. You see the point of orange people? (Osho chuckles) The colour grey is suicidal -- red is more alive, red is the colour of life. So even colour can be of such importance. They were simply surprised!
They could not figure it out -- that just by changing the colour it happens... but it happens!
Colour enters your eyes, changes you. Mm? just looking at green suddenly you feel peaceful -- something happens inside. It is the same with smell: a certain smell and you start floating into a certain space. And this is my feeling -- that sandal perfume will help you tremendously. It will make you more alive, more throbbing, more vibrating, more pulsating....
Anand is bliss or blissful, nisheetha means the hour of midnight, the most empty hour. And whenever you can manage, midnight will be your best time for meditation. For people who like emptiness, the midnight hour is the best -- it simply corresponds with nothingness. Just as in the midmorning activity is at its peak -- opposite to it, at midnight activity is as low as possible; inactivity is at its peak. It is the most passive moment. So all people who have been following the path of nothingness -- what Buddhists call shunyata -- their hour for meditation has been the midnight hour. Nisheeth means midnight. Just to remind you, I'm giving you that name, Nisheetha.
And whenever you can manage, never miss. You can just sit in your bed at midnight when everything has become silent, the traffic has stopped and people have fallen asleep. When millions of people fall asleep, their very sleep is a help for a person who is moving into nothingness, because they are no more creating turmoil, they are no more creating vibrations, they are no more creating neurosis all around. All neurotic people are asleep -- all politicians, all mischief-mongers, all are asleep. Mm? they have fallen into oblivion. At that moment the climate, the spiritual climate, is the purest, and one can simply use that space and move into it.
If you can keep awake, get up and go to the terrace -- just look at the stars, sit silently. Just twenty minutes will do, and you will feel so calm and so quiet. If you want to repeat the same experience in the middle of the day it will take at least three hours. It is very easy at midnight. It is almost as if you are moving with the tide, so you don't need to make much effort... you can ride on the tide. And change to orange.
'Sound is the vehicle to move to the other. Become absolutely deaf and dumb -- suddenly you will find that you are standing within. That is why silence was practised so much -- all the bridges to the other were broken.'
[There follows a description of the 21-day silence and isolation technique. A sannyasin reports on her experience after completing this. She found that she went through several changes; some of the time it was easy, and later more difficult.]
It always changes when you have touched the rock-bottom of misery; only then it changes, never before. And remember -- it is one of the most fundamental things: if you are sad, become as sad as you can. And when you have come to the last point where you think that it is impossible to bear it, just a little more and then suddenly you will see the turning point -- you are no more sad; the same energy is becoming joy. If you had stopped then you would have remained hanging in the sadness.
And in silence this always happens -- the beginning few days become very heavy because it is so new.
[The sannyasin says she enjoyed being outside and playing with children during the silence. But at night was afraid of the darkness.]
This has been good. Next time when you go into silence, the whole day also, don't play with children because that is not good. Mm? that is a sort of communication. And if you enjoy hills and trees and animals and birds, then it is no more silence. These trees are people...
Just close the room the whole day... just lie down on the floor, look at the room. For seven days, day, night, no communication with the outside world -- and you will fall in love with darkness.
At first it may become very very difficult, but then the turning point will come. And once you can love darkness you have achieved something valuable, because darkness is more primal than light.
Darkness is more fundamental than light. Light comes and goes; darkness always remains. Light is limited; darkness is unlimited. Light can be created; darkness cannot be created. You can bring light here and there; darkness you cannot touch even, it is so beyond. In the day there is light, the sun is there, the sun comes and disappears, but the darkness continues eternally; it is always there. So light is momentary, darkness is eternal.
There is only one occult school... in which Jesus trained and John the Baptist was trained; the school is called the Essenes... that is the only school in the whole world that defines God as darkness -- and I love it. Their definition is far better than god as light. You will have to learn to love darkness. With that love many things will grow in you.
With darkness one becomes very silent. In fact darkness is more like silence -- light is more like words.... But fear arises, that's true, because darkness is more like death too.
So next time just take your food... if you want to walk, walk in the room, but close all the windows so you remain in the room absolutely alone -- no book to read, nothing to write on, no tape to listen to -- nothing! Just for seven days, absolute zero. But not now -- sometime later.