[A sannyasin who is a healer says: I want to become a better healer, so I can be of better service in helping people.]
Healing is one of the most delicate dimensions. And the delicacy consists in the healer not doing anything in it. The healer is not really a healer because he is not a doer. Healing happens through him. He has just to annihilate himself. To be a healer really means not to be. The less vou are, the better healing will happen. The more you are, the more the passage is blocked. God or the totality or whatsoever name you prefer, is the healer. The whole is the healer.
The word 'healing' comes from the same root as from where the word 'whole' comes. Whole, health, healing, holy, all come from the same root. To be healed means to be joined with the whole. To he ill means to be disconnected with the whole. An ill person is one who has simply developed blocks between him and the whole, so something is disconnected. The function of the healer is to reconnect it. But when I say the function of the healer is to reconnect it, I don't mean that the healer has to do something. The healer is just a function. The doer is God, the whole.
So if you really want to become a healer you will have to completely commit suicide. You have to accept your emptiness. And that is going to become your work: to become more and more empty of yourself. So go on emptying yourself. As nature abhors vacuum, God also abhors vacuum. When you empty yourself, from one side you go out and from another side, God comes in. He has to occupy the same space that you are occupying. The same space that the ego is occupying, is to be occupied by Him; so the ego and God cannot exist together in a person.
And that's the whole problem of healing and the whole art - how to nullify yourself, how to become a void. But it will happen.... Everybody can become a healer. Healing is something like breathing; it is natural. Somebody is ill; it means he has lost his capacity to heal himself. He is no more aware of his own healing source. The healer is to help him to be rejoined. That source is the same from which the healer draws, but the ill man has forgotten how to under-stand the language of it. The healer is in relationship with the whole, so he can become a via-media. The healer touches the body of the ill person and becomes a link between him and the source. The patient is no longer connected directly with the source so he becomes indirectly connected. Once the energy starts flowing, he is healed.
And if the healer is really a man of understanding.... Because it is possible that you can become a healer and you may not be a man of understanding. There are many healers who go on doing it but they don't know how it happens; they don't know the mechanism of it. If you understand also, you can help the patient to be healed and you can help him to be aware of the source from where the healing is happening. So not only is he healed of his present illnesses, he is prevented from future illnesses. Then the healing is perfect. It is not only curative, it is also preventative.
Healing almost becomes an experience of prayer, an experience of God, of love, of the whole.
So just be here and for a few days don't do any healing. Meditate for a few days and just get in tune with the family that is growing here around me. And when I say get in tune, I mean don't try logically, intellectually to dissect things. Whatsoever is going on here, accept it in deep trust. Simply fall in line with it. You are not to think about it because thinking is one of the barriers for a healer. So start by dropping thinking.
Simply be empty here. Be like a small child who cannot argue, who cannot reason; who simply accepts. Trust comes naturally to a child. Simply trust me and trust the people here, even if sometimes it is difficult for the reason to accept.
But acceptance is so valuable that the reason can be starved to death. Whenever there is a choice between acceptance and reasoning, always choose acceptance. By and by you will see that your reason also starts helping you to accept it. Because when the reasoning comes to see that you accept anything, that a yes or no makes no difference, then reason also becomes sympathetic to your trust. And when inside you, reason and trust meet, your own conflict is transcended.
This will be the first step for your discipline to become a healer.
Between reason and trust, or between heart and mind, a bridge is needed, and such a bridge that the mind becomes secondary, just instrumental to the heart. Ordinarily the mind is the master and the heart has to follow. Then you can become a doctor but not a healer. You can become a therapist but not a healer. Therapy is part of science; healing is part of religion.
So you can become a man of medicine by reason, by the head, but not a man of healing energy, because that comes from a different source, and the whole thing just goes topsy-turvy. The heart becomes the master and the reason becomes just a shadow and ally. Remember this word.
I am not saying be against reason, because if you are against reason, the rift will continue and there will be a continuous conflict within you. So don't be against reason, just be for the heart. If the reason says something, listen to it. If it goes against the heart, neglect it. There is no need to fight it; just ignore it and follow the heart.
By and by you will see that the mind is coming closer and closer to the heart because now the mind will feel unnourished unfed, starved. Once the mind understands - and it understands very well that the situation has changed, the heart has become the centre so it has to become an ally - then it cooperates. And when the mind cooperates with the heart and reason cooperates with your trust, your rift is bridged.
When you are not divided you have become a vehicle. In your undividedness you have taken the first step towards being a healer. This is going to be your deepest meditation: listen to the heart.
Feel more, think less. If any conflict arises, you have to be with the heart. You have to listen to the feeling - howsoever irrational, absurd, even mad. And I will make you a great healer; don't be worried!
And do a few groups here. Enlightenment Intensive will be good.
[The sannyasin says: I did that once in England and it wasn't my cup of tea.]
Mm mm... don't think of it as not your cup of tea. Always think that you are not yet worthy of this cup of tea. Do it again and this time do it as totally as possible. It is a zen method and tremendously helpful.
I know for many people it looks like a barrier. And for people who have been in the new therapy groups - Encounter, Gestalt, Psychodrama, or groups like that - it is very difficult and it makes for a barrier. All those groups are very new and they fit with the western mind because they are groups of relating, of expression, movement, bodywork, catharsis. That fits perfectly with the western mind.
But a group like the Intensive is an eastern method.
It is more concerned with going within than going without. The journey is totally different. It is more concerned with your original face, with who you are, than the reflection that you create in others' minds. It is more concerned with your innermost core of being as it is in deep isolation, not in relationship. So it is not cathartic. It has nothing to do with relating. It is not expressive. You have to go within.
You have to be alone and alone and alone. You have to seek a point, a virgin point within your being which has never been travelled before. Nobody can enter there, except you. And you too can only enter up to a certain extent. A point comes when you are also left outside. Something enters - but not you. The I is left out at the door. You enter as energy, nameless, formless, but not as you have known yourself. Your whole identity is lost. Your whole address is no more there. You don't know who you are. You enter only when you don't know who you are. Then suddenly you are inside the shrine and you know who you are. But this has nothing to do with your previous identity.
So it is a different method, but I would like you to do it - and work as hard as you can.
[To a visitor who said he had up to now always worked on himself by himself, Osho spoke of the dynamics of how a group functions in helping one to grow and achieve insights.
Osho said that we are not islands but all part of the continent. He said that in a group much energy was amassed and one could rise high on that crest, and that in groups one could glimpse insights that inspired and reassured one that there was something there to be attained (see 'Above All, Don't Wobble' January 25th, where Osho expands on this).
Osho said the benefit of working in groups has been recognised for many many years and hence, even in ancient times, schools, academies and ashrams were established to allow people to work and grow together. He said people have attained by working on their own, but that is rare (see'Hammer On The Rock', December 19th, where Osho talks about working alone and with a master).]
Gurdjieff used to say that the situation is such that it is as if a hundred persons are asleep. Now nobody can wake himself up on his own accord, but if somebody is awake his very presence can be used in many ways to help others to awake. Only one who is awake can help the one who is fast asleep to be wakeful. And if a person who is fully awake is not available... because it is rare to find a fully awakened man, a fully enlightened man; if one can find, one is tremendously fortunate, but it is not easy... then a group of people can make a contact between themselves.
Whenever one person in the group is a little close to being awake, he can help others. At least he can create some noise; he can shriek and scream, and that will become an alarm.
If a group is working together, by and by the personality, the persona, drops. You start functioning as one of the group. You start functioning as part of the collectivity; you become members of each other. You each penetrate the other and people start over-lapping. Many possibilities open.
Ordinarily you are simply confined to yourself, and people who remain confined to themselves remain poor, spiritually poor. When many persons criss-cross you, it is just like cross-breeding - you are enriched; new elements enter you, new challenges. And those new challenges create situations in which you will have to awake.
And if even for a single moment you are awake and the dreams have disappeared, the sleep disturbed, you will never be the same again.
Now you will always carry this beautiful memory. The memory will haunt you and will again remind you to come back, to be awake again. Your whole life will start changing because now things which were valuable before will be valuable no more. Things which were not valuable before will become valuable because a new value has arisen in you. Now your whole pattern, your whole gestalt of life will change.
It will be good if you can come for a little longer period, at least for four or six weeks, and that will do much.
[An englishman, who is a buddhist monk since three years, says of his meditation: I feel I've lost the motivation or the enthusiasm that I felt originally. I need some encouragement now, some incentive.]
Mm, I can see it. It always happens when one becomes part of a traditional religion, because whenever a religion becomes established, it dies. Then everything becomes just a dead routine, a repetition. In the beginning you will feel very much enthusiasm because you don't know in what you are moving. In ignorance there is always enthusiasm. By and by, when you become alert about what you have done and what is happening, enthusiasm is gone. But then you are caught and you don't know what to do because going back is not going to be of any meaning. Going back to your old life is as meaningless as this, so what is the point of going back? One continues; one simply carries it.
A religion is alive only for a very few moments. When the original person is alive - when a Buddha is alive - then the religion is alive. When Buddha is gone the religion is gone.
It is exactly like a lamp. When the oil is gone, sooner or later the flame is also gone and then there is darkness. Then people simply go on repeating something which was there and is no more there.
They go on repeating for centuries. They go on elaborating, decorating, interpreting, commenting, and the bulk grows. But now it is based on a corpse. And this has to be so. When a Jesus is alive it is something else. It is not Christianity.
To live with a person like Jesus is to live face to face with a god.
To live with a Buddha is one thing; to be a Buddhist is something else. So if you are really interested, then find someone who is alive and who responds to your innermost core, and risk everything with him. That's worth risking. Otherwise from a Christian you can become a Buddhist; from a Buddhist you can become a Hindu; from a Hindu you can become a Mohammedan, and one can go on. It is just like changing your psychoanalyst, but the psychoanalysis always remains the same. Again another couch and again another couch; a little difference here and there.
If you have many corpses, they are all a little different from each other. One corpse may look very very beautiful, very attractive; another corpse may look very ugly and horrible. One corpse may look very very silent; another may look very angry. But one thing is similar - that they are all dead; and that's the real thing to find out. Christianity is dead. Buddhism is dead. Jainism is dead.
And it is natural, because a religion is born as people are born. Then a religion becomes grown up as people become grown up. Then a religion becomes old as people become old. Then as people die, religion dies. But with people we are more scientific - we bury them or burn them. With religions we are very unscientific; we carry the corpse for centuries - and the older the corpse the more valuable. Every religion tries to prove that theirs is the oldest, the most ancient.
If you really want to have a mutation, if you want to be transfigured, then you will have to hitch your balloon with an alive person. It is not going to happen with any church. They have much appeal.
When Buddha himself was alive he was not so appealing because there was no tradition behind him, no past, no respectability. The society was against him because the old churches were there; their business was at stake.
So it was very difficult and only courageous people would go to Buddha to be initiated; very courageous, rare souls, gamblers. Calculating, cunning, clever people would not go to him because what had he to give? On the contrary, he will take everything. He will uproot you. Your prestige, your power, will be gone; He will make you a beggar on the street. But later on Buddhism became established, as every religion becomes established.
Religion sooner or later becomes a church. The unorganised anarchy and beauty of it has gone.
Then there is an organised corpse with priests, orders, scripture, rules, regulations in thousands.
Buddhists have written rules in the thousands. To read them is difficult and to remember them is even more difficult. A bhikkhu has to follow almost three thousand rules!
Then everything is dead. The real is missing. It is simply a facade, but very decorated, golden.
And as time passes, more and more decoration goes on being done. It becomes more and more beautiful; more and more dead people are attracted.
You can get respectability from it, but you will not get life and you will not get light.
So the question is not how to give you encouragement. That is not going to help. The question is how to give you the insight. Encouragement is not going to help because it can boost you a little so that for a few days you again paddle a little faster, but again you will drop dead because you are carrying a corpse. And when I say this, I am not saying anything against Buddha. I am saying something against the buddhist church. Buddha is perfectly beautiful.
So find a Buddha. Don't become part of a church.
Commit yourself to someone who is alive yet and can give you something, who can transfer something which cannot be transferred . . .who can communicate to you immediate, direct, heart to heart. Otherwise you will waste your life.
You don't need encouragement. You need a little more frustration so that you can get out of the church. Then you can become a real Buddhist. A real Buddhist is a real Christian; a real Christian is a real Mohammedan; a real Mohammedan is a real Hindu - because reality is one.
Formulations are many, but reality is not many. It is one.
You need insight, and if you can understand what I am saying, get out of it. You are not yet too old to get out and the more you are in it, the more entangled you will be. And by and by as you start getting older you will lose more courage. You will say now where to go? What to do? and everything is settled here; you have a mission and work, this and that, and people respect you. They touch your feet and they call you baba. So it will become very difficult.
Before energy leaves you, before life starts declining, escape; get out of it ! And that is the only way to become a Buddhist. Never belong to a church. Belong to an alive person. And the earth is always full of them; it is never that buddhas are lacking. Of course they don't come again in the same shape and in the same package; that's right. The container is always different but if you look deep down vou can always find a buddha.
And that should be the search - the search for a master.
You are a disciple but you have no master; that's your problem. How can you become a disciple without there being a master? I know all the Buddhists in India. Not a single one is a master. They are very learned people, but a learned person is a learned person - nothing to do with being a master. They can quote scriptures but even the devil can do that.
So just be alert. It is your life and you have to take a decision. First find a master - then the disciplehood is possible and then learning starts. And don't be clinging to a dogma, a scripture, tradition. I can see you have the heart of a seeker but you have got lost in a desert. So gather courage.
And before one becomes a missionary, one should attain something. Unless you have it how can you share it with others? Otherwise the mission becomes almost like a business. You have to do it because they feed you. You have to do it because they take care of you. You have to do it because the old age is coming and who will take care of you? Where is your security? So a religious business is also a business; it makes no difference.
But I can see that you are still fresh. You have not yet been crippled. Your limbs are alive... you can run away. Mm? Get out of it!
[A visitor says: I've come from Mr Bennett's school (a Gurdjieffian school) in England - Sherborne House. Mrs Bennett sent me to ask you a question...
Before Mr Bennett died, he entrusted to me all the medications, all the teachings and movements and morning exercises; in fact all the spiritual disciplines of the academy.
Up to last year everything was alright and then my father died and I started drinking a lot, really a lot. I even started taking classes drunk.
Now I feel as if I know all the techniques backwards and side-wards, but it is as if the work has gone from me. I mean I'm just a man of techniques, and I feel I've destroyed everything.
Mrs Bennett said I should go to a master, so she sent me to you.]
You have come to the right person.
And she is perceptive; she understands....
There is nothing to be worried about. It is a good indication that you are feeling a little concerned; feeling responsible seeing that unless you know it as an experience, just knowing the techniques is not going to help. You will be false and you cannot help people, because the help never comes from techniques. It comes from the awakened state of the person who is helping. You need a certain state, an integration; what Gurdjieff used to call a crystallisation.
Unless that crystallisation is there, you will not be of any help. On the other hand you can be harmful.
At least you must be a little higher than the people you are going to help. You may not be perfect - because perfection is a very difficult thing - but you need to be of a little higher integration; somewhat ahead of them. That much you can help. But it always happens that when a master like Gurdjieff is dead, techniques are left, and the whole gurdjieff movement is suffering from techniques.
[The visitor adds: We don't only use gurdjieff techniques. We use a lot of sufi techniques also.]
Yes, they are also gurdjieff techniques because Gurdjieff was a Sufi. Gurdjieff techniques were something that were added by Ouspensky - or were found by people who were searching at the original sources from where Gurdjieff had got them. But still they are techniques.
And techniques can help a little - it is not that they are absolutely useless - but they are very superficial. The same technique in the hands of a master becomes a tremendous force. The technique in the hands of a technician is very ordinary. Those techniques one can read from a book.
But the real thing that is important is the presence of the master.
That presence is like a catalytic agent. What he says and what he tells you to do is not very important. Those are just ways of keeping you engaged. What is really transpiring is something totally different.
For example, if I say to somebody to go and dig a hole in the garden and not to stop until he falls asleep, on the surface it is just a technique; it can be used by anybody. But the real thing is not that.
When a person listens to me and trusts me, even though it is absurd, he will dig the hole for twenty hours without eating, without sleeping. The whole energy will be exhausted and he is not allowed to fall asleep. If he falls, that's okay, but he is not to initiate it; he is not to rest. By and by the digging becomes almost dream-like. He cannot believe whether he is really digging or whether he is seeing a dream. The boundary between waking and dreaming merge, and he goes on....
[Osho described the three layers of energy in man: the first for day-to-day work, the second layer for emergencies, and the third which Osho described as 'the eternal source, which is your real being'.
(See 'Above All, Don't Wobble', Sunday, February 1st, where Osho talks about energy in more detail, to another seeker from Sherborne.)]
If he continues as the master has said, then whenever he is passing from one energy level to another, there will be a contact with the master just between the two. When the day-to-day level is finished and he is just on the verge of moving out of it and into the second layer, at that neutral point, in that neutral gear, the master can do much because in that moment there is no ego and no resistance. You are just an opening. So if the master is alive he can simply flow in you. He may be thousands of miles away; that makes no difference. He can simply flow in you, and he can do many things that would have taken years, even lives, for you to attain.
When you are passing from the second, emergency layer to the original, to the source, then again he can do many things - many more than he can do at the first because the first was a little further away from the centre. The second is very close to the centre.
Now these things are secrets, and even if they are made open, one who is not himself awakened can read them, listen to them, but they will be of no use. The method can be retained, and then anybody can give it like a technician to anybody else. For example he can say to dig a hole, but nothing will happen; the man will simply be tired. He will have a good sleep, that's all. The next morning he will feel very good and he may think that something has happened but he will remain the same. That goodness is just a deep rest after a great tiredness. Nothing has happened.
A master is a must. Without him techniques are just impotent.
Be here and start meditating. Don't bring in your knowledge; keep it aside so I can work. And do a few groups here to just clean and purify you a little. I will be working.
You can be ready; nothing is wrong. You can have something valuable which is not a technique.
Have you done any growth groups in England?
[Never. Mr Bennett was always very against Encounter so we never did it.]
You will be helped very much by it, very much. The modern mind needs them.
Bennett was right in a way because his masters were against it, and those masters were also right because their masters were against it. But the modern mind has changed so much that old techniques that were developed one thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago, are perfectly good, but the mind is no more the same. They don't fit; they criss-cross.
I am very much in favour of all the growth groups because they give you a cleansing. They give you a cathartic purity. They bring out everything that is hidden in you. If you work on your techniques after that cleansing, more results will be there and faster - and more permanent.
It is almost as if a person is ill and you give him medicine. Now if before being given the medicine he is put on a fast for two or three days, the medicine will function very very deeply and immediately.
The smallest dose will be enough because his system will be pure. If his system is full of toxins and you give him medicine, very big doses will be needed, and even that will not be effective because those toxins will contradict it. You go on giving bigger doses because of those toxins, and once you have overpowered them, the dose of poison that you have given yourself will create new trouble. So all old medicine says, first fast and then take medicine. Then it works immediately because the body is pure, ready.
Encounter, Gestalt, Psychodrama, Bio-energetics, are just a fasting, a fasting of the mind.
Everything is thrown out and your whole system, your intestines are clean. Then any technique goes deeper and easier. So I will suggest that you do a few groups here.
[One of the ashram masseuses says: Since I've been in the ashram, I've been really happy but I've got a fear and a real lack of confidence in my work.
I still feel my hands are good but I feel I've lost my intuition. I want so much for the love to flow but lately when I did massage it just felt like a technique and as if it wasn't coming from my heart.
Osho talked to Her about not comparing oneself with others and reassured her that her work was going well.... ]
And the second thing will happen many times so it is not a problem. You just have to become acquainted with it.
There is always a rhythm in energy. Sometimes love will be overflowing and sometimes not. It has to be that way - day and night, work and rest. Love also needs rest. It is an energy and every energy needs rest. You cannot go on every day doing massage with love. Some day you will find love is not flowing; there is no need to be worried. That's how it should be. Just continue to massage.
Massage in itself has something very meaningful. If it is joined with love then something more happens, but if love is not there then massage is still happening.
If a doctor gives you medicine it will work. If he gives it to you with deep love and prayer it will work more, but medicine will itself work. Even if there is no doctor but just a computer that diagnoses your disease and gives you a prescription, that will also work But if a doctor is there and the human touch is there, many more things will happen.
So when you are massaging, massage is enough. Love is just your gift. It is not demanded; it is not a requirement. It is just your pure gift; you are giving it for nothing. But sometimes it will be flowing, sometimes not. One has to accept that rhythm. So don't be worried. Everything is going so well...
[Two sannyasins are practising massage in the ashram. Osho said of massage in an earlier darshan to Her:]
Massage is something that you can start learning but you never finish: It goes on and on and the experience becomes continuously deeper and deeper. Learn the technique and then forget it. Just feel and move by feeling. When you learn deeply, ninety percent of the work is done by love, ten percent by the technique. The whole body becomes the keys of an organ and you can feel that a harmony is created inside the body. Not only will the person be helped, but you also.
[On the subject of Rolfing Osho describes it as being a way to restructure the body... ]
If somebody has been worrying continuously, the body takes a certain musculature which is adjusted to worrying. Then worries disappear but the musculature remains and it will feel heavy, painful. Its function is no more there and the body does not know how to dissolve it. If you don't do anything about it, it will dissolve by and by but it will take a long time.
In Rolfing it dissolves by pressure.