The Open Secret

The Open Secret

Talks given from 1/11/77 to 30/11/77

Darshan Diary

29 Chapters

Year published: 1980

The Open Secret

Chapter #1

Chapter title: None

1 November 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 7711015

ShortTitle: OPENSE01

Audio: No

Video: No

Anand means bliss, and avid means one who knows -- one who knows blissfully, one who knows through bliss, a knowing blissfulness. And God can only be known that way; God cannot be known through suffering. Everybody tends to remember God when they suffer. But the real lovers are those who remember him when they are happy, because it is only in happiness that we are open to him. Happiness really means that we are very close to him, because happiness is possible only when we are close to him. So remember when you are happy... make it a point, whenever there is happiness, to turn it into prayer. Whenever you are joyous bow down, and that will bring you closer and closer to God every day. And God is not far away: he is just around the corner!

[A sannyasin at his leaving darshan says he wants to return forever... and also that he has a problem relaxing.]

... It will be good if you can come because much more will be possible while you are here close to me. There are different types of people. There are a few people who can grow even far away from me. You will not be able to; you will need the physical presence. You are a very earth-bound person, and that may be one of the reasons why you can't relax. You are a very practical person, empirical, experimental.

Dreamers can relax very easily. In fact it is very difficult for them to be active; laziness comes very easy to them. Whenever there is an opportunity they can fall asleep; activity is difficult. To you activity is not difficult and if you are not physically active then you are mentally active. That's why listening to me or listening to the tape helps you to relax because is goes on boggling your mind. You cannot think: it absorbs you totally. Nothing is left to think about. It magnetises your whole attention. It takes your whole mind so nothing is left behind; there is emptiness. Then you can relax.

Just being close to me you will be able to relax utterly. And it is not that I turn people into inactive people -- no, not at all; I put them to activity. But I take the actor away from them. The doer is taken away but not the doing. That's what you need: you need action without any tension. And that is a difficult thing.

It is easy to be non-tense when you are not active. It is easy to be active but then you are tense, you are not relaxed. Relaxation alone is easy, action with tension is easy, and the whole point is to be active and yet relaxed. That is the synthesis that is needed.

So this will be the right opportunity for you. Manage things so you can come back. A few difficulties are always there; finish them. Just by being here you will start relaxing because there is nothing to worry about. And all those great ideas that go on wandering in your mind I can put to use! They need to be implemented. And they will bring you joy because they can become creative.

Remember this: whenever there are great ideas in the mind if you don't put them to use they will torture you, they will become your worries. If you put them to use, if you become creative, if you start transforming those ideas into reality then they will not be worries. They will bring great joy to you.

It is said that if you want some work to be done give it to the person who is very busy. If you give the work to somebody who is not busy there is not much possibility that it will be done. A busy person has more time than the non-busy person. That is strange but that's how it is. A busy person can always have holidays, can relax, can go into hobbies. A non-busy person has no holiday possible because all his activity goes on in the mind. A busy person can come home and relax in the swimming pool but a non-busy person never goes anywhere. Sitting by the swimming pool he is busy; his mind is continuously working there.

You need activity. You have energy for it and your mind can become very creative. So I will not suggest anything that can tranquillize your mind; that will not be good. That will give you a kind of relaxation but a very uncreative relaxation. That is getting something at a very high cost. Relaxation in itself is not valuable. Relaxation is valuable only if it is creative. Creativity in itself is not valuable; it is valuable only if it brings relaxation.

So you come! Relaxation will happen; nothing to be worried about.

[A visitor says she feels fine -- better than ever.]

That's very good. Go on becoming better and better and better. One can go on rising higher and higher. If you don't go higher then you start falling back, because life is a movement. You cannot stay anywhere; you have to go on. If you don't go on, you go back. Either grow or fall back but life does not allow anybody any rest because rest is stagnancy. Life is movement, riverlike.

So this has to be understood, that one should go on moving higher and higher. Never try to stay anywhere: go on. One who starts staying begins receding and then there is misery. Because nobody wants to fall back to those lower places which one has passed. They were beautiful when one was passing through. Now they are no more beautiful because they are lower than you are. Something higher is needed, so go on trying to reach the higher. In that very reaching you grow.

And never feel satisfied. with worldly things it is perfectly good to be satisfied, but with the inner being, with joy, with bliss, with God, never feel satisfied! And people do the opposite: with God they are perfectly satisfied.

With the house they are not satisfied. With their money they are not satisfied. So naturally the money goes on growing, because whatsoever you are not satisfied with grows. The house goes on becoming bigger but you go on becoming smaller because with yourself you are completely satisfied.

This is my whole message of sannyas -- that one should be satisfied with the ordinary things. It doesn't matter whether you have big diamonds or not. It doesn't really matter, but you should be a big diamond; that matters. The inner treasure should go on growing. It's good.... Now become a sannyasin!

[A sannyasin says he is undecided whether to continue working in the ashram bakery or return to the West. Osho checks his energy.]

Very good. No need to go anywhere, mm? -- The bakery is the place for you. And I will tell [the coordinator] to rub on your third eye. It is perfectly good; no need to go anywhere. Right now going will not be good, mm? things are happening. Become more meditative in your work. Love the work and get absorbed completely.

Something is going to happen soon. And when something is going to happen the mind starts thinking to go to Goa or go to somewhere else. That is the way of the mind to avoid something that is just very very close. The mind starts becoming suspicious of it. It starts feeling, it has a kind of hunch, that if you don't escape then something is going to happen. And that something is unknown; it frightens. It thinks to go somewhere where there will be less possibility of it happening. Right now, no.

When I see that things are perfectly good and there is no problem I can tell you to go to Goa. For a few weeks you can enjoy it there, or if I feel it is right for you to go back to Australia you can go, but right now, no.

Right now put yourself completely into work. And let the work be worship. Don't do it just as a kind of job; no, it is not a job. You are preparing for sannyasins, you are preparing for my people. You are preparing for me! So do it with immense love. We are going to create a great family so this is just the beginning. Each has to learn to sacrifice oneself with love, with gratitude, with thankfulness that one is accepted, that one's work is valued.

You are needed! Everybody who is here is needed. Many more are coming who will be needed. And they all have to put all that they have into it. Only then can this family grow and become a great miracle. It can become one of the greatest experiments that has ever happened to humanity. It can become a herald for the future. So this is not the time to escape!

[A sannyas couple are present. The woman has just completed the tantra group. The man said he was very jealous while she was in the group. She says they had a war but everything is beautiful now.]

Mm mm... now there is no problem? I wanted you to go into it and I wanted [your partner] also to go into it. This was good.

And one is always surprised. You never know yourself. We have been suppressing ourselves so much that we have become almost unacquainted with major parts of our being. We are acquainted only with that part which we allow. But we have a great being, many aspects are completely denied... and these groups bring up those aspects of your being. They make them alive; again vitality moves through them... and you are surprised. The group has been very good.

Now you will feel more alive in your relationship with Govind; more love will be flowing because now you will be less repressive. When you repress, love is automatically repressed. Repress anything and a part of love will be repressed immediately. If you have repressed many things then the major part of your lovelife will be repressed. Allow everything, become free again and you will see that your love is going so high; it has never been before. It will become more orgasmic.

Tantra is a must for every couple. If you really want to love you have to free love from all restrictions. That creates trouble in the beginning: jealousy and fear and insecurity about what is going to happen. And the great fear comes from oneself, from seeing that one can enjoy this and can go into it. So what about the old identity, the old image of yourself that you had been carrying? It falls down and shatters! But that's my whole work here: to shatter all your images.

Once all your images are gone you become a free human being for the first time. Then there is no should, no ought. And it is not only that you become free; you start being compassionate towards the other. For example, if some day you find [your partner] enjoying Tantra you will not be hurt, because you know you enjoyed it. You will not feel hurt at all, because you know that you enjoyed Tantra yourself and it was not against him, it was not a betrayal of him. In fact by going into Tantra you came closer to him and so if he enjoys Tantra you will be completely with him. Maybe the old mind feels a little hurt and jealous, but you will know that this is absolutely absurd. This old mind is not worth cooperating with. You will feel great compassion for [your partner] and you will feel happy that he is also enjoying, that he was also repressed and now he will no more be repressed; a few aspects of his life have become available to him. Now he will be more alive, now he will be bigger than he was before. And naturally when you move with a person who is free, unrestricted, unrepressed, uninhibited, there is great joy: the joy of meeting, of merging into each other.

It has been very good. I was a little worried about how things would go because I was creating an unnecessary trouble! But it has been good. The trip has been good and you arrived safely!

[Another tantra group member says she had a fight with her boyfriend; he tried to strangle her and she wanted to die. But after she felt bad about it. Osho checks her energy.]

Good! You misinterpreted it. It was not that you wanted to be killed -- it was a deep surrender; it was a surrender in love. And okay! If death comes through love it is perfectly okay. You didn't resist and that was good; that's how it should be. When you love a person you are ready: if he wants to kill you, that's perfectly okay.

It has been immensely beautiful. It was a kind of surrender or acceptance, a total acceptance that 'Okay. f death happens then it is okay.' This is the best moment -- to be killed by your own lover, the person you love. Where else can you find a better death? So you accepted and you relaxed.

Later on your fears started coming up and your mind started working around what had happened. The mind said it is death, it is a kind of suicidal instinct, and why do you want to be killed.

[She answers: I felt it very deep.]

It is deep but the interpretation is very superficial. The interpretation is of the mind. The mind always comes back. In that moment the mind was not there so you relaxed; you said, 'okay'. You were ready to accept it.

In that moment the mind was not there. The mind cannot be in those intense moments. It comes only when that intensity is no more there. Then it takes hold of the past and starts playing with it... starts interpreting, analysing. Then it brings in its own philosophy.

That moment was really deep and if death had happened in that moment you would have died the best kind of death, a death more valuable than life itself, because it would have been a love surrender, a sacrifice. It would have been sacred. That is the meaning of the word sacrifice; it comes from the same root as sacred.

But later on the mind came in. And it is bound to come, to take account of the whole situation and of what happened. It surveyed the whole thing and it interpreted it as a kind of suicidal instinct in you, mm? -- what Freud calls 'thanatos', that one is drawn towards death. Then one becomes afraid; this is pathological! To want to be killed seems like an illness, a kind of madness. But it was not that at all.

And maybe because you were so totally surrendered the other person was also possessed to see how long you could go. Not that he wanted to kill you, otherwise he would have. But you were giving a great challenge to him -- the challenge that you were ready to die, that you were ready to go so far. Now the only way to judge whether you were really going so far was to try it. So he tried!

But he could not kill you because he was not there to kill you; it was just that your acceptance created the challenge. So in his deep unconscious it came to him to see how long and how far you went on saying yes. He could see that you could go on saying yes. Then at the last moment he stopped because there would be no point in going on. He was not there to kill you, was not wanting to kill you but wanting to see how far you could go. And that too was unconscious.

Sometimes these things happen. Your unconscious was ready to go to the very end, his unconscious was also trying to take you at least if not to the very end then just a little bit before it, to the last 'but'. He took you just to the boundary and then it was certain that you were ready to go even into death. Now your love can grow very very deep.

But his mind will also come back just like your mind and he will start thinking he is aggressive, violent, and he wanted to kill the woman who loves him: 'This is dangerous; is he a murderer or something?' Just as your mind will interpret, his mind will interpret; he may start feeling guilty. Make it clear that he need not feel guilty, you need not feel pathological. Suddenly you will see that your love has taken a new jump and friendship will grow now on a different level. Don't miss that opportunity. Make it clear to him and help him also to become clear about it.

Otherwise you can drift away, mm? -- he is thinking that this is dangerous and sometime if he is possessed to kill again and he does, that will not be right. It is better he leave, go away; this is dangerous. You may start thinking that if it happens again and you allow him and he really kills you, then what? Better separate before it happens. Your minds can create such a situation, an interpretation, that you start drifting away, you can separate. But there is no need.

So first have a good communion with your friend. Make your whole heart clear to him and let him also pour his heart out to you too.