---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Open Secret"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "OPENSE"
dategiven: "29 November 1977 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #28"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7711295"
shorttitle: "OPENSE28"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Open Secret: Chapter #28"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[A new sannyasin asks for a mantra. He was initiated by Ananda Marga with the mantra 'baba'. Osho checks his energy, telling him to chant this mantra.]


Continue it; that's no problem. It will suit you. And it has nothing to do with Ananda Marga, mm?


Baba is one of the most ancient mantras. It simply means 'father'... what Jesus used to call 'abba'. That was his mantra; his whole prayer consisted of repeating 'abba'. Baba is even better because it is very balanced. Mm? just one ba, another ba, and both are similar, of equal potential; it is very balancing. You can continue it; it's perfectly good.


[A couple are present. The man asks about smoking pot. He has very good insights on it; he talks to plants; it gives him hope for the future; but also he gets a pressure in the head.]


It is just illusory, it is not a real hope. The whole thing is just a chemical illusion and the chemical change may be giving you pressure in the head because the whole thing happens in your nervous system. It can give you a pressure; that is a simple indication to stop it. It can be dangerous later on: it can destroy some necessary nerves in the brain. It is destructive, it is a very costly dream. It is beautiful but even if a dream is beautiful it is a dream, and by the morning you are again back in the reality. And it costs much.


If you go on taking it for a long time it will make your intelligence deteriorate. People who take pot or things like that for long become idiotic. Their intelligence loses sharpness, because having the chemical pressure on the nerves every day is harmful. And you are not getting anything! I am not worried about the cost: if something real is attained then at whatsoever cost it is, it is good. But you are not getting anything in return -- just an illusion.


When you take pot and you know who you are, that is not of any importance. You have to know it when you are alert, aware, completely natural, with no chemical pressure creating things in you. Then you have to know who you are.


One has to become enlightened in a very very ordinary way, only then is enlightenment true. One can find short-cuts but all short-cuts are false. There exist no short-cuts for realisation. Short-cuts only create small circuits within you and release dreams, release imagination. It is not good for you, it is not good for anybody. But it is simply indicating that it is going deep into your brain cells; it is better to stop as soon as possible.


To create an experience which is not your natural state is of no use. It does not give you hope. It simply destroys your life and destroys your opportunities to become alert, aware of the reality as it is. There is no need to seek God in the trees. If you can only see the trees as they are, all is realised. Why impose God? You need not see God in anybody. If you can only see the real person standing there, that's enough! God simply means reality, the ordinary reality that surrounds you.


When I say that God is in the trees, I don't mean that you will have to see God in the trees -- that a head will start blooming in the tree, then somebody will look at you and you will have an encounter and a dialogue and he will say 'hello!' When I say see God in the trees I simply mean to see the tree as it is without any idea on your part. See the truth of the tree. That is the God of the tree -- the greenness of it, the flower, the joy, the rootedness of it, the strength, and the fragility. See the truth of it with no notions in the head.


Now God is your notion. You cannot see ordinarily because you are not a fool; how can you befool yourself? How can you see God in the tree? A tree is a tree! How can you see God in a tree? You cannot befool yourself, but when you take pot you become a fool; then it is very easy to befool. You can see God or a buffalo or anything in the tree. You have simply to keep that notion in your mind. When the pot starts working and starts changing your chemistry, you have to be constantly remembering one thing -- that the tree is this: God... or the devil. One day try looking for the devil and you will see him !


So it is not in the tree -- it is just in your mind; you have projected onto the tree. The tree begins to function as a screen. Now, ordinarily you don't see the tree because to see the tree you have to be very sensitive, alert, watchful and utterly herenow, because the tree is not in the past and the tree is not in the future. If you are in the past or in the future you will never meet the tree. You may by-pass it but you will never meet it. The tree is always herenow; to meet the tree you have to be herenow.


Now, ordinarily you don't see God. It's perfectly good: the problem is not that one should see the God; ordinarily you don't see the tree either; you just by-pass it. It is there; there is no meeting. Then you take pot and you have these great ideas that God is everywhere. With these ideas you go into it. That's why guides are needed for acid trips. A guide can give you ideas. When you are falling into the chemical change, the guide can say, 'Look, God is everywhere! It is here...'. Whatsoever idea he suggests will start working and you will start projecting.


So it has happened that people who are against drugs have taken drugs and have known only hell and people who are for drugs have taken the same drugs and have known heaven. It depends on you. The' drug does not give you anything. The drug simply makes you a fool. You relapse into a kind of childishness, you relapse into imagination, you relapse into your dreaming faculty; that's what the drug does. Now it is up to you to release the dream. Whatsoever dream you want to release, you can release. If you want to see monsters and dragons and devils all jumping on you and trying to kill you, you can have that; it is your choice. Or you can have God and angels dancing around and singing and Jesus and all the apostles sitting by the side. It is up to you, it is your dream.


Drugs can only help your dream faculty to function totally. It is as if you run a projector. The film has to be provided by you. The electricity in the projector cannot create the film; the electricity running in the projector can only project the film of whatsoever you provide. The film has to be provided by you and the projector is there: it starts projecting. If you want to see hell, you can have a film of hell or if you wanted a film of heaven you will see it on the screen. That is exactly what a drug does: it simply releases your dream faculty; the dream starts functioning. But it is just wasting time... and at a very great cost.


Come out of it. And don't look for God in the trees or in the rocks; that is stupid! Just look for the tree in the trees and for the rock in the rocks. Just see the truth of it, the presence of it. Let the presence be revealed and in that revelation you will see that all is one.


And it is not only that one can project through drugs. You can project without drugs; then you need something else which can drug you. For example, great will -- that can become a drug. You can will that you will see God in a tree. You can go on looking, you go on looking and you say, 'I will not eat, I will not move from here unless I see God.' You can force your will and what the drug does, will can do. It will take a little longer....


So the people in the Himalayan caves seeing God are the same! It is not much different. It is just that they have not taken the chemical from the outside; they have created a chemical inside. You can create it by yoga postures because yoga postures change your body chemistry. You can- do it by fasting because fasting changes your body chemistry. Anything that changes your body chemistry in some way can be used as a drug.


To see reality one has to be completely ordinary, not using anything -- no will, no fasting, no postures; one has to be simply as one is. It will take a long time to see the truth of the tree, but that time is not wasted. So don't be in a hurry and don't speed. Yes, drugs give speed, but don't speed and don't be in a hurry. Be patient and allow things to grow slowly. All real things grow slowly: they take their own time. Something has to mature in you.


And be satisfied and contented with whatsoever is available right now; don't ask for more. And I know that once you have been on any drug, it becomes very difficult because the drug attracts you. Without any effort on your part something starts happening, so why bother with anything else? Why meditate and why be aware when the drug can trigger the process immediately?


It has been used down the ages; it is not anything new. In the West it is something new but in the East it is one of the most ancient practices. But the people who have taken drugs for centuries have never reached anywhere.


If you really want to see what is there you have to stop all kinds of projection. It will look dull in the beginning. It will not be so enchanting, it will not have that allurement, that fascination. But there is no need for fascination, allurement; there is no need. One should be satisfied with the ordinary reality. What is wrong with the trees as trees and man as man and woman as woman?


If you can do it for six months without the drug, just living with the ordinary, with no desire for the extraordinary, sooner or later you will start seeing the truth of ordinary things. And in the very ordinary, the extraordinary is hidden. But you have to approach it through the ordinary. The ordinary is the door to the extraordinary. My suggestion is that you drop it, mm? completely stop it.


[The woman says she has a problem in the relationship, not to get pulled into her partner's moods.]


That's very natural; you should not desire the opposite. It is very natural: when you love a person your spaces start overlapping. That's what love is. So it is very natural that when the other is happy you are happy;. when you are happy the other is happy. Wen the other is sad you feel sad. That simply shows that your spaces are not distinct; they are overlapping. It is very natural.


The only way to stop it is to create a distance. That you will not like. Then love disappears and you can be at the most friends. That will be destructive to love. I would not like that. I would like you to come even more close. Why should you not be sad when he is sad?


Lose identities. It is perfectly good. If he is sad why should you not be sad? -- nothing is wrong in it. and if you can really be sad when he is sad, you will share his sadness and you will help him to come out of it because that shared sadness will become thin. You understand? -- there is an inner working in it. If you can really share his sadness, immediately he will feel uplifted from it, because a lot of the burden has been taken by you.... And that's the whole purpose of love! It works just the same with joy but then in a very different way. That's how it is decided what is negative and what is positive. If he is happy and you become happy and elated with it, a euphoria surrounds you both, his joy will become double. If he is sad and you become one with his sadness, his sadness will become half.


So this is my definition of a positive emotion: if by sharing it grows, it is positive; if by sharing it is diminished, it is negative. But one has to share both. And when you share his sadnesses, his joys, he will share your sadnesses, your joy. So nobody is at a loss. It is not only one way -- that when he is sad you have to be sad with him and when you are sad you have to be sad alone. It is not one way: he will be sad with you. The more you participate in each other's being, the more you will find your sadness becomes less and less. The total result will be very very great. The sadness will become less and less and less and one day you will see that sadness has disappeared or is only just on the margin, somewhere distant. The joy will go on increasing and you will become bigger and bigger. f you stop sharing sadness you will stop sharing joy too. It is not possible to share only the positive; that is not possible. They both have to be either shared or not shared; they are both together. How can you become happy when he is happy if you don't become unhappy when he is unhappy? It is impossible!


But nothing is wrong in what you are experiencing. That very desire to stop it is selfish. Drop it. Be really sad when he is sad. If you start crying you will see that he is coming out of it, suddenly he is coming out of the cloud. When somebody is there to share so much how can he create your sadness? He will start coming up and when he starts coming you can come up.


And this is true from the other side also. Share each other's joy, sadnesses. Share with each other whatsoever is available at the moment. Yes, sometimes it is dark but that is part of the game of love. In fact one should be happy that one was present when the friend was unhappy. The burden has been shared. We owe it to each other when we love. So try this: share the burden totally. Very few people share it totally because a kind of reluctance is there, mm? He is sad so that is his problem; why should you bother? You have your own problems, you have your own sadnesses -- enough! And why should you share his?


In fact if you are not ready to share when he is sad, you will feel a kind of anger arising in you. Why is he sad? Why does he create this situation again and again of being sad and making you feel guilty? If you don't feel sad you feel guilty; if you feel sad that looks foolish. You will be angry if you don't share; it is better to share. With sharing there is no guilt, no anger, and sharing is always bringing you closer and closer. What you share does not matter: sharing brings you closer and closer.


And it happens sometimes... in the beginning it is a kind of sympathy, but by and by it becomes empathy if you go on sharing. It has happened sometimes between lovers that if one is ill the illness is transferred. Suddenly you take it -- that is empathy. Suddenly the other is healthy. And naturally, if you can take the other's illness it will disappear sooner from you because it will not find any background in the body. He is ill because there is some cause for the illness in his body. If you can share totally and his illness is transferred to you, if you take it upon yourself, it will disappear very soon because you will not have any cause for it.


In the ancient days lovers knew that art very deeply; that's why love has been called a healing energy. This is the way love heals. If the illness remains with him it may take three months or two months or a year to get rid of it, because he has physical reasons for his illnesses. If it can be taken by somebody who has no physical reasons for it to exist, it will disappear within hours or minutes even It depends on how intensely you have taken it in. It can be burned in a single moment and he can be healed.


So don't be too selfish. Relax into each other. Problems are there. Every human being has problems and they are good because through them one grows. Mm? first try sympathy and go deeper into empathy. One day you will be surprised at what a great secret has become available to you. There are many stories in the East....


There was a great musician in South India. He was one hundred years old and all his disciples had gathered to celebrate his last birthday because they were not expecting him to survive any longer: one hundred is too much. All the disciples had brought gifts. There were many kings who were his disciples; he was one of the most famous musicians. There were rich people.... Thousands of disciples had gathered and everybody had brought precious gifts -- diamonds and money and things like that.


One beggar who was also his disciple came there empty-handed. When he was bowing down to the master, somebody who was standing there said, 'Empty-handed? You have not brought anything? Couldn't you even get a flower?'... because in the East it seems to be unmannerly, mm? anything, even a leaf from a tree will do. It is not that it has to be valuable or anything... anything, but one should not go empty-handed.


The beggar stood up and he said, 'Yes, I have brought something. I have brought my life -- I give my life to you!' And he died then and there. He was only thirty years, perfectly healthy and young as only a beggar can be! He immediately died then and there, and the master lived forty years more. Maybe that was his age, seventy years.


This is absolute empathy. This is possible through love. Miracles are possible through love. The impossible can become possible through love.


[A seeker says that recently he began to feel a futility about life; hence the attraction of the ashram. Now he feels there are forces that make his taking sannyas almost inevitable, yet there is resistance on his part. He doesn't feel ready for it because he wants to lead his life his way.


Osho says that he only helps one to go on whatever path one is spontaneously moving.


Sannyas does not interfere with your life, he says. It enhances it. It gives you freedom, freedom to be yourself. Sannyas is just an availability to me and to the energy that is happening here. I am not giving you knowledge; I am trying to participate in your being.


He then says this sense of life's meaninglessness is significant; it can be a turning point -- suicide or transformation are open to one.]


[A sannyasin says he feels stuck because he never really goes into anything totally; never finishes anything.]


Nothing is the problem, mm? Your energy is perfectly okay; there is no problem. It just must be that you have some idea, an idea of becoming too happy, joyful, this and that. You ask too much it seems.


What is happening is perfectly good, but if you ask too much, then in comparison it is not always as it should be: it falls short. Your energy is flowing perfectly. You are not defensive or anything; it is just that you have some ideas that one should be greatly euphoric, ecstatic, this and that. And everything happens only when you are ready for it, so just accept yourself as you are.


And closing is not always wrong. Sometimes it is perfectly good, because sometimes the person who comes has such energy that it is better to close than to remain open. Opening in itself is not virtue, neither is closing in itself a sin. But that's how people work: they start making virtue and sin out of everything.


What is needed is flexibility -- neither openness nor closedness, just flexibility. When something is there which has to be received, one should be able to open, and when there is something which has not to be received, one should be capable of closing. And people want to get fixed: either they want to be fixed with closedness.... So they are always closed. It goes on raining -- not a single drop of water reaches them.... Or they are open, so even if poison is coming they cannot close, they cannot defend themselves.


To me, the quality that is needed is flexibility: neither openness nor closedness. One should be able to move from this to that easily, spontaneously.


Simply continue as you are and start being more accepting of your spaces: the closed space, the open space, the joyous, the sad, the creative, the uncreative. Accept all: all are part of you! And one should not make too many demands, otherwise one becomes tense. Now you become interested and you start creating a thing and then you become disinterested, so keep it away! Who is forcing you and why should you force yourself?


When Coleridge died he left thousands of poems incomplete, thousands, exactly forty thousand. For his whole life people were saying 'Why don't you complete them?' Sometimes only one line was missing, but he would say, 'The poem has to complete itself. It flowed up to this point and then it stopped. Who am I to complete it?' He said, 'I have tried -- it is not that I have not tried: I have tried. I have managed to put in one line of my own but it never fits. Something is wrong. Those other lines are spontaneous; this line is just made, manufactured. They don't meet, they are poles apart and my line hangs there very ugly. Ordinary people will not understand it but whenever a poet reads my poem he will see that have been trying to deceive people!'


And I'm completely in agreement with Coleridge. He was really a poet and he had the sensibility, the aesthetic sense, that one should not force anything. He completed only very few poems, exactly seven. But he became one of the greatest poets; even those seven are great.


Just do whatsoever is happening. If it has stopped then nothing.... God does not want it to be completed. And all complete things are not beautiful, remember; sometimes incomplete things have immense beauty. Musicians say that incomplete symphonies are the greatest because when something is complete it is dead too. There are many places in India which have never been completed, something has been left incomplete, because when a thing is complete it is dead, there is no growth in it. Something unfinished keeps a thing alive. Something unfinished keeps energy flowing. Something unfinished gives you space to think, to imagine.


Have you observed this fact? If a woman is standing naked, utterly naked, soon you become disinterested in her. What is the message? Why do you become disinterested in a naked woman? If she is wearing some clothes, just a bikini, that will do to keep you interested. Everything is complete in her nakedness and your imagination cannot go on flowing. How long can you look? That nakedness is complete and there is no point anywhere about which you can imagine.


People think that clothes were invented to hide nakedness; that's not my opinion. Clothes were invented to enhance nakedness, to enhance curiosity. Clothes were invented to create beauty. A hidden thing is always inviting because you would like to explore it, to see it, and you will see this: an Eastern woman seems to be more inviting than a Western woman. An Eastern woman hiding in her sari and very very shy seems more attractive. A Western woman is more natural, simple, open. You can see her naked, that's not much of a difficulty, but then she does not create imagination and dream in you.


My observation is that the Eastern woman knows much more about how the mind functions than the Western woman. Things incomplete, unfinished, hidden, always keep you alive. Don't be worried: if something comes... and creativity always comes like a breeze. One moment it is there, then it is gone. When it is gone, it is gone; you start doing something else. Enjoy yourself and don't demand. Good!


[A sannyasin says: For the last two days I've been going through a lot of very strong feelings, feeling as if a part of me is dying. I wanted to come and ask your help for this.
Osho checks her energy.]


Nothing to be worried; it is something to be happy about. It is the dead part in you that is dying. Everybody carries many dead things, and wh those dead things start dropping you feel as if something in you is dying. Really, something dead is dying and once it is dead the new, the fresh, will start growing. It is something beautiful. Allow it to die; say good-bye to it.


Everybody is carrying many dead things, always remember. We are burdened by dead things, they are hanging all around. But we have always been thinking that they are part of our being, so when one thing starts falling the mind wants to cling to it. The mind becomes afraid, as if something is being lost. Nothing is being lost.


If all these dead things disappear, for the first time you will become totally alive. Death is the way of resurrection and dead things should be allowed to die. Jesus says to let the dead bury their dead -- he means exactly this. So life abundant can become available.
Simply let it drop with no fuss, no clinging. Good!
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>