---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Cypress in the Courtyard"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "CYPRES"
dategiven: "17 June 1976 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #14"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7606175"
shorttitle: "CYPRES14"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Cypress in the Courtyard: Chapter #14"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[A sannyasin, who is returning to Italy, said that his mind had been working less and less so that now he felt he had no centre, that he was dead and had no mental life.]


Nothing to be worried about. It's nothing to do with life and death. It is just because you have not used the mind for so many months, that's all. Once you start using it, within a week it will be rolling again, and moving in the same old way. Whatsoever you know your skill -- has not been used by you. It is just as if a car has been sitting unused for two years, that's all. You have to oil it, lubricate it and drive it a little? Everything is good; there is nothing to be worried about.


Whatsoever one knows is never lost. You may not swim for twenty years and you may think that you have forgotten it. But suddenly you are in the water and a few strokes here and there and it is there. Just go back and you will see. And the mind will run more efficiently now because you will be more detached from it. You will interfere less in it.


You have gained much, but back home you will be able to see what you have gained.


[The sannyasin replied that what he feels now is an emptiness because he knows that the past has always played on his mind but now it is not there any more.]


I know... that's how it should be. Now you will start working from a new centre -- of emptiness. Then action has a purity, a freshness, aliveness. When you act out of your past it is repetition. You feel more efficient because you have done the same thing many times so you can do it more easily, but it has not any freshness in it. It is not knowledge. It is nothing new. And by repeating the old again and again, the capacity to be new is lost. So it is good.


That's what we want -- that a person should become so empty that he does not know who he is, that he does not know from where he comes, that he does not know what his past was. Then suddenly his action will be total because the past will not create any hindrance. It will come directly from his very core of being. And such action never binds. It liberates. It is spontaneous.


[He added that he felt aware of a masked violence in him of which he was afraid.]


It is there, it is still there, because in your past you have been violent and aggressive. The pattern has relaxed, and because the pattern has relaxed you are feeling empty. But very subtly an undercurrent is still there and you will have to be aware and drop it with full awareness.


Once you drop your violence, you will be a totally new man. But now you will have drop it. And you see the point so there is no problem at all.


Going back, start working, and use your mind, but don't allow the violence to get settled again. At that point remember -- whatsoever the cost -- don't get angry, don't get aggressive, don't become violent. If you feel it is coming and you cannot bear it, close your room and be violent with a pillow. Do whatsoever you want to to the pillow and say things you want to say, but never be violent with a person.


This much you have to remember -- because when the old mind starts functioning again and you have to go back to your work, the old pattern of violence will also come back. The undercurrent is there so it can take possession of you.


You are feeling empty, but that emptiness can be filled again by the past, so you have to be very alert. When one becomes empty, one is in a very critical stage. Either something of the unknown can descend, or again the past will enter, because one cannot remain empty for long.


Nature abhors emptiness, so something is going to fill it. So beware! Don't allow it to be filled by the past. And that's why I see that going back to Italy will be a great help. You will be able to see things more clearly because the whole past will be coming back. You have to choose. All that is technological, useful, utilitarian, choose; and all that is psychological, drop. Knowledge that has to be used in the day-to-day world, make alive again. But there is no need to be violent, no need to become aggressive, no need to remain in anger continuously.


If you are aware you will be able to choose. And when a person becomes capable of choosing from his own past, when one obsession is over, a great slavery is over. Otherwise your past is your totality. You never choose. You never make any discrimination that I will choose this and this I will not choose. You are so identified with your past that you cannot choose. How can you choose? You say, 'This is my past, this is me, so how am I to choose?'


But now that past has relaxed. You are more loose. You can choose. This is the way to transform even the past. By continuous new choice you can go on changing the past. Ordinarily it is said that the past cannot be changed because it has happened and you cannot undo it. There is no way because you cannot go back in time.


Ordinarily that's true -- but just ordinarily. There is a. way to change the past also, and that's by a constantly new choice.


For example in the past you have been a painter or a football player, a swimmer, a poet or an architect. A thousand and one things you have been: angry, loving, sad, happy, mm? Out of this whole chaos you can always choose a few things. When you choose those few things and drop the rest, you have changed your past, because the total combination is no more the same. You can become a poet. You can drop your being an architect, or your being a dancer or a singer and can choose to be a poet. Next year you can drop being ,a poet and again choose to be a dancer. Then with your choice the whole past goes on changing because you go on getting a new identity.


And once you know this -- that even the past is within your hands -- you feel for the first time a certain power over your own destiny. Otherwise the past goes on leading you and you are slave. Just whatsoever the past has destined you to do, you are doing.
My whole effort here is to make you masters of your destiny.


So if you become angry because in the past many times you became angry, then you are just allowing yourself to become a victim. You are allowing yourself just to become a puppet in hands of the dead past.


There is no need. You can change the past. You can choose whatsoever you think is right. The past is not your master; it is just raw material. You can choose many things out of it, you can drop many things out of it, and you can always make a new synthesis to abide in. That new synthesis becomes your house. One has to go on changing it continuously. Then the present starts determining the past.
So just go and don't be worried. One thing -- keep alert !


[A sannyasin said he had done an Enlightenment Intensive group in England but had felt disappointed. He felt he didn't get a lot out of it and was left feeling frustrated with the constant questioning.]


One gets only that much that one puts in. If you forget to put in, then you don't get anything. And that is not only so with groups; it is basically so with life itself. You only get that which you put in. First you have to put it in and then you get. If you come empty-handed, you go empty-handed.


People go on seeking meaning in life, but meaning has to be given to life. There is no meaning in life itself -- you have to create it.


So what you gain out of a group is your responsibility, totally yours. You can gain much, you may not gain anything. You may even lose something. But always remember that it is you who is responsible. There is nobody else to give you anything in the world unless you take it.


In Tibet they have a very old proverb -- that a disciple has almost to steal from his master, almost steal. It is good. One has to work hard like a thief in the darkness of the night. And in somebody else's house without any map, one has to search for the treasure. There is every hazard and danger. He may be caught. He may lose his freedom, he may be imprisoned, but still he tries to steal it.


If you are not getting anything from life, then remember you must not be putting something into it.
Life is just a response, it is a mirror. You see your face.


It does not give you anything. It gives you an opportunity to create. It is absolutely raw. The canvas is there, the colour tubes are there, the brush is there, but the painting is not. It is you who has to create it.


And of course when a child creates a painting, it is a child's painting. When a madman creates a painting, it is a madman's painting. When a Picasso works, of course it is worth a million dollars. It depends. The colours are the same, the canvas is the same.


So always remember it, otherwise the mind has a tendency to expect and then to get frustrated. Somehow deep down one goes on thinking that one has been cheated. Nobody can cheat you -- except yourself. So this time try again, but this time the responsibility is totally yours. You have to put much effort into it The more you put, the more you get.


If you can put yourself totally at stake, that single effort can bring so much fulfillment that you cannot even imagine, dream of.


[A sannyasin said: Since I was a child I have always been afraid to be alone in the house at night. I get these negative thoughts about evil spirits coming to get me.


Osho checked his energy and the medium, Radha, who helped him, fell backwards.]

Good... come back, Radha. Don't be possessed by his evil!


It has nothing to do with the evil forces outside. It is a very rare phenomenon. It has something to do with your negative centres.


Just as there are seven centres -- what Patanjali calls 'chakras' --  which are seven whirling pools of energy, exactly parallel to them are seven negative chakras. In existence everything exists in polarities. Every plus has a minus and the positive electricity has a negative pole. Magnetism or any energy has polarity. But Patanjali never talked in his Yoga sutras about the negative chakras. In fact nobody has described them because it happens so rarely that it need not be accounted for, but those chakras are there.


Patanjali and others have not talked about them because even the talk about them may make many people curious to know what they are. Black magicians know everything about them. They work on the negative energy, the darker side of man, the night side of man.


Sometimes it happens that both the channels of positive and negative are very close and sometimes energy can leak from the positive to the negative. That's what is happening. It has nothing to do with the evil from outside.


But something can be done. That's what happened to Radha. Your negative energy started flowing in her, because a woman can absorb negative energy very easily. If she keeps hold of your hand for almost an hour, she will go almost mad.


But there is nothing to be afraid about. You will have to do a few things. One thing is, start doing shirshasan, the headstand posture. Do you know how to stand on the head? It will be tremendously helpful. Just do it every day in the morning for seven minutes and for seven minutes in the evening.


Standing on the head reverses every process in the body, so whatever energy is leaking to the negative side will fall back to the positive side. Shirshasan is one of the most significant postures to reverse any process. The gravitation and all the energy fields are in a completely reversed position than they are ordinarily, so the whole field of energy changes. This is one thing.


The second thing is, after seven days -- not right now -- start sleeping alone. Give something to Radha -- a handkerchief or anything -- and Radha, you keep it with you for seven days and then give it to him. And then keep this handkerchief with you and if you become afraid at night, put your hand on the handkerchief.


So after fourteen days come and see me. It will disappear; there is nothing to be worried about. It is just energy-leaking inside and it happens very rarely so no manual says anything about it. Whenever it happens a master will help the disciple because it is rare, exceptional.


[Another sannyasin said that she had been suffering from epilepsy since childhood and had always needed to take a great many drugs. She said that she had had three individual sessions of divine healing here [see 'Get Out Of Your Own Way' April 23rd and had stopped taking any drugs now. She added that she was feeling very, good and asked if there was any special meditation for people who tended to Ft epileptic attacks.]


Healing is the best -- and you can have healing wherever you are. Do it the way it happens here. Have a picture of me, burn incense, have a dim candle in the nighttime, and just lie down and feel the same atmosphere. Create the whole situation and feel healed; that will do. Whenever the trouble arises, that will help.


[A sannyasin said that she had a strong puritan streak in her. When she made love, it was high energy and then the next day she was sick: I feel as if I'm not very good at having Jun or pleasure, and being sick feels like a denial. I don't feel that I understand enlightenment but I understand pleasure. That's what I want -- more pleasure.]


Mm mm, if you can understand pleasure you will be able to understand enlightenment also -- because it is the utmost pleasure. Enlightenment is not against pleasure. It is the ultimate pleasure.


This is possible -- that you have a puritan's mind hidden somewhere in the unconscious and this pattern can be repeated. Whenever you will have fun, enjoyment, joy, the mind will create a subtle situation to make you suffer. That's a self-imposed punishment.


Kazantzakis, the greek author, has written about one of his experiences. He was visiting a certain town and he went to the theatre and saw a woman there who was a very beautiful person. He was fascinated by her, but his whole training was that of a puritan, so he became very much afraid. But he approached her somehow and made friends with her. She was willing to meet him after three days.


Those three days were a torture for him. He would decide to meet her and then decide not to. By the third day his face was so swollen that he could not leave his house because it was so ugly. And it had never happened before ! He had to cancel the appointment.


The moment he did, the face started getting better and within hours he was okay. They had decided to meet again after another three days and this happened again. From that morning his face started swelling. By the time he was ready to leave, he couldn't. Again he changed the appointment and again the face went down. This happened three times, so he went to the doctor and said, 'What is the matter? What is happening to me?'


The doctor said that two hundred years ago there used to exist a certain disease called priest's disease. It had disappeared from the world because that puritan mind had disappeared. But in fact, he said, this was the same disease. It used to happen to catholic priests -- just the idea of enjoying a woman and their whole body would swell. It became automatic.


The mind functions inside continuously. If you have a puritan's mind, first it will not allow you to have fun. If you force, it will punish you.


So a few groups will be helpful. Do Hypnotherapy. That will help unwind the puritan attitude. The suggestion has to go as deep as the other. suggestion has reached into your unconscious: Other groups will not be of much help because they will remain conscious. They will give you some insight but the unconscious remains unreachable. That can be reached only through hypnosis.


It needs a deep suggestion that there is nothing wrong and no need to punish yourself. Once it reaches to the right source, deeper than the other suggestion -- that you have to punish yourself and you have done something wrong so you have to suffer for it it will disappear.


Just do Hypnotherapy and then tell me. It will go, and it has to be dropped, otherwise your whole life will be a continuous repetition, the same pattern, and by repeating it, it becomes more ingrained.
But it will go. Don't be worried.


[A sannyasin said: I have no motivation, no creativity and no centre, and I don't know what to db to find a centre or a deep motivation.


Osho asked Him if he was interested in any of the arts, to which he replied he was interested in all of them so he didn't know from where to start. Osho suggested he do the Aum marathon and then he would make some suggestions.]


The motivation is always there. You have lost contact with it, that's all. Nobody can live without motivation. It is almost as if a tree can live without roots. A tree may have forgotten about roots but roots are there. We just have to work it out -- to dig a little earth and find out where the roots are.


In the Aum marathon if you suddenly have some insight that this or that may be the line for you, remind me when you come and see me with the group. If nothing happens, don't be worried. Go through the group as totally as possible so everything becomes topsy-turvy. Leave no stone unturned. We will find something. The root is there because nobody can live without it. One may be aware, one may not be.
Motivation is just like breathing. You cannot live without it.


[He asked if he could take the risk of using drugs to develop some creative direction.]


No need to be so drastic right now. Just wait. There are other ways to find it more easily. Drugs can sometimes reveal and sometimes mislead.


Drugs are not very intelligent; they are just drugs. They can give you a certain feeling which may not be true and you may starting in a wrong direction. Under the influence of drugs, people are almost so intoxicated that they don't have any capacity to discriminate.
			

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