---
section: Library
booktitle: "Get Out of Your Own Way"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "GETOUT"
dategiven: "26 April 1976 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #19"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7604265"
shorttitle: "GETOUT19"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Get Out of Your Own Way: Chapter #19"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[An assistant groupleader says: I'm not feeling unhappy or happy.]

If you want to be happy then who is blocking the way?

... That can be an even bigger problem. If you feel unhappy, it is easier to feel happy, but if you are not feeling unhappy, it will be more difficult. This will create a sort of numbness.


Unhappiness is a very passionate thing -- at least one is feeling something. It is easy to move from hell to heaven, because one gets fed up with hell. One wants to get away, to get out. But if you are not feeling unhappy there can be more trouble, because then there is no motivation to go beyond it. One simply feels alive, so so, lukewarm... one can carry on. Then one starts living like a zombie. Whatsoever happens is okay. If nothing happens, that too is okay. Then one simply loses contact with life.


This is a good insight -- that you understand that there is nobody in the way, that it is only you. But this insight will not be of much help because there is actually something in the way, though it may not be somebody.


As I see it, I have never come across a neurotic person; there are none. People only have neurotic styles. Nobody is neurotic -- just the style. And that style is in the way. We all learn some style of life. If you have learned something which makes you numb, you will have to unlearn it. If you don t unlearn it, it is in the way. If you have learned to be unhappy, you will create unhappiness again and again -- and at the same time feeling resentful, because who wants to be unhappy? But a wrong style of life, a wrong attitude has entered somewhere into the makeup of the mind. It goes on influencing you.


If you feet that you are not unhappy, don't settle for it. It is not happiness... certainly not happiness. And it is not better than unhappiness, remember. It is worse! And one can settle in it. One can never settle in unhappiness; that is the problem.


So don t settle in it. And I will suggest a few things for you to start doing, because this numbness has to be broken. You have tremendous possibility in you. Once this numb style is broken you will start flowing. And to be with Veeresh is a great opportunity -- you can use it. But sometimes it happens that if you are too close you start taking things for granted.


[Osho suggested that she take up some vigorous physical exercise -- swimming, running, horse-riding -- to get the body energy flowing. He said that whenever she felt the numbness she should immediately do something -- sing, dance -- to erode the habit. One has to have a substitute style -- one cannot simply break a style without replacing it, otherwise one will fall back into the old ways. Osho suggested that She start doing a headstand every morning and evening; initially for two or three minutes, gradually increasing the time to ten minutes.... ]


You need to be put upside down. As I see, if you have become numb, by and by blood circulates less and less in the very subtle fibres of the brain. If you stand on your head it will become an on-rush of energy -- not only of blood, but of sexual energy also, because then it is easier for gravitation to pull things towards the head.
At least become unhappy if you cannot become happy. Cry, weep, mm?


[The Aum marathon group is present. The leader says: This group is amazing... The first part was the positive, and as you said, and the negative came up. And in the second part, the negative, all of a sudden I started to fall in love with the people.]


Good. That's how it happens. That's the polarity and one of the very basic, fundamental laws of life.


If somebody is crying, help him to cry well, and soon he will laugh. If somebody is miserable don't try to bring him out of it; help him to sink in. Soon he will come out of it completely freed. If somebody is dying, help him die. He will resurrect. Just let life work. Simply understand the law and don't go against it, that's all. This is the law: never enforce and don't be bothered about the opposite. The opposite is coming on its own. It is just like a swinging pendulum.


And the circle has to be complete -- both yin and yang -- and then a person is at peace. One should be capable of being negative totally, of being positive totally.


Ordinarily the whole humanity has been taught to be positive and not to be negative. The result is that humanity has become negative. People don't know what joy is. They have forgotten the very language. You talk about bliss, and they simply listen to the word; they don't have any experience of it. And they have been taught continuously to be blissful, joyful. They only know what angerand sadness is. They have been taught to cling to just one polarity and have not been allowed to move to the other polarity. Life exists between these two poles... in the movement is life. And a real life implies both.


A real life is so comprehensive that day and night, summer and winter, god and devil, all are in it. A god who is without the devil is not much of a god; he will be a very poor god. And a devil who has no divinity in him will simply be worth nothing. The day is rich because you have rested deeply in the night... the darkness allowed you rest. There are joys of work, but if you have worked hard, only then is the night beautiful. Otherwise you just go on changing from side to side the whole night and there is no sleep.


This is what I mean when I say be a whole person. Nothing should be excluded... nothing should be excluded. Everything should be included, and in that inclusion of everything, you start soaring. Otherwise every human being is crippled because something has been excluded. Somebody has excluded his anger, somebody has excluded his sex, somebody has excluded something else


No human being seems to be whole, but wounded, cut, fragmented. Let this be your whole work in the West. Help people to become whole. Just tell them that whatsoever is in you has to be included in your higher synthesis... it has its role to play. In the higher orchestra of your being, nothing should be left behind. All notes have to fall in tune, in harmony. Then something arises which is more than the total of all -- and that is the whole. The whole is more than the total. Whole and total do not mean the same thing.


Total is the way towards the whole, but the whole is more that the total. If all your parts are added together it will be total. If all your parts fall into a symphony, then it will be whole.


A room has furniture. You can throw the furniture in a chaotic fashion -- everything topsy-turvy. Then it is total. It is difficult to live in such a room; chairs are upside down and everything is in chaos. Then you arrange everything and the same room becomes liveable in. Now there arises a harmony, a new value, which is more than the total -- because it was total before too.


A man can be total and may not be whole. That man will go mad. This is my observation -- that there are two types of persons. One type is people who are too cultured and civilised; who are not mad, but are fragmentary; a few parts have been denied. They are not vital, because how can you be vital when one of your wings is cut, one leg is cut, one hand is cut, one eye is missing? You cannot be vital. These people live at the lowest, the minimum; afraid that if they live a little more, those parts which have been excluded will have to be included.


So this civilised person lives a life which is very superficial, non-vital. If you tell the civilised person to include all without giving him a harmony, he will go mad. That is what is happening in the West. Christianity has made people adjusted to the lowest possibility and fragmented them. Now with the new ideology of licence, freedom, dropping of all the taboos, living. Life in its totality, here and now. many people are going crazy. They become total but they don't know how to become whole, so chaos is created instead of a cosmos. This cannot go on very long. Sooner or later they will again fall into the same trap; they will go to church. When you get fed up with madness, you again start cutting things to make yourself sane.


This is a vicious circle which has been going on for centuries; it is nothing new. Phases come: phases of discipline where people become fragmented, and phases of freedom when people become mad. This can go on and on; there is no end to it.


You get out of this wheel if you become whole. Then you are not just total, but something new, something more than the total, something higher than the total, superior to the total.


And I am going to help you continuously wherever you are  -- now space will not make any difference. Just go on working as if you are working here. Go on calling me and I will be there. Much has to be done....


[The leader says: Last year when I was in Europe and working, I introduced a lot of people to you.


I find that people get turned on to me and think they're related to me rather than you.]


Whenever people think that, just tell them that you are part of me. Drop the division. Somebody turned on to you is turned on to me. Drop the duality from the mind and then work becomes easier.


Allow me to work through you. And many more people will be coming through you, mm? I am not going anywhere, I will be sitting here, so you all have to go and work and spread me as far as you can.


[A group assistant said: I realized that I really like working more than any meditation.]


Very good. If you love some work, it is the most beautiful meditation... there is nothing else like it. In fact meditation is a substitute when you don't love your work. Then something has to be found which you can love.
If you love your work there is no need for meditation.


[A sannyasin says: I've decided to stay although there is a man in the States whom I love very much, and I feel a lot of sadness about not being with him.]

If he can come it will be good. ,If he cannot come, don't be worried.


I can understand the sadness, but always remember that love is possible only if you become very very open. Otherwise one can only think about love, but it never becomes possible. A certain readiness, a ripeness is needed for love to happen. One can be in love and not ready. You go on beating the bush around and around, but you never hit the target. Then love brings more misery than happiness.


Ordinarily it is thought that everybody is born ready for love. That's absolute nonsense. Even if one can become ready by the time one is going to die, then too one should be happy that it has happened early. People simply live without knowing what love is and then they die.


I have heard about a man who went to his doctor. He was very old, and when the doctor examined him he said, 'Your body is ageing too much, and you are almost eighty. I think you will have to cut your love life in half.'


The old man said, 'Okay; but which half? Thinking about it or talking about it?' (laughter)


But this is the whole of the love life! People think and talk about it. So even if you feel sad there is nothing to worry about.


Be here, meditate more... feel me more. Allow me to help you more. And dare! You have been hiding and trying to avoid a few things. That is at your own risk. Don't avoid -- it is very costly. Just plunge in, and take the danger that life is... accept it -- and then you will become able to live. One can find lovers any day. The basic thing is to find love and that is a quality in you that has nothing to do with the other.


One should really be sad if one has not found love within one's own heart. Lovers are always available; if one is not there, there is another. That's not a big problem. First create the quality and then it will come.
It will come. It comes only when you become very meditative.


[An assistant leader of the Aum says: Sometimes in the group there are certain responses that you have to give the participants which is from the head. If I'm telling somebody, I can't meet their eyes... it's not real I don't know if that will disappear.]


It will disappear. One thing has to be remembered: even a thought can be real. All thoughts are not necessarily unreal -- but this is how the human mind goes on creating unnecessary problems.


Now the emphasis in the West in growth groups, in the new trends in humanistic psychology, is that the feeling is true and the thought is not true. Just the opposite was the case a hundred years ago. The thought was true and the feeling was not true. Now you have simply put things upside down.


The first attitude was wrong; the second is also wrong, because thought has also to be included. Otherwise you will again create a part human being, not whole, because where will you put thought? Thought as such is not phoney. So how to decide whether thought is phoney or not?


If thought is in cooperation with feeling it is not phoney. If thought is trying to dominate feeling, then it is phoney. All domination is wrong. If things are cooperating and nobody is trying to dominate anybody, then everything is true.


So remember, rhythm is true. To be non-rhythmic is untrue. So if thought is in rhythm there is no problem. Don't think it is phoney, because thought is also yours as much as your feelings. The head is also yours. The problem is not the head. The problem is that your head has become your whole being and the whole body is excluded.


Don't go to the other extreme; don't exclude the head. Accept the totality: your head, your hands, your body, your feelings, your thinking -- everything has to be included.


Man is such a rich possibility, and everything has to be helped to fall into a rhythm. Just think, if your legs want to go the West and your hands don't, then you are in a dichotomy. You are in trouble... your being is contradictory. One hand wants to do something and another hand doesn't want to do it. With one hand you give, with another hand you snatch away. Then you are divided. But if both your hands are ready to give, your legs and eyes and your whole body are ready to go in one direction, you are in a perfect harmony, a beautiful graceful phenomenon.


Here, don't take any head-trip. Leave everything to me. Whenever you feel that you have become tense or anything, just relax, remember me, and leave it to me. I will be there to help


[A sannyasin says: I'm afraid of wanting and asking for love... and I'm afraid of men.]


You have only now become aware? But once you become aware, it can be dropped. The fear can continue if it is unconscious, but once you become aware that fear is there, then the choice is between love and fear.


Who is going to choose fear rather than love? It is impossible. Nobody can choose it. So just remain alert and see the absurdity of it. Fear cannot give you any happiness. Love can give you tremendous happiness... infinite possibilities to be happy. So there is no point in choosing fear. But it was in the unconscious; it is in everybody's unconscious.


It is good that it has surfaced and you are alert. Watch it -- there is no need to do anything against it. If you do something, it may go into the unconscious again. Just watch and wait, and within a few days you will feel it is becoming fainter and fainter and fainter without any sort of doing on your part.


Let it remain on the surface and evaporate, and remain with it for three weeks. There is no hurry for love -- first we have to evaporate the fear. When I say evaporate, I mean let it evaporate by its own energy... you simply remain a watcher.


[A group member says: It was terrible... I just abandoned all hope and went in. And I've never experienced such love and such highs... ]


The group has made you aware of both possibilities -- the highest and the lowest.


That is the success of a group -- that it makes you aware of how deep you can fall and how high you can rise. It points to both the ends. If it is going to be beautiful, it is going to be terrible. It is good that you have become aware.


To abandon hope is the greatest thing in the world. If you can abandon hope, all misery is dropped that very moment, because U is hope that brings all the misery. It is hope that brings the misery, the desire. It is hope that destroys the present. It is hope that goes on postponing your life... always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, and life is herenow.


If one can abandon hope, one does not become hopeless, because hopelessness is part of hope. You hope and it is not fulfilled -- you feel hopeless. But if hope is abandoned, you simply go beyond hope and hopelessness both. Suddenly you are here because there is no future, because there is no hope. You are not in despair. You are simply free for the first time from the past and the future. This moment is the only reality then. You live it... you live it without any thinking. You live it like an authentic animal... as a man should be.


Then there is no fear because there is nothing to lose. The hope is abandoned, and there is no greed because there is nothing to gain. Hope is abandoned. You are, and this moment. So one dances, one eats, one loves, one lives... and one lives without any hope. Life becomes tremendously beautiful. Look at the trees, the animals, the birds, the rivers, the rocks. They are uncontaminated by hope. Hope has not entered yet so they are beautiful. Man's mind is polluted by hope


It is difficult to understand because we live by hope. We cling to hope... that is our only pleasure. It is worth nothing, but only the pleasure of fantasy, of trying, of imagination -- that tomorrow everything is going to be good, and this and that... and it never happens. But again you go on thinking and thinking and thinking. It is living a world through thoughts, ideas, in the head... not really connected with reality. Abandon hope -- nothing is more beautiful than that.


It has been really good for you. That's why you are feeling so terrified. It is terrifying. In christian theology they call God not only luminous, not only mysterious, but they have a word 'tremendum' -- mysterium plus tremendum. God is terrifying. If you face God you will be reduced to ashes... He is fire. But that's also how life is. That's why we live with blinkers... we don't face life.


You felt very good with the eye meditation because a certain encounter with reality came through it. Continue that meditation.


... And never again hope... drop it! Howsoever hard it is, drop it and you will rise to a totally new plane of being. Hope is hell.
			

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