---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Further Shore"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "SHORE"
dategiven: "23 June 1977 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #21"
chaptertitle: "People who are full of wonder are people of god"
acode: "7706235"
shorttitle: "SHORE21"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Further Shore: Chapter #21"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[A sannyasin is returning to the west. Osho gives him a box, saying that whenever he needs him, he should hold the box in his hands, close his eyes and feel Osho. Don't remember me, Osho reiterates, feel me.... ]


Remembrance is just memory. Live it rather than remember it. For example, just this moment, close your eyes and have the feel here. Mm? -- the birds, the air, the silence, my presence. Feel it for three minutes... Let the whole envelope you...


So just create this atmosphere. Any moment that you need me just hold the box in your hands, close your eyes: relive this moment. And at least every night before you go to sleep, relive this moment in your bed and fall asleep so when you are moving into sleep, you are moving into your sleep with me. And that helps, that helps tremendously -- because when you are very very deeply asleep many many things are possible in that moment.


When you are full of thought you are far away from me. The distance has nothing to do with space; the distance has something to do with too many layers of thought. You can be ten thousand miles away but if there is no thought between me and you, you are just in front of me. You can be here, and if there are many mountains of thought between me and you, you are far away.


So when you are awake and so many thoughts and the mind noise and the ordinary traffic of inside goes on, it is difficult to make a contact. When you are going to sleep and thoughts are disappearing and by and by silence is settling and you are relaxing, you are getting ready to go into rest, then there is more possibility.


And if you go on remembering me while falling asleep there is a certain moment when the gear changes, when you are no more awake and you have fallen asleep. If in that moment of gear change the remembrance remains, then that thought pulses through you the whole night. It hovers around you, it lives in you. Your dreams will be saturated with it and when you are without dreams your sleep will be saturated with it.


The last thought in the night is always the first thought in the morning -- always; it stands there, it remains there the whole night. You can observe it: you can just note what the last thought in the night is and then early in the morning recall it. You will see that the first thing that happens in your mind is the last thought -- that with which you had said good-bye to the mind. It has been there, it is waiting for you. You fell asleep and the guest was waiting for the host to come back.


So fall asleep remembering, reliving me, and that will be of much help. Continue to meditate and come as soon as possible, mm? I will be waiting!

[A nine-year-old sannyasin asks: What's enlightenment?]


Mm! you want to become enlightened? (he nods) I will make you and then you will know what it is, mm? It is easier to become it than to talk about it. It is difficult to say what it is.


It is like a taste: if you taste something you know what it is but you cannot explain it to anybody else. At the most you can say good, bad, but that doesn't explain anything, mm? If somebody asks you 'What is the taste of this chocolate you are eating?' how will you explain it? The only thing possible is that you can give the chocolate to the person, mm? and say, 'You eat also.'


That's what I can do, mm? It is a chocolate -- enlightenment! It tastes good! I will give it to you.


Very good! Start meditating: you can go to all meditations and meditate, Very good!

[Another sannyasin says: I don't know about me.]


So nothing to be worried about! There is in fact no need to know anything, mm? Not knowing is not a bad state; you are not in a bad shape by not knowing. People are in a bad state because they know too much about themselves. There is no need really to know.


You are! And this -- your being -- cannot be made an object of knowledge. You are always the knower; you never become the known. You cannot be reduced to an object; you are not a thing! So the more you know about yourself, the more you will come to feel that you are unknowable. Finally, only mystery is left there, nothing else. Finally one is there, one has come home, but one knows not a thing. Knowledge is not something very important; this state of not knowing is very potent.


Nothing to be worried about! I am taking all your knowledge away from you. I would like to make everybody here a non-knower. And remember, non-knowledge is not ignorance; there is a difference -- these are three separate things.


Knowledge is the presence of information, ignorance is the absence of information, and non-knowing is neither presence nor absence: it is beyond both. The non-knower is neither knowledgeable nor ignorant. He has dropped all knowledge but he does not suffer from lack of knowledge. He enjoys his not-knowing, he is tremendously happy with his not-knowing. That's where you are getting confused....


Because of this non-knowing you start feeling as if you are ignorant; that is not the thing. Non-knowledge looks like ignorance; it is not. Just get deeper into this not-knowing, move deeper into this mystery. This is you! And there is no way to know it. Nobody has ever known it and nobody can ever know it because that one who knows always remains the knower and cannot be converted into the known. This is impossible to do.


So relax into it, abide in it, rest in it and enjoy it! With non-knowing all life becomes wonderful; with knowledge wonder disappears. When you know too much you lose surprise, you are not surprised when you know too much: you know everything. Then nothing seems like a mystery and nothing is miraculous.


When you don't know a thing everything is mysterious: the green trees, the red flowers, the birds in the sky and the clouds. Everything is mysterious and everything is so mysterious that you are surrounded by mystery continuously and each move is mysterious. One is simply surprised at how life goes on, how one goes on breathing. Even that is a surprise! One is constantly full of wonder and that feeling of wonder is really the feeling of god.
People who are full of wonder are people of god. They are the chosen people.


So don't be worried about this non-knowledge. It is not ignorance: it is opening the door of wonder to you.
What are you doing?

[She answers: Cleaning.]


Very good! That is the best thing one can do! That's very good -- that's all I do: cleaning! All kinds of rubbish I go on cleaning. Very good, Good!


[A sannyasin who practises massage in the ashram says she has reached a stasis in her work: I don't get high from it any more and I don't get upset by it any more. It's just as if it's really in between, and I've never experienced anything like that before.


I'm thinking maybe it's the time to stop... or it's the time to start. I don't know!]


No, this is the time to start, mm? because high and low are momentary things and this will become a permanent thing. This is more right, more balanced. A high is an imbalance and a low is also another kind of imbalance, and one goes on moving like a pendulum -- from high to low, from low to high; that is not a very restful state. There is excitement but there is no rest, and finally one gets tired of it.


This is far better. This is more calm, more silent, more tranquil; this is equilibrium. Equilibrium means exactly that: everything is equal. If this happens, good; if that happens, good. If things go right, good; if they don't go right, that too is good. This is not a bad state -- this is very healthy and whole, so no need to be worried.


This is the time now when you start your massage in a better situation. And you will be of great help, because when you are very high you can excite the person but you will not help him to fall into rest -- and the deepest massage is to help him to relax, to fall into rest. If you are excited you will excite him: one person very much stirred, naturally stirs the other. We are so much joined with each other that if you are too much excited, excitement is catching, infectious.


And if you are massaging with excitement you are throwing great energy into the other man. He will become excited: he will feel very good, but that was not really the point of massage. The very innermost core of massage is to help him to come to equilibrium so he feels completely at ease, silent, peaceful, unmoving. To bring the man to that rest is the highest goal of massage.


In the west that is completely lost. In the west massage has become just a kind of excitement, and hence, naturally, it has fallen even more. It has become sexual because when a massage is excitement, naturally it will become hooked with sex because sex is excitement. If massage is excitement and sex is also excitement they both become hooked, so in the west massage has become a sexual game.


The eastern way of massage is totally different, and that's what is happening now. I was waiting for this moment. I had not talked about it because if I talk about it you may start pretending it, but this has now happened naturally on its own. I had not even given you a single hint about it. If hints are given about these things the mind is so cunning that it can manage, it can pretend. It can say, 'Now it is happening'; it can imagine, it can project, and then you miss the real thing.


Now the real has happened and the mind is puzzled about what is happening because now there will be no excitement and there will be no low also. When the high disappears the low disappears: when there are no mountains there are no valleys either; one starts moving on plain ground.


But this is the point: the other person is ill, his body is ill because he has lived a life of excitement; it has tired him. That excitement has created many blocks in him.


For example, if a person gets sexually excited again and again and the sexual excitement has almost become local, then there will be trouble because one part of the body becomes excited and the other parts remain cold so the energy does not flow. One part becomes excited, another part becomes the block, so one part starts flowing, another part remains frozen; then he is in division.


Somebody lives in the head and gets very excited about new thoughts, so the head becomes very very hot and the whole body becomes cold so the wholeness is lost... and so on and so forth.


Massage means: a method to bring the man to his totality, to his wholeness, so the flow is equal. All the parts are nourished equally and the energy flows equally all over the place. No part dominates... no part functions as the dictator. The body becomes more democratic: each cell receives whatever it needs. And that will be more possible in that state when you are not excited. As excitement is catching, so is equilibrium.


When you are moving very silently, unexcitedly, almost unconcerned, a pool of silence goes on falling on the man. It will function like a lullaby. Mm? -- his own excitement will start settling. This will be far better and this way you can do much more work. When excitement is there you will soon get tired, and when excitement is there you have to pay for it again and again with a low; a low is bad.


Now you will not have any low, you will not have any high. You can go very silently and you can do great work without getting tired. Work does not tire; it is excitement that tires.


So perfectly good... Everything is perfect -- just go ahead and continue your work.


[A couple who are initiates of an indian swami are present. The man said he wanted to do groups, but had to restrain himself from having kriyas and giving shakti in front of non-initiates. He asks Osho for advice on how to do the groups under these condition.]


First thing: these ideas that you have got will not help you in you growth -- these ideas that you should not move into kriyas.... You have to drop it, otherwise you will never grow. These kinds of things have existed down the ages. These are tricks to manipulate people and to keep them in control through fear: these are very subtle tricks to keep people in control, to make them afraid. Once you are afraid, you are possessed by the man or whoever has made you afraid. Now a few things....


Shakti is neither yours nor mine nor anybody else's -- it is a universal force. It has nothing to do with anybody: it is all over. It is in the trees, it is in the river, it is in the ocean, it is roaring in the ocean. It is in the clouds, it is lightning, it is electricity, it is gravitation. All that is is one energy, one shakti. It is in you, it is in the woman, it is in the child. It was there in all the people who participated in the group.


And you become afraid.... If you start controlling, you remain isolated from this vast energy that is available. Kriya is one of the most essential things to go through; it cleanses you. If you stop kriya, if you stop expression, if you hold it in, you are just a miser and nothing else. But this miserliness exists in many sects. They are very much afraid -- as if they are losing something. You cannot lose!


The more you give, the more you share, the more you express, the more you will be getting, because you are joined with an infinite source. It is almost like a well: you go on drawing water from the well and new water is constantly flowing.


If you become afraid... If you initiate the well and tell the well not to allow anybody to take any water out of it otherwise it will become empty one day, it will die. If you say that when it needs the water it will not have any, so it shouldn't give water, it shouldn't allow anybody to draw water... If the well becomes an initiate like you and becomes afraid and does not share and does not give water, what will happen?


The well will become sooner or later stagnant. Its water will become poisoned, its water will no more be fresh and flowing, and because no new water is coming those small fountains that bring the water by and by will be blocked.


Allow the well to be shared by as many people as possible and the well will remain fresh, the flow will remain fresh. And the ocean is always there sending you new sources.
So with me if you have to work here, kriya is a must.


... Yes, it must be there, without it there is no growth. Without it you become an island -- isolated, separate, cut. When you allow it you become part of the whole: you become a continent.


I know that type of group exists in India -- very miserly-type people -- but they have existed long. I am not in favour of those people.


... I am not concerned with your guru; I am just concerned with you. If you want to choose that way, it is open for you; then you leave. With me there is no go because it is so contradictory that you will be constantly in trouble... so you choose! I'm not saying to be here and do this; I'm not saying that. I am simply making it clear to you that here kriya is a must. Here kriya has to happen: the more it happens the better.


If you want to be here, then you have to follow me. If you are afraid, then you can go to your guru and do whatsoever you like; then that is not my concern. And I am not saying that you should not go there; I am not saying that. You can go -- that is your choice -- but I should make it clear to you that if you choose that kind of thing you will never grow.


[The visitor then says: ... in my groups I had kriya once or twice -- I experimented -- and I found that I lost very large amounts of energy after the groups.]


That's what I'm saying: you have been taught to be very miserly! You have not lost anything; it is just your idea. It is exactly as in india people think that if you make love, you lose energy... so they do! Nobody else in the whole world does: in the West nobody loses any energy by making love. In fact people get energy by making love, and the whole modern science is in favour of it: by making love you get energy; you don't lose. But the whole hindu mind is a miserly mind, a very miserly, hoarding mind. One drop of semen should not be lost, otherwise you lose energy.


These people are constipated, their whole mind is constipated, and then they are afraid. When you are afraid and this idea goes deeper into you and one day you make love, suddenly the whole mind jumps on you, takes you by the neck, and says, 'What are you doing? You are losing energy!' You start feeling afraid and you start feeling that you are losing energy... and naturally you feel frustrated that much energy has been lost... but that is your idea! Once it has been accepted it becomes an auto-hypnosis.


So the kriya that happened is happening to everybody. Nobody is losing energy -- only you are; then something is wrong with you!


Thousands of people are coming and working here with kriyas. Nobody has come and told me that he loses energy; they are gaining energy by it. Here you come and say that you are losing energy. Then you have something in the mind which is creating the idea.


And if you become afraid of losing energy you will shrink. you will go on shrinking. Then in each small thing you will start feeling that you are losing energy. Then you are in your grave; you will not be able to live.


Life means share, life means express, life means give and take: give and allow somebody to give to you.


But I know these people are there. To me these people are neurotic. If I have my say I will put them into hospitals: they have to be psychiatrically treated. They are simply insane people, but their insanity is very traditional, very scriptural; they can prove it by scripture and this and that.


So you have to think over it, mm? otherwise you will be in trouble. I don't want to create any trouble for you. If you are too much into that idea please escape from here as fast as possible! If you are courageous enough to get into this new kind of energy phenomenon, then you are welcome -- enter into it -- but drop all those ideas.


It is just as for thousands of years people have been telling children that if you masturbate you lose energy, you will become weak in mind, you will become weak in heart, you will go crazy or you will become stupid, and this and that; you will be ill and all kinds of things.


That used to happen in the past... because when you tell a child that if he masturbates these things are going to happen, each time he masturbates these ideas will be there: 'Now you are doing it again you will go mad, you will become stupid, you will become silly, you will go crazy, you will go blind, and this and that.'


If he does not masturbate, then the energy is continuously there. Mm? now the society creates such trouble. A boy becomes sexually mature at the age of fourteen, and marriage is allowed somewhere after ten years -- at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age or even later. Now what is that boy expected to do for these ten years?


Sexually he is mature at fourteen -- he will become marriageable at twenty-four; these ten years are going to be torture. Now he cannot make love to a woman -- that is immoral; he cannot masturbate because he will go mad. And people have gone mad... not because of masturbation but because of the idea that is constantly there. Now, nobody goes mad. Now even doctors suggest that masturbation should be done; it is healthy, hygienic. The whole modern research says it is hygienic and the whole past and its nonsense says it drives people mad.


You have been with people who don't know a single thing about all the modern research that has gone into human energy. They are still living at least three thousand years back; these are primitive people.


It is for you to choose, mm? If you are feeling that you are growing there, go and work on that way. When you are finished with it, fed up with it, tired of it, when one day you see that nothing is happening and you are being more suffocated inside, then you can come, if I am here, and work. Or if you choose to work here now, just throw these things away. Put them in a handkerchief, burn the handkerchief and be finished. Only then will you be able to do anything here, because all these groups are cathartic and all these groups are kriya groups.


My whole work is parallel to latihan. The kriya has to be allowed: it is only through kriya that you pulsate, that you start streaming, that you become more alive.
So you choose, mm? it is for you. It is a problem for you -- you choose.


[The woman also asks: is it not possible to take the groups and to be here, to do that, and control our kriya?]


I'm not saying don't do it -- if you want to do it you can, but you will not be profited so much as would have been possible. It will be at the most twenty percent; you will miss eighty percent of it. But it is up to you: if you want to do... I'm not saying don't do the groups -- it is up to you, but you are doing two contradictory things, and that is unnecessary.


It is as if somebody is driving a car and goes on accelerating it and braking it. You are heavy on the mechanism; they should not be done together. When you want to brake you should leave the accelerator; you should not press the accelerator. All these groups are accelerating and what you are doing is braking in the middle.


It is for you to choose, but you are doing something opposite and that is bad on the system, it is not good on the system. And the profit will be very very small: you will lose eighty percent. But if you want to do it, it is perfectly okay; even twenty percent is better than nothing.

[She then asks which groups are more likely to bring kriyas.]


Leela may be heavy because it is an energy group; it is a pure play of energy.


There is much possibility for it if you allow. If you don't allow then there is nothing; you can simply remain frozen. Your cooperation is needed; nothing will happen without your cooperation, so you can do it. If you feel like going into it, you can; if you don't feel like going into it, you can pull yourself back.


... My whole work here is totally different to the old concept, it is totally revolutionary. I am against all this nonsense.


I would like to lead people more into kriya -- more than they are going -- but the government won't allow it. A thousand and one problems are there, otherwise I would lead them completely into utter madness! Only from there, you jump! Only from there does one simply explode into another dimension.


Miserly, lukewarm -- nothing happens. One has to go to the peak -- to the peak of all your effort and all your energy. When everything is vibrating and nothing is repressed in you, then you are on the verge: just a single step and you enter the divine. It is from the extreme that the jump happens; it is never from the middle.


So it is for you to choose. Think about it; if you feel like being here, you can be. If you feel like doing half-heartedly, you can do that.


... it is up to you! I don't suggest anything. I have made it clear to you that if you go whole-heartedly you will be more benefitted. If you can't go whole-heartedly and still you want to do it, you can. A little benefit will be there; that too is good!


And my feeling is that if you are here for four, five weeks, you will drop all this nonsense that you are carrying in your heads. This is simply nonsense; this is no initiation... nothing at all.


And even if you go from here I am going to haunt you! It is not going to be so easy; once you come here it is difficult. I will continue to haunt you.
So do whatsoever you feel like, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: I feel happy to be here!]

Right... Become more happy, mm?


People are very very reluctant to become happy. They have almost to be forced into it; they are so reluctant to be happy. They are so happy to be miserable and they are so unhappy to go into happiness; they find a thousand and one reasons not to go into it.


Go into it more, mm? There is no end to it, you can go on and on: it is a non-ending bliss. One just needs courage to go on, and higher and higher peaks are always available. So allow yourself a little more. People are very very hard in allowing themselves. they cling to their misery, to their past, to their patterns, and because of that clinging things don't happen. So drop that clinging, and the new sprout that is coming up, help, water, nourish in every way so that soon it becomes a tree.


Man can become such blissfulness that there is no way to imagine it... we don't know what is possible for us. We are just living like caterpillars; we don't know that we can become butterflies. We go on groping int he dark and crawling on the ground. and even if a butterfly comes and tells you to get out of this, you cling. You cling to your shell; you think it is your home.


It is only a temporary home; it has to be left again and again. We will make many temporary homes and we will destroy them. No home is a permanent home. Man is a wayfarer, a pilgrim, and all homes should be like tents: in the night you fix them, by the evening you have gone to sleep, by the morning you take them away and you move on. No home should be more than a tent -- just an overnight stay.


So, much more is possible, mm? Don't be satisfied with this small bit that has happened. Learn the taste from it and go ahead!
			

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