---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Further Shore"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "SHORE"
dategiven: "22 June 1977 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #20"
chaptertitle: "Become an instrument to me"
acode: "7706225"
shorttitle: "SHORE20"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Further Shore: Chapter #20"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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[A sannyasin who is leaving for the west says he has a hard time accepting everything about himself and finds it particularly tricky relating to people -- especially to strangers and to groups of people: I don't know whether to just accept it, or to try and do something about it... ]


Accepting it is doing something about it. Acceptance is not mere acceptance: it is the very method of changing it. The moment you accept anything, it starts coming into the conscious. It leaves the unconscious, it starts coming to the light because now you are not denying it so there is no need for it to hide. Now you are not against it and there is no need to go on living underground: it can come and face you.


And when things come to the conscious and you see them clearly.... And they can be seen clearly only when you accept. If somewhere you have any kind of denial, rejection, you cannot look into the eyes of a thing. You avoid, you don't want to see; you're afraid.


Acceptance makes you unafraid of any fact -- if it is there. the moment you see that it is there and you are no more repressing, it comes up, it surfaces; it comes into the light. You can see it through and through and that very seeing is a transforming phenomenon. You will never be the same again once you have seen the facts about yourself in their utter nakedness.


That's what the whole method of psychoanalysis is. It tries to analyse your dreams, because dreams come from the unconscious. Dreaming is nothing but an effort of the unconscious to bring a few facts about you to your conscious, but you are so much against them that it cannot bring them directly. It brings them through a myth, the myth of the dream. It brings them in a poetic form so you cannot immediately reject them. By the time you see what they are you would have faced them already.


[For example, Osho continues, when you are a child you might think of killing your father, because it is the father who doesn't allow you freedom, who is continually enforcing discipline on you!. You resent the father but you can't do anything about it, and the very idea makes you feel so guilty that you repress it. Later on, when you are older, a situation may arise where you are in conflict with a father-figure -- perhaps the boss in your office. Again the idea to kill your father might arise, again you repress it. Then you dream that you kill the uncle; that is safer. The uncle resembles your father but is not, so it is more acceptable to you.]


This was a message garbed, coded, masked, to tell you that now it is time to get rid of father-figures. You need not be afraid of the boss, you need not be afraid even of god -- because god is again the projection of the father-figure, the ultimate projection, the father of all. You need not be afraid: now you are mature enough, you can get rid of these things. That's what the unconscious wants to relate to you: to drop this garbage now. But it will come in a story-form and you will have to analyse it. You may not be able to; you may have to go to some expert who will analyse it.


The whole psychoanalysis is simply this: decoding your dreams that the unconscious can clearly give you the message. If you don't repress the unconscious, if you accept you yourself, there is no need for psychoanalysis at all. A man who accepts himself totally need not be psychoanalysed; there is nothing to analyse! His unconscious will not garb his messages. He will get direct messages, and direct messages are very beautiful; they immediately bring about a transformation in you.


So the first thing is to accept. Through acceptance you don't need any Freud, any Jung: you yourself become your own psychoanalyst. In fact, psychoanalysis is not needed; things become very simple. No expert is needed, no expertise is needed. The unconscious reveals itself... and when the unconscious reveals itself, naturally, it is unburdened.


And many things, almost ninety percent of the garbage, are there because you repress. When it comes to light you see the futility of it, and rather than repressing it you simply throw it out. That is the whole effort of groups like encounter: you throw it, you don't put it back inside.


If you are really angry at your father, then you write 'father' on the pillow and you beat the pillow; you are nasty to it, you kill it. Act it out -- and suddenly you will feel a great relief. Something was boiling: it has been thrown out. You will feel clean as one feels after vomiting: relaxed, the strain gone, the nausea disappears.


Yes, exactly, that's what encounter and groups like that are -- an effort to vomit the emotions. So first accept, then no need for psychoanalysis; if you deeply accept then no need for encounters. Then you yourself become capable of throwing whatsoever is useless. There is no need to put it back -- it is not worth saving and why waste space for it? Have a cleaner space inside. Why carry rubbish and junk?


So ninety percent can be thrown just like that -- as every morning you throw all that is garbage into the garbage bin. The ten percent that remains is very significant. It is not to be thrown; it is your own nature telling you to do a few things that you have never done. But before the garbage is thrown you will never be able to sort it out -- what is essential and what is non-essential and what is significant and what is insignificant.


For example, you feel afraid of relationship, you feel afraid of people, you feel afraid of strangers. Mm? -- that's a message from the unconscious that from your very childhood you have never allowed any deep involvement with people. You have never really loved somebody. Maybe you loved so-so but you were never so involved as if it were a life and death problem. No, you never put yourself totally at the stake.


So by and by you have become a little alienated, you have become a little lonely. The bridges are broken: now you don't know how to relate to strangers. And because you cannot relate with a stranger, to be with a stranger feels embarrassing. Something has to be said, some relationship has to be made, otherwise you feel restless; one feels something has to be done!


Another human being is there sitting in front of you and you can't even say 'hello'. You will feel embarrassed, he will feel embarrassed, and his embarrassment will make you feel even more embarrassed. The more embarrassed you are, the more nervousness will arise, and you will start trembling, shaking, and then it is even more difficult to say hello. Your throat is dry, you cannot open your mouth. Even if you want to talk, suddenly no word seems to be available, the mind simply goes blank; hence the fear!


So my suggestion is: there is no need to start with strangers, but love your friends a little more, put a little more energy into that love. If you can love your friends, one day you will understand a miracle. The miracle is: if you love your friend deeply you come to know that he is your friend and yet he is a stranger. Human beings are such mysteries. We only pretend that we know each other; in fact, there is no way to know each other. All our knowledge is just on the surface. It never goes to the heart of the other person.


When you love a friend deeply you will become aware that you love him so much but still he is a stranger. You have loved him so much but that has not made him known to you. In fact that has made him even more unknown -- even unknowable. His mystery has grown dense, his mystery has become deeper.


So if you love a friend you will find finally that he is a stranger... and that very day, when you look at a stranger you will find he is a friend too. That is the miracle I am talking about. If you can find the stranger in the friend, you will find the friend in the stranger; then those two things are not separate. You follow me? Those two things are two aspects of the same coin.


Each friend is a stranger and each stranger is a potential friend... and there is no antagonism. By friendship the stranger is not destroyed: the stranger remains a stranger. And by being a stranger he is not your enemy; he is just a potential friend -- you can befriend him. He is as ready as anything, he is waiting as much as you are. He is as much embarrassed as you are because a bridge is not being created; he is as nervous as you are.


When you know yourself rightly, you know everybody because they are all alike. Even the very very powerful people are as nervous as the powerless people, even your great leaders are as nervous. They simply go on putting on airs, deep down there is the same human being... fragile.


Just the other day I was reading about a zen master who was a master to a chinese Emperor. It happened that the Emperor was defeated and had to escape into the mountains; he took the master with him. The master was surprised because this man was absolutely a different man, he was no more an emperor; all that he was putting on disappeared. He had never seen the Emperor walking, and he saw him running -- just like an ordinary man! They were travelling miles every day, and running!


The Emperor felt very hungry, and the master was surprised because that was one of the problems of the Emperor -- that he has lost his appetite; all emperors lose their appetites. Now after running for miles, by the evening when they reached a small village he was so hungry that he said, 'Master, find something, anything will do; I am so hungry!' They could not find anything: it was such a small, poor village, that only sweet potatoes were available. In china, sweet potato is not thought to be human food; it is given only to pigs. And that was the only thing available; one poor man offered some.


The Emperor ate them and he liked the sweet potatoes so much that he said, 'I have never eaten anything so delicious!' He ate like an ordinary labourer, with his hands -- no golden spoons, nothing and he slept a very sound sleep. That was another problem: he was suffering from insomnia for years. Mm? -- that's also part of being an emperor. The appetite always goes when you are rich, sleep goes when you are rich. These two things god allows only to poor people!


He slept... he snored! The master was awakened two, three, times in the night because he was snoring so much! He had never heard him snore, mm? -- people like emperors don't snore! Even in their sleep, if they sleep at all, they follow a certain etiquette, they remain appropriate.


Now this was too much -- snoring like a labourer, a farmer, a fisherman -- and in the morning the master said to the Emperor 'What were you doing? You snored!'


The Emperor said, 'Forget all about it! I am feeling so happy, I have never felt so happy in my whole life. It is good that the kingdom is lost. I have become alive!'


After one week of running towards the mountains, all airs, all that pretension, all that pseudo-personality disappeared, and the Emperor was just as a human being -- as any other. Even the master started forgetting that he was the Emperor.


After two, three weeks, things changed: the enemies left, the Emperor came back, and within a single moment -- as he entered the capital and was received with a golden chariot -- all those airs were there again. The master could see that he was a totally different man! Suddenly everything changed, and next day the Emperor was suffering from loss of appetite and after two, three days he was saying that sleep did not come.


And the master said, 'But now you know! Don't ask me and don't bother me about this nonsense! Now you know all this can be changed.'


The Emperor said, 'That almost seems like a dream that we had; it is not possible. Now I am an emperor.'


Remember: each human being -- maybe the human being is Alexander the Great or just a beggar on the roadside -- each human being is as fragile as anybody else. Deep down he is the same -- the same consciousness, the same fear, the same death, the same lust, the same love: all exists the same.


So don't be worried about that. Accept yourself, allow your unconscious to be revealed to you. This is how each human being is. By knowing it, you become a separate kind of human being. By accepting it, cherishing it, you bring a revolution to your life. And when you look at others with that understanding, you will not find strangers; you will find all are friends.


Everybody is looking for a friend. Everybody is hiding behind a wall and waiting for somebody to say 'hello', somebody to say, 'Why are you there? Come out! I am waiting for you!'... somebody to hold hands with. Everybody is waiting for that -- somebody to hug, somebody to love and be loved by....


There is nobody who is in any way different from you. Once you understand yourself you have understood the whole humanity. In that very understanding a great vision arises in which we are all brothers and sisters and we are all in the same boat. Then fear disappears; there is nobody to be afraid of. Nervousness disappears; what is there to be nervous about? We are all in the same boat.


So this is what I mean by acceptance. Acceptance is not just acceptance: it is a way of changing the whole situation. Accept it, allow it, and you will see many things are useless, just hang-ups from the past; they can be thrown easily. Just by seeing them -- that they are hang-ups from the past -- you get rid of them. Nothing else is needed in just seeing that.


And the remaining are messages of tremendous import from your deepest core, from your navel to the head -- which has gone very very far away. Those messages are very significant; they have to be understood. By understanding them you will be creating a bridge between your unconscious and conscious. By understanding them you will become more one, more individual. The division, the split will disappear. You will start feeling a new centre arising in you -- the centre which is called integration.


And neither a psychotherapist is needed for it nor does one really need to go to encounter groups. If you can do it yourself it is simple. When you cannot do it yourself, then I say, 'Yes, take the help of somebody who knows better'. Otherwise it is simple -- you can do it... and start doing it!


[A sannyasin who practises Postural Integration in the ashram says that he his work has become mechanical and he feels stuck: When my heart is into it, when it's fresh, I get a lot of energy out of it and I feel really good, but when it's not I get really drained.]

There are a few problems, mm?


One is, that you have to be a little more inventive about it; there is no need to follow a very very rigid pattern. You can make it a little loose and you can put a few changes here and there, and in fact it will be helpful to because each person is such a different person that no structure fits all people.


So this is my first feeling -- that sometimes when your structure fits with the people you start flowing; when it doesn't fit you start feeling stuck. You could not flow with [your girlfriend] at all, not at all: your energy and her energy are totally different. That's what I wanted to see.


So when the person you are working on flows.... Your understanding is just the other way round: you think that because your heart is in it he is flowing. Just the other way is true: because he flows your heart gets into it.


And any rigid structure will not allow all persons to flow into it. You have to be a little more inventive, you have to be a Little more intuitive, because rigid structures come from the head, liquid structures come from the heart. You have to see the person, you have to feel the person!


Sometimes just let the person lie down there, close your eyes; just feel the person all over the body. Just go feeling, groping in the dark, just touching the body here and there. Have a feel of the person, and out of that feel let the structure grow. Whatsoever you know will be used; it will only be a difference of arrangement. All techniques that you use will be used, but sometimes putting a thing here and putting a thing there and changing the arrangement can make such a lot of difference.


And be a little inventive too. No technique is complete and no technique will ever be complete. When man is growing, techniques have to go on growing. When man has not finished yet how can techniques be finished? So be a little more intuitive, more fluid, and let there be more play.


In zen, they say that if you want to become a real painter, for twelve years learn painting then for twelve years forget all about it. Throw the canvas, throw the brush, throw the colours and forget all about painting. For twelve years do something else -- gardening, farming, anything will do -- and after twelve years start painting again. And then there will be something original... because when you don't know the technique you may be original but you will be amateurish and your art cannot be very valuable; it will be childish, juvenile.


When you only know the technique your art will have the technical quality in it but it will not have the genuineness of the heart. The technique has to be known and then forgotten so the technique enters in your bloodstream -- it becomes part of you; you don't know what it is.


Now you are again like a child with all the know-how; you are again like a child. First you learn, then you unlearn. Now you are again like a child but not really a child; you have all the expertise hidden in your bones. It will work but it will not work any more like a technology. It will not dominate you, it will not be predominant, it will not be dictatorial. It will simply serve you, and it will serve in a very unconscious way... and then original things are born.


So everything has to be learned and then forgotten, unlearned. Then one is innocent and yet technically correct; that is the right process.


Start being a little more inventive, intuitive, liquid... go by the feeling. Mm? -- you are too much in the technique and you just follow a rigid pattern. Sometimes it fits; when it fits you feel very happy. Naturally, when the patient starts getting well the doctor feels happy. When the students start learning, the teacher feels happy. When the trees start flowering the gardener feels happy... naturally.


When you see some human being flowing, mm? you start flowing. Your work is bringing fruit, your work is meaningful, it has certain significance. You feel fulfilled: so you are not working in vain, you are not just wasting your energy.
Become more innovative... one thing.


And the second thing: your own love is not flowing very deeply so if you can find a woman to flow with that will help... that will help tremendously. Otherwise you will feel that all work by and by becomes a drag. You are not yet capable of being flowing without love. One day you may be but right now love is almost like food.


Mm? if you don't get food for a few days, then it will be difficult to do your postural integration. And that's what is happening: you are not getting love and you are not sharing love. Something is missing in your heart; that's why the heart does not flow.


It happens to people: when their love is not flowing their work is not flowing. When their love is flowing their work also flows. So the second thing: fall into love... fall into love like a fool. Don't be worried; go into it!


And the third thing: start becoming more like an instrument to me rather than doing things on your own -- and that will help tremendously. Before you start your work on somebody, just close your eyes, remember me. Repeat 'Osho, Osho, Osho...' three times, loudly, and tell your patient also to repeat that. Then start working; leave it to me.


Become instrumental, become a vehicle, just a passage, and there will be more enjoyment and there will be more flow. There will be new sources of energies flowing in you; that is the way to tap the infinite source.


Man always feels exhausted after a time, becomes tired; work becomes repetitive. Of course for three and a half years you have been doing the same work; it is natural. Let god do it now.
These three things, mm? And after one month report to me.


[The sannyasin says he has been in a relationship with his girlfriend for four months: so you kind of blew my mind when you said that my energy wasn't with her.]


It is not! It is not... and that may be the reason why it is not. If you are with a woman long enough you are not in any poetic relationship any more. Things have settled: you have become a husband and a wife.


That's what happens, and here it happens within three days, four days... not more than that. Within seven days divorce comes, and that too in very orthodox people, very conventional people. They stay together for at least seven days; otherwise in one day also, love is there and it is gone.


That may be the reason why you could not flow with her energy. It is very difficult to flow with the energy you have been with, with the woman you have been with -- very difficult. It is very difficult to turn on to the wife or the husband... very difficult. Any other woman may do it very easily, any other man will do it very easily: the new provokes excitement. Maybe just because you are acquainted with each other's energy, that's why it.... You should have told me before!
But do these three things and then you tell me, mm? Good!


[The girlfriend then says their relationship has been really beautiful: I do feel there are places where our energies don't meet. We didn't fall headlong in love with each other but what's been growing between us has been really beautiful, so.... ]


Mm mm, go into it! Sometimes your energies may not go together and yet you can be in love. You cannot be in love headlong, that's true.


... When you fall headlong in love with somebody it will be finished soon. It will be too romantic and romance does not last. When you fall in love with somebody not headlong, not madly, the romance is not there; it is more on the earth, it is more down-to-earth, more practical. It can last long; it can become a very very stable thing.


That's why in the East we completely cut the idea of love. For many centuries in the East love was not necessary; in fact, it was avoided. Persons should get married and then they should love -- not love first and then marriage. If love is there first, then marriage cannot last long; that is the trouble with love. It goes so high and you cannot remain on that height for long -- sooner or later you fall flat on the ground.


Mm? -- that is the misery in America: a love marriage cannot succeed. A love marriage is beautiful -- it really takes people on a trip -- but it cannot succeed, mm? It cannot become an institution, it cannot create a family; the family will always be on the rocks.


This is the human dilemma: marriage succeeds, marriage is practical, mm? mathematical, calculated -- it succeeds. It is good for a family, for children, for society, for the state, it is good, but for those two persons it never goes to the stars. It is simply moving on the ground -- good; it is what is called happy marriage.


Mm? a happy marriage is not a very happy affair. A happy marriage means that things are going well, things are okay... but for things to be just okay is not enough. It is lukewarm, comfortable, convenient, but it never drives you mad!


That may be the reason. You can stay together and it may become a good, happy marriage....
And I'm not saying drop out of it, no!


Once you know that your energies are not meeting something can be done to help them meet. That is not a problem: it is not such a thing that nothing can be done about it. If you don't know, then nothing can be done about it. It is good: by accident you have come to know that your energies are not meeting. Now much can be done and you can make them meet.


But you will have to be into it more consciously; they will not meet on their own accord. You will have to move towards him a little and he will have to move towards you a little and you will have to meet. You will have to make a little effort -- but good! I am not against it and I am not saying to drop out of it.


Give it a try for one month more but for this one month try more consciously. For example dance together, sing together; do many other things together. Massage him, he can massage you, mm? Let your energies meet and mingle not only sexually  -- in other ways too! Massage is perfectly good, dancing is good; go swimming together, hold your hands in the water, take a sunbath together. Let your energies meet in many other ways. Sex is okay, but let it be multi-dimensional.


And when you know that, your energies are not meeting then you can do something consciously to create a situation so that they start moving. And when you know that they are not meeting you can avoid many situations of conflict, nagging, fighting... because that won't be good for you.


When energies are not meeting fighting is very bad. When energies are meeting very much fight is okay, it can be allowed because the affair can afford it. If you start fighting there is nothing much to hold you together, nothing is at stake; you will say good-bye. Knowing this, you can create a situation.


So avoid all negativities. I never say to avoid negativities when people are in a romantic love -- I say go into them: be angry, fight, throw pillows at each other and do all kinds of things. But when energies are not meeting, then you have to be very very alert: the negative cannot be allowed. Do more positive things so that you start coming closer to one vibe.


And just sex won't do. You will have to make other non-sexual approaches, then in the sex also it will happen; otherwise just sex won't do. But one thing is good about it  -- it can be stable... and I think you need something stable. Mm? -- you have been in many affairs: now you need something stable too.
			

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