Q: You made me altogether confused and lethargic. I am like mad. At the moment I feel no trust even. Now tell me what should I do? Where should I go?
This comes from Swabhav. You must have also come across his madness. Now, he himself has become aware of it – this is a beautiful moment.
If you can be confused, that shows that you are intelligent. Only a fool cannot be confused; only a stupid man cannot be confused. If you have some intelligence you can be confused. An intelligent person can only be confused, so don’t look at the confusion. You must have some intelligence, that’s why. Now the intelligence is coming on its own. Coming of age. The confusion was always there, but you were not alert, so you could not see it. Now you are alert and you can see. It is just like this: you live in a dark room. Cobwebs are there, rats run here and there, in the corners dirt goes on multiplying. And suddenly I come in your room with a lamp. You tell me, “Put off your lamp because you are making my room dirty. It was never so; everything was so beautiful in darkness.”
How can I make you confused? I am here to dissolve all your confusions. But in the very process of dissolving, the first step is going to be that you will have to become aware of your confusion. If your room has to be cleaned, then the first step is to see the room as it is; otherwise how will you clean it? If you believe it is already clean – and in the darkness you have never known the piles of dirt that have come into it and what miracles the spiders have been doing in your room and how many scorpions and snakes have made their habitat there – if you remain fast asleep in darkness, then there is no problem. A problem exists only for a man whose intelligence is growing.
Only a person who does not know much,
only a person who is not aware,
can remain without confusion.
So whenever you come to me, the first thing, the first impact if you understand me will be confusion. That’s a good sign. You are on the right path, go on. Don’t be worried. If confusion is there, then no-confusion is possible. If you can’t see the confusion, then there is no possibility for clarity. Just watch it: who is saying that you are confused. A confused mind cannot even say, “I am confused.” You must have become a little watcher by the side – you see the confusion around you like smoke. But who is this who has become aware that there is confusion? All hope lies in this phenomenon: that a part of you – a very small part of course, but that too is too much in the beginning – you should feel fortunate that a part of you can watch and look at the whole confusion. Now let this part grow more. Don’t be afraid of the confusion: otherwise you will try to force this part to go to sleep again so you can feel safe again.
I know Swabhav from his very beginning. He was not confused, that is true – because he was perfectly stupid. He was adamant, stubborn. He almost knew everything, without knowing. Now, for the first time a part of his being is becoming intelligent, alert, aware, and that part is locking around: there is sheer confusion.
This is beautiful. Now two possibilities are there: either you listen to this part which is saying this is confusion, and you increase it – it becomes a pillar of light and in that light all confusion will dissolve: or you become afraid and scared – you start escaping from this part which has become aware, you start drowning it back into darkness again. Then you will be a knower again: stubborn, knowledgeable, everything clean-cut – no confusion. Only a person who does not know much, only a person who is not aware, can remain without confusion.
A really aware person will feel, hesitate – every step he will take and he will hesitate – because all certainties are lost. Says Lao Tzu, “The wise man walks so cautiously, as if he is afraid of death on every step.” A wise man becomes aware of confusion; that is the first step.
And then there is the second step: when the wise man has become so wise that all the energy has become light. So now the same energy that was creating confusion and moving in confusion is there no more; it has been absorbed. All confusion disappears; there is morning suddenly. And when darkness is too much – remember that the morning is close. But you can escape.
“You made me altogether confused….” Perfectly true, that’s what I have been doing. You should be thankful for it to me.
“… and lethargic.” Yes, that too is true… because, I know Swabhav. He is the rajas type – too much activity. When he would come for the first times to see me he was full of energy, too much activity – a rajas type. Now, meditation, understanding, is bringing his activity to a lower pitch, to a balancing state. A man of rajas will always feel, when he is becoming balanced, that he is becoming lethargic. This is his attitude. He will always feel that “where has his energy gone”; he has become lethargic. What is happening to him? He had come here to become a great warrior and to go and win the whole world, and all that I have been doing to him is bringing him back from too much activity, too much nonsense.
I go on destructuring;
then, understanding arises –
flashes of understanding.
In the West you have a saying that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop. That has been created by rajas people. It is not true, because the empty mind is God’s workshop. The devil cannot function there, because in an empty mind the devil cannot enter at all. The devil can enter only in an active mind. So remember this: the rajas mind is the devil’s workshop. Too much activity, then on your activity the devil can write.
You have seen two world wars. They have come from rajas people. In Europe, Germany belongs to the rajas type – too much activity. In the East, Japan belongs to rajas people – too much activity. And these two became the source of all the nonsense of the Second World War. Too much activity. Just think, Germany belonging to the tamas people, lethargic – what can Adolf Hitler do? You tell them to turn to the right, and they are standing. You tell them to turn about; they are standing. In fact they will sit down by that time and they will have gone to sleep. Adolf Hitler will look foolish amongst tamas people. He will look absolutely foolish in a sattvic society – mad. People will get hold of him and treat him in a sattvic society. In a tamas society he will look just stupid, a nuisance. Hmm?… people are resting and you are unnecessarily moving with flags and slogans, and nobody follows you – alone. But in Germany he became the leader. The Führer, the greatest leader Germany had ever known, because the people were rajas.
Swabhav was a rajas type, a kshatriya type, ready to fight, always on edge to be angry; now he has slowed down; he was running one hundred mp., and I have brought him down to ten mph, of course he feels lethargic. This is not lethargy; this is just bringing your obsession with activity to a normal state because only from there the sattva will become possible; otherwise it will not become possible. You have to gain a balance between tamas and rajas, between lethargy and movement. You have to know how to rest and you have to know how to act.
It is always easy to rest completely; it is also easy to act completely. But to know these two opposite polarities and move in them and create a rhythm is difficult – and that rhythm is sattva.
“You made me altogether confused and lethargic.” True.
“I am like mad.” Perfectly true. You have always been. Now you know it – and that is the definition of a man who is not mad
A madman can never know that he is mad. Go to the madhouse, inquire. No madman can say, “I am mad.” Every madman believes that except him the whole world is mad – that is the definition of madness. You can never come across a madman who says. “I am mad.” If he has that much wisdom to say that he is mad, he is already a wise man; he is no longer mad. Madness never accepts. Mad people are very, very reluctant. Even to go to the doctor they are reluctant: they say, “Why? For what? Am I mad? There is no need – I am perfectly right. You can go.”
Mulla Nasrudin went to a psychiatrist and he said. “Now something must be done – things have gone beyond me. My wife has gone completely mad, and she thinks that she has become a refrigerator.”
Even the psychiatrist became alert. He had himself never come across such a case. He said, “That is serious. Tell me more about it.”
He said, “Eh, there is nothing more to it. She has become a refrigerator; she believes she is a refrigerator.”
The psychiatrist said, “But, if this is only a belief, there is no harm in it. It is innocent. Let her believe. She is not creating any other trouble?”
Nasrudin said, “Trouble? I cannot sleep at all because in the night she sleeps with her mouth open – and because of the light in the refrigerator I cannot sleep!”
Now who is mad? Mad people never think they are mad.
Swabhav, this is a blessing that you can think, “I am mad.” This is the sane part within you which realizes it. Everybody is mad. The sooner you realize it, the better.
“At the moment I feel no trust even.” Good. Because when you become really alert it becomes difficult to feel trust. There are many stages. One stage, people feel doubt. Then they suppress the doubt because trust seems to be very promising: “Surrender, and you will attain everything.” I go on promising you, “Surrender, and your enlightenment is certain.” Trust seems to be very promising.
Your greed is provoked – you say, “Okay. Then we will trust and surrender.” But this is not trust, this is greed – and deep down you hide the doubt. You go on doubting – by the side. You remain alert that trust is okay but don’t trust too much because, who knows, this man may be after something, or just befooling, deceiving. So you trust, but you trust half-heartedly. And deep down is doubt.
To come to me is dangerous:
then you can go anywhere,
but everywhere I will haunt you.
There is nowhere to go.
When you meditate, when you become a little more understanding, when you listen to me continuously and I go on hammering from so many points of view, from so many sides – I make many holes in your being. I go on hammering, breaking you down. I have to break your whole structure. I have to destructure you; only then can you be remade. There is no other way. I have to demolish you completely; only then a new structure is possible.
I go on destructuring; then, understanding arises – flashes of understanding. In those flashes you will see that you don’t even trust; the doubt is hidden there. First, you doubt. Second, you trust with doubt hidden deep down. Third, you become aware of the hidden doubt and the trust – and how can you both trust and doubt. You hesitate. You feel confused.
Now from this point two possibilities open: either you fall back to doubt, that is the first stage as you had come to me, or you grow into trust and drop all doubts. This is a very, very liquid state. It can solidify in two ways: either on the lower rung where you are full of doubts again – even the false trust has disappeared; or you grow into trust and the trust becomes a crystallization – the suppressed part of doubt has disappeared. So this state is very, very vulnerable and one should move very cautiously and alertly.
“Now tell me what should I do? Where should I go?” There is nowhere to go when you have come to me. Now you can go anywhere, but you will have to come. To come to me is dangerous: then you can go anywhere, but everywhere I will haunt you. There is nowhere to go.
And nothing is to be done. Just be alert to the whole situation because if you start doing something, if you are hankering to do something, you will mess everything. Let it be as it is. Confusion is there, madness is there, trust has gone: just wait and watch and sit on the bank and let the river settle by itself. It settles on its own: you need not do anything. You have done enough – now rest. Just watch and see how the river settles. It has become muddled; there is mud in it and dry leaves are floating on the surface – don’t jump into it! You are hankering to jump into it to do something so that the water can be made clean – whatsoever you do you will make it more muddy. Please resist this temptation. Remain on the bank, don’t get into the river, and just be a watcher.
Watching, the ego disappears.
Doing, the ego strengthens.
Be a witness.
If you can watch without doing anything…. And that is the greatest temptation of the mind – the mind says, “Do something: otherwise how are things going to change?” The mind says only with effort, with doing, can something be changed. And that looks logical, appealing, convincing – and it is absolutely wrong. You cannot do anything. You are the problem. And the more you do, the more you feel you are; the “I” becomes strengthened; the ego becomes strong. Don’t do, just watch.
Watching, the ego disappears. Doing, the ego strengthens. Be a witness.
Accept it – don’t fight it at all. What is wrong if confusion is there? Just a cloudy evening, clouds in the sky – what is wrong? Enjoy it. Too much sun is also not good; sometimes clouds are needed. What is wrong in it? The morning is misty and you feel confused. What is wrong in it? Enjoy the mist also. Whatsoever the case, you watch, wait, and enjoy. Accept. If you can accept it, the very acceptance transmutes, the very acceptance transforms.
Soon you will see you are sitting there, the river has disappeared – not only the mud, but the whole river – the mist is no longer there, the clouds have disappeared, and the open sky, the vast space is available.
But patience will be needed. So if you insist, “Now tell me what to do,” I will say, “Do patience.” If you insist, “Where should I go?” I will tell you “Come closer to me.”
Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5, Ch 2, Q 5
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