DARSHAN
Osho meets with groups of seekers in a small auditorium adjoining his residence at seven P.M. each evening for one or two hours. In these darshans he initiates new san-nyasinsfrom all over the world, greets people who are arriving or leaving, answers questions, and advises on problems. Groups of ashram workers and participants in ashram programs attend these meetings on a rotating schedule. Recordings are made of these intimate, face-to-face meetings between Osho and his guests and are published as "Darshan Diaries." One has to learn by and by to be on one's own and one has to trust oneself more and more. My help should not become a dependence. It should help you to become really more alert, more trusting of your own life, of your own heart's voice. So when you come to me and ask, it is not that I answer. I have to search into your heart to see what really would have been your decision if your own heart were functioning. I never give any decision on my own because that would be destructive. It would be something from the outside. So when you ask, I look into you; I don't decide. I look into you, I feel you, I see your own heart that you cannot see, and I let that heart decide. So at the most I interpret your heart to you. I am a midwife. So if you can decide, good. By and by you will start listening to your own inner core and what it is saying. And that trust has to arise. Otherwise trusting in me can become dangerous to you, because then you're always depending on some outside agent. It can become a habit, so that when you are alone or when you have gone far away from me you will be at a loss as to what to do. So even while you are here, whatsoever you can decide, decide. When you feel that it is almost impossible for you to come to a decision, the pros and cons are almost balancing, you are divided half and half, only then come to me. And then too, I can only help you; I don't impose anything on you. At the most I become a bridge between you and yourself. That's my function. So by and by you can see the bridge, and you can go on moving from yourself to your real self; the need for me is less and less. One day there is nothing that you cannot decide. Then you have come of age. You become mature and ripe. Whenever you see some problem has arisen, it is a good opportunity, a challenge, a critical moment. Use it creatively, find out ways and means. Listen silently to your own heart and if a certainty arises from there, good; you have taken my help already. But only in rare moments when you cannot decide, when the darkness is too much and you are absolutely confused—if you decide this and the mind says that, if you decide that and the mind says this, and you go on hanging between the two; you cannot even see that one voice is the voice of your major being, you are divided fifty/fifty—then only come to me. Then too, remember always that it is not my advice that I am giving to you. It is your innermost heart that I am handing over to you. Soon you will start seeing it.
SHARING THE VISION
Many Western sannyasins spend a few months in Pune and then return to their native countries. During their "leaving darshan" they often ask how they can continue their meditations at home and what they can do to share Osho's vision and unique meditation techniques with their friends and families. Although he often suggests that people can start meditation centers in the West, Osho repeatedly emphasizes that he is not interested in proselytizing or converting people to sannyas, hut only that his work be made available to those who are interested. When I say don't be a missionary, I mean don't impose yourself upon others. Share, but don't impose. Sharing is totally different, it is very respectful toward the other person. Sharing is not violent, imposing is. You are not respectful toward the other person, you are simply using the other person as a means; you are interested only in converting him. That is wrong. Never use a person as a means to anything, because each person is an end unto himself. The missionary is very disrespectful toward the person. His whole idea is how to convert him, how to make one more person part of his sect. He is not really interested in sharing. Sharing is totally different: you share because you have experienced something, because you have seen something. You share unconditionally. If the person becomes converted that is just a by-product but that is not the motive of it. If he does not become part of it, you are perfectly happy—happy because you shared. Your work is finished. You are not looking for any result. It is good to be conscious about all the possibilities, otherwise one tends to become a missionary. Just share and forget about it. Sow the seeds and go on moving and don't look back to see what is happening to those seeds. In their time, when the spring comes, something will happen.
THERAPY AS A PREPARATION FOR MEDITATION
Throughout 1.975, Osho guides an expansion of programs and workshops that revolutionize Western methods of therapy with Eastern techniques of meditation. In August 1975, the first therapy groups begin. Included in all group processes are daily Dynamic and Kundalini Meditations, Osho's morning discourse, and participation in a ten-day meditation camp before or after the group. In darshan, Osho suggests groups to new arrivals, advises group leaders, and meets with group participants. By the end of 1977, there are fifty different group offerings, and the ashram is known as the largest and most innovative growth center in the world. The growth group is needed because you have a tremendous need to relate, to love, to communicate. In the West the basic problem is how to communicate, how to relate. Many Westerners are here. When they come to me in darshan their problems are a hundred percent relationship problems—how to relate. Not even a single Indian has come who has said, "How to relate?" That is not a problem at all. He says, "How to be silent? How to be into one's own being?" That's why I do not suggest that Easterners participate in groups, except Japanese. I have suggested therapy groups to a few Japanese because Japan is the most Western part of the East. I have sent Indians only once or twice—and these were Indians only in name. They have been born in the East but their mind has not been influenced by the Eastern concept, their mind is Western. They have been taught by Christian missionaries in Christian schools. Their whole education and upbringing is Western. It depends on the person, on what he needs. To a few Westerners also I don't suggest groups. When I see some Westerner who has no need to relate, then I don't suggest groups; then I say there is no need. But at least five thousand years of different psychological conditioning exists. That has to be taken note of. MY THERAPISTS ARE THE BEST IN THE WORLD, FOR THE SIMPLE REASON that other therapists are only therapists, they are not meditators. My therapists are meditators too. Therapy is a superficial thing. It can help to clean the ground, but just to have a clean ground is not to have a garden. You will need something more. Therapy is negative; it simply takes away the weeds from the ground, removes the stones from the ground, prepares the soil for the garden. But there its work ends. Western therapy is still in its very primitive stage. It has to go a long way. And unless it becomes associated with meditation, it may help a little bit superficially but it cannot really help the person to grow. So when I say my therapists are the best in the world, I simply mean that my therapists are not only therapists, they are meditators too. Other therapists are only therapists.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE: ENCOUNTER AND PRIMAL THERAPY
Although only a small percentage of therapy groups in the Pune ashram during the 1970s involve cathartic processes or nudity, it is these groups that attract the most media attention. A German film company is allowed to film a (staged) encounter group session, and their resulting documentary, Ashram, provokes worldwide controversy and outrage. The movie continues to be shown well into the 1980s and is used by anticult groups to support their claim that Osho's work is dangerous and should be opposed. In this commune, I have arranged for many psychotherapies. They will be misunderstood by the masses, bound to be misunderstood—because in a psy-chotherapeutic situation you have to bring all the denied parts to the surface. If somebody has been denying his anger, it has to be allowed in a psychothera-peutic situation. Only then can psychotherapy be of any help, can it be therapeutic, can it heal you. It has to open all your wounds. Much pus starts flowing. If you watch the encounter group you will feel sick. You will feel sick because you will see such animality coming out; you could never have imagined that human beings can be such animals. But that animality is within you too, just repressed. By repression you cannot dissolve it. In the encounter group—that is the meaning of the word encounter—you have to encounter yourself in your totality. You have to bring out all that is repressed—you have to bring out all, without any evaluation about what is good, what is bad. And suddenly you see great animals roaring inside you. They are violent, and you have been taught to be nonviolent. Your nonviolence has repressed your violence. Great rage, for no reason at all, will arise. You will start beating the wall; you may start beating yourself. And you will say, "What am I doing? I have never done it before. From where is it coming?" But it is coming in great surges, in great waves. And the whole process is to let it be. When all the parts have been expressed—your sex, your anger, your greed, your jealousy, your rage—when all parts have been expressed, a great calmness arises, the silence that follows the storm. This cannot be understood by the masses. In fact they are very much on their guard. They don't want to understand either, because to understand means they will have to look within, and they will find the same things inside themselves. IN PUNE THERE WERE A FEW GROUPS, AND I WAS DECIDING WHICH group people should participate in, and in what sequence. These groups were therapies; so first silent therapies were given, meditative therapies were given. To those who could not succeed in them, then more active therapies were given. If even that was not enough, then therapies were given to them in which they can beat pillows, shout, scream . . . but not to touch anybody. Mostly this was enough. Rarely there was a person who still needed something more, was yet not cleansed. Then for these there were therapies where they were allowed to have physical encounters. But there was a therapist to take care that nothing harms anybody. And these people were required to sign a form that they were accepting a certain therapy on their own—if they don't want to participate, they need not. It was their individual choice. These therapies helped these people immensely. And during all these therapies whatever they were doing, they had constantly to remember witnessing— that was the part that has not been known to the world—that even if they were hitting somebody, inside there was a watcher. And after hitting each other they would hug each other and cry and weep, and great compassion would come out. In sexual therapies, I asked the men and the women about their experience: "What is your experience? What you have gained out of it?" And it was again surprising. One woman told me that she had always dreamt that she was being raped, and she woke up in the middle of the night afraid, trembling, perspiring. It was a constantly recurring dream. But after this therapy the dream disappeared and her sleep has become silent and quiet. She was not raped in the group, but in a sexual therapy she was a participant. It was all playful, nobody was being raped. Nobody was forced against his or her will. And if anybody wanted to get out of it at any moment, he was free to get out of it. REMEMBER, THESE GROUPS ARE NOT THE END, THEY ONLY PREPARE you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are just simple means to undo the wrong of the past. Once you have thrown out of your system all that you have been repressing all along, I have to lead you into watchfulness. Now it will be easier to watch. But you are not to become a group-addicted person, you are not to become a groupie. There are people now in the world who are group addicted; they go from one group to another. One encounter finishes, then another marathon, then gestalt, then this and that. . . . After just a few days the itch arises—because where to express? In the normal society they cannot express, they have to repress. So the group becomes just an outlet. The normal society forces you to repress, the group helps you to express but you are not really growing. Again you will be back in the normal society, again repressing. That's where this commune is different from institutes like Esalen. They end with groups—we begin with groups. Where they end, that's exactly the point from where we begin. And it is not a coincidence that thousands of therapists have become interested in my work. Among my sannyasins, the greatest group from any profession is that of psychotherapists. A great need is felt now all over the world: encounter, primal therapy, gestalt, can help a little bit to unburden people, but they cannot help to make them buddhas. They cannot help them to become awakened.
ASHRAM EXPANSION
In March 1976, renovation and remodeling of many newly acquired buildings have been completed. Osho names the buildings after enlightened mystics: Francis, Jesus, Eckhart, and Krishna. For his daily morning talks he appears in Chuang Tzu Auditorium, where mosquito netting encloses a large circular veranda adjoining his residence. By March \977, construction of Buddha Hall is completed, where Osho's English-language discourses can accommodate more people. Ashram work departments include publishing, a press office, crafts, a music department, silk screen facilities, a clothing boutique, and a carpentry shop that also makes musical instruments. And by August 1.977, there is a bakery and studios for the creation of jewelry, pottery, and weaving. This place is a marketplace. Can you find any other place that is more like the market? I could have made the ashram somewhere in the Himalayas. I love the Himalayas, for me it is a great sacrifice not to be in the Himalayas. But for a certain purpose I have not made my ashram in the Himalayas. I want to remain part of the marketplace. And this ashram is run almost as part of the marketplace. That's why Indians are very annoyed—they cannot understand. They have known ashrams for centuries, but this ashram is beyond their comprehension. They cannot think that you have to pay to listen to a religious discourse. They have always listened free of charge—not only free of charge, but after the discourse the ashram distributes prasad, food and sweets, too. Many go to listen to the discourses not because of the discourse but for the prasad.
Here you have to pay. What am I doing? I want it to be absolutely a part of the marketplace because I want my sannyasins not to move into the monasteries. They have to remain in the world. Their meditation should grow in the world, their meditation should not become escapist. So whatsoever peace you are finding here, you will be able to retain anywhere you go. There will be no problem, not at all. I have been managing things in such a way that all that can disturb you anywhere else is present here! My whole effort here is to create a miniature world where money is absolutely accepted, where women and men live together in joy, in celebration, without fear, where all that goes on in the world also continues and, alongside, the meditation grows. It becomes stronger and stronger because all the challenges are there. You can go anywhere you like. Nobody can take your peace away. Your silence is yours! It is not because of me. You have earned it, you have gained it.
HARASSMENT
With growing numbers of visitors from the West, incidents of harassment of foreigners, particularly women, increase. Public displays of affection between men and women, and even the wearing of sleeveless clothing, is seen as provocative in the context of the sexually inhibited Indian culture. And Osho's frequent critiques of Indian politics and corruption rankle government officials at all levels. They begin to initiate a range of repressive measures against the ashram, including restrictions on new construction and denial of tourist visas to foreigners who name the ashram as their destination. I cannot be supported by the society. It is a sheer miracle that I am existing, it is very illogical. I should not be here at all. The society does not support me, it cannot support me. In every possible way it will create—it is creating— hindrances for my work. Just the other day I was reading in the newspapers, one man has suggested to the government that I should be expelled from India. He must be a very religious man, because he says I am destroying religion. And he is not satisfied with just my expulsion—he then suggests my tongue should be cut out, so that I cannot speak; and my hands should also be cut off, so that I cannot write. And he thinks he is a religious man! WHAT IS WRONG IN HUGGING A PERSON YOU LOVE, IN KISSING A person you love? Don't enforce your hug on anybody, that's true; then it is ugly—and that's what the Indians go on doing. And my women sannyasins are aware of it. If you are there in the marketplace, then Indians behave really in an ugly way. They will pinch your bottoms. Now, that is ugly. They will rub their bodies against your body—that is ugly. They will look at you as if they would like to eat you—that is ugly. But that behavior is accepted by them, that is perfectly good. If you love a person and you hold hands and you hug each other and you kiss each other, it should be nobody's business. Why should others feel offended? If they feel offended, then something is wrong with them. Maybe they are feeling jealous, but they cannot show their jealousy, so they become angry. Maybe they would also like to hug somebody but they don't have the courage; they are afraid of the society. Hence they feel very angry with you. What they cannot do, they would not like anybody else to do either.