Guilt

 

 

This question of guilt has to be understood; otherwise, you will listen to me and you will not be able to follow. Then you will feel guilty. And I am here to make you happy, not to make you guilty. A guilty person is an ill person. A guilty person is a poisoned person. A guilty person is not in harmony; he is in an inner conflict. He wants to do something and is always doing something else, just the opposite. The rift grows bigger and bigger, and the bridge becomes more and more impossible. Guilt creates schizophrenia: you become two persons, or even many. You become a crowd; you become polypsychic -- you lose unity.

 

Listen to me from your whole heart. Absorb me. Otherwise it is better not to listen to me, to forget all about me. But please don't feel guilty.

 

If you have listened rightly, if you have listened at all, then the question of practice never arises. You are practicing it. It is as natural as when if you want to go out, you go out through the door, not through the wall. You see the door, you simply get out by the door. You don't even think where the door is, you don't ask: Where is the door? You don't take a decision that: This time I am going to go through the door, not through the wall; that, I am going to stick to my decision whatsoever happens; whatsoever the temptation, I am not going through the wall -- I will go through the gate.

 

If you do such things, that simply shows that you are mad. And you will go through the wall, you will not go through the gate. The wall is much too tempting; you are fascinated, obsessed.

 

Understanding brings its own practice. Understanding is enough. If you understand me, then there is no problem. So if the problem of practice arises, I am not going to tell you to make more forced efforts. No. Drop all efforts. Try again to understand me. You have missed in the first place; you have missed the very thing, the very seed, which brings practice spontaneously.

 

Listen to me again. Listen to me very relaxed. When the head listens, one is very attentive, concentrated; there is a tension. Listen to me very relaxed. Allow me to surround you from everywhere. Let me be a climate surrounding you from everywhere. And just allow me in, soak me in; be like a sponge -- not attentive, relaxed, like a sponge, so you can drink whatsoever I am saying. There is no need to think about it; drink it. Let it become a part of your being. And then you will see that you are never following me.

 

If the understanding is there, you always follow yourself. The guilt is not created and the follower is not created. The guilt is not created and the conflict -- how to practice it -- is not created. Then you are not a follower. You become my lovers but not my followers -- and that is a totally different dimension. And if you find some day that there is something which the head says has to be followed and done, practiced, and you are not doing it, don't make any effort to practice it. Try to listen to it again. Go from the very first moment of understanding again; start from the very beginning.

 

This is a trick of the mind. First it misleads you -- just verbal, intellectual understanding, and it gives you an impression that you have understood. Secondly, it says: Now practice! -- and you cannot practice because you have not soaked it in; it has not yet become part of you, it is not integral to you. It is something foreign, alien. How can you practice it? It becomes a load, a burden. Then the head says: You are guilty! You understand and you don't do it. So now, whatsoever you do, you will not feel good. And this, the understanding that you think you have got, cannot be practiced, so you will feel bad. That's how so many millions of people remain in guilt, in sin, burdened, crushed under the burden.

 

Drop it! That dimension is wrong. Start listening to me again. There is no need to understand me intellectually. I am not an intellectual, and I am not teaching some doctrines to you. I am simply allowing you to participate in my being, to get in rapport with me, to get in tune with me. The whole effort is so that you can find a certain harmony between me and you, so that you can become partners with me, sharers with me of something unknown that has happened to me, and is possible to happen to you. I want to hold your hand. I want to give you courage, not intellectual understanding. I want to give you life. I want to share something which is overflowing in me.

 

So don't listen from the head; that is the wrong point to listen from. In Zen they say: Listen from the belly. That is better. Try it sometime: listen to me from the belly. That is better than the head. In Tao they say: listen from the bottom of your feet. That is even better -- because if you listen from the bottom of your feet, to travel from the feet to the head it will pass through your whole being. If you listen from the belly, that too is very good; at least it will be heard.from the middle, from the very center.

 

But, I tell you: listen to me as a whole. There is no need to listen from the bottom of the feet or from the belly or from the head. Just listen to me as a whole being.

 

For example, if you are in danger and somebody is running behind you with a sword, how will you run? Just with your head? Just with your feet? Just with your belly? No, you will run as a total unit. You will forget completely where the head is and where the feet are and where the belly is. Everything will be forgotten. You will become a total unity. You will run as one.

 

That is the way to be here with me. Soak me in, absorb me, and then there is no problem of practicing me. It will start affecting you. It will start changing you. You will be surprised: suddenly you will see you have practiced it. Somebody was angry and there was no anger in you; you could remain calm and serene. Suddenly you have practiced it; not that you tried to practice it -- it has become part of your being, it happened.

 

You will be surprised: if the understanding is true, rather than feeling guilty, you will feel many, many surprises -- at your own behavior, at your own responses. In the same old situation, somebody is insulting you, and you will not feel anything at all. It is as if it goes just through you, never hits anywhere; just passes, does not leave a wound, does not even scratch you! And you can smile and you can look back... what has happened? A miracle! Understanding is miraculous. It is the only miracle there is.

 

If you have understood me, you will find at every point of your life, on every step, surprises waiting for you. You will not be able to believe that "this is happening to me!" -- because you can expect only the old, and this is new, absolutely new. You will start falling in love with yourself.

 

A new being is arising.

 

-Osho, "The Search, #9 Q3"