[The Tao group came to darshan this evening. The group leader said: I don't think it's therapy anymore -- not as I understand therapy -- but it seems fine. I don't know what it is. It's more like a house with friends coming and going, and I feel very much like just one of the people.]

The less you know, the better -- because then more freedom is possible. Once you know what is going on, the mind starts creating structures, boundaries, disciplines. Once you know exactly what you are doing, everything is predetermined and the freedom is lost, the spontaneity is not there.

It is good that you don't feel it is therapy; it isn't. In fact the very word therapy is condemnatory. The moment you say therapy, you have taken the other as a patient, ill -- that s the condemnation. Nobody is really ill. In fact the society is ill, individuals are victims. Society needs therapy, individuals simply need love. The society is the patient and needs hospitalization.

Individuals suffer because you cannot catch hold of the society; it remains invisible. When you try to catch hold of it, an individual is found and then he becomes responsible -- and he is simply suffering, he is a victim. He needs understanding, not therapy; love, not therapy. Society has not given him understanding, has not given him love. Society has given him strait-jackets, prisons. Society has forced him into a pigeon-hole, categorised him, labelled him -- this is him, this is the identity.

Man is freedom and has no identity. He cannot be labelled... and that's his beauty and glory -- that you cannot say who he is. He is always in the making. By the time you have asserted that he is this, he has moved. He is deciding each moment what to be, or, to be or not to be. Each moment there is a fresh decision, a fresh release of life. A sinner can be a saint in a single moment, and a saint can be a sinner in a single moment. The unhealthy can become healthy, and the healthy can become unhealthy in a single moment. Just a change of decision, just a change of insight, of vision, and everything changes.

Man is a tremendous freedom with no boundaries to his being. All boundaries are false. That's why only in love a man becomes healthy and whole, because love forces no boundaries. It takes away all boundaries, all labels; it does not categorise you. It accepts you whosoever you are. It doesn't make it a condition that the other has to be known before he will be accepted. No, love accepts, and the more acceptance there is, the more you become aware that each individual is an infinity, and it is impossible to know him.

And when you have known that it is impossible to know an individual, you have touched the very pulse of life.

So these groups are not therapies because those who participate are not patients. I don't call them ill, I don't call them patients; they are not in need of any therapy. They are in need of understanding, in need of a group who can allow them that which has been denied them by society.

They need a family because their own family has not proved to be a family at all. It has been destructive it has crippled them, paralysed them. They need an alternative family, an alternative society. They need a place where they can be themselves totally -- with no barriers, and nobody condemning them, evaluating them, a place where they are accepted as they are, unconditionally, and suddenly wholeness happens, health happens. Health is a function of love, of understanding.

Secondly: the leader is not a leader. At the most he is a facilitator; at the most a midwife. The child is going to be born even without a midwife. At the most the midwife can make the process a little easier and more comfortable. Whatsoever they gain in the group, people can gain themselves, on their own; it will take a little longer, maybe it will be more arduous. Somebody who has gone a little ahead can help them, can give them a little more confidence.

The leader is not a leader -- at the most he is a catalytic agent. His presence, just the idea that he is present, is helpful. They can move more easily; they know that somebody knows. They know that they can enjoy freedom without any danger to themselves.

Society has made a point of incessantly implanting a fear in people. A fear that alone you are not enough, that you have to be led, that you cannot be left alone; the fear that you need a teacher, that you always need somebody as a guide, somebody who is going to decide what to do and what not to do. You need a Moses to give you commandments. You need a scripture, a doctrine, beliefs -- you alone are not enough; all these things are needed, and left to yourself you will go wrong. This fear has been implanted very deeply; it has gone to the very marrow.

In these groups we are just trying to do the opposite. In fact the whole effort is that they should stop depending on the leader; rather they should reclaim their right to be themselves. So here the leader is doing something that no leader will do: he is destroying the very base of leadership -- and that's the point to be understood. We are trying to help people in such a way that they become independent, that they come to a point where help is not needed; where they can thank you, can feel grateful, and can say goodbye.

Society has made people helpless, impotent. And the fear has been implanted so deeply that they are always looking for somebody else to decide for them -- some expert, some guide, somebody who can say 'do this'. Then they are okay; they know that somebody who knows is saying it.

[The group leader continues: This brings up the conflict that I have with you, you see. I don't know if I need you... I think I do, but then I hear you say these things, and I think that you're teaching me that I don't need you.]

I am teaching you that you don't need me -- but for this much you need me.

And this is the whole effort -- to make you free. I take your hand in my hand, but not to keep for ever and ever, because that will be a bondage to you and a burden to me. It will not make you free, and it will make me a prisoner as well as you. I take your hand to leave it as soon as possible. And my whole blessing and my whole prayer is that the sooner you become capable of my leaving your hand... You have to leave it to me, because if you decide there is every possibility that the ego will decide, and that's the trouble. If the ego decides, you will leave my hand before the time is right and then you will remain dependent.

[The group leader answers: See, the trick that goes in my head is that you will hold my hand until I begin to take it away. At that point you will say yes -- but I have to do the pulling away.]

That is the ego that is creating a new hold for itself -- that you will have to do something.
No, the moment you are ready you will not find my hand anywhere. In fact I should not say it right now, but my hand is not there at all. The moment you are ready you will find you are completely free -- nobody was holding your hand...

This too is the same game of the ego -- it will suspect, it will say that you have to do something, that you have to take your own hand away, and all these things will go on and on and on.
Just listen to it, and don't cooperate with it. Just time is needed.

[A participant says: There were no group rituals, that was good.... It doesn't matter if there's a leader. The really good things that happened, nobody planned... and I feel fine.]

Whatsoever I have said to [the group leader] has been said to the leader, not to the group. The group needs the leader, but the leader needs that he should not be a leader. If you understand that you don't need a leader, then everything will be topsy-turvy; then the group won't function at all. You follow me?


It is not for you, it is for the leader, that he should not be a leader. He should just be a very indirect presence, just like a shadow moving on the periphery, not interfering: just keeping a watch on what is going on. He has to watch that something does not go wrong. His work is negative.

For example, somebody may start to murder someone  -- and you have violence in you; if everything is allowed, why not murder? If one has to be spontaneous then a murder can be spontaneous too. Then the function of the group leader comes in. These are things which should not happen, but there is no should for anything positive. And there is nothing which has to happen. The leader is not to force something on the group, but he has to watch that the group should not go mad. The possibility is there if you are left alone. By and by you slip, because you have never been left alone, and you don't know what freedom is.

Whenever you hear the word freedom then you immediately think of licence. Freedom is not licence; it has an inner discipline of its own. Only people who are tremendously disciplined can enjoy freedom, nobody else. If somebody rapes someone spontaneously, then what is going to happen? It may be spontaneous for the person who is trying the rape, but for the person on whom it is being forced?... the leader comes in.

So he remains like a shadow on the periphery, watching. Anything that can be destructive to any individual should not be allowed, but all creativity is allowed. If everything moves into the positive dimension he is not to interfere, not to plan at all, but just to help you.

So whatsoever I have said to [the group leader] is said to the leaders of the groups, not to the participants. So you need not say that the leader is not needed, or whether the leader is there or not is irrelevant; to you it is very relevant. You follow me? It is very relevant -- and without a leader the group won't exist; it will not be possible for you. He is the link between you all, he functions as a bridge between you. You are all strangers to each other, but he creates a situation in which a bridge exists and you become a family. He is not to interfere, that's all; he is to help. That's why I say he is a midwife. The midwife is to help the child to come out of the womb, not to force it.

For the participants a leader is needed, he is a must. A day will come when your understanding will become your leader. Up to then a leader will be needed. He is a substitute -- a poor substitute of course, but when your understanding is there, no substitute is needed. When you have your own light within you, then not even a Buddha can substitute it.

Buddha's last words were 'Be a light unto yourself'. If you don't have the light, he is helpful, but his help is only to help you to create a light within yourself.

So remember that when I talk, I talk on many levels and layers, mm? You are making the same mistake that Satprem made. I was talking about the leader and the group, and his mind immediately jumped to me and him. I was talking to him about him and the group, and your mind immediately jumped to you and him.

The leader should know that he is not needed, but the led should know that they need him, and should feel grateful that he is there. Otherwise you miss the point, and the ego can assert that the leader is not needed, is irrelevant; that you can do it on your own because everything is unplanned.

I know everything is unplanned, but the un-planning is absolutely planned. It has been thought about, planned, brooded upon. It is not just unplanned; it is very carefully planned. It is planned in the sense that it has been chosen; it has been a choice to use an unplanned situation to help the group. Otherwise the whole thing will go into a chaos, and it will not give you anything, no maturity. It may make you even more confused rather than grounding you.

These things look contradictory and they are in a way, because life is paradoxical. So to a leader I say not to be a leader, and to the led I say to believe in the leader, to trust and respect him, to be grateful to him. And to the leader I say he is irrelevant, that he should not accept look much gratitude; that he should not go on an ego-trip, and that he is not needed at all -- without him the group can continue, and that it is not therapy and the participants are not patients.

Osho

Above All Don't Wobble
Chapter #13
Chapter title: None