Laugh From The Belly

Question to Osho: I KEEP ON DREAMING THAT I AM FLYING. WHAT IS HAPPENING?

G.K. Chesterton has said, “The angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

That must be happening to you; you must be becoming an angel. Allow it. The more light you feel, the more happy you feel, the less will be the pull of gravitation. Gravitation makes graves out of you. Heaviness is a sin. To be heavy simply means that you are loaded with unlived experiences, incomplete experiences; that you are loaded with much junk, unfinished. You wanted to love a woman but it was difficult, because Mahatma Gandhi is against it; it is difficult because Vivekanand is against it; it is difficult because all the great seers and sages go on propounding brahmacharya, celibacy. You wanted to love, but all the sages were against it, so you somehow controlled yourself.

Now that is like a junk load on you. If you ask me, I will say you should have loved. Even now, nothing is lost; you should love. Complete it. I know the seers and sages are right, but I don’t say that you are wrong.

And let me explain the paradox to you. The seers and sages are right, but they come to this understanding after they have loved much, after they have lived, after they have experienced all that love implies. Then they come to an understanding and brahmacharya flowers. It is not against love, it is through love that brahmacharya flowers. Now you are reading books, scriptures, and through the scriptures you go on getting ideas. Those ideas cripple you. Those ideas are not wrong in themselves, but you take them from the books, and the sages come to them through their own lives. Just go back into history, in the old puranas, and see your sages: they loved much, they lived much; they lived tremendously human lives with power, intensity. And then, by and by, they came to understand.

It is only life that brings understanding. You wanted to be angry but all the scriptures are against it, so you never allowed anger. Now that anger goes on accumulating – piles upon piles – and you are carrying that load, almost crushed under it. That’s why you feel so heavy. Throw it out, drop it! Go into an empty room and be angry, and be really angry; beat the pillow, and do things to the walls, and talk to the walls and say things that you always wanted to say but you have not said. Be in a rage, explode, and you will come to a beautiful experience. After the explosion, after the storm, a silence will come to you, will pervade you, a silence that has never been known by you, an unburdening.

You may suddenly feel light!

Vidya has asked this question. I can see that she is feeling light. Go deeper into it so that not only in dreams, but actually you can fly.

If you are not carrying the past, you have such a lightness – feather-like. You live but you don’t touch the earth. You live but you don’t leave any footprints on the earth. You live but nothing is scratched by you, and a grace surrounds your life, your being – an aura, a glow. It is not only that you will be light, but whosoever will come in contact with you will suddenly be filled by something so graceful, so beautiful. Flowers will shower around you, and you will have a fragrance that is not of this earth.

But that happens only when you are unburdened.

Mahavira has called this unburdening nirjara – dropping everything. But how to drop? You have been taught not to be angry. I also teach you how not to be angry, but I don’t tell you not to be angry. I say: be angry. No need to be angry, on someone, with someone; that complicates. Just be angry in a vacuum. Go to the river where there is nobody and simply be angry, and do whatsoever you feel like doing. After a great catharsis of anger you will fall down on the sand, and you will see that you are flying. The past has, for a moment, disappeared.

And this same has to be done to every emotion. You will feel, by and by, that if you try to be angry, you will pass through a sequence of emotions. First you will get angry, then suddenly you will start crying, out of nowhere. Anger relaxed, released – another layer of your being is touched, another load of sadness. Behind each anger there is sadness, because whenever you withhold your anger you become sad. So after each layer of anger, there is a layer of sadness. When anger is released, you will feel sad. Release that sadness – you will start crying, sobbing. Sob, cry, let tears flow.

Nothing is wrong with them. Tears are one of the most beautiful things in the world: so relaxing, so relieving. And when the tears have gone, suddenly you will see another emotion: a smile is spreading somewhere deep within you, because whenever sadness is released, one starts feeling happy, a very smooth, delicate happiness, fragile. It will come up, it will bubble and it will spread all over your being. And then you will see that you are laughing for the first time – a belly laugh, like Swami Sardar Gurdayal Singh a belly laugh. Learn from him. He is our Zorba the Greek in this ashram. Learn from him how to laugh.

Unless your belly goes into ripples you are not laughing. People laugh from the head; they should laugh from the belly. After sadness is released, you will see a laughter arising, almost maddening; a mad laughter. You are as if possessed and you laugh loudly. And after laughter has gone, you will feel light, weightless, flying. First it will appear in your dreams, and by and by, in your awakened state of being also you will feel that you are no longer walking, you are flying.

Yes, Chesterton is right: angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

Take yourself lightly.

Ego takes itself very seriously. Now, there is a problem: egoistic people become very much interested in religion. And in fact, they are almost incapable of being religious. Only people who are non-serious can become religious, but they are not too interested in religion. So a paradox, a problem exists in the world. Serious people, ill people, sad people – uptight, hung-up in their heads – they become very much interested in religion because religion gives them their greatest ego-trip. They are doing something otherworldly, and the whole world is just worldly – materialists, condemned. Everybody is going to hell; only these religious people are going to heaven. They feel very, very strengthened in their egos. But these are the people who cannot become religious. These are the people who have destroyed all the religions of the world.

Whenever a Buddha arises, these people start gathering. While he is alive he does not allow them to become powerful. But when he is gone, by and by, the serious people start manipulating the non-serious people. That’s how all the religions become organized, and all religions become dead.

While Buddha is there, he goes on spreading his smile, and he goes on helping people.

So many times I have told the story: that Buddha comes one day with a flower in his hand, and sits silently. Minutes pass; then the hour is passing and everybody is worried, uncomfortable, uneasy: “Why is he not speaking?” He has never done that before. And he goes on looking at the flower as if he has completely forgotten the thousands of people who have gathered to listen to him.

And then one disciple, Mahakashyap, starts laughing, a belly laugh. Amidst that hushed silence his laughter spreads. Buddha looks at him. He calls him close, gives him the flower and says, “Whatsoever I could say through words I have told to you, and whatsoever I cannot say through the words, I transfer it to Mahakashyapa” – to a laughing Mahakashyapa. To laughter Buddha gives his heritage? But Mahakashyapa disappears. Those serious people who could not understand became the manipulators. When Buddha is gone, nobody hears anything about Mahakashyapa. But what happened to Mahakashyapa, to whom Buddha had given the most secret message: that which cannot be delivered through words, that which can only be delivered and received in silence and laughter, that which can only be given by tremendous silence to tremendous laughter? What happened to Mahakashyapa? In Buddhist scriptures, nothing is mentioned – only this solitary anecdote, that’s all. When Buddha is gone, Mahakashyapa is forgotten; then serious long-faces start organizing.

Who will listen to the laughter? And Mahakashyapa will recede back. Why bother? – These serious people are fighting so much that a man who loves laughing will get out of this mad mob of competitors: “Who is going to be the head of the Buddha sangha, of the Order of Buddha?” – And politics enters, fighting and voting, and everything. Mahakashyapa is simply lost. Where did he die? – Nobody knows. Nobody knows the real heir of Buddha. Many centuries, almost six centuries pass; then another man, Bodhidharma, reaches China. Again Mahakashyapa’s name is heard, because Bodhidharma says, “I’m not a follower of the organized Buddhist religion. I have received my message through a direct line of Masters. It started with Buddha giving a flower to Mahakashyapa, and I am the sixth.” Who were the other four in between? – But it became a secret thing. When mad people become too ambitious and politics becomes strong, laughter goes secret.

It becomes a private, intimate relationship. Silently, Mahakashyapa must have delivered his message to somebody, and then he to somebody else, and he to Bodhidharma.

Why did Bodhidharma go to China? Zen Buddhists have been asking for centuries, “Why? Why did this Bodhidharma go to China?” I know; there is a reason: the Chinese are more joyous people than Indians, more delighted with life and small things, more colorful. It must be the reason why Bodhidharma travelled so long, crossed the whole of the Himalayas to seek and search for people who could laugh with him, and who were not serious, not great scholars and philosophers, and this and that. No, China has not created great philosophers like India has. It has created a few great mystics like Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, but they all are laughing Buddhas. It must be that Bodhidharma’s search towards China was a search for people who were non-serious, light.

My whole effort here is to make you light, non-serious, and laughing. People come to me, particularly Indians, to complain that: “What type of sannyasins are you creating? They don’t look like sannyasins. A sannyasin has to be a serious person, almost dead, a corpse. These people laugh and dance and hug each other. This is unbelievable! Sannyasins doing this?” And I tell them, “Who else? Who else can do that? – Only sannyasins can laugh.”

So Vidya, very good – laugh, enjoy, be more and more light.