In that Point of Balance – Osho

Sometimes I feel in a state of non-doing, very passive, but my awareness of what is happening around me seems less. In fact, I feel detached from things around me. This somehow means false passivity, as I imagine non-doing should be synonymous with increased awareness. Can you please define this?

Ordinarily we are in a feverish state – active, but feverishly. If you become passive the fever will be lost. If you become passive, non-doing, if you relax within yourself, activity will be lost, fever will be lost, and the intensity that comes through fever will not be there. You will feel a little dull, you will feel as if your awareness is decreasing. It is not decreasing; only the feverish glow is decreasing.

And it is good, so don’t be afraid of it, and don’t think that this passivity is not real. This is being said by your mind which needs and wants the feverish activity and the glow that comes through fever. Fever is not awareness, but in fever you can have a very unhealthy awareness, alertness. That is diseased; don’t hanker for it. Allow it to go, fall into passivity.

In the beginning it will look like your awareness is decreasing rather than increasing. Allow it to decrease, because whatsoever decreases with passivity was feverish, that’s why it decreases. Allow it to decrease. A moment will come when you will gain a balance. In that point of balance there will be no increase and no decrease. That is a healthy point; now the fever has gone. On that point of balance, whatsoever awareness you have, that is real, that is not feverish. And if you can wait for that moment to come . . . It is difficult, because in the beginning you feel that you are losing grip, you are becoming really dead; your activity, your alertness, everything has gone – you are relaxing into death. It appears that way because whatsoever you know about life is feverish.

It is not really life but just a fever, just a state of tension, just a state of hyper-activity. So in the Beginning . . . And you know only one state – this state of fever. You don’t know anything else so how can you compare?

When you become passive, relaxed, you will feel that something is lost. Allow it to be lost. Remain with passivity. A balancing point will come soon when you will be right at the point where there is no fever. You will be simply your own self – not pushed by someone else into activity, not pulled by someone else into activity. Now activity will start happening to you, but it will be spontaneous, it will be natural. You will do something, but you will not be pulled and pushed.

And what is the criterion by which to know whether this activity is not forced on you, is not feverish?

This is the point: if the activity is spontaneous, you will not feel any tension through it, you will not feel any burden. You will enjoy it. And the activity will become an end unto itself; there will be no end.

This will not be a means to reach somewhere else; it will be just an overflow of your own energy. And this overflow will be here and now; it will not be for something in the future. You will enjoy it. Whatsoever it is – digging a hole in the garden, or pruning the trees, or just sitting, or walking, or eating – whatsoever you are doing will become absolute in itself, total action. And after it you will not be tired; rather, you will feel refreshed. A feverish activity tires you; it is ill. A natural activity nourishes you; you feel more energetic, more vital after it. You feel more alive after it. It gives you more life.

But in the beginning when you start becoming passive and you fall into non-doing, it is bound to be felt that you are losing awareness. No, you are not losing awareness. You are simply losing a feverish type of mentation, a feverish type of alertness. You will settle into passivity and a natural awareness will happen.

This is the difference between a feverish alertness and natural awareness; this is the difference: in feverish alertness there is a concentration; it excludes everything. You can concentrate on a thing.

You are listening to me. If it is a feverish alertness, then you listen to me and you are totally unaware of anything else. But if it is a passive awareness, not feverish, but balanced, natural, then if a car passes by, you hear that car also. You are simply aware. You are aware of everything; of whatsoever is happening around you. And this is the beauty of it – that the car passes by and you hear the noise, but it is not a disturbance.

If you are feverishly attentive and you hear the car, you will miss listening to me; it will be a disturbance, because you don’t know how to be totally, simply aware of everything that is happening. You know only one way: how to be alert of one thing at the cost of everything else. If you move to something else, then you lose the contact with the first thing. If you are listening to me in a feverish mind, then anything can disturb you. Because your alertness goes there, then you are cut off from me. It is one-pointed; it is not total. A natural, passive awareness is just total; nothing disturbs it. It is not concentration, it is meditation.

Concentration is always feverish, because you are forcing your energy to one point. Energy by itself flows in all directions. It has no direction in which to move; it simply enjoys flowing all over. We create conflict because we say, ‘This is good to listen to; that is bad.’ If you are doing your prayer and a child starts laughing, it is a disturbance – because you cannot conceive of a simple awareness in which the prayer continues and the child goes on laughing and there is no conflict between the two; they both are part of a bigger whole.

Try this: be totally alert, totally aware. Don’t concentrate. Every concentration is tiring, you feel tired, because you are forcing energy unnaturally. Simple awareness is inclusive of all. When you are passive and non-doing then everything happens around you. Nothing disturbs you and nothing bypasses you. Everything happens and you know it, you witness it.

A noise comes: it happens to you, it moves within you, then it passes, and you remain as you were. Just as in an empty room: if there was no one here the traffic would go on passing, the noise would come into this room, then it would pass and the room would remain unaffected, as if nothing had happened. In passive awareness you remain unaffected. Everything goes on happening; just passes you, but never touches you. You remain unscarred. In feverish concentration everything touches you, impresses you.

One more point about this. In the eastern psychology we have a word, sanskar – conditioning. If you are concentrating on something you will be conditioned, you will get a sanskar, you will get impressed by something. If you are simply aware – passively aware, not concentrating, not focusing yourself, just being there – nothing conditions you. Then you don’t accumulate any sanskar, you don’t accumulate any impressions. You go on remaining virgin, pure, unscarred; nothing touches you. If one can be passively aware, he passes through the world, but the world never passes through him.

One Zen monk, Bokuju, used to say, ‘Go and cross the stream, but don’t allow the water to touch you.’ And there was no bridge over the stream near his monastery.

Many would try, but when they crossed, of course the water would touch them. So one day one monk came and he said, ‘You give us puzzles. We try to cross that stream; there is no bridge.

If there was a bridge, of course we could have crossed the stream and the water would not have touched us. But we have to pass through the stream – the water touches.’

So Bokuju said, ‘I will come and I will cross and you watch.’ And Bokuju crossed. Of course, water touched his feet, and they said, ‘Look, the water has touched you!’

Bokuju said, ‘As far as I know, it has not touched me. I was just a witness. The water was touching my feet, but not me. I was just witnessing.’

With passive alertness, with witnessing, you pass through the world. You are in the world, but the world is not in you.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #58, Q4

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