The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. TO BE DEAD DO NOTHING
delicate tissues and fibres to evolve. If there is a flood, the bigger trees will be swept away; what
about the tiny bushes? So the tissues are so delicate that the slightest increase in blood pressure
destroys them, as if they were hit by a flood.
If you dismantle the delicate machinery of all these seventy million cells and tried to work things out
for yourself, you would never meet with any success. Failure and great damage are certain. Yet this
is what people do: they try to open their own brains! They try to meditate on their own and practice
their own yoga postures! They pick up clues from books and from people that they meet. They pick
up ideas that are floating freely in the air and they begin to work with them. The only outcome is
disaster!
A Buddhist monk was brought to me. He had not been able to sleep for three years. He had been
given extensive treatment but to no avail. His insomnia had defied all tranquillizers, and no treatment
seemed to work on him. You can imagine his state – the man who has not slept for three years is
almost insane!
No doctor had asked him what I asked him, however. The doctors all carried out the usual tests;
they checked his blood pressure and did a cardiogram and then began to treat him. But this was
not his trouble. This man was engaged in practising a particular meditation technique used by the
Buddhists, Vipassana. He himself had chosen this meditation from the scriptures and began to
practise it. A guru will take care of each and every disciple. If he develops a group exercise he will
take care of the group. The scriptures cannot take care of you in this way. Who is going to read
them Scriptures can live for thousands of years, and anyone can read them his own way.
The technique of vipassana is a very old technique. This man read about it and set out to practise
it. Then he began to enjoy it. As a method it is a jewel. Buddha himself used it a great deal. Once
you begin to enjoy it you won’t know when to stop. Enjoyment, once it become extreme, turns into
poison. This man was so intoxicated by the vipassana that he began to practise it twenty-four hours
a day.
If you practise anything incessantly, day and night, sleep is bound to be destroyed. You have created
a great flood of energy inside yourself, and its continuous motion won’t allow you to sleep. Besides,
he had done this practice for so many years that all the brain tissues that brought on sleep had been
destroyed. A doctor can help only if the brain tissue itself is still in order. Tranquillizers can cause
the cells in question to relax, but if they are not there what can the doctor do?
I suggested to him that he should forget the meditation completely and become a lazy person for a
full year. He should forget all about meditation. He should encourage idleness-just eat, drink and
sleep as much as he could for a year; become a completely worldly man for a full year.
He was disappointed. He objected, ”I never expected to hear you say such a thing. Are you trying
to ruin me?”
I told him that he could think this if he chose, but this was my opinion. ”Do as I say for a year and
then come to me,” I told him.
He returned in three months, beaming and happy. Then I had to give him a new technique. At such
a point I have to judge what is suitable and how much a particular person can take. Gradually the
The Great Path 80 Osho