When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. SYMPHONY FOR A SEABIRD
the periphery. A man of understanding changes himself, then the periphery changes automatically.
When the centre changes, the periphery changes automatically, it has to change. But when the
periphery changes there is no necessity for the centre to change with it.
What can rules do? They can tell you what to do and what not to do, but they cannot change you,
they can only change your actions, and actions are not you. Actions come from you, but you are
deeper than your actions. Rules can change your behaviour – behaviour means your relationship
with others – but they cannot change you. Only in your total aloneness are you your being, not in
relationship.
And then Chuang Tzu says that natures differ.
One man came to me. He had been doing SIRSHASANA – a yoga posture, standing on his head,
the head stand posture. It is written in the books that it is very beneficial and because it is very
beneficial he had been doing it for very long periods. Now he was in such an inner turmoil that he
was almost going mad. So he asked me what had gone wrong. He was a man of rules, he followed
Patanjali word for word: diet, sleep time, exactly as they should be, he was a very ’regularised’
man. So he could not think what had gone wrong. I asked him to tell me his whole routine. He did
SIRSHASANA for one hour in the morning, and one hour at night. And he was waiting, expecting
that at any moment enlightenment would happen. It had not happened, rather he was going mad,
he was crazy.
SIRSHASANA suits certain people. And the more idiotic a person is, the more it suits him. To a
man of intelligence it is dangerous; the higher the intelligence, the more dangerous. Because it is
not just a posture, it changes your whole body chemistry.
Man has attained intelligence but no animal has. Why? Because man stands on two legs; that is
the whole point. If a child continued to walk on all fours, he would never become a man. He would
never attain that intelligence. When your spine is parallel to the earth blood flows equally all over the
body; it goes to the legs in the same amount as it goes to the head. Then the head cannot develop
subtle nerves – it cannot develop a subtle nervous system. Subtle is your brain mechanism, very
subtle, the most subtle thing in the world.
Your head weighs only one and a half kilos. Even if it is the head of an Einstein, a great genius’s
head, it still weighs only one and a half kilos. In this small head there are seventy million cells. Each
cell can carry millions of bits of information. And the cell is so subtle that if the blood flows too fast
the cell dies. Blood must not move into the head too much, otherwise it washes away the subtle
mechanism. So if someone is stupid, idiotic, imbecilic, SIRSHASANA is the best thing, because it
cannot do any harm and he will feel very good. It will not do any harm and he will feel very good
because the blood will flow to the head in a flood and when the flood recedes, everything will relax.
He will feel very good, just as when you take a bath you feel very good. But if you are very intelligent
then it is dangerous. Then you will get stuck in it, your subtle mechanism will be destroyed. You may
feel good physically, but mentally it will prove destructive. So if a very intelligent person does it he
may go mad; if an unintelligent person does it he may become more healthy.
And then there is the question of time, how much? For a few seconds even for an intelligent man it
may be good, just a few seconds, just a flood and then back: then nothing is destroyed, everything
When the Shoe Fits 82 Osho