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Osho on Psychic Binding during ShaktipatQuestion - Is there a Possibility of Psychic Binding between the Meditator and the medium in Shaktipat? Can it be detrimental to the Meditator or is it helpful for him? Osho - Ties that bind can never be useful, because ties are bad in themselves. The deeper the attachment, the worse it is. Psychic binding is a very bad thing. If someone ties me in chains only my physical body is affected, but if someone ties me with the chains of love it penetrates deeper and is more difficult to break. If someone binds me with the chain of shraddha, faith, it goes deeper still. Then to break this chain would be ”unholy.” So all bonds
are bad, and psychic bonds even more so. He who acts as a medium in
shaktipat would never want to bind you. If he does so he is not
worthy of being a medium. But it is quite likely that you may get tied
to him. You may catch hold of his feet and vow never to leave him
because of the great blessing bestowed on you. It is necessary to be
very alert at that moment. The meditator should protect himself from
attachment.
Gratitude is not a bondage. On the contrary, it is the expression of ultimate freedom. But the tendency to become bound is always within us because there is a fear within. We are never sure whether we shall be able to stand by ourselves or not; hence there is an urge to cling to someone. What to say of clinging to another – when a man passes through a dark street in the night he sings loudly because the sound of his own voice alleviates fear. If it is the voice of another person, then too it would be something to cling to, but basically he musters strength and courage from his own voice. Man is frightened so he holds on to anything; that is why if a drowning man comes across a piece of straw he will hold fast to it even though this does not protect him from drowning. Rather, the straw also sinks with him. So out of fear the mind tends to hold on to someone, to something, whether it be a guru or anyone or anything else. By doing so we want to protect ourselves. The fear is the root of all kinds of binding. Meditators should always be wary of security. Security is the greatest web of attachment for a meditator. If he seeks security for even a single moment, if he feels that he has the support of someone in whose protection he has nothing to fear and thus he will now not go astray, if he is thinking that he will go nowhere and be under his guru’s wing forever, then he has already lost his way. For a seeker there is no security; insecurity is a blessing for a seeker. The greater the insecurity, the greater is the opportunity for his soul to expand and to become bold and fearless. The more the protection, the weaker he will become in the same proportion. To take assistance is one thing, but to keep on being dependent is quite another. You are given support so that you can stand without support. It is given with the intention that soon you will need no more. Have you noticed that when a father is helping his child to walk he holds the child’s hand and not the child? In a few days’ time he learns to walk, and then the father lets go of his hand. But at first the child catches hold of the father’s hand for confidence. So if the child takes hold of the father’s hand it means that although he has learned to walk he will not let go of it. If the father holds the child’s hand, then know that the child still does not know how to walk and it is dangerous to let him be on his own. The father wants his hand to be relieved soon; that is why he teaches the child to walk. If some father allows his child to go on holding his hand out of the sheer pleasure he gets from it he is his child’s enemy. Many fathers, many gurus, do this, but this is a mistake. The reason for which the support was given is defeated. Instead of giving rise to a strong healthy person who can walk on his own two feet he has given rise to a cripple who will depend upon crutches all his life. This, however, is the pleasure that gives satisfaction to the father or the guru – that you cannot go on your way without their support. In this way their egos are satisfied. But such a guru is not a guru. So it is for the guru to shake off the meditator’s hand and tell him firmly to walk on his own two feet. And there is no harm if he falls a couple of times: he can get up again. After all, one has to fall in order to rise, and it is necessary to fall a few times in order to get over the fear of falling. The mind tries to catch hold of some support and so the binding starts. This should not happen. The meditator should always keep in mind the fact that he is not in search of security. He is in search of truth, not security. If he is sincere about his quest for truth he must give up all ideas of safety and security. Falseness affords a lot of protection – and very quickly too, so he who is in search of safety is quickly attracted towards it. The seeker of convenience never scales the heights of truth, because the journey is long. Then he fashions falsehoods out of fanciful ideas and begins to believe that he has attained while he remains sitting just where he was. Therefore, any type of attachment is dangerous – and even more so the attachment to a guru, because this is a spiritual attachment. The very term spiritual attachment is contradictory. Spiritual freedom has a meaning, but spiritual slavery is meaningless. But in this world other types of slaves are considerably less enslaved than are the slaves of spirituality. There is a reason for this. The fourth body, from where the spirit of freedom arises, remains undeveloped. The majority of human beings have developed only up to the third body. It is seen very often that a high court judge or a vice-chancellor of a university is sitting at the feet of an absolute idiot. Seeing this, others follow suit thinking that if such well known people are sitting at this man’s feet... we are nothing in comparison. They do not know that though this judge, this vice-chancellor, has developed his third body to the full, that though he has developed his intellect to a very high level, he remains ignorant so far as his fourth body is concerned. He is equally as ignorant as they are in matters of the fourth body. And his third body – that which has developed intellect and reason – is thoroughly exhausted by constant thinking and debating and is now at rest. Now when intellect gets tired and relaxes it indulges in very unintelligent pursuits. Anything that relaxes after extreme activity becomes opposite to its nature. This is the danger, and this is why you will invariably find high court judges in ashrams. They are exhausted and they are distressed by their intellects, so they wish to be rid of them. In such a condition they will do anything irrational; they will just close their eyes and put their faith in anything. Their contention is that all their learning and reasoning and discussions led them nowhere, so they drop them. And in order to sever all connection with them they promptly catch hold of something that is completely contrary. Then the rest of the crowd, which gives credence to the intellects of such high-placed people, begins to imitate them. These people may be very intellectual, but in matters of the fourth body they are just nothing. Therefore, a slight development of the fourth body in any individual will suffice to bring the greatest of intellectuals to his feet, because he has something that the intellectual lacks completely. This sort of binding occurs when the fourth body is not developed. Then the mind wants to hold on to someone whose fourth body is developed, but this will not help you to develop your fourth body. Only by understanding such a person can your fourth body develop. However, in order to avoid the
trouble of understanding him you catch hold of his person. Then you will
say, ”Where is the need to understand? We will hold on to your feet so
that when you cross the river of hell we too will cross with you; we
will cling to your boat to cross the river of heaven.” Osho on Psychic Binding Continued.....
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