Anger & Sadness

[Guest guest]

Question: Osho, I can feel myself moving from anger into

sadness. I don't know whether I should try and get the anger out or

just let it explode inside.

 

Answer: Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger

and anger is active sadness. Because sadness comes easy, anger seems

to be difficult. because you are too much in tune with the passive.

 

It is difficult for a sad person to be angry. If you can make a sad

person angry, his sadness will disappear immediately. It will be very

difficult for an angry person to be sad. If you can make him sad, his

anger will disappear immediately.

 

In all our emotions the basic polarity continues — of man and woman,

yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is

female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift

to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within

won't help much because again you are seeking some way of being

passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense,

then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.

 

If you can float between anger and sadness, both become similarly

easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will be able to

watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and

then you can go beyond both. But first you have to be moving easily

between these two. otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is

heavy, transcendence is difficult.

 

Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike,

fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because they

are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody's

grip. Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so

they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip

out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent, then

it is very difficult. Thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy

percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and

it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping

out. That forty percent will hang over you.

 

So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies — to always let

the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are

able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and

you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not

worry, and you can escape. Don't bring the mind in. Just make it an

exercise.

 

You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to

come. Every day you have to be angry — that will be easier. So jump,

jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at

all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise

even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If

you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?

 

Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples never to start by dropping

anything. First start by bringing it in, because only a person who

can create anger on demand can be capable of dropping it on demand —

simple mathematics. So Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to first

learn how to be angry. Everybody would be sitting and suddenly he

would ay, " Number One, stand up and be angry! " It looks so absurd.

 

But if you can bring it.... And it is always available, just by the

comer, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody

provides an excuse. Somebody insults you — it is there. So why wait

for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can't you bring it

yourself? Bring it yourself!

 

In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable,

because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody

else whose insult has created the anger. That's not true. Anger has

always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come

up. You can give yourself an excuse. Imagine a situation in which you

would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say

things, and soon the wall will be talking to you. Just go completely

crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where

they are exactly proportionate to each other. They will cancel each

other out and you can slip away.

 

Gurdjieff used to call this " the way of the sly man " — to bring inner

energies to such a conflict that they are engaged together cancelling

each other, and you have the opportunity to escape. Try it, mm?