The Way of the Sly Man
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.
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?
