Deliberate Chaos:
an Opportunity for Change

Veeresh on Chaos

Years ago I was asked to take over an Encounter group in Pune, because the group leader was sick. One of the rules of the group was that you were not allowed to attack the leader. I liked that rule. The other rule was that the only thing that could happen here was that you could die. This was not meant physically, but spiritually - ego-stuff. I changed it. I said, "The only thing that can happen here is that you will live, and there is going to be no physical violence in this group at all." I decided to go completely the other way. Everybody in the group was shocked. After the group I went to Osho and I told him about it. He said:

"Good, good, Veeresh! Sometimes things that you have to do without any planning turn out beautiful, because the mind is in shock. The mind needs time to plan, to visualize, to project some ideas, some blueprints. The mind needs a guide, a map.
Through this experience, in the future, you should plan a group which takes many jumps. One day it is one thing, another day it is something else. In seven days' time it is seven things. It has no plan; it is haphazard, zigzag... Nobody knows what is going to happen, not even you. In the morning you get up and it is whimsical, it is eccentric. With the whimsical you will see people flowering more spontaneously.
Otherwise they start learning the technique of the group leader; they learn the method, the group process... and once they have learned they start obliging the group leader. They know what is expected of them: they know what they should do so that they should be thought good, they know what is not expected of them.
There will be two types of people there, as there are always! A few, the obedient types, will simply follow the process and will go into it, and the rebellious type will resist and fight. Both are following a mind pattern that they have followed all their lives.
Some time, you will have to develop a group which is a chaos. Nobody knows when it begins, nobody knows when it ends; nobody knows what is going to happen next. It moves by sudden jerks, and nobody knows where it is going. You will take people into very, very unknown spaces."

The AUM Meditation

The AUM is a perfect example of a 'zig-zag' approach. Opposite stages are following each other, for instance hate-love and crying-laughing. There is even a stage where everyone has a chance to deliberately act crazy.

Already in Phoenix House…

I was already experimenting with shock and chaos in Phoenix House. Whenever I introduced new techniques there it would shock everybody; to me it was an exploration. For instance, having people stand up in an encounter session and walk around the room screaming at each other was unheard of; everybody thought there was going to be a fight. People were used to do it sitting in chairs. It was an utterly confusing situation for everybody. Suddenly they had to go closer to the person and find out that they still could control teir aggression. It was great.

One time when I was assistant director in Phoenix House New York, I was bored. The community was asleep, so I woke them all up, about 130 people, for a General Meeting. They all came rushing in, because General Meetings were like alarms. I went into a whole talk about guilt. I didn't say anything specifically about which guilt or who, just the nature of guilt and how it arises. People started to feel very guilty. Before I could even finish my talk, people were already raising their hands to cop to what they had done.

There was a blanket on a table. Suddenly I took it off and said, "Who took the wig from my coconut?" I had this coconut all carved out with a wig on it. Everybody was just staring in shock. You could see the utter confusion in their brains. And then, way in the back, there was a little "hee hee" Suddenly the whole place went into a huge laughter, after this heavy guilt number where everybody was wondering who was going to be thrown out of the community. That's an example of positive deliberate chaos as a teaching tool.

Going Crazy Consciously

I worked in a psychiatric hospital in Holland, training addiction therapists. There was one guy who was certified crazy, and who wanted to join the training. I thought about what I could do to create a learning experience so that they could understand what craziness is about: the meaning of going crazy, the fear of going crazy, the feeling, and the desperateness of it.

I rented a small room in the Free University in Amsterdam and squeezed thirty two people in it. They were all doctors, nurses and therapists! I told them that I did not want them to come out until they all experienced what craziness is. The only rule was that they could not abuse each other.

After a while I came back. I opened the door; people were sitting on the floor, babbling like mental midgets. It looked like one-flew-over-the-cuckoo's-nest.

I closed the door and came back later; I wanted them to really experience it. They all went crazy with each other's support.

One student told me that he had been crazy once in his life and ended up in a mental hospital. This time he went crazy and he enjoyed it.

You can only work with people in that way when you trust your intuition. And, if you are going to work with people, you need to be able to give them the best of who you are. When people are in crisis and chaos, you need to be able to understand all that experience yourself; you need to have been through it yourself.

I was in mental hospitals in the United States seven times, so I know about going mad and having chaos in my life. I want people to have the best training. Like Osho used to say: if you are going to work with people, you have to know yourself as much as possible, especially your own chaos.

The Result

The result of using deliberate chaos in groups is usually shock and disorientation for a short period of time. For three days to three weeks, people are a little bit bewildered and don't know what happened and then it starts to sink in. They get insights like, "I understand that I have been living my life the same way all the time." Some people get it right away and they feel enlightened.

Chaos and Connection

Next to upsetting rigid mind patterns, I feel that human connection is the immediate answer to looking inside. If you have good connections outside, you can relax and look at yourself. My main purpose in a group is to encourage people to share, to have contact, to break all isolation patterns and bring them together.

I know that change happens to them. We get people married, engaged, divorced, we get people to become friends. If somebody is isolated, we create a connection. We give them big brothers, uncles, and a family head. I use connections to get people to the point where they feel safe enough to go inside. Once you have worked through the resistance, people feel very close. Then they can go into incredible spaces.

The Osho quote is taken from: "Don't Just Do Something - Sit There" #27