Tag Archives: Mind

May 21, 2013 · 2:06 pm

Behind the Mind – Jean Klein

There are moments when you hear sounds, but you can’t distinguish anything. As long as you have ears, it will be so. This kind of audibility, which is not really hearing, is there. Likewise, the eyes may be open and you do not see any special object, there is nothing seen and nothing heard. But meditation, presence, is everywhere there. Very often people close their eyes or ears in a kind of introversion. This kind of introversion does not bring them to meditation. Meditation is when all is present. All that is, all that you are, is in this stillness. It is beyond the stillness of the senses, of the mind. It is behind the mind. You can have it before the body wakes up in the morning. The world is not awake because the body creates the world, but there are moments when you are lying down where there is nobody present and nothing is present, but there is presence.

-Jean Klein

From Living Truth, pages 243-244

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May 10, 2013 · 3:29 pm

The Essential and the Accidental – Osho

The most fundamental religious truth is that man is asleep — not physically, but metaphysically; not apparently, but deep down. Man lives in a deep slumber. He works, he moves, he thinks, he imagines, he dreams, but the sleep continues as a basic substratum to his life. Rare are the moment when you feel really awake, very rare; they can be counted on the fingers. If in seventy years’ life you had only seven moments of awakening, that too will be too much.

Man lives like a robot: mechanically efficient, but with no awareness. Hence the whole problem! There are so many problems man has to face, but they are all by-products of his sleep.

So the first thing to be understood is what this sleep consists in — because Zen is an effort to become alert and awake. All religion is nothing but that: an effort to become more conscious, an effort to become more aware, an effort to bring more alertness, more attentiveness to your life.

All the religions of the world, in one way or other, emphasize that the sleep consists in deep identification or in attachment.

Man’s life has two layers to it: one is that of the essential, and another is that of the accidental. The essential is never born, never dies. The accidental is born, lives and dies. The essential is eternal, timeless; the accidental is just accidental. We become too much attached to the accidental and we tend to forget the essential.

A man becomes too much attached to money — money is accidental. It has nothing to do with essential life. A man becomes too much attached to his house or to his car, or to his wife, or to her husband, to children, to relationship. Relationship is accidental; it has nothing essential in it. It is not your real being. And in this century, the twentieth century, the problem has become too deep.

There are people who call the twentieth century ‘the accidental century’ — they are right

People are living too much identified with the non-essential: money, power, prestige, respectability. You will have to leave all that behind when you go. Even an Alexander has to go empty-handed.

I have heard:

A great mystic died. When he reached Paradise, he asked God, “Why was Jesus not born in the twentieth century?”

The Lord God started laughing and said, “Impossible! Impossible! Where would the twentieth century people ever find three wise men or a virgin?”

The twentieth century is the most accidental. By and by, man has become too much attached to ‘my’ and ‘mine’ — to possessions. And he has completely lost track of his being. He has completely lost track of ‘I’. ‘My’ has become more important. When ‘my’ becomes more important then you are getting attached to the accidental. When ‘I’ remains more important and ‘my’ remains just as a servant, then you are a master, then you are not a slave — then you live in a totally different way.

That’s what Zen people call the original face of man, where pure ‘I’ exists. This ‘I’ has nothing to do with the ego. Ego is nothing but the center of all the non-essential possessions that you have. Ego is nothing but the accumulated ‘my’ and ‘mine’ – my house, my car, my prestige, my religion, my scripture, my character, my morality, my family, my heritage, my tradition. All these ‘my’s', all these ‘mines’, go on getting accumulated: they become crystallized as the ego.

When I am using the word ‘I’, I am using it in an absolutely non-egoistic sense. ‘I’ means your being.

Zen people say: Find out your face, the face you had before you were born; find out that face that you will again have when you are dead. Between birth and death, whatsoever you think is your face is accidental. You have seen it in a mirror; you have not felt it from the within — you have looked for it in the without. Do you know your original face? You know only the face your mirror shows to you. And all our relationships are just mirrors. The husband says to the wife, “You are beautiful!” and she starts thinking she is beautiful. Somebody comes, buttresses you, says, “You are very wise, intelligent, a genius!” and you start believing in it. Or somebody condemns you, hates you, is angry about you. You don’t accept what he says, but still, deep down in the unconscious it goes on accumulating. Hence the ambiguity of man.

Somebody says you are beautiful, somebody else says you are ugly — now what to do?

One mirror says you are wise, another man says you are an idiot — now what to do? And you depend only on mirrors, and both are mirrors. You may not like the mirror that says you are an idiot, but it has said so, it has done its work. You may repress it, you may never bring it to your consciousness, but deep down it will remain in you that one mirror has said you are an idiot.

You trust in mirrors — then you become split because there are so many mirrors. And each mirror has its own investment. Somebody calls you wise? not because you are wise — he has his own investment. Somebody calls you an idiot, not because you are an idiot-he has his own investment. They are simply showing their likes and dislikes; they are not asserting anything about you. They may be asserting something about themselves, maybe, but they are not saying anything about you — because no mirror can show you who you are.

Mirrors can only show you your surface, your skin. You are not on your skin: you are very deep. You are not your body. One day the body is young; another day it becomes old. One day it is beautiful, healthy; another day it becomes crippled and paralyzed. One day you were throbbing with life; another day life has oozed out of you. But you are not your periphery! You are your center.

The accidental man lives on the periphery. The essential man remains centered. This is the whole effort!

Let me tell you one anecdote. I have-heard a very beautiful Jewish story. It is tremendously significant — it is about a man:

He was always sleepy and always ready to sleep, everywhere. At the biggest mass meetings, at all the concerts, at every important convention, he could be seen sitting asleep.

You must have known that man because you are that. And you must have come across that man many, many times, because how can you avoid him? –It is you.

And he slept in every conceivable and inconceivable pose. He slept with his elbows in the air and his hands behind his head. He slept standing up, leaning against himself so that he should not fall down. He slept in the theater, in the streets, in the synagogue. Wherever he went, his eyes would drip with sleep.

Had he been a Hindu he could have even slept standing on his head in shirshasan. I have seen Hindus sleeping that way. Many yogis become efficient in sleeping standing on their head. It is difficult, arduous; it needs great practice — but it happens.

Neighbors used to say that he had already slept through seven big fires, and once, at a really big fire, he was carried out of his bed, still asleep, and put down on the sidewalk. In this way he slept for several hours until a patrol came along and took him away.

It was said that when he was standing under the wedding canopy and reciting the vows, “Thou art to me….” he fell asleep at the word ‘sanctified’ — try to remember him – and they had to beat him over the head with brass pestles for several hours to wake him up. And he slowly said the next word and again fell asleep.

Remember your own wedding ceremony. Remember your honeymoon. Remember your marriage. Have you ever been awake? Have you ever missed any opportunity where you could have fallen asleep? You have always fallen asleep.

We mention all this so that you may believe the following story about our hero.

Once, when he went to sleep, he slept and slept and slept; but in his sleep it seemed to him that he heard thunder in the streets and his bed was shaking somewhat; so he thought in his sleep that it was raining outside, and as a result his sleep became still more delicious. He wrapped himself up in his quilt and in its warmth.

Do you remember how many times you have interpreted things through your sleep? Do you remember sometimes you have fixed the alarm clock, and when it goes off you start dreaming that you are in the church and the bells are ringing, a trick of the mind to avoid the alarm, to avoid the disturbance that the alarm is creating.

When he awoke he saw a strange void: his wife was no longer there, his bed was no longer there, his quilt was no longer there. He wanted to look through the window, but there was no window to look through. He wanted to run down the three flights and yell ‘Help!’ but there were no stairs to run on and no air to yell in. And when he wanted merely to go out of doors, he saw that there was no out of doors. Everything evaporated! For a while he stood there in confusion unable to comprehend what had happened. But afterward he bethought himself: I will go to sleep. He saw, however, that there was no longer any earth to sleep on. Only then did he raise two fingers to his forehead and reflect: Apparently I have slept through the end of the world. Isn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?

He became depressed. No more world, he thought. What will I do without a world?

Where will I go to work, how will I make a living, especially now that the cost of living is so high and a dozen eggs costs a dollar twenty and who knows if they are even fresh, and besides, what will happen to the five dollars the gas company owes me? And where has my wife gone off to? Is it possible that she too has disappeared with the world, and with the thirty dollars’ pay I had in my pockets? And she is not by nature the kind that disappears, he thought to himself.

You will also think that way one day if you suddenly find the world has disappeared. You don’t know what else to think. You will think about the cost of eggs, the office, the wife, the money. You don’t know what else to think about. The whole world has disappeared! — but you have become mechanical in your thinking.

And what will I do if I want to sleep? What will I stretch out on if there isn’t any world?

And maybe my back will ache? And who will finish the bundle of work in the shop? And suppose I want a glass of malted, where will I get it?

Eh, he thought, have you ever seen anything like it? A man should fall asleep with the world under his head and wake up without it!

This is going to happen one day or other — that’s what happens to every man when he dies. Suddenly, the whole world disappears. Suddenly he is no longer part of this world; suddenly he is in another dimension. This happens to every man who dies, because whatsoever you have known is just the peripheral. When you die, suddenly your periphery disappears — you are thrown to your center. And you don’t know that language. And you don’t know anything about the center. It looks like void, empty. It feels like just a negation, an absence.

As our hero stood there in his underwear, wondering what to do, a thought occurred to him: To hell with it! So there isn’t any world! Who needs it anyway? Disappeared is disappeared — I might as well go to the movies and kill some time. But to his astonishment he saw that, together with the world, the movies had also disappeared.

A pretty mess I’ve made here, thought our hero, and began smoothing his moustache. A pretty mess I’ve made here, falling asleep! If I hadn’t slept so soundly, he taunted himself, I would have disappeared along with everything else. This way I’m unfortunate, and where will I get a malted? I love a glass in the morning. And my wife? Who knows who she’s disappeared with? If it is with the presser from the top floor, I’ll murder her, so help me God.

Who knows how late it is?

With these words our hero wanted to look at his watch but couldn’t find it. He searched with both hands in the left and right pockets of the infinite emptiness but could find nothing to touch.

I just paid two dollars for a watch and here it’s already disappeared, he thought to himself. All right. If the world went under, it went under. That I don’t care about. It isn’t my world. But the watch! Why should my watch go under? A new watch. Two dollars. It wasn’t even wound.

And where will I find a glass of malted? There’s nothing better in the morning than a glass of malted. And who knows if my wife…I’ve slept through such a terrible catastrophe,

I deserve the worst. Help, help, he-e-e-lp! Where are my brains? Where were my brains before? Why didn’t I keep an eye on the world and my wife? Why did I let them disappear when they were still so young?

And our hero began to beat his head against the void, but since the void was a very soft one it didn’t hurt him and he remained alive to tell the story.

This is a story of human mind as such. You create a world around you of illusions. You go on getting attached to things which are not going to be with you when you die. You go on being identified with things which are going to be taken away from you.

Hence, the Hindus call the world ‘illusion’; they don’t mean by the ‘world’ the world that is there — they simply mean the world that you have created out of your sleep. That world is maya — illusion. It is a dream world.

Who is your wife? The very idea is foolish. Who is your husband? Who is your child? You are not yours — how can anybody else be yours? Not even you are yours; not even you belong to yourself. Have you watched sometimes that not even you belong to yourself? You also belong to some unknown existence you have not penetrated. Deeper in yourself you will come to a point where even self disappears — only a state of no-self, or call it the Supreme Self. It is only a difference of language and terminology.

Have you not seen deep down in yourself things arising which don’t belong to you? Your desires don’t belong to you; your thoughts don’t belong to you. Even your consciousness, you have not created it — it has been given to you, it is a given fact. It is not you who have created it — how can you create it?

You are suddenly there… as if it happens by magic. You are always in the middle; you don’t know the beginning. The beginning does not belong to you, and neither does the end belong to you. Just in the middle you can create, you can go on creating dreams. That’s how a man becomes accidental.

Watch out! Become more and more essential and less and less accidental. Always remember: Only that which is eternal is true; only that which is going to be forever and ever is true. That which is momentary is untrue. The momentary has to be watched and not to be identified with.

I was reading a beautiful anecdote:

An elderly Irishman checked out of a hotel room and was half way to the bus depot when he realized he had left his umbrella behind. By the time he got back to the room, a newlywed couple had already checked in. Hating to interrupt anything, the Irishman got down on his knees and listened in at the keyhole.

“Whose lovely eyes are those, my darling?” he heard the man’s voice ask.

“Yours, my love,” the woman answered.

“And whose precious nose is this?” the man went on inside the room.

“Only yours,” the woman replied.

“And whose beautiful lips are these?” the man continued.

“Yours!” panted the woman.

“And whose…?” but the Irishman could not stand it anymore.

Putting his mouth to the keyhole, he shouted, “When you get to a yellow plaid umbrella, folks, it is mine!”

This game of ‘my’ and ‘mine’ is the most absurd game — but this is the whole game of life.

This earth was there before you ever came here, and this will be here when you are gone.

The diamonds that you possess were there before you ever came here, and when you are gone those diamonds will remain here — and they will not even remember you. They are completely oblivious that you possess them.

This game of possessiveness is the most foolish game there is — but this is the whole game.

Gurdjieff used to say that if you start getting disidentified from things, sooner or later you will fall upon your essential being. That is the basic meaning of renunciation. Renunciation does not mean, sannyas does not mean, renouncing the world and escaping to the Himalayas or to a monastery — because if you escape from the world and go to a monastery, nothing is going to change. You carry the same mind. Here in the world, the house was yours, and the wife was yours; there the monastery will be yours, the religion will be yours. It will not make much difference. The ‘mine’ will persist. It is a mind attitude — it has nothing to do with any outside space. It is an inner illusion, an inner dream, an inner sleep.

Renunciation means: wherever you are, there is no need to renounce the things because in the first place you never possessed them. It is foolish to talk about renunciation. It means as if you were the possessor and now you are renouncing. How can you renounce something which you never possessed? Renunciation means coming to know that you cannot possess anything. You can use, at the most, but you cannot possess. You are not going to be here forever — how can you possess? It is impossible to possess anything.

You can use and you can be grateful to things that they allow themselves to be used. You should be thankful to things that they allow themselves to be used. They become means, but you cannot possess them.

Dropping the idea of ownership is renunciation. Renunciation is not dropping the possessions but possessiveness. And this is what Gurdjieff calls getting unidentified. This is what Bauls call realizing ‘Ardhar Manush‘ — the essential man. This is what Zen people call the original face.

-Osho

From A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Chapter Three

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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May 4, 2013 · 2:05 pm

Life is Aware of Itself – U.G. Krishnamurti

The following is a conversation between U. G. Krishnamurti and David Bohm, recorded in Saanen, Switzerland in 1968. Also present were Mrs. Bohm, David Barry and Valentine.

U.G.: From quite a young age I had this question about religious people and religious experiences. What is there behind or beneath these religious beliefs and practices? And most of the guys I met were frauds, in the sense they didn’t have this real thing in them. You see, I myself went through all kinds of experiences—all within the field of thought. These religious people and mystics didn’t have the real touch of the ‘source’ or the ’origin’—except perhaps Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti.

Not that I have what he has. There is nothing there. But is it the same? Perhaps it can’t be different. I don’t know, the question doesn’t interest me. However, this must be the base—the religious experience is not the thing—which is something beyond thought. The thought can never penetrate here. It is that state where the action takes place. But I have no way of knowing what is happening at that time. But there seems to be some kind of awareness—that is the difference between sleep and this state. Something is aware of something else. The Hindu religious thinkers say the immensity is aware of its own immensity, or that is aware of that. I would simply say life is aware of itself.

The body is in a state of quiet, of relaxation, which you can call bliss, truth, love, god or reality or anything you like, but it is not that, because there is nobody looking at it. I look at that (microphone) and I can bring out the word and say it is a microphone. But here, for this state of being, there is no word you can find to describe it. So the words bliss, love, god, truth, are all inadequate to express this state of being. Here there is no difference between life and death. The continuity (of the self) is gone once and for all.

Bohm: What do you say of time?

U.G.: There is no time, no space. When there is thought, there is time. Thought is time and thought is space.

As long as I am looking at something, there is space—but space of and by itself—because I have what you call Vistavision, I see much more. The eyes take in completely the hundred peer cent of what is there. They say the eye cuts off ninety-eight per cent and takes in only two per cent, but here, since there is no choice of any kind, the eyes take in the whole thing.

But the space that thought creates is different. The moment you say the Palace Hotel (in Gstaad), there is a space. When I close my eyes there is no space at all. Light is the part of the whole space, and the light inside has no frontiers. But to say that I am the space is not correct (laughs).

(To illustrate the point, UG picks up a visor.) This is the social consciousness, the mind, the world, this is the enclosure, this is the eye I have built through the years. Every human cell carries the knowledge built from thousands of years; rather, the whole fourteen million years of the past is embedded in the individual. So the human being is not different from the social consciousness. And what has happened in me is that this whole built-up consciousness somehow and by some process-not through any sadhana or effort or one’s volition—has knocked itself off.

When the explosion takes place, the whole structure of thought collapses. This is not an ordinary thing. It is like a nuclear explosion and it affects the whole human consciousness. It is not just once, but a series of explosions and there is a fallout which affects the human consciousness. This seems to be the only way we can affect the world, by bringing about a structural change within oneself. You can never look at thought. The thought splits itself into two, and one thought or image looks at the other. Only when you step out of the whole structure built over millions of years, you can look at thought, but it has no content. Thought has been a part of the human consciousness right from the beginning. There is this expression in the Bible: In the beginning was the word and word as the flesh. Actually it means matter. Thought is matter and at the same time it is sound and this has been in existence through centuries.

The thinker has no existence; he is an artificially created, built-up thing. He has taken possession of the body and has dominated for centuries… but somehow, here, he has been displaced. He is not there anymore. What you are left with are the body and thought. What is this thought? Here, they are only words, factual memory without psychological content. Only now, after you step out of the social and individual consciousness, there is a possibility of looking at thought. When thought comes, there is a disturbance in awareness and , once you look at it, this very awareness destroys it. There is no scope for the thought to take roots here and bring the thinker in. It is just there in the background for your use and when there is a need you use it and discard it. Sometimes the old memories come, but when you become aware of them, they disappear. The braid becomes tight and they cannot penetrate and take root.

Bohm: As thought comes in it disturbs the awareness, you say. Can we discuss the root of thought, but you say you don’t know.

U.G.: You see, when you put the question, first I am in the state of not-knowing; I really don’t know what mind is. If the exploration of the question should begin, the thinker has to come in and the thought process develops.

All right, let us take an example from the field of science. As long as we were caught up in the Newtonian physics nobody could break through. But Einstein, somehow and by some process, realized the inadequacy of Newtonian thought and that itself acted as a breakthrough. Now we connect them and we know that without Newtonian physics Einstein’s theories would never have come into existence. And now we can see that the process (Newtonian thought) had come to an end, but not actually, rather it caught the experience and created another thought structure. This kind of revolution is within the structure of thought. It could be a mystical experience or a path-breaking discovery and this brings about the changes or conversions. However, all experiences in any field are within the field of thought. A mystical experience can change the individual consciousness. The whole way of looking at life changes and it’ll be like wearing new glasses. Everything you look at, every activity is different, but still within the field of thought. Even bringing the mind to a quiet state is not the end of the mind. That could, at best, be the first loosening process of this whole structure. Every cell has a memory of its own. So the whole human body has to change for this to happen. This silence is of a different quality and kind.

So, you see, it is difficult to answer the question.

Bohm: I also wanted to ask, ‘What is the origin of the continuity of thought?’

U.G.: There is no continuity.

Bohm: If the awareness doesn’t wipe out thought…

U.G.: That means the ‘I’ is there and he carries on. But when the ‘I’, the thinker is absent, there is no continuity and thoughts just come and go and never take root and bring the thinker into operation.

Bohm: But you use thoughts in order to communicate, which it seems you want to.

U.G.: (Laughs) I may not even want to. But I am beginning to feel that even without communicating there is a possibility of being silent in some corner, no matter where, and these fallouts perhaps will affect in their own way. I don’t know; but there is another difficulty for me. I have no way of expressing myself—the whole of my past is wiped out and that past included Krishnamurti. So the Krishnamurtian lingo—if I may use that word—is of no value at all. I can’t use that language. I don’t even know what he is talking now, except the few phrases which are fresh.

The easiest thing would be to fall back on such a lingo. All the religious teachers used the then available literature, they used words like god, beyond, immortal, heavenly and such expressions. In our times Ramana did the same. He read texts of Hinduism in order to understand what he had come into and that coloured his mode of expression and he fell back on the Hindu terminologies to explain things. It must be said to the credit of Krishnamurti that he has come out with this strikingly original approach and has developed a new mode of expression which is very vital. But then there are and were hundreds of Hindu scholars who have tried to strike a new path, use new words or terminologies. So where do all these take one? To me all that seems inadequate. Perhaps it helps others.

This is not a new discovery, not something that comes from outside. When the whole process comes to an end, the search comes to an end, not that you arrive at a point or a destination. The self, the seeker disappears and what is left is the body and the senses operating in an extraordinary way. So—how am I going to create new words to talk about this? I can’t. I have to use the inadequate words we have.

Bohm: But the same words can function differently in different persons.

U.G.: It would be interesting to find out. But, you see, the person who comes here can bring me out. I can’t come prepared. It depends upon the person I am talking to. And one of the difficulties I have is that most of the people who come here are all full of Krishnamurti’s ideas. I am always confronted with this, or if I go to India, There they come with the Hindu terminologies. Anyway, they have to bring me out. Perhaps in this process something will come out.

From The Biology of Enlightenment: Unpublished Conversations of U.G. Krishnamurti after He Came into the Natural State (1967-71), pages 109-113.

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April 21, 2013 · 11:25 am

The Sanctuary of Silence – Dada Gavand

You cannot meet God through the mind,

nor experience the timeless through time.

Thought cannot touch the transient.

Only with freedom from thought

and from mental cravings and ambitions

does the energy become

whole, tranquil and pure.

Such inner purity and humility

will invite the hidden divinity.

The pure consolidated energy,

with its silence and fullness within,

awaits in readiness to meet the divine,

to experience that which is beyond the mind.

There across the region of time

beyond the frontiers of the mind,

within the sanctuary of silence,

resides the supreme intelligence,

your Lord, the timeless divine.

-Dada Gavand

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April 19, 2013 · 3:14 pm

A Great Harmony – Osho

Science is based on doubt: doubt is its method, its climate, its very soul. Science cannot exist without doubt. It is only through questioning, and constant questioning, that science comes to know about the facts of existence. Its world of enquiry is objective.

The object cannot be trusted. The object is dead. You have to penetrate the object with as many questions and doubts as possible; only then will the object reveal its mysteries.

Religion, on the contrary, is trust. Religion’s method is trust. Trust is its climate, its philosophy, its very being, because religion is not concerned with objects but with your own subjectivity. The journey of science is outwards, the journey of religion is inwards. Science means going outward, religion means going inward; their directions are diametrically opposite. Although they are diametrically opposite they are complementary too, as all opposites always are.

There is a harmony between the opposites. The inner and the outer are not enemies, they are in utter coordination. The body and the soul are not enemies, they befriend each other; in fact they cannot exist separately, they can exist only in a togetherness. Man and woman, darkness and light, summer and winter, positive and negative – they are all together, although they are opposites. But they are not enemies, this has to be understood: opposites and yet complementaries … and there is utter harmony in existence.

It is like inhalation and exhalation: you breathe in, you breathe out. When you breathe in it is one process, the breath goes inwards; when you breathe out it is just the opposite process, the breath goes outwards, but it is the same breath. Inhalation and exhalation are two aspects of the same phenomenon, opposites and yet complementary; so are religion and science, so are doubt and trust.

Because it has not been understood in the past a great calamity has happened to humanity, the greatest calamity, I call it – the calamity that has kept religion and science not only separate but inimical. In the past we have not been able to bring a synthesis between science and religion.

Because of that incapability the world has become split and the man who is trained in science becomes anti-religious; and vice versa, the person who moves into the world of religion becomes anti-scientific. This need not happen, this should not happen.

If you are really. intelligent you will be able to coordinate between these opposites. You will be able to bring a harmony between these two, doubt and trust, and then arises the real total human being.

What do I mean when I say a great harmony has to be achieved? I mean that when you are moving outwards, use doubt as your methodology, trust doubt when you are moving outwards. When you are enquiring into the world of objects trust doubt. Doubt is beautiful, immensely beautiful. And when you are moving inwards put your doubt aside: trust trust. And the man who can manage this I call a really intelligent person.

It is like you are seeing me, you are seeing me through your eyes, but you are also listening to me, you are listening to me through your ears. The ears cannot see and the eyes cannot hear, but still there is a tremendous coordination happening in you: you know you are hearing the same person that you are seeing. This is intelligence, this coordination is intelligence. Deep down a synthesis is happening constantly. The ears are pouring one information, the eyes are pouring another information; both are unrelated – as far as ears and eyes are concerned, both are unrelated – but your intelligence is creating a relationship between them: you are hearing the same person you are seeing.

Exactly in the same way, doubt cannot know the subject and trust cannot know the object. Doubt can know the object, trust can know the subject; and intelligence is when both pour their information into one pool and truth is known in both its aspects, as inner, as outer.

That is the real religion humanity needs now – or, the real science – which will not divide man and which will not cripple man. Up to now, hitherto, man has been crippled.

If you trust you forget the language of doubt. The society becomes unscientific, becomes incapable of tackling so many problems that man has to encounter, becomes poor, impoverished, ill, ugly. If you start only using doubt the society becomes better, scientifically better, technologically better, affluent, but the inner world simply is forgotten. Then you don’t have a soul; inwards you remain fast asleep. In both ways man remains lopsided. In both ways man remains partial and cannot become total.

The religions of the past have failed in creating a total man. And so has been the case with modern science; modern science has also failed in creating the total man. And the total man is the need because only the total man can be contented, only the total man can be richer inwards, outwards.

Only the total man can be really in a celebration – his body satisfied, his soul satisfied, his senses contented, his spirit contented.

-Osho

Excerpt from The Secret, Chapter 15

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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April 14, 2013 · 4:36 pm

A Bigger Container – Charlotte Joko Beck

At the age of ninety-five Genpo Roshi, one of the great Zen masters of modern times, was speaking of the “gateless gate,” and he pointed out that there truly is no gate through which we must pass in order to realize what our life is. Still, he said, from the standpoint of practice we must go through a gate, the gate of our own pride. And every one of us here, since the time we got up this morning, has in some way or another met our pride—every one of us. To go through this gate that is not a gate we have to go through the gate of our own pride.

Now the child of pride is anger. By anger I mean all kinds of frustration, including irritation, resentment, jealousy. I talk so much about anger and how to work with it because to understand how to practice with anger is to understand how to approach the “gateless gate.”

In daily life we know what it means to stand back from a problem. For example, I’ve watched Laura make a beautiful flower arrangement: she’ll fuss and fiddle with the flowers, then at some point she’ll stand back and look, to see what she has done and how it balances out. If you’re sewing a dress, at first you cut and arrange and sew, but finally you get in front of the mirror to see how it looks. Does it hang on the shoulders? How’s the hem? Is it becoming? Is it a suitable dress? You stand back. Likewise, in order to put our lives into perspective, we stand back and take a look.

Now Zen practice is to do this. It develops the ability to stand back and look. Let’s take a practical example, a quarrel. The overriding quality in any quarrel is pride. Suppose I’m married and I have a quarrel with my husband. He’s done something that I don’t like—perhaps he has spent the family savings on a new car—and I think our present car is fine. And I think—in fact I know—that I am right. I am angry, furious. I want to scream. Now what can I do with my anger? What is the fruitful thing to do? First of all I think it’s a good idea just to back away: to do and say as little as possible. As I retreat for a bit, I can remind myself that what I really want is to be what might be called A Bigger Container. (In other words I must practice my ABCs.) To do this is to step into another dimension—the spiritual dimension, if we must give it a name.

Let’s look at  a series of practice steps, realizing that in the heat of anger it’s impossible for most of us to practice as the drama occurs. But do try to step back; do and say very little; remove yourself. Then, when you’re alone, just sit and observe. What do I mean by “observe”? Observe the soap opera going on in the mind: what he said, what he did, what I have to say about all that, what I should do about it . . . these are all a fantasy. They are not the reality of what’s happening. If we can (it’s difficult to do when angry), label these thoughts. Why is it difficult? When we’re angry there’s a huge block that stands in the way of practice: the fact that we don’t want to practice—we prefer to cherish our pride, to be “right” about the argument, the issue. (“Do not seek the Truth—only cease to cherish opinions.”) And that’s why the first step is to back away, say little. It may take weeks of hard practice before we can see that what we want is not to be right, but to be A Bigger Container, ABC. Step back and observe. Label the thoughts of the drama: yes, he shouldn’t do that; yes, I can’t stand what he’s doing; yes, I’ll find some way to get even—all of which may be so on a superficial level, but still it is just a soap opera.

If we truly step back and observe—and as I said, it’s extremely difficult to do when angry—we will be capable in time of seeing our thoughts as thoughts (unreal) and not as the truth. Sometimes I’ve gone through this process ten, twenty, thirty times before the thoughts finally subside. When they do I am left with what? I am left with the direct experience of the physical reaction in my body, the residue, so to speak. When I directly experience this residue (as tension, contraction), since there is no duality in direct experience, I will slowly enter the dimension (samadhi) which knows what to do, what action to take. It knows what is the best action, not just for me but for the other as well. In making A Bigger Container, I taste “oneness” in a direct way.

We can talk about “oneness” until the cows come home. But how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How? The pride out of which anger is born is what separates us. And the solution is a practice in which we experience this separating emotion as a definite bodily state. When we do, A Bigger Container is created.

What is created, what grows, is the amount of life I can hold without it upsetting me, dominating me. At first this space is quite restricted, then it’s a bit bigger, and then it’s bigger still. It need never cease to grow. And the enlightened state is that enormous and compassionate space. But as long as we live we find there is a limit to our container’s size and it is at that point that we must practice. And how do we know where this cut-off point is? We are at that point when we feel any degree of upset, of anger. It’s no mystery at all. And the strength of our practice is how big that container gets.

As we do this practice we need to be charitable with ourselves. We need to recognize when we’re unwilling to do it. No one is willing all the time. And it’s not bad when we don’t do it. We always do what we’re ready to do.

The practice of making A Bigger Container is essentially spiritual because it is essentially nothing at all. A Bigger Container isn’t a thing; awareness is not a thing; the witness is not a thing or a person. There is not somebody witnessing. Nevertheless that which can witness my mind and body must be other than my mind and body. If I can observe my mind and body in an angry state, who is this “I” who observes? It shows me that I am other than my anger, bigger than my anger, and this knowledge enables me to build A Bigger Container, to grow. So what must be increased is the ability to observe. What we observe is always secondary. It isn’t important that we are upset; what is important is the ability to observe the upset.

As the ability grows first to observe, and second to experience, two factors simultaneously increase: wisdom, the ability to see life as it is (not the way I want it to be) and compassion, the natural action which comes from seeing life as it is. We can’t have compassion for anyone or anything if our encounter with them is ensnarled in pride and anger; it’s impossible. Compassion grows as we create A Bigger Container.

When we practice we’re cutting deep into our life as we’ve know it, and the way this process unfolds varies from person to person. For some people, depending on their personal conditioning and history, this process may go smoothly, and the release is slow. For others it comes in waves, enormous emotional waves. It’s like a dam that bursts. We fear being flooded and over whelmed. It’s as though we’ve walled off part of the ocean, and when the dam breaks the water just rejoins that which it truly is; and it’s relieved because no it can flow with the currents and the vastness of the ocean.

Nevertheless I think that it’s important for the process not to go too fast. If it’s going too fast I think it should be slowed down. Crying, shaking upset, are not undesirable things. That dam is beginning to break. But it’s not necessary that it break too fast. Better to slow it down, and if it breaks rapidly, that also is OK—it’s just that it doesn’t have to be done that way. We think we’re all the same; but probably the more repressive and difficult the childhood has been, the more important it is for the dam to give way slowly. But no matter how smooth our life may have been, there’s always a dam that has to busts at some point.

Remember also that a little humor about all this isn’t a bad idea. Essentially we never get rid of anything. We don’t have to get rid of all our neurotic tendencies; what we do is begin to see how funny they are, and then they’re just part of the fun of life, the fun with living with other people. They’re all crazy. And so are we, of course. But we never really see that we’re crazy; that’s our pride. Of course I’m not crazy—after all, I’m the teacher!

-Charlotte Joko Beck

From Everyday Zen, pages 49-52

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April 6, 2013 · 5:05 pm

Observation, Emptiness and Dhyan – Vimala Thakar

What is involved in being an observer of the stillness?

When we sit in silence what do we do? We sit and observe the voluntary and involuntary activities of the body and mind.  Slowly the voluntary activities come to an end, but the involuntary activities we have inherited from birth, from our family, religion, race, nationality -which fill the mind – go on, and we sit and observe their unfoldment.

Since we are used to working all the time we may find it difficult at first to sit quiet, or the body may fall asleep due to accumulated fatigue. If it happens it is desirable to rest the body for a few days till it is fresh again. While you sit in silence, thoughts will arise, as the mind has been working for 24 hours. The thoughts cannot be suppressed nor can they be thrown away anywhere, you can only watch them, not naming them as good or bad. Then you are free from the roles of an experiencer and an actor, you enter into the state of an observer of non-reactional attention.

As soon as the mind begins moving and says: “I like” or “I dislike” what it sees, there is a disturbance, a burdening of the mind and the role of the observer is lost and you are once more immersed into the roles of an experiencer and actor. If you do not react to the thoughts you are observing, if they no longer have the power to elicit any reaction from you then they will subside of their own accord.

Effects of observation in relationships

We have to extend this attitude of observation in relationships. Once the observer state is awakened it changes relationships. It is a tremendous energy that is awakened. When observation becomes a continuous state throughout the day, then:
(1) There is no self-deception. We do not hide anything from ourselves. There is nothing left as subconscious or unconscious it being all revealed in observation. There is now only the conscious level.
(2) We stop deceiving others or presenting a different image of ourselves to others. The seeing of what is, without justification or condemnation shatters the image. We now have the courage to live and be what we are.
(3) We become aware of all that is happening within us, of the different emotions arising within us, for example if we begin to get angry we are aware of it and so the grip of anger loosens its hold over us.
(4) We recognise and admit our mistakes; asking for forgiveness immediately, thus freeing the mind from the burden of residue.
(5) Through observation thoughts subside, hence the strain and pressure they cause on the neurological and chemical systems is also lifted. It is this tension that brings about anti-social behaviour.
(6) Pain and pleasure are not taken further then the present moment; thus no grudges or attachments are formed. The art of living is to live completely in the moment, not carrying any residue over to next incident, person or day.

Emptiness

First we sat to observe our thoughts, which not being unlimited subside after some time. When they subside there is an awareness of the emptiness within. There is a dimension of emptiness, like there is a dimension of time and space. When we touch the dimension of emptiness and stay steady in it, nothing happens, there is only emptiness. The mind is then afraid, for it has not been educated to live in that motionlessness. When there is functionlessness of the “I consciousness”, the “I” feels as if it is dying, there is fear and one wants to return to the mind, to more familiar grounds. The first touch of emptiness is like death but there is not an experiencing of emptiness, there is no one to experience it; the “I” and its functional roles not being there any more, even the observer is not necessary any more. There is only a consciousness that this is emptiness and after some time even that goes.

To surrender all activity to the emptiness requires courage. Man must be able to stick it out and not to run away from this state, he must be able to digest it. After all, what is there to be afraid of? It is a fact of the organic Reality of Life. It is a phase that does not last but it comes in life and if man stays patiently with it, it will leave him as it arose.

We are in the dimension of silence, of space. In this state there is nothing to experience, nothing to gain, nothing to see, there is only emptiness. Whenever there is work to do, you do it, when someone comes before you, you respond, and when there is no need to act then the emptiness within becomes the abode of the “I consciousness”. The home is no longer the mind but silence. One lives in silence all the time. One remains steady in the emptiness.

Dhyan

From the attitude of an actor, of an experiencer we moved into the attitude of an observer. From the state of observation we moved into the dimension of silence. And from silence we move into the dimension of dhyan. We shall see what dhyan is and what dhyan is not.

The light or energy within us works in many different ways and can be utilised in many different ways. Some people develop this energy by developing the powers of the mind, or the powers of concentration or psychic powers, but all these are activities and not dhyan. You can awaken energies in the body but those who want to know what Reality is are not attracted or interested in such powers.

Dhyan is not an activity but a state of being, a dimension of being. It is a state of motionlessness where the ego is dissolved and you have let it be dissolved, where there is no experiencing but only a state of non-knowing, non-doing. Some have described it as the dark night of the soul. There is no tension at all in this state; the space within is being activated. It is a very delicate state that has to be looked after. You need to be alone then and need time to adjust to it.

In the dimension of dhyan you have let the activities of the mind come to an end. The conditioned energy of the mind is quiet. The unconditioned part of the energy, which is within and without, now begins to work. There is an awakening of the Perceptive Intelligence. There is a new freshness and ecstasy. Universal Consciousness has taken over. The mystics have called it the marriage of the individual and the cosmic consciousness and in India it is described as the union of Shiva and Shakti.

This is a new dimension and in this state it is difficult to function in society for some time but after a period of adjustment the individual can live in society, the difference will be that he will live in a state of egolessness. He does not want or expect anything from others or from society. There is a divine indifference, there is so much joy within that he needs nothing from outside or from anyone. Living is its own fulfilment.

There is no centre or circumference of the mind ever to come back. Since there is no centre or ego that desires things, there are no reactions of likes and dislikes but only a response to need. Nobody can make him unhappy though he will be affected by the unhappiness of others. There is a difference between suffering and sorrow. Suffering is a reaction of the ego, which is always fragmentary. In sorrow events are seen in the context of whole humanity and the response is to the totality of life.

One of the by-products of the state of dhyan is that fearlessness is awakened. Fearlessness is very different from bravery. Bravery is an attribute of the mind, which can be and has been cultivated by the state, religion and family for their own purpose, but it is an attribute that can also be lost. Once fearlessness is awakened it can never be extinguished, fear no longer enters the mind. Fearlessness is awakened when man has faith either in his own understanding or has faith in the Universal Intelligence.

The mind obtains knowledge by grasping ideas. If this knowledge is not lived it becomes a burden. But if it is lived in relationship then the knowledge gets converted into understanding. Knowledge can be forgotten but not understanding. Nothing is as sacred as your own understanding. You should start walking in the light of your understanding no matter how small it may be. Faith in one’s own understanding awakens fearlessness and it brings about choiceless action.

-Vimala Thakar

This post was first seen at:  http://www.ul.ie/~sextonb/vt/Observation.htm

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March 31, 2013 · 1:45 pm

The Explosion Within Your Being – Osho

What is the relationship between enlightenment and the spring of life? Is enlightenment the spring of life?

One basic thing has always to be remembered: not to get involved in questions of intellect. They are pseudo questions; they don’t belong to your experience. Mind is tremendously capable of creating questions out of words.

But any question that is created by the mind, out of words, not out of experience, is an exercise in utter futility. You don’t know what enlightenment is as an experience, you don’t know what the spring of life is as an experience. The question is purely intellectual. It can lead to a great philosophical discussion, but it will not lead to any understanding or any transformation.

Intellect is one of the barriers to reach to the sources of existence. It does not allow you to ask the authentic question. It goes on giving you questions which only appear as questions, but they are not your quest. Of course in a dictionary, enlightenment will mean one thing and spring of life will mean something else.

But here we are not discussing linguistics. And the people who have been writing dictionaries, analyzing language and grammar, are not the people of the path. So the first thing: always remember whether the question is arising from some experiential source or not. If it is not arising from experience, then it is not worth discussing.

Carol, a newlywed, brags that her Romeo is a model husband. We looked up the word ‘model’ in the dictionary, and found it means “a small imitation of the real thing.”

It has been heard that the pope died but was allowed to return to earth to speak to the cardinals. They gathered around him eagerly.

“What is he like?” they clamored. ”Is he very old, with a long, white beard, like in all the paintings? Tell us, describe him.”

“Well,” said the pope, “to start with, she is black.”

Knowing is one thing; knowing directly and knowing through books are so different. Sometimes they may appear to be similar, but they are not similar.

I cannot answer your question in terms of intellect, but I can answer it in terms of existential experience. The spring of life and enlightenment are not the same, although they are deeply related. The spring of life, when it becomes aware of itself, brings you to the experience of enlightenment. In other words, spring of life plus awareness is equal to enlightenment.

The spring of life is available to everybody; otherwise how can you live? Your life is continuously being nourished by the spring of life. The trees are nourished by the spring of life, the flowers blossom… but the juice comes from the spring of life. The whole existence is nothing but a manifestation of the springs of life.

But trees cannot become enlightened – neither can mountains or oceans; neither can animals or birds. They all have the same source of life that you have. But man has a prerogative, a privilege, that he can become aware of his spring of life. This awareness is not possible in any other form in existence. It is man’s grandeur, it is his dignity. Existence has given him the most precious opportunity. If he can create awareness, consciousness, more alertness, then his spring of life explodes into a new dimension. The dimension of life becomes the dimension of light, of knowing – knowing the deepest roots of our being in eternity. And the moment we know our roots are eternal; we know our flowers are also going to be eternal.

Enlightenment is a flowering.

The springs of life are seeds; enlightenment is a flower. The seed has come to its ultimate expression – there is no further to go. Springs of life are the lowest rung of the ladder, and enlightenment is the highest rung of the ladder, although the ladder is the same.

The change comes slowly, as you become more aware of who you are, of what life is – not intellectually, not by reading through scriptures, but by reading the only holy scripture: your own being, and bringing your potential to its realization. So that which was hidden in the seed becomes an explosion in the flower, in the fragrance. That fragrance is enlightenment. It comes from the sources of life, but it is not synonymous with it.

The seed is not synonymous with the flower, although the flower comes from the seed. The seed is the womb, but the flower – although connected with the seed, with the womb – is a totally new experience.

Awareness ordinarily is objective. You know others, you know the world, you know the faraway stars. The moment awareness turns inwards and starts knowing itself – in other words, the moment awareness is the object of its own knowing – enlightenment blossoms with all its beauty, with all its immortal glory.

Life is accepted by the scientist, but he is not yet capable of accepting the possibility of enlightenment. Life is accepted by the atheist, but he is also not capable of comprehending the ultimate explosion. Just as for millennia we had no idea that matter is made of small atoms, which are not visible to the eyes … they are so small that if you put one atom upon another atom, and then go on putting one on top of another, you will need one hundred thousand atoms, and then they will be as thick as a human hair. Such a small atom, one hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair, when it explodes, releases so much energy that a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki disappears within seconds – evaporates.

I have seen a picture sent by a friend from Japan … just looking at the picture, one feels so sad about humanity, so hopeless. The picture is of a small girl, maybe nine years old. She is going from the ground floor to the first story with her bag and books – perhaps to do her homework before she goes to sleep. She is just in the middle of the staircase when the atom bomb falls on Hiroshima. Just a small atom exploding creates so much energy … you can use it for destruction or you can use it for some creative purpose. Right now the scientists say we have come so far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki – our new nuclear weapons are so great in their energy – that the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like children’s toys.

If matter, in its smallest particle, contains so much energy, can you conceive how much energy may be available in the living cell of human beings?

Enlightenment is the explosion of a living cell. Certainly it is not destructive at all, but it transforms the whole man. In that way, it is destructive. It destroys the old man, it destroys the night, it destroys all that was constituting your personality: your jealousy, your anger, your hate, your lust, your greed – all that is simply finished in a single moment. And the same energy that was involved in jealousy, hate, greed, ambition, and a thousand and one desires, is changed into totally new forms of energy: love, silence, peace, compassion, wisdom – all that is the basic search of life itself.

Life in itself is dormant, it is fast asleep. Enlightenment is absolutely awake. But it is the same energy that was asleep that becomes awake. So they are not synonymous, but they are two extremes of the same energy.

But this, if taken as an intellectual understanding, is not going to help you in any way. It has to become your own experience.

You have to see that light.

You have to see that explosion within your own being.

You have to see the darkness disappearing. You have to see the new dawn of a new life – a life of grace and gratitude, a life of beauty and blessings.

Chandaram, you have to remember, it is very easy to ask questions as mind gymnastics. I am not interested in mind gymnastics because it leads you nowhere; you remain stuck where you are. You only become more burdened with knowledge – knowledge which is meaningless because it is not part of your own experience.

Rabbi Bierstein was asking his congregation to donate money to help build a new synagogue.

Suddenly, the town prostitute stood and shouted, “Praise the Lord. I repent. I will give two thousand dollars right now.”

“Well, as much as we need funds, I am afraid I cannot accept tainted money,” said Bierstein.

“Take it, Rabbi,” shouted a man from the back, “after all, it is our money anyway!”

Now, what are these guys doing in a synagogue? Just a formality. They are visiting prostitutes. The prostitute is more authentic. Perhaps the money also belongs to the Rabbi; that’s why the man is saying, “It is our money anyway.”

Mind has been befooling man for centuries.

After holding mass in Warsaw Cathedral, the pope was giving words of encouragement to a group of devout Poles. One of them asked, “Your Holiness, Poles are such devout Catholics, why was Christ not born in Poland?”

“Don’t you understand,” said the pope, “that for such a birth, there had to be three wise men and a virgin?”

And where can you find three wise men and a virgin in Poland? You must know the story of Jesus, that he is born out of a virgin, and three wise men come from the East to pay him respect. They are the first to recognize in the small child the possibility of a future enlightened being. They recognized in the seed, the flower.

I recognize in you the seed and the potential of the flower. But if you go on thinking intellectually, you will become a philosopher, a theologian; you will never become a mystic. And unless you become a mystic, you have wasted your life. Such a great opportunity, where you can grow to your greatest height of consciousness, is being wasted in unconscious trivia.

Even if you think about something great, it is only a thought, it never becomes an actual reality in your being.

I would like you to be more existential. I am not an existentialist because that is again falling into the same trap. Existentialist philosophers are not enlightened people. Neither Jean-Paul Sartre is enlightened nor Jaspers, nor Martin Heidegger, nor Marcel, nor Soren Kierkegaard; they are philosophers of existence, they think about existence.

I want you not to be existentialist thinkers; I want you to be existential experiencers. That difference is so great, and makes all the difference – because Jean-Paul Sartre, or Jaspers or other existentialist philosophers live in anguish, in anxiety, in boredom, in despair. They even think that perhaps suicide is the only way out of this mess. These people are not to be categorized with Gautam Buddha or Chuang Tzu or Baal Shem. These people are thinking about existence, just as old philosophers were thinking about God; only the object of thinking has changed, but thinking continues, and thinking can only lead you into a desert.

It is only the experience which leads your life river towards the ultimate merger with the ocean, with the universe, with the life of full awareness. You come back home. You had left the home unconscious, you come back home with consciousness. The circle is complete. Your life has come to fulfillment and contentment. This is the only benediction and this is the only authentic religious path.

-Osho

From The New Dawn, Chapter 16

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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March 23, 2013 · 4:10 pm

The Only Gift to Me: Your Enlightenment – Osho

If I look at my death, or your death, one thing I could never forgive myself for is to miss you. I use to think: if life has a purpose, you are the purpose – And if there is a destiny, you are my destiny. Now I see things a little differently. The most beautiful gift my life can give to you is not to worship you or help your work on this earth. It is not even to love you. Out of your compassion, as I understand it, the most beautiful gift my life can give to you is my own enlightenment. Please, Osho, give me a technique to prepare my meditation.

Raso, the way your understanding has been growing is perfectly the right way and the right direction. The only thing you should think of is enlightenment. Yes, that is the only gift you can give to me: your enlightenment. Everything else is trivia. So your conclusion has my absolute, categorical approval.

Once you are committed, once you have decided wholeheartedly that enlightenment is the only purpose of being here in the world, of being alive, then a single pointed awareness – just like an arrow moving towards its target – begins in you.

You are asking for the right meditation. Meditation is a beautiful word; hiding behind it is a very dangerous reality. The dangerous reality is: if you want to be deeply in meditation, you will have to pass through almost a death – the death of the old, the death of all that you used to be, a discontinuity with the past – and a rebirth.

The place where your meditation is going to descend is the place occupied by your mind and your past. So the first and primary work is to clean your interior being of all thoughts. There is no question of choosing to keep the good thoughts in and to throw the bad thoughts out. For a meditator, all thoughts are simply junk; there is no question of good and bad. They all occupy the space inside you, and because of their occupation, your inner being cannot become absolutely silent. So good thoughts are as bad as bad thoughts; don’t make any discrimination between them. Throw the baby out with the bath water!

Meditation needs absolute quiet, a silence so deep that nothing stirs within you. Once you understand exactly what meditation means, it is not difficult to attain it. It is our birthright; we are absolutely capable of having it. But you cannot have both: the mind and meditation.

Mind is a disturbance.

Mind is nothing but a normal madness.

You have to go beyond the mind into a space where no thought has ever entered, where no imagination functions, where no dream arises, where you simply are – just a nobody.

It is more an understanding than a discipline. It is not that you have to do much; on the contrary, you don’t have to do anything except clearly understand what meditation is. That very understanding will stop the functioning of the mind. That understanding is almost like a master before whom the servants stop quarreling with each other, or even talking with each other; suddenly the master enters the house and there is silence. All the servants start being busy – at least looking like they are busy. Just a moment before, they were all quarreling and fighting and discussing, and nobody was doing anything.

Understanding what meditation is, is inviting the master in. Mind is a servant. The moment the master comes in with all its silence, with all its joy, suddenly the mind falls into absolute silence.

Once you have achieved a meditative space, enlightenment is only a question of time. You cannot force it. You have to be just a waiting, an intense waiting, with a great longing – almost like thirst, hunger, not a word …. It is like the experience of people who have sometimes got lost in a desert. At first, thirst is a word in their mind: “I am feeling thirsty and I am looking for water.” But as time goes on, and there is no sign of any oasis – and as far as the eyes can see, there is no possibility of finding water – the thirst goes on spreading all over the body.

From the mind, from just a word, ‘thirst’, it starts spreading to every cell and fiber of the body. Now it is no longer a word, it is an actual experience. Your every cell – and there are seven million cells in the body – is thirsty. Those cells don’t know words, they don’t know language, but they know that they need water; otherwise life is going to be finished.

In meditation, the longing becomes just a thirst for enlightenment and a patient awaiting, because it is such a great phenomenon and you are so tiny. Your hands cannot reach it; it is not within your reach. It will come and overwhelm you but you cannot do anything to bring it down to you. You are too small; your energies are too small. But whenever you are really waiting with patience and longing and passion, it comes. In the right moment, it comes. It has always come.

You are asking what meditation will be helpful to you. Raso, all meditations … hundreds of techniques are available, but the essence of all those techniques is the same, just their forms differ. And the essence is contained in the meditation vipassana.

That is the meditation that has made more people in the world enlightened than any other, because it is the very essence. All other meditations have the same essence, but in different forms; something nonessential is also joined with them. But vipassana is pure essence. You cannot drop anything out of it and you cannot add anything to improve it.

Vipassana is such a simple thing that even a small child can do it. In fact, the smallest child can do it better than you, because he is not yet filled with the garbage of the mind; he is still clean and innocent.

Raso, I would suggest vipassana as the technique for you. Vipassana can be done in three ways – you can choose which one suits you the best.

The first is: Awareness of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing. You are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert of the movements of your body.

While eating, be alert of the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert of the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it …. Just be alert. It should not go on happening in an unconscious state.

And the same about your mind: whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness – don’t get involved, don’t get identified, don’t evaluate what is good, what is bad; that is not part of your meditation. Your meditation has to be choiceless awareness.

You will be able one day even to see very subtle moods: how sadness settles in you just like the night is slowly, slowly settling around the world, how suddenly a small thing makes you joyous.

Just be a witness. Don’t think, “I am sad.” Just know, “There is sadness around me, there is joy around me. I am confronting a certain emotion or a certain mood.” But you are always far away: a watcher on the hills and everything else is going on in the valley. This is one of the ways vipassana can be done.

And for a woman, my feeling is that it is the easiest, because a woman is more alert of her body than a man. It is just her nature. She is more conscious of how she looks, she is more conscious of how she moves, she is more conscious of how she sits; she is always conscious of being graceful. And it is not only a conditioning; it is something natural and biological.

Mothers who have experienced having at least two or three children, start feeling after a certain time whether they are carrying a boy or girl in their womb. The boy starts playing football; he starts kicking here and there, he starts making himself felt – he announces that he is here. The girl remains silent and relaxed; she does not play football, she does not kick, she does not announce. She remains as quiet as possible, as relaxed as possible.

So it is not a question of conditioning, because even in the womb you can see the difference between the boy and the girl. The boy is hectic; he cannot sit in one place. He is all over the place. He wants to do everything, he wants to know everything. The girl behaves in a totally different way.

That’s why I say, Raso, it will be easier for you to take vipassana in this first form.

The second form is breathing, becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the second method is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling … And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother’s life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life’s source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy, the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single technique.

In the first, you have to be aware of the body, you have to be aware of the mind, you have to be aware of your emotions, moods. So it has three steps. The second sort has a single step: just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heart becomes silent, the moods disappear.

And the third is to be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme – the other polarity from the belly – feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out …  breath going in, breath going out ….

That too is possible. It is easier for men than for women. The woman is more aware of the belly. Most men don’t even breathe as deep as the belly. Their chest rises up and falls down, because a wrong kind of athletics prevails over the world. Certainly it gives a more beautiful form to the body if your chest is high and your belly is almost non-existent.

Man has chosen to breathe only up to the chest, so the chest becomes bigger and bigger and the belly shrinks down. That appears to him to be more athletic. Around the world, except in Japan, all athletes and teachers of athletes emphasize breathing by filling your lungs, expanding your chest, and pulling the belly in. The ideal is the lion whose chest is big and whose belly is very small. So be like a lion; that has become the rule of athletic gymnasts and the people who have been working with the body.

Japan is the only exception, where they don’t care that the chest should be broad and the belly should be pulled in. It needs a certain discipline to pull the belly in; it is not natural. Japan has chosen the natural way; hence you will be surprised to see a Japanese statue of Buddha. That is the way you can immediately discriminate whether the statue is Indian or Japanese. The Indian statues of Gautam Buddha have a very athletic body: the belly is very small and the chest is very broad. But the Japanese Buddha is totally different; his chest is almost silent, because he breathes from the belly, but his belly is bigger. It doesn’t look very good because the idea prevalent in the world is the other way round, and it is so old. But breathing from the belly is more natural, more relaxed.

In the night it happens when you sleep: you don’t breathe from the chest, you breathe from the belly. That’s why the night is such a relaxed experience. After your sleep, in the morning you feel so fresh, so young, because the whole night you were breathing naturally … you were in Japan!

These are the two points: if you are afraid that breathing from the belly and being attentive to its rising and falling will destroy your athletic form … men may be more interested in that athletic form. Then for them it is easier to watch near the nostrils where the breath enters. Watch, and when the breath goes out, watch.

These are the three forms. Any one will do. And if you want to do two forms together, you can do two forms together; then the effort will become more intense. If you want to do all three forms together, you can do all three forms together. Then the process will be quicker. But it all depends on you, whatever feels easy.

Remember: easy is right.

As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of “I.” Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody’s life – enlightenment.

It comes … it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old man is dead and the new man has arrived.

Big Chief Sitting Bull had been constipated for many moons. So he sent his favorite squaw to the medicine man for help. The medicine man gave the squaw three pills and told her to give them to the chief, and then report back to him the next morning.

The next morning the squaw came back with the message, “Big chief no shit.” So the medicine man told her to double the dose.

The next day, she came back with the message, “Big Chief no shit.” So again he told her to double the dose.

Again she came back with the same message. This went on for a week, and finally the medicine man told the squaw to give Sitting Bull the whole box.

The next morning, she came back with a very sad expression. “What is wrong, my child?” asked the medicine man. The little squaw looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Big Shit, no chief!”

One day it will happen to you, and that will be a great moment. That’s what I am calling the right moment.

-Osho

From The New Dawn, Chapter 16

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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March 7, 2013 · 9:23 am

The Art of Watching – Osho

For the last four days I have been taking part in the Zazen group. When anger arises, it is so difficult for me to watch this feeling instead of throwing this anger on others. Would you please speak about the art of watching?

Everything that I have been saying to you consists of the art of watching – from different dimensions, from different aspects, from different angles. My whole teaching can be reduced to a single word – watching.

That is the only thing in you which is not part of the mind. That is the only thing in you which does not belong to you, but belongs to existence itself. For example, I can watch my hand; that means I am not the hand. Whatever you can watch you are not. This is a simple arithmetic. The watcher is bound to be separate from the object that he is watching.

You can watch your body from outside, and from inside too. You can close your eyes and you can watch your body from the inside. It will be dark, and it will not be so visible and so clear, but still you can feel many things. You can hear the heart beating. If you are really very silent you can even hear the sound of your blood running. You are not the body.

You can watch your mind. All its thoughts, howsoever fine, are available to your watching. You can see the subtlest expression of the mind. That makes one thing clear – that you are not the mind either. It is a little more difficult, but not impossible, to watch your feelings – what the poets call the heart; your emotions, your moods – which are the subtlest things in your personality. A little sadness, a little joy, or perhaps nothing but an indifference … But even indifference is a certain attitude. Watching goes on becoming more and more deep.

Beyond your moods there is nothing to watch, but only silence. In that silence a great miracle happens. The energy that has been watching turns upon itself. Hence many old religions have used as a symbol the snake holding its own tail in its mouth. It is a circle … the mouth and the tail. It has been used in a very ancient school in Tibet, and Madame Blavatsky brought it from there and it became a symbol for the Theosophical movement.

I have met many Theosophists. In the city where I used to live there was a Theosophical lodge; it was one of their big centers. And just before the lodge was the snake taking his tail in his mouth.

The president, who had invited me to speak in their lodge, was taking me inside the lodge. I asked him, “Do you know the meaning of this snake?”

He said, “I have once or twice been puzzled myself – what is the meaning of this snake? And I have been asking all our Theosophist leaders – president of the world society, secretary of the world society – but nobody seems to know the meaning of it. And it is there on all the lodges. It seems everybody has forgotten the meaning.”

I said, “If you have forgotten the meaning of this simple symbol, then you have forgotten everything about theology, theosophy, or whatever name you give to it. You have forgotten everything about religion, because this snake represents the ultimate experience of watching. When the energy of watching, just like a snake, turns back to the source, creating a circle, one knows oneself, there is nothing else to know. That’s what Socrates was saying to his disciples: ‘Know thyself, because without knowing thyself you cannot be thyself.’”

Unconscious, you simply think you are. But you don’t know who you are, what you are, why you are. Your whole life is lived in unconsciousness.

Mrs. Pomeroy’s maid became so sick one afternoon that Mrs. Pomeroy said to her, “Please, let me put you in my bed until I can get our family doctor here to examine you.”

When the physician arrived, Mrs. Pomeroy showed him into the bedroom, then left him alone to examine the maid. “Doctor, I am not sick at all,” confessed the maid, “I am faking it. That old tightwad owes me three months back salary, and I am not getting out of her bed until she pays me.”

The doctor’s face suddenly brightened. “Hell,” he said, “she owes me for my past ten visits here.” He then popped a thermometer into his mouth and said to the maid, “Move over.”

But this is our whole life … almost living in a state of sleep.

When a sudden storm blew up at sea, a young woman leaning against the ship’s rail lost her balance and was thrown overboard. Immediately another figure plunged into the waves beside her, and held her up until a lifeboat rescued them.

To everyone’s astonishment, the hero was the oldest man on the voyage, ninety-two years old. That night a party was given in honor of his bravery. “Speech, speech!” cried the other passengers.

The old gentleman rose slowly and looked around at the enthusiastic gathering. “There is just one thing I would like to know,” he said. “Who the hell pushed me?”

This game goes on. Our life is really ridiculous, and the only way to make it sane and intelligent is the way of creating a watcher in you. Then whether you are awake or asleep the watcher remains inside you, just like a small flame, continuously burning. It watches your sleep, it watches your dreams; it watches everything. Finally it watches your death too.

And because it watches your death, it means you are not dying. Only that which was not you is dying. The flame has become your life source, and the center simply moves on into another form, into another life. And this flame cannot be extinguished. It is immortality itself. The experience of this flame is the experience of enlightenment. With this experience, all the fears of life disappear.

What remains is pure joy, and a tremendous gratitude towards existence. I call this gratitude the only prayer … no words, but without words a deep feeling of gratefulness: “So much has been given to me which I don’t deserve, which I have not earned, of which I am not worthy. Life goes on giving to me out of its abundance, not because I need it, I deserve it, but because life has so much to give. It is overflowing.”

The energy of existence is so much, uncontainable. So those who are not closed, who are open, they become filled with all kinds of flowers, and all kinds of fragrances, and all kinds of riches, and all kinds of mysteries, and all kinds of secrets.

The golden key is watching. And there is nothing much to learn in it. It is a very simple thing. You cannot imagine anything more simple which can open the doors of the whole existence for you.

-Osho

From The New Dawn, Chapter 25

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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