Riding on a Miracle – Osho

Man has the greatest potential on the earth, in existence. If you are lacking something, it means you are lacking a great dream of surpassing yourself. You have become satisfied with the mundane. You have started creeping on the earth, crawling on the earth. You don’t look upward. There is a great beyond calling you forth! There is a great beyond challenging you. And only that man is truly a man who accepts the challenge of the beyond. All others are only men in name, in form, but not really men.

Be a man: accept the challenge of the unknown, of the beyond. Let it become a great dream in your being. That which you appear to be is only a seed. The seed has to fall into the soil, and has to die, and has to become a tree, and has to bloom.

If you cut the seed, you will not find flowers there. That’s where science is missing the whole point – it goes on cutting the seed. It says, “You say this seed will bring great flowering? We will cut and dissect the seed and see.” And they cut and dissect the seed, and they have the methodology to dissect the seed, but no flower is found. So they say there is no flower. That’s how they have come to the conclusion that there is no God in existence, that there is no soul, that there is no beyond, that life is just an accident and there is no destiny to life.

There is a famous saying of the Zen Master, Ikkyu.

“If you break open the cherry tree, where are the blossoms? But in springtime how they bloom!”

Wait for the springtime. If you want to see, then wait for the springtime. And then you will find a buddha, not a man; and you will find a Jesus, not a man; and you will find a Krishna, not a man. Then you will find the flower, and the seed is no more found there; the seed has disappeared, its function fulfilled. It was protecting something of immense value, it was carrying a blueprint; now it is no more needed. The soil has been found, the spring has arrived, and the seed was courageous enough to die.

Man’s ego is nothing but a seed. It is very protective. People ask me, “If ego is such a barrier toward God, then why in the first place does ego exist? If mind is such a barrier to God, then why does mind exist at all?” It exists to protect you, just as the hard shell of the seed exists to protect the potential. The potential is very soft; it will be destroyed if the hard shell is not around it. The hard shell is not the enemy. The hard shell will be the enemy only if the spring has come, and the soil has been found, and the seed rejects death. If the hard shell says, “Now, I will go on protecting you, even against the spring. I will protect you against this soil,” then there is going to be trouble. That’s where the problem arises.

The ego in itself is not a problem. The child needs it, otherwise the child will be very unprotected. He will not know how to survive in this world of struggle. He will not know how to protect himself against so many hazards. He is so soft, tender, he will die before he becomes a buddha. The ego helps him. The ego is a kind of armor, and so is the mind – it protects him.

It is not your enemy. It is the enemy only when the moment has come and you are ready to move into meditation – you have found a Master, you have found a method and you are ready – but the mind says, “No, I cannot die. Just think of all the blessings that I have showered upon you. Just think of all the benefits that I have given you. Just think of all that I have done for you! Feel grateful, and don’t try to destroy me.” Then the problem arises: then the protector becomes destructive. Then you have to fight against your own mind, you have to fight against your own ego, you have to fight against your own armor because the armor is no more needed. You have to release your inner potential – spring has come. So when spring has come, only then is it a problem; otherwise it is not a problem, it is a help. The helpful can become a hindrance. When its time is gone, it has to go.

Dream of the impossible. Dream of surpassing yourself. Dream of nirvana, dream of moksha, dream of the kingdom of God; only then will you start working and moving toward it, and only then – with that dream – will your feet have the quality of dance.

Without the dream you will become dull. That’s why people are dragging. How can they dance? For what? Just to go every day to the office and work and come back home and quarrel with the wife and listen to all the complaints of the children? And next day the same rut starts again – year in, year out. What is there to dance about? In fact, it is a miracle how man goes on living, why he does not commit suicide. What does he live for?

There is nothing that is awaiting him, there is nothing that he can look up to. There is no star in the night; it is all darkness. It is a miracle how man goes on living, how he manages. The people who commit suicide seem to be more logical. The people who go on living seem to be very illogical. Miserable, bored, dragging – but they go on living. But it shows something. It shows one thing: that your innermost being knows that the possibility is there. Any day you may become alert about the potential, about the possible. Any day, the dream will possess you. And then there will be meaning and there will be dance.

“Religion is art,” said William Blake. “Religion is art, not money.” This is a very, very pregnant statement. And only a man like William Blake could have made it. He is a mystic poet.

What is art? “Art is a way,” he says, “of doing something”: painting, poetry, dancing, sculpture, music, pottery, weaving. “Art is a way of doing something.” He does not say anything about creating oneself. But that is exactly what religion is. It is not painting, it is not poetry, it is not sculpture, it is not music, but something on the same lines, something beyond – creating oneself. Religion is a way of doing something also – living, loving, seeing, being.

All art is “making.” It is helping God to create. That’s why I call the man who said to God, “Can I help?” the religious man. If you want to know the creator you will have to become a creator in some measure on your own. Poetry may not be religion proper but it points in the right direction. When a poet is really in a creative state, he knows something of religion – a faraway distant music – because when he is in a creative state, he is no more himself. He participates – although in a very small measure, but he participates in God. Just a drop of divinity enters into him. That’s why great poets have always said, “When we write poetry, we are not the creators of it. We become possessed. Some unknown energy enters, sings, dances in us. We don’t know what it is.” When a painter is lost into his painting, he is utterly lost into his painting, his ego disappears. Maybe only for moments, but in those egoless moments God paints through him.

If you participate in God, God participates in you. Art is an unconscious form of religion. Religion is conscious art. Art is as if you are religious in a dream, but it is pointing in the right direction. The artist is the nearest to the religious. But it is not understood that way. You don’t think of a poet as religious or a painter as religious, on the contrary, if somebody fasts, tortures his body, makes his being ugly, you start thinking that he is religious. He is simply being violent with himself. He is just suicidal, he is neurotic, and you think he is religious.

Neurotics become mahatmas; they are respected and worshipped as saints. They are not religious at all. The difference between a so-called saint and a murderer is not much. The murderer murders somebody else, and your so-called saint murders himself. But both do the same thing: both are violent, both are destructive. And whenever you are destructive you are farthest from God because God is creativity. To me, aesthetics is the closest neighbor of religiousness, not ethics.

Lenin is reported to have said, “Ethics will be the aesthetics of the future.” I say: No, just the contrary; aesthetics will be the ethics of the future. Beauty is going to be the truth of the future because beauty can be created. And a beautiful person, who loves beauty, who lives beauty, who creates beauty is moral – and with no effort. His morality is not a cultivated morality; it is just his aesthetic sense that makes him moral. He cannot kill because he cannot think of killing as being beautiful. He cannot cheat, he cannot be dishonest because all these things make him feel ugly. His criterion is beauty. And I agree with William Blake that religion is art.

All art is making. All making necessitates a kind of faith. You see what is not there, and work in such a way that what was invisible, intangible, inaudible is given shape in time and space. What is produced will be apparent to the senses – a painting, a poem, or a garden. Art is not to be confused, however, with the object it produces. It is a beautiful distinction to be remembered. It will help you immensely to understand religion.

Art is not a painting or a piece of sculpture. What art dealers buy and sell are works of art, not art itself. Works of art are a form of property. Just as art is not the same thing as works of art, so religion is not to be confused with the objects and effects it produces – such as dogmas, doctrines, Bibles, Korans, Gitas, churches, temples, cathedrals. These are works of art. You can call them works of the art of religion, but religion should not be confused with them.

A church is a church. It may be beautiful, but it is not religion in itself. It is a by-product, a spin-off. A Koran is a beautiful poem, but as a work of art, a spin-off. Something happened in Mohammed’s heart – that was religion, but that remains invisible. Because something stirred in his soul, he started singing, he went into a mad expression. That’s exactly what he thought when for the first time alone on the mountains he started feeling the presence of God. He became so frightened, so afraid, he thought he had either gone mad or become a poet.

He rushed home. He was in a feverish state, trembling. His wife thought he had suddenly got a high fever. She asked, “What has happened to you?” And he said, “Either I have gone mad or I have become a poet. Something tremendously great is happening, and I don’t know what it is or from where it is coming. And I am so unworthy of it . . . I cannot believe my own eyes, and I cannot believe my own heart – what I am feeling. It is so immensely beautiful, so great, so vast, I am incapable of conceiving it.” That was religion.

A few days fever, and Mohammed cooled down and settled into his new state, his ecstasy, his samadhi. And then the flow started: the beautiful Koran was born. But the Koran is a by-product, so is the Gita, so is the Dhammapada. Remember always that no scripture contains religion – cannot contain it. All scriptures are by-products of religion – shadows, footprints, left on the banks of time. But footprints are footprints.

When Buddha walks on a sea beach, naturally, he will leave footprints, but those footprints are not Buddha himself, those footprints are beautiful because they belong to Buddha. Bow down to them! but don’t forget they are just by-products. And you have to be a buddha, not just the worshipper of a footprint .

Works of art are a form of property, that’s why you can sell them, purchase them; but you cannot sell art and you cannot purchase art. If you ask Pablo Picasso to sell you his art, it will be impossible. You may be ready to pay any fantastic price for it, but he cannot sell it. He can sell his paintings, but he cannot sell his art. There is no way of selling it because it is not a thing. It remains always invisible. Only effects become visible.

God remains invisible, only in the world does he becomes visible. You are invisible, only the body is visible. That’s why Blake says religion is not money. He is right. He means religion is not property. Religion is not like that, religion is like love – you cannot buy it, sell it, or keep it in a bank. You cannot possess it; on the contrary, it possesses you.

The work of art can be possessed; it is property, it is dead. You can learn the Koran and the Gita and the Bible, but you cannot learn religion. You have to live it – there is no way of learning it. You have to be possessed by God; you have to become available to God. You have to open up your being. You have to withdraw. You have to become empty so that God can enter and possess you totally. In that very possession, you have transcended humanity. You are no more a human being, you are a god, a Christ, a buddha.

These sutras are the secrets to help you release this Buddhahood that you are carrying as a blueprint, that you are carrying in a seed form – to help it bloom, to help it become a great tree with great foliage and many flowers.

The sutras.

Master Lu-tsu said:

Release is in the eye . . .

This potential that I have been talking to you about, this Buddhahood, this Christ-consciousness or Krishna-consciousness, or whatever you wish to call it, is in the third eye. Just between your two physical eyes there is an empty space, and that empty space is the seed of your being a god. Unless that third eye starts functioning, your potential will not be released.

Hence,

Master Lu-tsu said:

Release is in the eye . . .

Release means nirvana, moksha, deliverance, freedom. Release means enlightenment. If your third eye can start functioning . . . It is dormant, non-functioning; your energy has not reached up to it. It is a mechanism – perfect but without any energy reaching it. Your energy is flowing downward into your sexuality, into your greed, into your anger, into your worldly affairs – your energy is moving downward and outward. You don’t have enough energy to bring to the third-eye center. Unless you have an abundance of energy, it will not reach the third eye.

You have to become a reservoir of energy. And when you become a reservoir and energy is not wasted, its level starts going higher and higher every day. One day it reaches the third eye, and the moment the energy touches the third eye, immediately, instantly, it starts functioning. And then you know, and then you see for the first time. Then you have the vision of life – what it is. And only through the third eye will you be able to know God, reality, that which is.

Through the two physical eyes you know the world. And because your eyes are two, the world is divided, it is dual. Your two eyes make the world divided. The world in itself is not divided, but your way of seeing it divides it. It is like a ray passing through a prism. The ray is one; the moment it passes through a prism, it becomes seven; it is broken up into seven colors. That is how the rainbow is created: sunrays passing through drops of water hanging in the clouds. Those hanging drops function as prisms, and the sunrays passing through them are immediately split into seven colors.

Your energy moves through your two eyes and the whole world becomes dual. Then you see day and night as opposite, life and death as opposite, love and hate as opposite, matter and consciousness as opposite. Your two eyes make all things dual and polar. And because of these two eyes you cannot see the oneness of existence. Unless your two eyes become one eye, you will never know the indivisible, the universal.

The book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, says: energy going outward becomes dual; if you bring it backward it becomes again one – it loses duality, it becomes non-dual. When energy moves back from the two eyes, it starts falling into the original source.

If you mix the seven colors of the rainbow into one, it becomes white, it becomes one color. The method is the same. Energy moving outward passes through two eyes and the whole existence becomes dual. Energy moving backward passes through two eyes and moves into one eye, the third eye – which is just exactly in between the two – and suddenly all is one. This is samadhi: you are one with God.

Release is in the eye . . .

The seed-blossoms of the human body must be concentrated upward in the empty space.

Right now it is an empty space. But once energy starts moving inward, it becomes full of light.

Immortality is contained in this and also the overcoming of the world.

And the moment you have reached the one point in your being – Jesus says, “When your two eyes become one, you have entered the kingdom of God.” You know immortality because now you know life and death are not opposite but two wings of the same bird. Death does not destroy life but helps it to renew itself again. Death is not the enemy but the friend. It simply helps life to change its garments because they have become rotten; they have been used and they cannot be used anymore. It simply helps you to change the house, it does not end you. It only gives you a new beginning, a fresh lease of energy.

Then darkness and light are not two. Then opposites disappear and they become complementaries. Then the whole existence becomes a dance between the masculine energy and the feminine energy. Then it is an orgasmic dance. Then both are one, meeting, melting into each other. The conflict disappears. And when you see the whole existence without any conflict, certainly, great joy arises. There is no death. Death, one sees only from the outside. You see somebody else dying, you have never seen yourself dying. Nobody has ever seen himself dying.

When Socrates was given poison, he was very enchanted. His disciples were crying and weeping, and he said, “Don’t weep. Soon I will be gone, and then you can weep to your heart’s content. Right now, see this great experiment that is happening to me. I am very intrigued by the idea of death – whether I am really going to die or not. Don’t miss this opportunity. Just sit around me and watch.”

A Master teaches through his life and also teaches through his death. A Master uses every opportunity – even his own death he will use to teach his disciples. Because he shouted and was very angry and said, “Stop crying and weeping and come close! Don’t miss this opportunity!” the disciples looked. And Socrates said, “Wait. The poison is being given to me. Now I will tell you what is happening to me inside, so you can become aware of something that you cannot see.” And then he said, “Up to my knees, my legs are dead. But as far as I am concerned, I am intact and as whole as I was before.”

Then he said, “My whole legs have gone dead – below the waist I cannot feel anything.” He asked a disciple to touch his feet, to pinch them, but he could not feel anything. He said, “I cannot feel them, so half of my body is dead, but I am as whole as ever. My inner feeling is not that I am half-dead and half-alive, I am as alive as ever! Half of the body is gone, but my being is untouched by it.”

And slowly, slowly his hands became dead, and his chest started sinking. And then he said the last words. He said, “My tongue will not be able to say any more words. It is getting numb. But the last thing that I want to tell you is this: that although almost ninety percent of my body is dead, I am a hundred percent alive. If it is an indication of something, it shows that even when the body is one hundred percent dead, I will be alive, because I have seen ninety percent of my body go, but I am as whole as before. So ten percent more will go . . . You cannot see what is happening to me inside, but I can see it.”

Socrates is not an ordinary philosopher as are the other Greek philosophers. Even his own disciples, Plato, Aristotle . . . Aristotle, in fact, is not a disciple but an enemy. He does not understand Socrates at all, and what he proposes is absolutely against Socrates.

Socrates is a mystic. His philosophy is just a method of inquiry – and a very penetrating inquiry. He will not even leave death aside; he inquired into death. To the very last moment he was true to his method of inquiry.

Death one sees only from the outside: you see other people dying. But to be alive is different: you can see it from the inside. To be alive is to feel pain and pleasure, to love and to fear. To be alive is to be able to create, to think of something which is not and make it happen. That’s why the creative person only knows the highest form of life because when you create you are at the optimum point of your energy. When you create you are part of God. How one can do it is a mystery. How one can exist is a mystery. Every effect must have a cause. That is what we call the law of causation – that is what we are taught. But I can see no cause for the effect which I am.

I wake up riding on a miracle. My reason serves me well, but with the mystery of my being it fails. My reason itself is a tool of this mystery, hence it cannot know it.

You have to look within. To see what life is, first you have to feel it from the interior. And the best way to feel your life is to be creative because then you are at your maximum. Ordinarily, people live at their minimum, and whatsoever people go on doing can be done at the minimum because those are just habits; those are just routine things your body has learned. They have been transferred from your consciousness to the robot part of your body which goes on functioning on its own – as, for example, once you have learned to drive. When you first learn, you are very alive, very alert, because there is danger. You have to be alert – you don’t know what is going to happen. You have to keep aware of so many things: the steering wheel, the road, the clutch, the gears, the accelerator, the brakes – so many things to be aware and alert about – and the traffic, and the people passing by, and the cars passing by. But once you have learned, your knowledge is transferred to the robot part of your body. Then you need not bother; you can talk to your friend, you can sing a song, you can smoke, you can listen to the radio, and your body goes on doing. You need not be alert – only exceptionally. If some accident is going to happen, you will wake up for a moment because the danger is so great and the danger is so unknown that the robot part cannot face it. It has not happened before; it is new.

Ordinary life becomes a mechanical routine, and you start living at the minimum. You never flare up to your maximum. In creativity you flare up. And that is going to be one of my messages to my sannyasins. Be creative, because to be creative is worship. To be creative is prayer, to be creative is meditation. And to be creative is to be close to God. There is no need to go to the Kaaba because God is here as much as in the Kaaba. There is no need to go to the Himalayas because God is everywhere equally available – but available only to those who live at their maximum, whose life flame is not a dull flame, who pour their whole energy into it. And that happens only through creativity.

So, to me, the definition of a sannyasin is not the definition of the old kind of saint, sitting there dull and dead. The definition of a sannyasin is to be creative. Dance, sing, create music, paint, sculpt, or whatsoever you feel like doing. Find out what is your innermost joy and do it! And doing means: bring it from the invisible to the visible. Doing means: make the dream exist on the earth. Let the dream become actual. Transform the potential into the actual. And that is the greatest joy there is. The real bliss is attained only when you are able to bring something from the unknown to the known, when you make, create, when you are able to transform a dream into reality, when you have helped God. When in a certain way, in your own way, you have made the world a little more beautiful, when you have enhanced its joy, then you are a sannyasin.

And to know this way, your inner life, will help you to know that you are deathless, because once you know who you are in your utter capacity, when your inner torch is burning from both ends together, at the optimum, then you will know there is no death. And at the optimum your third-eye center starts functioning – and only at the optimum. So don’t live life as a drag. Don’t live it as if it is a burden, a duty to be fulfilled, make it a dance, let it be a celebration.

Immortality is contained in this and also the overcoming of the world.

If you can allow your flame of life to reach the third eye, you will see there is no death. And you will suddenly see that you are no more attached to the world.

Now, the difference has to be remembered. The old sannyas, the so-called old religious way of life, has been teaching people to renounce the world. I don’t teach renunciation, I teach you to bring your life energy to the optimum. And once you have seen the true in your being, the world carries no meaning anymore. The higher has happened, the lower becomes insignificant. You need not renounce it; it has already dropped. You need not escape anywhere. You can live in the world, but you have overcome it. And remember, escaping and overcoming are two totally different things. The real sannyasin has to overcome the world, not renounce it.

The light is not in the body alone, nor is it only outside the body.

And once you have seen the light inside, then you will become aware that it is not only inside, it is also on the outside. It is not confined to you. Remember: darkness is individual, light is universal. Death is individual, life is universal. Misery is individual, bliss is universal. For misery to exist, you have to exist – you have to exist as separate. And for bliss to come into existence, you have to become part of the whole, in harmony with the whole.

The light is not in the body alone, nor is it only outside the body. Mountains and rivers and the great earth are lit by sun and moon; all that is this light.

Once you have seen it on the inside you will recognize it everywhere: in the moon, in the sun . . . All light is the same – inner and outer make no difference.

Therefore it is not only within the body. Understanding and clarity, perception and enlightenment, and all movements of the spirit are likewise this light . . .

It is the same light that you see in the moon, and that you see inside yourself in the third eye. Once you have seen that it is the same light, the inner and the outer are no longer distinct. The inner is the outer, the outer is the inner. That’s why the Zen Masters say that samsara is nirvana, the world – this very world – is enlightenment. This very body the Buddha, this very earth the paradise. That’s why when Buddha became enlightened, he said, “It is incredible, it is unbelievable that the moment I became enlightened, the whole existence became enlightened with me.”

Down the centuries Buddhist meditators have been meditating over it, “What does he mean? What does he want to say – ‘The moment I became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened?’ But how can it be? – because there are still so many unenlightened people. What can he mean?” The meditator himself thinks, “I am as yet unenlightened, so how has the whole existence become enlightened?” It has become enlightened for the Buddha because he has seen that the distinction between the inner and the outer was nothing but the ego – the small thin curtain of the ego. Once that curtain has fallen there is nothing inner, nothing outer.

So Buddha cannot say, “I have become enlightened.” He says, “The whole has become enlightened.” All the trees, and all the rivers, and all the mountains, and all the people, and all the animals, and all the planets – all have become enlightened because now he has no separate identity. He does not mean that you have become enlightened, he is simply saying, “I cannot say that I have become enlightened. I was in bondage, that much I can say. I was ignorant, that much I can say. I was in misery, that much I can say. But now, I am no more.”

Existence is blissful. Existence is full of light. And the inner and the outer light are the same – there is nothing inner, there is nothing outer. All distinctions disappear when the light enters into the third eye – the one eye, the single eye. All distinctions disappear. The rainbow again becomes a single ray of white light. […]

Understanding and clarity, perception and enlightenment, and all movements of the spirit are likewise this light; therefore it is not just something outside the body.

It is neither outside nor inside, it is everywhere – inside too, outside too. And it is the same light – the same light that you see shining on the greenery and the flower, and dancing on the lotus. It is the same light that becomes clarity inside – enlightenment, perception, understanding.

And remember, the Master says, understanding, not knowledge. The Master says, clarity, not answers. One simply becomes so clear that the questions disappear. Not that you attain to some answers, only you are so clear that the confusion is no more there, that’s all. It is absence of questions not presence of answers, hence it is called understanding, not knowledge.

Just the other day, Aniruddha also asked, “What is the difference between our knowledge and your knowledge? I don’t see any difference,” he says.

The difference is not in knowledge. He must have been thinking that I know more than he knows. Just the contrary is the case. I don’t know more than you know; in fact, you know and I have no knowledge. I am only clear – a clarity, an understanding, not knowledge. Here are many people who know more than me, and that is their problem. They will have to drop that knowledge.

I don’t know anything, there is only clarity.

When you ask me a question, it is not that I have an answer for it, but I just focus my clarity on it – try to understand – and whatsoever response comes out of the clarity, I give to you. It is not knowledge. It is just a capacity to see.

Knowledge makes people blind. Their eyes become so full of knowledge they cannot see. Even before you have asked the question they have the ready-made answer there. They are ready to answer it. They don’t listen to your question, they don’t listen to the questioner, they don’t listen to his being, they don’t look into him to see what he means, they have a ready-made answer. They are in a hurry to answer you – and they must prove the answer with arguments and scriptures, and they must give all kinds of support to it.

I have only a kind of understanding, a vision, a capacity to see. That’s why the Master says:

Understanding and clarity, perception and enlightenment . . .

It is not knowledge, It is just an utterly cloudless sky within.

The light-flower of heaven and earth fills all the thousand spaces. But also the light-flower of the individual body passes through heaven and covers the earth.

It is a light-flower, this whole existence. This is the experience of the mystics: that existence is made of nothing other than light. It is all light; light is the basic constituent of existence. And modern physics agrees with it. They call it electricity. “Light” is much too poetic a word for them, they have to drag it down to earth; it becomes “electricity.” But what they are saying is exactly the same.

Matter has disappeared from modern physics, matter is no more. At the deepest core of matter is nothing but electricity, electrons, electrical particles dancing, energy particles dancing, with no matter in them, no weight. This has been experienced by mystics down the centuries, unexceptionally; whether the mystic was born in India or in China or in Tibet makes no difference. This has been the most fundamental experience of all the mystics: that the existence is made of light and nothing else.

The Secret of the Golden Flower says, “This light, this flower of light, these petals of light fill all the spaces outside and also inside.”

Therefore, as soon as the light is circulating, heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, are all circulating with it at the same time.

The same thing that Buddha said is said in different words. The moment you see light circulating in you, you will be able to see the dawn of light all over. Stars moving, and mountains and rivers – all will be nothing but streams of light, a tremendous dance of light energy.

To concentrate the seed-flower of the human body above in the eyes, that is the great key to the human body. Children, take heed! If for a day you do not practice meditation, this light streams out, who knows whither? If you can meditate for a quarter of an hour, by it you can do away with the ten thousand eons and a thousand births. All methods end in quietness. This marvelous magic cannot be fathomed.

The Master Lu-tsu says only fifteen minutes in twenty-four hours will do. If you can sit silently for fifteen minutes, concentrated in the third eye, that will be enough to change your whole future. You will not need to be born into the body again. You will not need to be thrown into the world again. You have learned the lesson, you have become worthy of moving without the body and the limitation of the body. Your soul will be free, unentangled, without any bondage. And then there will be no death, no birth. You will be an eternal flowering of light in this infinite existence.

Only fifteen minutes? Yes, only fifteen minutes can do the miracle. But people are not even ready to give fifteen minutes . . . to quietness, to silence.

I have heard . . .

When Ignatius Loyola heard the news that an unfriendly man had been elected Pope, he was asked what he would do if the new head of the Church should order the Society of Jesus dissolved, the work in which Loyola had invested his whole life. He replied, “Fifteen minutes in prayer and all will be the same.”

An immensely significant reply.

An unfriendly Pope had come into power and there was every possibility that Loyola’s whole work would be dissolved. He had created a small society of mystics. The work was esoteric, and Christianity has always been against esoteric work, has always been afraid of the mystics because these are the dangerous people: they bring truth to the world, and once they bring truth to the world, people are no longer interested in rituals, impotent rituals. Who cares about the church then?

So Christianity has consistently been destroying all mystic schools so that nobody can go outside the church, so that nobody can have any other door to reach God, so that everybody has to come to the priest. Whenever the desire to seek and search for God arises, no alternatives are to be left. Because of this stupid idea, Christianity destroyed religion in the whole world, because there are different people and they need different types of schools, and they need different types of techniques. And those who are really sincere in their search have to find esoteric groups. They cannot become part of the formal religion – that is not enough for them; it is very lukewarm, it is very superficial.

In the West, real religion had to go underground because of the church. People have to create many false facades to hide behind. Alchemy was one of the facades. The real work was something else: the alchemist was trying to create around himself the idea that he was working to transform baser metal into gold. This was allowed. The church was very happy. If you are trying to turn baser metal into gold, it is perfectly okay, you can do it. If you succeed, the church will have more gold, that’s all; there was no fear about it. But this was just a facade, it was not real alchemy; it was just on the outside. Behind the curtain the real work was totally different: it was transforming the lower being into the higher being. It was exactly the secret of the golden flower: how to transform your sexuality, the baser metal, into spirituality, the gold.

But unnecessary trouble had to be taken, they had to make arrangements on the outside such that society remained convinced that their work was something to do with gold. And everybody is interested in gold. The church is very interested in gold, not in God.

Loyola was a great mystic. He had created the Society of Jesus. And a very antagonistic Pope was in power. Somebody said to him, “What will you do? What will happen now? The Society can be dissolved by the order of the Pope.”

Loyola said, “Fifteen minutes in prayer, and all will be the same. It will just take me fifteen minutes to go deep into meditation, that’s all. Because whenever I am there, nothing matters. Nothing matters at all.”

Master Lu-tsu says: Just fifteen minutes . . .

. . . by it you can do away with the ten thousand eons and a thousand births. All methods end in quietness.

Remember it. Whatsoever the method, the goal is the same: quietness, utter silence inside, thoughtlessness, only consciousness without any content.

This marvelous magic cannot be fathomed.

It is an unfathomable depth. When thoughts disappear and you are simply silent, then the silence is a bottomless abyss; it cannot be fathomed. The Pacific Ocean can be fathomed – it has a five-mile depth; but the Pacific Ocean inside you cannot be fathomed – it is infinite. You can go on digging and digging and diving deeper and deeper and you will not come to fathom it, you will not come to the bottom of it at all.

Only thoughts can be measured, thoughtlessness is immeasurable. Hence, thoughtlessness is another name for God. But remember, thoughtlessness should not be a kind of sleep because that is very ordinary. It happens every day: deep in sleep, when dreams disappear, you fall into that abyss. That’s why deep sleep is so rejuvenating, so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, new, reborn. But that is unconscious. Patanjali has said deep sleep and samadhi are very similar, with only one difference: in sleep you are unconscious, in samadhi you are conscious. But you go to the same space, the same unfathomable, magical space within you, where there is no thought, no desire, no vibration in your mind, all is quiet. All methods lead to it – Yoga, Tantra, Tao, Hassidism, Sufism – all methods lead to it from different angles; they have been devised for different people.

But when the practice is started, one must press on from the obvious to the profound, from the coarse to the fine.

In the beginning great effort is needed . . . one must press on from the obvious to the profound . . . What is obvious? – the obvious is your continuous process of thought. And what is profound? – just a state of no-thought. What is gross? – all contents of the mind are gross. And what is subtle? – a state of no-content is subtle. One must go pressing on. In the beginning, great effort will be needed. In the beginning, you have to be utterly committed to the work, only then does the blissful moment arise when meditation becomes effortless.

First, meditation has to be masculine energy. Only then, in the end, can it become feminine energy. That’s why my insistence is on dynamic methods in the beginning. Bring all your effort to the maximum. Put all that you have at stake, don’t hold anything back, and then, one day, you will be able to relax without effort. Just by closing your eyes you will be able to reach the third eye.

. . . when the practice is started, one must press on from the obvious to the profound, from the coarse to the fine. Everything depends on there being no interruption.

And make it a regular phenomenon.

The beginning and the end of the practice must be one. In between there are cooler and warmer moments, that goes without saying. But the goal must be to reach the vastness of heaven and the depths of the sea, so that all methods seem quite easy and taken for granted. Only then have we mastered it.

The real mastery is when no effort is needed, when all efforts can be dropped. The real mastery is when no method is needed, when all methods can be dropped. The real mastery is when meditation is no longer a thing to do but has become your very state. You live in it, you walk in it, you sit in it: “Sitting in Zen, walking in Zen.” You eat in it; you sleep in it. You are it– that moment also comes. But in the beginning one has to go with all one’s energy.

Remember, just as water evaporates at a hundred degrees heat – not at ninety-nine, not at ninety-nine point nine, but exactly at a hundred degrees – so whenever you put your total energy, one hundred degrees, at stake, immediately the baser metal turns into gold. Immediately the sexual energy has penetrated into the spiritual world. Immediately the energy that was going out has taken a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and the two eyes become one eye. And then all that is inner and all that is outer is enlightened.

Jesus has said, “Cleave the wood and you will find me. Strike the stone and I am there.”

This is the ultimate state: when you cleave the wood and you find God, and you strike the stone and you find God. Then you walk on God, in God, as God. Then you breathe God, then you eat God, you drink God, because all is God.

This ultimate experience is what Master Lu-tsu says is released. And it is in the third eye.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #9

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Podcast Episode: A Map from Mind to No-Mind

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: A Map from Mind to No-Mind.

click to play or download audio file:

A Map from Mind to No-Mind Podcast

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the territory being mapped is the distance between thinking and the silence on the other side of it.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece by Purushottama that traces that exact journey — the mechanics of moving from ordinary mind into no-mind, step by careful step.

Pip: Let’s start with the map itself.

A Map from Mind to No-Mind

Mara: The question this post is sitting with is a practical one: not whether no-mind is real, but how you actually get there — what the stages are, in order, with honest notes on where it gets hard.

Pip: The post lays out the sequence plainly, and here is the hinge of it: “We move from watching the objects of awareness — the thoughts of mind and the feelings of the heart — to seeing the watching itself.”

Mara: That shift is the crux. You stop being absorbed in what you’re watching and turn attention onto the act of watching — and that reorientation is what lets the objects quietly fade out.

Pip: It starts earlier, though. The first stage is just watching other people — the easiest available object. Then your own body, then your thoughts and moods. Each layer builds the watcher’s independence from whatever it’s watching.

Mara: And the post is specific about how to watch at that middle stage — thoughts and feelings require what it calls “indifferent watching, a watching without involvement, a watching without judging and also without analyzing.” That quality of watching is what earns the autonomy needed for the next move.

Pip: Which is the subtle one. Once the watching itself becomes the object, the original contents drift to the background and, without attention feeding them, begin to dissipate — until only seeing remains.

Mara: The post names that endpoint directly: “A seeing that is totally conscious because no energy is being lost in objects. This is no-mind.” And it’s careful to say this isn’t a one-time crossing — the map gets misplaced, the journey repeats, sometimes home is elusive, sometimes as present as the midday sun.

Pip: The companion pieces linked in the post — including Watching and also Forgetting the Content and The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow — fill out the surrounding territory, but this piece is the spine: a sequential, first-person account of the mechanics.

Mara: What strikes me is how the post holds both the precision of a map and the honesty that maps are not always at hand.

Pip: A map you occasionally lose is still a map.

Mara: The through-line here is attention itself — what it does when it turns back on itself, and what becomes possible in that turning.

Pip: Something worth sitting with — maybe more than once, from different directions.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original Post from Purushottama, A Map from Mind to No-Mind.

The Golden Light Meditation – Osho

The Golden Flower is waiting at the highest peak of your being. In the yoga map it is called sahasrar, one-thousand-petalled lotus. It is the seventh chakra – in your head. The lowest is the sex chakra, muladhar, and the highest is the seventh chakra, sahasrar. From the lowest chakra, energy moves downward, creates new life. If the energy is conserved, helped to move upwards, it reaches one day to the sahasrar – and the Golden Flower blooms.

Of course, it needs energy. It is there only as a potential, as a possibility. Unless energy becomes available for it, it will not become actual.

It is like when you don’t give water to a tree: the tree is waiting, the water is not coming. The green juice is not flowing upwards. How can it bloom into a thousand and one flowers? – impossible. It will remain sad, it will almost remain dying. It will be a slow suicide. By and by the leaves will also wither away, by and by the branches will die, and ultimately, the roots. It needs a constant upward flow of energy.

Just as the green sap moves in a tree, man is also a tree. And this is not a new symbol that I am using – of man as a tree – it is one of the most ancient symbols. It has been used in the Jewish mystical schools: it is called the Tree of Life. Just as Buddhism has reached to its crescendo in Zen, and Islam in Sufism, Judaism has reached its ultimate peaks in the Kabbala. The Kabbala says that man is a tree, and it needs great energy for the flowers to bloom.

But remember, to conserve energy does not mean to repress energy; that’s where many people become misguided. To conserve energy does not mean to repress. The processes are absolutely different.

Repression means you are continuously repressing at the lowest center. If it becomes too much at the lowest center it will create perverted sexuality. If you don’t allow it a natural let-go and the energy accumulates at the lowest center too much, it will find some way or other; it can become perverted. It will become perverted! It will create pathology. Ask the psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts: they say, “Out of a hundred percent, ninety-five percent of the psychological cases are because of sexuality. Somewhere or other, sex is involved.” This is too big a number, ninety-five percent. And the people who never go to the psychiatrists and the psychoanalysts are not in a better position either. Everybody is suppressed.

Suppression is not transformation. Let it be understood once and for all! – repression can never become a transformation.

Then what is transformation? And what is conservation of energy?

Conservation of energy is a meditative process. It is not moralistic. I will suggest a small method to you that will be of immense help. It has been used by Taoists down the ages. It is given only from the Masters to the disciples; that’s why it has not been written in the books. But now the time has come that it should be given, because now millions of people are working on their spiritual search through books. Masters are not so available either.

This is a simple method of transforming your energy and leading it upwards. And always remember, Taoist methods are very simple, so don’t think, “How can such a simple thing be of such great importance?” Practice it, experiment with it and you will know.

The process is:

At least twice a day – the best times are early in the morning, just before you get out of your bed. The moment you feel you are alert, awake, do it for twenty minutes. Do it first thing in the morning! – don’t get out of the bed. Do it there, then and there, immediately! – because when you are coming out of sleep you are very, very delicate, receptive. When you are coming out of sleep you are very fresh, and the impact will go very deep. When you are just coming out of your sleep you are less in the mind than ever. Hence some gaps are there through which the method will penetrate into your innermost core. And early in the morning, when you are awakening, and when the whole earth is awakening, there is a great tide of awakening energy all over the world. Use that tide; don’t miss that opportunity.

All ancient religions used to pray early in the morning when the sun rose, because the rising of the sun is the rising of all the energies in existence. In that moment you can simply ride on the rising energy wave; it will be easier. By the evening it will be difficult, energies will be falling back; then you will be fighting against the current. In the morning you will be going with the current.

So the best time to begin is in the early morning, immediately, just when you are half-asleep, half-awake.

And the process is so simple. It needs no posture, no yogasana, no bath is needed, nothing. You simply lie down, as you are lying down in your bed, on your back. Keep your eyes closed.

When you breathe in, just visualize great light entering from your head into your body, as if a sun has risen just close to your head – golden light pouring into your head. You are just hollow and the golden light is pouring into your head, and going, going, going, deep, deep, and going out through your toes. When you breathe in, do it with this visualization.

And when you breathe out, visualize another thing: darkness entering through your toes, a great dark river entering through your toes, coming up, and going out through the head. Do slow, deep breathing so you can visualize. Go very slowly. And just out of sleep you can have very deep and slow breaths because the body is rested, relaxed.

Let me repeat: breathing in, let golden light come into you through your head, because it is there that the Golden Flower is waiting. That golden light will help. It will cleanse your whole body and will make it absolutely full of creativity. This is male energy.

Then when you exhale, let darkness, the darkest you can conceive, like a dark night, river-like, come from your toes upwards – this is feminine energy: it will soothe you, it will make you receptive, it will calm you, it will give you rest – and let it go out of the head. Then inhale again, and golden light enters in.

Do it for twenty minutes early in the morning.

And then the second-best time is when you are going back to sleep, in the night. Lie down on the bed, relax for a few minutes. When you start feeling that now you are wavering between sleep and waking, just in that middle, start the process again, and continue for twenty minutes. If you fall asleep doing it, it is the best, because the impact will remain in the superconscious and will go on working.

And after a three-month period, you will be surprised: the energy that was constantly gathering at the muladhar, at the lowest, the sex center, is no more gathering there. It is going upwards.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #29

You may wish to visit the page for OSHO Golden Light Meditation.

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

His Anger is Out of Compassion – Osho

You have said that Krishnamurti can get angry. How is that possible, as in enlightenment there is no one there to be angry?

Henk Faassen, in enlightenment there is nobody there to get angry, and there is nobody there not to get angry either. So whatsoever happens, happens. Krishnamurti does not get angry the way you get angry. Everything with an enlightened person happens on a totally different plane. His anger comes out of his compassion. Your anger comes out of hate, aggression, cruelty. He becomes angry — sometimes he starts pulling his hair out, he hits his own forehead — but out of compassion.

Just think, for fifty years or more he has been teaching a certain kind of truth to the world, and nobody understands him. The same people gather each year to listen to him — the same people.

Once he was talking in Bombay . . . somebody reported this to me, and the person who reported it to me is an old lady, older than Krishnamurti. She saw Krishnamurti when he was a child, she has seen him and listened to him for fifty years. And because she is a little deaf, very old, she sits in the front on a chair. And for fifty years Krishnamurti has been saying that there are no methods for meditation, that meditation is not needed at all. Just be in the present and live your life, that’s enough meditation, no other technique is needed . . .

For one and a half hours he poured his heart out, and at the end the lady stood up and asked, “How to meditate?” Now, what do you suppose he should do? He hit his head. This is not your anger. This is so unbelievable! He is tired of this lady, but this lady is not tired of him. She comes to every talk to listen to him, and asks the same stupid questions.

When I say Krishnamurti can get angry, I don’t mean, Henk, that he can get angry like you get angry. His anger is out of compassion. This situation is unbelievable! He wants to help this lady and he feels so helpless. He tries this way and that. His message is very simple, singular, one-dimensional. For fifty years he has been saying only a single word.

In essence his whole teaching can be printed on one side of a postcard. He has been saying it in as many possible ways as one can invent, but it is the same citadel that he attacks from the north, from the south, from the west, from the east. And still people go on listening to him and go on asking the same old foolish questions. He certainly gets angry. And when a man like Krishnamurti gets angry, he is pure anger.

Many in India have felt very disappointed with Krishnamurti because he gets angry. They have a certain concept that a buddha should not get angry. They go with a prejudice. And when they see that Krishnamurti can get angry, they are disillusioned, “So this man is not a buddha, he has not become enlightened yet.”

I say to you that he is one of the most enlightened persons who has ever walked on this earth. Still, he can get angry, but his anger comes out of compassion; it is condensed compassion. He cares about you, so much so that he becomes angry. This is a totally different quality of anger.

And when he becomes angry, he is real anger. Your anger is partial, lukewarm. Your anger is like a dog who is not certain how to behave with a stranger. He may be a friend of the master, so he wags his tail; he may be an enemy, so he barks. He does both together. On one hand he goes on barking, on the other hand he goes on wagging his tail.

He is playing the diplomat, so whatsoever the case turns out to be, he can always feel right. If the master comes and he sees that the master is friendly, the barking will stop and his whole energy will go into the tail. If the master is angry with the intruder, then the tail will stop completely, and his whole energy will go into barking.

Your anger is also like that. You are weighing up how far to go, how much will pay; don’t go beyond the limit, don’t provoke the other person too much.

But when a man like Krishnamurti becomes angry, he is pure anger. And pure anger has a beauty because it has totality. He is just anger. He is like a small child, red-faced, just anger all over, ready to destroy the whole world. That’s what happened to Jesus. When he went into the great temple and saw the moneychangers and their tables inside the temple, he was in a rage. He became angry — the same anger that comes out of compassion and love. Singlehanded, he drove all the moneychangers out of the temple and overturned their boards. He must have been really very angry, because driving all the moneychangers out of the temple singlehanded is not an easy thing. […]

People have their prejudices, their ideas. Rather than seeing into reality, rather than looking into an enlightened man, they come ready with so many concepts, and unless he fits them, he is not enlightened. And let me tell you, no enlightened person is going to fit with your unenlightened prejudices; it is impossible.

It happened; a lady came to me. She had been a follower of Krishnamurti for many years, then a small thing disturbed the whole thing and the whole applecart was upturned. The thing was so small that I was surprised. There was a camp in Holland where Krishnamurti holds a camp every year, and the woman had gone there from India. Nearabout two thousand people had gathered from all over the world to listen to him. The next morning the lectures were going to start, and the woman had gone shopping. And she was surprised; Krishnamurti was also shopping. An enlightened person shopping? Can you believe it? Buddha in a supermarket? And not only that — he was purchasing a necktie. Enlightened people need neckties? And not only that — the whole counter was full of neckties and he was throwing them this way and that, and he was not satisfied with any. The woman watched, looked at the whole scene, and fell from the sky. She thought, “I have come from India for this ordinary man who is purchasing neckties. And even then, of thousands of neckties of all colors and all kinds of material, nothing is satisfying to him. Is this detachment? Is this awareness?”

She turned away. She didn’t attend the camp; she came back immediately. And the first thing she did was to come running to me, and she said, “You are right.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “You are right that it was useless wasting my time with Krishnamurti. Now I want to become a sannyasin of yours.”

I said, “Please excuse me, I cannot accept you. If you cannot accept Krishnamurti, how can I accept you? Get lost! . . . Because here you will see far more disappointing things. What are you going to do with my Mercedes Benz? So before it happens, why bother? What are you going to do with my air-conditioned room? Before it happens, it is better that you go and find some Muktananda, etcetera. You have not been able to understand Krishnamurti; you will not be able to understand me.”

People like Krishnamurti live on a totally different plane. Their anger is not your anger. And who knows that he was not just playing with those ties for this stupid old woman? Masters are known to devise things like that. He got rid of this stupid old woman very easily.

-Osho

From The Book of Wisdom, Discourse #12, Q4

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Never Ask What God Is – Osho

Never ask what God is: just ask “Who am I?”

God is just knocking on your door. God is always close by. The idea that God is far away in the heavens is just stupidity. He is in your very breath . . . he is your breath! We just have to understand who we are, and in that very understanding we come to know what God is. And except for that there is no other way to know God.

Understanding oneself becomes the knowledge of God. So the only religious question is “Who am l?” Never ask what God is; just ask “Who am I?” Search for the answer and never believe in the answers that are given by others. No borrowed answer can be of any help; each person has to come to his own answer. Each person is carrying the answer within him; one just has to dig.

-Osho

From The Open Secret, Talk #14

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Podcast Episode: Watching and also Forgetting the Content

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: Watching and also Forgetting the Content.

click to play or download audio file:

Watching and also Forgetting the Content Podcast

Pip: Welcome to Sat Sangha Salon — where the mind watches itself, forgets what it was watching, and somehow calls that progress.

Mara: Today we’re working through a genuine meditation puzzle from Purushottama — the paradox of watching the mind while simultaneously letting its content disappear. Let’s start with that tension between watching and forgetting.

Watching and also Forgetting the Content

Pip: The question here is whether two instructions that seem to cancel each other out can actually be practiced together — watch the mind, and forget its content. Those feel like opposites, so what resolves the contradiction?

Mara: The post sets up exactly that friction, and here is the core of the answer: “if I watch with the qualities that are prescribed by Osho, that is watching without grasping and without rejecting, watching without analyzing, and watching without judging and at the same time remember that I am the watcher and not the content, then slowly, slowly the content begins to evaporate and I am left with only a watchingness without content.”

Pip: So the resolution is not a technique so much as a quality of attention. The content does not get suppressed or ignored — it dissolves on its own when the watching is clean enough.

Mara: Right, and the post names what makes that watching clean: no grasping, no rejecting, no analyzing, no judging. What it calls the double-pointed arrow — that simultaneous awareness of being the watcher, not the watched — is treated as the hinge the whole practice turns on.

Pip: There is something almost counterintuitive there. Most people assume watching means engaging, tracking, following the thread. This says the opposite — the less you grip the content, the more clearly you see.

Mara: The post is honest that it is not a stable achievement. The phrase is “at least until of course I fall out of watching with these qualities” — which is a candid acknowledgment that the state is recoverable but not permanent.

Pip: That honesty is doing real work. It keeps this from reading as a solved problem and frames it instead as a koan that stays live in practice.

Mara: The post itself grew out of a meditation program session titled Like the Empty Sky it Has No Boundaries — and it points toward related explorations, including The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow and Meditation Involves all Three, for anyone who wants to follow the thread further.

Pip: The sky metaphor earns its keep here — boundless but not empty of weather.

Mara: The watching-without-gripping idea is one that tends to stay with you after the episode ends.

Pip: Which is either proof it works, or proof we forgot to analyze it properly. Either way — more from Sat Sangha Salon next time.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original Post from Purushottama, Watching and Also Forgetting the Content.

A Door to the Divine – Osho

A parable.

Once there was a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant.

Secondly, he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place, he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it.

Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians. And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and their skins.

George Gurdjieff loved this parable very much. His whole philosophy is contained in this small parable. And this parable represents man in the ordinary state of unconsciousness. It is one of the most beautiful illustrations of man as he is.

Man is a machine. Man is not born to be a machine, but man lives like a machine and dies like a machine. Man has the seed of a great flowering of consciousness, man has the possibility to become God, but that doesn’t happen. It does not happen because man has been hypnotized – by the society, by the state, by the organized church, by the vested interests. The society needs slaves and man can remain a slave only if he is not allowed to grow to his uttermost flowering. The society needs your flesh and your skins and naturally, nobody likes it. Hence, the whole process of socialization, of civilization, is nothing but a deep hypnosis.

Man is being hypnotized from the very moment he is born. He is being hypnotized to believe that the society exists in his favor, for his good. That is utterly wrong. He is being hypnotized to believe that he is immortal. He is not. He can be, but he is not. And if the hypnosis persists he will never be immortal.

You live only as a mortal being, because you live in the body. The body is going to die. That which is born is bound to die. Birth is the beginning of the body and death the end. Do you know anything in you which is more than the body? Have you experienced anything higher than the body, deeper than the body? Have you seen anything in you which was even before you were born? If you have seen that, then you are immortal. If you know your face, your original face, the face that you had before you were born, then you know you will be there after death too; otherwise not.

Man can be an immortal, but man lives surrounded by death because man lives identified with the body. The society does not allow you to know more than the body. The society is interested only in your body – your body can be put to use – your soul is dangerous. A man of soul is always dangerous because a man of soul is a free man. He cannot be reduced to slavery. A man who has an immortal soul in him has a deeper commitment to existence itself, to God himself. He does not care a bit about the man-made structures of society, civilization and culture; these are prison cells for him. He does not exist as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. He cannot be part of a crowd. He exists as an individual.

The body is part of a crowd, your soul is not. Your soul is deeply individual. Its flavor is that of freedom. But your soul cannot be put to any use in the market-place. The society needs only your body. And it is very dangerous for the society if you start striving for the soul, because then your interest changes. You turn from being an extrovert into an introvert; you start moving inwards. The society is outside, the society wants you to remain an extrovert, interested in money, power, prestige, and all that, so that your energy goes on moving outwards. If you start moving inwards, that means you have become a drop-out, you are no more part of the game that is being played on the outside. You don’t belong to it. You start diving deep within your own being. And there is the source of immortality.

The society prevents you from going inwards. And the best way is to give you a false idea that you are going inwards. The magician told the sheep that they were lions, suggested to them that they were immortals, hypnotized them into believing that they were not only men but great magicians.

When you go to a church you are not going inwards. When you go to the temple you are not going inwards. But the society has hypnotized you to believe that if you want to go inwards, go to the church. But the church is as much outside as anything else. The society has hypnotized you to believe that if you want to go inwards, go to the priest. And the priest is an agent of the state and the society. The priest has always been against the mystics, because if you go to a mystic you will start moving inwards.

A mystic lives in a totally different way. His energy moves in a different gestalt: his river moves inwards. So one who comes to a mystic, falls in tune with the mystic, will start moving inwards naturally, simply, spontaneously. That is the whole purpose of being with a Master, with a mystic.

This book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the most esoteric treatises in the world. It will show you the way to become more than the body. It will show you the way to go beyond death. It will show you the way to bloom – how not to remain a seed but to become a Golden Flower. What in India we have called the one-thousand-petalled lotus, in China they call the Golden Flower. It is a symbol.

The flower represents perfection, totality. The flower represents the uttermost expression of the potential, the actualization of the potential. The flower represents the beauty, the grandeur, the splendor of being. And unless you have become a thousand-petalled lotus or a Golden Flower . . .

Remember you have to go far. Remember that you have to get out of the traps that the society has put around you. Remember that you have not yet done the work for which you have come to the earth. Remember you are just a seed, not yet a soul.

This treatise, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is very ancient – possibly one of the most ancient treatises in the world certainly twenty-five centuries old, and the possibility is that it is older than that. But twenty-five centuries can be traced back very easily. And this treatise is also a great synthesis of all the great religions. That is rare, unique. The Bible belongs to the Christians, the Talmud belongs to the Jews, the Vedas belong to the Hindus, the Dhammapada to the Buddhists, the Tao Te Ching to the Taoists. But this small book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, belongs to no one in particular, or, it belongs to all.

It is deeply based in Taoist teachings. It is a flowering of the Taoist approach to life and existence. But it is not only that – Zarathustra has played a role. Zarathustra’s teachings have been incorporated in it. Buddhist teachings have also been incorporated in it. And a certain esoteric school of Christians, the Nestorians, they have also played their part. So Christianity and Judaism also have become part of it.

It is one of the most synthetical approaches. It combines all that is beautiful in all the traditions of the world. For centuries it was only transmitted orally, and the book remained esoteric. It was not available to the public because it has something very secret to teach; it was available only to the disciples. The Master would tell to the disciple only when the time was ripe, because it gives you such a potential secret that if you don’t understand rightly, if you do something wrong with it, there are found to be harmful effects from it. It has to be understood rightly, and it has to be worked at only in the presence of a Master. It is a powerful method it is as powerful as atomic energy.

Now, the secrets of atomic energy are kept hidden from the public. Once they start leaking out to the public there is going to be great danger. If people can manufacture atom bombs privately, there is bound to be great chaos. Great secrecy is maintained about atomic research. Exactly in the same way this book teaches you one of the most potential methods of inner explosion. For centuries the secrets were guarded – only given to the disciples in privacy, in intimacy. And the people who followed this particular esoteric school resisted all temptations to write the book. In fact, all the religions of the world have long resisted writing their spiritual teachings.

There is some beauty when something is transferred really. It is alive – one thing – the Master is behind it. it is not a dead word, the word has soul, wings. The experience of the Master supports it; the master is a witness to it. It is not just speculation, not only a philosophy, but something existential, experienced, lived. And the Master has travelled the path; he knows the dangers of the path, he knows the pitfalls, he knows the points at which people go astray, and he will take every care so that the disciple cannot go astray.

The closer you come to the truth, the more is the possibility of going astray, because when you come closer to the truth, you can become very egoistic: that “Now I know,” that “Now I am.” And if the ego exploits the situation, you will fall back to your old dark valley, you will lose the peak. When you come closer to the truth, a great desire arises to share it with people. But you have not attained it in its wholeness; and it is dangerous to share half-truths because half-truths are more dangerous than lies, because they are powerful. Lies are impotent. Sooner or later people will themselves find that it is a lie. But the half-truth can persist for centuries, can have effects for centuries.

Nobody can reach through the half-truth, and the person who travels half the way will belong neither to this world nor to the other. He will be in a limbo, and that is a very strange situation to be in: you lose the old and you don’t gain the new; you become a chaos. The old order is gone and the new has not happened. You become a cloud, you become confusion. Rather than becoming more clear, rather than becoming more alive, rather than becoming more light-full, your life becomes a conflict between two polarities. You are pulled apart, you start falling into pieces. Half of you belongs to the earth and half of you belongs to the sky. Now you are nowhere. Now you are nobody. This can create madness. So, for centuries The Secret of the Golden Flower was only conveyed orally.

Secondly, with an oral tradition the book remains always alive. That’s how it became a synthesis. Basically, it was born in the Taoist climate of China. But then Bodhidharma reached China – a new master with a new message from India, Buddha’s message. And the people who were following The Secret of the Golden Flower were very open people; they were not part of any established church. They could immediately see that Bodhidharma also had it – it was so apparent, so manifest. They allowed Bodhidharma’s teachings to be part of their teaching. And the same happened with Zoroastrian Masters, with Nestorian Christians. Again and again something came to China, and if it was worthwhile, it was incorporated.

An oral teaching remains alive, growing, like a river. New streams of water come and become part of it. Once a teaching is written, then it cannot incorporate anything anymore. Then it becomes rigid, it loses fluidity, it becomes dead; it is a corpse. Now The Secret of the Golden Flower is not growing. For centuries it has not grown. Since it has been written it has not grown.

Why have I chosen to speak on it? – so that it can still grow. It is such a beautiful message to the world, it should not die. I would like to revive it. And now I can talk to people who are disciples, who have come to me and who are ready to die in order to be reborn, who are ready to die for flowering. The seed has to die, only then can it grow. The seed has to disappear; only then can the tree happen.

I will be speaking to you on this small but immensely valuable book so that the book can become alive again. It can become alive between me and you. It can again start flowing. And it has something of immense importance. If you understand it and if you practice it, you will be enriched.

But the first thing to understand is: remember that you have been hypnotized, and you have to go through a dehypnotizing process. Remember that you have been conditioned and you have to be unconditioned. Remember that death is coming. Don’t think that it is not going to happen today; it can happen any moment.

In fact, all that happens always happens now. The seed dies now, the bud becomes the flower now, the bird starts calling now. All that ever happens, happens only in the space made available by now, this moment. Nothing ever happens in the past, and nothing ever happens in the future. All that happens always happens in the present – that is the only way for things to happen because the present is the only time there is.

Past is just your memory and future is just your imagination. But you have been hypnotized to live in the past, and you have been hypnotized to live in the future. Choose either past or future, but no society allows you to live in the present.

Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans – they condition you to live in the past. Their golden age was in the past. Communists, socialists, fascists – they condition you to live in the future, their golden age is in the future, the utopia is coming: when the revolution comes, then you will be able to really live, then there will be a golden age. Either you are taken to the past, which is false, or to the future, which is again false. No society tells you to live in the present, in the herenow.

To be a sannyasin, to be a real seeker means to live herenow. And there is no other life. But for that you will have to de-automatize yourself, you will have to become a man and not a machine. You will have to become a little more conscious. You are not conscious.

Once I was sitting by the side of a dying man – he was a professor in the same university where I was a professor. He was at the pinnacle of his successful career. And then came the heart attack – which always comes when you are at the pinnacle. Success is always followed by a heart attack. What else can you have after it? So he had a heart attack and he was dying. I went to see him. He was very sad – who wants to die? – and he was in great despair and anguish. I told him, “You need not worry. You’re not going to die.”

He said, “What are you saying? But the doctors . . . all the doctors say that there is no possibility of my survival. On what grounds are you saying that I am not going to die?”

I said, “You cannot die in the first place, because you never lived. You have not fulfilled the first requirement for dying. For these fifty-five years you have been sleep-walking, you have dreamt; you have not lived. I have watched you for years.”

He was shocked, he was angry – so angry that for a moment he forgot all about death. His eyes were aflame with anger and he said, “Is this the way to treat a dying man? Can’t you be a little courteous? Why are you so hard on me? I am dying and you are talking such great philosophy – ‘You never lived.’ Is this the time to say such things?”

I listened silently. I just became absolutely silent. Then the rage disappeared and he started crying, and great tears came to his eyes. He held my hand with great love, and then he said, “Maybe you are right. I never lived. Maybe you are not rude, you are just being true. And I know nobody else would have said this to me.” And then, great gratitude, and for a moment he became so conscious that one could have seen the light on the face – it was there, he was all aura. And he thanked me. That night he died. I remained with him to the last moment.

And he said, “If you had not been here, I would have missed my death too, as I have missed my life. But I am dying consciously. At least one thing I am happy about – I am not dying unconsciously. “And his death was beautiful. He died without any regret; he died in a relaxed way. He died almost with a welcoming heart; he died full of gratitude. He died prayerfully. His next life is bound to have a different quality. If death is so beautiful it brings a new life to you.

But one has to live each moment, whether it is of life, of love, of anger, of death. Whatsoever it is one has to live each moment as consciously as possible.

A peasant, carried away by his imagination, found himself in a vegetable garden stealing cucumbers.

“I’ll carry off this sack of cucumbers,” he thought, “and with the money I get for them I’ll buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, she will sit on them and hatch a brood of chicks, and I’ll feed the chicks till they grow, then I’ll sell them and buy a suckling pig. I’ll feed the suckling pig till it grows into a sow, I’ll breed her, and she’ll have a litter of pigs and I’ll sell them. With the money I get for the pigs I’ll buy a house with a garden; I’ll plant cucumbers in the garden, and I won’t let anyone steal them – I’ll keep guard over them. I’ll hire a strong watchman, and from time to time I’ll go out to the garden and shout, ‘Hey, you! Take care!’”

The peasant was so carried away by this thought that he shouted at the top of his voice. The watchman heard him and came running. He caught the peasant and gave him a good thrashing.

But this is how man lives: in dreams, in imagination, in projections. This is how you live. And this is not the way to live this beautiful, tremendously valuable life! This is sheer wastage! You have to become more attentive to the moment, to the present. You have to gather your consciousness. Consciousness is your treasure, and all the methods that have been invented, devised, down the centuries are nothing but ways to create more consciousness in you, to create more fire in you, to make your life a passionate affair, a flame. People are living dull lives, people are living absentmindedly, people are living inattentively. How can you live with so much inattention around you? Inattention is darkness, attention is light. And this treatise will teach you how to create more light in you, so that one day . . . the Golden Flower.

Two psychiatrists met on the street. “You are feeling fine,” said one. “How am I doing?”

People are asking each other. Nobody knows how they are doing, they are looking into each other’s eyes, gathering information about themselves from others. That’s why the opinion of others has become so important. If somebody says you are a fool, you become angry. Why? Or you become sad. Why? You are shattered. You were thinking you are a wise man, because others had told you that you are wise. It was the opinion of others that you depended on. Now somebody else says you are a fool. He can easily shatter your wisdom, very easily. He has thrown a stone and you had made a palace with playing cards. Now all is shattered. That’s why one becomes so angry, so enraged, so violent, and one becomes so worried, anxious. You are continuously looking for what others are thinking, because you know only that which others think about you, you don’t know anything about yourself. Now what kind of situation is this? If I cannot know about myself, who else can know about me? From the outside nobody can watch me, I am not available that way. From the outside only my body can be watched. From the inside I can know my consciousness.

Even when you stand before a mirror you see only your body, you cannot see your consciousness in the mirror. Even you cannot see it in the mirror – your own consciousness. You have to see it directly. It is never mirrored; it is never reflected in anything; it is invisible. You have to close your eyes and be it. And that is the only way of knowing it. But people live so unconsciously. They simply live by the opinion of others. What others say becomes their soul. Others can take it away any moment. People remain beggars.

Have you known anything about yourself directly? Have you ever encountered yourself directly without bringing the opinion of others into it? If you have not done it, you have not yet lived. Life starts only by encountering oneself, by seeing oneself directly, immediately. Life exists only when you are capable of seeing yourself as you are, not as others think about you. What can they think about you? What can they say about you? They can watch your behavior, they cannot watch you. If you want to watch yourself, only you can do that, nobody else. It cannot be done by servants. It cannot be delegated to somebody else. It cannot be done by the experts either. But we are so much interested in others’ opinions because we are absolutely absent – there is nobody awake inside. Deeply asleep, we are snoring inside.

The absent-minded professor went in for a haircut. He sat down in the barber’s chair, but didn’t remove his hat.

“I’m afraid you will have to take off your hat,” said the barber. “Oh, I’m sorry!” said the professor, “I didn’t know there were ladies present.”

Watch your own absent-mindedness. Watching it will create attentiveness in you. Watch what is happening within you: thoughts passing, memories arising, a cloud of anger, a dark night of sadness, or a beautiful morning of joy. Watch all that passes in you. Become more and more watchful. Slowly, slowly you will become an integrated watchfulness. And the method taught by The Secret of the Golden Flower is how to become integrated in your inner light. This is the story of this book before we enter into the sutras.

The book comes from an esoteric circle in China. The founder of this esoteric circle is said to have been the well-known Taoist adept, Lu Yen. Where did Lu Yen get this secret teaching? He himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi, for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his Tao Te Ching.

Lao Tzu never wrote a single word in his whole life. He declined again and again the invitation to write anything. He conveyed to his disciples what he had come to know, but he was not ready to write, because he said, “The Tao which can be said is not the true Tao.” The Tao which can be expressed is already falsified. It can be learned only in intimate contact with the Master. There is no other way of communicating it. It can only be learned in a deep communion where the disciple and the Master meet, where the disciple holds nothing back, where the disciple and the Master overlap, where their consciousnesses merge into each other. Only in such a meeting, communion, can Tao be conveyed. So he refused again and again.

He lived a long life. But when he was going to die he left China on a water buffalo. Why on a water buffalo? His whole teaching had been the teaching of the watercourse way.

He said: One should be like water – flowing, fluid, fresh, always moving towards the ocean. And one should be like water – soft, feminine, receptive, loving, non-violent. One should not be like a rock. The rock appears to be very strong but is not, and water appears to be very weak but is not. Never be deceived by appearances. Finally, the water wins over the rock and the rock is destroyed and becomes sand and is taken to the sea. The rock disappears finally – against the soft water.

The rock is masculine; it is the male mind, the aggressive mind. Water is feminine, soft, loving, not aggressive at all. But the non-aggressive wins. The water is always ready to surrender, but through surrender it conquers – that is the way of the woman. The woman always surrenders and conquers through it. And the man wants to conquer and the ultimate result is just a surrender and nothing else. Hence, he chose a water buffalo when he left the country. Where was he going? He was going to the Himalayas to die into that eternal beauty.

A real man knows how to live and how to die. A real man lives totally, dies totally. A real man lives in benediction and dies in benediction.

He was going into absolute aloneness in the Himalayas. But he was caught on the border. And the man who caught him on the border was Master Kuan Yiu-hsi. He was a guard at the last post of the Chinese border. Lao Tzu had to pass that post; there was no other way to get out of the country. And Kuan Yiu-hsi persuaded him: “You are going to die, you are leaving the country forever, and soon you will be leaving the body. Please write just a few words. And I won’t allow you to get out of the land if you don’t write them. This price you have to pay.” And Lao Tzu had to sit in Kuan Yiu-hsi’s hut for three days, and there he wrote the Tao Te Ching.

The tradition of The Secret of the Golden Flower is said to have originated with Lu Yen. Lu Yen himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his Tao Te Ching. Kuan means “the Han-ku pass”, hence he is called Master Kuan, that is “Master of the Han-ku pass.” And he must have been a great adept, otherwise it would have been impossible to persuade Lao Tzu to write. His whole life he had declined – he could not decline the invitation of this man. This man must have had something that it was impossible even for Lao Tzu to say no to.

This is how the tradition of The Golden Flower is connected with Lao Tzu. But it didn’t start with Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu himself says that whatsoever he is saying has been said before, again and again, down the centuries. He is not bringing a new truth in the world but only a new expression. It is always so. Truth is the same, only expressions differ.

What Lao Tzu said is the same as what Krishna had said before him. What Krishna said is the same as what Buddha said later on. What Buddha has said is the same as Mohammed, as Jesus, as Zarathustra have said although their expressions are so different that you will need great intelligence to see to the very core. The structure is different, the language is different, their ways of saying it are different; naturally, because they are different persons, different individuals, with their own uniqueness. But truth is neither new nor old; and wherever truth is, it is eternal.

The book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the eternal sources where one can again become alive, one can again find the door to the divine.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #1, part 1

Here you can read The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life, which is part two of this discourse.

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

The Atomic Moment – Osho

Remember two words which will be very important to understand this strange but immensely valuable book, The Secret of the Golden Flower: one word is “essence,” the other word is “personality.”

“Personality” comes from a root, persona which means a mask. In ancient days, the actors in Greek dramas used to wear masks. Persona means a mask. “Personality” comes from persona. The actors used to wear one mask, you are wearing many, because for different situations you need different masks. When you are talking to your boss you need one kind of mask. And when you are talking to your servant, of course, you need another kind of mask. […]

You have to use many masks, and you have many faces, and you go on changing them as circumstances change. Your personality consists only of false faces.

And what is essence? Essence is your original face, without any masks. Essence is that which you brought into the world when you were born. Essence is that which was with you in the womb.

Essence is that which has been given to you by God – or whatsoever you call totality, the whole, existence. Essence is a gift from existence to you.

Personality is a gift of the society, parents, school, college, culture, civilization. Personality is not you; it is pseudo.

And we continue to polish this personality, and we have completely forgotten the essence. And unless you remember the essence, you will have lived in vain because real life consists of essence. A real life is the life of essence. You can call it “soul,” or “God within you,” or whatsoever you will. But remember the distinction.

You are not your clothes – not even your psychological clothes. […]

Essence is that which you bring into the world. The personality is that which the world imposes upon the essence. The world is very afraid of the essence because the essence is always rebellious, the essence is always individualistic. And the world does not need any individuals, it needs sheep. It does not need rebellious people, it does not need people like Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, no; these people are dangerous. It wants people who are obedient – obedient to the status quo, obedient to the vested interests, obedient to the organized church, obedient to the state and the stupid politicians.

But society requires obedience, and society requires efficiency. The more mechanical you are, the more efficient you are. When you are more alive, you cannot be so efficient. A machine is more efficient than man. The society’s effort is to reduce every man into a machine. And how to reduce a man into a machine? Make him more and more unconscious, make him more and more robot-like. Let his essence completely disappear from his consciousness. Let him become perfectly pseudo. Let him be a husband, let her be a wife; a servant, a boss, this and that, but never let him be his essential self. Don’t allow that because that essential self is not obedient to anybody except to God. It has no other commitment. Its sole commitment is to the source. It knows no other masters. […]

The moment you encounter your essence […] You will have to put off all that is hiding your essence. That is revolution, metanoia. That is the turning point in a life: the society disappears and you become an individual. And only individuals can relate with God.

But a great consciousness will be needed. […]

Now the sutras.

Master Lu-tsu said:

Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

What I have been telling you about essence, Master Lu-tsu calls the primal spirit. The primal spirit is your essential soul, that which you have brought from God, untaught, unconditioned – as you were in your mother’s womb. How did you exist in your mother’s womb? Nothing was taught to you, you had no mind, you existed in a state of no-mind, hence the blissfulness of it.

Psychologists say that because of the experience of the mother’s womb – those nine months – man has been searching for God because of that nine months’ experience. The memory haunts him. Those nine months were the most beautiful that you have known. Maybe you have forgotten consciously, but deep down in the very cells of your body, in the very fibers of your being, those days are still pulsating. Those days are still carried by your existence. They may not be conscious in your mind, but they are there. Just as when in the night you fall into deep sleep, you don’t know where you go and what happens to you, but in the morning, you feel the relaxation, the freshness, the joy. Life has again happened to you. All the dust that you had gathered has disappeared. You are again fresh, you are rejuvenated.

Your body carries the feeling. Your body is calm and quiet and remembers something. The remembrance is not in the brain; you don’t know what happened exactly – where you had gone. Only a buddha knows where he goes in his deep sleep, because even in his deep sleep he remains alert. You are not alert even when you are aware, the so-called awareness. You are not alert when you are in that so-called wakeful state. Your eyes are open, but your mind goes on weaving and spinning a thousand and one thoughts. The inner talk continues, the inner noise continues. You see and yet you don’t see and you hear and yet you don’t hear, because deep inside there is a wall of thoughts – dreams continuously floating in the sky of your consciousness. You are not alert even when you are awake. The Buddha is alert even when he is fast asleep. Only he knows where he goes.

Where does he go? He goes to the essence, to the source, to the primal spirit. And even if for a few moments at night you fall into the primal source, you are rejuvenated. The man who cannot fall into deep sleep is really in hell. He goes to bed tired, exhausted, bored with life, and gets up in the morning even more tired, more bored, more exhausted. His life is hell.

In deep sleep you simply slip back into the primal source of your being. That primal source is always there; you have not lost it; you have only forgotten it. And that primal source is beyond all dualities. It is neither light nor darkness, it is transcendental. It is neither the life nor the death that you know, it is transcendental. It is neither man nor woman, it is transcendental. It is beyond all kinds of dualities. It is God.

Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

When you are in the primal spirit you are in your true nature. When you are in your personality you are untrue, you are just a plastic phenomenon. Watch, and you will be surprised how many things are plastic in you. You smile when there is no smile in the heart, then it is plastic. You sympathize when there is no sympathy in you, it is plastic. You show joy when there is no joy in you, it is plastic. You can even cry and weep without your heart feeling anything, then those tears are plastic. Just watch how many things are plastic in you. And remember, whatsoever is plastic is not you. God has not made you a plastic thing. God has given you eternal life. But that eternal life you can find only when you put off your shoes.

Put off your personality. Drop all personas all masks. Let all masks disappear. It will be painful because you have become identified with those masks; you think they are your faces. It is going to be almost a very painful process of death; and not only once – you will have to die many times, because each time a face falls you will find a death has happened. But again, new life will be released in you, fresher, deeper, more vibrant.

When all the faces disappear and the essence is left alone, you have transcended all duality, even the duality of time and space. When you enter deep meditation, when you enter your essential being, there is no space and no time. You cannot say where you are – all “wheres” disappear – you cannot pinpoint the place. Either you are nowhere, or you are everywhere: these are the only two possibilities. Both mean the same.

A few people have chosen to say one is everywhere – Vedanta has chosen to say that in deep meditation one is everywhere: Aham Brahmasmi, “I am God.” “God” means one who is everywhere, who permeates the whole existence. You become space itself. And “I am always, I am eternal.” It means you permeate time. This is one way of expressing it, the positive way.

Buddhism has chosen the other: the negative way.

Buddha says, “In deep meditation you are nowhere.”

All space has disappeared. And there is no time; you are in a timeless state. And when there is no time and no space, how can you exist?

Man exists only at the crossing point of time and space. One line of time, another line of space cross, and at that crossing the ego arises. Take away these two lines and the point of the ego disappears. It was only a crossing of two lines. It was a fallacious idea.

So Buddha says, “There is nobody.”

In deep meditation, time disappears, space disappears, and you disappear. All disappears, there is only nothingness, shunya, zero. This is the negative way of saying the same thing.

Either you can say, “I am God,” if you choose the positive expression – which has its own dangers, its own beauties too – or you can choose the negative expression, anatta, no-self, nothingness, nirvana. It has its own beauties and its dangers too. The very idea of nothingness puts people off – that is the danger. Who wants to be nothing?

In his forty years of ministry again and again Buddha is asked, “Why should one try to be nothing? That would be a death, ultimate death.”

And Buddha says, “Yes, it is an ultimate death. But it is beautiful.”

And the questioners ask, “But to whom is it beautiful – because there is nobody?”

And Buddha says, “There is only beauty, beatitude, and nobody to experience it.”

Naturally, the human mind says, “But then what is the point? If I am not there . . . And it is very beautiful, so let it be beautiful, but I am not there, so whether it is beautiful or not makes no difference to me. Why should I lose myself? It is better to be in a world which is not so beautiful but where at least I am.”

The goal of nothingness puts people off. That’s why Buddhism disappeared from India. And it learned a lesson: in China it dropped the negative language, in Tibet it dropped the negative language. Indian Buddhism, the original Buddhism, was absolutely negative. Under the influence of Buddha thousands were transformed, but you cannot find a man like Buddha every day.

The impact of Buddha was such that people were even ready to die and become nothing. That was because of Buddha, otherwise there is no enchantment, no charm in being nothing. But Buddha’s magnetism was such, his charisma was such, that thousands of people were ready to become nothing. “If Buddha says it, it must be right.” His word was so important, his eyes were a witness to it. “He has disappeared, so let us also disappear. And if he says so then we can trust.”

But once Buddha disappeared from the Earth, Buddhist priests could not convince people. They had to disappear from India completely. Then they learned a lesson. Outside India Buddhism started using positive language, started using all that Buddha had denied. It survived; but it did not really survive as Buddhism, it survived as Vedanta, it survived as a positive language. And Buddha’s greatest contribution was the negative expression.

The beauty of the negative expression is that it never allows your ego any satisfaction, any gratification. That is the danger of the positive language. If you say, “Aham Brahmasmi, ‘I am God,’” “Ana’l haq, ‘I am truth,’” the danger is that truth may become secondary and the “I” may become primary. Truth may become your shadow. The emphasis may start concentrating on the word “I”: I am God. If the emphasis remains on God and the “I” remains just a shadow to God, it is perfectly good. But that is very difficult. The “I” is very cunning, the ego’s ways are very subtle. It will use the opportunity, it will jump upon the idea, it will say, “Right, I am God and nobody else is. I am truth and everybody else is a lie.” But then the whole point is missed.

But one thing is certain: time and space disappear. Either you have to declare, “I am all” – the whole space, the whole time – “I am everywhere and everywhen,” or you have to use the Buddhist expression, “I am not. Time is not. Space is not. There is only an absolute silent nothing from eternity to eternity. A silence, not even a ripple.” But both statements indicate the same thing. Expressions are different, fingers are different, but they point to the same moon. That moon is your essence.

Master Lu-tsu said:

Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

And unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome death. Death exists in time, and death exists in space. Unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome mind and body.

Try to understand: body corresponds to space and mind corresponds to time. Mind is a time phenomenon and body is a space phenomenon. Body exists somewhere and mind exists “somewhen.” Think of mind without time and you will not be able to think of it. Mind is either past, present, or future: either memory or imagination or the present facticity. Mind exists in three tenses.

You are listening to me attentively, alert: mind is in the present. If you are here thinking of other things – you have read something in the Bible and it corresponds with me or does not correspond with me – you have gone into your imagination or into your memory. You cannot think of mind if time disappears; time is synonymous with mind.

Man is a miniature cosmos, a miniature universe. All that exists outside on a greater scale exists on a small scale in man. If you can understand man, you will have understood the whole universe. As above, so below. Man is the atomic constituent of this whole universe. If one atom is understood you have understood all matter. If one man is understood, if you can decipher your own mystery, you have deciphered all the mysteries possible, past, present, future – all.

And these two things have to be remembered: body is space, mind is time. When you meditate you disappear from the body, you don’t know who you are: man, woman, ugly, beautiful, black, white; you simply don’t know who you are. When you go in, the body is left far behind. A moment comes when you cannot even locate your body, and you cannot even feel its presence. You are no more attached to the form; you have become formless. And the same happens with the mind: you don’t know where your mind is, where that mind has gone. All that noise, that traffic noise that was constantly inside, becomes distant, distant, distant, and disappears. Suddenly a great silence explodes in you. In this state of no space and no time, you come to know your essence. And to know one’s essence is to have the first glimpse of Tao.

The primal spirit is beyond the polar differences.

All the polar differences disappear: man-woman, summer-winter, hot-cold, love-hate, positive-negative, time-space, life -death; all polar opposites disappear.

The primal spirit is beyond the polar differences.

And that’s why I insist again and again that you don’t get attached to any polarity. You have been taught to become attached to some polarity. Your so-called religions have been teaching you: either be worldly or renounce and go to the monasteries. I say remain in the world and don’t be of it, otherwise, you will become attached to a polarity. If you go to the monastery, you will be afraid of the marketplace. What kind of attainment is this? If there is fear there is no attainment.

And I know people who have lived in the Himalayas. Then they become afraid. Then they don’t want to come to the world because whatsoever they have been experiencing in the Himalayas disappears when they come to the marketplace. If it disappears in the marketplace it is no attainment. It may have been just the silence of the Himalayas that you mistook for your silence. It was borrowed. Certainly, the Himalayas are silent, and if you live in that silence, slowly, slowly that silence starts permeating you. But it is not your music; it is borrowed. Go away from the Himalayas and it will disappear.

This is creating a fallacy. This is enjoying a reflected glory. This is not your own glory. Live in the marketplace and create a Himalaya in the heart. Become silent in the noise. Remain a householder and yet be a sannyasin. That’s why I emphasize so much that I don’t want my sannyasins to renounce. Nothing has to be renounced. The way of renunciation is the way of the escapist, and the way of renunciation will make you attached to a polar phenomenon. That will not give you freedom. Freedom is in transcendence, and transcendence comes only when you live in the polar opposites simultaneously, together. So be in the world, but don’t let the world be in you.

Love, and yet don’t be lost in it. Relate, and yet be alone, utterly alone. Know perfectly well that all relationship is a game. Play the game and play it as beautifully as possible and as skillfully as possible. A game is after all a game and has to be played beautifully. And follow all the rules of the game because a game cannot exist without rules. But remember always that it is just a game. Don’t become attached to it. Don’t become serious in it. Always allow the sense of humor to remain alive in you. Remain sincere but non-serious. And then, slowly, slowly you will see that the polarities are disappearing. Who is worldly, and who is other-worldly? You are both or neither.

The primal spirit is beyond the polar differences. Here is the place whence heaven and Earth derive their being. When students understand how to grasp the primal spirit they overcome the polar opposites of light and darkness and tarry no longer in the three worlds.

The world of heaven, the world of Earth, and the world of hell – the three worlds – they all disappear for the person who knows how to transcend polarities.

I told you just a few moments ago that past, present, future – these are the three worlds. Past is hell, because it is dead it is ghostly: ghosts following you. Present is the Earth: the facticity, the fact, that which is right now and here. And future is heaven: hopes, aspirations, desires, longings. These are the three worlds, and you have to move in these three worlds constantly; you are shuttled back and forth. From the past you jump to the future, from the future you jump to the past. And this goes on. And the present is so minute that you are not very aware of it. It is sandwiched between the past and the future, and they are vast. And the present is a very minute, atomic moment – so small that you don’t even see it. The moment you become aware of it; it is already past.

To be present to the present one needs to be very attentive, utterly attentive. And that’s why to be present to the present becomes the door to go beyond time. You cannot go from the past because the past is so vast – infinite. You can go on and on, you will not find the end of it. That’s why I say psychoanalysis will not help. It goes into the past, and it goes on unravelling the past, digging up the past. You can go on . . . Psychoanalysis continues for years: three years, seven years, then too it is not complete. One simply becomes bored with the psychoanalyst and then changes the psychoanalyst and goes to somebody else and starts from ABC again.

And one thing I would like to say to you: sooner or later psychoanalysis is bound to discover that this life is not the end of the past. You can go on moving backwards, and you can come to what Janov calls “the primal scream.” Primal scream is the ultimate of psychoanalysis: the first scream of the child when he started breathing – through it he started breathing – the first scream. But once you have reached there you will be surprised: that is not the beginning either. Then you have to move into the womb.

In the East we have tried it. We have a very, very deep-going method called prati prasav – going back, going back. Mahavir used it, Buddha used it – they went through the womb. And then again, you have to go through death, because before the womb you died, and then the whole life again . . . layer upon layer. It is through deep psychoanalysis that the East became aware of the phenomenon of many lives. Christianity, Judaism, Islam are not aware of it. They never tried so hard. They have never tried psychoanalysis.

Freud is the first Jew to have tried it, and of course, Christians and Jews and all the so-called religious people were against him. The fear is that if psychoanalysis goes deeper, sooner or later the Hindu idea of rebirth will be proved right. That is the fear. If you go on digging you will find layer upon layer. Where will you end? Thousands of lives you have lived as man. And we have tried to penetrate all those. But then too there is no end. One day suddenly you see that before this life you were not a man; you were an elephant or a tiger or a dog. And then you start moving into animal lives. And before that, after millions of lives, one day you will suddenly discover that you were a bush or a tree, and then a rock.

In India, we say you have passed millions of lives. Where can it lead? The analysis of the past cannot lead anywhere. It can drive you crazy, but it leads nowhere. And so is the case with the future. Where to stop? How far is far enough? Where to make a point that “Now we will not look ahead”? In the East we have tried that too because we have worked tremendously on the concept of time. And both are unending: memory is unending, imagination is unending. Between the two is the present moment, very tiny, so tiny that you cannot become aware of it if you are not absolutely alert. It goes so fast, it is so fleeting.

But if you become aware of the present, then a door opens, the door to eternity. It is from there that mind moves into no-mind. It is from there that personality moves beyond personality into essence.

You know perfectly well Jesus was crucified. There were two thieves who were crucified with him: one was on his left side, the other was on his right side. You may not have ever thought of it as a tremendously significant symbol but Jesus represents the present moment. One thief is the past; the other thief is the future. And Jesus represents the present moment – closest to God, closest to essence. One thief mocked Jesus – the past always mocks you – he condemned Jesus. The past always condemns you. The other thief asked Jesus about the future, “What will happen after death? Will I be able to see you in heaven?” One is past, the other is future, and Jesus is just sandwiched between these two thieves.

And why call them thieves? Past is a thief, future is a thief, because they go on stealing your present. They are thieves. To me this is a parable. I don’t know whether any Christian will agree with me or not, but that is not my business at all. I don’t care whether anybody agrees with me or not.

Jesus is present, herenow, closest to the essence, just ready to die and disappear from the body and the mind. He hesitates a little bit – everybody hesitates. When you come to the present, you will see eternity facing you – no past, no future, but eternity – a totally different dimension.

Past, present, future are horizontal; eternity is vertical. Again, to me, the cross is the symbol of these two lines crossing. A cross is made of two lines: one horizontal, the other vertical. This is a representation of time and eternity. Everybody hesitates when one faces eternity, nowhereness, nothingness, or all-ness. It is so much. One is going to disappear into it like a drop. And the ocean is so big, one will not be found again. Even a dewdrop falling into the ocean from a grass leaf hesitates.

Jesus hesitated, and I love this man because he hesitated. His hesitation shows that he was human. His hesitation shows that he belonged to us – he was son of man. He cried to God, “Have you forsaken me? What are you doing to me? Have you abandoned me? Are you no more with me? I am disappearing and I don’t see your hands protecting me.” The dewdrop is falling in the ocean. “Where are you? I am falling into a deep nothingness. Death has arrived, and I had always hoped that in death you would be there waiting and you would embrace me, you would take me in your fold, you would be warm and loving. But where are you? Have you forsaken me? Have you abandoned me? I don’t see you anywhere.”

In fact, there is no God to be seen. God is not a person; God is a positive name for this absolute nothingness. But Jesus has lived with the Jewish idea of God as a person, hence this turmoil in his mind, the fear in his mind. He can’t see – he was waiting to see the beloved, the Father. He used to call the Father abba. He was waiting to find his father, but there seems to be nobody. The world is finished and beyond is nothing but a yawning nothingness, an abyss with no bottom.

It is very human. The life of Jesus is very human, and that is the beauty of it. That’s why it has impressed so many people – his very humanity is touching. But then he saw the point. He must have looked deep into the eternity, the nothingness. He must have seen the point: that “God cannot have a human face, this is his face,” that “God cannot have human hands, this nothingness is ready to embrace me, to take me deep into its heart.” And then he said to God, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. So, be it so. Let it be so. So you are nothingness. I am ready, I trust you. I will trust even your nothingness.”

Every Christian, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, every Jew – whosoever has lived with the idea of God’s personality will have to face this, will have to go through this anxiety period, this anguish. That is the beauty of the Buddha’s idea, and the Taoist idea, that God is nothingness, another name for nothingness. One who has lived with that idea of nothingness from the very beginning will not hesitate; he will simply disappear into it.

Unless you have been able to see your own inner nothingness you will not be able to do it. First meditate and go into your inner nothingness, then you will be able to enter into the nothingness of existence itself.

When men are set free from the womb, the primal spirit dwells in the square inch . . .

This is a Taoist map. Don’t get puzzled. There are different maps of human consciousness. Different maps use different symbols. This is a Taoist map.

Taoists say that after a child is born from the womb, the primal spirit starts dwelling in the third eye. Between the two eyes, between the two exists the third, exactly in the middle. What the Yoga map calls ajna chakra, the third-eye center, that’s what Taoists call the dwelling place of the primal spirit.

. . . The primal spirit dwells in the square inch, but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart . . .

. . . but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart . . ., the ordinary physical heart.

This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not eat for one day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it hears something terrifying it throbs; if it hears something enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it becomes sad; if it sees something beautiful it is dazzled. But the heavenly heart in the head . . .

. . . that is in the third-eye center.

. . . when would it have moved in the least? Dost thou ask: “Can the heavenly heart not move?” Then I answer: “How could the true thought in the square inch move!”

This physical heart is constantly dependent on the outside world. It is affected by the outside world; it is part of the outside world inside you. This is not the true heart. Taoists say the true heart is in the third eye; it moves not, it is unmoving; it is always the same. The physical heart is always in chaos, and the spiritual heart in the third eye is always in order. It is order itself. That’s why Hindus have called it ajna chakra – the center from which orders arise, discipline arises. If something comes from the third eye it is immediately followed; the whole body follows it, the whole being follows it. It is the center from which commandments are issued. But it is fast asleep. You live from the physical heart. You have not known your spiritual heart yet.

The lower heart moves like a strong, powerful commander who despises the heavenly ruler because of his weakness . . .

But the physical heart thinks that the spiritual heart is weak because it moves not. And because it moves not you remain unaware of it. You only become aware of things when they move. If something remains absolutely unmoving you become oblivious to it. And the lower heart thinks itself very strong and thinks the heavenly heart, the spiritual heart, as being weak, almost dead, because it moves not.

. . . and has usurped the leadership in affairs of state.

And because of this, the lower heart has become the master of you.

But when the primal castle can be fortified and defended, then it is as if a strong and wise ruler sat upon the throne.

But if you start becoming more and more alert and more and more conscious, you will find that you have fortified the primal castle in the third eye. Whenever you become aware, you will be surprised: you start functioning from the third eye. Just become a little bit aware and you will see a little strain on the third eye. Whenever you become alert, the strain is more on the third eye. Something starts throbbing in the third eye, something starts pulsating in the third eye.

Once awareness has made the third eye function, once awareness has moved in the third eye and the third eye starts functioning, becomes alive… That’s why Hindus call it a chakra. Chakra means a wheel. The wheel needs energy; once the energy comes in, the wheel starts moving. By “movement” is meant that it starts functioning. Then a great revolution happens in your being: immediately the lower heart bows down to the higher heart. When the higher comes, the lower always bows down. It rules only when the higher is not present.

And that is the difference between a real religion and an unreal religion. The unreal religion says to you, “Try to control yourself. Do this, don’t do that. Control your senses. Discipline your body.” The real religion says, “Just go into the third eye center and let the spiritual heart function, and all will be controlled, and all will be disciplined. Let the master arrive, and everything will be settled immediately.”

The eyes start the light circulating like two ministers at the right and left who support the ruler with all their might. When rule in the center is thus in order, all those rebellious heroes will present themselves with lances reversed ready to take orders.

Just let the master come in, and there is no need to make any effort to create an order in your life, there is no need to cultivate character. That’s why I say don’t be worried about character. Simply put all your energy into being more conscious. Consciousness is followed by character as you are followed by your shadow. If you try to cultivate a character, your character will be false, pseudo, and you will become a hypocrite. And this is not the way to reach to the ultimate.

The way to the Elixir of Life knows as supreme magic . . .

This is the supreme magic. Why call it magic? – because once the higher heart has started functioning – it is as if a magical miracle happens . . . Your senses were never in order; your mind was always confused. You were always hesitating: to do this or to do that? to be or not to be? You were in constant tension: where to go? what to choose? Suddenly, as if somebody has done a miracle, all confusion disappears, clarity arises, life becomes transparent. You simply do that which has to be done. In fact, once the heavenly heart has started functioning, all that you do is good; you cannot do wrong – it is impossible.

The way to the Elixir of Life knows as supreme magic . . .

And three are the constituents of this supreme magic:

. . . seed-water, spirit-fire, and thought-earth . . .

These are Taoist symbols.

. . . these three. What is seed-water? It is the true, one energy, eros. Spirit-fire is the light, logos. Thought-earth is intuition.

You will have to understand these three.

Seed-water is eros, the energy that you know now as sexual energy, the energy of passion. Right now, it creates only troubles for you and nothing else. Right now, it pretends to be your friend but proves to be your foe. The more you follow it, the more it takes you into miseries. That’s why it is said that love is blind.

Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, “Love is blind and marriage is an eye-opener.”

Love is blind because you don’t have eyes yet, and a great energy that could have become a great blessing to you becomes only misery. Eros is your energy. And Freud is right to seek and search for everything in your eros, in your sexual energy. But he is wrong because he does not know that this ordinary state of sexual energy is not its natural state; it is a perverted state.

In its natural state sexual energy rises higher and higher, it takes you upwards not downwards. In its natural state sexual energy becomes the golden flower within you. In the so-called ordinary, perverted state it simply takes you into new prisons because it moves outwards and downwards. It dissipates you; it only brings your death closer and closer. If the same energy starts moving upwards, it brings a new life, life in abundance. It becomes the Elixir of Life.

Just as the mud can become a lotus – the mud contains the lotus, the seed of it – so your sexual energy contains the seed of the golden flower. But the energy has to move upwards, you cannot move it upwards. There are people who try to make it move upwards; they become sexual perverts and nothing else. You cannot do it directly, but you can do it indirectly. Once your third eye, your spiritual heart, starts functioning, energy starts moving of its own accord. You have created the third eye, and the energy is attracted as if towards a magnet.

Right now, your energy moves outwards because you have magnets outside, far greater than you have inside. You see a beautiful woman and the energy starts moving outwards; the woman functions as a magnet. When your third eye functions you have such a strong magnet that nobody can pull you outwards. It is just a question of having a bigger magnet inside than the one which exists outside. Then the energy moves upwards, inwards.

If you go outwards you will move into the world of duality. If you go inwards you will move into the world of non-duality; you will become non-polar.

This is exactly the foundation of what I call metapsychology, or the psychology of the Buddhas. This is pure religion – not the religion of the rituals but pure religion: nothing to do with Christianity and Hinduism but something to do with your energy source.

The second is spirit-fire. It is light, logos; it is conscious mind. Eros moving upwards takes you beyond conscious and unconscious mind. Logos is conscious mind. It is psychology, it is science.

Thought-earth is darkness, unconsciousness, intuition. It is parapsychology, art. Thought-earth is intuition, darkness. Women live in thought-earth, in the intuitive vision. Women live as unconscious, illogical beings. Men live in spirit-fire, logos, logic, conscious mind. Artists are feminine, scientists are masculine. And the seed-water, eros, the one energy, is non-dual. It takes you beyond art and beyond science. It takes you beyond the conscious and the unconscious. It takes you beyond man and beyond woman. It takes you into the non-dual, the transcendental.

But the secret of the magic is to let your heavenly heart, which exists between your two eyes, function. Later on, we will go into the methodology of it – how to help it function.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #3

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

A Great Scream will Arise in Your Heart – Osho

Why is every human being full of problems and unhappy?

The first thing: because man can be tremendously happy, the possibility exists, hence, his unhappiness. Nobody else – no animal, no bird, no tree, no rock – can be so happy as man. The possibility, the tremendous possibility that you can be happy, eternally happy, that you can be at the top of a bliss mountain, creates unhappiness. And when you see around you, you are just in the valley, a dark valley, and you could have been at the top of the peak: the comparison, the possibility, and the actuality.

If you were not born to be Buddhas, then there would be no unhappiness. So, the more perceptive a person is, the more unhappy. The more sensitive a person is, the more unhappy. The more alert a person is, the more he feels the sadness, the more he feels the potentiality and the contradiction, that nothing is happening and he’s stuck.

Man is unhappy because man can be tremendously happy. And unhappiness is not bad. It is the very drive that will take you to the peak. If you are not unhappy, then you will not move. If you are not unhappy in your dark valley, why should you make any effort to climb uphill? It is going to be arduous – unless the sun shining at the top becomes a challenge, unless the very existence of the top creates a mad urge to reach, unless the very possibility provokes you to seek and search.

People who are not very alert, sensitive, are not very unhappy. Have you seen any idiot unhappy? – Impossible. An idiot cannot be unhappy because he cannot be aware of the possibility that he is carrying within himself.

You are conscious that you are a seed, and the tree can happen. It is just by the corner. The goal is not very far away; that makes you unhappy. It is a good indication. To feel unhappiness deeply is the first step. Certainly, Buddha feels it more than you. That’s why he renounced the valley and he started climbing uphill. Small things that you come across every day became great provocations for him. Seeing a man ill, seeing an old man leaning on his staff, seeing a dead body, was enough; that very night he left his palace. He became aware of where he was: “The same is going to happen to me. Sooner or later, I will become ill and old and dead, so what is the point of being here? Before the opportunity is taken away from me, I should attain to something which is eternal.” A great desire arose in him to reach to the peak. That peak we call God; that peak we call kaivalya, that peak we call moksha, nirvana; but that peak exists within you like a seed. It has to unfold. So great sensitive souls suffer more. Idiots don’t suffer; dullards don’t suffer. They are already happy in their ordinary life: earning a little money, making a small house – finished. Their whole possibility is only that.

If you are aware that this can’t be the goal, this can’t be the destiny, then a great suffering will enter into your being like a sharp sword. It will penetrate to the very core of your being. A great scream will arise in your heart and that will be the beginning of a new life, of a new style of life, of a new foundation of life.

-Osho

Excerpt from Yoga: The Supreme Science, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V. 10, Discourse #10, Q1 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V. 10).

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 in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Podcast Episode: The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow.

click to play or download audio file:

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow Podcast

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the arrow points both ways and somehow that’s the whole point.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece from Purushottama on the mechanics of meditative awakening — specifically what shifts when awareness turns back on itself, and what the path looks like from there.

Pip: Let’s start with the double-pointed arrow itself.

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Mara: The central question here is structural: what actually changes at the turning point in meditation, and why does that change matter for everything that follows?

Pip: The post names it directly. Here’s the spine of the whole argument: “It is in the activity of watching the mind that the turning point happens. It is by watching the mind that one becomes aware of being something other than the mind, and this is precisely the awakening of the double-pointed arrow, the awakening of the witness.”

Mara: So the stakes are real and practical. Until that shift happens, you are the mind watching objects. After it, there is a witness — something that knows it is not the mind. That gap is where transformation becomes possible at all.

Pip: And the post is careful to say this is not a conceptual upgrade. You do not think your way into it.

Mara: Right — the language is precise on that point. It is “not just an intellectual or conceptual understanding” but the actual experience of there being thought and simultaneously a knowingness beyond it. The double-pointed arrow is awareness that points outward at objects and inward at its own subjectivity at once.

Pip: Which is why the stabilization phase gets its own chapter. You find the witness, and then you lose it, and then you find it again — apparently that oscillation is the work, not a sign you’re doing it wrong.

Mara: The post calls the shifting back and forth “natural to the stabilization process.” And it maps a trajectory: stabilized witnessing, then witnessing the heart, then transformation gaining momentum, and finally awareness watching awareness itself — what the post calls watchingness.

Pip: At which point the arrow dissolves entirely. No observer, no observed, just oneness. The double-pointed arrow was always a transitional tool — scaffolding that the building eventually no longer needs.

Mara: That’s the arc the post traces: from body-watching, to breath-watching, to mind-watching, to the witness stabilizing, to the witness dissolving. Each stage is preparation for the next, and the awakening of the double-pointed arrow is the fulcrum the whole sequence turns on.

Pip: Awareness becoming aware of itself — and then, eventually, just awareness.

Mara: The through-line is transformation requiring a witness before it can outgrow one.

Pip: Next time, we’ll see what else is waiting on the other side of that arrow.

Sat Sangha Salon

Riding on a Miracle – Osho

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Podcast Episode: A Map from Mind to No-Mind

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

A Map from Mind to No-Mind Podcast

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Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

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Podcast Episode: Watching and also Forgetting the Content

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Watching and also Forgetting the Content Podcast

Watching and also Forgetting the Content

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A Door to the Divine – Osho

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Podcast Episode: The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

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The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

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A Map from Mind to No-Mind

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An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Watching and also Forgetting the Content

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Here is the original Post from Purushottama, Watching and Also Forgetting the Content.

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An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original post from Purushottama, The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow.

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