Featured

A Course in Witnessing Weekly Meditation Meetings

Currently, O-Meditation Sangha is hosting weekly online meditation meetings on Zoom. A Course in Witnessing consists of 144 two-hour meditation programs in 7 modules. Each week we are doing one program from A Course in Witnessing.

Each program has two parts: Listening Meditation and Satsang Meditation. Additionally, our online meetings include a third part, Dialog. For a complete description of the programs see A Course in Witnessing.

Saturdays 14:00 UTC/GMT 2:00 PM

These local times:

LA/SF – 6-8 AM (PST)
Arizona/Denver – 7-9 AM (MST)
Chicago/Dallas – 8-10 AM (CST)
NY/Atlanta – 9 AM-11 AM (EST)
London/Lisbon – 2-4 PM (GMT)
Paris/Berlin – 3-5 PM (GMT+1)
India – 7:30-9:30 PM (IST)
Bangkok/Hanoi 9-11 PM (UTC +7)

If you would like to receive information for the mediation meetings or if you are not able to attend but would like to receive links for the programs so that you can listen to the Listening and Satsang Meditations in your own time, send an email to info@o-meditation.com. We send out reminders and information for the meditation meeting to those on this list.  This mailing list is only for the meditation meetings and is separate from the Sat Sangha Salon list for subscribers of the weekly posts.

If you would like to know more about how A Course in Witnessing came about you can read A Course in Witnessing Blossoms.

Love is Being,

Purushottama

 

It is Time for the Pilgrimage: Badarayana Brahma Sutra – Osho

Is not the inquiry into Satchidanand the same as Badarayana’s Athato Brahma Jigyasa?

Maneesha, Badarayana’s statement, “athato brahma jigyasa” is one of the most potential statements ever made. It means, “Now begins the inquiry into the ultimate.” It is the first statement in his Brahmasutra: Maxims About the Ultimate, one of the greatest mystic books in the world.

This is the first sentence of that strange book, but one of the most significant books that has ever been written.

I call it strange because Badarayana is not much known in the world, although in India he is the only mystic on whose maxims thousands of commentaries have been written. Each of his statements is so pregnant with meaning that you can go on commenting on it in a thousand and one ways. Still it seems something inexhaustible has remained behind. This is the only book which has commentaries, then commentaries on commentaries, then again commentaries on those commentaries.

For almost two thousand years all the great geniuses of this great country have been in some way or other connected with Badarayana. And still his name is not known in the world. Perhaps the reason is that nothing is known about him except the book. About his personal life absolutely nothing is known. Whether he was a historical person or not is very difficult to say. But one thing is certain, whoever wrote the book, whatever his name was, was certainly one of the greatest mystics of the world. So what is the problem calling him Badarayana?

The book is historical; it has existed for two thousand years and is one of the books – the only one – which has been spread through so many commentaries, in so many complexities, that almost every philosopher in India became involved in some way or other. There is no other book in the world which has been commented upon so much. It can mean only one thing: that his statements are almost mines of meaning. You can go on digging and you will go on finding more and more, fresher sources of water, fresher sources of meaning and significance.

Maneesha, sachchidanand is not equivalent to athato brahma jigyasa. Athato brahma jigyasa – “Now begins the inquiry into the ultimate” – is the first step and sachchidanand is the last step. What begins as an inquiry . . . sachchidanand is not an inquiry, it is the ultimate result of the inquiry. You have come to the conclusion. The statement of Badarayana is the beginning and sachchidanand is the end. They are not synonymous, although they are connected deeply with each other. Without the inquiry there is no possibility of realizing the conclusion. Hence Badarayana comes first.

And this small statement has to be understood, because this is for every beginner. And as far as the ultimate is concerned one is always a beginner. One is always coming close to it, closer and closer and closer, but something always remains inviting you, calling you forth, challenging you, a higher peak. You were thinking you have arrived but still there is something left. And this pilgrimage continues.

I have started saying that there is no goal, only the pilgrimage. In other words, the pilgrimage in itself is so divine, so holy, that to be bothered and to be anxious about the end of it can only mean one thing: that you are not interested in the journey, you are interested in the end of the journey.

You are not enjoying each moment of your pilgrimage. You are looking forward, ahead, for the time when you will have reached and then you will celebrate. And that is a wrong approach from the very beginning.

Each moment is the journey and each moment is the goal.

You have to live as if you have already arrived, although you will never be in a moment when you can say, “I have arrived.” You can only say, “I am coming home. I can see the home coming closer and closer.” But it is good that you never come. Once you have come, you come to a full stop, and life knows no full stops. Yes, colons, semicolons, commas, everything is allowed – but a full stop absolutely no, a hundred times no, because a full stop will mean that life has come to an end, life has come to the grave.

Life never comes to an end.

It never terminates in death.

It is an ongoing process.

Hence, Badarayana’s statement has to be understood very lovingly and very deeply. Each word of it is pure gold.

First, it has been commented upon by different commentators, giving different colors to it. You are not accustomed to it because in the West the very phenomenon of commentaries has not happened.

Nobody comments on Kant, nobody comments on Hegel, nobody comments even on Socrates, nobody comments on The Bible. The very phenomenon of commentaries is absolutely Eastern.

And the reason is, that the great philosophers of the West came into existence when writing had arrived, when it was not any more a question of memorizing – you could write a treatise. And when philosophers like Kant or Hegel or Feuerbach write, they write with all possible implications, complexities, meanings. They also write keeping in mind that if somebody is going to contradict them, what their points are. They are also keeping in mind what the arguments of the opposite philosophy can be, and they are already replying to them – although nobody has opposed them, nobody has even understood what they are writing about. So their writings are very complete in a way, full and entire. They have not left anything for anybody else to add.

In the East commentaries started for a certain historical reason. It is at least ten thousand years old – that is the very orthodox view about the history of philosophical development in the East. There are people who think it is far more ancient than ten thousand years. And because there was no writing – writing was not yet invented – every Master had to speak in small maxims, not elaborate treatises, but in small sutras. The word sutra means ‘the thread’.

They are giving you the very minimum to remember, because to remember a vast amount of a great philosophical treatise will not be possible. And there is a danger of forgetting something, there is a danger of adding something of your own. So the way of the sutras was the only possibility – to write in such a condensed way that every disciple of any master can remember the small, seed-like maxims.

But they are only seeds. They indicate the way, they indicate a certain direction. Unless your heart becomes a soil for those seeds, they will not sprout into leaves, into branches, into flowers, into fruits. Those seeds contain everything that is going to happen, they have the whole inbuilt program. If you allow that seed to enter into your being, as it sinks deeper and deeper, you will realize all that is contained in it. It will become a reality in you.

But because individuals are different, because individuals are unique, each individual heart is not the same soil, not the same territory, not the same land. The seed will have to grow according to the soil. Somebody’s heart may be very fertile, creative. The tree may become very huge, the foliage may be very green, and when the spring comes there will be thousands of flowers and fruits.

But somebody’s heart may be very hard. The seed is the same, but the soil is not going to help the seed much. The seed has to grow against all odds, against all hindrances. The heart is not going to help but on the contrary it will hinder. It is just a seed which has fallen into a land full of stones. It may grow but it won’t be the same as in a fertile creative heart. It may not attain to the same height; it may even be a bit crippled; it may not have much foliage; it may come to only a few flowers.

But the uniquenesses are such – somebody is a poet and the seed may become poetry. And somebody is a musician and the seed may become music. And somebody is a sculptor and the seed may become a beauty in stone. It will all depend in which kind of heart the seed falls. And there are many more implications.

It is possible that one heart may be very fertile and it may bring thousands of flowers. And one heart may not be so fertile and it may not bring thousands of flowers but just one flower – very huge, very big. Those thousand flowers will not be in any way competitive to this one flower. In numbers they may be many, but the beauty of this one flower has almost accumulated the whole beauty of thousands of flowers. […]

These are the uniquenesses I am talking about – that the same seeds in different hearts will bring different manifestations.

And that is how commentaries begin. The master dies. He had thousands of disciples who have listened to him. Now they start thinking, what is the significance of a certain statement or of a certain word? In the East it has been a very delicate affair. Not brutal logic, but a very subtle, very feminine art.

The word athato can mean ‘now’, it can mean ‘here now’, it can mean ‘from now’, it can mean ‘from this point onwards’. Because of these different meanings growing in different hearts, the whole meaning of the sentence will change. Just the first word will change the whole meaning.

For example, to a man or a woman whose heart is the heart of a devotee, the heart of a lover, athato will mean, “Enough of love; now begins the inquiry into the ultimate. Enough of this world and its pleasures, now begins the inquiry into the ultimate.” To the logician, the same word will mean: “Enough of logic, enough of rationality, enough of philosophy; now begins the real inquiry into the existential” – not into words, not into philosophical investigations, but into an existential experience. To a poet it may mean: “Enough of the poetry, enough of all that life I have lived up to now; the time has come to enter on the path in search of light, in search of the truth. I have sung songs of joy, I have sung songs of beauty.”

But a time comes when you are tired even of your own creativity – how long? Just as you become tired of the woman you loved so much, of the man you loved so much, you become tired of your creative dimension for which you would have sacrificed your life. A moment comes when it seems that you have been playing like a child, collecting seashells on the sea beach, or making castles of sand. Beautiful utopias, but it is enough!

You have not gained anything of the eternal, of the timeless, of the immortal. How long are you going to wait? Now is the moment to change the direction of all your genius and intelligence. Then athato will mean something different, different from what it can mean to a businessman, to what it can mean to a king. He has been on a power trip, he has conquered as much as he wanted, he is tired. […]

And like the meaning of athato will be the meaning of brahma jigyasa. To the theist, brahma will mean ‘the God’; to the atheist, brahma will mean ‘the ultimate reality’ – not a personal God, but an impersonal reality. And jigyasa, ‘inquiry’, will also take different forms. To someone it may become meditation, to somebody else it may become yoga, to somebody else it may become prayer. It will depend on your potentiality and according to your potential the seed will take form.

This simple sentence has been commented upon by almost one thousand commentators. I have gone through so many commentaries and it has been such a joy to see the same small sentence – just three words – take such different meanings. And on the different meanings of this first sentence will depend the whole commentary on all other sutras, all other maxims.

The book is historical; it has existed for two thousand years and is one of the books – the only one – which has been spread through so many commentaries, in so many complexities, that almost every philosopher in India became involved in some way or other. There is no other book in the world which has been commented upon so much. It can mean only one thing: that his statements are almost mines of meaning. You can go on digging and you will go on finding more and more, fresher sources of water, fresher sources of meaning and significance.

It is time for the pilgrimage.

Your boat has arrived.

It is time to go into the unexplored seas, to the untraveled path; to be alone and to go within; to be alone and to be absolutely free and independent; to find your roots in existence. And the day you start finding your roots in existence will be the moment when you have touched the edge of your very life springs. That will be the time of a certain conclusion. Your life is no more a question, but becomes an answer. And that answer is Sat-Chit-Anand. Those three words are irrefutable.

God can be argued against. In fact, half of the world is now communist and does not believe in God. Buddhism, which is the third greatest religion after Christianity and Mohammedanism – they don’t believe in God. Jainism, which is a minority religion – but they don’t believe in God either. In fact, if you accumulate all the numbers, there are more atheists in the world than theists. It has never been so before. The world was always a theist majority and an atheist minority. The balance has reversed. Today there are more atheists in the world than theists. And the theist is not much of a theist either. Just by name he is theist. Scratch his skin a little and you will find a doubt inside. He believes in God, he goes to the church, he goes to the temple, but his is not a faith which has no doubt within it. It is a faith which has been sitting on a repressed doubt. It is a belief – just underneath is the doubt. I have never come across a single theist who really believes. He may say, “I really believe,” but the more he says, “I really believe,” the more he exposes himself.

When you say to someone, “I really love you,” what do you mean? Is not love enough? This emphasis of “really” makes the whole thing bogus. It is like in a movie – it is not true; it is a Hollywood love affair.

Truth cannot be denied either by theists or by atheists or by agnostics. And these are the only three possibilities, the only three alternatives. The agnostic is the most intelligent of all three. The agnostic says, “I don’t know, I am still trying to know. I am on the path, but I have not come to any conclusion yet.” He is the most honest of the three – not really getting into either belief or unbelief. Keeping himself neutral so that he is not prejudiced, so that he is not carrying a certain opinion already, just keeping himself without any prejudice, without any opinion, so that when he comes across the truth, he can realize it as it is, not as he wants it to be. An opinion will give color, distortion. Opinion will create its own illusions, hallucinations.

The agnostic is the most significant seeker of truth. But there are very few agnostics in the world.

Perhaps most of them are here, going onto the path with open eyes and with a clean heart, ready to accept truth as it is, with no desire to project anything onto the truth. The agnostic cannot deny the beauty of Sat-Chit-Anand; he can say “I am searching,” but he cannot say anything against it.

Neither can the theist deny it. He may say, “This is what I mean by God: my God is truth, my God is consciousness, my God is bliss.” There is no problem – it is just a question of words that only idiots fight about. If this is what you mean by God, then it is perfectly okay. But then don’t pray, because there is no person who is going to listen and say hello to you.

Sachchidanand is just an experience. If you want it to be synonymous with your idea of God, there is no harm, but remember there is no need to create temples and mosques and synagogues and churches for it. It is an experience that is going to happen within you, not without.

Nor can the atheist deny it. He can deny God as a creator. He can laugh at the very idea of a personal God, because there is no evidence and no proof for it. It is simply pure fiction invented by cunning priests for the gullible, for those who are still childish and have some father fixation – they need somebody to protect them, a great father.

Not even the atheist can deny the reality of truth, nor can he deny the reality of consciousness, because he is already a little bit conscious. If this much consciousness is possible, what is the problem? Why can’t more grow? This small consciousness that we have is enough proof that there is a possibility of growth, of expansion.

We may not know bliss, but we have known moments of peace, we have known moments of silence, we have known moments of joy. Bliss is altogether something tremendously vast. But if you have seen a dewdrop, you have seen all the oceans, because a small dewdrop is enough proof that water exists. And if there is a dewdrop, what is the problem? There may be oceans. And the formula that makes the dewdrop, H2O, makes all the oceans. It is the same formula. It is the same foundation.

These are the three kinds of people in the world. None of them can deny sachchidanand. That’s the beauty of mystical experiences. […]

I have been thinking of speaking on Badarayana’s Brahmasutra, but I am keeping that for the last. Once I speak on Badarayana’s Brahmasutra, then I will not speak again. Because there is nothing that can be better than Badarayana’s Brahmasutra – that is the end. So I am keeping it aside. If you want me to continue to speak, don’t let me speak on Badarayana! If you allow me to speak on Badarayana, then remember . . . Just once in a while, here and there, you can ask questions, but the whole sutras I have kept for my last communion with you, my last transmission of the lamp.

-Osho

From Sat Chit Anand, Discourse #10, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Only the Heart Knows the Answer – Osho

Could you please comment on how to deal with a continuous questioning mind that is not interested in any answer anyway? Or am I just a Greek donkey?

The disciple who can wait will find all his questions answered at the right moment.

But waiting is a great quality: it is deep patience; it is great trust. The mind cannot wait; it is always in a hurry. It knows nothing about patience; hence it goes on piling questions upon questions without getting the answer.

It is something very delicate to understand: that it is not the answer that is significant but the right timing, your readiness to receive it; otherwise, it will just go above your head. The impatient mind is too much occupied in questioning. It forgets that questioning in itself is a meaningless activity — the real thing is the answer, but for the answer you need a certain silence, peace, openness, receptivity. The mind is incapable of these qualities; hence, for thousands of years the mind has been asking and asking but it finds no answer.

In the world of the mind there are only questions.

And in the world of the heart there is only the answer, because the heart knows how not to ask, how to wait: let the spring come by itself; wait like a thirsty earth . . . the rainclouds will come; they have always been coming. There is no need to distrust, because there is not even a single exception where trust has failed, where waiting is not fulfilled, where patience is not immensely rewarded.

The functioning of the heart and the mind are totally different; not only different, but diametrically opposite. The mind creates philosophies, theologies, ideologies — they are all questions that don’t have any answer. The heart simply waits. At the right moment, the answer blossoms by itself.

The heart has no question, yet it receives the answer.

The mind has a thousand and one questions, yet it has never received any answer because it does not know how to receive.

Your mind is full of questions yet you have been observing that by and by, they are being answered. This should create in you a new insight, a new trust. A new dimension is opening: that you have just to wait, alert and awake, and if it is needed the answer will come to you.

You are also seeing that most of the questions that the mind is filled with are silly.

They are—not most of them, all of them are silly for the simple reason that mind does not go through the discipline of asking receptively. It is more concerned with questions.

Even while the answer is being given, it has moved on to another question. Perhaps, listening to the answer, it has created ten more questions out of the answer itself.

Questions arise out of the mind just like leaves grow on the trees. And slowly, slowly, they become more and more silly — because it is very difficult to find many significant questions, and the mind is not satisfied with a small quantity of questions. It is greedy. It wants to ask everything; it wants to know everything without being ready to understand anything.

There are few significant questions.

And there is only one really fundamental question.

But that small quantity does not satisfy the greed of the mind. […]

The mind is a vulture. It is never satisfied with anything. You go on giving to it, it goes on taking, and it goes on asking for more. It never feels grateful; it is always complaining that it is not enough. Nothing is enough to the mind. Question after question — meaningful, meaningless, relevant, irrelevant — and not even a small space for any answer to enter into your mind. It is so crowded with questions.

The heart knows no questions.

And this is one of the mysteries of life: that the mind questions the whole life long and never receives any answer, and the heart never asks but receives the answer.

But there is one thing to be remembered: the mind is noisy, there is maddening noise. The heart may be receiving the answer, but because of the noise of the mind you may not come to feel that the answer has been received, that you are carrying it with you, that you are pregnant with it.

Not only does the mind disturb your peace, your silence; it disturbs it to such an extent that the heart — which is capable of listening to silence, waiting, receptive — is denied all connection with your being. The mind monopolizes your being; it simply puts the heart aside. And because the heart is silent, and a gentleman, it does not quarrel; it simply goes down the street, waits by the side of the road.

Mind wants to occupy the whole space.

The disciple has to understand this whole situation — that the dictatorship of the mind has to be destroyed, that the mind is only a servant, not a master. The master is the heart, because all that is beautiful grows in the heart; all that is valuable comes out of the heart — your love, your compassion, your meditation.

Anything that is valuable grows in the garden of the heart.

Mind is a desert, nothing grows there — only sand and sand and barren land. It has never given any fruit, any flower. You have to understand it: mind should not be supported as much as you have been supporting it up to now. Mind has to be put in its right place.

The throne belongs to the heart.

And this is the revolution through which the disciple becomes a devotee: when the heart becomes the master, and the mind becomes a servant.

This has to be remembered: that as a servant, the mind is perfect. As a master . . . it is the worst master possible; as a servant, it is the best.

And the heart — wherever it is, either on the throne or on the street — is your only hope, the only possibility for you to be bridged with your being, to be bridged with existence. It is the only possibility for songs to arise in you, stars to descend in you, for your life to become a rejoicing, a dance.

You are asking me how to stop this mind, its constant questioning, its silly crowd of questions.

That is where everybody takes the wrong step. If you try to stop it, you will never be able to stop it. Ignore it. Be indifferent to it. Let it chatter.

Be aloof, unconcerned — as if it does not matter whether it chatters or not, whether there are questions or not. Only this aloofness, this ignoring — Buddha has given it the right name, upeksha — this indifference slowly, slowly makes the miracle happen.

What you want to achieve by fighting is not possible, because when you fight with someone you are giving energy to the enemy. You are giving attention, and attention is food; you are getting entangled with the mind, and mind enjoys a good fight. It has never happened that anybody has been able to stop the mind by fighting with it. That is the most important thing to understand: don’t take any step towards fighting.

Just ignore, just be aloof, just let the mind do whatever it wants to do. When the mind feels unwelcomed, when the mind sees that you are no more interested in it, that it is pointless to go on shouting; you are not even hearing it, that you are not even curious about what is going on in the mind — it stops. […]

When you are indifferent, the mind starts feeling as if there is nobody — what is the point of all the questions? Because you are interested, curious, you get involved, you are giving juice to the mind.

Indifference to the mind is meditation.

And all those questions will disappear, because they are absolutely meaningless. And when the chattering of the mind has disappeared, there is a silence, a peace, so that you can hear the still, small voice of your heart.

Only the heart knows the answer . . . it already knows it.

And if you are with a master, the heart simply says yes to the master, because the heart knows the answer already. Perhaps the master is putting it in a better way, more articulate, but the heart is in complete agreement. And that agreement dissolves all distances between the master and the disciple.

Then silence is not only silence, it is also communion.

Then things are not said but heard; then things are not said but shown.

And when the heart is totally willing, life is such a simple, uncomplicated phenomenon that you cannot conceive of anything more simple.

It is the mind which creates complications, goes on creating complications and questions.

Mind’s whole expertise is to create complications.

If you want to live a simple, a beautiful, a silent, a joyful, a blissful life, let the mind be ignored and let the heart be restored to its status as master. This is the whole work of a religious seeker; nothing more is needed.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #8, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Listen, says Pythagoras – Osho

Listen, says Pythagoras. Down the ages the Masters have always been saying: Listen. But what you do at the most is you hear — you don’t listen. And there is a tremendous difference between these two words.

Hearing is very superficial. You can hear because you have ears, that’s all. Anybody who has ears can hear. It is an ordinary phenomenon. Listening has a different quality to it. When you hear attentively, then it is listening. Hearing is only physical; when your soul also gets involved in it, then it becomes listening. […]

And to listen is to understand. Truth needs no proof. Truth is self-evident. All that is needed is the capacity to listen.

The student hears; the disciple listens. The curious hears, because his inquiry is intellectual. But the one who is a seeker, whose inquiry is not only a kind of curiosity, whose inquiry is a question of life and death to him, he listens. Everything is at stake. How can you afford not to listen?

Listening means your body and soul function together in a deep harmony. You become all ears; your whole body functions as an ear — your legs, your hands, every cell of your body and your whole being inside is attentive. Something immensely important is imparted to you. Something is communicated and you would not like to miss it.

If you are a seeker, a disciple, only then do you know what listening is. When you hear with great love, intensity, passion, when you hear aflame, when you hear totally, when you hear in silence, it is listening.

Pythagoras says: Listen . . .!

One of the great contemporaries of Pythagoras, Mahavira, has said that there are two ways to move into the world of truth. One is by right listening — just by right listening. Those who fail in right listening, for them the other is by right practice. You will be surprised. Right practice is needed for those who have failed in right listening. Otherwise, to listen to a man who has arrived is enough. To listen to a Buddha is enough. He is fire, and in listening you will become afire. Something will jump from the enlightened person to the disciple; something mysterious will be communicated — a transmission beyond scriptures and beyond words. But for that, listening is needed.

I was travelling in this country for many years, almost for fifteen years, talking to millions of people, but they were hearing, not listening. I tried hard to help them to listen, but it was impossible. I had to stop travelling. Now I wait only for those who can listen. You can see this silence, this presence of yours, this utter attentiveness, this being with me . . . this very moment a transformation starts happening. Something will be triggered in you. These moments are precious, and these moments are as precious as you are capable of listening.

If your mind is wandering somewhere else, then physically you will be hearing but you will not be able to listen. If many thoughts are moving inside you, and there is great traffic, then you will be hearing. Those thoughts won’t allow what I am saying to reach you, and they won’t allow what I am to reach you. When the mind has no thoughts, when the traffic inside has stopped, when the inner talk is discontinued, in that gap, in that silence, in that state of love and being listening happens.

And to listen rightly is to understand. There is no other effort needed. There is no need to practice truth because truth already is — if you understand, it is there; if you open your eyes, you have found it. Truth is not lost; you have only fallen asleep. If you listen, you will be awakened. Truth is where it has always been.

-Osho

From Philosophia Perennis, V. 2, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

God is Love – Osho

What is divine love? How does an enlightened person experience love?

First let us look at the question itself. You must have been waiting to ask it. It couldn’t have come to you just now; you must have decided on it in advance. It was waiting to be asked; it was forcing you to ask it. Your memory has determined the asking, not your consciousness. If you were conscious right now, if you were in the moment, this question would not have come. If you had been listening to what I have been saying, this question would be impossible.

If the question has been present in you, it is impossible for you to have heard anything I have been saying. A question that is constantly present in the mind creates a tension and because of the tension you cannot be here. That is why your consciousness cannot act with freedom. If you understand this, then we can take up your question.

The question itself is good, but the mind that has been thinking about it is ill. Awareness must be there moment to moment, not only in acts but in questions, in every gesture. If I raise my finger, it may be just a habit. Then I am not the master of my body. But if it is a spontaneous expression of something that is present in my consciousness right now, it is altogether different.

A Christian preacher’s every gesture is predetermined. He has been taught it. Once I was at a Christian theological college. After five years at this school, one becomes a doctor of divinity. Absurd! A doctor of divinity is sheer idiocy! They were being trained in everything: how to stand on the pulpit, how to begin the service, how to sing the hymn, how to look at the audience, where to stop and where to leave a gap or interval. Everything! This foolish preparation must not happen. It is a great misfortune.

So be in the moment. Do not decide anything beforehand. Be aware that the question is present in you, that it is knocking at the door of the mind continuously. You were not hearing me at all – just because of this question! And when I begin talking about your question, your mind will create another question. Again, you will miss. What I am saying is not personal to you. It is true for everyone.

Now the question.

Whenever love exists it is divine, so to say “divine love” is meaningless. Love is always divine. But the mind is cunning. It says: “We know what love is. It is only that we do not know what divine love is.” But we do not even know love. It is one of the most unknown things. There is too much talk about it; it is never lived. This is a trick of the mind. We talk about that which we cannot live. Literature, music, poetry, dance – everything revolves around love. If love were really there, we would not talk about it so much. Our excessive talk about love shows that love is nonexistent. Speaking about things which are not is a substitute. By talking, by language, by symbols, by art, we create an illusion that the thing is there. One who has never known love may write a better poem about it than one who has known love, because the vacuum is much deeper. It has to be filled. Something has to be substituted in place of love.

It is better to understand what love is first, because when you ask about divine love it is understood that love is known. But love is not known. What is known as love is something else. The false must be known before steps can be taken toward the real, the true.

What is known as love is just infatuation. You begin to love someone. If that someone becomes yours totally, love will die soon; but if there are barriers, if you cannot have the person you love, the love will become intense. The more barriers, the more intensely love will be felt. If the beloved or the lover is impossible to get, the love becomes eternal; but if you can win your lover easily, then the love dies easily.

When you try to get something and you cannot get it, you become intense about getting it. The more hindrances there are, the more your ego feels it is necessary to do something. It becomes an ego problem. The more you are denied, the more tense you become – and the more infatuated. This tension you call love. That is why, once the honeymoon is over, the love is old. Even before that. What you knew as love was not love. It was just ego infatuation, ego tension: a struggle, a conflict. Ancient human societies were very cunning. They devised methods to make love last. If a man cannot see his wife for a long time, infatuation will be created; tension will be created. Then a man can remain with one wife his whole life.

But in the West now, marriage cannot exist anymore. It is not that the Western mind is more sexual. It is that infatuation is not allowed to accumulate. Sex is so easily available that marriage cannot exist. Love too cannot exist with this kind of freedom. If a society is completely free sexually, then only sex can exist.

Boredom is the other side of infatuation. If you love someone and do not win the loved one, the infatuation goes deep, but if you win him or her, you begin to feel bored, fed up. There are many dualities: infatuation/boredom, love/hate, attraction/repulsion. With infatuation you feel attraction, love, and with boredom you feel repulsion, hate.

No attraction can really be love because repulsion is bound to come. It is in the very nature of things that the other side will come. If you do not want the opposite to come, you must create barriers so that infatuation never ends; you must create daily tensions. Then infatuation continues. This is the reason for the whole ancient system of creating barriers to love. But soon it will no longer be possible. Then marriage will die, and love will also die. It will go deep in the background. Only sex will remain. But sex cannot stand by itself; it becomes too mechanical.

Nietzsche declared that God is dead. The real thing that is going to be dead in this century is sex. I don’t mean that people will be non-sexual. They will be sexual, but the excessive emphasis on sex will go. Sex will become an ordinary act like anything else – like urinating or eating or anything. It will not be meaningful. It has become meaningful only because of the barriers that have been created around it.

What you have been calling love is not love. It is just delayed sex. Then what is love? Love is not related to sex at all. Sex may come into it or it may not, but it is not really related to sex at all. It is a different thing altogether.

To me, love is a by-product of a meditative mind. It is not related to sex; it is related to dhyana, meditation. The more silent you become, the more at ease with yourself you will be, the more fulfilled you will feel, and the more a new expression of your being will be there. You will begin to love. Not anyone in particular. It may happen with someone in particular, but that is another thing. You begin to love. This loving becomes your way of existing. It can never turn into repulsion because it is not an attraction.

You must understand the distinction clearly. Ordinarily when you fall in love with someone, the real feeling is how to get love from him. It is not that love is going from you to him. Rather it is an expectation that love will come to you from him. That is why love becomes possessive. You possess someone so that you can get something out of him. But the love I am talking about is neither possessive nor does it have any expectations. It is just how you behave. You have become so silent, so loving, that your silence goes to others now.

When you are angry, your anger goes to others. When you hate, your hate goes to others. When you are in love, you feel that your love is going out to others, but you are not dependable. One moment there is love, and the next moment there will be hate. Hate is not opposite to love; it is part and parcel of it, a continuity.

If you have loved someone, then you will hate him. You may not be courageous enough to admit it, but you will hate him. Lovers are always in conflict when they are together. When they are not together, they may sing songs of love to each other, but when they are together they are always fighting. They cannot live alone, and they cannot live together. When the other is not there, infatuation is created; the two again feel love for one another. But when the other is present, infatuation goes and hatred is felt again.

The love I am talking about means that you have become so silent that now there is neither anger nor attraction nor repulsion. Really, now there is no love and no hate. You are not other-oriented at all. The other has disappeared; you are alone with yourself. In this feeling of aloneness, love comes to you like a fragrance.

To ask for love from the other is always ugly. To depend on the other, to ask for something from the other, always creates bondage, suffering, conflict. A person should be sufficient unto himself. What I mean by meditation is a state of being where a person is sufficient unto himself. You have become a circle, alone. The mandala is complete.

You are trying to make the mandala complete with others: man with woman, woman with man. At certain moments the lines meet, but almost before they have met the separation begins. Only if you become a perfect circle – whole, sufficient unto yourself – does love begin to flower in you. Then whatever comes near you, you love. It is not an act at all; it is not something that you do. Your very being, your very presence, is love. Love flows through you.

If you ask a person who has reached this state, “Do you love me?” it will be difficult for him to answer. He cannot say, “I love you,” because it is not an act on his part; it is not a doing. And he cannot say, “I do not love you,” because he loves. Really, he is love.

This love comes only with the freedom I have been talking about. Freedom is the feeling you have, and love is the feeling others have about you. When meditation happens inside, you feel completely free. This freedom is an inner feeling; it cannot be felt by others.

Sometimes your behavior may create difficulties for others, because they cannot conceive of what has happened in you. In a way you will be a trouble to them, an inconvenience, because you cannot be predicted. Now nothing will be known about you. What will you do next? What will you say? No one can know. Everyone around you feels a certain inconvenience. They can never be at ease with you because now you are likely to do anything; you are not dead.

They cannot feel your freedom because they have not known anything like it. They have not even looked for it; they have not sought it. They are so much in bondage that they cannot even conceive of what freedom is. They have been in cages, they have not known the open sky, so even if you talk to them about the open sky it cannot be communicated to them. But they can feel your love, because they have been asking for love. Even in their cages, in their bondage, they have been searching for love. They have created the whole bondage – bondage with persons, with things – only because of their search for love.

So whenever a person happens to be free, his love is felt. But you will feel that love as compassion not as love, because there will be no excitement in it. It will be very diffused – with no heat, with no warmth even. There is no excitement in it. It is there, that’s all. Excitement comes and goes, it cannot be constant, so if there is excitement in Buddha’s love then Buddha will have to move into hate again. So excitement will not be there. Peaks will not be there, and valleys will not be there. The love is just there. You will feel it as karuna, compassion.

Freedom cannot be felt from the outside; only love can be felt. And that too only as compassion. This has been one of the most difficult phenomena of human history. The freedom of an enlightened one creates inconvenience, and their love is compassion. That is why society is always divided about these people.

There are people who have felt only the inconvenience that a Christ creates. These are the people who are well-established. They do not need compassion. They think that they have love, health, wealth, respect, everything. Christ happens and the “haves” will be against him because he will be creating an inconvenience for them, while the “have-nots” will be for him because they will feel his compassion. They are in need of love. No one has loved them, but this man loves them. They will not feel the inconvenience of a Christ because they have nothing to fear, nothing to lose.

When a Christ dies everyone will feel his compassion, because now there is no inconvenience. Even the well-established will feel at ease; they will worship him. But when he is living, he is a rebel. And he is a rebel because he is free. He is not a rebel because something is wrong with society. Such rebelliousness is only political. If the society changes, the very one who was rebellious will become orthodox. This happened in 1917. The very revolutionaries became one of the most anti-revolutionary cliques in the world. The moment men like Stalin or Mao Tse-tung are in power they become the most anti-revolutionary leaders possible because they are not really rebellious. They are only rebelling against a particular situation.

Once that situation is overthrown, they become the same as those they fought to overthrow. But a Christ is always rebellious. No situation will extinguish his rebellion, because his rebellion is not against anyone. It is because his consciousness is free. Anywhere he feels a barrier, he will feel rebellious. The rebellion is his spirit. So if Jesus comes today, Christians will not be at ease with him. They are part of the establishment now; they have become settled. If Jesus comes into the marketplace again he will destroy everything they have. The Vatican, the Church, is not possible with Jesus. Only without Jesus is it possible.

Every teacher who has achieved enlightenment is rebellious, but the tradition that is concerned with him is never rebellious. It is never concerned with his rebellion, with his freedom, but only with his compassion, his love. But then it becomes impotent. Love cannot exist without freedom, without rebellion.

You cannot be as loving as Buddha unless you are as free as he. A Buddhist monk is just trying to be compassionate. The compassion is impotent because the freedom is not there. Freedom is the source. Mahavira is compassionate, but a Jaina monk is not compassionate at all. He is just acting nonviolently and compassionately; he is not really compassionate. He is cunning. Even in his compassion, and his exhibition of it, he is cunning. There is no compassion, because the freedom is not there.

Whenever freedom happens in human consciousness, freedom is felt from inside and love is felt from outside. This love, this compassion, is an absence of both love and hate. The complete dualism is absent; there is neither attraction nor repulsion.

So with a person who is free and loving, it depends on you whether you can take his love or not. It is not up to me how much love I can give you; it depends on how much love you can take. Ordinarily love depends on the person who is giving. He may give love; he may not. But the love I am talking about is not dependent on the giver. He is completely open and giving every moment. Even when no one is present, the love is flowing.

It is just like a flower in the desert. No one may know that it has flowered and is giving out its perfume, but it will give it. It is not being given to anyone; it is just being given. The flower has bloomed, so the fragrance is there. Whether someone passes or not is irrelevant. If someone passes and is sensitive, he may receive it. But if he is completely dead, insensitive, he may not even be aware that there is a flower there.

When love is there, it is up to you whether you can receive it or not. Only when love is not there can the other give it to you or withhold it from you. With love, with compassion, there is no division between divine and non-divine. Love is divine. God is love.

-Osho

From The Psychology of the Esoteric, Discourse #11, Q3

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Trance is Always Unconscious – Osho

Can trance-like states be higher or lower than the conscious?

The trance-like state is always lower than the conscious. It is always unconscious. It is a very significant question, because for centuries it has been avoided and not discussed.

There have been people like Ramakrishna who used to go into a trance very easily. Ultimately Ramakrishna became enlightened, but he became enlightened when he met a master who taught him witnessing. Before that he was not an enlightened man. But he was a very simple, very spontaneous, very loving person, and he would go into a trance just by seeing something. For example, he was passing by the side of a lake. It was evening time, the sun was setting, and there was a black cloud – the rains were just going to come. And as he passed by, he disturbed almost two dozen cranes that must have been sitting by the side of the lake. Because of Ramakrishna’s coming there, they suddenly flew away – against the black clouds, the two dozen white cranes in a row and a beautiful sunset underneath. Then and there he fell suddenly into a trance. He had to be carried back to his home. It took three hours for him to come back. Just the beauty of it was enough. But it was not a superconscious state. It was tremendously relaxing, but it was below consciousness. […]

Trance is possible but for that you need a certain training in auto-hypnosis. Or, you may have a natural tendency of falling unconscious. You may have a very thin layer of consciousness, and anything that affects you very deeply – like Ramakrishna – may make you go unconscious; otherwise, you need a training. But the training will lead you to the unconscious – it is not a spiritual growth.

You have to be conscious, more conscious. That’s why my process is to first reach to the highest point of consciousness, then turn backwards. Now go down with the light that you have, the insight that you have, into the deeper, dark parts of your being. Now you will be going with light, and wherever you are, there will be light.

Your unconscious has treasures, your collective unconscious has treasures, your cosmic unconscious has treasures, but you need light and you need alertness. If you yourself are unconscious, how can you find any treasures in the three layers of your deep unconscious mind?

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #13

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Witnessing where Mindfulness and Self-Inquiry Meet

At first glance, one might think that there is a significant difference between Ramana’s Self-Inquiry and Osho’s Witnessing Meditation. But in my own experience I have found that not to be the case. What I discovered is that Osho’s Watching/Witnessing Meditation incorporates Ramana’s enquiry but also extends out to reach a much larger field of practitioners. How so? you might ask. Okay, here goes.

Ramana Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry is often described as such:
A thought appears.
The question is asked, “To whom does the thought appear?”
The answer, “Me,” arises.
And then the question, “Who is this me? Or who am I?” is enquired into.

Osho has described the following three steps for his watching meditation:
We begin with watching the activities of the body.

With this awareness we then turn inwards to watch the movement of mind, thought.

Even deeper still and ever more subtle we then begin to watch the feelings of the heart.

So where do these seemingly very different approaches to realizing the self overlap, and how are they related?

Ramana begins with “a thought appears.” So, for a thought to appear it presumes that one is watching the movement of mind. For many of us, this is not as easy as one might, excuse the pun, think.

And this is where Osho extends the field. He instructs us to begin with watching the activities of the body. Meaning: we watch, we bring awareness to daily activities, eating, walking, talking, showering, etc. By this bringing awareness we are reclaiming our consciousness. We are increasing our own capacity of being aware. We are learning the art of watching. We are beginning to be more conscious.

His next step is to take this awareness and begin to watch the movement of mind. First, we watch our continual getting lost into thought and then remembering which brings us momentarily out of the stream. This process takes time because we have to gradually increase our capacity to watch all that appears in consciousness. Soon we are able to see thought as something separate from our watching and slowly disidentification begins, but still we are drawn out into the fray again and again. But then there is one more instruction that Osho adds and that is to watch without grasping or rejecting, to watch without judging the thoughts, to watch without analyzing the thought stream. Through this quality of watching, we begin to see that it is “the grasping and rejecting, the judging and analyzing” that is keeping us tethered to the stream of thought. It is how we remain identified with thought. A thought appears and we grab onto it because we like it and go for a ride. Or a thought appears that we find unpleasant and we push it down not to be looked at. Or we judge our getting lost into a thought or even analyze why we are attracted to such a thought.

But when we discover watching without grasping or rejecting, without judging or analyzing we are able to disengage, disidentify with thought and remain the watcher. And it is the same process for feelings, moods, emotions.

It is here that Ramana’s second step comes in. He says, we ask, “To whom does the thought appear?” We are not able to ask this as long as we are glued together with the stream of thought, as long as we are grasping, judging, etc. With the quality of watching that Osho has instructed there is space for the inquiry, “To whom does the thought appear?” Here we are in the double-pointed arrow that Osho speaks about. The arrow pointing back is the enquiry – to whom does that thought appear.

Osho instructs us to remain in this watching with the double-pointed arrow, watching without judging, analzying … and slowly, slowly the content that the outward-pointing arrow is pointing to begins to disappear. It no longer has the fuel to continue because it was being supplied by the identification, by the engagement.

And it is here that Ramana’s inquiry of “who am I” is relevant. Here in this disengaged awareness, this witnessing without an object, one’s own true nature as the witnessing consciousness is revealed. And it is indeed who we are.

I have been known to say that Osho’s witnessing meditation is the bee’s knees of meditation because it incorporates both mindfulness and self-enquiry. And so it is, and so it does.

A big shout to those who have persisted in their questions requiring me to articulate ever more clearly this insight.

-purushottama

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

Awareness is My Successor – Osho

You have said that you don’t care if there is any successor when you are gone. What do you see happening to your sannyasins, to Rajneeshism, the moment you die?

I don’t at all think about it. Never does the thought occur to me, for the simple reason that the very idea goes against my approach. The people who are living with me are enjoying the moment. Do you want me alone not to enjoy the moment?

I am teaching everybody to enjoy the moment, and don’t be bothered by tomorrow. Living in the moment intelligently, consciously, meditatively, will take care of the future. There is no need for me to give you directives, guidelines for what you have to do when I am gone. That’s what all the old religions have done.

Manu gave all the guidelines for Hindus five thousand years ago, and they are still following them. Everything has changed, nothing of Manu is applicable any more. In fact it is a hindrance to the evolution of Hindus to become contemporaries. Now, Manu has committed a crime against humanity by giving these directives. He did not prove a blessing, he proved himself a curse. But the same is done by Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Buddha. On one thing they are all agreed: that when they are gone they have still to control the people who had come into contact with them, who had trusted them. But they don’t trust their people.

I trust my people. I know that they are living fully, joyously. They know how to live joyously, how to live fully, and that’s enough. I have given them the experience; now the experience will be decisive. And they will have a freedom, because things will change, situations will change. I could give directives that will become hindrances to their growth, but I cannot do that. That is criminal, very criminal. […]

Nobody should try to make any guidelines for the future. The future is always open. I am not willing to be a participant in a crime which has been committed for thousands of years. I absolutely decline to stand with Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Mohammed, Jesus, Moses. No, that is not my company.

I want to make a complete breakthrough about everything, and this is one of the most fundamental things. There is hidden in it a deep desire to dominate people, even when you are gone —to put it in other words, that the dead should be dominating the living. That’s what has been happening all around the world. The living are not given freedom even to choose their own course, to choose their own moralities, to choose, according to the time, what is right and what is wrong.

Those people were very much concerned, because they were writing, they were dictating rules and regulations in detail. In Buddhist scriptures there are 33,000 rules for a monk. People have come to seek freedom, they have come to seek truth. What they are getting is a strange psychological slavery in its place, and that too even for coming generations.

So when I am asked whether I am going to make somebody my successor, I say absolutely no. I am giving my people clarity, understanding, awareness. That is going to be my successor. Every one of my sannyasins has to decide for himself. I have given him that much understanding, and I am making every effort to make him more and more conscious, so there is no need for him to be dictated to about things which are absolutely new by people who are dead, and who had no idea about those things. […]

I am not going to give a single instruction about anything. In fact there is no need. These people had to give instructions because they left people blind. They gave only beliefs to them; they never gave them consciousness, awareness. They never gave them the capacity to decide on their own. They never made them responsible for their own life.

Yes, they gave them a blind man’s stick, and directions on how to move so you can get to the door. But the house is being continuously renovated, continuously remade. Doors are being changed, windows are being changed, and the old blind man goes on finding the way with the old instructions.

No, I don’t want to give my people sticks. I want to give them eyes. And the people who ask me who is going to be my successor are asking because that’s how it has always been: somebody should succeed, and I should give clear-cut instructions about what you have to do and what you have not to do when I am gone. The people who ask me the question think that I am very irresponsible that I will simply die and leave the sannyasins without any instructions, without any moral code, without any ten commandments. They do not understand me. I love my people so much that I cannot create any hindrance in their life in the future. I cannot give them any instructions. I am giving them eyes so they can see where the door is for themselves. Why should I give them a map of the house when the house is continuously changing? And it has been proved by these five thousand years that all codes, all religions, all ethical systems have failed for the simple reason that they were trying to decide the future, which was not in their hands. Their intention was good, but their understanding was not enough.

I want my sannyasins to inherit my freedom, my awareness, my consciousness. And each sannyasin has to be my successor, has to be me. There is no need for anybody to dominate. There is nobody for anybody to dictate to. They are on their own. If they want to be together, they can be together. Out of their own freedom, it is their choice and their decision. If they want to move free, they have all the rights to move free.

So the thought never occurs to me. All that occurs to me is that the sooner I can make my people more clear about life and its complexities the better, because nobody knows when I may be gone. Before that my people have to be capable of blissfully and joyously giving me a send-off.

And I will not be leaving any ethical code, any structure to be followed. They will have to make it. And they will have to remember that they make it only for themselves, not for the future. They will have to do the same as I am doing for them. They will have to keep alert, because it is very easy to be tempted so that the new generation does not get lost. It is better to get lost than to be imprisoned.

So I am not giving you any structure, any instructions, but only clarity, understanding, consciousness. Remember, the same thing has to be done for the future generation. One day the same question will be before you. What are you going to decide for the younger generation of sannyasins for when you are gone?

Nobody has the right to decide for anybody else. Help the person to grow, to mature. Help the person to stand on his own feet, this is real compassion. And my compassion does not allow me to say a single word about the future. I am absolutely concerned with the present. And if the present is golden, the future born out of it will be even more golden.

-Osho

From The Last Testament, V. 1, Talk #6

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

Many of Osho’s books are available 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 Double-Pointed Arrow of Watchingness

Osho speaks often about watching the mind without grasping or rejecting, without judging, without analyzing. And he also speaks about watching with a double-pointed arrow of awareness.

After experimenting with these two viewpoints, it has been my discovery that they are two ways of describing the exact same phenomenon. When we manage to watch without grasping or rejecting, without judging, without analyzing we find ourselves watching with a double-pointed awareness. If we find ourselves in watching with the double-pointed arrow we discover that we are indeed watching without grasping or rejecting, etc., and we see that it is the grasping, the rejecting, the judging, the analyzing that is preventing us from having the double-pointed awareness

So whichever viewpoint we are more suited to, they both will be describing the same quality of watchingness. The key is watching without being drawn out (grasping, rejecting …) into the fray. This watching without being drawn out creates the second arrow of awareness.

-purushottama

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

Don’t Start with Love, Start with Meditation – Osho

Your silence goes so deep into my heart that it makes my love unconditional. Beloved Master, is this what “satsang” is?

Satyam Svarup, there are two ways to look at life. One is the way of the schizophrenic. That has been followed by the crowds around the world down the centuries. It divides things. It is very uneasy without dividing them. And because for thousands of years the teaching has penetrated into every mind it seems to be the only way.

It looks neat and clean divided, but existence does not follow it. It has its own undivided melting, merging into each other without making any demarcations. I am against the first because it has destroyed so much that the crime is incalculable. […]

The old way, the wrong way, the ugly and the insane way, divides love from silence, divides silence from ecstasy, divides ecstasy from self-realization and so on, so forth. But they are not divisions. It is a simple flow of energy moving into different spaces.

You are asking, “Your silence goes so deep into my heart that it makes my love unconditional.” To any logician, to any follower of the first path it will look absurd. What has silence to do with unconditional love? They seem to be worlds apart.

But, Satyam Svarup, you gathered courage to say something which goes against your training of logic. It was possible because it is not an intellectual question, it is your existential experience. And logic cannot overrule existential experiences.

Man is a miniature cosmos, everything intertwined. If your love deepens, your silence will deepen; your blissfulness will deepen, your innocence will deepen, your sensitivity, your aesthetic potentiality will come to flowering.

Just as your hands are not separate from your eyes, neither are your feet separate from your head; you are an organic unity – the same is the situation in the inner world. Your love, your meditation, your silence, your blissfulness – they are simply waves in the same ocean of consciousness. So don’t be disturbed by the mind, which is pretending to be the master. Listen to the heart and you will never be on a wrong track. And the more you listen to the heart, the more and more your life will go beyond intellect, beyond logic, beyond dialectics, beyond all kinds of discriminations.

It is beautiful that you have brought it into a question: “As your silence goes so deep into my heart, there it makes my love unconditional.”

Start from anywhere. You are a perfect circle, and so deeply interconnected, with everything in your life. You can start by being more meditative, which is the simplest because it does not involve other human beings. The others are a little complex; it is better to let them come on their own.

My own understanding is, don’t start with love, because your understanding of love is not the authentic love. It is simply biological infatuation, and if you start with that you have gone astray. Start with meditation because meditation is the only thing that biology has not given to you. It has a tremendous force of its own. That’s why the physiologist or the biologist will account for everything but will never mention the word ‘meditation’.

Meditation is the only bridge between you and the beyond. Start with meditation – and that’s what is happening to you, effortlessly. Sitting with me, listening to me, a silence enters into your heart and suddenly you feel springs of love unaddressed, radiating in all directions. It is not love to someone; it is simply being loving.

But if it comes from meditation, from silence, it will have purity, because it is not coming from biology.

It is not coming from your past, it is not coming from all your conditionings; it is coming from the spontaneous experience of silence. And suddenly you see a great aroma of love around you. You have known love, but it was always conditional. Anything conditional is not worth a penny, because the conditional will disappear. Once the condition is fulfilled there is no purpose in it. […]

Any love which has some conscious or unconscious conditions is bound to bring frustration, because those conditions cannot be fulfilled. The very nature of conditions is such. […]

When I say love has to be unconditional it means you are not expecting from the other anything. You are not expecting the other to be someone else. You are simply loving to the other, as he or she is. And your unconditional love will make you unattached to individuals; it will be just an aroma around you. You will be a loving person. You will love the trees, you will love the sunset, you will love a woman, you will love all that this universe provides you.

Right now, the conditional love is like an imprisonment. Two persons who don’t like each other are holding each other in imprisonment. It is a strange thing. If you don’t like the other, say good-bye.

But you cannot say good-bye because you are afraid he may enjoy himself somewhere else. It does not fit with your jealousy, he has to be happy with you. A husband does not like his wife to be laughing, to be happy with another man. Neither does the wife like such a situation.

So it is a very strange situation in which we have placed humanity. And unless a great awareness happens that this is our fundamental misery, you cannot be freed from this hell that you have made of the earth. Lovers – the so-called lovers, I mean – are more like detectives to each other than lovers. Jealously watching what the other is doing . . . every letter is opened; every pocket is searched.

One night, a woman heard . . . in sleep her husband was again and again saying, “Kamala, darling.”

The woman was listening to exactly what he was saying. In the morning, she asked, the first thing, “Who is this ‘Kamala darling’?”

The man said, “It is nothing, it is just the name of a female horse. I have been thinking to bet on that horse – you know the racing season is coming.”

And then, just when they were talking about this, the phone rang. The husband ran towards the phone; the wife said, “Stop, I will take it.” And then she handed over the phone to the husband: “That female horse ‘Kamala darling’ wants to talk to you.”

Even in sleep you are not free to say things. And people say there is freedom of speech! If there were a small window which God had managed to make into every head, the wife would have been looking through the window into your dreams. “What are you seeing? Who is this woman?” […]

This whole society is boiling with jealousy. Nobody says it, everybody hides it. But the more you hide it, the more it goes on like a cancerous growth, expanding in your interior being. Just look how many things you are jealous of: somebody has a beautiful house and somebody has a beautiful physique, and somebody has a beautiful strong body. Somebody is an intellectual giant and somebody has the most wealth that one could ever think of. So on, so forth, there are people all around who will make you jealous.

Instead of your life being in an oceanic love, it is suffering in a gutter of dirty jealousy. But unless you start looking inwards and finding the roots, you will not be able to transform it.

You are blessed, Svarup, that just without any effort my silence reaches to your heart. It will purify you; it will destroy all that is poisonous in you – jealousy, anger, greed, attachment, possessiveness.

It will make you just a beautiful flower of love.

What is happening has been called in the East satsang, being with a man who has attained the truth. Yes, this is satsang – where, without any effort on your part, just the grace of your master starts alchemical changes . . . so silently that you become aware only when the work is done.

And there are a few things . . . for example if you have known unconditional love, you cannot undo it. It is so vast and it is so beautiful that what you used to think was love looks like just an ugly nightmare compared to it. You would not like to go back to it; your whole being will resist going back to it.

My speaking to you is not especially to give you any philosophy or any dogma, or any creed or any theology or any religion. My talking to you is a device so that you can experience my presence, my silence. In an unaware moment perhaps, you can come closer to my heart without any fear.

This is a device for meditativeness.

I am not interested in any kinds of doctrines; they have tortured humanity long enough. I am interested in a loving humanity, in a humanity fragrant with silence, rejoicing this immense gift of life and existence. […]

-Osho

From Om Mani Padme Hum, Discourse #28

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Shravan Means Right Listening – Osho

This sutra uses four words as four steps, four steps towards the unknown. The first is shravan. Shravan means right listening – not just listening, but right listening.

We listen, everyone listens, but right listening is a rare achievement. So what is the difference between listening and right listening, shravan?

Right listening means not just a fragmentary listening. I am saying something, you are listening to it there. Your ears are being used; you may not be just behind your ears at all; you may have gone somewhere else. You may not be present there. If you are not present there in your totality, then it cannot be right listening.

Right listening means you have become just your ears – the whole being is listening. No thinking inside, no thoughts, no thought process, only listening. Try it sometimes; it is a deep meditation in itself. Some birds are singing – the crows – just become listening, forget everything – just be the ears. The wind is passing through the trees, the leaves are rustling; just become the ears, forget everything – no thought process, just listen. Become the ears. Then it is right listening, then your whole being is absorbed into it, then you are totally present.

And Upanishads say, that the esoteric, ultimate formulas of spiritual alchemy cannot be given to you unless you are in a moment of right listening.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #44

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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