Suppose Your Passive Form to be an Empty Room – Osho

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin – empty. 

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin . . . but inside, everything empty. This is one of the most beautiful techniques. Just sit in a meditative posture, relaxed, alone, your backbone straight and the whole body relaxed – as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. Then close your eyes. For a few moments go on feeling relaxed, more relaxed, becoming calmer and calmer and calmer. Do this for a few moments, just to be in tune. And then suddenly start feeling your body is just walls of skin and there is nothing inside, there is no one inside, the house is vacant. Sometimes you will feel thoughts passing, clouds of thoughts moving, but don’t think that they belong to you. You are not. Just think that they are roaming in a vacant sky – they don’t belong to anyone, they don’t have any roots.

Really this is the case: thoughts are just like clouds moving in the sky. They don’t have any roots and they don’t belong to the sky; they simply roam in the sky. They come and they go and the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced. Feel that your body is just walls of skin and there is no one inside. Thoughts will still continue – because of old habit, old momentum, old cooperation, thoughts will go on coming. But just think that they are rootless clouds moving in space – they don’t belong to you, they don’t belong to anybody else. There is no one to whom they can belong – you are empty. It will be difficult, but because of the old habits, nothing else. Your mind would like to catch some thought, be identified with it, move with it, enjoy it, indulge in it. Resist! Just say there is no one to indulge, there is no one to fight, there is no one to do anything with this thought.

Within a few days, a few weeks, thoughts will slow down, they will become less and less. The clouds will start disappearing or, even if they come, there will be great gaps of cloudless sky when there will be no thought. One thought will pass. Then another will not come for a period. Then another will come and then there will again be an interval. In those intervals you will know for the first time, what emptiness is. And the very glimpse of it will fill you with such deep bliss you cannot imagine.

Really it is difficult to say anything about it, because whatsoever is said in language will refer to you, and you will not be there. If I say that you will be filled with happiness it will be nonsense. You will not be there, so how can I say you will be filled with happiness? Happiness will be there. Just within the four walls of your skin, happiness will be there, vibrating – but you will not be there. A deep silence will descend on you, because if you are not, no one can create a disturbance. You always go on thinking that somebody else is disturbing you; the traffic noise on the road, children playing around you, the wife working in the kitchen . . . somebody is disturbing you. Nobody is disturbing you; you are the cause of the disturbance. Because you are there, anything can disturb you. If you are not there, then disturbances will come and pass through the emptiness without touching it. You are there – very touchy, a wound; anything immediately hurts you.

I have heard about a scientific story. It happened after the third world war that all were dead; now there was no one on the earth, only trees and hills were there. One big tree thought to create a great noise, as it used to create in the past. It fell down from a big rock, it did everything that was possible, but there was no noise. Because for noise your ears are needed, for sound your ears are needed. If you’re not there, sound cannot be created. It is impossible. I am speaking here. I am making sound because you are here. If no one is here, I may go on speaking, but sound cannot be created. But I can create it myself because I myself can hear it. If no one is there to hear, sound cannot be created, because sound is a reaction of your ears.

If no one is there on the earth, the sun will rise but it cannot create light. It seems absurd. We cannot conceive of it because we always think that the sun will rise and there will be light. Your eyes are needed. Without your eyes, the sun cannot create light. It may go on rising but it will be futile because the rays will pass in emptiness. There will be no one who can react and who can say that this is light. Light is a phenomenon of your eyes. You react. Sound is a phenomenon of your ears. You react. What do you think . . . a rose is there in the garden, but if no one passes, will there be perfume? A rose alone cannot create perfume. Impossible. You and your nose are needed – someone to react and interpret that this is perfume, this is rose-perfume. However hard a rose tries, without a nose it will not be a rose at all.

The disturbance on the street is not there really, it is within your ego. Your ego reacts and says that this is a disturbance. It is your interpretation. Sometimes in a different mood you may enjoy it. Then it will not be a disturbance. You may enjoy it in a different mood. And then you will say, “This is beautiful. What music!” But in a sad moment even music will become a disturbance. But if you are not there, just space, emptiness, there can be neither disturbance nor music. Things will just pass through you, unnoticed. Because unstruck, there is no wound to react, there is no one to respond; not even an ego will be created. This is what Buddha calls nirvana.

And this technique can help you.

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin – empty. Sit in a passive state, inactive, not doing anything . . . Because whenever you do something, the doer comes in. Really there is no doer. Only because of the doing you imagine that there is one. Buddha is difficult only because of this. Only because of linguistic forms have problems arisen.

We say a man is walking. If you analyze this sentence, it means that there is someone who is walking. But Buddha says there is only a process of walking, there is no one who is walking. You are laughing. Because of language it appears that there is someone who is laughing. Buddha says there is laughter but no one inside who is laughing. When you laugh, remember this, and find out who laughs. You will never find anyone – there is simply laughter. There is no one behind it doing it. When you are sad, there is no one who is sad, there is simply sadness. Look at this, simply sadness. It is a process: simply laughter, simply happiness, simply unhappiness. There is no one behind it.

Only because of language do we go on thinking in terms of two. If there is movement, we say there must be someone who has moved – the mover. We cannot conceive of movement alone. But have you ever seen the mover? Have you ever seen the one who laughs? Buddha says there is life, the process of life, but no one inside who is alive. And then there is death, but no one dying. For Buddha you are not a duality – the language creates a duality. I am speaking, there is no one who is speaking. It is a process. It belongs to no one.

But for us this is difficult because our mind is deeply rooted in dualism. Whenever we think of some activity, we conceive of some actor inside, some doer. That’s why a passive, inactive form is good in meditation because then you can fall into emptiness more easily. Buddha says, “Don’t meditate. Be in meditation.” The difference is vast.

I will repeat. Buddha says, “Don’t meditate. Be in meditation.” Because if you meditate, the doer has come in – you will go on thinking that you are meditating. Then meditation has become an act. Buddha says, “Be in meditation.” That means be totally passive, don’t do anything, and don’t think that there is any doer. That’s why sometimes, when the doer is lost in the doing, you feel a sudden upsurge of happiness. It comes because you have become one. With a dancer a moment comes when [the] dance takes over the dancer disappears – then happens a sudden blessing, a sudden beatitude, a sudden ecstasy. He is filled with unknown bliss. What has happened? Only the doing remained and the doer was no more.

At the war-front, soldiers sometimes attain to very deep bliss. It is difficult to conceive of because they are so near death – at any moment they can die. In the beginning it makes them afraid; they tremble in fear. But you cannot continue trembling and fearing every day, continuously. One becomes accustomed, one accepts death – then the fear disappears. And when death is so near and with any wrong movement you may be dead immediately, the doer is forgotten, and only duty remains, only doing remains. And one has to be so deeply in the doing that one cannot go on remembering that “I am.” That “I am” will create trouble. You will miss. You will not be totally in the activity. And life is at stake so you cannot afford duality. Action becomes total. When action is total, you suddenly feel you are happy as you have never been before.

Warriors have known very deep springs of joy that ordinary life cannot give to you. That may be the reason why war is so appealing. And that may be the reason why kshatriyas, warriors, have attained to moksha more than brahmins; because brahmins are always thinking and thinking – much mental activity. Twenty-four Jain teerthankaras, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, were all kshatriyas, warriors. They have attained to the highest peak.

No businessman has ever been heard to attain to that peak. He lives in such security that he can afford to be dual. Whatsoever he is doing, it is never total. Profit cannot be a total activity. You can enjoy it, but it is never a life-and-death problem. You can play with it, but nothing is at stake. It is a game. A business is playing a game, the game of money. The game is not very dangerous so businessmen almost always remain mediocre. Even a gambler may attain to higher peaks of bliss than a businessman, because a gambler moves into danger. He stakes everything that he has got – in that moment of total stake [risk] the doer is lost.

That may be the reason why gambling is so appealing, war is so appealing. As far as I understand, behind whatsoever is appealing, there must be some ecstasy lurking somewhere, some hint of the unknown somewhere, some glimpse of the deep mystery of life hidden somewhere there. Otherwise, nothing can be appealing.

Passivity . . .  Any posture that you take in meditation should be passive. In India we have evolved the most passive asana, the most passive posture, that is siddhasana. And the beauty of it is that in this siddhasana posture, as Buddha sits, the body is in the deepest of passive states. Even while lying down, you are not so passive; even while sleeping, your posture is not so passive, it is active. Why is siddhasana so passive? For many reasons. In this posture the body is locked, closed. The body has an electric circle: when the circle is closed and locked, the electricity moves round and round inside the body, it does not leak out. Now it is a proved scientific phenomenon that in certain postures your body leaks energy. When the body is leaking energy, it has to create energy continuously. It is active. The body dynamo has to work continuously because you are leaking. When energy is leaking from the outside body, the inside body has to be active to replace it. So the most passive state will be when no energy is leaking.

Now in Western countries, particularly in England, they treat patients just by making a circle of their body electricity. In many hospitals these techniques are being used and they are very helpful. A person lies on the floor on a net of wires. The net of wires is just to make a circle of his body electricity. Just half an hour is enough, and he will feel so relaxed, so filled with energy, so strong, that he cannot believe that when he came, he was so weak.

In all the old cultures, people used to sleep in a particular direction in the night just so that energy didn’t leak out – because the earth has a magnetic force. To use that magnetic force, you have to lie in a particular direction – then the force in the earth will magnetize you the whole night. If you are lying opposite to it, the force is fighting with you and your energy will be destroyed. Many people in the morning feel very depressed, very weakened. This should not be so, because sleep is meant to rejuvenate you, to give you more energy. But there are many people who are more energetic when they go to bed but in the morning, they are just dead. There can be many reasons for it but this may be one: they are lying in the wrong direction. If they are lying against the earth magnet, they will feel dissipated.

So now scientists say that the body has an electric circuit which can be locked, and they have studied many yogis sitting in siddhasana. In that state the body is leaking the minimum energy; energy is preserved. When energy is preserved the inner batteries need not work, there is no need for any activity. So the body is passive. In this passivity, you can become more empty than if you are active.

In this siddhasana posture, your backbone is straight and the whole body is also straight. Now many studies have been done. When your body is straight, totally straight, you are least influenced by the gravitation of the earth. That’s why if you sit in a posture which is inconvenient, which you call inconvenient, the inconvenience is caused because your body is more affected by gravitation. If you are sitting straight then gravitation is least effective, because it can pull only your backbone, nothing else. That’s why it is difficult to sleep while standing. It is almost impossible to sleep while standing in a shirshasana, on your head.

For sleep you have to lie down. Why? Because then the earth has the maximum pull on you – and the maximum pull makes you unconscious. For sleep you have to lie down on the ground, so the earth’s gravitation touches the whole of your body and pulls every cell of it. Then you become unconscious. Animals are more unconscious than man because they cannot stand erect. Evolutionists say that man could evolve because he could stand erect, on two feet. The gravitation pull is less. Because of that he could become a little more aware.

In siddhasana, the gravitational pull is at its minimum. The body is inactive and passive, closed inside, it has become a world unto itself. Nothing is moving out, nothing is coming in. Eyes are closed, hands are locked, feet are locked – energy moves in a circle. And whenever energy moves in a circle, it creates an inner rhythm, an inner music. The more you hear that music, the more you feel relaxed.

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room – just like an empty room – with walls of skin – empty. Go on dropping into that emptiness. A moment will come sometime when you feel everything has disappeared; that there is no one, nobody, the house is vacant; the lord of the house has disappeared, evaporated. In that gap, in that interval, when you are not present inside, the Divine will be present. When you are not, God is. When you are not, bliss is. So try to disappear. Try to disappear from within.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #79

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Suppose Your Passive Form to be an Empty Room.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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.