Man is a periphery but also a center. Man is a circumference but not only that. Your body is your circumference but not you. […] The body is just your abode, just a house – not even a home, just a house. You are in it, but you are not it. But the mind believes itself to be the body. That is known as adhyasa, illusion, projection.
Why does this mind take the body as identical with it, as one with it? The nearness, the constant nearness, the intimacy between the two, and the body begins to be reflected in the mirror of the mind. Constant association – not only in this life, but of many lives – and by and by you become one with that which has been in association with you. It becomes a habit.
For millions of years consciousness has existed in bodies, and because of that, it is identified with the body. This identification is the only error, the only ignorance, the only sin. For the Eastern approach, this is the original sin, to be identified with the body. How to be non-identified again? How to be aware that you are not your body, you are not your mind? How to go in and find the forgotten center? It is always there, you are standing on it; you are it! But your eyes, your senses have taken you far away; you have gone on a journey.
This journey is very miraculous; it is like a dream journey. You sleep in Mt. Abu, and in the night, you dream you are in London, or in New York, or in Calcutta. You have gone on a journey in the mind. The journey appears to be actual, real. You cannot remember in your dream that this is a dream. The moment you remember this is a dream, the dream will be broken. This is a basic condition of the dream, that you should not remember it as a dream. The dream must be taken as reality; only then the dream can continue, that’s the basic condition. The dream must appear as real; otherwise, it is broken.
So in the night when you dream, the dream appears not only real but really more than real. Real life seems pale before it; the dream is more colorful, more intense, more alive. You can go on a journey in the dream and still you continue to be here in Mt. Abu. In reality you remain in Mt. Abu, but in the dream you have moved. Nothing has moved; only the mind has moved.
The whole world, for the Eastern mind, is just a dream journey – you go on moving. You remain constantly at the center, but you go on moving to the periphery, to the circumference. You look at some beautiful face, some proportionate body . . . it appeals; the mind has moved. Now you are not at your center, you are not at your home; you have gone away. Now you will follow, your mind will move. Any desire is a movement; any motivation is a movement – a movement of the mind.
You see a beautiful car, or you see a rich palace, and the mind starts desiring, you start moving. You remain at the center, but the mind is not there. You have forgotten the center; now the mind is attached with the objects of desire. Those objects of desire become your clinging. That’s why the mind goes on and on, out and out – and you are at the center. This creates a division; this divides you in two. And because you never return to the center, you never go back to it, ultimately you forget that you have a center.
The more civilized, the more cultured, the more educated the world becomes, the more it is centerless. Everyone is just a circumference – the master is missing. The house is there; the center is not there. And even if you try to reach the center you cannot reach it because you don’t know how to reach it. And the ways and the means you try to reach it really are not means and ways. They are barriers because you try to reach the center in the same way as you reach the circumference. You know only one way: how to move to the circumference, how to desire.
You desire riches, you desire power, you desire facts – you desire so many things. The mechanism of desire is that you desire something which you have not. You desire something which can become possible only in the future, never in the present! Desire is meaningful only in reference to the future. You cannot desire immediately, here and now; you will need time. Desire needs time to move. So you desire for tomorrow. You say, “Tomorrow,” or “In the next life this will happen. This I would like to happen; I hope for it.” Desire is basically future oriented, and desire means something which you don’t have.
This mechanism, if you apply it to the inner journey, will become a barrier. This mechanism cannot help because the basic situation differs; not only differs, it is absolutely diametrically opposite. Your being, your center is not something to be achieved in the future, it is here and now. It is already the case – you can have it immediately! No time is needed to move to it; really, no movement is needed. Just an awareness and you are there. You have not moved away, you are just unaware. You have not gone anywhere so that you have to come back. You have never gone in reality, only in dream.
You are sleeping in Mt. Abu and dreaming of London, and someone suddenly wakes you. Will you be awake in London or in Mt. Abu? Or will you say, “Wait, I am in London, and now I need to come back to Mt. Abu?” No, from a dream, if you are awakened, you are suddenly here. The dream world, the dream journey disappears completely. You have not come back because you have never gone away.
Your being, your center is here and now.
It cannot be made the object of desire. You cannot desire it, and if you desire it, you will miss.
Your very desire will become the barrier.
Lao Tzu says, “Do not seek; otherwise, you will miss. Do not seek, and find.” This looks absurd! Do not seek and find, looks illogical; it is not. It looks illogical because we know only one logic: the logic of desire. If someone says, “Do not seek riches and you will find,” it is illogical, you will never find. If someone says, “Don’t long for worldly things and you will find them,” nonsense; you will never find them. You will have to seek; then too, it is difficult to find them.
But it is not illogical for the inner journey. Note it, understand it deeply: the inner journey is just the reverse – from the center to the periphery, this is the way. Create an object of desire and then move toward it – just the reverse is the way which goes in. Don’t create any object of desire and don’t move – and you will reach it because you are already there.
Any movement anywhere, and you will miss your center. No movement and you are there, suddenly awakened.
Because we know only one logic, one method to reach a certain thing, we go on applying it toward the inner journey. That creates hindrances – they are self-created. Nothing is to be done to reach the center. I repeat, nothing is to be done to reach the center – it is there. If you can be in a non-doing moment, you will find it. Or, we can say:
Non-doing is the doing for the center.
Non-desiring is the way for the inner center.
Just being, not becoming, is the gaining of it.
But the mind will ask, “What to do?” Even if I say, “Don’t do anything,” the mind will constantly go on asking, “But how? How not to do anything? What to do to achieve this non-doing, this non-action? How is it to be achieved?” And “how” means that something is to be done.
So one secret I will tell you.
All the techniques of meditation, and the one which we will be doing just after the talk – all the techniques are really just toys to play with because the mind goes on asking, “What to do?” So the technique supplies you: Do this. By that doing you are not going to reach the center, but by that doing, suddenly you will be exhausted. Suddenly, totally moving in that doing, the doing will stop. As I said last night, you cannot be angry totally. If you try to be totally in anger, anger will disappear and compassion will arise. You cannot be in hate totally. If you hate totally, at the climax, hate will disappear and love will arise. You can try to be in love totally; the same will happen.
If you do, in no doing can you be total – your being remains out of it. You go on doing a certain thing, your being remains out of it, it can never be total. You walk – can you walk totally? You cannot because at a certain inner point is non-walking; it will never walk. Even if you go on to the moon, it will never go anywhere; it will remain there inside, just sitting there.
That’s why if you love and your love is an act, an action, then your love, too, cannot be total. If you are “doing” love, if you are making love, love cannot be total. Because no action can be total – the being remains out. The love can be total only if you become love. It is not a doing; you are love. You are not making love, your very being is love. That’s why hate cannot be total because your being can never become hate. You can hate someone, but your being can never become hate; your being can become love.
No doing, no action can be total.
Only being can be total.
So I will suggest a method to do, and the trick – I may be allowed to call it a trick – and the trick is this: that if you go totally into it, suddenly a moment will come when all doing will cease, all effort will cease. And you will be thrown back to your center, and there will be no doing, no effort – simple existence, innocent existence, just being. […]
Meditation is not doing something. But you cannot take a jump immediately into non-doing. So I suggest that you make your doing total. Move into it so deeply and so totally that suddenly the doing drops, and you alone are left, just existing.
Just like a tree – of course aware, but just like a tree.
Just like a flower – aware, but just like a flower, existing.
Just like a stream flowing – aware, but just like a stream.
No mind, just you alone, no thoughts.
When there are no thoughts, you cannot move from the center. You move through thoughts. Thoughts are the way toward the periphery, and no-thought is dropping back to the center.
Now I will tell you something about the technique we are going to use.
Four steps. First step, ten minutes fast, chaotic breathing with no system. This is not a yoga exercise . . . chaotic, anarchic. Why? – because if you use any systematic breathing, any rhythm, the mind can control it. Mind can control any system. Mind is the great systematizer, so we are here to break the systems, the system of the mind. So breathe chaotically, like a madman – fast. Take the breath in as much as you can and throw it out – fast, with no rhythm; so that the mind is just shocked. And breathing is a great device to shock the mind.
You must remember that with every emotion breathing changes. And every emotion has its own system of breathing. When you are in love, breathing is relaxed; when you are angry, breathing can never be relaxed. When you hate someone, breathing is different; when you are in compassion, breathing is different. When you are at ease, breathing is so silent that you cannot even feel it; when you are tense, breathing cannot be silent – you can feel it.
This chaotic breathing belongs to no emotion. So simply by doing it you transcend emotions, the mechanism of the mind. And the mind is just thrown off; it cannot continue. Ten minutes of mad, fast breathing.
The second step is a deep catharsis. You have to throw yourself out – the mind has to be thrown out. Laugh – but madly, totally; cry, weep or whatsoever comes to your mind – but madly. Jump, dance, do whatsoever comes to you; and if nothing is coming then too, try something, because mind is a long suppression. So sometimes you feel nothing is coming, start; choose anything – laugh, cry, scream, jump, dance – but do something; don’t just stand there. Do something, and whatsoever you are doing, do it exaggeratedly.
The second step you must throw away your whole civilization, your whole culture. Just be like children with no fear – the fear of the others. Your eyes are to be closed; you have to use a blindfold.
In the third, when all the nonsense that is suppressed is thrown out, when all the madness is thrown out, you have to use a mantra. The mantra is the sound of “hoo, hoo” – meaningless. It is just a sound with no meaning attached to it – just “hoo.” It is not “w-h-o”; it is “h-o-o, h-o-o.” Loudly you have to make it; […] and move in it totally, so that you are exhausted completely.
And in the fourth step, you are not to do anything.
-Osho
From That Art Thou, Discourse #36
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