Author: purushottama

On Having No Head – Douglas Harding

The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. This is not a literary gambit, a witticism designed to arouse interest at any cost. I mean it in all seriousness: I have no head.

It was eighteen years ago, when I was thirty-three, that I made the discovery. Though it certainly came out of the blue, it did so in response to an urgent enquiry; I had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I? The fact that I happened to be walking in the Himalayas at the time probably had little to do with it; though in that country unusual states of mind are said to come more easily. However that may be, a very still clear day, and a view from the ridge where I stood, over misty blue valleys to the highest mountain range in the world, with Kangchenjunga and Everest unprominent among its snow-peaks, made a setting worthy of the grandest vision.

What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over me. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it was, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of “me”, unstained by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious. It was a lucid moment in a confused life-history. It was a ceasing to ignore something which (since early childhood at any rate) I had always been too busy or too clever to see. It was naked, uncritical attention to what had all along been staring me in the face – my utter facelessness. In short, it was all perfectly simple and plain and straightforward, beyond argument, thought, and words. There arose no questions, no reference beyond the experience itself, but only peace and a quiet joy, and the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden.

-Douglas Harding

Excerpt from On Having No Head

 

Someone’s Left the Tap On

in the beginning, the words flow like water

someone’s left the tap on

i become aware – the water is running

the flow begins to slow

enamored by the words

the shapes of the letters

the colors of the sounds

noticing space between words

i am drawn back into myself

the space in which all these words appear

and when the last syllable disappears

there is . . .

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

Awareness and Effort – Osho

For me, there is no earth, water, fire, air or sky. Only the one who has realized the godliness which dwells in the cave of the heart, which is formless, which is beyond the web of illusion, which is the witness to the whole and which is beyond existence and non-existence, will know my pure and godly nature.

Thus ends the Kaivalya Upanishad.
Om, Shantih Shantih Shantih.

The most significant thing to be understood in this sutra is that only one who becomes capable of knowing the formless, the witness to the whole – which is beyond both existence and non-existence – will know the God that lives in the cave of the heart. One must either first become the ultimate witness, and then he will enter the cave of the heart; or first enter the cave of the heart and then he will become the ultimate witness. Either the one who knows the ultimate reality will enter the cave of the heart, or the one who enters the cave of the heart will be able to know the ultimate reality – these are the only two ways. This is why there are only two disciplines for man’s spiritual search.

India has recognized only two disciplines that lead to knowing the truth of life. One is called Sankhya. Sankhya means that if you realize the ultimate reality, then you will enter the cave of the heart. The other is called yoga. Yoga means that if you enter the cave of the heart, then you will come to know the ultimate reality.

Sankhya is direct knowing. Yoga is an effort, a doing. Sankhya says that nothing has to be done; it only has to be realized. Yoga says that much has to be done and only then can realization happen. Both are right, and both can also prove to be wrong. It all depends on you, on the seeker. If a seeker can ignite the fire to know so totally that his ego is burned to ashes, and only the fire to know is left, then nothing else needs to be done. If there is only knowing and there is no knower, if there is no nucleus of ego left within the seeker – only knowing, only awareness, only consciousness – then nothing needs to be done. In this penetrating fire, everything else will happen on its own. Just to see is enough, just to become more aware is enough. To go on growing in awareness is enough. If awareness grows, if wakefulness flowers, that is enough.

But this happens very rarely, only to one in tens of millions. When this happens, it is the result of the efforts of many, many lifetimes. But whenever the phenomenon of Sankhya happens to someone, that person experiences that awareness is enough, that all has happened just through awareness. He has also lived an endless number of lives, and in those many lifetimes he has moved with an endless number of streams of effort.

Sankhya has always spoken against yoga. It is bound to be so, because when the state of Sankhya happens to someone, he feels that nothing else needs to be done – just to be totally aware is enough. But for someone who is unconscious, simply to become totally aware is very, very difficult. Someone whose sleep has broken can say, “Nothing was needed to be done. I simply woke up and saw the light!” But for someone who is asleep – not only asleep, but drunk, almost in a coma; who has taken poison and has become unconscious – you can go on shouting, “Wake up! Wake up! All that you need is to wake up! Just wake up out of your sleep and that is enough. Nothing else needs to be done and you will know the truth!” – But he cannot even hear your shouts. Someone who is drunk from alcohol will first have to clean his whole system of it. Someone who is unconscious will first have to be revived so that he can at least hear what you are saying. At least what you are saying about him opening his eyes needs to reach him.

This is why this concept of Sankhya, although true, does not help. It is only sometimes that someone has a mind-set for Sankhya, and he goes on speaking in the Sankhya way. My own mind structure has been of Sankhya. For fifteen years I went on saying that nothing needs to be done, that just to become aware is enough. Continuously saying this to people, I realized that they are incapable of hearing it. They are not just asleep, they are unconscious. And even if they understand, their understanding is only intellectual, only on the surface. They hear the words, the teaching, and they even start repeating those same words and teachings, but no transformation happens in their lives.

Then I saw that Sankhya is like a flowering – and when a flower blooms, you have no remembrance of its roots at all. The roots are hidden in the darkness, under the earth; they don’t even come to your mind. But for years the roots are growing, the tree is growing, and only then does the flower bloom. Perhaps the flower can say, “Simply to bloom is enough. One just has to bloom; and the fragrance begins to spread everywhere on the winds. What else needs to be done?” The blooming of the flower is the result of a long process – but when the flower blooms, the process is forgotten. When the flower blooms the process remains hidden. When the final fruition happens, then all else, the whole long journey, is forgotten in its shadow.

I began to feel that only once someone’s flower has already bloomed is it okay to say, “All that is needed is for the flower to bloom.” But to go on saying this to someone whose flower has not yet bloomed can be dangerous, because then that man will not even do what little he could have done to care for the roots. He will not even do what little he might have done to nurture the plant, to take care of the plant. Now he will also think in his mind that, “Simply to flower is enough, so I will!” and he will not be able to flower because the flowering is part of a long process. That long process is called yoga.

This is the mistake that Krishnamurti has been making for his whole life: he is telling people that nothing needs to be done. People even understand it, but it is the kind of understanding that instead of destroying ignorance, only hides it. People start to think that nothing has to be done, so they even stop doing what little they might have done. This is why the flower that Krishnamurti says can bloom does not bloom, and the people who listen to him fall into a tremendous dilemma.

So many of his longtime listeners – people who have been listening to him for thirty years or forty years – come to me and say, “We are in a great difficulty. We have heard this idea so much that there is nothing to do. Now even if we want to do something, we can’t. The moment we do something, we immediately remember that doing is futile and that the flower blooms without doing anything; it blooms through non-doing, through effortlessness; there is no need for any spiritual practice. This idea has gone so deep within us that now we can’t do anything at all! We have also stopped doing what we used to do, and by not doing anything at all we have not had even a glimpse of what Krishnamurti says will happen through non-doing. The flower has not bloomed at all.”

The problem has gone even deeper, because they never reached to the same state as a tree reaches when its flowers bloom on their own. Perhaps there are only roots, or their tree has just sprouted, or the branches and leaves have just begun to grow. Now they are not ready to do anything, either to water the plant or even to put a fence around the plant to protect it. Now they no longer actively try to grow towards the sun. Their beings are restless and their flowers don’t bloom, but deep down the flower wants to bloom. The pain in their being is the pain of the flower that wants to bloom – but they have been told that there is nothing to do.

So on one side there is this problem in the approach of Sankhya, that it talks about the ultimate flowering. On the other side, yoga creates a different problem: yoga searches deeply for the roots in the soil, for the water and the sun, but the danger is that you become lost in all the techniques and rituals of yoga. The flowering that you have been doing the rituals for is forgotten, and the rituals themselves take over so much that you begin to feel as if these rituals are your very life. The rituals and practices have become a habit.

Patanjali has mentioned the Eightfold Path of Yoga, and the last three points are dharana, conception, dhyana, meditation and samadhi, enlightenment. These three are the really significant ones, and the other five are the basic steps that lead to them. Samadhi, enlightenment, is the flower, and the other seven are the tree. But often yogis go on doing body postures and pranayama, breath exercises, for their whole lives. They go on doing these same things for their whole lives: they forget the flower of samadhi completely and these rituals become an end in themselves. The means becomes the goal; the path itself starts to become the destination.

The mistake of Sankhya is that the goal becomes all-important, as if no path is needed. And the folly of yoga is that the path becomes so important that even if the goal has to be abandoned in favor of the path, it is done. Even if God were to stand in front of a man who is obsessed with rituals, he would ask God to wait until he has finished doing his rituals! This idea that on the path of yoga rituals are everything misleads thousands of people. The mistake of Sankhya rarely happens, because people with a Sankhya personality are rarely born. Not many people fall into that trap.

Krishnamurti spoke for his whole life, but I don’t think that there are more than five thousand people in India who really hear or understand him. And these five thousand are also the same people who have been listening to him regularly, for the past thirty years – but there seems to be no transformation in their lives. Yes, they accumulate some words, like transformation or words of this sort, and they just start repeating those words. But they always feel the pinch, that the real thing has not happened within them yet; their flower has not bloomed yet.

The danger in yoga is even greater, because whenever people on the Earth become interested in religion, most of them immediately become interested in some activity, in some techniques. It is natural – because man does not achieve anything in life without activity, so naturally he thinks that religion will also have to be an activity. They approach religion in the same way that they approach money. If God is what they seek, that too will have to happen only by doing something. This is how most people think. But the other side of this danger is that man becomes so obsessed with these rituals and the mind enjoys the rituals so much that it becomes difficult to let them go. They lose sight of the destination and the path becomes a trap.

So what can be done to experience the cave of the heart? I say that instead of taking sankhya and yoga as two separate disciplines, take them as two parts of one discipline: take yoga as the beginning part and sankhya as the end part. Take yoga as the tree and Sankhya as the flower. I join the two together for you: sankhya-yoga.

You will certainly have to do something, because as you are, nothing can happen unless you do something. But also, keep in mind that if you remain stuck only in doing, then too, nothing will happen. Much will have to be done, and at a certain moment, all doing will simply have to be dropped. It is like someone climbing a ladder: he climbs it, but then he also leaves it. When someone takes medicines, when the disease is cured he stops taking them; or when someone walks on a path, when he arrives at his destination he leaves the path.

It is not right to say that then he leaves the path, because in reality, the meaning of a path is that you have to go on leaving it at each step – this is the exact meaning of a path. To get closer to your destination you have to go on leaving the path. One has to go on abandoning the path each day so that the destination will keep coming closer. When I say that your destination will come closer as you walk on the path, it means that it comes closer as you constantly leave the path behind. If you have walked one step ahead, it means that you have left one step of path behind you, and this has also brought the destination one step closer.

You have to walk on a path, you have to accept a path, but you also have to let go of it; only then will you come closer to the destination. But people find it easier to get stuck with one of these two. You say, “If I have to abandon the path, why walk on it in the first place?” This is the mistake of Sankhya. Or the other way that makes sense to you is, “Why let go of something that I have already started? Once I start, I should go on forever. I will go on holding on to it and never let go of it.” This is the mistake of yoga.

If both ways – Sankhya and yoga – are in the seeker’s awareness, the cave of the heart can be found very easily.

-Osho

Excerpt from Flight of the Alone to the Alone, Discourse #17

You can read a related post at: The Door to Sankhya is Open.

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.

Shiva’s 112 Meditation Techniques

Following are the 112 meditation techniques, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, that Shiva gave to his partner Devi (Shakti).

These techniques are the basis for Osho’s The Book of Secrets.

I have numbered them in the order that Osho gave them. The entire discourse series contains 80 discourses. The even number discourses were answers to questions. The techniques were given in odd numbered discourses after the first which was an introduction. Usually more than one technique was described in each of the discourses.

On the following list, the numbers in brackets at the end of the technique, for example (#3-1), signify the discourse number and which technique in that discourse. Some of them have links to posts of the discourses in which Osho describes the techniques.

  1. Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down) and just before turning up (out)—the beneficence. (#3-1)
  2. As breath turns down from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down—through both these turns, realize. (#3-2)
  3. Or, whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energy-filled center. (#3-3)
  4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped – in such universal pause, one’s small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure. (#3-4)
  5. Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head and there shower as light. (#5-1)
  6. When in worldly activity, keep attention between two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days be born anew. (#5-2)
  7. With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches heart at the moment of sleep, have direction over dreams and over death itself. (#5-3)
  8. With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower. (#5-4)
  9. Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck something and become the sucking. (#5-5)
  10. While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caress as everlasting life. (#7-1)
  11. Stop the doors of the senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then. (#7-2)
  12. When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind. (#7-3)
  13. Or, imagine the five-colored circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall—until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true. (#9-1)
  14. Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal column. In such be transformed. (#9-2)
  15. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all-inclusive. (#11-1)
  16. Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus. (#11-2)
  17. Unminding mind, keep in the middle—until. (#11-3)
  18. Look lovingly at some object. Do not go to another object. Here in the middle of the object—the blessing. (#13-1)
  19. Without support for feet or hands, sit only on the buttocks. Suddenly, the centering. (#13-2)
  20. In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a still vehicle, by letting yourself swing in slowing invisible circles. (#13-3)
  21. Pierce some part of your nectar-filled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing and attain to the inner purity. (#13-1)
  22. Let attention be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form, having lost its present characteristics, is transformed. (#15-1)
  23. Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then, leaving aside the object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize. (#15-2)
  24. When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. (#15-3)
  25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. (#17-1)
  26. When some desire comes, consider it. Then suddenly, quit it. (#17-2)
  27. Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole. (#17-3)
  28. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend. (#19-1)
  29. Devotion frees. (#19-2)
  30. Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature. (#21-1)
  31. Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become aware. (#21-2)
  32. See as if for the first time a beauteous person or an ordinary object. (#21-3)
  33. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity. (#23-1)
  34. Listen while the ultimate mystical teaching is imparted. Eyes still, without blinking, at once become absolutely free. (#23-2)
  35. At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths until – the wondrousness. (#23-3)
  36. Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought from it. Then. (#23-4)
  37. Devi, imagine the Sanskrit letters in these honey-filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free. (#25-1)
  38. Bathe in the center of sound, as in the continuous sound of a waterfall. Or by putting the fingers in the ears, hear the sound of sounds. (#25-2)
  39. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you. (#27-1)
  40. In the beginning and gradual refinement of the sound of any letter, awake. (#27-2)
  41. While listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound; thus omnipresence. (#27-3)
  42. Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent harmony. (#29-1)
  43. With mouth slightly open, keep mind in the middle of the tongue. Or, as breath comes silently in, feel the sound HH. (#29-2)
  44. Center on the sound a-u-m without any a or m. (#29-3)
  45. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH, effortlessly, the spontaneity. (#31-1)
  46. Stopping ears by pressing and the rectum by contracting, enter the sound. (#31-2)
  47. Enter the sound of your name and, through this sound, all sounds. (#31-3)
  48. At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end. (#33-1)
  49. When in such embrace your senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking. (#33-2)
  50. Even remembering union, without the embrace, transformation. (#33-3)
  51. On joyously seeing a long absent friend, permeate this joy. (#33-4)
  52. When eating or drinking, become the taste of food or drink, and be filled. (#33-5)
  53. O lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living. (#35-1)
  54. Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this. (#35-2)
  55. At the point of sleep, when the sleep has not yet come and the external wakefulness vanishes, at this point being is revealed. (#35-3)
  56. Illusions deceive, colors circumscribe, even divisibles are indivisible. (#35-4)
  57. In moods of extreme desire, be undisturbed. (#37-1)
  58. This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so. (#37-2)
  59. O beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these. (#37-3)
  60. Objects and desires exist in me as in others. So accepting, let them be transformed. (#37-4)
  61. As waves come with water and flames with fire, so the universal waves with us. (#39-1)
  62. Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this. (#39-2)
  63. When vividly aware through some particular sense, keep in the awareness. (#39-3)
  64. At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware. (#41-1)
  65. The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us. In reality, know nothing as pure or impure. (#42-1)
  66. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor. (#43-1)
  67. Here is the sphere of change, change, change. Through change consume change. (#43-2)
  68. As a hen mothers her chicks, mother particular knowings, particular doings, in reality. (#45-1)
  69. Since, in truth, bondage and freedom are relative, these words are only for those terrified with the universe. This universe is a reflection of minds. As you see many suns in water from one sun, so see bondage and liberation. (#45-2)
  70. Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises livingness in you. (#47-1)
  71. Or in the spaces between, feel this as lightning. (#47-2)
  72. Feel the cosmos as a translucent ever-living presence. (#47-3)
  73. In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity. (#49-1)
  74. Shakti, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance. (#49-2)
  75. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light. (#49-3)
  76. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms. (#51-1)
  77. When a moonless rainy night is not present, close eyes and find blackness before you. Opening eyes see blackness. So faults disappear forever. (#51-2)
  78. Wherever your attention alights, at this very point, experience. (#51-3)
  79. Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but not you. (#53-1)
  80. Meditate on the make-believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human. (#53-2)
  81. As, subjectively, letters flow into words and words into sentences, and as, objectively, circles flow into worlds and worlds into principles, find at last these converging in our being. (#53-3)
  82. Feel: my thought, I-ness, internal organs – me. (#55-1)
  83. Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? Consider. Dissolve in the beauty. (#55-2)
  84. Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous. (#57-1)
  85. Thinking no thing will limited-self unlimit. (#57-2)
  86. Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – you. (#59-1)
  87. I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such know illimitably. (#59-2)
  88. Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing. Perceive one being as knower and known. (#61-1)
  89. Beloved, at this moment let mind, knowing, breath, form, be included. (#61-2)
  90. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the cosmos. (#63-1)
  91. Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form. (#63-2)
  92. Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart. (#65-1)
  93. Consider any area of your present form as limitlessly spacious. (#65-2)
  94. Feel your substance, bones, flesh, blood, saturated with the cosmic essence. (#67-1)
  95. Feel the fine qualities of creativity permeating your breasts and assuming delicate configurations. (#67-2)
  96. Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes the end of mind pressures. (#69-1)
  97. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss. (#69-2)
  98. In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace. (#71-1)
  99. Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near. (#71-2)
  100. The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things. (#73-1)
  101. Believe omniscient, omnipotent, pervading. (#73-2)
  102. Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes. (#75-1)
  103. With your entire consciousness in the very start of desire, of knowing, know. (#75-2)
  104. O Shakti, each particular perception is limited, disappearing in omnipotence. (#75-3)
  105. In truth forms are inseparate. Inseparate are omnipresent being and your own form. Realize each as made of this consciousness. (#75-4)
  106. Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside concern for self, become each being. (#77-1)
  107. This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. (#77-2)
  108. This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one. (#77-3)
  109. Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin—empty. (#79-1)
  110. Gracious one, play. The universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics infinitely. (#79-2)
  111. Sweet hearted one, meditate on knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be. (#79-3)
  112. Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. (#79-4)

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation: A Course in Witnessing is a module of 20 two-hour meditation programs based on Osho’s The Book of Secrets meditations.

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.

Stillness – Douglas Harding

In appearance I’m moving about in Space Itself. In reality I’m that unmoving Space Itself. Walking across the room, I look down, and my head (no-head) is the infinite and empty Stillness in which those arms and legs are flailing. Driving my car, I look out, and my human body (no-body) is this same Stillness, in which the whole countryside is being shuffled like a giant’s pack of cards. Going out at night, I look up, and my Earth body (no-Earth-body) is the same Stillness in which those heavenly bodies are swinging and dancing. (No: I can find no head here to turn to and fro, to bob up and down!) Finally and most importantly, I “go blind” (shut my eyes, they say) and my Universe body (no-Universe-body) is the same infinite and empty Stillness, now revealing itself as the unmoving No-mind whose mental contents refuse to stay still for a moment. Besides confirming yet again one’s true Identity, this aspect of our submission to the Obvious—of our two-way looking, our meditation for all seasons—happens to take the rush out of “the rush of modern life”: or rather, out of the one who thinks he rushes. He never moved an inch. All his agitation is illusory. He neither needs nor can do anything to calm down—except stop overlooking the place where he is forever at rest, where the Peace that passes all understanding is so brilliantly self-evident. This yearned-for tranquility, which he imagined was always evading him, is discovered at this very centre, begging to be noticed!

-Douglas Harding

From On Having No Head, Inner Directions Publishing

The Satori Event – Osho

Before we enter the sutras there are a few things to be noted. Hubert Benoit calls Zen ‘the doctrine abrupt’ as opposed to all others which he names ‘progressive doctrines’. For the first, for Zen, he uses the singular, and for the others the plural – because the doctrine abrupt can only be one. But
there can be as many progressive doctrines as there are people; each one has to progress in his own way. So there can be millions of progressive doctrines – he is right in using the plural – and the abrupt doctrine can only be one. It can’t be different for different people, because it is abrupt.
It doesn’t depend on you, who you are, it depends only on one thing: that you disappear. And the disappearance is abrupt, sudden. This point has to be understood because it is very fundamental to Zen.

Yoga is a progressive doctrine; Zen, the doctrine abrupt. That is its fundamental vision – of great beauty and grandeur. It simply means one thing: that Buddhahood is not something to be attained. In Yoga the samadhi has to be attained: you have to improve upon yourself, you have to go on and on working on yourself. It is a great program of improvement, of achievement, of accomplishment. In Zen all that you have to find is that you are already a Buddha, that there is no accomplishment, that there is no growth, that there is no attainment, that Buddhahood is everybody’s inner nature.

Everybody is a Buddha; whether you know it or not makes no difference. A few Buddhas are fast asleep and snoring, a few Buddhas have become awakened, but both are Buddhas.

In Zen there is no method. Not that Zen Masters don’t give methods to their disciples, they do give – they give methods only to prove to you, to your heart’s desire and contentment, that all methods are useless. They give methods so that you work on the method, and slowly slowly you see the futility of it. The moment you see the futility of one method and you are finished with that, a higher method will be given to you and so on and so forth. Higher and higher methods will be given; and ultimately,
slowly, slowly, you will cling ate all the methods because you will see the futility of them all.

One day you will come to the point where you will see that there is nothing to be attained, nowhere to go. That moment in Zen is called ‘the great doubt’. That moment is known in the West through Christian mystics as ‘the dark night of the soul’. It is really a dark night of the soul, the great doubt. Nothing to be attained, nowhere to go, all future disappears; you are in a kind of shock. Then who are you? Then what are you doing here? Then why this existence? All seems meaningless if there is no attainment, if there is no way to reach and nowhere to reach and nobody to reach. Then what
is all this? A great doubt arises.

This doubt precedes satori. This great doubt, this dark night of the soul, always precedes satori. Either you fall back because of the doubt – you start moving again into methods, you start clinging again to methods, paths and ways, and scriptures and principles and philosophies and doctrines.
You fall back; just to avoid the doubt you start clinging to something again. But if you are really ourageous… And this is real courage: that you remain in doubt, and you don’t fall back, and you don’t cling to anything again. You leave yourself in this dark night of the soul, helpless, lost – utterly
lost, seeing no meaning and seeing no future. If this courage is there, satori happens. Suddenly, out of this great doubt, and the pain and agony of it, you become awakened.

A parallel exists in nightmares. You must have seen it happening again and again: if the nightmare is too horrible, the dream is broken. You can go on dreaming sweet dreams the whole night; there is no problem. The dream is so sweet that it is like a lullaby: it keeps you drunk, intoxicated. But if
the dream is horrible? – you are being chased by a tiger, and the tiger is coming closer and closer and closer; and the fear… and your heart is beating fast, and your breath is no more rhythmic, and you are perspiring; and you are running and running, and there seems to be no escape, and then
suddenly you see that the path has ended in an abyss, there is no way to go; and the tiger is coming closer and closer, you can almost feel his breath on your back; and then his paw… and a fountain of blood rushes out of your back – can you go on remaining asleep? The nightmare is too much; it is
bound to destroy your sleep. Abruptly, suddenly, you are awake. It is like a sudden jump from one state of consciousness to another. A moment before you were asleep, now you are awake. There is no tiger, just your wife – and her hand on your back, and her breath… All has disappeared.

The great doubt is the point where one feels the greatest nightmare, where one’s whole life turns into a nightmare with open eyes. When you see that the whole of life has lost meaning… Because life has meaning only if you have goals. When you are enchanted by goals, life has meaning; when there are no goals, meaning disappears. Suddenly you see that you don’t have any ground underneath your feet; you are hanging in emptiness. You are falling like a dead leaf into some unknown, bottomless pit, and it is all dark, and there is not even a ray of light.

This is the work of a Zen Master: to push you into this great doubt. Once this happens, satori is bound to happen unless you fall back again and start dreaming sweet dreams.

To be with a real Master is to be in a fire. To be with a real Master is to face your death, is to face your annihilation. That’s why Zen is known as the sudden enlightenment, the doctrine abrupt.

Hubert Benoit also says that satori has two meanings. One is the satori-state in which everybody is – the birds and the trees and the mountains and you and all the buddhas – past, present, future. The whole existence is in the state of satori. This is another way of saying that godliness is everywhere, in everything; that godliness is the soul of everything. Buddhahood is everybody’s nature. And the second is the satori-event. Every man is from all eternity in the state of satori. The satori-event is only that historic, anecdotal instance when man suddenly ceases not recognizing that he has always been in the satori-state.

You are a Buddha. When you recognize it, or when you remember it, that is the satori-event. The satori-event is only a window into the satori-state, and this satori event has apparent reality only in the eyes of the man who has not yet experienced it. One who has experienced it recognizes
that he has always been in satori. That is why we cannot speak of progress, evolution, attainment, realization, etcetera, etcetera.

-Osho

From The Sun Rises in the Evening, Discourse #1

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.

Let Love Be Your Only Law – Osho

let love be your meditation

let love be your only law

i have only one commandment

because to me the whole religiousness

is contained in this single word

love

all the bibles, all the gitas, all the korans

if in any scripture there is something valuable

then it is bound to be some aspect of love

love has many aspects

it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon

the way to find it is meditation

meditation simply means becoming utterly silent

so that your mind is no more an interference

mind is full of desires, motives, goals, purposes

and love cannot be found by the mind

because love has no motive, no purpose

love has nothing to achieve, nothing to gain

it is not a means to some end

it is an end unto itself

hence mind is incapable of even comprehending

what love is

mind has to be put aside

that putting aside of the mind

is what meditation is all about

when the mind is put aside

you are in a state of meditation

no-mind is meditation

and in that state, love blossoms

suddenly you explode into love

your whole life becomes an overflowing love

but without silence it is not possible

one has to attain to such a deep silence that

not even a slight tremor of the mind remains in it

not even a small ripple of thought, desire

motive, greed, anger, no past, no future

when mind has completely ceased

then one hears the music of silence

the song of silence

the Sound of One Hand Clapping

-Osho

From The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

No Body Is

Jean Klein’s seminars used to consist of two parts, the bodywork and dialogues. He said the ‘bodywork’ was for us to come to know that we are not the body, and the dialogues were for us to discover that we are not the mind.

Recently, the understanding ‘I am not the body’ was expanded to the realization that in fact there is no such thing as ‘body.’ The idea of ‘body’ is just an image that we hold in memory. But if we look carefully, we can see that that memory does not correspond to reality. It is more like ‘bodying.’ It is not a fixed entity.

Intellectually it is easy to understand that there is no independent separate entity called body. If we look from the viewpoint of biologists, we see that there are many organized systems. There are viruses, bacteria, cells, etc., and probably from their standpoint, they would tell you that ‘they’ are independent entities and would not know what you were talking about when you said ‘my body.’ If we look from the viewpoint of physicists, we see that there are atoms, neutrons, electrons, and whatever else they have named, and these objects are found in space. Around and between these particles exists vast amounts of nothingness.

But aside from intellectually, if we look with our own experiencing, we can see that what we refer to as ‘body’ is an ever-changing collection of processes which is not in any way separate from existence. It is sunlight being transformed into energy, elements being absorbed by cells and transformed into physiology. It is oxygen being inhaled and carbon dioxide being expelled.

What we have done with the mind, is drawn a false border around a bunch of processes in a moment in time. This image is then held in memory and we refer to that image as ‘body.’ Of course there is sensing but that is certainly not stagnant. It is constantly changing, and when I investigate, I am unable to find any border that delineates what we call body from the rest of existence except for that which is in memory. When I look with my own experiencing, not relying on hearsay, I simply cannot find the division of body.

And it is through meditation that we find exactly the same situation concerning that which we refer to as our ‘mind.’ Again, with careful examination we find there is simply thinking but not any ‘thing’ as mind. It is simply the activity of thoughts passing through our consciousness that we call the ‘mind.’

The understanding that first we are not the ‘body-mind,’ and even more profoundly that there is no such thing as body-mind, leaves us free to be that which we are, pure subjectivity, consciousness without an object.

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

 

God is Not a Ford – Osho

Is knowing an intellectual experience?

The experience of knowing has two dimensions to it. One is objective knowing, the other is subjective knowing. Objective knowing is intellectual. That’s what all of science goes on doing. It is intellectual knowing.

Intellect is enough to know the object. The object is outside – available to your eyes, available to experiments. You can dissect it, you can do whatsoever you want, all kinds of experimentation. It is available to the pure intellect. But your own being is not available to your intellect.

Your own being is available only in silence, not in intellectual activity, but in a silent awareness.

That is a totally different dimension and that is true knowing, knowing yourself. But that cannot be intellectual, because intellect is something that can only reach outwards; it has no way of reaching inwards.

You can see everything with your eyes, but you cannot see – with your eyes – your own eyes. In a mirror you can see, but those are not your eyes; that is only a reflection. Your intellect is capable of knowing everything that is outside, but you are behind the intellect and the intellect has no way to go there.

I am reminded… when Ford first made his cars they had no reverse gear. The very idea of the reverse gear had not happened. So even if you had gone only a few feet past your house and you had to come back to get something, you had to go around the whole city in order to come back. That was too tedious and stupid and a waste of time. So he added a reverse gear.

But as far as intellect is concerned, God is not a Ford. The intellect still has no reverse gear; it simply goes outwards. You can take it to the farthest stars, there is no problem; but it cannot reach within you, which is so close.

Albert Einstein, perhaps the most intelligent man who has explored the stars, died unhappy because he did not know himself. His unhappiness was: what is the point of knowing the whole world – knowing all about electrons and protons and neutrons and faraway galaxies – and not knowing about yourself, who you are?

Just before dying he said, ‘If I am born again I would rather be a plumber than be a physicist, so that I can have time enough to look within myself. This physics has been too much an involvement.”

With intellect you can know everything except yourself.

And if you depend only on intellect then you are going to deny your soul – that’s what atheists go on doing, that’s what communists go on doing. The reason is simply that they have made it a point that to be true something has to be intellectually proved. And the intellect has no way to prove consciousness.

Consciousness has to be discovered in a totally different way. Intellect is thinking, and consciousness is discovered in a state of no-thinking – in such utter silence that not even a single thought moves as a disturbance.

In that silence you discover your very being.

It is as vast as the sky.

And to know it is really to know something worthwhile; otherwise all your knowledge is garbage. It may be useful, utilitarian, but it is not going to help you transform your being. It cannot bring you to fulfillment, to contentment, to enlightenment, to a point where you can say, “I have come home.”

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #1

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.

Is Awareness a Higher Value than Love? – Osho

Is awareness a higher value than love?

The highest peak is the culmination all the values: truth, love, awareness, authenticity, totality. At the highest peak they are indivisible. They are separate only in the dark valleys of our unconsciousness They are separate only when they are polluted, mixed with other things. The moment they become pure they become one; the more pure, the closer they come to each other.

For example, each value exists on many planes; each value is a ladder of many rungs.

Love is lust — the lowest rung, which touches hell; and love is also prayer — the highest rung, which touches paradise. And between these two there are many planes easily discernible.

In lust, love is only one percent; ninety-nine percent are other things: jealousies, ego trips, possessiveness, anger, sexuality. It is more physical, more chemical; it has nothing deeper than that. It is very superficial, not even skin-deep.

As you go higher, things become deeper; they start having new dimensions. That which was only physiological starts having a psychological dimension to it. That which was nothing but biology starts becoming psychology. We share biology with all the animals; we don’t share psychology with all the animals.

When love goes still higher — or deeper, which is the same — then it starts having something of the spiritual in it. It becomes metaphysical. Only Buddhas, Krishnas, Christs, they know that quality of love.

Love is spread all the way and so are other values. When love is one hundred percent pure you cannot make any distinction between love and awareness; then they are no more two. You cannot make any distinction between love and God even; they are no more two. Hence Jesus’ statement that God is love. He makes them synonymous. There is great insight in it.

On the periphery everything appears separate from everything else; on the periphery existence is many. As you come closer to the center, the manyness starts melting, dissolving, and oneness starts arising. At the center, everything is one.

Hence your question, Virendra, is right only if you don’t understand the highest quality of love and awareness. It is absolutely irrelevant if you have any glimpse of the Everest, of the highest peak.

You ask: Is Awareness a higher value than Love?

There is nothing higher and nothing lower. In fact, there are not two values at all. These are the two paths from the valley leading to the peak. One path is of awareness, meditation: the path of Zen we have been talking about these days. And the other is the path of love, the path of the devotees, the Bhaktas, the Sufis. These two paths are separate when you start the journey; you have to choose. Whichever you choose is going to lead to the same peak. And as you come closer to the peak you will be surprised: the travelers on the other path are coming closer to you. Slowly, slowly, the paths start merging into each other. By the time you have reached the ultimate, they are one.

The person who follows the path of awareness finds love as a consequence of his awareness, as a by-product, as a shadow. And the person who follows the path of love finds awareness as a consequence, as a by-product, as a shadow of love. They are two sides of the same coin.

And remember: if your awareness lacks love then it is still impure; it has not yet known one hundred percent purity. It is not yet REALLY awareness; it must be mixed with unawareness. It is not pure light; there must be pockets of darkness inside you still working, functioning, influencing you, dominating you. If your love is without awareness, then it is not love yet. It must be something lower, something closer to lust than to prayer.

So let it be a criterion if you follow the path of awareness, let love be the criterion. When your awareness suddenly blooms into love, know perfectly well that awareness has happened, Samadhi has been achieved. If you follow the path of love, then let awareness function as a criterion, as a touchstone. When suddenly, from nowhere, at the very center of your love. a flame of awareness starts arising, know perfectly well…rejoice! You have come home.

-Osho

From Ah This!, Discourse #8

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Is Awareness a Higher Value than Love.

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.