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The Bridegroom is Waiting for You – Osho

Now, try to understand these sutras of Patanjali.

The seen which is composed of the elements and the sense organs is of the nature of stability, action, and inertia, and is for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.

The first thing to be understood is that the world exists for you to be liberated. Many a time the question has arisen in your mind: “Why does this world exist? Why is there so much suffering? For what? What is the purpose of it?” Many people come to me and they say, “This is the ultimate question — ‘Why are we at all?’ And if life is such a suffering, what is the purpose of it? If there exists a God, why can’t he destroy all this chaos? Why can’t he destroy this whole suffering life, this hell? Why does he go on forcing people to live in it?” Yoga has the answer: Patanjali says, ” . . . for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.”

It is a training; suffering is a training — because there is no possibility of becoming mature without suffering. It is like fire: the gold, to be pure, has to pass through it. If the gold says. “Why!” then the gold remains impure, worthless. Only by passing through the fire will all that is not gold be burned, and only the purest gold will remain. That’s what liberation is all about: a maturity, a growth so ultimate that only the purity, only the innocence remains, and all that was useless has been burned.

There is no other way to realize it. There cannot be any other way to realize it. If you want to know what satiety is, you will have to know hunger. If you want to avoid hunger, you will avoid satiety also. If you want to know what deep quenching is, you will have to know thirst, deep thirst. If you say, “I don’t want to be thirsty,” then you will miss that beautiful moment of deep quenching of the thirst. If you want to know what light is, you will have to pass through a dark night; the dark night prepares you to realize what light is. If you want to know what life is, you will have to pass through death; death creates the sensitivity in you to know life. They are not opposites; they are complementary.

There is nothing which is opposite in the world; everything is complementary. “This” world exists so that you can know “that” world; “this” exists to know “that.” The material exists to know the spiritual; the hell exists to come to heaven. This is the purpose. And if you want to avoid one you avoid both, because they are two aspects of the same thing. Once you understand, there is no suffering: you know this is training, a discipline. Discipline is to be hard. It has to be hard because only then will real maturity come out of it.

Yoga says this world exists as a training school, a learning school — don’t avoid it and don’t try to escape from it. Rather live it and live it so totally that you need not be forced again to live it. That’s the meaning when we say that an enlightened person never comes back — there is no need. He has passed all the examination that life provides. He need not come back. You have to be forced again and again to the same life pattern because you don’t learn. You go on repeating the experience without learning. The same experience you repeat again and again — the same anger. How many, how many thousand times have you been angry? Count it. What have you learned out of it? Nothing. Whenever the situation arises, you will be angry again — the same, as if it is for the first time that you are getting into anger.

How many times has greed, lust possessed you? Again, it will possess. And again, you will react in the old way — as if you have decided not to learn. And to be ready to learn is to be ready to become a yogi. If you have decided not to learn, if you want to remain blindfolded, if you want to repeat the same nonsense again and again; then you will have to be thrown back: you will have to be sent back to the same class — unless you pass.

Don’t take life in any other way. It is a vast training school, the only university there is. The word “university” comes from “universe.” In fact, no university should call itself “university”; the name is too big. The whole universe is the only university. But you have created small universities, and you think that when you pass through them you have become entitled, as if you have become a knower. No, these small, man-made universities won’t do. You will have to pass through this university your whole life.

Says Patanjali, ” . . . for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation . . .” Experience is liberating. Jesus has said, “Know the truth and the truth will liberate you.” Whenever you experience a thing, alert, aware, fully watching what is happening — participating and watching together — -it is liberating. Immediately, something arises out of it: an experience which becomes true. You have not borrowed it from scriptures; you have not borrowed it from somebody else.

Experience cannot be borrowed; only theories can be borrowed. That’s why all theories are dirty, because they have been passing through so many hands, so many millions of hands. They are just like dirty currency notes. Experience is ever fresh — fresh like the dew in the morning, fresh like this morning’s rose. Experience is always innocent and virgin — nobody has ever touched it. You come upon it for the first time. Your experience is yours, it is nobody else’s, and nobody Can give it to you.

Buddhas can indicate the way, but you have to walk. No Buddha can walk for you; there is no possibility. A Buddha cannot give his eyes to you so that you can look through them. Even if the Buddha gives you the eyes, you will change the eyes — the eyes will not be able to change you. When the eyes will be fit into your mechanism, your mechanism will change the eyes themselves, but the eyes cannot change you. They are parts; you are a very big phenomenon.

I cannot lend my hand to you. Even if I do, the touch will not be mine, it will be yours. When you will go and feel something — even from my hand — it will be you who will feel, not my hand. There is no possibility of borrowing reality.

Experience liberates. Every day I come across people who say, “How is one to get free from anger? How is one to get free from sex, lust? How is one to get free from this and that?” And when I say, “Live it through,” they are shocked. They had come to me in search of a method to repress themselves. And if they had gone to another guru in India, they would have found some method to repress themselves with. But repression can never be liberating, because repression means repressing experience. Repression means cutting all the roots of experience. It can never be liberating. Repression is the greatest bondage that you can find anywhere.

You live in a cage. Just the other day, one new sannyasin told me, “I feel like an animal in a cage.” There is every possibility that he meant that he wanted me to help him so that the animal is killed, because we say “animal” only when we condemn. The very word carries condemnation. But when I told the sannyasin, “Yes, I will help you. I will break the cage and make the animal completely free,” he was a little shocked; because when you say “animal” you have already valued it, condemned it — it is not a simple fact. In the very word “animal” or “animality” you have said everything that you wanted to say. You don’t accept it. You don’t want to live it. That’s why you have created the cage.

Cage is character. All characters are cages, imprisonments, chains around you. And men of character are imprisoned men. A really awakened man is not a man of character. He is alive. He is fully alive, but he has no character, because he has no cage. He lives spontaneously; he lives through awareness — so nothing can go wrong — but he has no cage around him to protect him.

The cage is a substitute for awareness. If you want to live a sleepy life you need character, so the character gives you guidelines. Then you need not be alert. You are going to steal something — the character just hinders you: it says, “No! This is wrong! This is sin! You will suffer in hell! Have you forgotten the whole Bible? Have you forgotten all the punishment that a man has to go through?” This is character. This is just hindering you. You want to steal; character is just a hindrance.

A man of awareness will not steal, but he has no character; and that is the miracle and the beauty. He has no character, and he will not steal, because he understands. Not that he is afraid of sin — there is nothing like sin; at the most, errors — nothing like sin. He is not afraid of being punished, because punishment is not in the future — it is not that sins are punished, in fact: sins are the punishment. It is not that you are angry today and tomorrow you will be punished or in the next life — sheer nonsense. When you put your hand in the fire today, do you think it will be burned in the next life? When you put your hand in the fire today it burns today; immediately it burns. Putting the hand in and the burning of it — all simultaneous. Not even a single moment’s gap. Life never believes in the future because life is only present.

Not that sins will be punished in the future, sins are the punishment. Intrinsic punishment is there: you steal and you are punished. In the very stealing you are punished — because you are more imprisoned: you will become more afraid; you will not be able to face the world; continuously, you will feel some guilt, you have done something wrong, any moment you can be caught. You are already caught! Maybe nobody ever catches you and no court punishes you — and there is no other heavenly court anywhere — but you are caught. You are caught by yourself. How will you forget it? How will you forgive yourself? How will you undo the thing that you have done? It will linger and linger. It will follow you like a shadow; it will haunt you like a ghost. It itself is the punishment.

Character hinders you from committing wrong things, but it cannot hinder you from thinking them. But to steal or to think about it is the same. To commit a murder really and just to think about it is the same, because as far as your consciousness is concerned you have committed it if you have thought about it. It never became action because the character hindered you; if the character was not there it would have become action. So in fact character, at the most, does this: it hinders the thought; it doesn’t allow it to be transformed into action.

It is good for the society, but nothing good for you. It protects the society; your character protects the society. Your character protects others, that’s all. That’s why every society insists on character, morality, this and that; but it does not protect you.

You can be protected only in awareness. And how to gain awareness? There is no other way except to live life in its totality. ” . . . for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.”

“The seen which is composed of the elements and the sense organs is of the nature of . . .” three gunas. Yoga believes in three gunas: sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattva is the quality which makes things stable; rajas is the quality which gives action; and tamas is the quality which is inertia. These three are the basic qualities. Through these three this whole world exists. This is the yoga trinity.

Now physicists are ready to agree with yoga. They have split the atom and they have come across three things: electrons, neutrons, protons. Those three are of the same three qualities: one is of the quality of light — sattva — stability; another is of the quality of rajas — activity, energy, force; and the third is of the quality of inertia — tamas. The whole world consists of these three gunas; and through these three gunas, a man of awareness has to pass. He has to experience all these three gunas. And if you experience them as a harmony, which is the real discipline of yoga . . .

Everybody experiences: sometimes you feel lazy, sometimes you feel so full of energy; sometimes you feel so good and light, and sometimes you feel so evil and bad; sometimes you are a darkness, and sometimes you are a dawn. You feel all these gunas. Many moments of them come continuously, you move in a wheel, but they are not in proportion. A man of lethargy is ninety percent lethargy. He is active also — he has to be because just to keep on living a life of lethargy he will have to act a little. That’s all his activity is — just to support his inertia. And he has to be a little good to people also; otherwise people will be very, very bad to him. People will not tolerate his inertia.

Have you watched? People who are not very active . . . For example, very fat people are always smiling. That is their protection. They know they cannot fight. They know that if the fight happens, they cannot escape, they cannot “flight.” You always see very fat people smiling, happy. What is the reason? Why do thin people look sad and why do fat people never look so sad, always happy? Psychologists and physiologists say that is their protection, because in the struggle of life it will be very difficult for them to be always in a fighting mood, as lean and thin people always are. They can fight — if the other person is weak, they will beat him; if the other person is strong, they will escape. They can do both, and the fat person cannot do either — he goes on smiling; he goes on being good to everybody. That’s his protection so others should be good to him.

Lazy people are always good. They have never committed any bad thing because even to commit a sin one need be a little active. You cannot make a lazy person a Hitler, impossible. You cannot make a lazy person a Napoleon or Alexander, impossible. Lazy persons have not committed any great sin; they cannot. They are, in a way, good people because even to commit a sin or to do something bad they will have to be active — that’s not for them.

Then there are active people, unbalanced; they are always on the go. They are not worried in any way where to reach; they are only worried how to go with speed. They don’t bother about whether they are leaching anywhere — that is not the point at all. If they are moving with speed everything is okay. Don’t ask, “Where are you going?” They are not going anywhere; they are simply going. They have no destiny. They have only energy to be active. These people are the dangerous people in the world, more dangerous than the lazy people. Out of this second category come all Adolf Hitlers, Mussolinis, Napoleons, Alexanders. All mischief-mongers come from the second category because they have energy, a disproportionate energy.

Then there is a third kind of people, which is rare to find: somewhere a Lao Tzu just sitting silently — not lazy, passive. Not active, not lazy — passive: full of energy, a reservoir, but sitting silently. Have you watched somebody sitting silently, full of energy? You feel a field around him, radiant with life, but still — not doing anything, just being.

And yoga is to find the equilibrium between these three. If you can find a balance between these three, suddenly you transcend. If one is more than the others, then that one becomes your problem. If you are more lazy than active, then laziness will be your problem: you will suffer through it. If activity is more than laziness, then you will suffer from your activity. And the third is never more, it is always less; but even if that is theoretically possible — that somebody is too good — that too will be a suffering for him, that too will create imbalance. A right life is a life of balance.

Buddha has eight principles for his disciples. Before every principle he adds a word, sama. If he says, “Be aware,” he not only says “smriti,” he says “samyak smriti.” In English they have always been translating it as “right memory.” If he says, “Be active,” he always says, “Be rightly active.” By “rightly” he means be in an equilibrium. The Indian term samyak means equilibrium. Even for samadhi, even for meditation, Buddha says “samyak samadhi.” Even samadhi can be too much, and then it will be dangerous. Even good can be too much, and then it will be dangerous.

Equilibrium should be the key factor. Whatsoever you do, always be balanced like a man walking on a tightrope, continuously balancing. That is the rightness: the factor of balance. The man who wants to attain to the ultimate marriage, ultimate yoga, has to be in a deep balance. In balance you transcend all the three gunas. You become gunateet: you go beyond all these three attributes. You are no longer part of the world; you have gone beyond.

The three gunas — stability, action, and inertia — have four stages: the defined, the undefined, the indicated, and the unmanifest.

These three gunas have four stages. The first, Patanjali calls “the defined.” You can call it matter; that is the most defined thing around you. Then, “the undefined” — you can call it mind; that too is there, felt by you continuously, but is an undefined factor. You cannot define what mind is. You know it, you live it continuously, but you cannot define it. Matter can be defined but not mind. And then “the indicated” — the indicated is even subtler than the undefined: it is the self. You can only indicate it. You cannot even say it is undefined because to say something is undefined is, in a subtle way, to define it, because that too is a definition. To say that something is undefined . . . you have already defined it in a negative way; you have said something about it. So, then, there is this subtle layer of existence, which is self, that is the indicated. And then beyond it there is again the subtlest which is “the unmanifest” — unindicated — that is, no-self.

So: matter, mind, self, no-self — these are the four stages of all these three gunas.

If you are deeply in lethargy, you will be like matter. A man of lethargy is almost matter, vegetates; you don’t find him alive. Then there is the second quality, mind. If rajas, activity, is too much, then you become too much of the mind. Then you are very, very active — mind is continuously active, obsessed with activity, continuously in search of new occupations. Somebody asked Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to reach the Everest peak, “Why? Why did you take such a risk?” He said, “Because the Everest peak was there, man had to go.” There is nothing . . . Why is man going to the moon? Because the moon is there. How can you avoid it? You have to go. A man of activity is continuously in search of occupation. He cannot remain unoccupied, that is his problem Unoccupied he is hell; occupied he forgets himself.

If tamas, inertia, is too much, you become like matter. If rajas is too much you become mind: mind is activity. That’s why mind goes mad. Then, if sattva is too much you become self, you become atma. But that too is an imbalance. If all the three are in balance, then comes the fourth, the no-self. That is your real being where not even the feeling of “I” exists, that’s why the term “no-self.”

These are the four stages — three of un-equilibrium, and the fourth of equilibrium. First is defined, second is undefined, third is indicated, fourth is not even indicated. unindicated; and the fourth is the most real. The first seems to be most real because you live in the first. The second seems to be very near because you live in the mind. The third even seems to be a little far away, but you can understand. Fourth seems to be simply unbelievable — no-self? Brahman, God, whatsoever you name it, seems to be very far away, seems to be almost non-existential; and that is the most existential.

The seer, although pure consciousness, sees through the distortions of the mind.

And that fourth, even if you attain it . . . while you are in the body you will have to use all the layers of your being. Even a Buddha, when he talks to you, has to talk through the mind. Even a Buddha, when he walks . . . he has to walk through the body. But now, once you have known that you are beyond mind, the mind can never deceive you: you can use it and you will never be used by it. That’s the difference. Not that a Buddha doesn’t use mind, he uses: he uses; you are being used. Not that he doesn’t live in the body: he lives; you are being lived — the body is the master and you are the slave. Buddha is the master; the body is the slave. A total change, a total mutation happens — that which is up goes down and that which is down goes up.

The seen exists for the seer alone.

This is the climax of yoga or vedanta: “The seen exists for the seer alone.” When the seer disappears, the seen disappears, because it was there only for the seer to be liberated. When the liberation has happened, it is not needed. This will create many problems because a Buddha . . . for him the seen has disappeared, but for you it still exists. There is a flower, somebody amongst you becomes an enlightened person: for him the flower has disappeared, but for you it still continues. So how is it possible — for one it disappears and for you it continues?

It is just like this: you all go to sleep this night, you all dream; then, one person becomes awake — his sleep is broken, his dream disappears — but all others’ dreams continue. His disappearance of the dream does not help in any way for your dreams to be disturbed; they continue on their own. That’s why enlightenment is individual. One person becomes awakened; all others continue in their ignorance. He can help others to be awakened. He can create devices around you to help you come out of your sleep, but unless you come out of your sleep your dream will continue: “The seen exists for the seer alone.”

Although the seen is dead to him who has attained liberation, it is alive to others because it is common to all.

In India we have made only one distinction between dream and that which you call reality, and this is the distinction: that dreams are private realities and this reality that you call the world is a common dream, that’s all. When you dream you dream a private world. In the night you live a private life; you cannot invite anybody else to share in your dream. Even your closest friend or your wife or your beloved is far away. When you are dreaming you are dreaming alone. You cannot take anybody there; it is a private world. Then what is this world, because in India we have called this world also dreamlike? This is a common dream. We all dream together because our minds function in the same way.

Just go to the river. Take a straight stick with you; you know the stick is straight. Push it down in the river: immediately, you see it has become crooked, bent. Pull it out; you know it is straight. Again put it in the water; it has again become bent. Now, you know well that the stick remains the same, but the functioning of your mind and the functioning of the light rays create the phenomenon, illusion, that it has become bent. Even if you know now, still it will be bent. Your knowledge will not help. You know well, perfectly well, it is not bent, but it looks bent — because the functioning of the eyes and the light rays is such that the illusion is created. Then take a dozen friends with you: you all will see it bent. It is a common illusion. The world is a common dream.

The seer and the seen come together so that the real nature of each may be realized.

The cause of this union is ignorance.

To be united with this world. which is like a dream, to be united with the body, with the mind — which you are not — is a necessity. Through this union you will be prepared for a greater union. Through this union you will come to realize that this union is false. The day you realize that this union is false, the final union will happen.

When you are divorced from the world, you get married to the divine. When you are married to the world, you remain in a divorce from God. That’s why all the mystics — Meera, Chaitanya, Kabir; in the West, Theresa — they all talk in terms of marriage, in terms of bride and bridegroom. And they are all waiting for a final consummation.

The allegory has always been used. Psychologists have even become suspicious about it, about why mystics use that allegory of love, marriage, embrace, kiss. In India even sexual intercourse has been used as an allegory: when the final marriage happens there is the ultimate crescendo, the total orgasm of the individual with the whole, of the wave with the ocean.

Why do these people use sexual allegories? Psychologists suspect that there must be some repression about sex. They are wrong. There is no repression about sex, but sex is such a fundamental phenomenon, how can religion avoid it? It has to be used. And sex is the only, the deepest, phenomenon where you lose yourself. You don’t know any other phenomenon where you lose yourself so completely. And in God or in the total one loses himself completely — becomes a no-self. In sex just a little glimpse of it comes to you. It is good to use the allegory of marriage, of bride and bridegroom.

Remain married to the world and you remain divorced from the divine. Pass through the worldly experience — enriched, liberated — suddenly you become aware that this marriage was illusory, a dream. Now, the real marriage is getting ready for you. The bridegroom is waiting for you.

-Osho

From Yoga: A New Direction, Discourse #5; Yoga: Science of the Soul, V.5 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.5)

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.

Meditation Involves all Three

Osho often talks about the difference between concentration, contemplation and meditation or dhyana. Mostly, he is making a distinction in order to prod us on into real meditation or dhyana. But just this morning, and it is so obvious I am almost embarrassed to say that it was a realization, I did, in fact, realize that meditation involves all three.

Many times, when I begin my sitting, I first gather myself to move out of identification with the mind and into being able to watch the mind. This gathering myself may involve watching the movement of breath or doing a body scan to feel any tension within the body. These are ways that I am bringing my mind into a state of watching. So first, I am focusing my energy into watching. This is concentration. In concentration there is very little self-awareness.

Only after the watching is concentrated am I able to begin to watch the mind. At first this watching the mind involves a constant movement between watching, getting involved with the stream of thought, remembering and the cycle repeating. Sometimes there is some topic that arises that I think about from every angle allowing it to be seen in its totality. I would call this stage contemplation. In contemplation there arises just the beginning glimpses of self-awareness, it is a continual movement from being aware to being lost in thought, remembering and again lost into the stream of thought. Here there is more self-awareness than in concentration hence the remembering, the continual re-joining, re-membering with awareness.

The more that I bring watching into the equation the more self-awareness is present and the less I find myself lost in the flow, until finally I am able to begin watching without any involvement or identification at all. This watching without involvement or watching with indifference is like watching a river flow but remaining on the bank as the objects float past. Here I allow all that wants to surface and just watch without judging the contents, without analyzing from where the thoughts come, without choosing the pleasant ones and rejecting the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. I remain with whatever appears without adding any new thought to the stream. This watching without any involvement at all is what I am referring to as dhyana, as meditation. In this watching there is more self-awareness than identification hence I am able to watch without involvement.

And when I am able to watch without grasping, without rejecting, without judging and without analyzing, then even this flow of thought begins to subside. I see that it is the grasping, rejecting, judging, interfering that perpetuates the movement thought. When I am able to watch without doing those things and thought subsides, that is when the witness begins to be revealed. When there is nothing to be seen and there is only watchingness, awareness aware of itself, that is the ground on which the three stages of meditation have built their abodes. Coming out of those abodes, awareness is able to remain in its ground of being, consciousness without any objects, awareness just being aware, witnessing.

But for awareness to find its home ground, the I, the me has to always begin from where it finds itself in the moment. If I am lost in chaotic dreaming without any center, I begin with gathering my watching in concentration. If I am lost in contemplation, thinking about some problem, some question from every angle, I can begin to be aware of this whole movement. And when I see a movement of thought and am able to remain indifferent, I stay with this non-involved indifference until it too begins to disappear.

And when I am able to watch without any involvement and stay with the movement until it completely subsides on its own, then the I is absorbed into awareness without an I, and only awareness, only witnessing remains.

-purushottama

Have a listen to Podcast Episode: Meditation Involves all Three.

For more on this topic, you may wish to explore:

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Watching and Forgetting the Content

Awakening Before Enlightenment

After Awakening Before Enlightenment

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

I am That – Osho

Soham bhavo namskarah.

The feeling of I am That – So-Aham – is the salutation.

Existence is one, or rather, Existence is oneness. Al-Hillaj Mansoor was flayed alive because he said, “I am the Beloved; I am the Divine; I am That which created the world.” Islam was totally unacquainted with this type of language. This language is basically Hindu. Wherever man has contemplated, man has come to duality: God, the Creator, and the world, the created. Hinduism has taken the boldest jump by saying that the created is the Creator and there is no basic difference.

To Islam or to other dualistic thinking, this looks like sacrilege. If there is no difference between God and the world, between man and God, then for dualistic thinkers it appears that there is no possibility of religion, no possibility of worship, no possibility of salutation. If you are the Divine, then who are you going to worship? If you are the Creator, then who is superior to you? Worship becomes impossible.

But this sutra says that this is the only worship, this is the only salutation: “The feeling of I am That – So-Aham – is the salutation.” Ordinarily, this sutra is absurd, contradictory – because if there is no higher power than you, if you are the highest, then whom are you going to salute? To whom are you going to pay your respects? This is the reason Mansoor was murdered, killed; this is heresy. He was thought to be a heretic, a nastik – an atheist. If you say that you are God, you deny Godhood. Then you are the Supreme.

To the dualistic way of thinking, this is egoistic. The division must be maintained. You must come nearer and nearer, but you must not become the flame itself. You must become intimate with the Divine source, but you must not become one with it. Then respect is possible, worship is possible.

So you can reach to the Divine feet, but you cannot become one with the Divine flame. How can the created become the Creator? And if the created becomes the Creator, that means the created was not the created at all. And if the created becomes the Creator, that means there is no Creator.

This is one type of religious thinking – the dualist type. It has its own reasoning and it appeals to our ordinary minds. So, really, even those who are born Hindus are not Hindus unless they can come to conceive of this attitude – of being one with the Creator. One may be born a Hindu, but there is no basic difference between a Hindu, a Mohammedan and a Christian attitude. Theirs is our basic attitude – the attitude we learn and the attitude by which we behave.

A Hindu is really a deep absurdity, because he takes the impossible jump: the created becomes the Creator. And this sutra says, “This is the only salutation.” If God is there high above and you are here low down, if something in you is not already Divine, there is no bridge possible. You cannot be related to the Divine. You can be related to Him only if you are already related; otherwise there is an unbridgeable gap. God remains God and you remain just the created.

Because of this, a third attitude develops – the attitude of the Jains. They deny God altogether, because they say if there is a God as a Creator and we are just created beings, we can never become Gods. How can something created by you become you? The created will remain the created, and the Creator will always have the capacity to destroy you, because “Creator” also means the capacity to destroy, the capacity for destruction. If God has created the world, he can destroy it this very moment. He is not responsible to you. You cannot ask why because you have never asked why He created the world. So at this very moment, if there is just a whim in the Divine mind, the world can be destroyed. With all your holy men, with all your sinners, the world can at this very moment be destroyed.

So if there is a God, Jains say, then man is not really a spirit. He is just a created thing, not a soul, because then he does not have any freedom. If God is the Creator, then man is not free and then everything becomes meaningless: whether you are good or bad, it is meaningless. God remains the supreme power. He can do anything, He can undo anything. And He is not responsible to you. If you have created a mechanical device you can destroy it: you are not responsible to your mechanical creation. A painter creates a painting; he can destroy it. The painting cannot say, “You cannot destroy me.” And if God is the Creator and man is just a created thing, how can the created thing evolve and become Divine? That is impossible. So Jains say that there is no God. Only then can man become Divine, because only then is man free. With a God we are slaves; with no God we are free.

Nietzsche has said, without knowing that Mahavir has said this before him, “Now God is dead and man is free.” The same was the problem with Mahavir. If God is there, then man is not free. God’s being is man’s slavery, God’s non-being is man’s freedom. So Mahavir says that there is no God and that only then can you become Divine. Mohammedans, Christians, Jews, they say God is, man is, but man is just a created being. He can worship the Divine and come nearer. The nearer he comes, the more he will be filled with Divine light, bliss, ecstasy. But he cannot become one with the Divine, because if he can become one with the Divine that shows that potentially he was already one with the Divine; because nothing can happen in the world which is not already in the seed.

A tree evolves because the tree was in the seed. If you can become Divine, you were already Divine. So Jews, Christians and Mohammedans say that if you are already Divine, then evolving becomes meaningless. If you are already Divine in the seed, then there is no real evolution, then there is no growth, and whatsoever you do or do not do, you will remain Divine. Christians, Mohammedans and Jews say that religious growth is possible only if man is man and God is God. You come nearer and nearer, and that coming nearer is a growth.

It is your choice. You may not come near, you may go far away – this is your freedom. But if you are already Divine, say Jews, Mohammedans and Christians, then there is no real growth. The whole growth becomes just illusory, just a dream growth. You were bound to become Divine because in the seed you were Divine already. So the whole thing becomes hocus-pocus, they say. The whole evolution becomes meaningless.

Hindus take a standpoint just in between these two standpoints. They agree with Jains that man is Divine and they agree with Christians, Mohammedans and Jews that there is God as the Creator. And Still, they say, there is growth, there is evolution. Not only that: they say only then is growth possible. But to them growth means just unfoldment. A seed grows, and the growth is real, authentic, because a seed may not grow and may remain a seed forever; there is no inner necessity to grow But a seed grows only to be a particular tree because that tree is already potential in it.

Man can remain man, man can even fall down and become an animal, or man can grow to be Divine. This is choice! This is freedom! But this possibility, that man can become Divine, shows that somewhere deep down in the seed form man is already Divine.

So it is an unfoldment. Something hidden becomes actual, something potential becomes actual, something that was just a seed becomes a tree. In a way, the Hindu God is totally different from the Mohammedan and the Christian God because for Hindus man can become God. And they say that if you cannot become God, then even the concept of coming nearer and nearer is false – because if you cannot jump into the flame, what does it mean to come nearer and nearer? Then what is the difference between you and someone who is not near? If you can come nearer, then the logical conclusion will be more near, more near, more near, and ultimately you become one.

If you cannot become one, then there is a limit, a boundary, and beyond that boundary and limit there will be a gap between you and the Divine. That gap cannot be tolerated. And if there is a gap which it is not possible to bridge, the whole effort is useless. Hindus say that unless you become the Divine itself, the urge will not be fulfilled. The nearer you are, the more you will feel the gap and the more you will suffer. And when you come on the boundary line from where no growth is possible, you will stagnate and you will die, and the suffering will be unbearable, absolutely unbearable.

Man can become Divine because he is already Divine, and Hindus say you can only become that which you are already. You cannot become that which you are not; you cannot grow to be something else. You can only grow to be yourself.

This attitude has many dimensions. One is God the Creator: we can think of Him as a painter, but Hindus have not thought that way. They say the Creator is not a painter but a dancer: that is why there is the concept of Shiva the dancer. In dance the dancer is creating something, but the creation is not something separate from the Creator. In painting the painter and painting are two things, and the painter can die and the painting can remain. And the moment the painting is complete, it is independent of the painter completely. Now it will take its own course.

Hindus say God is a Creator like a dancer. A dancer is there dancing; the dance is the creation – but you cannot separate it from the dancer. If the dancer dies the dance will die, and if the dance continues the dancer will be there.

One thing more which is basic and important: the dance cannot exist without the dancer, but the dancer can exist without the dance. Hindus say this world is a creation in this way. God is dancing, so whatsoever is created is part and parcel of it.

Another thing: a painter paints; he can complete the painting and then go to sleep. But a dance is a constant creation. God cannot go to sleep. So the world was not created on a particular day; it is being created every moment. Christians think the world was created on a particular day and date, and before that there was no world. They say in a week – in exactly six days – God created the world, and on the seventh day he rested. Now, even if He is, He is no more needed. He may have died meanwhile. The painter can die and the painting can continue. The painter may have gone mad, but the painting remains as it was.

Hindus say not that the world was created but that it is being created every moment. It is a constant flux of creation; it is a continuum. It is a constant flux of creation; it is a continuum of creation. So really, if you look at things in this way, then God is not a person: God is energy. Then God is not something static: God is movement. He is dynamic because a dance is a dynamic movement. You have to be in it every moment: only then can it exist. Dance is an expression, a living expression, and you have to be in it continuously.

The world is a dance, not a painting, and everything is part of this dance, every gesture is Divine. So Hindus say a very beautiful thing. They say if not everything is Divine, then nothing can be Divine. If not everything is holy, then nothing can be holy. If not everything is God, then there is no possibility of any God. This is one dimension – to look at this oneness. They never say there is oneness. They always say everything is non-dual, because Hindus think that to say that the world is one, that Existence is one, gives you a feeling that “one” can exist only if something else also exists.

One is a number. One can exist only if other numbers exist – two, three, four. If there are no other numbers, one becomes meaningless. Then what do you mean by “one”? Because there are nine digits, from one to nine, one is meaningful. It is meaningful in a pattern of digits, of numbers. If there is only one, you cannot say it is one. Then numbers become meaningless.

Hindus say that Existence is non-dual, not one. They mean it is one, but they say it is non-dual. They say it is not two. This is a non-committal statement. If you say “one”, you have made a commitment, you have committed yourself in many ways. If you say “one”, you are saying that you have measured it. If you say “one”, you are saying that Existence is finite.

Hindus say it is non-dual. They mean it is one, but they say it in a roundabout way, and this is very meaningful. They say that it is non-dual – that it is not two. Thus, they only indicate that it is one. It is never said directly, but only indicated. They say only that it is not two.

This is very meaningful, because when we say that the dancer and the dance are one, then there will be many difficulties. If the dance ceases, the dancer will cease – if they are one. Hindus say instead that they are not two. Then the dancer will be there even if the dance ceases, but the dance cannot be there if the dancer ceases.

This non-dualness is hidden; the duality is manifested. “Manyness” is manifest; oneness is hidden. But this many-ness can exist only because of that hidden oneness. Trees are different, the earth is different, the sun is different, the moon is different, but now science says that deep down everything is related and one. The tree cannot grow if there is no sun, but we have come to know only this oneway traffic. We know trees cannot grow and flowers cannot flower if the sun ceases to be. Hindus too say trees cannot grow if there is no sun, but they say also that if there are no growing trees, the sun cannot exist. This is a two-way traffic; everything is related.

Jains say if there is God, then man will be a slave. Mohammedans say if man declares that “I am God”, then God is dethroned and the slave pretends to be-the master. Hindus say there is neither independence nor dependence: Existence is an interdependence. So to talk in terms of dependence and independence is meaningless. The Whole exists as an interdependent whole. Nothing is high and nothing is low because the high cannot exist without that which you call low.

Can the peak exist without the valley? Can the holy man exist without the sinner? Can beauty exist without that which you call ugliness? And if beauty cannot exist without ugliness, then it depends on ugliness. And if the peak cannot exist without the valley, then what is the meaning of calling the peak something high and calling the valley something low?

Hindus say the lowest is the highest and the highest i5 the lowest. By declaring this, they mean that this whole world is a deeply interdependent pattern and all religions are arbitrary. They are good for thinking, for analyzing, for understanding, but basically they are false. And this is the longest jump.

The rishi says, “Soham bhavo namaskarah – the feeling of I am That is the salutation.” Unless the lowest can feel that he is the highest, he cannot be at home in this universe. But this is not a declaration: this is a feeling. You can declare that “I am God” and that may not be a deep feeling at all. That may be just an egoistic assertion. If you say that “I am God and no one else is God”, then you have not felt it. When it is a feeling, it is not a declaration on your part – it is a declaration on the part of the whole Existence.

The rishi says, “I am God, I am That.” He is saying that everything is God, everything is That. With him, the whole Existence declares. So it is not a personal statement. Al-Hillaj Mansoor was killed because Islam could not understand this language. When he said, “I am God,” they thought Al-Hillaj was saying, “‘I’ am God.,” It was not Al-Hillaj at all. It was simply that Al-Hillaj became vocal on the part of the whole Existence. It was the whole Existence speaking through Al-Hillaj, declaring. Al-Hillaj was no more – because if he was, then this declaration becomes personal. So this is the second dimension.

Man exists in three categories. One is when he says “I am” without knowing who he is. This is the ordinary existence of everyone, the feeling of “I am” without knowing “who I am”. The second stage is when he comes to know “I am not” – because the deeper you ponder over this am-ness, the more you dig, the more you will find that you are not, and the whole phenomenon of “I” disappears. You cannot find it. So there is no question of making it disappear. You simply do not find it; it is not there.

If you exist without any search, you feel that “I am”. If you begin to search, you will come to know that you are not. This is the second state: when man comes to know that he is not. First he was probing deep into the phenomenon of “I am”; now he will have to probe into the phenomenon of “I am not”.

This is most arduous. The first is difficult, very difficult. Even to come to the second is a long journey. Many stay at the first. They never probe into “Who am I?” Only very few go into a deep search to know who it is that says “I am”. Then, among those few, very few will go again on a new journey to know what this “I am not” is, what this feeling of “I am not” is. With “I am not”, still I am, but now I cannot say “I am”; I feel as if there is a deep emptiness.

Hindus have said that the first is “I-am-ness”; the second is simply “am-ness”. The “I” is dropped, but my existence is there. Even if I am empty, nothing, still I am. This is called “am-ness”. The first they call ahankar – ego; the second they call asmita – am-ness. If someone goes deep into ahankar, the ego, he comes to asmita, amness. And now, if someone again goes deep into this am-ness, he come to Divineness. Then he says, “I am That; aham brahmasmi – I am God.” Through emptiness. one becomes all. Through nonbeing, one becomes the very ground of Being. Dissolving, one becomes all.

This sutra, Soham bhavo namaskarah, is the feeling of the third state. When man has dissolved completely, ego has disappeared. Even am-ness is not a finite thing now. One has come to the very source, as if one is just a gesture in a dance just a gesture in a dance! He has probed deep, and now he has come to the dancer. Now the gesture of the dance is that “I am the dancer”.

This is going in. First you go in yourself, but you are relative to the universe. So if you continue, then you are stepping down into Existence. If you go on continuing, then from the periphery you will one day come to the center.

Even a leaf in the wind has its own individuality. If the leaf begins to travel inwards, sooner or later it will go beyond itself; it will enter into the branch. If it goes on, then sooner or later it will not be the leaf, it will not be the branch: it will become the tree. If it goes on, sooner or later it will not be the tree: it will become the roots. And if it still continues, sooner or later it will become the Existence: it will go beyond the roots.

But the leaf can remain itself without moving in. Then the leaf can think, “I am”; this is the first stage. If the leaf moves, sooner or later it will find, “I am not the leaf. I am more: I am the branch.” Then, “I am not the branch. I am even more: I am the tree.” And then, “I am not even the tree. I am still more: I am the roots, the hidden roots.” And if the journey goes on, from the roots also it will take a jump – it will become the whole Existence.

This is a feeling, a realization. And this is the more difficult part because intellectually your ego would like to declare that you are God, you are Divine. Intellect tries always to be high, at the peak. The very effort of the ego is to be something supreme. So this can appeal to you, this can appeal to the ego. It can say, “Okay this is right: I am God.”

But this sutra says this is the salutation, and salutation is a deep humility, a humbleness. It is not to put yourself on the peak, because then there is no one whom you can salute. This was the problem with Islam when Al-Hillaj declared. He declared himself God and Islam felt: “This is not humbleness – this is the climax of being egoistic!” So those who killed him felt that they killed him very righteously, in good faith: this was the peak of ego!

This sutra is contradictory. It declares that you are That, and this is the salutation. If this is felt and realized, then the peak will salute the valley – because now there is nothing else but the Divine, and now the peak will realize that it is dependent on the valley. Then light will salute darkness and life will salute death. because everything is interdependent and interrelated. At this peak of realization, one becomes humble – because this declaration of “I am That” is not against anyone. It is for all. Now, through me, everything is declaring its Divinity.

Many people were there when Al-Hillaj was killed; many were throwing stones. He was laughing, he was prayerful, he was loving. There was a sufi fakir also present in the crowd. The whole crowd was throwing stones, and the sufi fakir, just to be one with the crowd, just in order not to let them feel he did not belong with them, threw a flower. He could not throw any stone, so he threw a flower just to be one with the crowd – so that everyone would feel that he was with them, that he belonged to them.

Mansoor began to weep. When the sufi’s flower hit him, he began to weep. The Sufi became uneasy. He came nearer and he asked Mansoor, “Why, when they are throwing stones, are you laughing, praying for them? And I have thrown only a flower!”

Mansoor said, “Your flower hits me more because you know. This is not a declaration for me. I have declared for you and you know, so your flower hits me more. Their stones are just like flowers because they do not know. But this has been a declaration for them. If Mansoor can be Divine,” said Mansoor, “then everything can be Divine. If even Mansoor can be Divine, then everything can be Divine!” Mansoor said, “Look at me! I was no one and yet I declare I am Divine. Now everything can be Divine.”

This is a declaration not from the ego: this is a declaration from a non-ego realization. When one begins to feel that one is nothing, only then can one come to this. Then it is humble; then it is the most humble possibility. It becomes a salutation – a salutation to the whole Existence. Then the whole Existence has a Divinity.

Mystics have denied temples, mosques, churches, not because they are meaningless, but because the whole Cosmos is a temple. Mystics have denied statues, not because they are meaningless, but because the whole Existence is the image of the Divine. But to understand their language is difficult. They appear to us as antireligious – denying statues, denying images, denying temples, churches, denying scriptures; denying everything that we believe to be religious. They are denying only because the Whole is Divine. And if you insist on the part, that shows you do not know about the Whole.

If I say, “This temple is Divine,” just by saying this I have said that the whole universe is not Divine. If this temple is just part of a greater temple, then it is a different thing. But if this temple is against the Whole, against other temples – not only against other temples: if this temple is against any ordinary house even, if this temple says that houses are not holy and only temples are holy, it is a denial of the Whole.

For the Whole, mystics have denied the parts. But for us there is no Whole; we do not know anything about the Whole. So even when the part is denied it is uncomfortable, because that is all we know. If someone says there is no temple, it is enough for us that he is not religious. He may be saying this: that because everything is a temple, do not make anything in particular a temple; do not say anything in particular is Divine, because everything is Divine. This is the salutation.

We are also worshipping. We go to the temple, to the mosque, to bow. We bow down, but the ego remains standing. It is only a bodily movement. The inner ego remains unmoved. Rather, it may become even more straight because you have been to the temple, because you have been to the teerth – because you have been on a holy pilgrimage – because you have been to Kaaba. Now you are no ordinary person! You are “religious” because you bowed down, but it was a bodily gesture. Your ego has become more strengthened by it; it has been a food for your ego. Your ego has been vitalized; it is not dead.

That is why so-called religious persons will always be more egoistic than ordinary worldly persons. They have something more, that you do not have. They are “religious”: they do prayer daily! When you go to a cinema hall your ego may not be strengthened, but when you go to a temple it is strengthened, because in a temple you can never feel that you are guilty. You may feel in a cinema hall that you are guilty; you may feel in a hotel that you are guilty, but you can never feel that you are guilty in a temple. You feel superior; you become more respectable; you gain something in terms of ego.

Look at the faces of persons coming out from temples. Observe them! Their egos are more strengthened. They are coming out with some gain; this has been a “vitamin”. You can bow down without bowing down at all – and that is the problem. Bowing must be inner. And if then the body follows, it is a deep experience. Even in the body it is a deep experience – if you are bowing inwardly with the feeling that because everything is Divine, then wherever you bow down you are at the feet of Divine. If your body moves with this feeling, then your body also will have a deep experience, and you will come out of it more simple, more innocent, more humble.

What to do? Man has invented many things, but they have not helped. And man’s ego is so subtle and cunning, and it can deceive you in such subtle ways that you cannot defeat it. If there is a God somewhere in heaven you can bow to Him, and you can still behave egoistically with the whole Existence because you feel that this world is not Divine. Your Divinity, your God, is somewhere high in heaven. To this world, you can go on behaving as you were behaving, and you can behave even more badly because now you are related to the Supreme Authority. Now you have a direct link. You can dial any moment to the Supreme Authority; you can tell Him to do anything.

Jesus was passing through a village. The village was antagonistic. They would not shelter the disciples of Jesus; they refused. They would not give any food, not even water, so they were having to move to another village. The disciples said to Jesus, “This is your moment. Show your miracles: destroy this village! Such irreligious people should not exist.” These are the disciples who later on created the whole Christianity. They said, “Destroy this village this very moment. This is the time! Show your miracles!” They are asking Jesus to prove that he is the Son, the only begotten Son. They are saying, “Now tell your Father who is high in heaven to destroy this village this very moment!”

Why this arrogance? Why this anger? And they were prayerful people. They were praying daily; they were living with Jesus. Why this arrogance? There were simply some ordinary people in the town. They had only refused to give food. This is not a sin. This is up to them. If I come to your house and you refuse me food, okay – it is up to you. Why this arrogance? And not the whole city had denied them. There were small children and old men, they had not denied them: only a few people had. But the disciples said, “Destroy this whole city. This whole village must be destroyed this very moment.”

The trees had not denied them shelter, but they were asking Jesus to destroy everything that belonged to the village. Why? Through prayer, through salutations, through worship, they have become more arrogant. They are not humble people; humility is far from them. And if they are not humble, how can they be religious? Why did this become possible? Because God is “in heaven.” Then they could feel that “The person who has denied us food is not Divine; the village is not Divine. God is somewhere in heaven and we are God’s chosen people. These people are anti-God, so destroy them.”

Real humility is possible only when God is not far away. He is your neighbor every moment. Wherever you are, He is your neighbor. To put God somewhere else, far away. is very easy, convenient, because then you can behave as you like with your neighbor and God is “always on your side.”

I was reading something: One French general was talking to an English general. It was after the Second World War. The French general said, “We were continuously defeated and you were not defeated. Why is this so?”

The English general said, “This is because of prayer. We pray before we start any fight. We pray!”

The French general said, “But that we also do.”

The English general said, “That is okay, but we pray in English and you pray in French. From where did you get this idea that God knows French? He cannot know it.”

This is how the so-called religious mind becomes arrogant. Sanskrit is the “only sacred language”; you can laugh at the anecdote, but can you laugh at this? You think Sanskrit is the only sacred language and that the Vedas are the only scriptures written by God Himself. You think: “The Koran? How is it possible! From where did you get the idea that God knows Arabic? He knows only Sanskrit!” Then you say, “God is always on my side. If He insists on not being on my side, I can change my God. That is always within my capacity.” So because of that fear, “He always remains on my side. He is my God; He has to follow me.”

This attitude is created because for you the whole Existence is not Divine. If the whole Existence is Divine, then God even understands the language of trees – not only Sanskrit and Arabic, but even the language of the stones. And then it is not a problem of language at all. Then language is irrelevant. It is not prayer which is meaningful now: it is a prayerful mind. And a prayerful mind is something totally different from a praying mind.

This sutra says that this is the only salutation, the only humbleness possible, but in a very paradoxical way. “I am God”: to feel this is the salutation. We would have liked to say, “You are God,” and then it would have been easy to salute. But this sutra says, “I am God. This is the only salutation.” Then we will ask whom to salute. There is really no need to salute. There is no need to salute! It is not an activity; it is not something you have to do. If the whole Existence is Divine, then whatsoever you are doing is a salutation.

Because Kabir continued to work as he was working before his Enlightenment, he was asked about it. He was a weaver; he continued weaving. Disciples would come from far, very, very faraway places, and they would say, “Why? You are an Enlightened One; you are now a Buddha. Why do you continue weaving?”

Kabir would say, “This is the only prayer I know. I was a weaver, so I only know how to salute Him in this way.”

Someone said to Kabir, “But Buddha, when he became Enlightened, left everything.”

Kabir is reported to have said, “He was a king. He knew only I know only this way. This is my prayer, and when I am weaving these clothes, I am weaving them for the Divine.”

And then Kabir would go to the market to sell them. So someone said to him, “But you go to the market to sell them. You say these are for the Divine, so why do you not go to the temple and lay them at the Divine feet?”

Kabir said, “I always lay them at the Divine feet, but my gods are waiting there in the market. My Ram is waiting there, and I believe in living gods.”

This attitude does not need any salutation. Now it is not an act to be done; rather, it is a way to live. your prayer can be just a part of your act – just one act among many. But to persons like Kabir, it is not an act. It is a way to live. So Kabir said, “Whatsoever I am doing is prayer.” It can be, but then the whole Existence must be Divine. Then whatsoever you are doing, if you are eating, it is prayer because it goes to the Existence. Then it is not you who are eating, but the Existence through you. Then, when you are moving or walking, it is prayer because it is the Existence moving through you, walking through you.

When you are dying it is prayer, because it is the Existence taking back that which was given. That which was made manifest is now becoming unmanifest. Then you are not in between. You are no more. You are just an opening, just an opening for the Existence, a window. Existence moves through you, in and out. You are nowhere in between at this moment of nothingness. Man can say, “Aham brahmasmi – I am the absolute; I am That.”

This is not an egoistic assertion: this is one of the most humble of assertions – but it looks very paradoxical. Life is such a complexity that if you have to assert simple truths you have to be paradoxical. If you are asserting complex truths you need not be paradoxical; you can be very logical. This has to be understood: only very simple truths are difficult to express – because the more simple they become, the more non-dual. And when it comes to the very center, then the statement has to imply all dualities.

Look at it in this way: the Upanishads say, “God is near and God is far away.” If you say, “He is only near,” it is false; if you say, “He is only far away,” it is false, because that which is near can become far and that which is far can become near. You can move; you are already moving. “He is everywhere”: this simple truth has to be expressed in a very paradoxical way. He is the nearest and the farthest; He is the minutest and the greatest; He is the seed and the tree; He is birth and death – because if He is life, then He must be both birth and death.

Why not simply say that He is life? Because in our minds, life is against death, so this simple truth – that He is life – cannot be asserted in this way. It has to be asserted in a paradoxical way: “He is birth and He is death; He is both.” He is life only because He is both. He is the friend and the foe, because the foe can become the friend and the friend can become the foe. He is both! We would like Him to be the friend and never the foe, but our likings are not truths. Really, unless our likings and dislikings cease, we cannot come to the Truth. We cannot come to it because we go on choosing and projecting.

This statement is again a paradox. The first part of it, “The feeling that I am Divine, I am That,” is the peak; and the second, “. . . is the salutation,” is the valley. It is the valley and peak both. First there is the most egoistic assertion possible – “I am That.” And then, falling down unto the feet of everything, the assertion, “. . . is the salutation.” These are two extremes, two polar opposites, and many things are implied.

If you feel that you are inferior and then you bow down, it is not a salutation. It is just part of your inferiority. If you say, “I am superior,” and you cannot bow down, then you are not really superior – because one who cannot bow down is dead. He cannot be superior. And one who cannot bow down is still afraid somewhere of his superiority – afraid that “If I bow down I will not be superior.” Only one who is at ease with his superiority can bow down; only one who has gone beyond his inferiority can bow down. And this is the highest peak possible – “I am That” – and then from there you bow down.

Buddha has given his past-life memories. In one, he says. “I was just ignorant.” Buddha says, “I was just ignorant. Then a Buddha, a person who had become Enlightened, passed through my village. I went to touch his feet. I touched his feet, but then suddenly I became aware that he was doing something. He was bowing down and then he touched my feet. I became afraid and I said, ‘What are you doing? I should touch your feet; that is as it should be. But why are you touching my feet?’”

That Enlightened One said to Gautam Buddha, “You are touching my feet because I am a Buddha. I am touching your feet because you are a Buddha also.”

Gautam Buddha, in his past life, said to him, “But I am not. I am ignorant; I am no one.”

The Enlightened One said to him, “Because you do not know what you are, you do not know what you can become. You are bowing to a present Buddha; I am bowing to a future Buddha. I have become manifest; you will become manifest. It is only a question of time.”

This bowing down of an Enlightened One is the secret of this sutra. He was a peak, and he is bowing down to an ignorant man. Now from his peak he can see another peak which is hidden in ignorance. It is not hidden for him; to him it is as clear as anything.

You can bow down to this ordinary Existence only when you feel that you are That! To say it in another way: unless you become God you cannot be humble, unless you become God you cannot be innocent. That innocence is expressed through this sutra. Salutations we know. We know about God, we know about salutations. But this sutra is very difficult. It is impossible to conceive of it. It makes you the God and it makes this being the God a basic condition for salutation.

To us, one must always salute to the higher, to that which is higher than us. But this sutra makes you the highest, and that is the basic condition for salutation. Whom to salute? You are the highest, so now salute the lowest. The salutation from the lower to the higher is just ordinary. There is nothing in it. It is the ordinary mind working – the political mind, the ambitious mind. It is working to salute the higher. But you are the highest. Now the mind will say that you need not salute anyone. Now the whole Existence must salute you. You are the highest. Now let the whole world come to you to salute; now let the whole Existence bow down to your feet.

This will be your feeling. If you take it as you are, if you begin to follow this sutra, this will be the feeling: “Now let the whole world come and salute me.” But this sutra says that this is the basic condition for you to salute the Divine.

When there is no one whom you can ask, the ego feels starved. When you feel inferiority, you want someone to salute you. This is a hunger – a hunger for food. This shows that you are still just at the first stage of the mind: “I am.” And below this stage there is nothingness, so whatsoever you put into this “I am” goes deep into the abyss, and the “I am” remains always vacant. […]

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2, Discourse #10

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Where is the Witness – Osho

Where is the witness when the observer and the observed become one?

Anand Pravesh, the observer and the observed are two aspects of the witness. When they disappear into each other, when they melt into each other, when they are one, the witness for the first time arises in its totality.

But this question arises in many people; the reason is that they think the witness is the observer. In their minds, the observer and the witness are synonymous. It is fallacious; the observer is not the witness, but only a part of it. And whenever the part thinks of itself as the whole, error arises.

The observer means the subjective, and the observed means the objective. The observer means that which is outside the observed, and the observer also means that which is inside.

The inside and the outside can’t be separate; they are together, they can only be together. When this togetherness, or rather oneness, is experienced, the witness arises. You cannot practice the witness. If you practice the witness, you will be practicing only the observer, and the observer is not the witness.

Then what has to be done? Melting has to be done; merging has to be done. Seeing a rose flower, forget completely that there is an object seen and a subject as a seer. Let the beauty of the moment, the benediction of the moment, overwhelm you both, so the rose and you are no more separate, but you become one rhythm, one song, one ecstasy. Loving, experiencing music, looking at the sunset, let it happen again and again. The more it happens the better, because it is not an art but a knack. You have to get the knack of it; once you have got it, you can trigger it anywhere, any moment.

When the witness arises, there is nobody who is witnessing and there is nothing to be witnessed. It is a pure mirror, mirroring nothing. Even to say it is a mirror is not right; it will be better to say it is a mirroring. It is more a dynamic process of melting and merging; it is not a static phenomenon; it is a flow. The rose reaching you, you reaching into the rose: it is a sharing of being.

Forget that idea that the witness is the observer; it is not. The observer can be practiced, the witness happens. The observer is a kind of concentration, and the observer keeps you separate. The observer will enhance, strengthen your ego. The more you become an observer, the more you will feel like an island — separate, aloof, distant.

Down the ages, the monks all over the world have been practicing the observer. They may have called it the witness, but it is not the witness. The witness is something totally different, qualitatively different. The observer can be practiced, cultivated; you can become a better observer through practicing it.

The scientist observes, the mystic witnesses. The whole process of science is that of observation; very keen, acute, sharp observation, so nothing is missed. But the scientist does not come to know God. Although his observation is very, very expert, yet he remains unaware of God. He never comes across God; on the contrary, he denies that God is, because the more he observes — and his whole process is that of observation — the more he becomes separate from existence. The bridges are broken, and walls arise; he becomes imprisoned in his own ego.

The mystic witnesses. But remember, witnessing is a happening, a by-product — a byproduct of being total in any moment, in any situation, in any experience. Totality is the key: out of totality arises the benediction of witnessing. Forget all about observing. It will give you more accurate information about the observed object, but you will remain absolutely oblivious of your own consciousness.

Science is objective, art is subjective, religion is neither — neti neti, neither this nor that. Then what is religion? Religion is the meeting of the object and the subject; religion is the meeting of the lover and the beloved. Religion is the disappearance of the separation, of the duality. And in that separation energy is released; energy that was confined by the dual, that was kept separate, simply dances in utter unity.

That unity is witnessing. It happens only once in a while to you, and even then, you don’t take much note of it, because it comes like a flash, and it is gone. And because you don’t understand it, you don’t preserve the experience. In fact, you neglect it, you ignore it; it seems to be dangerous.

It happens when you are in a deep orgasmic state, when the woman and man meet and merge and disappear into each other. It happens only for a single moment at the highest peak. When their energies are no more two, when the energies have penetrated into each other so deeply that you cannot call them two at all . . . that orgasmic peak is the moment where witnessing arises. This is the whole secret of Tantra. Tantra discovered that in orgasmic ecstasy witnessing arises on its own accord. It is a gift from God, a natural gift to enter into samadhi.

But it happens in all creative experiences, because all creative experiences are orgasmic; in a subtle sense, there is something of the sexual and the sensuous in them. When a painter looks at the trees, then the green and the red and the gold of the trees is not the same as when you look at the trees. His experience is orgasmic, he is utterly lost in it. He is not there as an observer; he falls in deep rapport. He becomes one with the green and the red and the gold of the trees.

The painter knows that looking at the beautiful existence is an orgasmic experience. Hence, while the painter is painting, he becomes absolutely nonsexual; he becomes celibate. He is already experiencing orgasmic joy; he need not go into sex at all. Celibacy comes naturally to him.

Thousands of poets and painters and musicians have remained celibate, and with no effort. Monks remain celibate with great effort. Why? The monk is uncreative; in his life there is no orgasmic experience, his mind hankers for the sexual experience. The poet, the musician, the artist, the dancer who is capable of being lost into whatsoever he is doing, is having orgasmic experiences on a higher plane; sex is not a necessity. If once in a while such a person moves into sex, it is not out of need, it is just playfulness, it is simple playfulness. And when sex has the quality of playfulness it is sacred. When it is out of need it is a little bit ugly, because out of need you exploit the other, and out of need it can never take you to the highest orgasmic peak. You remain always discontented somewhere or other, because out of need means there is a motive, there is goal orientation. There is manipulation, exploitation, an effort to use the other as a means. When you are simply playful, it is totally different.

D.H. Lawrence is right when he says that he experienced God in sexual orgasm. But his sexuality is totally different from the sexuality of the monks. They will not be able to understand Lawrence.

Lawrence was one of the most misunderstood men of this century — one of the most beautiful, one of the most creative, one of the most precious, but the most misunderstood. And the reason is that his experience has a totally different quality. When he is talking about sexual orgasm, he is not talking about your sexual orgasm, he is talking about his sexual orgasm. Only very rare people will be able to understand him. He is a natural tantrika — unaware of the science of Tantra, but he stumbled upon it. Somehow a window has opened in his life; his sensuality is spiritual.

It is not a question of what you do, it is a question of how you do it. And ultimately it is a question whether you do it or you allow it to happen. If you allow it to happen, then whenever there is a creative meeting, you will suddenly become a witness. The observer and the observed become one in it — in fact it happens only when they become one.

-Osho

From The Book of Wisdom, Discourse #23, Q1

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.

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Kaivalya – Osho

When one has seen this distinction, there is a cessation of desire for dwelling in the atma, the self.

Then the mind is inclined toward discrimination and gravitates toward liberation.

In breaks of discrimination, other pratyayas, concepts, arise through the force of previous impressions. These should be removed in the same way as other afflictions.

One who is able to maintain a constant state of desirelessness even toward the most exalted states of enlightenment and is able to exercise the highest kind of discrimination, enters the state known as “the cloud which showers virtue.”

Then follows freedom from afflictions and karmas.

That which can be known through the mind is very little compared with the infinite knowledge obtained in enlightenment, when the veils, distortions, and impurities are removed.

Having fulfilled their object, the process of change in the three gunas comes to an end.

Kramaha, the process, is the succession of changes that occur from moment to moment which become apprehensible at the final end of the transformations of the three gunas.

Kaivalya is the state of enlightenment that follows the reemergence of the gunas, due to their becoming devoid of the object of the purusa.

In this state, the purusa is established in his real nature, which is pure consciousness.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

The first sutra:

Visesa-darsina atma-bhava-bhavanavinivrttih.

When one has seen this distinction, there is a cessation of desire for dwelling in the atma, the self.

Buddha has called the ultimate state of consciousness anatta – no self, non-being. It is very difficult to comprehend it. Buddha has said that the last desire to drop is the desire to be. There are millions of desires. The whole world is nothing but desire objects, but the basic desire is to be. The basic desire is to continue, to persist, to remain. Death is the greatest fear; the last desire to be dropped is the desire to be.

Patanjali in this sutra says: when your awareness has become perfect, when viveka, discrimination has been achieved, when you have become a witness, a pure witness of whatsoever happens, outside you, inside you . . . you are no more a doer; you are simply watching; the birds are singing outside . . . you watch; the blood is circulating inside . . . you watch; the thoughts are moving inside . . . you watch – you never get identified anywhere. You don’t say, “I am the body”; you don’t say, “I am the mind”; you don’t say anything. You simply go on watching without being identified with any object. You remain a pure subject; you simply remember one thing: that you are the watcher, the witness – when this witnessing is established, then the desire to be disappears.

And the moment the desire to be disappears, death also disappears. Death exists because you want to persist. Death exists because you don’t want to die. Death exists because you are struggling against the whole. The moment you are ready to die, death is meaningless; it cannot be possible now. When you are ready to die, how can you die? In the very readiness of dying disappearing, all possibility of death is overcome. This is the paradox of religion.

Jesus says, “If you are going to cling to yourself, you will lose yourself. If you want to attain yourself, don’t cling.” Those who try to be are destroyed. Not that somebody is there destroying you; your very effort to be is destructive because the moment the idea arises that “I should persist,” you are moving against the whole. It is as if a wave is trying to be against the ocean. Now the very effort is going to create worry and misery, and one moment will come when the wave will have to disappear. But now, because the wave was fighting against the ocean, the disappearance will look like death. If the wave was ready, and the wave was aware: “I’m nothing but the ocean, so what is the point in persisting? I have always been, and I will always be because the ocean has always been there and will always be there. I may not exist as a wave – wave is just the form I have taken for the moment.

“The form will disappear but not my content. I may not exist like this wave; I may exist like another wave, or I may not exist as a wave as such. I may become the very depth of the ocean where no waves arise . . .”

But the innermost reality is going to remain because the whole has penetrated you. You are nothing but the whole, an expression of the whole. Once awareness is established, Patanjali says, “When one has seen this distinction, that ‘I am neither this nor that,’ when one has become aware and is not identified with anything whatsoever, there is a cessation of desire for dwelling in the atma, in the self.” Then the last desire disappears, and the last is the fundamental. Hence, Buddha says, “You can drop desiring money, wealth, power, prestige – that’s nothing. You can stop desiring the world – that’s nothing – because those are secondary desires. The basic desire is to be.” So people who renounce the world start desiring liberation, but liberation is also their liberation. They will remain in moksha, in a liberated state. They desire that pain should not be there. They desire that misery should not be there. They will be in absolute bliss, but they will be. The insistence is that they must be there.

That’s why Buddha could not get roots into this country which thinks itself very religious. The most religious man who was born on this earth could not get roots into this religious country. What happened? He said, he insisted, to drop the basic desire of being: he said, “Be a non-being.” He said, “Don’t be.” He said, “Don’t ask for liberation because the freedom is not for you. The freedom is going to be freedom from you; not for you, but from you.”

Liberation is liberation from yourself. See the distinction: it is not for you; liberation is not for you. It is not that liberated you will exist. Liberated, you will disappear. […]

In Zen, when meditators sit for many years, just sitting and doing nothing, a certain moment comes when they forget that they have bodies. That is their first satori. Not that the body is not there; body is there but there is no tension, so how to feel it? If I say something you can hear me, but if I’m silent how can you hear me? Silence is there – it has much to communicate to you – but silence cannot be heard. Sometimes when you say, “Yes, I can hear the silence,” then you are hearing some noise. Maybe it is the noise of the dark night, but it is still noise. If it is absolutely silent, you will not be able to hear it. When your body is perfectly healthy, you don’t feel it. If some tension arises in the body, some disease, some illness, then you start hearing. If everything is in harmony and there is no pain and no misery, suddenly you are empty. A nothingness overwhelms you.

Kaivalya is the ultimate health, wholeness, all wounds healed. When all wounds heal, how can you exist? The self is nothing but accumulated tensions. The self is nothing but all sorts of diseases, illnesses. The self is nothing but desires unfulfilled, hopes frustrated, expectations, dreams – all broken, fractured. It is nothing but accumulated disease that you call “self.” Or take it from another side: in moments of harmony, you forget that you are. Later on, you may remember how beautiful it was, how fantastic it was, how far-out. But in moments of real far-outness, you are not there. Something bigger than you has overpowered you; something higher than you has possessed you; something deeper than you has bubbled up. You have disappeared. In deep moments of love, lovers disappear. In deep moments of silence, meditators disappear. In deep moments of singing, dancing, celebration, celebrators disappear. And this is going to be the last celebration, the ultimate, the highest peak – kaivalya.

Patanjali says, “Even the desire to be disappears. Even the desire to remain disappears.” One is so fulfilled, so tremendously fulfilled that one never thinks in terms of being. For what? – you want to be there tomorrow also because today is unfulfilled. The tomorrow is needed; otherwise you will die unfulfilled. The yesterday was a deep frustration; today is again a frustration; tomorrow is needed. A frustrated mind creates future. A frustrated mind clings with the future. A frustrated mind wants to be because now, if death comes, no flower has flowered. Nothing has yet happened; there has only been a fruitless waiting: “Now, how can I die? I have not even lived yet.” That unlived life creates a desire to be.

People are so much afraid of death: these are the people who have not lived. These are the people who are, in a certain sense, already dead. A person who has lived and lived totally does not think about death. If it comes, good; he will welcome. He will live that too; he will celebrate that too. Life has been such a blessing, a benediction; one is even ready to accept death. Life has been such a tremendous experience; one is ready to experience death also. One is not afraid because the tomorrow is not needed; the today has been so fulfilling. One has come to fruition, flowered, bloomed. Now the desire for tomorrow disappears. The desire for tomorrow is always out of fear, and fear is there because love has not happened. The desire to always remain simply shows that deep down you are feeling yourself completely meaningless. You are waiting for some meaning. Once the meaning has happened, you are ready to die – silently, beautifully, gracefully.

“Kaivalya,” Patanjali says, “happens only when the last desire to be has disappeared.” The whole problem is to be or not to be. The whole life we try to be this and that, and the ultimate can happen only when you are not.

When one has seen this distinction, there is a cessation of desire for dwelling in the atma, the self.

The self is nothing but the most purified form of the ego. It is the last remnant of strain, stress, tension. You are still not perfectly open; something is still closed. When you are completely open, just a watcher on the hill, a witness, even that desire disappears. With the disappearance of that desire, something absolutely new happens in life. A new law starts functioning.

You have heard about the law of gravitation; you have not heard about the law of grace. The law of gravitation is that everything falls downward. The law of grace is that things start falling upward. And that law has to be there because in life everything is balanced by the opposite. Science has come to discover the law of gravitation: Newton sitting on a bench in a garden saw one apple falling – it happened or not; that is not the point – but seeing that the apple was falling down, a thought arose in him: “Why do things always fall downward? Why not otherwise? Why doesn’t a ripe fruit fall upward and disappear into the sky? Why not sideways? Why always downward?” He started brooding and meditating, and then he discovered a law. He came upon, stumbled upon a very fundamental law: that the earth is gravitating things toward itself. It has a gravitation field. Like a magnet, it pulls everything downward.

Patanjali, Buddha, Krishna, Christ – they also became aware of a different fundamental law, higher than gravitation. They became aware that there comes a moment in the inner life of consciousness when consciousness starts rising upward – exactly like gravitation. If the apple is hanging on the tree, it does not fall. The tree helps it not to fall downward. When the fruit leaves the tree, then it falls downward.

Exactly the same: if you are clinging to your body, you will not fall upward; if you are clinging to your mind, you will not fall upward. If you are clinging to the idea of self, you will remain under the impact of gravitation – because body is under the impact of gravitation, and mind also. Mind is subtle body; body is gross mind. They are both under the impact of gravitation. And because you are clinging to them – you are not under the impact of gravitation – but you are clinging to something which is under the impact of gravitation. It is as if you are carrying a big rock and trying to swim in a river; the rock will pull you down. It won’t allow you to swim. If you leave the rock, you will be able to swim easily.

We are clinging to something which is functioning under the law of gravitation: body, mind. “Once,” Patanjali says, “you have become aware that you are neither the body nor the mind, suddenly you start rising upward.” Some center somewhere high in the sky pulls you up. That law is called “grace.” Then God pulls you upward. And that type of law has to be there, otherwise gravitation could not exist. In nature, if positive electricity exists, then negative electricity has to exist. Man exists, then the woman has to exist. Reason exists, then intuition has to exist. Night exists, then the day has to exist. Life exists, then death has to exist. Everything needs the opposite to balance it. Now science has become aware of one law: gravitation. Science still needs a Patanjali to give it another dimension, the dimension of falling upward. Then life becomes complete.

You are a meeting place of gravitation and grace. In you, grace and gravitation are crisscrossing. You have something of the earth and something of the sky within you. You are the horizon where earth and sky are meeting. If you hold too much to the earth, then you will forget completely that you belong to the sky, to the infinite space, the beyond. Once you are no more attached with the earth part of you, suddenly, you start rising high.

When one has seen this distinction, there is a cessation of desire for dwelling in the self.

Tadahi viveka-nimnam kaivalya-pragbharam cittam.

Then the mind is inclined toward discrimination and gravitates toward liberation.

A new gravitation starts functioning. Liberation is nothing but entering the stream of grace. You cannot liberate yourself; you can only drop the barriers; liberation happens to you. Have you seen a magnet? – small iron pieces are pulled toward it. You can see those small iron pieces rushing toward the magnet but don’t be deceived by your eyes. In fact, they are not rushing, the magnet is pulling them. On the surface, it appears that those iron filings are going, moving toward the magnet. That is just on the surface. Deep down, something just opposite is happening, they are not moving toward the magnet, the magnet is pulling them toward itself. In fact, it is the magnet which has reached them. With the magnetic field, it has approached them, touched them, pulled them. If those iron filings are free, not attached to something – not attached to a rock – then the magnet can pull them. If they are attached to a rock, the magnet will go on pulling, but they will not be pulled because they are attached.

Exactly the same happens once you discriminate that you are not the body, you are no more bound to any rock, you are no more in bondage with earth, immediately, God’s magnet starts functioning. It is not that you reach to God. In fact, God has already reached you. You are under His magnetic field but clinging to something. Drop that clinging and you are in the stream. Buddha used to use a word srotaapanna: falling into the stream. He used to say, “Once you fall into the stream, then the stream takes you to the ocean. Then you need not do anything.” The only thing is to jump into the stream. You are sitting on the bank. Enter the stream and then the stream will do the remaining work. It is as if you are standing on a high building, on the roof of a high building, three hundred feet or five hundred feet above the earth. You go on standing, the gravitation has reached you, but it will not work unless you jump. Once you jump, then you need not do anything. Just a step off the roof . . . enough; your work is finished. Now the gravitation will do all the work. You need not ask, “Now what am I supposed to do?” You have taken the first step. The first [step] is the last step. Krishnamurti has written a book, The First and Last Freedom. The meaning is: the first step is the last step because once you are in the stream, everything else is to be done by the stream. You are not needed. Only for the first step is your courage needed.

Then the mind is inclined toward discrimination and gravitates toward liberation.

You start moving slowly upward. Your life energy starts rising high – an upsurge. And it is unbelievable when it happens because it is against all the laws that you have known up to now. It is levitation, not gravitation. Something in you simply starts moving upward, and there is no barrier to it. Nothing bars its path. Just a little relaxation, a little unclinging – the first step – and then automatically, spontaneously, your consciousness becomes more and more discriminative, more and more aware.

Let me tell you about another thing. You have heard the word, the phrase: “vicious circle.” Let us make another phrase: “virtuous circle.” In a vicious circle, one bad thing leads to another. For example, if you get angry then one anger leads you to more anger, and of course, more anger will lead you to still more anger. Now you are in a vicious circle. Each anger will make the habit of anger stronger and will create more anger, and more anger will make the habit still stronger, and on and on. You move in a vicious circle which goes on becoming stronger and stronger and stronger.

Let us try a new word: virtuous circle. If you become aware, what Patanjali calls vivek, awareness, if you become aware, vairagya – discrimination – creates renunciation. If you become aware, suddenly you see that you are no more the body. Not that you renounce the body; in your very awareness the body is renounced. If you become aware, you become aware that these thoughts are not you.

In that very awareness those thoughts are renounced. You have started dropping them. You don’t give them any more energy; you don’t cooperate with them. Your cooperation has stopped, and they cannot live without your energy. They live on your energy, they exploit you. They don’t have their own energy. Each thought that enters you partakes of your energy. And because you are willing to give your energy, it lives there, it makes its abode there. Of course, then its children come, and friends, and relatives, and this goes on. Once you are a little aware, vivek brings vairagya, awareness brings renunciation. And renunciation makes you capable of becoming more aware. And of course, more awareness brings more vairagya, more renunciation, and so on and so forth.

This is what I am calling the virtuous circle: one virtue leads to another, and each virtue becomes again a ground for more virtue to arise.

“This goes on,” Patanjali says, “to the last moment” – what he calls, dharma megha samadhi. We will be coming to it later on. He calls it “the cloud of virtue showering on you.” This virtuous circle, vivek leading to vairagya, vairagya leading to more vivek, vivek again creating more possibilities for vairagya, and so on and so forth – comes to the ultimate peak when the cloud of virtue showers on you: dharma megha samadhi.

In breaks of discrimination, other pratyayas, concepts, arise through the force of previous impressions.

Still, though, many intervals will be there. So don’t be discouraged. Even if you have become very aware and in certain moments you feel the pull, the upward pull of grace, and in certain moments you are in the stream, floating perfectly beautifully, with no effort, effortlessly, and everything is going and running smoothly, still there will be gaps. Suddenly you will find yourself standing again on the bank just because of old habits. For so many lives you have lived on the bank. Just because of the old habit, again and again the past will overpower you. Don’t be discouraged by it. The moment you see that you are again on the bank, again get down into the stream. Don’t be sad about it, because if you become sad, you will again be in a vicious circle. Don’t be sad about it. Many times, the seeker comes at very close quarters, and many times he loses the track. No need to be worried; again, bring awareness. This is going to happen many times; it is natural. For so many millions of lives we have lived in unawareness – it is only natural that many times the old habit will start functioning. […]

In breaks of discrimination, other concepts arise through the force of previous impressions.

Many times, you will be pulled back, again and again and again. The struggle is hard, but not impossible. It is difficult, it is very arduous but don’t become sad and don’t become discouraged. Whenever you remember, again don’t be worried about what has happened. Let your awareness again be established, that’s all. Continuously establishing your awareness again and again and again will create a new impact inside your being, a new impression of virtue. One day, it becomes as natural as other habits.

One who is able to maintain a constant state of desirelessness, even toward the most exalted states of enlightenment, and is able to exercise the highest kind of discrimination, enters the state known as “the cloud which showers virtue.”

One who is able to maintain a constant state of desirelessness even toward the most exalted states of enlightenment . . . Patanjali calls it paravairagya: the ultimate renunciation. You have renounced the world: you have renounced greed, you have renounced money, you have renounced power; you have renounced everything of the outside. You have even renounced your body, you have even renounced your mind, but the last renunciation is the kaivalya – renunciation of kaivalya itself, of moksha itself, of nirvana itself. Now you renounce even the idea of liberation because that too is a desire. And desire, whatsoever its object, is the same. You desire money, I desire moksha. Of course, my object is better than your object, but still my desire is the same as yours. Desire says, “I am not content as I am. More money is needed; then I will be contented. More liberation is needed; then I will be contented.” The quality of desire is the same; the problem of desire is the same. The problem is that the future is needed: “As I am, it is not enough; something more is needed. Whatsoever has happened to me is not enough. Something still has to happen to me; only then can I be happy.” This is the nature of desire: you need more money, somebody needs a bigger house, somebody thinks of more power, politics, somebody thinks of a better wife or a better husband, somebody thinks of more education, more knowledge, somebody thinks of more miraculous powers, but it makes no difference. Desire is desire – and desirelessness is needed.

Now the paradox: if you are absolutely desireless – and in absolute desirelessness, the desire of moksha is included – a moment comes when you don’t desire even moksha, you don’t desire even God. You simply don’t desire; you are, and there is no desire. This is the state of desirelessness. Moksha happens in this state. Moksha cannot be desired – by its very nature – because it comes only in desirelessness. Liberation cannot be desired. It cannot become a motive because it happens only when all motives have disappeared. You cannot make God an object of your desire because the desiring mind remains ungodly. The desiring mind remains unholy; the desiring mind remains worldly. When there is no desire, not even the desire for God, suddenly He has always been there. Your eyes open and you recognize Him.

Desires function as barriers. And the last desire, the most subtle desire, is the desire to be liberated. The last, subtle desire is the desire to be desireless.

One who is able to maintain a constant state of desirelessness, even toward the most exalted states of enlightenment and is able to exercise the highest kind of discrimination . . .

Of course, the ultimate in discrimination will be needed. You will have to be aware – so much so that this very, very deep desire of becoming free of all misery, of becoming free of all bondage, even this desire does not arise. Your awareness is so perfect that not even a small corner is left dark inside your being. You are full of light, illuminated with awareness. That’s why when Buddha is asked again and again, “What happens to a man who becomes enlightened?” he remains silent. He never answers. Again and again, he is asked, “Why don’t you answer?” He says, “If I answer, you will create a desire for it, and that will become a barrier. Let me keep quiet. Let me remain silent so I don’t give you a new object for desire. If I say, ‘It is satchitananda: it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss,’ immediately a desire will arise in you. If I talk about that ecstatic state of being in God, immediately your greed takes it. Suddenly, a desire starts arising in you. Your mind starts saying, ‘Yes, you have to seek it, you have to find it. This has to be searched. Whatsoever the cost, but you have to become blissful.’” Buddha says, “I don’t say anything about it, because whatsoever I say, your mind will jump on it and make a desire out of it, and that will become the cause, and you will never be able to attain it.”

Buddha insisted that there is no moksha. He insisted that when a man becomes aware, he simply disappears. He disappears as when you blow out a lamp and the light disappears. The word “nirvana” simply means blowing a lamp out. Then you don’t ask where the flame has gone, what has happened to the flame; it simply disappears – annihilated. Buddha insisted that there is nothing left; when you have become enlightened, everything disappears, like the flame of a lamp put out. Why? – Looks very negative – but he does not want to give you an object of desire. Then people started asking, “Then why should we try for such a state? Then it is better to be in the world. At least we are; miserable – but at least we are; in anguish – but we are. And your state of nothingness has no appeal for us.”

In India, Buddhism disappeared; in China, in Burma, in Ceylon, in Japan, it reappeared, but it never appeared in its purity again because Buddhists learned a lesson: that man lives through desire. If they insist that there is nothing beyond enlightenment and everything disappears, then people are not going to follow them.

Then everything will remain as it is; only their religion will disappear. So they learned a trick, and in Japan, in China, in Ceylon, in Burma, they started talking of beautiful states after enlightenment. They betrayed Buddha. The purity was lost; then religion spread. Buddhism became one of the greatest religions of the world. They learned the politics of the human mind. They fulfilled your desire. They said, “Yes . . . lands of tremendous beauty, Buddhalands, heavenly lands where eternal bliss reigns.” They started talking in positive terms. Again, people’s greeds were inflamed, desire arose. People started following Buddhism, but Buddhism lost its beauty. Its beauty was in its insistence that it would not give you any object for desire.

Patanjali has written the best that it is possible to write about the ultimate truth, but no religion has arisen around him, no established church exists around him. Such a great teacher, such a great Master has remained really without a following. Not a single temple is devoted to him. What happened? His Yoga Sutras are read, commented upon, but nothing like Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism exists with Patanjali. Why? – because he will not give any hope to you. He will not give any help to your desire.

Dharma megha samadhi: this word has to be understood. It is very complex. And so many commentaries have been written on Patanjali, but it seems they go on missing the point. Dharma megha samadhi means: a moment comes when every desire has disappeared. When even the self is no more desired, when death is not feared, virtue showers on you – as if a cloud gathers around your head and a beautiful shower of virtue, a benediction, a great blessing . . . But why does Patanjali call it “cloud”? – One has to go even beyond that; it is still a cloud. Before, your eyes were full of vice, now, your eyes are full of virtue, but you are still blind. Before, nothing but misery was showering on you, just a hell was showering on you; now, you have entered heaven and everything is perfectly beautiful, there is nothing to complain about, but still, it is a cloud. Maybe it is a white cloud, not a black cloud, but still, it is a cloud – and one has to go beyond it also. That’s why he calls it “cloud.”

That is the last barrier, and of course, it is very beautiful because it is of virtue. It is like golden chains studded with diamonds. They are not like ordinary chains; they look very ornamental. They are more like ornaments than chains. One would like to cling to them. Who would not like to have a tremendous happiness showering on oneself, a non-ending happiness? Who would not like to be in this ecstasy forever and ever? But this too is a cloud – white, beautiful, but still the real sky is hidden behind it.

There is a possibility from this exalted point to still fall back. If you become too attached to dharma megha samadhi, if you become too much attached, and you start enjoying it too much and you don’t discriminate that “I am also not this,” there is a possibility that you will come back.

In Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, only two states exist: hell and heaven. This is what Christians call heaven, what Patanjali calls dharma megha samadhi. In the West, no religion has risen beyond that. In India we have three terms: hell, heaven and moksha. Hell is absolute misery; heaven is absolute happiness; moksha is beyond both: neither hell nor heaven. In Western languages, there exists not a single term equivalent to moksha. Christianity stops at heaven – dharma megha samadhi. Who bothers anymore to go beyond it? It is so beautiful. And you have lived in so much misery for so long; you would like to remain there forever and ever. But Patanjali says, “If you cling to it, you slip from the last rung of the ladder. You were just close to home. One step more, and then you would have achieved the point of no return – but you slipped. You were just reaching home and you missed the path. You were just at the door – a knock and the doors would have opened – but you thought that the porch was the palace and you started living there.” Sooner or later, you will even lose the porch because the porch exists for those who are going into the palace. It cannot be made an abode. If you make an abode of it, sooner or later you will be thrown out: you are not worthy. You are like a beggar who has started to live on somebody’s porch.

You have to enter the palace; then the porch will remain available. But if you stop at the porch even the porch will be taken away. And the porch is very beautiful, and we have never known anything like that, so certainly we misunderstand – we think the palace has come. We have lived always in anxiety, misery, tension, and even the porch, even to be close to the ultimate palace, to be so close to the ultimate truth, is so silent, so peaceful, so blissful, such a great benediction, that you cannot imagine that better than this is possible. You would like to settle here.

Patanjali says, “Remain aware.” That’s why he calls it a cloud. It can blind you; you can be lost in it. If you can transcend this cloud – Tatah klesa-karma-nivrttih – Then follows freedom from afflictions and karmas.

If you can transcend dharma megha samadhi, if you can transcend this heavenly state, this paradise, then only . . . then follows freedom from afflictions and karmas. Otherwise, you will fall back into the world. Have you seen small children play a game called ludo, ladders and snakes? From the ladders they go on rising, and from the snakes they go on coming back. From point ninety-nine – if they reach the hundred [point], they have won the game, they are victorious – but from point ninety-nine there is a snake. If you reach ninety-nine, you are suddenly back, back into the world.

Dharma megha samadhi is the ninety-ninth point, but the snake is there. Before the snake takes hold of you, you have to jump to the hundredth point. Only then, there is abode. You have come back home, a full circle.

Then follows freedom from afflictions and karmas.

That which can be known through the mind is very little compared with the infinite knowledge obtained in enlightenment, when the veils, distortions, and impurities are removed.

Just a few sutras back, Patanjali said that the mind is infinitely knowledgeable, the mind can know infinitely. Now he says that which can be known through the mind is very little compared with the infinite knowledge obtained in enlightenment.

As you progress higher, each state is bigger than the first state that you have transcended. When one is lost in his senses, the mind functions in a crippled way. When one is no more lost in the senses and no more attached to the body, the mind starts functioning in a perfectly healthy way. An infinite apprehension happens to mind; it becomes capable of knowing infinities. But that too is nothing compared to when mind is completely dropped, and you start functioning without mind. No medium is now needed. All wheels disappear and you are immediate to reality. Not even mind is there as an agent, as a go-between. Nothing is in between. You and the reality are one. The knowledge that comes through mind is nothing compared to the knowledge that happens through enlightenment.

Having fulfilled their object, the process of change in the three gunas comes to an end.

The whole world stops for the enlightened person because now there is no need for the world to go on. The ultimate has been achieved. The world exists as a situation. The world exists for your growth. The school exists for learning. When you have learned the lesson, the school is no more for you; you have graduated. When somebody attains enlightenment, he has graduated from the world. Now, the school no longer has any function for him. Now, he can forget about the school, and the school can forget about him. He has gone beyond, he has grown. The situation is no longer needed.

The world is a situation: it is a situation for you to go astray and come back home. It is a situation to be lost in and then come back. It is a situation to forget God and to remember Him again.

But why this situation? – because there is a subtle law: if you cannot forget God, you cannot remember Him. If there is no possibility to forget Him, how will you remember, why will you remember? That which is always available is easily forgotten. The fish in the ocean never knows the ocean, never comes across it. Lives in it, is born in it, dies in it, but never comes to know the ocean. There is only one situation when the fish comes to know the ocean: when it is taken out of the ocean. Then suddenly it becomes aware that this was the ocean, my life. When the fish is thrown on the bank, on the sand, then she knows what ocean is.

We needed to be thrown out of the ocean of God; there was no other way to know Him. The world is a great situation to become aware. Anguish is there, pain is there, but it is all meaningful. Nothing is meaningless in the world. Suffering is meaningful. The suffering is just like the fish suffering on the bank, in the sand, and making all efforts to go back to the ocean. Now, if the fish goes back to the ocean, she will know. Nothing has changed – the ocean is the same, the fish is the same – but their relationship has tremendously changed. Now she will know, “This is the ocean.” Now she will know how grateful she is to the ocean. The suffering has created a new understanding. Before, also she was in the same ocean, but now the same ocean is no more the same because a new understanding exists, a new awareness, a new recognition.

Man needs to be thrown out of God. To be thrown into the world is nothing but to be thrown out of God. And it is out of compassion, out of the compassion of the whole that you are thrown out, so that you try to find the way back. By effort, by arduous effort you will be able to reach, and then you will understand. You have to pay for it by your efforts, otherwise God would be too cheap. And when a thing is too cheap, you cannot enjoy it. Otherwise, God would be too obvious. When a thing is too obvious you tend to forget. Otherwise, God would be too close to you and there would be no space to know Him. That will be the real misery, not to know Him. The misery of the world is not a misery; it is a blessing in disguise because only through this misery will you come to know the tremendous blissfulness of recognizing, of seeing face to face . . . the divine truth.

Having fulfilled their object, the process of change in the three gunas comes to an end.

The whole world of the three gunas: sattva, rajas, tamas, comes to an end. Whenever somebody becomes enlightened, for him the world comes to an end. Of course, others go on dreaming. If there are too many fish suffering on the bank, in the hot sand, in the burning sun, and one fish tries and tries and jumps into the ocean, again back home, for her, or for him, the hot sun and the burning sand and all the misery have disappeared. It is already a nightmare of the past, but for others, it exists.

When a fish, like Buddha or Patanjali, jumps into the ocean, for them the world has disappeared. They are again back in the cool womb of the ocean. They are back again, joined, connected to the infinite life. They are no longer disconnected; they are no longer alienated. They have become aware. They have come back with a new understanding: alert, enlightened – but for others the world continues.

These sutras of Patanjali are nothing but messages of a fish who has reached home, trying to jump and say something to the people who are still on the bank and suffering. Maybe they are very close to the ocean, just on the border, but they don’t know how to enter into it. Or are not making enough effort, or are making them in the wrong directions, or are simply lost in misery and have accepted that this is what life is, or are so frustrated, discouraged, that they are not making any effort. Yoga is the effort to reach to that reality with which we have become disconnected. To be reconnected is to be a yogi. Yoga means: re-connection, re-union, re-merging.

Kramaha, the process, is the succession of changes that occur from moment to moment, which become apprehensible at the final end of the transformations of the three gunas.

In this small sutra Patanjali has said everything that modern physics has come to discover. Just thirty or forty years ago, it would have been impossible to understand this sutra because the whole quantum physics is present, in seed form, in this small sutra. And this is good because this is just the last-but-one. So Patanjali summarizes the whole world of physics in this last-but-one sutra: then, the metaphysics. This is the essential physics. The greatest insight that has come to physics in this century is the theory of quantum.

Max Planck discovered a very unbelievable thing. He discovered that life is not a continuity; everything is discontinuous. One moment of time is separate from another moment of time, and between the two moments of time, there is space. They are not connected; they are disconnected. One atom is separate from another atom, and between the two atoms there is great space. They are not connected. This is what he calls “quanta”: discrete, separate atoms not bridged with each other, floating in infinite space, but separate – just as you pour peas from one carton into another and the peas all fall, separate, discrete, or, if you pour oil from one container into another, the oil falls in a continuity.

The existence is like peas, separate. Why does Patanjali mention this? – because he says, “One atom, another atom: these are two things the world consists of. Just between the two is the space. That is what the whole consists of – the God. Call it space, call it brahma, call it purusa or whatsoever you like; the world consists of discrete atoms, and the whole consists of the infinite space between the two.”

Now physicists say if we press the whole world and press the space out of it, all the stars and all the suns can be pressed into just a small ball. Only that much matter exists. It is really space. Matter is very rare, here and there. If we press the earth very much, we can put it into a matchbox – if all the space is thrown out, unbelievable! “And that too, if we go on pressing it still more,” Patanjali says, “then even that small quantity will disappear.” Now physicists say that when matter disappears it leaves black holes.

Everything comes out of nothingness, plays around, disappears again into nothingness. As there are material bodies – earth, sun, stars – there are, just similar to them, empty holes, black holes. Those black holes are nothingness condensed. It is not simple nothingness; it is very dynamic – whirlpools of nothingness. If a star comes by a black hole, the black hole will suck it in. So it is very dynamic, but it is nothing – no matter in it, simply absence of matter – just pure space, but tremendously powerful. It can suck any star in, and the star will disappear into nothingness; it will be reduced to nothingness. So ultimately, if we try, then all matter will disappear. It comes out of a tremendous nothingness, and it drops again into a tremendous nothingness: out of nothingness, and back into nothingness.

Kramaha, the process – the process of quantum – is the succession of changes that occur from moment to moment which becomes apprehensible at the final end of the transformations of the three gunas.

This the yogi comes to see at the final stage, when all the three gunas are disappearing into black holes, disappearing into nothingness. That’s why yogis have called the world maya, a magic show. […] It is God’s imagination. The whole is dreaming, the whole is projecting. […]

Patanjali says, “The world is nothing but a cinematograph, a projection.” But this understanding arises only when one achieves to the last point of understanding. When he sees all gunas stopped, nothing is moving, suddenly he becomes aware that the whole story was created by illusory movement, by fast movement. This is what is happening to modern physics.

First, they said when they had come to the atom, “Now this is the ultimate; it cannot be divided anymore.” Then they also divided the atom. Then they came to electrons: “Now it cannot be divided anymore.” Now they have divided that too. Now they have come to nothingness; now they don’t know what has come. Division, division, division, and a point has come in modern physics where matter has completely disappeared. Modern physics has reached via matter, and Patanjali and the yogis have reached to the same point via consciousness. Up to this last-but-one sutra, physics has reached. Up to this last-but-one sutra, scientists can have an approach, an understanding, a penetration. The last sutra is not possible for scientists because that last sutra can be achieved only if you move through consciousness, not through matter, not through objects but directly through subjectivity.

Purusartha-sunyanam gunanam pratiprasavah kaivalyam svarupa-pratistha va citi-sakter iti.

Kaivalya is the state of enlightenment that follows the reemergence of the gunas, due to their becoming devoid of the object of the purusa. In this state, the purusa is established in his real nature which is pure consciousness. Finish.

Kaivalya is the state of enlightenment that follows the reemergence of the three gunas . . . when the world stops, when the process, the kramaha of the world stops, when you become able to see between two moments of time and two atoms of matter, and you can move into space, and you can see that everything has arisen out of space and is moving back into space; when you have become so aware that suddenly the illusory world disappears like a dream, then kaivalya. Then you are left as pure consciousness – with no identity, with no name, no form. Then you are the purest of the pure. That you are the most fundamental, the most essential, the most existential, and you are established in this purity, aloneness.

Patanjali says, “Kaivalya is the state of enlightenment that follows the reemergence of the gunas, due to their becoming devoid of the object of the purusa. In this state the purusa is established in his real nature.” You have come back home. The journey has been long, torturous, arduous, but you have come back home. The fish has jumped into the ocean which is pure consciousness.

Patanjali does not say anything more about it because more cannot be said. And when Patanjali says, “Finish; the end,” he does not only mean that the Yoga Sutras finish here. He says, “All possibility to express ends here. All possibility to say anything about the ultimate reality ends here. Beyond this is only experience. Expression ends here.” And nobody has been able to go beyond it – nobody. Not a single exception exists in the whole history of human consciousness. People have tried. Very few have even reached to where Patanjali has reached, but nobody has been able to go beyond Patanjali.

That’s why I say he’s the alpha and the omega. He starts from the very beginning; nobody has been able to find a better beginning than him. He begins from the very beginning, and he comes to the very end. When he says, “Finish,” he’s simply saying expression is finished, definition is finished, description is finished. If you have really come with him up to now, there is only experience beyond. Now starts the existential. One can be it, but one cannot say it. One can live in it, but one cannot define it. Words won’t help. All language is impotent beyond this point. Simply saying this much: that one achieves to one’s own true nature – Patanjali stops. That’s the goal: to know one’s own nature and to live in it – because unless we reach to our own natures we will be in misery. All misery is indicative that we are living somehow unnaturally. All misery is simply symptomatic that somehow our nature is not being fulfilled, that somehow, we are not in tune with our reality. The misery is not your enemy; it is just a symptom. It indicates. It is like a thermometer; it simply shows that you are going wrong somewhere. Put it all right, put yourself right; bring yourself in harmony, come back, tune yourself. When every misery disappears, one is in tune with one’s own nature. That nature Lao Tzu calls tao, Patanjali calls kaivalya, Mahavir calls moksha, Buddha calls nirvana. But whatsoever you want to call it – it has no name, and it has no form – but it is in you, present, right this moment. You have lost the ocean because you have come out of your Self. You have moved too much in the outer world. Move inwards. Now, let this be your pilgrimage: move inwards. […]

You are the temple of God. You are the abode of the ultimate. So the question is not where to find truth, the question is: how have you lost it? The question is not where to go; you are already there – stop going.

Drop from all the paths. All paths are of desire, extensions of desire, projections of desire: going somewhere, going somewhere, always somewhere else, never here.

Seeker, leave all paths, because all paths lead there, and He is here.

Purusartha-sunyanam gunanam pratiprasavah kaivalyam svarupa-pratistha va citi-sakter iti.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Supreme Science, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V. 10, Discourse #9 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V. 10).

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the twentieth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.

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 Witness is Self-Illuminating – Osho

The modifications of the mind are always known by its lord, due to the constancy of the purusa, pure consciousness.

The mind is not self-illuminating, because it is itself perceptible.

It is impossible for the mind to know itself and any other object at the same time.

If it were assumed that a second mind illuminates the first, cognition of cognition would also have to be assumed, and a confusion of memories.

Knowledge of its own nature through self-cognition is obtained when consciousness assumes that form in which it does not pass from place to place.

When the mind is colored by the knower and the known, it is all apprehending.

Though variegated by innumerable desires, the mind acts for another, for its acts in association.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

The first sutra:

The modifications of the mind are always known by its lord, due to the constancy of the purusa, pure consciousness.

Patanjali takes the whole complexity of the human being into account that has to be understood. Never before and never after has such a comprehensive system ever been evolved. Man is not a simple being. Man is a very complex organism. A rock is simple because the rock has only one layer, the layer of the body. It is what Patanjali calls anamayakos: the most gross, only one layer. You go into the rock; you will find layers of rock but nothing else. Look at a tree and you will also find something else other than the body. The tree is not just the body. Something of the subtle has happened to it. It is not so dead as rock; it is more alive – a subtle body has come into existence. If you treat a tree like a rock, you mistreat it. Then you have not taken into account the subtle evolution that has happened between the rock and the tree. The tree is highly evolved. It is more complex. Then, take an animal – still more complex. Another layer of subtle body has evolved.

Man has five bodies, five seeds, so if you really want to understand man and his mind – and there is no way of going beyond if you don’t understand the whole complexity – then we have to be very patient and careful. If you miss one step, you will not be able to reach to your innermost core of being. The body that you can see in the mirror is the outermost shell of your being. Many have mistaken it, as if this is all.

In psychology, there is a movement called behaviorism, which thinks that man is nothing but the body. Always beware of people who talk of “nothing buts.” Man is always more than any “nothing but” can imply. Behaviorists: Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and company, think that man is the body – not that you have a body, not that you are in the body but simply that you are the body. Then man is reduced to the lowest denominator. And of course, they can prove it. They can prove it because that is the most gross part of man and is easily available to scientific experimentation. The subtle layers of man’s being are not so easily available. Or, to say it in other words: scientific instrumentation is not yet so sophisticated. It cannot touch the subtler layers of man.

Freud, Adler, go a little deeper into man. Then man is not just the body. They touch something of the second body, what Patanjali calls pranamayakos: the vital body, the energy body. But only a very fragmentary part is touched by Freud and Adler; one part by Freud and another part by Adler.

Freud reduces man to just sexuality. That is also there in man, but that is not the whole story. Adler reduces man to just ambition, will to power. That too is there in man. Man is very big, very complex. Man is an orchestra; many instruments are involved in it.

But this has always happened. This is a calamity, but this has always happened: when once somebody finds something, he tries to make a total philosophy out of his finding. That’s a great temptation. Freud stumbled upon sex, and that too, not the whole of sex. He stumbled only upon the repressed sexuality. He came across repressed people. Christian repression has made many blocks in man where energy has become coiled up within itself, has become stagnant, is no longer flowing. He came against those rock-like blocks in the stream of human energy, and he thought – and the ego always thinks that way – that he had found the ultimate truth. Adler, working in a different way, stumbled upon another block of man: the will to power. And then he made a whole philosophy out of it.

Man has been taken in fragments. Yoga is the only philosophy in existence which takes the whole of man into account. Jung went still a little further, deeper. One fragment of the third body of man, manomayakos – he caught hold of it and he created a whole philosophy out of it. To comprehend the whole body – even that has not been possible because the body itself is very complex: millions of cells in a great harmony, functioning in a miraculous way. When you were born in your mother’s womb, you were just a small cell. Out of that one cell, another cell arises. The cell grows and divides in two, then the two cells grow and divide into four. Out of one division – and division goes on – you have millions of cells. And they all function in a deep cooperation, as if somebody is holding them. It is not a chaos; you are a cosmos.

And then, some cells become your eyes, some cells become your ears, some cells become your genital organs, some cells become your skin, some cells your bones, some cells your brain, some cells your nails and your hair; and they all are coming out of one cell. They are all alike. They have no qualitative difference, but they function so differently. The eye can see; the ear cannot see. The ear can hear but cannot smell. So those cells not only function in harmony, but they become experts. They gain to a certain specialization. A few cells turn into the eyes. What has happened? What type of training is going on? Why do certain cells become eyes, and certain other cells become ears, and still certain others become your nose, and they are all alike? There must be a great training inside – some unknown power training them for a specific purpose.

And remember, when those cells are getting ready to see, they have not yet seen anything. When the child is in the womb, he remains completely blind. He has not seen any light; the eyes are closed. A miracle: no training to see and the eyes are ready, no possibility to see and the eyes are ready. The child does not breathe with his own lungs, he has not known what breathing is, but the lungs are ready. They are ready before the child is going to enter into the world and breathe. The eyes are ready before the child is going to enter into the world and see. Everything is ready. When the child is born, he is a perfect human being of tremendous complexity, specialization, subtlety. And there has been no training, no rehearsal. The child has never taken a single breath, but immediately out of the mother’s womb, he cries and takes his first breath. The mechanism is ready before any training has been given: some tremendous power, some power which comprehends all the possibilities of the future, some power which is preparing the child to be able to face all possibilities of life for the future, is working deep within.

Even the body is not completely understood, not yet. Our whole understanding is fragmentary. The science of man does not exist yet. Patanjali’s yoga is the closest effort ever made. He divides the body into five layers, or into five bodies. You don’t have one body, you have five bodies; and behind the five bodies, your being. The same as has happened in psychology has happened in medicine. Allopathy believes only in the physical body, the gross body. It is parallel to behaviorism. Allopathy is the grossest medicine. That’s why it has become scientific because scientific instrumentation is only capable yet of very gross things. Go deeper.

Acupuncture, the Chinese medicine, enters one layer more. It works on the vital body, the pranamayakos. If something goes wrong in the physical body, acupuncture does not touch the physical body at all. It tries to work on the vital body. It tries to work on the bioenergy, the bioplasma. It settles something there, and immediately the gross body starts functioning well. If something goes wrong in the vital body, allopathy functions on the body, the gross body. Of course, for allopathy, it is an uphill task. For acupuncture, it is a downhill task. It is easier because the vital body is a little higher than the physical body. If the vital body is set right, the physical body simply follows it because the blueprint exists in the vital body. The physical body is just an implementation of the vital.

Now acupuncture is gaining respect, by and by, because a certain very sensitive photography, Kirlian photography, in Soviet Russia, has come across the seven hundred vital points in the human body as they have always been predicted by acupuncturists for at least five thousand years. They had no instruments to know where the vital points in the body were. But by and by, just through trial and error, through centuries, they discovered seven hundred points. Now Kirlian has also discovered the same seven hundred points with scientific instrumentation. And Kirlian photography has proved one thing: that to try to change the vital through the physical is absurd. It is trying to change the master by changing the servant. It is almost impossible because the master won’t listen to the servant. If you want to change the servant, change the master. Immediately, the servant follows. Rather than going and changing each soldier, it is better to change the general. The body has millions of soldiers, cells, simply working under some order, under some commandment. Change the commander, and the whole body pattern changes.

Homeopathy goes still a little deeper. It works on the manomayakos, the mental body. The founder of homeopathy, Hahnemann, discovered one of the greatest things ever discovered, and that was: the smaller the quantity of the medicine, the deeper it goes. He called the method of making homeopathic medicine “potentizing.” They go on reducing the quantity of the medicine. He would work in this way: he would take a certain amount of medicine and would mix it with ten times the amount of milk sugar or with water. One quantity of medicine, nine quantities of water; he would mix them. Then he would again take one quantity of this new solution and would again mix it with nine times more water, or milk sugar. In this way he would go on: again from the new solution he would take one quantity and would mix it with nine times more water. This he would do, and the potency would increase. By and by, the medicine reaches to the atomic level. It becomes so subtle that you cannot believe that it can work; it has almost disappeared. That is what is written on homeopathic medicines, the potency: ten potency, twenty potency, one hundred potency, one thousand potency. The bigger the potency, the smaller is the amount. With ten thousand potency, a millionth of the original medicine has remained, almost none. It has almost disappeared, but then it enters the deepest deep core of manomaya. It enters into your mind body. It goes deeper than acupuncture. It is almost as if you have reached the atomic, or even the sub-atomic level. Then it does not touch your body. Then it does not touch your vital body; it simply enters. It is so subtle and so small that it comes across no barriers. It can simply slip into the manomayakos, into the mental body, and from there it starts working. You have found an even bigger authority than the pranamaya.

Ayurved, the Indian medicine, is a synthesis of all three. It is one of the most synthetic of medicines.

Hypnotherapy goes still deeper. It touches the vigyanmayakos: the fourth body, the body of consciousness. It does not use medicine. It does not use anything. It simply uses suggestion, that’s all. It simply puts a suggestion in your mind call it animal magnetism, mesmerism, hypnosis or whatsoever you like – but it works through the power of thought, not the power of matter. Even homeopathy is still the power of matter in a very subtle quantity. Hypnotherapy gets rid of matter altogether, because howsoever subtle, it is matter. Ten thousand potency, but still, it is a potency of matter. It simply jumps to the thought energy, vigyanmayakos: the consciousness body. If your consciousness just accepts a certain idea, it starts functioning.

Hypnotherapy has a great future. It is going to become the future medicine because if by just changing your thought pattern your mind can be changed, through the mind your vital body and through the vital body your gross body, then why bother with poisons, why bother with gross medicines? Why not work it through thought power? Have you watched any hypnotist working on a medium? If you have not watched, it is worth watching. It will give you a certain insight. […]

You may have heard, or you may have seen – in India it happens; you must have seen fire-walkers. It is nothing but hypnotherapy. The idea that they are possessed by a certain god or a goddess and no fire can burn them, just this idea is enough. This idea controls and transforms the ordinary functioning of their bodies.

They are prepared: for twenty-four hours they fast. When you are fasting and your whole body is clean, and there is no excreta in it, the bridge between you and the gross [body] drops. For twenty-four hours, they live in a temple or in a mosque, singing, dancing, getting in tune with God. Then comes the moment when they walk on the fire. They come dancing, possessed. They come with full trust that the fire is not going to burn, that’s all; there is nothing else. How to create the trust is the question. Then they dance on the fire, and the fire does not burn.

It has happened many times that somebody who was just a spectator became so possessed. Twenty persons walking on fire are not burned, and somebody would immediately become so confident: “If these people are walking, then why not I?”; and he has jumped in, and the fire has not burned. In that sudden moment, a trust arose. Sometimes it has happened that people who were prepared, were burned. Sometimes an unprepared spectator walked on fire and was not burned. What happened? – the people who were prepared must have carried a doubt. They must have been thinking whether it was going to happen or not. A subtle doubt must have remained in the vigyanmayakos, in their consciousness. It was not total trust. So they came but with doubt. Because of that doubt, the body could not receive the message from the higher soul. The doubt came in between, and the body continued to function in the ordinary way; it got burned. That’s why all religions insist for trust.

Trust is hypnotherapy. Without trust, you cannot enter into the subtle parts of your being, because a small doubt, and you are thrown back to the gross. Science works with doubt. Doubt is a method in science because science works with the gross. Whether you doubt or not, an allopath is not worried. He does not ask you to trust in his medicine; he simply gives you medicine.

But a homeopath will ask whether you believe because without your belief it will be more difficult for a homeopath to work upon you. And a hypnotherapist will ask for total surrender. Otherwise, nothing can be done.

Religion is surrender. Religion is a hypnotherapy. But, there is still one more body. That is the anandmayakos: the bliss body. Hypnotherapy goes up to the fourth. Meditation goes up to the fifth. “Meditation” – the very word is beautiful because the root is the same as “medicine.” Both come from the same root. Medicine and meditation are off-shoots of one word: that which heals, that which makes you healthy and whole is medicine; and on the deepest level, that is meditation.

Meditation does not even give you suggestions because suggestions are to be given from the outside. Somebody else has to give you suggestions. Suggestion means that you are dependent upon somebody. They cannot make you perfectly conscious because the other will be needed, and a shadow will be cast on your being. Meditation makes you perfectly conscious, without any shadow – absolute light with no darkness. Now even suggestion is thought to be a gross thing. Somebody suggests – that means something comes from the outside, and in the ultimate analysis that which comes from the outside is material. Not only matter, but that which comes from the outside is material. Even a thought is a subtle form of matter. Even hypnotherapy is materialistic.

Meditation drops all props, all supports. That’s why to understand meditation is the most difficult thing in the world because nothing is left – just a pure understanding, a witnessing. That is what this first sutra is.

The modifications of the mind are always known by its lord . . . who is the lord within you? That lord has to be found.

The modifications of the mind are always known by its lord, due to the constancy of the purusa, pure consciousness.

In you two things are happening. One is a cyclone of thoughts, emotions, desires – a great whirlwind around you, constantly changing, constantly transforming itself, constantly on the move. It is a process. Behind this process is your witnessing soul – eternal, permanent, not changing at all. It has never changed. It is like the eternal sky: clouds come and go, gather, disperse . . . the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced, unimpressed. It remains pure and virgin. That is the lord, the eternal within you.

Mind goes on changing. Just a moment before you had one mind, a moment afterwards you have another mind. Just a few minutes before you were angry, and now you are laughing. Just a moment before you were happy, and now you are sad. Modifications, changes, continuous waves up and down; like a yo-yo you go on. But something in you is eternal: that which goes on witnessing the play, the game. The witnesser is the lord. If you start witnessing, by and by, you will come closer and closer to the lord.

Start witnessing objects. You see a tree. You see the tree, but you are not aware that you are seeing it; then you are not a witness. You see the tree, and at the same time you see that you are seeing; then you are a witness. Consciousness has to become double-arrowed: one arrow going to the tree, another arrow going to your subjectivity.

It is difficult because when you become aware of yourself you forget the tree, and when you become aware of the tree you forget yourself. But by and by, one learns to balance, just as one learns to balance on a tight-rope. Difficult in the beginning, dangerous, risky, but by and by, one learns the balance. Just go on trying. Wherever you have an opportunity to be a witness, don’t miss it, because there is nothing more valuable than witnessing. Doing an act: walking or eating or taking a bath, become a witness also. Let the shower fall on you, but inside you remain alert and see what is happening – the coolness of the water, the tingling sensation all over the body, a certain silence surrounding you, a certain wellbeing arising in you – but go on becoming a witness. You are feeling happy; just feeling happy is not enough – be a witness. Just go on watching – “I’m feeling happy . . . I’m feeling sad . . . I’m feeling hungry” – go on watching. By and by, you will see that happiness is separate from you, unhappiness also. All that you can witness is separate from you. This is the method of viveka, discrimination. All that is separate from you can be witnessed, and all that can be witnessed is separate from you. You cannot witness the witnesser; that is the lord. You cannot go behind the lord; you are the lord. You are the ultimate core of existence.

The mind is not self-illuminating, because it is itself perceptible.

The mind itself can be seen. It can become an object. It can be perceived, so it is not the perceiver. Ordinarily, we think that it is the mind which is seeing the flower. No, you can go beyond the mind and you can see the mind, just as the mind is seeing the flower. The deeper you go, the more you will find that the observer itself becomes the observed. That’s why Krishnamurti goes on saying again and again, “The observer is the observed; the perceiver is the perceived.” When you go deep, first you see the trees, and the rose and the stars, and you think the mind is witnessing. Then close your eyes. Now, see the impressions in the mind: of roses, stars, trees. Now who is the perceiver? The perceiver has gone a little deeper. Mind itself has become an object.

These five koshas, these five seeds, are five stations where the perceiver again and again becomes the perceived. When you move from the gross body, the food body, the anamayakos, to the vital body, you immediately see that from the vital body the gross body can be seen as an object. It is outside the vital body. Just as the house is outside you, when you stand in the vital body, your own body is just like a wall around you. Again you move from the vital body to manomayakos, the mental body; the same happens. Now, even the vital body is outside you, like a fence around you; and this way it goes on. It goes on to the ultimate point where only the witnesser remains. Then you don’t see yourself as, “I am blissful”; you see yourself as a witness of bliss.

The last body is the bliss body. It is the most difficult to separate from because it is very close to the lord. It almost surrounds the lord like a climate. But that too has to be known. Even at that last point when you are ecstatically blissful, then too, you have to do the ultimate effort, the last effort of discrimination, and of seeing that the bliss is separate from you.

Then is liberation, kaivalya. Then you are left alone – just the witnesser – and everything has been reduced to objects: the body, the mind, the energy. Even the bliss, even the ecstasy, even meditation itself is no more there. When meditation becomes perfect, it is no more a meditation. When the meditator has really achieved the goal, he does not meditate. He cannot meditate because that too is now an activity like walking, eating. He has become separate from everything. That is the difference between dhyan and samadhi, between meditation and samadhi. Meditation is of the fifth body, the bliss body. It is still a therapy, a medicine. You are still a little ill, ill because you are identifying yourself with something which you are not. All illness is identification, and absolute health is through non-identification. Samadhi is when even meditation has been left behind. […]

It is impossible for the mind to know itself and any other object at the same time.

These sutras are all about witnessing. Patanjali is saying, step by step, that it is impossible for the mind to do two things: to be perceived and to be the perceiver. Either it can be the perceiver or it can be the perceived. So when you can witness your mind, that proves absolutely that the mind is not the perceiver. You are the perceiver. You are not the body; you are not even the mind. The whole emphasis is: how to help you to discriminate from that which you are not.

If it were assumed that a second mind illuminates the first, cognition of cognition would have to be assumed, and a confusion of memories.

But there have been philosophers who say that there is no need to assume a witness; we can assume another mind: mind one is perceived by mind two. That’s what psychologists will also agree to because why bring something absolutely unknown into account? – mind is observed by mind itself, by a subtle mind. But Patanjali gives a very logical refutation of this attitude. He says, “If you assume that mind one is perceived by mind two, then who perceives mind two? Then mind three; then who perceives mind three?” He says, “Then this will create confusion. It will be an infinite regress. Then you can go on, ad absurdum; and again, even if you say ‘the mind one thousand,’ the problem remains the same. Then you have to again assume a mind behind mind one thousand: one thousand and one – and this will go on and on.”

No, one has to understand something absolutely inside – behind which there is nothing. Otherwise, there is a confusion of memories, otherwise, a chaos. Body, mind, and the witnesser: the witnesser is absolute. But who perceives the witnesser? Who knows the witnesser? And then we come to one of the most important hypotheses of yoga.

Knowledge of its own nature through self-cognition is obtained when consciousness assumes that form in which it does not pass from place to place.

Yoga believes that the witness is a self-illuminating phenomenon. It is just like a light. You have a small candle in your room – the candle illuminates the room, the furniture, the walls, the painting on the wall. Who illuminates the candle? You don’t need another candle to find this candle; the candle is self-illuminating. It illuminates other things, and simultaneously it illuminates itself. Svabuddhisamvedanam: innermost consciousness is self-illuminating. It is of the nature of light. The sun illuminates everything in the solar system – at the same time it illuminates itself. The witnesser witnesses everything that goes on around in the five seeds and in the world, and at the same time it illuminates itself. This seems to be perfectly logical. Somewhere, we have to come to the rock bottom. Otherwise, we go on and on – and that will not help, and the problem remains the same.

Knowledge of its own nature through self-cognition is obtained when consciousness assumes that form in which it does not pass from place to place.

When your inner consciousness has come to a moment of no movement, when it has become deeply centered and rooted, when it is unwavering, when it has become a constant flame of awareness, then it illuminates itself.

When the mind is colored by the knower and the known, it is all apprehending.

The mind is just between you and the world. The mind is the bridge between you and the world, between the witnesser and the witnessed. The mind is a bridge, and if the mind is colored by things, and also by the witness, it becomes all-comprehending. It becomes a tremendous instrument of knowledge. But two types of coloring are needed; one: it should be colored by the things it sees, and, it should be colored by the witnesser. The witnesser should pour down its energy into the mind; then only can the mind know things.

For example: a scientist is working. He has dissected the body of a man and he is looking very minutely, as minutely as scientific instruments make available. He is searching for the soul, and he cannot find any soul, just matter, matter. At the most, he can find something belonging to the world of physics or to the world of chemistry, but nothing belonging to the world of consciousness. And he comes out of the lab, and he says, “There is no consciousness.” Now, he has missed one thing. Who was looking in the dead body? He has completely forgotten himself. The scientist is watching the object but is completely oblivious of his own being. The scientist is trying to find consciousness outside but has forgotten completely that the one who is trying is consciousness. The seeker is the sought. He has become too much focused on the object, and the subject is forgotten.

Science is too focused on the object, and so-called religions are too focused on the subject. But yoga says, “There is no need to become lopsided. Remember the world is there, and also remember that you are.” Let your remembrance be total and whole, of the object and the subject – both. When your mind is infused with your consciousness, and also infused with the objective world, there happens apprehension.

And Patanjali says, “When the mind is colored by the knower and the known, it is all apprehending.”

It can know all that can be known. It can know everything that can be known. Then nothing is hidden from that mind. A religious mind – let us call him an introvert – by and by, knows only his subjectivity and starts saying that the world is illusion, maya, a dream, made of the same stuff as dreams are. A scientist who is too focused on objects starts believing in the objective world and says that only the material exists; consciousness is just poetry, a talk of the dreamers: good, romantic, but not real. The scientist says that consciousness is illusory. The extrovert says that consciousness is illusory; the introvert says that the world is illusory.

But yoga is the supreme science. Patanjali says, “Both are real.” Reality has two sides to it: the outside and the inside. And remember, how can the inside happen, how can it exist without an outside? Can you conceive that only the inside exists and the outside is illusory? If the outside is illusory, the inside will become illusory automatically. If the inside of your house is real, and the outside of the house is unreal, where will you demarcate? Where does the reality stop and illusion start? And how can an outside which is illusory have a real inside? An unreal body will have an unreal mind; an unreal mind will have an unreal consciousness. A real consciousness needs a real mind; a real mind needs a real body; a real body needs a real world.

Yoga does not deny anything. Yoga is absolutely pragmatic, empirical. It is more scientific than science, and more religious than religions, because it makes the greater synthesis of the inner and the outer.

Though variegated by innumerable desires, the mind acts for another, for it acts in association.

The mind goes on working, but it is not working for itself. It has a managerial post; the master is hidden behind. It cooperates with the master. Now, this has to be deeply understood.

If the mind cooperates with the master, you are healthy and whole. If the mind goes astray, against the master, you are unhealthy and ill. If the servant follows the master like a shadow, everything is okay. If the master says, “Go to the left,” and the servant goes to the right, then something has gone wrong. If you want your body to run and the body says, “I cannot run,” then you are paralyzed. If you want to do something and the body and the mind say, “No,” or, they go on doing something which you don’t want to do, then you are in great confusion. This is how humanity is.

Yoga has this as the goal: that your mind should function according to your lord, the innermost soul. Your body should function according to the mind, and you should create a world around you which is in cooperation. When everything is in cooperation – the lower is always in cooperation with the higher, and the higher is in cooperation with the highest, and the highest is in cooperation with the utterly ultimate – then you have a life of harmony. Then you are a yogin. Then you become one, but not in the sense that only one exists: now you have become one in the sense of unison. You have become one in the sense of an orchestra – many instruments, but the music is one; many bodies, millions of objects, desires, ambitions, mood, ups and downs, failures and successes, a great variety, but everything in unison, in harmony. You have become an orchestra. Everything is cooperating with everything else, and everything finally is cooperating with the very center of your being.

That’s why in India we have called sannyasins swamis. “Swami” means: the lord. You become a swami only when you have attained to this harmony that Patanjali is talking about. Patanjali is not against anything whatsoever. He is in favor of harmony. He’s against discord. He is not against anything: he’s not against the body, he’s not an anti-body man; he’s not against the world, he’s not anti-life; he absorbs everything. And through that absorption he creates a higher synthesis. And the ultimate synthesis is when everything is in cooperation, when there is not even a single jarring note. […]

If you are in a harmony, you will not complain about the world. You will not complain about anything. The complaining mind is simply indicative that things are not in harmony inside. When everything is in harmony, then there is no complaint. Now, you go to your so-called saints: everybody is complaining – complaining of the world, complaining of desires, complaining of the body, complaining of this and that. Everybody lives in complaints; something is jarring. A perfect man is one who has no complaints. That man is a God-man who has accepted everything, absorbed everything and become a cosmos, is no more a chaos. […]

Patanjali says, “Accept everything, use it, be creative about it; don’t negate.” Negation is not his way but affirmation. That’s why Patanjali has worked so much on the body, on food, on yoga asanas, on pranayam. These are all efforts to create the harmony: right food for the body, right posture for the body; rhythmic breathing for the vital body. More prana, more vitality has to be absorbed. Ways and means have to be found so that you are not always lacking in energy, but overflowing.

With mind also, pratyahar; the mind is a bridge: you can go outside on the bridge, you can move on the same bridge and go inside. When you go outside, objects, desires, predominate [over] you. When you go inside, desirelessness, awareness, witnessing, predominate over you; but the bridge is the same. It has to be used; it is not to be thrown and broken. It has not to be destroyed because it is the same bridge by which you have come into the world, and by which you have to go back again into the inner nature, and so on and so forth.

Patanjali goes on using everything. His religion is not one of fear but of understanding. His religion is not for God and against the world. His religion is for God through the world because God and the world are not two. The world is God’s creation. The world is His creativity, His expression; the world is His poetry. If you are against the poetry, how can you be in favor of the poet? In condemning the poetry, you have already condemned the poet. Of course, poetry is not the goal; you should seek the poet also. But on the way you can enjoy the poetry; nothing is wrong in it.

A methodist minister was on a flight to America when the stewardess asked if he would like a drink from the bar. “At what height are we flying?” he asked. When told that it was thirty thousand feet, he replied, “I would rather not . . . too near headquarters.”

Fear – continuously, religious people are obsessed by fear. But fear cannot give you a grace, cannot give you dignity. Fear cripples, paralyses, corrupts. Because of fear religion has become almost a disease. It makes you abnormal. It does not make you healthy, it makes you more and more afraid to live: hell is there, and whatsoever you do it seems to be that you are doing something wrong. You love and it is wrong; you enjoy and it is wrong. Happiness has become associated with guilt. Only wrong people seem to be happy. The good people are always serious and never happy. If you want to go to heaven you have to be serious and unhappy and sad and miserable. You have to be austere. If you want to go to hell, be happy and dance and enjoy. But remember, Omar Khayyam says somewhere, “I am always worried about one thing: if all these unhappy people are going to heaven, what will they do there? They cannot dance, they cannot sing, they cannot drink, they cannot enjoy, they cannot love. The whole opportunity will be wasted on these foolish people. People who could enjoy are thrown into hell. In fact, they should be in heaven. It seems more logical.” Omar Khayyam says, “If you really want to go to heaven, live a heavenly life here, so that you are ready.”

Patanjali would like you to radiate with life, to throb with the unknown. He is not against anything. If you are in love he says, “Make your love a little more deep.” There are greater treasures waiting for you. These treasures are good; these trees, these flowers, are good. Then man, woman, they are good and beautiful, because somehow, howsoever far away, God has come to you through them. Maybe there are many screens. When you meet a man or a woman, there are many screens and sheets, but still the light is of God. It may be passing through many barriers, it may be distorted, but still, the light is of God.

Patanjali says, “Don’t be against this world. Rather, search through this world. Find a way so that you can come to the original source of light, the pure, the virgin light.”

There are people who live only for food, and there are people who go against food – both are wrong. Jesus says, “Man cannot live by bread alone” – true, perfectly true – but can man live without bread? That has to be remembered. Man cannot live by bread alone, right; but man also cannot live without bread. […]

One has to be very, very alert, otherwise one can move to opposite polarities very easily. Mind is an extremist. This is my observation: people who have lived only for food, when they get frustrated with their life-style, start fasting. Immediately, they move to the other extreme. I have never come across a faster, a fanatic about fasting, who has not previously been a fanatic about food. They are the same people. People who are too much in sexuality start becoming celibate. People who are very miserly start renouncing everything. This is how the mind moves from one extreme to another.

Patanjali would like you to balance your life, to bring an equilibrium. Just in the middle somewhere, where you are not mad after food and you are not mad against food, where you are not mad after women or men and you are not mad against them; you are simply balanced, a tranquility.

A psychiatrist says that we are a little strange in our behavior. We all are a little strange in our behavior. Another way of saying this is: I am original, you are eccentric, he is nuts. When you do the same thing you think you are original, when your friend is doing the same thing you think he is eccentric, and when your enemy is doing the same thing you think he is nuts. Remember, this egoistic way of thinking will destroy all the opportunities for growth. Be very objective about yourself. There is a strain of insanity in everybody because humanity has been insane for millennia. There is a strain of neurosis in everybody because civilization has not yet come to a point where it can allow the full functioning of the human being. It has been repressive. So watch: if you are neurotic, you will eat too much. You can move to the other extreme – you can stop eating completely – but your neurosis remains the same. Now, the neurosis is against food. And don’t think that you are doing great spiritual work, very original work. […]

These people are neurotic. You can find them all over India: in monasteries, in ashrams. Out of a hundred people you will find ninety-five neurotic. And you cannot call them mad because they are doing yoga asanas, fasting, prayer, this and that. But their neurosis can be seen immediately, what I call neurosis. Any extremism is neurotic. To be balanced is to be healthy; to be unbalanced is to be neurotic. Wherever you find any unbalance within yourself or in somebody else, beware.

Otherwise, you will miss the ultimate unison. Lopsided, unbalanced, you cannot create the orchestra that Patanjali is trying to give you a glimpse of.

The modifications of the mind are always known by its lord, due to the constancy of the purusa, pure consciousness.

Sada jnatas citta-vritayas tat-prabhu purusayaparinamitvat.

Tat prabhu, the lord has to be found. He’s hiding in you; you have to seek him. Whatsoever you are, he’s present. Whatsoever you do, he’s the doer. Whatsoever you see, he’s the seer. Even whatsoever you desire, it is he who has desired it. Layer upon layer, like an onion, you have to peel yourself. But peel yourself not in a rage, but in love. Peel yourself very cautiously, carefully, because it is God you are peeling. Peel very prayerfully. Don’t become a masochist. Don’t start creating suffering for yourself. Don’t enjoy suffering. If you start enjoying suffering and you become a masochist, you are going on a suicidal trip. You will destroy yourself. One has to be very, very cautious, careful and creative. You are moving on holy ground.

When Moses reached to the top of the mountain where he encountered God, what did he see? He saw in a bush, a flame, a fire, and he heard a voice: “Leave your shoes off because it is holy ground you are walking on.” But wherever you are walking, you are walking on holy ground. When you touch your body, you are touching something holy. When you eat something, you are eating something holy; annambrahma: food is God. When you love somebody, you are loving the divine because it is He all around, in millions of forms. It is He who is expressing.

Keep this always in mind so that no neurosis can take possession of you. Remain balanced and tranquil, just walk the path in the middle, and you will never be lost, you will never be unbalanced, lopsided.

Yoga is balance. Yoga has to be a balance because it is going to be the path to the ultimate unity, the ultimate harmony of all that is.

-Osho

From Yoga the Supreme Science, Discourse #7; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.10 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega V. 10).

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the nineteenth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.

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.

Instantaneous Cognition – Osho

Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.

From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over pradhana, the material world.

Only after the awareness of the distinction between sattva and purusha does supremacy and knowledge arise over all states of existence.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Patanjali’s skill in expressing the inexpressible is superb. Nobody has ever been able to surpass him. He has mapped the inner world of consciousness as accurately as it is possible; he has almost done the impossible job.

I have heard one story about Ramkrishna:

One day he said to his disciples, “I will tell you everything today and will not keep anything secret.” He described clearly the centers and the corresponding experiences up to the heart and throat, and then pointing to the spot between the eyebrows he said, “The supreme self is directly known and the individual experiences samadhi when the mind comes here. There remains then but a thin transparent screen separating the supreme self and the individual self. The sadhaka then experiences . . .” Saying this, the moment he started to describe in detail the realization of supreme self, he was plunged in samadhi and became unconscious. When the samadhi came to an end and he came back, he tried again to describe it and was again in samadhi; again he became unconscious. After repeated attempts Ramkrishna broke into tears, started crying, and told his disciples that it is impossible to speak about it.

But Ramkrishna has tried, has tried in many ways, from different directions, and this always happened his whole life. Whenever he will come beyond the third-eye center and will be coming nearer sahasrar, he will be caught hold of by something inner, so deeply, that the very remembrance of it, the very effort to describe it, and he is gone. For hours he will remain unconscious. It’s natural because the bliss of sahasrar is such [that] one is almost overpowered by it. The bliss is so oceanic that one is possessed by it and taken over. One is no longer oneself, once you transcend the third eye.

Ramkrishna tried and failed, could not describe it. Many others have not even tried. Lao Tzu resisted, for his whole life, saying anything about the world of Tao because of this. Nothing can be said about it, and the moment you try to say it, you are plunged into an inner whirlwind, whirlpool. You are lost, drowned. You are bathed in such beauty and beatitude that you cannot utter a single word.

But Patanjali has done the impossible. He has described as exactly as possible each step, each integration, each chakra, its functioning, and how to transcend it, up to sahasrar — and he has even indicated beyond. On each chakra, on each wheel of energy, a certain integration happens. Let me tell you.

At the sex center, the first center, the most primitive but the most natural, the one that is available to all, the integration happens between the outer and the inner. Of course it is momentary. A woman meeting a man or a man meeting a woman come for a single moment, a split moment, where the outer and inner meet and mingle and merge into each other. That’s the beauty of sex, the orgasm, that two energies, the complementary energies, meet and become one whole. But it is going to be momentary because the meeting is through the most gross element, the body. The body can touch the surfaces but it cannot really enter into the other. It is like ice cubes. If you put two ice cubes together, they can touch each other, but if they melt and become water, then they meet and mingle with each other. Then they go to the very center. And if the water evaporates, then the meeting becomes very, very deep. Then there is no I, no thou, no inner, no outer.

The first center, the sex center, gives you a certain integration. That’s why there is so much hankering for sex. It is natural, it is in itself beneficial and good, but if you stop there, then you have stopped on the porch of a palace. The porch is good, it leads you into the palace, but it is not a place to make your abode, it is not a place to stop forever . . . and the bliss that is waiting for you on the higher integrations of other centers will be missed. And in comparison to that bliss and happiness and joy, the beauty of sex is nothing, the pleasure of sex is nothing. It simply gives you a momentary glimpse.

The second chakra is hara. At the hara, life and death meet. If you reach to the second center, you reach to a higher orgasm of integration. Life meeting death, sun meeting moon. And the meeting is inner now, so the meeting can be more permanent, more stable, because you are not dependent on anybody else. Now you are meeting your own inner woman or your own inner man.

The third center is the navel. There the positive and the negative meet — the positive electricity and the negative electricity. Their meeting is even higher than life and death because the electric energy, the prana, the bioplasma or bioenergy, is deeper than life and death. It exists before life; it exists after death. Life and death exist because of bioenergy. This meeting of bioenergy at the navel, nabhi, gives you even a higher experience of being one, integrated, a unity.

Then is the heart. At the heart center the lower and the higher meet. At the heart center the prakriti and purusha, the sexual and the spiritual, the worldly and the other-worldly — or you can call it the meeting of heaven and earth. It is still higher because for the first time something of the beyond dawns — you can see the sun rising at the horizon. You are still rooted in the earth, but your branches are spreading into the sky. You have become a meeting. That’s why the heart center gives the highest and the most refined experience ordinarily available — the experience of love. The experience of love is the meeting of earth and heaven; so love is in a way earthly and in another way heavenly.

If Jesus defined God as love, this is the reason, because in human consciousness love seems to be the higher glimpse.

Ordinarily, people never go beyond the heart center. Even to reach to the heart center seems to be difficult, almost impossible. People remain at the sex center. If they are trained deeply in yoga, karate, aikido, tai chi, then they reach to the second center, the hara. If they are trained in the deep mechanism of breathing, prana, then they reach the navel center. And if they are trained how to look beyond earth and how to see beyond the body and how to look so deeply and so sensitively that you are no longer confined to the gross, and the subtle can penetrate its first rays into you, only then, the heart center.

All paths of devotion, bhakti yoga, work on the heart center. Tantra starts from the sex center. Tao starts from the hara center. Yoga starts from the navel center. Bhakti yoga, paths of devotion and love, Sufis and others, they start from the heart center.

Higher than heart is the throat center. Again there happens another integration, even more superior, more subtle. This center is the center of receiving and giving. When the child is born, he receives from the throat center. First, life enters into him from the throat center — he sucks air, breathes; and then he sucks milk from his mother. The child functions from the throat center, but it is half functioning and soon the child forgets about it. He just receives. He cannot give yet. His love is passive. And if you are asking for love, then you remain juvenile, you remain childish. Unless you mature, that you can give love, you have not become a grown-up. Everybody asks for love, demands love, and almost nobody gives. That’s the misery all over the world. And everybody who demands thinks that he is giving, believes that he is giving.

I have looked into thousands of people — all hungry for love, thirsty for love, but nobody in any way trying to give. And they all believe that they are giving but they are not receiving. Once you give you receive, naturally. It has never happened otherwise. The moment you give, love rushes in you. It has nothing to do with persons and people. It has something to do with the cosmic energy of God.

The throat center is the meeting of receiving and giving. You receive from it and you give from it. That is the meaning of Christ’s saying that you must become a child again. If you translate it into the yoga terminology it will mean: you must come to the throat center again. The child forgets by and by. […]

When Jesus says you have to be a child again, he means you have to come back to the throat center, but with a new energy to give. All creative people are givers. They may sing a song for you or dance a dance or write a poem or paint a picture or tell you a story. For all these, the throat center is again used as a center to give. The meeting of receiving and giving happens at the throat. The capacity to receive and to give is one of the greatest integrations.

There are people who are only capable of receiving. They will remain miserable because you never become rich by receiving. You become rich by giving. In fact, you possess only that which you can give. If you cannot give it, you simply believe that you possess. You don’t possess it; you are not a master. If you cannot give your money, then you are not the master of it. Then the money is the master. If you can give it, then certainly you are the master. This will look like a paradox but let me repeat it: you are the possessor only of that which you give. The moment you give, in that very moment, you have become a possessor, enriched. Giving enriches you.

Miserly people are the most miserable and poor people in the world — poorer than the poorest. They cannot give; they are stuck. They go on hoarding. Their hoarding becomes a burden on their being; it does not free them. In fact, if you have something you will become freer. But look at the misers. They have much, but they are burdened; they are not free. Even beggars are more free than them. What has happened to them? They have used their throat center just to receive. […]

These people are always constipatory; hoarders, misers always suffer from constipation. Remember, I am not saying that all people who have constipation are misers; there may be other reasons. But misers are certainly constipated. […]

I have heard about two Buddhist bhikkhus. One of them was a miser and a hoarder and he used to collect money and keep it, and the other used to laugh at this foolish attitude. Whatsoever will come on his way, he will use it; he will never hoard it. One night they came across a river. It was evening, the sun was setting, and it was dangerous to stay there. They had to go to the other shore; there was a town. This side was simply wilderness.

The hoarder said, “Now you don’t have any money, so we cannot pay the ferryman. What do you say now about it? You are against hoarding; now if I don’t have any money, we both will die.” You see the point? He said, “Money is needed.” The man who believed in renunciation laughed, but he didn’t say anything. Then the hoarder paid, and they crossed the river; they reached the other shore. The hoarder again said, “Now remember, next time don’t start arguing with me. You see? Money helps. Without money we would have been dead.” The whole night on the other shore, it was dangerous to survive [because of] wild animals.

The other bhikkhu laughed and he said, “But we have come across the river because you could renounce it. It is not because of hoarding that we have survived. If you had insisted on hoarding it, and you were not going to pay the ferryman, we would have died. It is because you could renounce — because you could leave it, you could give it — that’s why we have survived.”

The argument must be continuing still. But remember, I am not against money. I am all for it but use it. Possess it, own it; but your ownership arises only the moment you have become capable of giving it. At the throat center this new synthesis happens. You can accept and you can give.

There are people who change from one extreme to another. First, they were incapable of giving, they could only receive; then they change, they go to the other extreme — now they can give, but they cannot receive. That too is lopsidedness. A real man is capable of accepting gifts and giving them back. In India, you will find many sannyasins, many so-called mahatmas, who will not touch money. If you give them any, they will shrink back, as if you have produced a snake or something — poisonous. Their shrinking back shows that now they have moved to the other extreme: now they have become incapable of receiving. Again, their throat center is half-functioning — and a center never functions really unless it functions fully, unless the wheel moves the full way, goes on moving and creates energy fields.

Then, is the third-eye center. At the third eye center the right and left meet, pingala and ida meet and become sushumna. The two hemispheres of the brain meet at the third eye that is just between the two eyes. One eye represents the right, another eye represents the left, and it is just in the middle. These left and right brains meeting at the third eye, this is a very high synthesis. People have been capable of describing up to this point. That’s why Ramkrishna could describe up to the third eye. And when he started to talk about the final, the ultimate synthesis that happens at sahasrar, he again and again fell into silence, into samadhi. He was drowned in it; it was too much. It was flood like; he was taken over by the ocean. He could not keep himself conscious, alert.

The ultimate synthesis happens at sahasrar, the crown chakra. Because of this sahasrar, all over the world kings, emperors, monarchs, and queens, use the crown. It has become formal, but basically it was accepted because unless your sahasrar is functioning, how can you be a monarch, how can you be a king? How can you rule people, you have not even become a ruler of yourself? In the symbol of the crown is hidden a secret. The secret is that a person who has reached to the crown center, the ultimate synthesis of his being, only he should be the king or the queen, nobody else. Only he is capable of ruling others because he has come to rule himself. He has become a master of himself; now he can be helpful to others also.

Really, when you achieve to sahasrar, a crown flowers within you, a one-thousand-petaled lotus opens. No crown can be compared with it, but then it became just a symbol. And the symbol has existed all over the world. That simply shows that everywhere people became alert and aware in one way or other of the ultimate synthesis in the sahasrar. Jews use the skullcap; it is exactly on the sahasrar. Hindus allow a bunch of hair, they call it choti, the peak, to grow exactly on the spot where the sahasrar is or has to be. There are a few Christian societies which shave just that part of the head. When a Master blesses a disciple, he puts his hand on the sahasrar. And if the disciple is really receptive, surrendered, he will suddenly feel an upsurge of energy running from the sex center to the sahasrar.

Sometimes when I touch your head and you suddenly become sexual don’t be afraid, don’t shrink back, because that is how it should be. The energy is at the sex center. It starts uncoiling itself. You become afraid, you shrink, you repress it — What is happening? And becoming sexual at the feet of your Master seems to be a little awkward, embarrassing. It is not. Allow it, let it be, and soon you will see it has passed the first center and the second, and if you are surrendered, within a second the energy is moving at the sahasrar, and you will have a feeling of a new opening within you. That’s why a disciple is supposed to bow down his head, so the Master can touch the head.

The last synthesis is of object and subject, the outer and inner, again. In a sexual orgasm outer and inner meet but momentarily. In sahasrar they meet permanently. That’s why I say one has to travel from sex to samadhi. In sex ninety-nine percent is sex, one percent is sahasrar; in sahasrar ninety-nine percent is sahasrar, one percent is sex. Both are joined, they are bridged by deep currents of energy. So if you have enjoyed sex, don’t make your abode there. Sex is just a glimpse of sahasrar. Sahasrar is going to deliver a thousandfold, a millionfold, a bliss to you, benediction to you.

The outer and the inner meet: I and thou meet, man and woman meet, yin and yang meet; and the meeting is absolute. Then there is no parting, then there is no divorce.

This is called yoga. Yoga means the meeting of the two into one. In Christianity, mystics have called it unio mystica; that is the exact translation of yoga. Unio mystica: the mysterious union. At the sahasrar, the alpha and the omega meet, the beginning and the end. The beginning is in the sex center, sex is your alpha; samadhi is your omega. And unless alpha and omega meet, unless you have attained to this supreme union, you will remain miserable because your destiny is that. You will remain unfulfilled. You can be fulfilled only at this highest peak of synthesis.

Now the sutras.

Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.

The first thing to be understood is that you have senses but you have lost sensitivity. Your senses are almost dull, dead. They are there hanging with you, but energy is not flowing in them; they are not alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies which are against the body have crippled you. You live only in name’s sake.

So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive. Only then can they be mastered. You see but you don’t see deeply. You see only the surface of things. You touch but your touch has no warmth; nothing flows in and out from your touch. You hear also. The birds go on singing and you hear and you can say, “Yes, I am hearing,” and you are not wrong — you are hearing — but it never reaches to the very core of your being. It does not go dancing within you; it doesn’t help a flowering, an unfolding within you.

These senses have to be rejuvenated. Yoga is not against the body, remember. Yoga says go beyond the body, but it is not against the body. Yoga says use the body, don’t be used by it; but it is not against the body. Yoga says the body is your temple. You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so mysterious, and so many dimensions open through it. And those senses are the only doors and windows through which you will reach to God — so don’t deaden them. Make them more alive. Let them vibrate, pulsate, and what Stanley Keleman has said, let them “stream.” That is exactly the right word: let them flow like a stream, rushing. You can have the sensation. Your hand — if it is rushing like a stream of energy — you will feel a tingling sensation, you will feel something inside the hand is flowing and wants to make contact, wants to be connected.

When you love a woman or a man and you take her hand in your hand, if your hand is not streaming, this love is not going to be of any use. If your hand is not jumping and throbbing with energy and pouring energy into your woman or into your man, then this love is almost dead from the very beginning. Then this child is not born alive. Then sooner or later you will be finished — you are already finished. It will take a little time to recognize because your mind is also dull; otherwise, you would not have entered into it because it is already dead. For what are you entering? You take time to recognize things because your sensitivity, brilliance, intelligence, is so much clouded and confused.

Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming.

Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See his eyes, the brilliance, the light that comes to his eyes. He is streaming. His eyes are almost dancing on the petals of the flower.

This is the way to be: be riverlike. And only then is it possible to master these senses. In fact, people have had a very wrong attitude. They think that if you want to master your senses you have to make them almost dead. But then what is the point of mastering? You can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master. But you have killed the body. Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use.

But this has been found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don’t be in contact. Remove yourself away. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree; no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are you going to gain from this mastery?

This is the problem; that’s why people don’t understand what Patanjali means.

Performing samyama on their power of cognition . . . Your eyes see, your ears hear, your nose smells, your tongue tastes, your hands make contact, your feet make connectedness with the earth — that is their power of cognition.

Performing samyama on their power of cognition. . . But they have to be powerful. Otherwise you will not be able to even feel what power is. These senses have to be so full of power, so high with power, that you can perform samyama, that you can meditate upon them.

Right now, when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes? It should be there because you are using your eyes to see the flower. And of course eyes are more beautiful than any flower because all flowers have to come through the eyes. It is through the eyes that you have become aware of the world of flowers, but have you ever felt the power of the eyes? They are almost dull, dead. They have become passive, just like windows, receptive. They don’t go to their object. And power means being active. Power means your eyes going and almost touching the flowers, your ears going and almost touching the songs of the birds, your hands going with the total energy in you, focused there and touching your beloved. Or you are lying down on the grass, your whole body, full of power, meeting in contact with the grass, having a dialogue with the grass. Or you are swimming in the river and whispering with the river and listening to the whispers of the river. Connected, in communion, but power is needed.

So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes. Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was on your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.

Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, “If you have ears listen. If you have eyes see.” They were not all blind, and they were not all deaf. What does he mean? He means that you have almost become deaf and almost become blind. You see and yet you don’t see. You hear, yet you don’t hear. It is not a power, it is not energy, it is not vital.

Performing samyana on their power of cognition, real nature . . . Then you will be able to see what is the real nature of your senses. It is divine. Your body embodies the divine. It is God who has looked through your eyes!

I remember Meister Eckhart’s famous saying. The day he realized and became enlightened, his friends and disciples and brothers asked, “What have you seen?” He laughed. He is the only one in the whole of Christianity who comes very close to Zen Masters, almost a Zen Master. He laughed; he said, “I have not seen him. He has seen himself through me. God has seen himself through me. These eyes are his. And what a game, what a play. He has seen himself through me.”

When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine. It is God who has moved through your hand. It is God’s hand. All hands are his. It is God who has loved through you. All love affairs are his. And how can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela, God’s play. It is he who is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is he who is listening through you. It is he and he alone spread all over.

Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.

This word “egoism” has to be understood because in Sanskrit we have three words for the ego, and in English there is only one word. That creates difficulty. The Sanskrit word in the sutra is asmita, so let me first explain it to you.

There are three words, ahankara, asmita, atma, all mean “I.” Ahankar can be translated as the “ego,” the very gross, too much emphasis on I. For asmita there is no word in English. Asmita means amness, I am. In ego the emphasis is on “I”; in asmita the emphasis is on “am.” Amness, purer than ego. Still it is there, but in a very different form. Amness. And in atma, even amness has disappeared. In the ego “I am”; in asmita only “am”; in atma even that has disappeared. In atma there is pure being, neither I nor amness.

In this sutra asmita is used, amness. Remember, the ego is of the mind. Senses have no ego. They have a certain amness but no ego. The ego is of the mind. Your eyes don’t have any ego; your hands don’t have any ego. They have a certain amness. That’s why if your skin has to be replaced and somebody else’s skin is planted on you, your body will reject it because the body knows “it is not mine.” So your own skin has to be replaced from some other part of the body, from your thighs. Your own skin has to be replaced, otherwise the body will reject. The body will not accept it, “It is not mine.”

The body has no I but it has an amness. If you need blood, anybody’s blood won’t do. The body will not accept all sorts of blood, only a particular blood. It has its own amness. That will be accepted; some other blood will be rejected. The body has its own feel of its being, very unconscious, very subtle and pure, but it is there.

Your eyes are yours, just like your thumbprints. Everything yours is yours. Now physiologists say that everybody’s heart is different, of a different shape. In the books of physiology, the picture that you will find is not a real picture. It is just average; it is just imagined. Otherwise each person’s heart has a different shape. Even each person’s kidney has a different shape. These parts all have their signatures; everybody is so unique. That is the amness.

You will never be here again, you have never been before, so move cautiously and alertly and happily. Just think, the glory of your being. Just think, that you are so superb and unique. God has vested much in you. Never imitate because that will be a betrayal. Be yourself. Let that be your religion. All else is politics. Don’t be a Hindu, don’t be a Mohammedan, don’t be a Christian. Be religious, but there is only one religion, and that is just being yourself, authentically yourself.

Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, asmita (the subtle amness), all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.

And if you meditate on these things, you will become a master. Meditation brings mastery; nothing else brings mastery except meditation. If you meditate on your eye, first you will see the rose flower; by and by you will be able to see the eye that is seeing. Then you have become a master of the eye. Once you have seen the seeing eye, you have become a master. Now you can use all its energies; and they are all-pervasive. Your eyes are not as limited as you think them to be. They can see many more things which you have not seen. They can penetrate many more mysteries that you have not even dreamed about. But you are not master of your eyes, and you have used them in a very haphazard way, not knowing what you are doing.

And having been in contact with objects too much, you have forgotten the subjectivity of your eyes. It happens, if you keep company with someone, by and by you become influenced by him. You have been in contact with objects too much and you have forgotten the inner quality of your senses. You see things, but you never see your seeing. You hear the songs, but you never hear the subtle vibration that goes on within you, the sound of your being. […]

We have kept company with objects so long that we have forgotten our subjectivity. We have remained focused outwardly so long on things that we have forgotten that we are persons. This long association with objects has completely destroyed your image of yourself. You have to come back home.

In yoga, when you start seeing your seeing eye, you come across a subtle energy. They call it tanmatra. When you can see your eye seeing, just hidden behind the eyes you see a tremendous energy. That is tanmatra, the energy of the eye. Behind the ear you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of the ear. Behind your genital organs you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of sexuality. And so on and so forth. Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy — unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes, in rare moments, lovers know how to touch.

You will become alive, streaming.

Ordinarily you have been taught to repress your senses, not to know them. It is very foolish, but very convenient. […]

That’s what you have done with your senses, with your body. You have repressed it. But you were helpless. I don’t say that you are responsible for repressing it. You were brought up in such a way, nobody allowed your senses freedom. In the name of love, only repression continues. The mothers, the fathers, the society, they go on repressing. By and by they teach you a trick, and the trick is not to accept yourself — deny. Everything has to be channelized into conformity. Your wilderness has to be thrown into the dark part of your soul and a small corner has to be clean, like a drawing room, where you can see people, meet people, and live and forget all about your wilder being, your real existence. Your fathers and your mothers are not responsible either because they were brought up in the same way.

So nobody is responsible. But once you know it, and you don’t do anything, then you become responsible. Being near me, I am going to make you very, very responsible because you will know it, and then if you don’t do anything, then you cannot throw the responsibility on anybody else. Then you are going to be responsible.

Now you know how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. […] Unblock yourself. Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again. You are like a disconnected telephone line. Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected. Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.

All my meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That’s why I call them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. I give you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.

From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over pradhana (prakriti), the material world.

If you can see tanmatras, the subtle energies of your senses, you will become capable of using your cognition without the grosser instruments. If you know that behind the eye there is an accumulated pool of energy, you can close your eyes and use that energy directly. Then you will be able to see without opening your eyes. That’s what telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience is. […]

This is what yoga calls tanmatra. […]

Once you know the tanmatra, the subtle energy, that is being used by your eyes, eyes can be discarded. Once you know that it is not really the sense that is functioning but the energy, you are freed of the sense. […]

I have heard a story.

So, this guy phoned Cohen & Goldberg, wholesalers.

“Put me through to Mr. Cohen, please.”

“I am afraid Mr. Cohen has gone out, sir,” said the switchboard girl.

“Then get me Mr. Goldberg.”

“I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is tied up at present, sir.”

“Okay, I will phone back later.”

Ten minutes later: “Mr. Goldberg, please.”

“I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is still tied up, sir.”

“I will phone back.”

Half an hour later: “Get me Mr. Goldberg.”

“I am terribly sorry, sir, but Mr. Goldberg is still tied”

“I will phone back.”

Another half an hour later: “Goldberg!”

“I have dreadful news for you, sir. Mr. Goldberg is still tied up.”

“But look, this is ridiculous. How can you run a business like that? The one partner is out all morning and the other is tied up for hours on end. What is going on there?”

“Well, you see, sir, whenever Mr. Cohen goes out, he ties up Mr. Goldberg.”

This is what is happening inside you also.

Whenever you go out, through the eyes, through the hands, through your genital organs, through your ears, whenever you go out, continuously a certain type of bondage and tying is created. By and by you become tight with the particular sense — eyes, ears — because that is from where you go out, again, again, again. By and by you forget the energy that is going out.

This getting in bondage to the senses is the whole world, the samsar. How to untie yourself from the senses? And once you are tied up with the senses, you start thinking in terms of them. You forget yourself. […]

The whole attachment to the senses is as if you are the senses, as if you cannot live without them, as if your whole life is confined to them. But you are not confined to them. You can renounce them, and you can live still and live on a higher plane. Difficult. Just as if you want to persuade a seed that “Die, and soon a beautiful plant will be born.” How can he believe because he will be dead? And no seed has ever known that by his death a new sprout comes up, a new life arises. So how to believe it? Or if you go near an egg, and you want to persuade the bird within that “Come out,” but how is the bird to believe it, that there is any possibility of life without the egg? Or if you talk to a child inside the womb of a mother and tell him, “Come out, don’t be afraid,” but he knows nothing outside the womb. The womb has been his whole life; he knows only that much. He is afraid. The same is the situation: surrounded by the senses, we live in a sort of confinement, an imprisonment.

One has to be a little daring, courageous. Right now, wherever you are and whatsoever you are, nothing is happening to you. Then take the risk. Then move into the unknown. Then try to find out a new way of life.

“From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over prakriti, the material world.” Up to now you have been possessed by the material world. Once you know that you have your own energy, totally independent from the material world, you become a master. The world possesses you no more; you possess it. Only those who renounce become the real masters.

Only after the awareness of the distinction between sattva and purusha does supremacy and knowledge arise over all states of existence.

And the subtlest discrimination has to be made between sattva and purusha — intelligence and awareness. It is very easy to separate yourself from the body. The body is so gross you can feel it; you cannot be it. You must be inside it. It is easy to see that you cannot be the eyes. You must be someone hidden behind who looks through the eyes; otherwise who will look through the eyes? Your glasses cannot look. Behind the glasses eyes are needed. Your eyes are also like glasses. They are glasses; they cannot look. You are needed somewhere behind to look.

But the subtlest identification is with intelligence. Your power to think, your power of intellect, understanding, that is the subtlest thing. It is very difficult to discriminate between awareness and intelligence. But it can be discriminated.

By and by, step by step, first know that you are not the body. Let that understanding grow deep, crystallize. Then know that you are not the senses. Let that understanding grow, crystallize. Then know that you are not the tanmatras, the energy pools behind the senses. Let that grow and crystallize. And then you will be able to see that intelligence is also a pool of energy. It is the common pool, in which eyes pour their energy, ears pour their energy, hands pour their energy. All the senses are like rivers, and intelligence is the central thing, in which they bring information and pour.

Whatsoever your mind knows is given by the senses. You have seen colors: your mind knows. If you are colorblind, if you cannot see the color green, then your mind does not know anything about green. Bernard Shaw lived his whole life unaware that he was colorblind. It is very difficult to come to know it, but one accidental incident allowed him to become aware. On one of his birthdays, somebody presented him a suit, but the tie was missing, so he went to the market to find a tie which could fit with the suit. The suit was green, and he started purchasing a yellow tie. His secretary was watching, and she said, “What are you doing? It won’t fit. The suit is green and the tie is yellow.” He said, “Is there any difference between these two?” For seventy years he had lived not knowing that he could not see yellow. He saw green. Whether it was yellow or green, both the colors looked green. Now yellow was not part of his mind; the eyes never poured that information into the mind.

The eyes are like servants, information collectors, probes, roaming all over the world, collecting things, pouring into the mind. They go on feeding the mind; mind is the central pool.

First you have to become aware that you are not the eye, not the energy that is hidden behind the eye, then you will be able to see that every sense is pouring into the mind. You are not this mind also. You are the one who is seeing it being poured. You are just standing on the bank, all the rivers pouring into the ocean — you are the watcher, the witness.

Swami Ram has said: “Science is difficult to define, but perhaps the most essential feature of it involves the study of something which is external to the observer. The techniques of meditation offer an approach which allows one to be external to one’s own internal states.” “The techniques of meditation offer an approach which allows one to be external to one’s own internal states” — and the ultimate of meditation is to know that whatsoever you can know, you are not it. Whatsoever can be reduced to a known object, you are not it, because you cannot be reduced to an object. You remain eternally subject — the knower, the knower, the knower. And the knower can never be reduced to the known.

This is purusha, awareness. This is the final understanding that arises out of yoga. Meditate over it.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Path to Liberation, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.9, Discourse #3 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.9).

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the seventeenth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.

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.

Beyond the Error of Experiencing – Osho

Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence, although they are absolutely distinct.

Performing samyama on the self-interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others.

From this follow intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling.

These are powers when the mind is turned outward but obstacles in the way of samadhi.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

One of the most important sutras of Patanjali – the very key. This last part of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is called “kaivalya pada.” Kaivalya means the summum bonum – the ultimate liberation, the total freedom of consciousness which knows no limitation, which knows no impurity. The word kaivalya is very beautiful; it means innocent aloneness; it means pure aloneness.

The word “aloneness” has to be understood. It is not loneliness. Loneliness is negative: loneliness is when you are hankering for the other. Loneliness is the feeling of the absence of the other; aloneness is the realization of oneself. Loneliness is ugly; aloneness is tremendously beautiful.

Aloneness is when you are so content that you don’t need the other, that the other has completely disappeared from your consciousness – the other makes no shadow on you, the other creates no dream in you, the other does not pull you out.

The other is continuously pulling you off the center. Sartre’s famous saying, Patanjali would have understood it well, is, “The other is hell.” The other may not be hell, but hell is created by your desire for the other. The desire for the other is hell.

And to be desireless of the other is to attain to your pristine clarity of being. Then you are and you are the whole, and there exists nobody except you. This Patanjali calls kaivalya.

And the way toward kaivalya, the path, is first the most essential step, viveka, discrimination; the second important step is vairagya, renunciation; and the third is the realization of kaivalya, aloneness.

Why are you hankering so much for the other? Why this desire – this constant madness for the other? Where have you taken a wrong step? Why are you not satisfied with yourself? Why don’t you feel fulfilled? Why do you think that somehow you lack something? From where arises this misconception that you are incomplete? It arises out of the identity with the body. The body is the other. Once you have taken the first wrong step, then you will go on and on, and then there is no end to it.

By viveka Patanjali means: to discriminate yourself as separate from the body – to realize that you are in the body but you are not the body, to realize that you are in the mind but you are not the mind. To realize that you are always the pure witness – sakshi, drashta – the seer. You are never the seen; you are never the object. You are pure subjectivity.

Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most influential existential thinkers in the West, has said, “God is subjectivity.” He comes very close to Patanjali. What does he mean when he says God is subjectivity? When all objects are known as separate from you, they start disappearing. They exist through your cooperation. If you think you are the body, then the body continues. It needs your help, your energy. If you think you are the mind, the mind functions. It needs your help, your cooperation, your energy.

This is one of the inner mechanisms: that just by your presence nature becomes alive. Just by your presence the body functions as alive; just by your presence the mind starts functioning. In yoga they say it is as if the master had gone out, then he comes back home. The servants were chitchatting and sitting on the steps of the house and smoking, and nobody was worried about the house. The moment the master enters, their chitchat stops, they are no longer smoking, they have hidden their cigarettes and they have started working, and they are trying to show that they are so much involved in their work that you cannot even conceive that just a moment before they were gossiping, sitting on the steps idling, lazy, resting. Just the presence of the master and everything settles – as if the teacher had gone out of the class and there was much turmoil, almost a chaos, and the teacher comes back and all the children are in their seats and they have started writing, doing their work, and there is complete silence. The very presence.

Now scientists have something parallel to it. They call it the presence of the catalytic agent. There are a few scientific phenomena in which a certain substance is needed just to be present. It does not act in any way, it does not enter into any activity, but just the presence of it helps some activity to happen – if it is not present that activity will not happen. If it is present it remains in itself; it does not go out. Just the very presence is catalytic – it creates some activity in somebody else, somewhere else.

Patanjali says that your innermost being is not active; it is inactive. The innermost being is called, in yoga, the purusha. Your pure consciousness is a catalytic agent. It is just there doing nothing – seeing everything but doing nothing, watching everything but getting involved in nothing. By the sheer presence of the purusha, the prakriti, nature – the mind, the body, everything – starts functioning.

But we get identified with the body, we get identified with the mind: we slip out of the witnesser and become a doer. That’s the whole disease of man. Viveka is the medicine – how to go back home, how to drop this false idea that you are a doer, and how to attain to the clarity of just being a witness. The methodology is called viveka.

Once you have understood that you are not the doer, and you are the watcher, the second thing happens spontaneously – renunciation, sannyas, vairagya. The second is: now, whatsoever you were doing before, you cannot do. You were getting involved too much in many things because you were thinking you are the body, because you were thinking you are the mind. Now you know that you are neither the body nor the mind, so many activities that you were following and chasing and getting mad about simply drop. That dropping is vairagya; that is sannyas, renunciation. Your vision, your viveka, your understanding, brings a transformation: that is vairagya. And when vairagya is complete, another peak arises which is kaivalya – you for the first time know who you are. But the first step of identification leads you astray; then once you have taken the first step, once you have ignored your separation and you have got caught in the identity, then it goes on and on and on; and one step leads to another, then to another, and you are more and more in the mire and in the mess.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Two young friends were breaking into society, and young Cohen had high hopes of marrying an heiress. To give him moral support, he took young Levy along with him to meet the girl’s parents. The parents smiled at young Cohen and said, “I understand you are in the clothing business.”

Cohen nodded nervously and said, “Yes, in a small way.”

Levy slapped him on the back and said, “He is so modest, so modest. He has twenty-seven shops and is negotiating for more.”

The parents said, “I understand you have an apartment.” Cohen smiled, “Yes, a modest couple of rooms.”

Young Levy started laughing, “Modesty, modesty! He has a penthouse in Park Lane.”

The parents continued, “And you have a car?”

“Yes,” said Cohen. “Quite a nice one.”

“Quite nice nothing!” interjected Levy. “He has three Rolls-Royces, and that is only for the town use.”

Cohen sneezed. “Do you have a cold?” asked the anxious parents. “Yes, just a slight one,” replied Cohen.

“Slight, nothing!” yelled Levy. “Tuberculosis!”

One step leads to another, and once you have taken a wrong step, your life becomes an exaggeration of that wrong. It is mirrored and reflected in millions of ways. And if you don’t correct it there – you can go on correcting all over the world – you will not be able to correct it.

Gurdjieff used to tell his disciples, “The first thing is to become nonidentified and to remember continuously that you are a witness, just a consciousness – neither an act nor a thought.” If this remembrance becomes a crystallized phenomenon in you, you have attained to viveka, discrimination; then spontaneously follows vairagya. If you don’t become discriminate, spontaneously follows samsar, the world. If you become identified with the body and the mind, you move out – you go into the world. You are expelled from the Garden of Eden. If you discriminate, and you remember that you are in the body and the body is an abode and you are the owner and the mind is just a biocomputer, you are the master and the mind is just a slave; then – a turning in.

Then you are not moving into the world because the first step has been removed. Now you are no longer bridged with the world, suddenly you start falling in. This is what vairagya is, renunciation.

And when you go on falling in and in and in and there comes the last point beyond which there is no go, the summum bonum, it is called kaivalya: you have become alone. You don’t need anybody. You don’t need the constant effort of filling yourself with something or other. Now, you are in tune with your emptiness, and because of your tuning in with the emptiness, the very emptiness has become a fullness, an infinity, a fulfillment, a fruition of being.

This purusha is there in the beginning, this purusha is there in the end, and between the two is just a big dream.

The first sutra:

Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence, although they are absolutely distinct.

Performing samyama on the self-interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others.

Each word has to be understood because each word is tremendously significant.

“Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate . . .” All experience is just an error. You say, “I am miserable,” or you say, “I am happy,” or you say, “I am feeling hungry,” or you say, “I am feeling very good and healthy” – all experience is an error, is a misunderstanding.

When you say, “I am hungry,” what do you really mean? You should say, “I am conscious that the body is hungry.” You should not say, “I am hungry.” You are not hungry. The body is hungry; you are the knower of the fact. The experience is not yours; only the awareness. The experience is of the body; the awareness is yours. When you feel miserable, again, the experience may be of the body or of the mind – which are not two.

Body and mind are one mechanism. The body is the gross mechanism of the same entity; the mind is the subtle mechanism. But both are the same. It is not good to say “body and mind”; we should say “body-mind.” The body is nothing but mind in a gross way, and if you watch your body, you will see that the body also functions as a mind. You are fast asleep, and a fly comes and hangs around your face – you remove it with your hand without in any way getting up or waking up. The body functioned, very mindfully. Or something starts crawling on your feet – you throw it away. Fast asleep. You will not remember in the morning. The body functions as a mind – very gross, but it functions as a mind.

So body-mind has all the experience – good or bad, happy, unhappy, it makes no difference. You are never the experiencer; you are always the awareness of the experience. So Patanjali says in a very bold statement, “Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate . . .” All experience is an error. The error arises because you don’t discriminate, you don’t know who is who. […]

Patanjali says all experience is an error – error in your vision. You become identified with the object, and the subject starts thinking as if it is the object. You feel hunger, but you are not hungry – the body is hungry. You feel pain, but you are not in pain – the body is in pain; you are only alert.

Next time something happens to you – and every moment something or other is happening – just watch. Just try to keep hold of this remembrance that “I am the witness,” and see how much things change. Once you can realize you are the witness, many things simply disappear, start disappearing. And one day comes which is the final day, the day of enlightenment, when all experience falls flat. Suddenly you are beyond experience: you are not in the body, you are not in the mind; you are beyond both. Suddenly you start floating like a cloud, above all, beyond all. That state of no-experience is the state of kaivalya.

Now one thing more about it. There are people who think that spirituality is also an experience. They don’t know. There are people who come to me, and they say, “We would like to have some spiritual experience.” They don’t know what they are saying. Experience as such is of the world. There is no spiritual experience – there cannot be. To call an experience “spiritual” is to falsify it. The spiritual is only a realization of pure awareness, purusha.

How does it happen? How do we get identified? In yoga terminology, the truth, the ultimate truth, has three attributes to it, sat chit anand – satchitanand. Sat means “being” – the quality of eternity, the quality of permanence, being. Chit: chit means “consciousness,” awareness – chit is energy, movement, process. And anand: anand is “blissfulness.” These three have been called the three attributes of the ultimate. This is the yoga trinity; of course, more scientific than the Christian trinity because it does not talk about persons – God, the Holy Ghost, the Son. It talks about realizations.

When one reaches to the ultimate peak of existence, one realizes three things: that one is and one is going to remain, that is sat; the second, one is and one is conscious – one is not like dead matter – one is and one knows that one is, that is chit; and, one knows that one is and one is tremendously blissful.

Now let me explain it to you. It is not right to call it “blissful,” because then it will become an experience. So a better way will be to say “one is bliss” – not “blissful.” One is sat, one is chit, one is anand; one is being, one is consciousness, one is bliss.

These are the ultimate realizations of the truth. Patanjali says these three, when they are present in the world, create three qualities in prakriti, in nature. They function as a catalytic agent; they don’t do anything. Just their presence creates a tremendous activity in prakriti. That activity is corresponded by three gunas, qualities: sattva, rajas, tamas.

Sattva corresponds to anand, the quality of bliss. Sattva means pure intelligence. The closer you come to sattva, the more you feel blissful. Sattva is the reflection of anand. If you can conceive of a triangle, then the base is anand and the other two lines are sat, chit. It is reflected into the world of matter, prakriti. Of course, in the reflection it becomes upside down: sattva, and rajas, tamas – the same triangle.

But the ultimate truth is not doing anything – that is the emphasis of Patanjali. Because once the ultimate truth is doing something, he becomes a doer, and he has already moved into the world. In Patanjali, God is not the creator; he is just a catalytic agent. This is tremendously scientific because if God is the creator, then you will have to find the motive, why he creates. Then you will have to find some desire in him to create. Then he will become just as ordinary as man. No, in Patanjali, God is absolute, pure presence. He does not do anything, but by his presence things happen – the prakriti, the nature, starts dancing.

There is an old story. A king had made a palace; the palace was called the Mirror Palace. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all were covered in millions of mirrors, tiny, tiny mirrors. There was nothing else in the whole palace; it was a mirror palace. Once it happened, the king’s dog, by mistake, was left inside the palace in the night and the palace was locked from the outside. The dog looked, became frightened – there were millions of dogs everywhere. He was reflected; down, up, all the directions – millions of dogs. He was not an ordinary dog; he was the king’s dog – very brave – but even then, he was alone. He ran from one room to another, but there was no escape, there was no [where to] go. All over. He became more and more frightened. He tried to get out, but there was no way to get out – the door was locked.

Just to frighten the other dogs, he started barking, but the moment he barked, the other dogs also barked – because they were pure reflections. Then he became more frightened. To frighten the other dogs, he started knocking against the walls. The other dogs also jumped into him, bumped into him. In the morning the dog was found dead.

But the moment the dog died, all the dogs died. The palace was empty. There was only one dog and millions of reflections.

This is the standpoint of Patanjali: that there is only one reality, millions of reflections of it. You are separate from me as a reflection, I am separate from you as a reflection, but if we move toward the real, the separation will be gone – we will be one. One reflection is separate from another reflection; you can destroy one reflection and save another.

That’s how one person dies . . . There are many argumentative people in the world who ask, “Then if there is only one Brahman, one God, one being spread all over, then when one dies, why don’t others die also?” This is simple. If there are a thousand and one mirrors in the room, you can destroy one mirror: one reflection will disappear – not others. You destroy another: another reflection will disappear – not others. When one person dies, only one reflection dies. But the one who is being reflected remains undying; it is deathless. Then another child is born – that is, another mirror is born; again, another reflection.

This story goes on and on. That’s why Hindus have called this world a maya: maya means a magic show. Nothing is there really; everything only appears to be there. And this whole magic world depends on one error and that error is of identity.

“Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, (absolute) pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence . . .” Purusha is reflected into prakriti as sattva. Your intelligence is just a reflection of the real intelligence; it is not the real intelligence. You are clever, argumentative, groping in the dark, thinking, contemplating, creating philosophies, systems of thought – this is just a reflection. This intelligence is not the real intelligence because the real intelligence need not discover anything: for the real intelligence everything is already discovered.

Now look at the different paths of philosophy and religion. Philosophy moves in the reflected intelligence, into sattva – it goes on thinking and thinking and thinking and goes on creating bigger palaces of thought. Religion moves into purusha – it drops this so-called intelligence; hence the insistence of meditation to drop thinking. […]

Thinking is just dreaming logically; it is creating verbal palaces. And sometimes one can get caught so much in the verbal, then one completely forgets the real. The verbal is just a reflection.

Language is one of the reasons we got so caught up in the verbal. For example, in English, it is very difficult to drop the use of the “I.” It is very prominent in English. The “I” stands so vertical – almost a phallic symbol. It is phallic. That’s why perceptive people like E. E. Cummings started writing “I” in the lower case. And it is not only vertical, phallic, when you write. When you say, “I,” it is phallic, like an erection, egoistic. Just watch how many times “I” has to be used. And the more you use it, the more it is emphasized, the more ego becomes prominent – as if the whole English language hangs around “I.”

But in Japanese it is totally different. You can talk for hours without using “I.” It is possible to write a book without using “I”; the language has a totally different arrangement. The “I” can be dropped easily.

No wonder Japan became the most meditative country in the world and achieved to the higher peaks of Zen, satori, and samadhi. Why did it happen in Japan? Why has it happened in Burma, in Thailand, in Vietnam? All the countries which have been influenced by Buddhism, their language is different from other countries which have never been influenced by Buddhism because Buddha said there is no “I” – anatta, anatma, no-selfness, there is no “I.” That emphasis entered the languages.

Buddha says, “Nothing is permanent.” So when for the first time the Bible was being translated into Buddhist languages, it was very difficult to translate it. The problem was very basic – how to put “God is,” because in Buddhist countries “is” is a dirty word. Everything is becoming, nothing is. If you want to say, “The tree is,” in Burmese, it will come to mean, “The tree is becoming.” It will not mean, “The tree is.” If you want to say, “The river is,” you cannot say it in Burmese. It will come to mean, “The river is becoming.” And that’s true because the river is never is. It is always in a process – the river is “rivering.” It is not a noun; it is a verb. The river is rivering, becoming. Never in any stage can you catch it as “is.” You cannot take a snap of it; it is a movie – continuous process. You cannot have a photograph – the photograph will be false because it will be “is,” and the river never is.

Buddhist languages have a different structure to them; then, they create a different mind. The mind depends much on language; its whole game is linguistic. Beware of it. […]

If Buddha comes to you and says, “There is no God,” you immediately get anxious, worried. What has he said? He has simply said something which goes against your linguistic pattern, that’s all. If he says, “There is no self, no ‘I,”’ you become disturbed. What has he done? He has simply taken away a strategy of your ego, nothing else. He has simply shattered your linguistic pattern.

It is happening every day here. When I say something, and I destroy some linguistic pattern in you, you become annoyed, you become angry. If you are a Christian, of course, you have a Christian house of language. If you are a Hindu, you have a Hindu house of language. I am neither, and I am here to destroy all linguistic patterns. You bet you get angry. You become annoyed. You start thinking what to do. But what am I doing? What can I take from you? Can Buddha take God from you if you have known God – can he take it from you? Then there is no question. But he can take a linguistic theory; he can take a hypothesis from you.

Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence . . ..

Language belongs to sattva, theories belong to sattva, philosophies belong to sattva. Sattva means your intelligence, your mind. Mind is not you.

Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, belong to the mind. That’s why Buddhist monks say, “If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.” Buddhist monks saying that? They say, “Kill the Buddha if you see him, immediately.” They are saying, “Kill the mind, don’t carry a theory about the Buddha; otherwise you will never become a Buddha. If you want to become a Buddha, drop all ideas about Buddha – all ideas. Kill Buddha immediately!” They say, “If you utter the name of Buddha, immediately wash and rinse your mouth – the word is dirty.” Buddhist monks saying that? They are amazing people . . . but really wonderful. And they mean it.

If you can see their point, you will become able to see many more things. Bodhidharma says, “Burn all scriptures, all – including Buddha’s.” Not only the Vedas, Dhammapada included – burn all scriptures. There is a very famous painting of Bin-chi burning all the scriptures, creating a holi. And they were very, very deep into reality. What are they doing? They are simply taking away your mind from you. Where is your Veda? It is not in the book; it is in your mind. Where is your Koran? It is in your mind; it is not in the book. It is in your mental tape. Drop all that; get out of it.

Intelligence, the mind, is part of nature. It is just a reflection. It looks almost like the real, but remember, even “almost like the real,” then too it is not real. It is as if in the full moon night, you see the moon reflected in the cool, placid lake. No ripple is arising; the reflection is perfect, but still it is a reflection. And if the reflection is so beautiful, just think about the real. Don’t get caught in the reflection.

What Buddha says is a reflection, what Patanjali writes is a reflection, what I am saying is a reflection. Don’t be caught in it. If the reflection is so beautiful, try reality. Move away from the reflection toward the moon.

And the path is going to be just the opposite to the reflection. If you go on looking at the reflection and you become hypnotized by the reflection, you will never be able to see the moon in the sky because it is diametrically opposite. If you want to see the real moon, you will have to move away from the reflection – you will have to burn scriptures and you will have to kill buddhas. You will have to move in the very opposite, diametrically opposite, dimension. Then your head moves toward the moon; then you cannot see the reflection. The reflection disappears.

All scriptures, at the most, can train and discipline your intelligence. No scripture can lead you toward the real, pure purusha – the witness, the awareness.

. . . inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence . . .

That is the very cause of getting into ignorance, into the dark night, into the world, into matter, losing contact with your own reality and becoming a victim of your own ideas and projections.

. . . although they are absolutely distinct. You can see that. Even the greatest idea is different from you – you can watch it arising as an object inside you. Even the greatest idea remains a thing within you and you remain far away from it, a watcher on the hill looking down at the idea. Never get identified with any object.

Performing samyama on the self-interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others – Svartha samyamat purusha gyanam.

Patanjali is saying, “Selfishness brings the absolute knowledge” – svartha. Become selfish, that is the very core of religion. Try to see what your real self-interest is, where your real self is. Try to distinguish yourself from others – “pararth,” from the others.

And don’t think that the people who are outside you are the others. They are others, but your body is also the other. It will return to the earth one day; it is part of the earth. Your breathing is also the other; it will return to the air. It is just given to you for the time being. You have borrowed it; it will have to be returned. You will not be here, but your breath will be here in the air. You will not be here, but your body will lie down in deep sleep in the earth – dust unto dust. That which you think of as your blood will be flowing into rivers. Everything will go back.

But one thing you have not borrowed from anybody: that’s your witnessing, that’s your sakshi bhav, the awareness.

Intellect will disappear, reasoning will disappear. All these things are like formations of clouds in the sky: they come together, they disappear, but the sky remains. You will remain as a vast space. That vast space is purusha – the inner sky is purusha.

How to come to know it? Samyama on the self-interest. Bring your concentration, dharana; your contemplation, dhyan; your ecstasy, samadhi; bring all the three to your self-interest – turn in. In the West people are turning “on” – then you turn out. Turn in. Just bring your consciousness to a focus, to who you are. Differentiate between the objects. Hunger arises – this is an object. Then you are satisfied, you have eaten well, a certain well-being arises – that too is an object. Morning comes – that too is an object. Evening comes – that too is an object. You remain the same – hunger or no hunger. Life or death, misery or happiness, you remain the same watcher.

But even in looking at a movie you get caught. You know well there is only a white screen and nothing else and shadows are moving on it, but have you watched people sitting in a movie house? A few start crying when something tragic is happening on the screen. Their tears start coming. Just see: there is nothing real on the screen, but the tears are very real. The unreal is bringing tears? People reading a story in a book become so excited. Or seeing a picture of a nude woman become sexually aroused. Just see, there is nothing. Just a few lines – nothing else. Just a little ink spread on the paper. But their sexual arousal is very real.

This is the tendency of the mind: to get caught with the objects, become identified with them.

Catch yourself red handed as many times as you can. Again and again, catch yourself red handed and drop the object. Suddenly you will feel a coolness, all excitement gone. The moment you realize there is only the screen and nothing else, for what am I getting so much excited, for what . . . The whole world is a screen, and all that you are seeing there are your own desires projected; and whatsoever you want, you start projecting and believing. This whole world is a fantasy. And remember, you all don’t live in the same world. Everybody has his own world because his fantasies are different from the others. The truth is one; fantasies are as many as there are minds. If you are in a fantasy, you cannot meet the other person, you cannot communicate with the other.

He is in his fantasy. That is what is happening: when people want to relate, they cannot relate. Somehow, they miss each other. Lovers, wives, friends, husbands, miss each other, they go on missing. And they are very much worried over why they cannot communicate. They wanted to say something, but the other understands something else. And they go on saying, “I never meant this,” but the other goes on hearing something else.

What is happening? The other lives in his fantasy; you live in your own fantasy. He is projecting some other film on the same screen; you are projecting some other film on the same screen. That’s why a relationship becomes such an anxiety, anguish. One feels [to be] alone is to be good and happy, and whenever you move with somebody, you start getting into a mire, into a hell. When Sartre says, he says through his experience: “The other is hell.” But the other is not creating the hell; just two fantasies clashing, just two worlds of dreams clashing.

Communication is possible only when you have dropped your fantasy world and the other has dropped his fantasy world. Then two beings face each other – and they are not two because the twoness drops with the world of fantasy. Then they are one.

When a buddha faces somebody who is also a buddha, they are not two. That’s why two buddhas have not been known to talk to each other – there are not two persons to talk. They remain quiet; they remain silent. There are stories that when Mahavir and Buddha were alive . . . They were contemporaries, and they moved, wandered, in the same small province of Bihar; it is called Bihar because of these two people: bihar means wandering. Because these two persons wandered all over the place, it became known as the province of their wandering – but they never met. Many times, they were in the same town; the place is not very big. Many times, they stayed in the same place, a small village. Once it happened that they stayed in the same serai, in the same dharmasala, but they never met.

Now a problem arises: Why? And if you ask Buddhists or Jains why they didn’t meet, they feel a little embarrassed. The question seems embarrassing because that simply shows maybe they were very egoistic? Who should go to whom? Buddha to Mahavir or Mahavir to Buddha? Nobody can do that. So Jains and Buddhists avoid the question – they have never answered. But I know: the reason is there were not two persons to meet. It is not a question of egoism. Simply, there were not two persons to meet! Two emptinesses staying in the same serai, so what to do? How to bring them together? And even if you bring them together, they will not be two. There will be only one emptiness. When two zeros meet, it becomes one zero.

Performing samyama on the self interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others.

Tatah pratibha sravana vedan adarsh asvada varta jayante.

From this follow intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling.

Again the word pratibha has to be understood. One who attains to pure attention, to pure awareness, to pure inner clarity, innocence, attains to pratibha. Pratibha is not intuition. Intellect is sun-oriented; intuition is moon-oriented; pratibha is beyond both. Man remains an intellectual, woman intuitional, but the Buddha – purusha, one who has attained, is neither man nor woman. […]

Woman has to flower in her moonhood as man has to flower in his sunhood, but pratibha is beyond both. Intellect is psychological, intuition parapsychological, pratibha para psychological.

From this follows intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling.

Remember this, that it can happen on two levels. If you are a moon person, a feminine person – maybe man or woman, that doesn’t make any difference – if you function from the moon center, you will be able to hear many things which others cannot hear and you will be able to see many things which others cannot see. You will become perceptive of the hidden. The hidden dimension will be not so hidden for you; the secret will become a little open for you.

That’s what is being studied by parapsychology. Now it is gaining momentum; a few universities of the world have opened parapsychological departments. Much research work is being done, even in Soviet Russia. Because man has failed in a way. The sun center has failed. We have lived through that sun center for thousands of years; it brings only violence, war, misery. Now the other center has to be tackled.

Even in Soviet Russia, which is dominated by the sun center, by the communists, who don’t believe in any possibility of the beyond, even they are trying. And they have done much work, and they have discovered much. Of course, they interpret it in terms of intellect – -they don’t call it “extrasensory,” they don’t call it “parapsychological.” They say, “This is also sensory, only refined.” Eyes can become more refined and they can see things which ordinarily cannot be seen. For example, eyes can see your inner body just as an X-ray can see it. If the X-ray can see it, then the eye can also see it; one just needs to train the eyes.

And in a way they are right. Intuition is not beyond the senses; it is a refinement of sense. Pratibha is beyond the senses – it is non-sensory, it is immediate, the senses are dropped. This is the yoga standpoint, that within you, you are all knowing – all knowingness is your very nature. In fact, you think that you see through the eyes; yoga says you are not seeing through the eyes – you are being blinded by the eyes. Let me explain it to you.

You are standing in a room and you are looking outside from a small hole. Of course, in a room you will feel that that small hole gives at least a certain knowledge to you about the world outside. You may become focused on it. You may think without this hole it will be impossible to see. Yoga says you are getting into a very, very erroneous attitude. This hole allows you to see, but this hole is not the cause of seeing – seeing is your quality. You are seeing through the hole; the hole is not seeing.

You are the seer. You are looking through the eyes into the world; you are looking at me. Your eyes are just the holes in the body, but you are the seer inside. If you can get out of the body, the same will happen as will happen if you can open the door and can come out into the open sky. Because of the hole being lost, you will not become blind. In fact, then you will understand that the hole was blinding you. It was giving you a very limited vision. Now open, under the sky, you can see the whole in a total, instantaneous vision, altogether. Now your vision is not linear, and your vision is not limited, because there is no window to it. You have come under the sky: you can see all around.

The same is the standpoint of yoga, and [it is] true. The body is giving only small holes to you: from the ears you can hear, from the eyes you can see, from the tongue you can taste, from the nose you can smell. Small holes, and you are hiding behind. Yoga says, come out, get out, go beyond. Get out of these holes, and you will become all-knowing, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. This is pratibha.

From this follows . . . the hearing that is of the beyond, the hearing that is not through the intellect nor through the intuition but through pratibha; and [so with] touching and seeing and tasting and smelling.

Remember it, that one who has achieved lives life in its totality for the first time. The Upanishads say, “ten tyakten bhunjitha” – “Those who have renounced, only they have indulged.” Very paradoxical. “Those who have renounced, only they have known and experienced and enjoyed, indulged.” Your limitation in the body is making you impoverished. Getting up beyond the body, you will become richer. One who has attained is not poorer – he becomes tremendously rich. He becomes a god.

So yoga is not against the world. In fact, you are against the world. And yoga is not against bliss – you are against bliss. And yoga wants you to drop the world so all limitations can be dropped and you can become unlimited in your being, in your experiencing.

These are powers when the mind is turned outward, but obstacles in the way of samadhi.

But Patanjali is always aware to tell you again and again – he goes on hammering the point to hit it home – that even these powers, of immediate hearing, listening, tasting, smelling, touching – remember, they are powers if you are going outward, but if you want to go in, they become hindrances. All powers become hindrances when one is going in.

The person who is going out is going through the moon and to the sun and to the world. And the person who is going in, his energy is moving from the sun to the moon and from the moon to the beyond. Their target and goals are totally different, diametrically opposite.

It happens then, sometimes you start feeling the first glimpse of pratibha, of the beyond, and you become so powerful – you are filled with power, you are power – and in that moment you can fall again. Power corrupts; you can fall. You can get into the head so much, you can get into the ego so much, that you would like to have a ride on it – the power. You would like to do miracles or other foolish things.

All miracle mongers are in a way foolish – whatsoever they say. They may say that they are doing these miracles to help people. They are not helping anybody; they are simply harming themselves – and harming others also. Because in doing such things they are falling below the beyond. And then their whole thing becomes just a trickery. There are tricks of the parapsychic, of the intuitional, of the moon world, which once you know them, you can play around. They are tricks still, and the ego can again use those tricks. […]

Patanjali says, “These are powers when the mind is turned outward, but obstacles in the way of samadhi.” If you want to attain to the ultimate, you have to lose all. You have to lose all! This is the way of the real seeker: whatsoever he gains, he goes and sacrifices it to God. He says, “You have given it to me, but what am I going to do with it? I put it again back at your feet.” He goes on sacrificing whatsoever he attains, and he remains always empty of attainment. That is spirituality: to remain always empty of attainment, and whatsoever comes by the way, one goes on sacrificing it. […]

Whatsoever comes on your way of inner growth . . . and much comes. Every moment is a new discovery on the inner path; every moment something suddenly falls in your hands – you had not even imagined; you have never asked for it. Millions are the gifts of the path, but only the one reaches to the end who goes on offering those gifts back to God. Otherwise, if you start clinging to the gift, then and there your progress stops. Then and there your growth stops. Then and there you make an abode and start living there.

Te samadhav upasarga vyuthane siddhayah.

If you want samadhi, the ultimate peace, the ultimate silence, the ultimate truth, then never get attached to any attainment whatsoever – worldly, other worldly, psychological, parapsychological, intellectual, intuitive, whatsoever. Never get attached to any attainment. Go on offering it to God, go on offering it to God . . . and more will be coming! Go on offering it to God.

When you have offered all, God comes. When you have offered all, given it back to him, he comes as the last gift. God is the last gift.

-Osho

From Secrets of Yoga; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.8, Discourse #7 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.8).

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the sixteenth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.

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.

Be Attentively Inattentive – Osho

This is what tantra says: the royal way – behave like a king, not like a soldier. There is nobody on top of you to force you and order you; there should not be really a style of life. That is the royal way. You should live moment to moment, enjoying moment to moment – spontaneity should be the way. And why bother about tomorrow? – This moment is enough. Live it! Live it in totality. Respond, but don’t react. “No habits” should be the formula.

I am not saying live in a chaos, but don’t live through habits. Maybe, just living spontaneously, a way of life evolves in you – but that is not forced. If you enjoy the morning every day, and through enjoyment you get up early in the morning, not as a habit, and you get up every day… and you may get up for your whole life, but that is not a habit. You are not forcing yourself to get up – it happens.

It is beautiful; you enjoy it, you love it.

If it happens out of love, it is not a style, it is not a habit, not a conditioning, not a cultivated, dead thing. Less habits – you will be more alive. No habits – you will be perfectly alive. Habits surround you with a dead crust and you become enclosed in them, you become encapsulated. Like a seed a cell surrounds you, hard. Be flexible.

Yoga teaches you to cultivate the opposite of all that is bad. Fight with evil and attend to good. There is violence – kill the violence within you and become nonviolent, cultivate nonviolence. Always do the opposite and force the opposite to become your pattern. This is the soldier’s way – a small teaching. Tantra is the great teaching – the supreme. What does tantra say? Tantra says: don’t create any conflict within yourself. Accept both, and through the acceptance of both, a transcendence happens, not victory but transcendence. In yoga there are victories, in tantra there are none. In tantra . . . simply transcendence. Not that you become nonviolent against violence, you simply go beyond both, you simply become a third phenomenon – a witness.

I was sitting once in a butcher’s shop. He was a very good man and I used to go to visit him. It was evening and he was just going to close the shop when a man came and asked for a hen. And I knew because just a few minutes before he had told me that everything was sold today – only one hen was left. So he was very happy; he went in, brought the hen out, threw it on the scale and said, “That will be five rupees.”

The man said, “It is good, but I am going to give a party and many friends are coming and this hen seems to be too small. I would like to have a little bigger one.”

Now I knew that he had no hen left, this was the only one. The butcher brooded a little, took the hen back inside the room, stayed there a little, came back again, threw the hen on the scale – the same one – and said, “This will be seven rupees.”

The man said, “Tell you what, I will take both of them.”

Then the butcher was really in a fix.

And tantra puts the whole existence itself in a fix. Tantra says, “I will take both of them.”

There are not two. Hate is nothing but another aspect of love. Anger is nothing but another aspect of compassion, and violence is nothing but another face of nonviolence. Tantra says, “Tell you what, I will take both of them. I accept both.” And suddenly through this acceptance there is a transcendence, because there are not two. Violence and nonviolence are not two. Anger and compassion are not two. Love and hate are not two.

That’s why you know, you observe, but you are so unconscious that you don’t recognize the fact. Your love changes into hate within a second. How is it possible if they are two? Not even a second is needed: this moment you love, and next moment you hate the same person. In the morning you love the same person, by the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love again. This game of love and hate goes on. In fact, love and hate is not the right word: love-hate, anger-compassion – they are one phenomenon, they are not two. That’s why love can become hate, hate can become love, anger can become compassion, compassion can become anger.

Tantra says the division is brought by your mind and then you start fighting. You create the division first; you condemn one aspect and you appreciate another. You create the division first, then you create the conflict and then you are in trouble. And you will be in trouble. A yogi is constantly in trouble because whatsoever he will do the victory cannot be final, at the most temporary.

You can push down anger and act compassion, but you know well that you have pushed it down into the unconscious and it is there – and any moment, a little unawareness and it will bubble up, it will surface. So one has to constantly push it down. And this is such an ugly phenomenon if one has to constantly push down negative things – then the whole life is wasted. When will you enjoy the divine? You have no space, no time. You are fighting with the anger and greed and sex and jealousy and a thousand things. And those thousand enemies are there; you have to be constantly on watch, you can never relax. How can you be loose and natural? You will always be tense, strained, always ready to fight, always afraid.

Yogis become afraid even of sleep, because in sleep they cannot be on watch. In sleep all that they have forced down surfaces. They may have attained to celibacy while they are awake, but in dreams it becomes impossible – beautiful women keep on floating inside, and the yogi cannot do anything. Those beautiful women are not coming from some heaven as it is written in Hindu stories, that God sent them. Why should God be interested in you? A poor yogi, not doing anybody any harm, simply sitting in the Himalayas with closed eyes, fighting with his own problems – why should God be interested in him? And why should he send apsaras, beautiful women, to distract him from his path? Why? Nobody is there. There is no need for anybody to send anybody. The yogi is creating his own dreams.

Whatsoever you suppress surfaces in the dreams. Those dreams are the part the yogi has denied. And your waking hours are as much yours as your dreams are yours. So whether you love a woman in your waking hours, or you love a woman in dream, there is no difference – there cannot be, because it is not a question of a woman there or not, it is a question of you. Whether you love a picture, a dream picture, or you love a real woman, there is in fact no difference – there cannot be, because a real woman is also a picture inside. You never know the real woman; you only know the picture.

I am here. How do you know that I am really here? Maybe it is just a dream – you are dreaming m here. What will be the difference if you dream me here and you see me actually here? – and how will you make the difference? What is the criterion? … Because whether I am here or not makes no difference – you see me inside your mind. In both the cases – dream or real – your eyes take the rays in and your mind interprets that somebody is there. You have never seen any actual person, you cannot see.

That’s why Hindus say this is a maya, this is an illusory world. Tilopa says, “Transient, ghostlike, phantomlike, dreamlike is this world.” Why? – because in dream and actuality there is no difference.

In both the cases you are confined in your mind. You only see pictures, you have never seen any reality – you cannot see, because the reality can only be seen when you become real. You are a ghostlike phenomenon, a shadow – how can you see the real? The shadow can see only the shadow. You can see reality only when the mind is dropped. Through the mind everything becomes unreal. The mind projects, creates, colors, interprets – everything becomes false. Hence the emphasis, continuous emphasis on how to be no-minds.

Tantra says don’t fight. If you fight you may continue your fight for many lives and nothing will happen out of it, because in the first place you have missed – where you have seen two was only one. And if the first step has been missed, you cannot reach the goal. Your whole journey is going to be continuously a missing. The first step has to be taken absolutely rightly, otherwise you will never reach the goal.

And what is the absolutely right thing? Tantra says it is to see the one in two, to see the one in many.

Once you can see one in duality, already the transcendence has started. This is the royal path.

Now we will try to understand the sutra.

To transcend duality is the kingly view.

To transcend, not to win – to transcend. This word is very beautiful. What does it mean, to “transcend”?

It is just as if a small child is playing with his toys. You tell him to put them away and he becomes angry. Even when he goes to sleep he goes with his toys, and the mother has to remove them when he has fallen asleep. In the morning the first thing that he demands to know is where his toys are and who has taken them away. Even in the dream he dreams about the toys. Then suddenly one day he forgets about the toys. For a few days they remain in the corner of his room, and then they are removed or thrown away; never again does he ask for them. What has happened? He has transcended, he has become mature. It is not a fight and a victory; it is not that he was fighting against the desire to have toys. No, suddenly one day he sees this is childish and he is no more a child; suddenly one day he realizes that toys are toys, they are not real life and he is ready for the real life. His back is turned towards the toys. Never again in dreams will they come; never again will he think about them. And if he sees some other child playing with toys, he will laugh; he will laugh knowingly… a knowing laugh, a wise laugh. He will say, ”He’s a child, still childish, playing with toys.” He has transcended.

Transcendence is a very spontaneous phenomenon. It is not to be cultivated. You simply become more mature. You simply see the whole absurdity of a certain thing . . . and you transcend. One young man came to me and he was very much worried. He has a beautiful wife, but her nose is a little too long. So he was worried and he said, “What to do?” Even plastic surgery was done – the nose became a little more ugly; because there was nothing wrong, and when you try to improve something where nothing is wrong, it becomes more ugly, it makes more of a mess. Now he was more troubled and he asked me what to do.

I talked to him about the toys and I told him, “One day you will have to transcend. This is just childish – why are you obsessed so much with her nose? The nose is just a tiny part, and your wife is so beautiful and such a beautiful person – and why are you making her so sad because of her nose?” – because she has also become touchy about her nose, her nose has become as if it was the whole problem of life. And all problems are like this! Don’t think that your problem is something greater – all problems are like this. All problems are out of childishness, juvenile, they are born out of immaturity.

He was concerned so much with the nose that he would not even look at his wife’s face, because whenever he saw the nose he was troubled – but you cannot escape things so easily. If you are NOT looking at the face because of the nose, still you are reminded of the nose. Even if you are trying to evade the issue, the issue is there. You are obsessed. So I told him to meditate on the wife’s nose.

He said, “What? I cannot even look.”

I told him, “This is going to help – you simply meditate on the nose. People used in the ancient days, to meditate on the tip of their own nose, so what is wrong in meditating on the tip of your wife’s nose? Beautiful! You try.”

He said, “But what will happen out of it?”

“You just try,” I told him, “and after a few months you tell me what happens. Every day, let her sit before you and you meditate on her nose.” One day he came running to me and he said, “What nonsense I have been doing! Suddenly, I have transcended. The whole foolishness of it has become apparent – now it is no more a problem.”

He has not become victorious because, in fact, there is no enemy there so that you can win, there is no enemy to you – this is what tantra says. The whole life is in deep love with you. There is nobody who is to be destroyed, nobody who is to be won, nobody who is an enemy, a foe to you. The whole life loves you. From everywhere the love is flowing.

And within you also, there are no enemies – they have been created by priests. They have made a battleground; they have made you a battleground. They say, “Fight this – this is bad! Fight that – that is bad!” They have created so many enemies that you are surrounded by enemies and you have lost contact with the whole beauty of life.

I say to you: anger is not your enemy, greed is not your enemy; neither is compassion your friend, nor is nonviolence your friend – because friend or foe, you remain with the duality. Just look at the whole of your being and you will find they are one. When the foe becomes the friend and the friend becomes the foe, all duality is lost. Suddenly there is a transcendence, suddenly an awakening. And I tell you, it is sudden, because when you fight you have to fight inch by inch. This is not a fight at all. This is the way of the kings – the royal path.

Says Tilopa,

To transcend duality is the kingly view.

Transcend duality! Just watch and you will see there is no duality.

Bodhidharma, one of the rarest jewels ever born, went to China. The king came to see him, and the king said, “Sometimes I am very much disturbed. Sometimes there is much tension and anguish within me.”

Bodhidharma looked at him and said, “You come early tomorrow morning at four o’clock, and bring all your anguish, anxieties, disturbances with you. Remember, don’t come alone – bring all of them!”

The king looked at this Bodhidharma – he was a very weird-looking fellow; he could have scared anybody to death – and the king said, “What are you saying? What do you mean?”

Bodhidharma said, “If you don’t bring those things, then how can I set you right? Bring all of them and I will set everything right.”

The king thought, “It is better not to go. Four o’clock in the morning – it will be dark, and this man looks a little mad. With a big staff in his hand, he can even hit. And what does he mean that he will put everything right?”

He couldn’t sleep the whole night because Bodhidharma haunted him. By the morning he felt that it would be good to go, “because who knows? – maybe he can do something.”

So he came, grudgingly, hesitatingly, but he reached. And the first thing Bodhidharma asked – he was sitting there before the temple with his staff, was looking even more dangerous in the dark, and he said, “So you have come! Where are the other fellows that you were talking about?”

The king said, “You talk in puzzles, because they are not things that I can bring – they are inside.”

Bodhidharma said, “Okay. Inside, outside, things are things. You sit down, close your eyes and try to find them inside. Catch hold of them and immediately tell me and look at my staff. I am going to set them right!”

The king closed his eyes – there was nothing else to do – he closed his eyes, afraid a little, looked inside here and there, watched, and suddenly he became aware the more he looked in, that there was nothing – no anxiety, no anguish, no disturbance. He fell into a deep meditation. Hours passed, the sun started rising, and on his face there was tremendous silence.

Then Bodhidharma told him, “Now open your eyes. Enough is enough! Where are those fellows? Could you get hold of them?”

The king laughed, bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma, and he said, “Really, you have set them right, because I could not find them – and now I know what is the matter. They are not there in the first place. They were there because I never entered within myself and looked for them. They were there because I was not present inside. Now I know – you have done the miracle.”

And this is what happened. This is transcendence: not solving a problem but seeing whether really there is a problem in the first place. First you create the problem and then you start asking for the solution. First you create the question and then you roam around the world asking for the answer. This has been my experience also, that if you watch the question, the question will disappear; there is no need for any answer. If you watch the question, the question disappears – and this is transcendence. It is not a solution because there was no question at all to solve. You don’t have a disease. Just watch inside and you will not find the disease; then what is the need of a solution?

Every man is as he should be. Every man is a born king. Nothing is lacking, you need not be improved upon. And people who try to improve you, they destroy you; they are the real mischief makers. And there are many who are just watching like cats for mice: you come near them and they pounce upon you and they start improving you immediately. There are many improvers – that’s why the world is in such a chaos – there are too many people trying to improve on you. Don’t allow anybody to improve upon you. You are already the last word. You are not only the alpha; you are the omega also. You are complete, perfect.

Even if you feel imperfection, tantra says that imperfection is perfect. You need not worry about it. It will look very strange to say that your imperfection is also perfect, nothing is lacking in it. In fact, you appear imperfect not because you are imperfect but because you are a growing perfection. This looks absurd, illogical, because we think perfection cannot grow, because we mean by perfection that which has come to its last growth – but that perfection will be dead. If it cannot grow then that perfection will be dead.

God goes on growing. God is not perfect in that way, that he has no growth. He is perfect because he lacks nothing, but he goes from one perfection to another, the growth continues. God is evolution; not from imperfection to perfection but from perfection to more perfection, to still more perfection.

When perfection is without any future, it is dead. When perfection has a future to it, still an opening, a growth, still a movement, then it looks like imperfection. And I would like to tell you: be imperfect and growing, because that is what life is. And don’t try to be perfect, otherwise you will stop growing. Then you will be like a Buddha statue, stone, but dead.

Because of this phenomenon – that perfection goes on growing – you feel it is imperfect. Let it be as it is. Allow it to be as it is. This is the royal way.

To transcend duality is the kingly view. To conquer distractions is the royal practice.

Distractions are there, when you will lose your consciousness again and again. You meditate, you sit for meditation, a thought comes – and immediately you have forgotten yourself; you follow the thought, you have got involved in it. Tantra says only one thing has to be conquered, and that is distractions.

What will you do? Only one thing: when a thought comes, remain a witness. Look at it, observe it, allow it to pass your being, but don’t get attached to it in any way, for or against. It may be a bad thought, a thought to kill somebody – don’t push it, don’t say, “This is a bad thought.” The moment you say something about the thought, you have become attached, you are distracted. Now this thought will lead you to many things, from one thought to another. A good thought comes, a compassionate thought: don’t say, “Aha, so beautiful! I am a great saint. Such beautiful thoughts are coming to me that I would like to give salvation to the whole world. I would like to liberate everybody.” Don’t say that. Good or bad, you remain a witness.

Still, in the beginning, many times you will be distracted. Then what to do? If you are distracted, be distracted. Don’t be worried too much about it, otherwise that worry will become an obsession. Be distracted! For a few minutes you will be distracted, then suddenly you will remember, “I am distracted.” Then it is okay, come back. Don’t feel depressed. Don’t say, “It was bad that I was distracted” – again you are creating a dualism: bad and good. Distracted, okay – accept it, come back. Even with distraction you don’t create a conflict.

That’s what Krishnamurti goes on saying. He uses a very paradoxical concept for it. He says if you are inattentive, be attentively inattentive. That’s okay! Suddenly you find you have been inattentive, give attention to it and come back home. Krishnamurti has not been understood and the reason is that he follows the royal path. If he had been a yogi he would have been understood very easily. That’s why he goes on saying there is no method – on the royal path there is no method. He goes on saying that there is no technique – on the royal path there is none. He goes on saying no scripture will help you – on the royal path there is no scripture.

Distracted? – The moment you remember, the moment this attention comes to you that “I have been distracted,” come back. That’s all! Don’t create any conflict. Don’t say, “This was bad”; don’t feel depressed, frustrated that you have been again distracted. Nothing is wrong in distraction – enjoy it also.

If you can enjoy the distraction, less and less it will happen to you. And a day comes when there is no distraction – but this is not a victory. You have not pushed the distracting trends of your mind deep into the unconscious. No. You allowed it also. It too is good.

This is the mind of tantra, that everything is good and holy. Even if there is distraction, somehow it is needed. You may not be aware why it is needed; somehow it is needed. If you can feel good about everything that happens, then only are you following the royal path. If you start fighting with anything whatsoever, you have fallen from the royal path and you have become an ordinary soldier, a warrior.

To transcend duality is the kingly view. To conquer distractions is the royal practice.

-Osho

From Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, Discourse #7

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.

Meditation is Mind Relaxed – Osho

Meditation, understanding, awareness, love and enlightenment, and now transcendence of enlightenment, seem to be inalienable parts of your teaching. And they also seem to be organically interconnected.

Would you please explain to us the whole thing once again?

It is so obvious, so simple. It needs no explanation.

It needs only description.

Meditation is nothing but your mind in a silent state. Just as a lake is silent, not even ripples on it . . . thoughts are ripples. Meditation is mind relaxed – don’t make things very complex – mind in a state of not doing anything, just at ease.

And the moment you are relaxed, silent, peaceful, there is great insight and understanding of things that you have never understood before. Nobody is explaining anything to you. Just your clarity of vision makes things clear.

It is the same rose, but now you know its beauty in its multi-dimensional way. You had seen it many times – it was just an ordinary rose. But today it is no more ordinary; today it has become extraordinary because you have a clarity. All the dust is removed from your insight and the rose has an aura that you were not aware of before.

Everything around you, inside you, outside you, becomes crystal clear. And as understanding reaches to the ultimate point, there is an explosion of light.

Clarity, in its ultimate stage, becomes an explosion of light we have called “enlightenment.”

Just don’t use big words; that makes things difficult.

It is simply in the intensity of clarity that darkness disappears. It is because you can see so clearly that darkness is no more there. You know perfectly well that there are animals who can see in darkness; their eyes are more clear, more penetrating. Your insight becomes so penetrating that all darkness is dispelled. In other words, you have an explosion of light. Call it enlightenment, liberation, realization. But you are still beyond it: it is your experience, and you are the experiencer. This is an objective experience; you are a subjectivity. You know all this is happening; hence the transcendence, hence going beyond enlightenment. At that peak, at that Everest . . . only witnessing, just pure awareness; not aware of anything, not witnessing anything – just a pure mirror, not mirroring anything at all. They are all organically related.

And don’t bother about the whole thing.

Move step by step; the other step will follow automatically.

-Osho

From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #12, Q4

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

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

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